bird whistle salesman
when you are the only bird whistle salesman in perth, there is no relief. it was 8 pm and i stood waiting at the bird whistle kiosk, the salesman nowhere to be seen. then i realised he was behind the counter and lying down. i was in a rush so i whacked the bell for service and heard him call out, just a minute! he had probably been here at the show since early morning and just needed a little rest. being a bird whistle salesman must be very draining because your role is to both supply, entertain and educate the masses, so i stopped dinging the bell and waited with patience and respect.
some people queued up behind me and i wondered if i should make conversation, but what about? i asked the guy behind me if he’d heard a bird whistle before and he said yes, once. but before i could ask him a follow up question the bird whistle salesman stood up and rubbed his eyes. i asked if i could please hear a demonstation. the salesman took a collection of pipes from under the counter and delivered a terse and mechanical bird whistle demonstation that went:
bird. weeoowee.
duck. HONK.
owl. hoohoo.
kookabarra. kaka ka kaka.
alien. weeoowee.
what whistles you want?
i thought about it. the bird and owl i could take or leave, but the kookaburra duck and alien were very convincing and would be quite useful to me on my bushwalks. ten dollars for three whistles wasn’t a bad deal and i remembered i had a further discount because earlier i had won four dollars in a coin push game by kicking the machine.
when one gets a new instrument one must sit in a quiet place and figure it out. i remembered a song that goes ‘went out on the mountain top to give my horn a blow / there i heard my true love sing, yonder comes my beau’ which now after writing i realise is unrelated to my situation but i refuse to backspace. the showground train station was relatively quiet despite being full of teenagers, and in this year’s haunting absence of bertie beetle, everyone was eating zappo sour chews. i tried not to think about cultural decline and i went out to the farthest corner to give my horn a blow.
duck, i said, and blew, but no sound came.
duck, i said. nothing again.
i looked at the instructions and realised that either i was blowing into the wrong end or i wasnt blowing hard enough, so i turned the pipe around and huffed a lung full of air and blew my hardest. for a moment, i heard the sound of a duck. and then i heard pain. then ringing. then nothing. it was like getting hit with a flash grenade. the screen goes white and you hear the mosquito ringtone and the only thing you can do is stumble around. someone pulled me back before i could stumble onto the tracks and cop a fine. i noticed everyone on the platform was looking at me, so i composed myself and grimaced and held up the duck whistle as apology and explanation. the night train was packed to the rafters but no one would sit next to me, not even the old guy or the pregnant lady. in the eyes of the public i had become someone aberrant.