April's Flute

 The Department of Very Bad Ideas' response to Covid-19 had been a standard-Liberal tax breaks alongside apolitical government wealth redistribution, which are much the same thing. The favoured barrels to pork was tradesmen - money trickled down to utes and artless drugs. April beheld this boom-time-during-pandemic with narrowed eyes and deemed it prudent to continue tax minimisation. She withheld finding employment, continued to live off savings which did not diminish and pursued her horrified fascination of gardeners' ilk.

Bunnings Warehouse remained out of April's comfort zone, a labyrinth half dedicated to paraphernalia deliberately kept out of her comprehension and lowest prices are just the beginning. She occasionally willed herself into the car park but never made it farther than the sausage sizzle. In lieu of mass-produced gardening wares, she made do. Lo, April whittled her Flute, which is more like Milwaukee 18V Li-lon Cordless Compact Blower but made of wood and about 150% the strength of Stihl BR-700 Backpack Blower.

April whittled her Flute from the dried tuber of Slutroot, a plant which releases gasses to elicit sounds, reminiscent of sex-negative slurs, upon being uprooted. She had been dismembering Slutroots for a while now, something of a profitable hobby, so taking careful renovators tool to them was easy feat. Then she added a coat of varnish.

So now here comes Judea down April's street, atop Doris the camel trotting leisurely. Right hand on reins, left hand swaying with stubbie of Balter's Captain Sensible, movement akin to drinking songs of yore. Judea prompts Doris to kneel on the neighbour's lawn, which is due for a mow.  He approaches April's front door with a well-rehearsed I have something you want and you have a way to pay for it, no I don't mean sex smile.

Judea works in horticultural retail, his nine-to-five split between watering the wares and answering customer's queries about which plants best suit their garden - always hydrangeas. On spare days, however, Judea side hustles as operator of micro-camel-train, mooking amongst suburbs to get certain wares, unique items if you will, to where they may most profitably go. He enjoys this haggling, this 'why the fuck do you want a glorified leaf blower?' to be reparteed with 'because you want it less than somebody else' accompanied by jiving of ass to his own beat.

Judea offers April an offer that she can refuse but probably will not: 'So how about your Flute for the GARY?'

April burps: 'The WHAT?'

'The Gratuitous Agricultural Ride-on Yeet. An artificial intelligence that thinks it is a combine harvester, but you can put it in a ride-on mower.'

'Yeeeah, sure, it's on my shopping list, right next to the enchanted pool noodle.'

'And you would just sit on the lawnmower, whilst drinking tea or sake or whatever, and it would trim the tops off your Slutroots, allowing the tuber to grow bigger. Or die. Like you care.'

'OK deal.'

So Judea takes April's Flute, second mid-strength beer swaying in sync to Doris' hooves, to its profitable destination. Up winding road between bushland and quarry used as swimming hole, to what was once a village which is now commuter suburb with country-lite vibe, finches amongst roses blooming like candy-store window, teenage couples lounging on picnic rugs, a long trail of impatient cars behind the camel. Judea will finally arrive and, from Doris' back, scramble over a back fence. The patriarch of the household will lower pool scoop and tip head back with closed eyes:

'Ezekiel moved to the other side of the square.'

Meaning Ezekiel 'Easy' Bones, the unrecognised esotericist who did not end up bunging Luna or her doppelganger, FYI. A casualty of large-swath redundancies of Covid and denied both JobKeeper and JobSeeker, Easy stumbled into work as a gardener/painter/cleaner/ spotter/cook/labourer/slack-of-all-trades under the tutelage of a lunatic boss, but he prefers the gardening. He enjoys being sent out to garden on his own, but his humble Mazda 3 can only carry so many tools and , which is why Easy will want April's compact Flute.

Easy will barter for April's Flute with the Gall Wasp Ocarina. With a perception of 9, which becomes a 10 with his coyote tobacco chew habit, Easy has a knack for salvaging useful shit, unique items if you will, from organic waste. Last Friday, he was tasked with removing nodules of gall wasp eggs from his boss' third lemon tree. The gall wasp lays within the branches of plants and the larvae's' growth prompts the growth of a gall, appearing like a fatty bulb - the gall of that. The emergence of insects from the within the tree leafs the nodule's bark riddled with tiny holes. One freak nodule on this particular third lemon tree, however, grew a particularly large nodule which was already hollow when Easy snipped dying limbs away from it. The nodule fit snugly in his left hand's grip with finger tips landing intuitively on four holes, a hollow stem serving as mouth piece.

This all happened after 1) Easy had to climb over his boss' fence, 2) unscrew said boss' window, 3)  crawl in for plastic clogs because the boss did not want calicivirus on his property and it might be on Easy's work boots after the sixth impromptu work visit to a sheep station to do frontier landscaping and 4) weeding.*

Perhaps the Gall Wasp Ocarina is just a novel instrument, a fluke of nature that would be cool to own but not very practical. A hunch, however, suggests to Easy and Judea that someone will be curious enough to trade for it. Target market: a musician with spare time to jam out solo and see what magic new tunes may bring - probably summon an insect plague, which would be even more valuable for someone in the insect-protein industry.

 

* True story.