Archive: The Wilderness (and) Society

First published in Voiceworks (Animal Instinct) in 2004. Also published on the Voiceworks website in 2004.

The Wilderness (and) Society

When Danny stepped outside that day his expectations were low. He knew he was unlikely to make his money's worth. There was a certain scruffiness about the suit that frightened international students, and made small children nervous instead of shy - besides which it smelt, and he only had one koala foot.
Sitting on the bus on the way into town, a woman noticed the tin bucket as she made her way up the aisle. It didn't take long for a man with a grey nose to start asking him questions about sleeping in trees, and for the bus to fill with faces turned in his direction, so Danny put his head on and got off two stops early. He walked up the hill and down Keira Street, struggling against his asthma and the stench of the suit, and sat down in the mall to catch his breath.
"I can only give you some small change," said a little old lady, gaily seating herself next to Danny. She shuffled through her bags, and he tried to stifle his wheezing long enough to nod at her. "My friend Mabel told me that she saw you on the bus. I've never done this before, so I thought I should today. It's ok, isn't it? It's all I've got, you see."
She let Danny nod again and push the bucket towards her with his foot, and seemed to fizz with excitement as some silver jingled in the bottom.
A child paused to hide behind her father's legs, and the little old lady beamed at the man, and drawing him nearer.
"Aren't you hot in that suit?" He asked, and Danny nodded. His ears flapped, probably morosely, and he had trouble gripping the zipper as he tried to breath in. The child quivered and whispered at her father, who gave her some change to put in the bucket, which the woman held out helpfully when the child still held back.
"What's he doing?" He asked.
"I think it's a pantomime. He's acting out the death of the species. The imminent destruction of life."
Danny tried to shake his head, but he could feel his ears flopping forward into a nod.
"He's quite good."
Danny struggled.
"Isn't he."
A group of highschoolers stopped to watch. The child began to weep softly, and the father, a man of the arts, deciding that this was the opportunity to encourage his daughter's latent dramatic streak, clutched Danny's paw and folded to his knees. His hand clawed the dirt of the palm garden behind the bench, and his elbow dug into Danny's ribs.
Danny wheezed and kicked the bucket, the tin rang like a death toll, and curiosity deepened the crowd at the sound of the applause. Another child began crying, in large, rasping sobs, and someone in the crowd followed the tune.
The mall security guard arrived to inform Danny that he did not have a busking permit, but was waylaid by a large, rolling woman in a blur of floral print, who had just set the bucket upright and shoved in a fifty dollar note. The guard was unable to reach him before she turned to thrust the seeping bulk of her face into his shirt. Finding himself overwhelmed by the sincerity of her emotion, he lost his inhibitions and, kissing her, took the first step to the most passionate long term relationship of his life.
Danny gasped as a man danced, and wailed, and tore the lapel from his work shirt. A passing local radio station, tired of giving Red Bull to unsuspecting caffeine addicts, set up their microphones and promised the first interview of the performer. They made their way through the emotional masses, who were now driving a wall of sniffling children before them down Globe Lane and spilling out beyond the mall into Burelli Street, the microphones catching morsels of the most significant event of the lives of the people that they passed.
The mall sound system which they had, on a hunch, rigged to broadcast their station, amplified the sound until it seemed that the entire world was filled with the sound of lamentation and ecstasy. People in Nowra and Wagga Wagga turned off their television sets and wondered at the noise, almost on the edge of their hearing, that seemed to epitomise all the joy and sorrow that they had felt throughout their lives. Telstra was forced to boost their electrical supply, as an enormous number of people began calling their parents, and for three months afterwards the garbos were astonished to find that their trucks were almost empty, as people had discovered that it was possible to reduce, reuse, and recycle.
John Howard, reading a sheet of statistics for Telstra finances, suddenly realised that there was more to life than cricket and world domination, and developed an addiction for jelly beans. A large regular consumption of sugar and Red 109 ultimately altered the chemical make up of his brain and forced him to start making rational decisions. The world became a better place for old growth forests, when John Howard joined the Greens party.
Danny hung his head, exhausted, and felt his breathing finally coming and going in normal gulps. The little old lady, caught up in the grace of the moment, removed her coat, and theatrically laid it on the bench, arranging Danny's arms onto his chest, and kissing him on the forehead. Danny took the opportunity to slip his hands out of his paws and undo the zipper. The people around were all preoccupied with their own private mourning, and the little old lady was busy condoning a couple of people with a lot of electrical equipment who kept staring at their feet, for interrupting a great performer at his work. So no one noticed his movement. The father, who had rolled under the bench in the rigours of his demonstration, emerged to join in the defence.
By the time they had allowed the radio people past, there was nothing left to nod at them but a tin bucket smothered in a mass of notes and coins, and an empty koala suit that was missing one foot.

© Laura Smith 2004