‘Two specials’, a couple of builders from the site over the road ordered.

‘Right, two shit-zels’, Sarah working behind the bar grinned wickedly.

‘Well how am I supposed to know’, Marie complained from her cubby-hole into the kitchen. ‘Didn’t have all them foreign words when I was at school’.

‘I’ll have one too’, I said, ‘except the pot better be tomato juice.

‘Me too’, said Barney, the country lad.

‘You wouldn’t like tomato juice’, Sarah said. No one could do a ‘young innocent’ look as convincingly as she.

‘Aw, I meant the ... ’

‘Four shit-zels’, Sarah cheered jubilantly. ‘Any more takers?’

‘Hooking a few on them schnitzels’, Gordon laughed. ‘I heard about how they were trying to unload them at the Railway yesterday.’

‘Don’t get to be special for nothing’, Marie said, and no one knew whether that made sense or was funny or what. Not even Marie. But it sounded right.

ln the short silence that followed, Old Charlie said, ‘I can hear a sparrow. It’s in the Bottle Shop’.

No one really bothered to listen, but Barney from the Bush and Gordon got into a lively debate about the difference between bush birds, the natural sort, and city birds, noisier reckoned Gordon because they’ve got to be heard over the traffic.

But when Sarah said, ‘I had a cocky once ... ’, the bar fell silent. ‘But it didn’t talk’, she added, and breezed off to get Old Charlie’s next pot.

In the silence, we had all heard the sparrow cheeping in the bottle shop.

Marie went in first and reported back that there was indeed a sparrow somewhere in the bottle shop.

‘Just a bloody sparrow’, muttered Barney from the Bush. Sarah went in next, and called through, ‘Give us a hand, boys, it’s stuck behind the fridge’.

‘Wind must’ve blown it in the door’, said Gordon, nod­ding wisely.

‘Then let it blow it out again’, Barney countered.

Marie came back around the bar and picked up a pool cue as if she intended to impale the poor creature. Barney went round the other way. ‘Good at catching birds’, he told them all. ‘Don’t hurt it Barney’, Marie cried, ‘it might be a budgie.’ But Charlie, annoyed at having been forgotten as the first to have heard the cheeping bird, chipped in: ‘It’s a bloody sparrow, I tell you’.

‘Brunswick Budgie’, I remembered from somewhere - probably a Frank Hardy story. But I had to go to watch the show, despite myself.

Marie poked the cue in one end and Barney was able to reach in and grab the bird from the other, announcing it to be just a fledgling, too young to fly as he brought it out from behind the fridge.

‘Don’t kill it’, Sarah jumped in, even though she, too, was from the bush, and knew that the right thing to do was to wring its neck. Barney had the bird hidden in cupped hands.

‘Won’t be no good’, he assured us all.

But Marie, levelling her cue like a sword, insisted that it be taken outside and given a chance to fly, to which Barney sighed enormously, and Sarah, knowing that she didn’t want to see what had to happen next, headed back into the bar.

‘She’s right, you know’, she remarked to me as she went by, ‘once you handle the young ones, they can never fly. Usually they just die.’

Barney grinned his agreement: ‘Better if I just flush it down the dunny. Hardly got no tail feathers. Can’t fly.’

But Marie insisted again, and, defeated, Barney went reluctantly to the door. He flipped his captive into the wind. The little sparrow flopped helplessly to the asphalt.

‘Can’t leave it there’, he mumbled as he turned to us with something like a plea in his voice, ‘Cats’ll get it.’

‘Try again’, said Marie.

Barney went after the bird on the pavement but it hopped up and away from him. The wind was strong and seemed to whip it away.

‘Can’t fly, just like I said,’ Barney said. ‘Can’t last. It’s buggered.’

‘Get it … ’

But the sparrow was hopping away and out of reach, watched with compassion by Marie, resignation by Barney. The others wandered back to the bar, but I kept watching the fledgling as it hopped erratically out across the intersection. Just as it reached the centre, tossed by the gusting wind, the Rathdowne St bus came thundering along, accelerating to make the amber light, an enormous diesel-powered cat, I thought, as I watched for the inevitable outcome.

The bus went straight over it. And missed it entirely, since it must have been between the wheels. Out from under the back of the flying bus it hopped, and hopped again. I glanced over my shoulder and found only Old Charlie witnessing this gallant survival effort from the little sparrow.

But at that moment, from the other direction, a Silver Top taxi was making a right turn, straight towards it. And then there was a stronger gust of wind that seemed to pluck the bird up and whisk it away, into the air, high enough for it to find its wings. Flapping raggedly, it fluttered off down Pigdon St, away from three deaths by cats and buses and Barney.

‘Bloody tough, them Brunswick Budgies’, Old Charlie said with a wink at me.

We turned back to the bar to see Sarah corning through the kitchen with plates piled on her arms: ‘Four shit-zels.’