Odours hover low in the arena, pungent with nervous urine; horse, cattle, sheep, any beast that can realize a profit. The auctioneer’s repetitious phrasing rings shamelessly to those listening and tedious to those who are not. His timing neither falters nor retires. He cannot allow himself to appear uncertain; not to his earnest buyers he can’t. That is the nature of his task.
The auctioneer might well have been pitching caskets to corpses as far as I am concerned. I am neither earnest nor a buyer and his ‘oo’ll gi me 40, 40, 40’ sounds like an engine missing far down the road. Today I am consumed by misfortune. That’s why I came to the sale barns. I didn’t want to bear the weight alone.
The same work bent bodies are here today as with every sale, some to buy, some to neighbor and sip coffee. Men and women that bend their bones with beasts’ work, can feel legitimately idle for a couple of hours. They lean the rail with their forearms, fingers laced, heads stooped from familiarity with strain; mighty workers clad in farm garb.
I was leaning. I was leaning next to a neighbor whose great bent hands and work worn frame declared his right to be leaning as well. The Guthrie’s persevered as a cow/calf operation in spite of owning good bottom land, north of the assumed limits of good Ontario farmland. He and his wife Violla were stockmen not land tillers. He stood pushing his finger at the tear hole of his cup. I expect he had seen the worry in my face and needed a detour for his eyes. He could see that I had been bit by our neighbor’s trouble.
“See anything you like, Elmer?” I ask to let him off the hook.
“Sellin; not buyin.” He says and he draws involuntary circles on the lid. We stand awkwardly for what seems too long, knowing that there is a question that needs asking.
“You heard?” He asks. I sense he hopes I have not.
I acknowledge his question with a nod but have a gnawing one of my own. Why I am so spooked by this tragedy. This isn’t the first-time injured beasts had to be put down. Every guy here probably had to do it himself at one time or another. But that business. That was the saddest waste of animal flesh I had ever known. Those poor horses. Ran full out, probably for the first time; ran until they perished. I had gone over every possible reason why and not one of them offered any comfort. The reason I had suspected was hard to swallow.
Guthrie twisted himself so he was facing me full on. He was still fingering that cup.
“You were there?” He asked it and raised his eyes till they were fused on mine, retiring yet persistent.
“No. Not me. You?”
“No. Walker told me.”
I scanned the men abreast of Guthrie, searching for Walker, as if that was going to settle anything. I watched Guthrie study me.
“Hell of a thing…” I said. “…just to bolt like that, full out.”
Guthrie made a spitting noise. “It would have only taken one of them to start.”
I listened to Guthrie’s explanation. I could see he had made his sense of it.
“Just bolted.” I repeated. “Ran clear to the swamp.”
Guthrie reached to an inside pocket. His hand emerged holding a small bottle. Under the cover of his coat, he tipped the bottle into his cup. He made a gesture. I waved the offer away.
“Those animals never saw anything like open spaces before…” Guthrie’s tone was looking for blame. “not in the years I knew Able to own them. They were either hitched and working or corralled in that shoebox paddock.”
Guthrie was probably right, but still, Able hadn’t been in the ground long. A dead man can’t answer to insinuations.
“You ever keep horses?” Guthrie asked. He was implying, that if I had, I’d know.
“I’ve never taken a notion to want a horse.”
He looked to me as if there should be more.
“No need of horses.” I answered. “As a pet maybe but I wouldn’t want to find myself here selling a friend. Would you?”
Guthrie sniffed a brief laugh at my logic.
A big strawberry roan mare got led out into the ring. She looked like somebody flung red paint at her white body through a sieve. Striking. She held herself proud and bobbed and shook her head in protest. The auctioneer began his trill and I could read the worry in that animal’s lines just as Guthrie had seen it in mine.
Able’s team had spent a lifetime in the company of soulless drudgery, no indulgences, no pasture land to kick up and play. They bolted out of the sheer joy of it; an opportunity they’d never known. That’s what I convinced myself happened. That’s what made it unpalatable. It’d be like watching fledglings getting picked off by predators on their first flight. Turn a guys’ guts just thinking about it.
Every day Able would hitch his team and they’d draw whatever he had been hired to haul and when he was done cooling them down, they’d be confined to that small paddock, only spitting distance from the comings and goings of the road. Those poor beasts could only witness the world’s disposition: passing dog fights, lightning storms, kids playing on the road. Imagine it; them cut loose for the first time. They probably hit full gallop in three strides. Rash enthusiasm ended up a very ugly thing indeed.
It took Guthrie and I less than an hour to learn the authentic details of what happened to that team: When Able Cromptom passed from the ailments that had plagued him, his team had needed care and feeding. Able was a bachelor. Gossip had it that he had been orphaned although no one knew that for sure. That was before my time. It was agreed within the community that his team should be pastured by his neighbors until the estate was settled. It was intended to be a charitable undertaking. We look after our own.
Mr. Angus Brown agreed to be the temporary recipient of the team. He offered the pasture fronting on the Mallard quarter line. They were loaded in a trailer and transported. A crowd of helpers showed up, mostly for the laughing and telling of stories, unaware that they were to become witnesses. Upon being unloaded both horses became hard to handle. The gelding reared and snorted and the mare resisted the men as they removed her halter. Those horses knew something was up. Both immediately bolted. Neighbors shouted, encouraging the team to freedom. The animals took separate trails for the first time in their lives like they were rebelling against years of pointless toil. They eventually both broke the rise that led to low ground and descended out of sight. The first sign that something had gone wrong came to the crowd on the wind. It was a dreadful sound, “Panicked whinnies.” That was how it was described. That sound got everyone running.
Some said they had bolted because of being skittish of the unfamiliar ground. Little Jenny Brown thought the same as me. She swore she saw raw impatience in their trusting faces. Both animals were dead within thirty minutes of their release. The mare ran head on into a leaning dead tamarack and broke her neck. The gelding broke a leg in the swamp muck. There was no decision to be made over the animals’ future. It took half of that thirty minutes to fetch a rifle.
Guthrie left the auction barns forgetting to collect his earnings from the sale. Me; I thought to offer the guy who bought the strawberry mare more than he had paid. I let that thought pass.
From a body of work that includes thirty short stories Steve has placed two pieces: ‘Hardly Worth the Telling’ with DASH, English dept., California State University, and ‘Burying Jacob Muscrat’ with the now defunct Danforth Review.
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