The Auction a Romance by Anna Erishkigal Read online

  The horse they led in was an enormous beauty, perhaps seventeen years old, not a youngster, but with lots of good years left in him. The opening bid was fifty dollars by a teenage boy who, despite his gawky height, leaned eagerly into the ring the same as Pippa. I glanced at the bid-list they'd given us at the gate. There were precious few families left and lots of horses still left on the list. What would happen to the ones who didn't find a home?

  "We've got fifty dollars, fifty-dollars," the auctioneer rattled in his sing-song voice. "Fifty dollars. Who will give me seventy-five for this grand old Clydesdale?"

  "Sixty dollars," somebody shouted.

  "Sixty dollars," the auctioneer said. "Who will give me…"

  "Seventy-five," the teenage boy shouted eagerly into the ring.

  "Seventy-five dollars," the auctioneer sang. "Seventy-five, seventy-five for this nice, big Clydesdale. Who will give me one hundred? Look at that feathering on his fetlocks. He's a grand old boy, sired by Rising Star. Who will give me a hundred dollars for this grand old boy?"

  "Who's Rising Star?" Pippa asked.

  "I don't know," I said. "Harvey was a mixed breed horse."

  "One hundred!" a man next to me shouted.

  "We have one hundred dollars from the man from Truganina Knackery," the auctioneer said.

  A sickening feeling settled into the pit of my stomach. I stared in horror at the man who stood beside us, the tall, scrawny troll of a man with the pointed teeth and pockmarked skin, the one who'd leered at me while filling up his petrol tank. There was a moment of silence, and then the teenage boy's father shouted: "Does he come with papers?"

  "Papers? Papers? Can somebody tell me if this horse comes with papers?" the auctioneer shouted.

  Somebody seated behind the auctioneer's podium shouted 'yes.'

  "Papers, he's got papers," the auctioneer said. "We have one hundred dollars from Truganina Knackery for a purebred Clydesdale who comes with papers. Look at this fine piece of horseflesh. Who will bid one hundred and fifty?"

  The teenage boy tugged at his father's arm.

  "One hundred fifty dollars," the boy's father shouted this time. The boy must have exceeded his own money. I could not help but finger my now-empty pocket, wishing I hadn't spent all my cash to get in. I would have given it to the kid, just to keep the horse out of the bloody knacker's hands.

  "One hundred seventy-five," the Troll-Knacker shouted.

  "Whatcha doin?" his short companion asked. "That horse is wanted by a family."

  "Look at how big he is," the Troll-Knacker rubbed his hands. "He must weigh over a thousand kilos!"

  I glanced around the room to the other seedy-looking men, none who looked like the type to buy a horse for their kid.

  "One-seventy-five, ones-seventy-five," the auctioneer droned. "Who will give me two hundred dollars for this purebred Clydesdale?"

  "Two hundred dollars!" the boy's father shouted.

  "Two-twenty-five," the Troll-Knacker shouted immediately.

  The boy tugged at his father's arm, pleading.

  "Three hundred," the boy's father shouted.

  "Three thirty five," the Troll-Knacker shouted before the auctioneer could even acknowledge the bid.

  "How much you think he'd dress out at?" the short companion rubbed his hands greedily.

  "At least 600 kilos," the Troll-Knacker said.

  All through my body, I felt the overwhelming urge to kill him…

  Pippa looked up at them, her face so young and innocent.

  "Why would you dress up a horse?"

  The Troll-Knacker turned to see who stood behind Pippa. When he saw it was me, his mouth twisted into a cruel, missing-toothed sneer.

  "Well, well, lookey here," the Troll-Knacker said. "Our tall poppy bitch's kid wants to know what happens when we dress out a horse."

  I grabbed Pippa by the waist and yanked her off the fence before the troll could tell her 'dressed' meant the weight of a carcass after it had been slaughtered, skinned and gutted out for meat.

  "C'mon, let's go!"

  "But I want to see that boy buy that horse!"

  "Three fifty," the boy's father shouted. "The horse is for my boy for a pet and that's every penny I have!"

  There was a moment of silence as the other interested bidders refused to bid. The Troll-Knacker winked at me, and then leaned forward and laughed: "Then I'll pay three-fifty-five for the horsemeat."

  The teenage boy leaped up on the fence and shouted: "But I want to give him a home! Why would you want to kill him?"

  The Troll-Knacker's maw curved up into a cruel grimace.

  "Keep bidding, boy," he laughed. "Sooner or later all horse owners have to learn, the real value of horseflesh is the value of its meat."

  My hot, Spanish blood exploded to the boiling point. If I only had a pitchfork! I would stab the bastard in the heart!

  "Let's GO!" I snapped at Pippa.

  The father of the teenager grabbed his son by the arm. Heated words passed between them, promises he'd buy him a different horse, a horse they could afford. The son sat down, his expression sullen. The auctioneer called the final bid.

  "A fine, healthy Clydesdale, sired by Rising Star. Sold to the man from Truganina Knackery."

  Chapter 42

  I dragged Pippa out of there like a dog on a leash, desperate to get away before she realized what was going on.

  "But I maybe I can buy a horse today!" Pippa protested. "Some of the horses only went for eighty dollars!"

  "Let's go look at the horses out in the pens," I said. "The prices keep going down the more people buy horses and leave."

  We passed row after row of skittish horses which baked in the sun until the auctioneer's voice grew indistinct like the constant drone of a mosquito. Around the metal pens circulated rough-looking men. Somehow I doubted they were here to buy a dream-horse. At last we came upon the little girl who'd successfully bid earlier on the palomino mare loading her new horse onto her father's trailer. I felt a pang of envy as the father bragged about how long he'd wanted to buy his daughter her dream-horse.

  "My father said I can get a horse as soon as I can buy one with my own money," Pippa said. "I'm here to see how much I need to save."

  "How much do you have?"

  "Thirty dollars," Pippa said.

  The father pointed back towards a large, communal pen where a group of horses wearing painted numbers had all been piled in together.

  "There's a lot of good Thoroughbreds in the kill pens this month," the father said. "One of the race track breeders is selling off his retired racers. If you're experienced enough to train an ex-racetrack horse to saddle, you can pick one up for the value of their meat."

  "The … kill … pens?" Pippa asked with a puzzled expression.

  I glanced at the pens filled with fat, healthy horses, most of them Thoroughbreds, and not one of them looked to be more than five years old. The Thoroughbreds were smaller than the gigantic Clydesdale, but they were still far more valuable than Pippa could afford. If only I hadn't spent my $50 on admission and a couple of stupid hot dogs!

  I grabbed Pippa's hand and shot the father an evil glare.

  "C'mon, nipper. These horses are too expensive. Let's go see if we go can find a horse further in the back?"

  I dragged her forcefully through the pens, ignoring her protests as she cried out I was hurting her. Finally I was forced to slow. In my eagerness to protect her from this ugly side of life, I was now mistreating her every bit as badly as her mother. I bit back my own tears as I tried to compose myself and turn this day back into a fun adventure. I'd had no idea this was what I was bringing Pippa to today! My mother had said Harvey would end up in a 'kill pen' if she hadn't put him down, but I hadn't wanted to believe her. I hadn't wanted to know!

  "Don't cry," I begged Pippa. "Please don't cry. Can't we just go home?" But it was me who was crying. Not just her.

  "I want to save a horse!" Pippa wailed. "That man said those horses are all going to die
!"

  I hugged her to my chest, for right now I wanted nothing more but to buy them all. But I had no money, only her father's credit card, and everything at this auction was cash only.

  We watched as a man with a clipboard called the final bid for a pen full of twenty Thoroughbreds. In a matter of minutes, a group of men backed a cattle hauler up to the pen while another man pulled out a wad of cash to pay. The men whacked the horses with long, slender sticks to drive them up into their double-decker livestock trailer.

  "Hi-yah! Hi-yah!" the men shouted, panicking the horses until they ran up the ramp. "Get up there you useless pieces of meat!"

  "Where do you think they're taking them?" Pippa asked.

  "Maybe they're doing a horse drive," I lied. "Like they do in the old American western movies. The ones that star John Wayne."

  One of the fillies, not even a yearling, slipped on the ramp and went down. It screamed as the other terrified horses trampled it. There were shouts as the goons tried to stop the line and beat the fallen horse with sticks to get it to stand back up. A beautiful Thoroughbred stallion with a golden coat reared up and screamed at the men, biting at the sticks, and pawed its hooves over the fence at them.

  'Kill them. Kill them. Oh, dear God horse, kill them and run away with your filly,' I thought to myself. But one of the men got out a cattle prod and zapped the stallion until it backed away, eyes wild, until the filly got up and limped up the ramp. The man with the cattle prod zapped the stallion again. 'Take that, yer bloody bastard!' The stallion walked up the ramp, standing between the knacker and his filly, and turned his head to look right at me.

  The sunlight hit his golden coat and made it shine, the exact same color as Harvey's coat had been, the exact same color as Adam's hair.

  Tears slid down my cheeks.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I don't have enough money to save you."

  The stallion snorted and disappeared inside the trailer. The knackers finished loading and shut the door, and then strolled over to the next kill pen where the auctioneer had already begun to call out bids on identical lot of young, healthy Thoroughbreds, all bound for slaughter because racehorse owners subsidize their hobby by breeding indiscriminately and then sell the slower horses to the Southeast Asian horsemeat market.

  I grabbed Pippa and dragged her to the rear. We walked in silence until we reached some smaller pens, each containing three or four horses. We paused at one of the pens. In it, an emaciated painted gelding that looked as though he hadn't eaten in months stood with his head down, indifferent to the little girl who, if she could buy him for her measly thirty dollars, would snatch him up and bring him home. Beside the pen, two mangy looking men chattered, oblivious to our presence, or perhaps they simply didn't care.

  "So where'd you get this one, Sam?" the first one asked.

  "Picked him up from an elderly woman whose homestead was hit by the drought," the second one said. "She paid me to help him find a home."

  The two men laughed, as if this was a joke.

  "He's awful thin," the first one said. "Most you'll get is fifty dollars."

  "That's fifty dollars in my pocket," the second man said, "times all of these." He gestured to the pens around him, all filled with equally emaciated and unresponsive horses. "The zoos and the greyhound track need cheap meat to feed their exhibits. Only cost is the fuel to haul them, and most of the owners paid me to take their horses off their hands."

  "I'll buy him," Pippa spoke up. She held out her money. "I've got thirty dollars, and I promise to give him a good home."

  The two men laughed at her.

  "Scram, kid," said the one who'd bamboozled the old woman out of her money and her horse. "Look at him? The only thing he's good for is dog food."

  "How can you do that to a horse?" Pippa shouted. She pointed at them in an eerie approximation of my own terrifying Gitano grandmother when she lay down a curse upon a gadje. I felt the air shift. The skin crawled down my back. "The Fairy Queen says that when I am older, all who are evil will be struck down!"

  I carried her out of there, kicking and screaming, before she could blurt out that her grandfather was Maynor Jackson. She screamed, 'I hate them, I hate them, I hate them,' as I carried her away until I got her out of sight.

  "I'm so sorry, nipper," I hugged her. "I had no idea so many horses get sent to slaughter!"

  I held her until she finally stopped hitting me.

  "Can't we save just one?" Pippa hic-sobbed. "I've got thirty dollars, and that man said he thought that horse would go for fifty. Daddy promised he'd chip in half. Can't you help, Rosie? Please? Can't we save just one?"

  I fingered my pocket, the one which only contained her father's credit card.

  "I spent all my money to get in here, nipper. If you want to save a horse, we have to find one we can buy for thirty dollars."

  Pippa nodded, her silver eyes red-rimmed from crying. I took her hand, the decision made. I would explain things to her father once he got home, which due to his court date, would not be until Wednesday night.

  Hi Adam. I let Pippa buy a horse. A broken-down, starved old horse, riddled with scalding or blind or lame, which will cost you thousands of dollars in vet bills which you can pay by not giving me my end-of-summer bonus.

  We walked grimly through the pens, no more tears, only a quiet determination to save a single horse's life. The pens were all filled with workhorses and family pets, thanked after a lifetime of service by being dropped off in a kill pen. We paused at one pen where a small, brown pony gasped for breath with a horrific wheezing sound. It sounded as though the pony breathed through a pair of bellows.

  "What's wrong with him?" Pippa asked the sharply dressed man who'd brought him here to sell.

  "Strangles," the man said. "It's nearly always fatal."

  "Why didn't you just put him to sleep?" I asked the man caustically. "It would be far less cruel than to drag him here?"

  The man stuck his hands into his pockets and slouched. "The vet wanted $150, and another $300 to dispose of the body because once they pump them full of barbiturates, the carcass is no good for meat. Here, I'll get rid of him for free, and they'll pay me the value of his meat."

  My blood hit the boiling point.

  "You are a loathsome excuse for a human being!" I jabbed the devil-horns into his face. "I hope someday somebody does the exact same thing to you."

  Pippa had long ago grown silent, scanning the pens, searching for a $30 unicorn. She walked off to the next pen, no longer weeping at every horse we could not save.

  At last we reached the very last pen. In it stood an emaciated white pony so small and thin it looked like a skeleton covered over with leather. Its once-white coat was scarred and grey with filth, and its hip-bones and ribs jutted out so badly it was a wonder the pony had anything left to propel its locomotion. Pippa held out her hand. The white pony stepped towards her and placed its muzzle trustingly into her palm.

  "This one," Pippa said. "This is the one the Fairy Queen wants me to save."

  I stared at the skeletal creature, guesstimating its weight, for that was the value of a small white pony that, given how readily she responded to Pippa's affection, had once belonged to a little girl just like her.

  "Her name is Luna." Pippa stroked the pony's muzzle. "She's really a unicorn, but an evil witch cut off her horn and stole away all her magic. The Fairy Queen told her I would rescue her."

  I gave her a weak, forced smile. Right now, -I- wanted to retreat into a world where fairies would save the day. But first, there was the matter of outbidding the doggers. The auction in the main building fell silent, the shadows grew long, and soon nobody but slaughterhouse buyers circulated amongst the pens. Up towards the front I heard shouts as the knackers drove terrified horses onto low-roofed transport vehicles, and once a gunshot split the air. Why, oh why, had I brought Pippa here today? Even if we won the bid, we had no way to get Luna home. But as Pippa hugged the white pony and promised it everything would be alr
ight, my heart whispered to give it a chance, the chance to live that my mother refused to give Harvey.

  I pulled out my mobile phone and stared at the four-of-five bars. Amongst my contact list were friends I'd kept touch with from my days at the riding stable. It felt weird to have access to social media again after two months of cold-turkey, but….

  I held up the phone to take a picture.

  "Pippa … smile."

  I snapped a photo of Pippa hugging her pony.

  I logged into my Facebook account and uploaded the image.

  .

  Hey guys … it's me.

  Sorry if my Mom's been spamming you. I've got this great gig taking care of this little girl here. I brought her to the auction to buy this little pony, but she doesn't have enough money and the auctioneer only takes cash. If we don't buy it, the knacker will chop it up for dog food. And then somehow we've got to get her home. And bring her to a vet. And feed her.

  Yeah … I know. Fat chance? But if anybody could swing by the horse auction with some cash, maybe you can help us? I'll pay you back. I promise I will.'

  .

  I hit 'upload' and then put away the phone.

  At last a group of seedy-looking men followed the auctioneer to our pen.

  "I'm buying this horse." Pippa shook her finger at them like a tiny, blonde Tasmanian devil. "So don't any of you bid on her or the Fairy Queen will get you!"

  The doggers laughed and elbowed each other in the ribs.

  "Only an adult can bid on a horse, kid," the auctioneer said.

  "I'll vouch for her bid." I held up my number. "I am registered."

  The auctioneer began his spiel.

  "We have here the last sale of the day, a small white mare, breed unknown, perhaps 11.2 hands."

  I expected him to elaborate about her lineage, her prior work experience, her suitability to ride, or any other factor which might give her a chance, but the auctioneer didn't bother. This was a kill pen, and the only question was which slaughterhouse would kill her.

  "Remember," I whispered. "Don't start with all the money you have."

  "Let's start the bid at thirty dollars," the auctioneer said.