Eventide (Plainsong #2)(10)

The cattle sale went on. And one time there was a big lot, eighty head of them, that the ringmen ran through fifteen and twenty at a time until they came to the last bunch and these they kept back in the ring as representative of the whole lot, and all the while the older ringman was hollering: Boys, they’re a good outfit. Take a good look at them, you’re not going to see them again. They’re a good feeding outfit, boys. Eighty cows. Eighty dollars. Come on!

And there was one other time in the afternoon when Harold, sitting up in his seat above the sale ring, began to bid on a pen of butcher cows. After he bid a second time Raymond turned to look at him. Was that you? He thought that was you trying to bid on them.

It was.

Well what the hell are you doing?

Nothing. Having a little fun.

We don’t need no more cattle. We’re trying to sell some here today.

I ain’t going to buy any. I’m just having some fun raising the price for somebody else.

What if you get stuck with them?

I won’t.

Yeah. But what if you do.

Then I reckon you’ll just have to get your pocketbook out and pay for them.

Raymond turned away. You know something, he said. You’re starting to get a little mushy in the head in your advanced years, did you know that?

Well, we got to have some fun, don’t we? Victoria’s not here no more.

But we don’t need no more cattle.

You already said that.

I’m saying it so you’ll hear me.

I hear you. But I still say we got to have some kind of enjoyment in life.

I know we do. I ain’t arguing with you about that.



AT LAST THE AUCTIONEER CAME TO THE BLACKBALDY yearlings the McPherons had hauled in. The steers came into the sale ring in a swirling mass, their heads down, all moving, trying to turn back into themselves to hide.

The ringman hollered: Boys, they come right off the grass. They’ll do everything you want them to do. Good stretchy steers. These are yearling kind of cattle, boys. And good ones they are!

Ninety dollars!

The auctioneer started his chant. Well all right now. You got to like them. Fifteen steers weighing a average of eight-oh-eight. They’ll hang a good carcass for you, boys. Here we go now. Hey I got a bid now, ninety-dollar bid now, ninety-na-quarter now, now a half, now a half, got seventy-five, now ninety-one, now one-na-quarter now, now half, bid’s one-na-half, now one-na-half the bid now, now seventy-five.

The McPherons watched the fifteen steers milling about in the ring below, frightened and uncertain in this great commotion and noise, their eyes rolled back, one bawling into the dust-filled air and another taking it up, the men and women in the stadium seats all looking on through the pipe-iron bars of the ring, the brothers watching from above, viewing their own cattle with a strange emotion, having brought them in to sell but knowing too well what effort they’d put into them and what trouble there’d been over the past year and with which one or two there’d been the trouble and even knowing for four or five of them which mother cow they’d come out of. But watching the two brothers, you could not have told anything by what showed on their faces. They looked on impassively at the sale of the fifteen steers as if they were attending an event of no more significance than the rise and fall of a dry little wind.

We all in now? the auctioneer cried. We all done here? Ninety-one seventy-five, ninety-two? ninety-two? ninety-two? He flipped the gavel around, taking it by the handle, banged it sharply on the wood block on the counter and sang into the microphone: I sold them out at ninety-one seventy-five to—he looked at the bidder across the ring in the fifth row, a fat man in a straw hat, a cattle buyer for a feedlot, who flashed four fingers twice—to number forty-four!

Sitting beside the auctioneer the sale clerk wrote it down in her ledger, and the ringmen released them and ran in the next lot.

Well, Harold said, looking straight ahead. That’ll do.

It’ll serve, Raymond said, looking as though he too were talking to no one, talking about not even yesterday’s news, but about last week’s, last month’s.

They stayed on in their stadium seats to watch the present lot of cattle being sold, and the next lot, then they rose and moved stiffly down the steps and out of the sale barn. The yard crew and the pen-back crew had done their work and they received the cashier’s check—less the selling commission and the charges for the brand inspection, the feed, the health inspection, the insurance, and the fee that went to the meat board. The woman in the office handed the check to Raymond and congratulated them both. Raymond looked at the check briefly and folded it once, put it in his old leather purse and snapped it shut, poking the purse away in the inner pocket of his canvas chore jacket. Then he said: Well, it wasn’t too bad, I guess. At least we never lost no money.

Not this time, Harold said.

Then they shook the woman’s hand and went home.



AT HOME UNDER THE FADING SKY THEY WALKED DOWN TO the horse barn and cow lots and out to the loafing shed to check on things, and the cattle and horses looked all right. So they came back up across the gravel drive to the house. But the day’s excitement was gone now. They were tired and bleary now. They heated up canned soup on the stove and ate at the kitchen table and afterward set the dishes to soak and then removed themselves to the parlor to read the paper. At ten o’clock they turned on the old console television to catch whatever news there might be showing from somewhere else in the world before they climbed up the stairs and lay down tired in their beds, each in his own room across the hall from the other, consoled or not, discouraged or not, by his own familiar time-worn memories and thoughts.