John Marsden - While I live

‘At ten sixty,’ Jerry yelled, striking his hand with his rolled-up receipt book. ‘At ten sixty, and I’m taking tens.’

Mr Rundle shook his head, Polly gazed away across the car park as though she were trying to remember a dream she’d had about the Taj Mahal or wombats or mango ice-cream, but Don Murray didn’t hesitate. A quick nod and we were up to $1070.

I didn’t know Mr Murray too well. I’d barely seen him since I’d arrived at Simmons’ Reef, on a big quest to find my mother, what seemed like years ago, just as the war ended, and he’d been nice to me when I at last had the big reunion with Mum. I know Dad respected him and thought he had good judgement. He managed ‘Black-wood Springs’ for a plastic surgeon who lived in the city and only got to Wirrawee every three or four months.

Don was an old guy, with white hair and sharp blue eyes. He was a bit overweight. He was one of those people who gets dressed up for the sales, with the blazer and tie. But he looked really posh anyway, the way some people do no matter what they’re wearing. He wouldn’t like being beaten by a girl, I was sure of that.

I felt the sweat oozing out of my skin, somewhere around my eyebrows. ‘Oh well,’ I thought, ‘if he wants these cattle he’ll have to pay for them.’ I nodded again. ‘Ten eighty, ten eighty, ten eighty,’ Jerry went, ‘it’s against you, Don, ten eighty, it’s with Ellie Linton on my right.’

For the first time Mr Murray hesitated. I hoped we could quit there. I was never sure how much these auctions were to do with getting the right price for the stock and how much they were to do with power struggles. In the past I’d watched my father caught up in these little dramas, I’d stood by his side and felt his tension as he went hammer and tongs with one of his neighbours or someone from three hundred k’s away for a ram or a bull or a pen of calves.

Now I was in that position myself. It was harder than I’d expected. I was attacked by so many doubts. It seemed like Don Murray and I were the only two people at this sale who thought these cattle were worth $1080 each. In a few moments one of us would stand alone: the only person who thought he or she could turn a good profit on these twenty beasts.

I’d always liked the sales before; I wasn’t so sure that I liked them now. It was the ultimate test of my judgement and knowledge as a primary producer, and I was no way ready for it.

Don twitched his sunglasses and Jerry was away again. ‘At ten ninety, ten ninety, ten ninety, and they still represent great buying. You’ve all seen the market, ladies and gentlemen, and it’s got quite a way to run yet.’

Before I could think too much I nodded again. Eleven hundred bucks. At last Mr Murray turned away. What a relief. I’d paid far more than I wanted. I’d be buying armchairs for these beasts and hiring a nanny for them. But I still thought I could make it work.

I glanced down at Gavin. He looked as nervous as I felt. Then out of nowhere I heard another female voice.

‘Eleven ten,’ she called out clearly and firmly.

No need to look. I knew that voice. Polly Addams was back. Well, the good news was that someone else thought the Herefords were worth around twenty-two thousand dollars the lot.

That was the only good news though. I went right back into full sweat mode. My first instinct was to yell ‘No fair’, as though I deserved these cattle because I’d worked harder through the bidding than anyone else. My second instinct was to commit homicide, out of sheer frustration. I had the ultimate weapon right beside me too. I’m sure if I told Gavin to go and buzz that lady with an electric cattle prod he wouldn’t have stopped to ask questions.

Still, no time to think about that. I hunched up my shoulders. Could I make these cattle pay? It was a gamble, like so much of life on the land. If prices kept going up, OK, yes. If they went down much I would be wiped out. But I couldn’t run a property with no stock. And there weren’t many pens left at this sale. I gritted my teeth and nodded at Jerry again.

‘Eleven twenty,’ he called, on my behalf. ‘Eleven twenty, come on, Polly, what do you say, I’ll take fives. Yes, it’s against you now, Ellie, eleven twenty-five.’

Gavin tugged anxiously at my sleeve. ‘Lot of money,’ he said. He’d got that right. I’d long ago forgotten the idea of turning a quick profit on these steers. I nodded again, and so did Polly a moment later. I bid eleven forty, trying to look confident, but I knew this had to be my last go. If Polly wanted them for $1145, they were hers.

She stared straight back at Jerry. About an hour passed, or that’s what it felt like. I half hoped she’d bid again, so she could have them. Then she turned away and Jerry knocked them down to me.

‘See if you can find Jack Edgecombe,’ I said to Gavin, wiping my face with my hand. ‘Ask him if he can take forty-four head for us.’

Jack was an old-timer with a cattle truck. He attended the sales every fortnight, along with half a dozen other truckies hoping to pick up work. Jack had been moving stock for us since the invention of the internal combustion engine. I think Gavin would have loved to adopt him as a grandfather. Mind you, Gavin would have happily adopted anyone with a truck or a bulldozer. He ducked away through the legs of the crowd and disappeared towards the trucks.

In the end we had a bit more than forty-four head.

The second last pen of the day, fourteen cows in calf, looked reasonably cheap on the prices people were paying. I was watching the bidding and next to me was Mr Young. Turned out they were his cows. When the bidding stalled at $990 he whispered to me, ‘Look, Ellie, you could do worse than this lot. They’ve had an excellent bull over them, and they’re all good mothers. I’m only selling them because I’ve got to make more room for the stud.’

He was a good guy, someone I trusted. So I put my hand up just as Jerry was about to knock them down to Wingaree Pastoral Company and that turned out to be the winning bid, at a thousand bucks. I had fifty-eight more cattle than I’d had at the start of the day and I’d spent nearly sixty thousand dollars. Then there was Jack’s bill for bringing the stock out to my place, not to mention all the taxes and other excuses the auctioneers found for adding stuff to the bill.

I was still shaking when I got home.

The next day started early, like so many of them do. Right on dusk the night before I’d noticed a cow with a prolapsed rectum, so we moved her into the cattle yard. Before going out to the school bus I nicked into the yard with a sleepy and complaining Gavin.

Dad had taught me what to do with prolapsed rectums and uteruses but it wasn’t nice before breakfast. There was too much of it to push back in so I got a piece of poly pipe, about thirty centimetres, and drilled a hole halfway along it. Then I had the fun job of finding the actual hole in the cow, through all the maggoty mess of intestines.

‘Hope you wash your hands after this,’ Gavin mumbled.

Once I’d found the bum, with a bit of careful pushing and experimenting, I got the pipe in, up to the hole which I’d drilled. Gavin gave me the needle and the twine and I got stuck into my needlework. A bit different from the needlework all those elegant ladies had done in the nineteenth century. Basically I was tying the twine round and round the prolapsed part, using the hole in the pipe, until I could tie it off and let the cow go back to the paddock. After a while the prolapsed part would drop off, because I’d cut the circulation to it. And the twine would rot away too. The pipe would drop out and the cow could go on with her life, able to mix with her friends again without the embarrassment of poly pipe sticking out of her bum. In the meantime she’d have to poo through the pipe.