Free Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & by Anna Tambour

slunk clear of him now.
    ~
    The pre-auction chatter was as pitiless as pre-auction utterings always are. The prime merinos sneered at openly, coveted secretly. The battered formica dining table that was once Coralee's pride, now part of a job lot, leaned against to check for wonky legs. The milling crowd before the auction is always the same. Bede had often been one of them. But to be on the other side ...
    The speaker coughed, the gavel clapped, and the auction began. The unimportant stuff first—as far as the auctioneers are concerned. For the sellers, the heart of memories—"household assorted".
    " ... Lot 5, children's bunk bed, toy box, phonograph player and ten records ... highchair ... double bed, original condition iron, missing one ball ..."
    The auctioneers were friends, Bede had thought, until today. Sure they talked up everything, but they settled too quick, didn't really try. Couldn't they see real worth?
    Bede's insides felt pretty watery. It was his idea to sell pretty much everything. Coralee had argued, but he saw the gleam in her eyes at the prospect of everything new. "What'd the place look like with our tatty old duds?" he'd asked her. "Old mutton," he'd declared. But he had his reasons. Now, here, with it flowing away at the worth of water in a flood, he felt panic. Never was Bede Dinning a man to change his mind. But Stewart McKell had been right, he mused. Should've gone anywhere today but here.
    " ... Lot 31, Green vinyl sofa and matching chair..." Clive McKell glared at Bede, stomping around with his hard face. Clive had also told Bede to spend the day in town. Take the wife shopping. Treat her to tea. But no. There's Bede, just like the rest of these selling buggers—overflowing septics all. Long green face, muttering outrage, stinking fear.
    The usual crowd was here today. The professionals, the neighbours, those newies who think they'll make a go of it, if it is a "bargain"; that young Ickersly fellow and his wife. Looks like a young Bede, and those size-up eyes.
    It turned out to be Ickersly's day, or maybe Bede's, after all. Ickersly bought the wool plant, the this, the that, at cruelly low prices. But for the sheep he paid top dollar. The station itself went to him in a surprisingly tense duel between him and a total unknown. And the dogs—no one sells dogs this way the McKells swore to Bede, but acquiesced to his insistence. The dogs were a bared-tooth brawl, a real pack fight. Someone said Ickersly actually growled at one point. In the end, Ickersly ended up with all the dogs, even old Louie; every one of em—excepting of course Coralee's Snowball, the house poodle that wasn't on the block.
    He paid too much for the dogs, everyone agreed—especially for Louie who only had a season or two left and hardly heard a thing.
    And by two o'clock, tea being served at break, it was over.
    Throughout the whole auction, Bede lurked silent on the edge of the crowd. His face only turned from green to its normal meat-pink once.
    Six p.m.—Bede, Coralee and Snowball are on the road. Snowball, smart dog, curls up on Coralee's lap and puts himself to sleep immediately. There are no sounds to wake him up.
    ~
    "But I put a down payment on it. I counted on it! I—"
    "Well, you can stop counting now!" Bede grabbed the phone from Coralee's hand and slammed it down so hard that it jumped out of the cradle and yelped back beep beep beep beep until Coralee shepherded it back with both hands into a position of silence.
    "Be more convenient if we were dead. Divvied us up, they did. It's obscene!" An innocent pencil was grabbed up by Bede's left paw, and with a splintering crunch, suddenly became two stubs. "Sound system now, huh? Like he needs one. When that boy wants something, I can bloody hear him from the loo!"
    Coralee stood with her back against the counter in the beachside caravan, just a step away from a husband hot enough to fry eggs on.
    The house plans, large as a coverlet, slithered in noisy folds to