Earnest Pace, because murder is bad for business

Chapter 2

It has been observed that auctioneers often seem to have a god like sense of their selves. Standing in front of the crowd with complete authority over who gets what and why and for how much can do that. Whether or not they go over the line, all auctioneers must keep control of a room full of competing interests and brook no challenge to their authority. The finality of their rulings has been confirmed in both national and international law going back for centuries. The gavel they share with members of the bar is because they are the judges of who wins in the competition sale process.

Earnest loved being an auctioneer. Outside he had to be cooperative and polite. Outside required listening and considering other's feelings. Inside the auction ring he could take the gloves off. This was the last bastion of bare knuckles capitalism. He decided who won and what it cost them. If two hands went up to bid at the same time he picked who got their bid in. It was always the one least likely to bid more. The most enthusiastic one got to go second thereby driving prices another tick higher. There were no assurances given and none expected beyond the fact that you could take home what you won and it would be yours. If you paid.

But Earnest took it far past ethical as well. He instructed his porters on the floor, the guys who would hold up items as they were sold, to put their hands over any flaw they noticed. Earnest would roll the bidding up to a point he liked without a single bidder committing while his eyes darting across the crowd facing him convinced them all that folks in the back corners behind them were really hitting it hard. If ever he looked at a bid spotter and said he thought they indicated someone was "in" they knew from prior instruction to apologize and say they had mistakenly called a bid to him.

He squared all of this with himself by saying that they were all getting better deals than they deserved and no one ever really paid a fair price to begin with. Furthermore they would not have offered up a bid if they didn't think it was a bargain. In reality he sometimes had to badger or bully a bidder into standing the bid and paying the invoice. And if that didn't work he could always make an adjustment with them later out of view of everyone else. He wouldn't let one strong willed individual start his whole crowd debating him.

Today was auction day for the school district surplus. The instruments had brought out the crowd but there was classroom after classroom full of obsolete globes, worn out student desks and even 20th century modern furniture that was considered barely tolerable when sold to institutions new but now 30 years later had become highly sought after home décor. Outside in the breezeway were stoves and refrigerators from home-ec and stoves and refrigerators from cafeterias. Pallet jacks and fire extinguishers were piled in corners. At noon a special departure from the orderly numerical progression was announced when they would step out to the parking lot to sell surplus vehicles.

One by one folks won their hard fought prizes. They contended with each other mostly, except when Earnest thought the competition too light. Then he would jigger the field a little with a bogus bid here or there or maybe a barbed comment meant to raise some ire. One family went away with the greatest play house ever for their two little girls. It was a big yellow school bus. It was gutted inside except the driver's seat and dash board. It had no engine or transmission. It was 400 square feet of dry inside play space and they even bought a few desks and chairs to furnish it. Another bidder was talked into buying an entire room full of gym mats though even he had no idea why he did it.

Hour after hour hundreds of items were sold at a blistering pace. 100 lots an hour was the answer told to anyone asking how fast it would go. "We break at noon to sell the vehicles then we get right back to the regular tagged order. You can estimate by the lot number how long it will take us to get there. Figure 100 an hour", Earnest and his crew were well rehearsed at saying. Everyone quickly realized that the instruments had been purposefully saved to the last. No doubt to keep the crowd there because as they waited all day they inevitably would buy some other things too. Who could resist a stack of tiny plastic seat school chairs originally sized for kindergarteners but also perfect for motorcycle repair? "It'll really save your back" Earnest said as he introduced the item to the crowd.

"There's 10 in the stack, how about two fifty apiece?" He wasn't much for calling out bids to get folks warmed up. Throughout the day he got the crowd trained to offer up their own openers. It saved a lot of work. "Dollar!" shouted a man in the back. "Dollar is bid, how about a two two two" cried Earnest. "Two and now three, three, three? Two and a half then... and now three.. three fifty and now four dollars a chair you must take em all at 4 dollars each. That's ten times your bid. Sold for three fifty each that's thirty five for the stack. Show me your number" He said as the man pulled from his bib overalls a cardboard square boldly scrawled with his assigned bidder number. "Sold to buyer two twenty five for three fifty at ten times the bid. Thank you."

And so it went on and on all day long. The instruments started at lot 650. It was well into the afternoon when the crowd followed the auctioneer like the pied piper into the multipurpose room today dedicated to selling musical instruments. Two attendants pushed Earnest in a large rolling podium so that he could tower above the crowd. It allowed for better view of the bidders and items being sold but it also drove home just who was in charge here.

" Ok guys, push me over there by that big bass drum. No I didn't say brass drum, those are kettle drums and they're copper, the one with the flat sides. Right there. Now turn my volume up on the PA a little. Ok. Can everyone hear me in here?" he asked. "This is what you have been waiting all day for."