The Amish Blacksmith

by Mindy Starns Clark

  If we bought a horse for Priscilla today, I realized as we began to pick up speed, Amos would likely hire a delivery service to bring the animal home. That many miles on narrow two-lane streets populated not just by other buggies but cars and trucks as well was a long way to tow a horse you didn’t know much about. Too bad Amos hadn’t wanted to wait for the next auction at New Holland, because that would have been a lot closer and easier.

  Regardless, we were on our way now. The drive would take about forty minutes, so I was glad when Amos found stuff to talk about. I didn’t have to come up with anything and neither did Priscilla, who probably wouldn’t have said a word anyway.

  Amos mostly filled the time by updating Priscilla on the goings-on of every family from Ronks to New Holland and all places in between. He didn’t talk about local life the way Roseanna would have, with news of weddings and births, but instead shared highlights of the good farm years and the not-so-good, new businesses and new schoolhouses, weather phenomena, who had been sick, and who had brought in interesting welding projects. By the time we reached the outskirts of Ephrata, Amos had covered nearly every month of the six years Priscilla had been away.

  Once we arrived at the auction, I directed Big Sam past the cars, trucks, and trailers belonging to the Englisch and the Mennonites to a long rank of Amish buggies out back. We found an empty slot and pulled in. I climbed out first, and as I turned to help Priscilla down, I saw that her eyes were already busy scanning the horizon, which was bustling with activity.

  “Die Geil Vendyu,” she whispered, more to herself than to me. The horse auction.

  Amos and Priscilla stood nearby as I tied up Big Sam, gave him a couple carrots as a reward for the long trek, and then wiped down the lather on his body so he wouldn’t draw flies while he was out here waiting for us. As I worked, I sensed Priscilla’s focus on me, and I had the distinct impression she was making sure I was treating Big Sam well, especially after our earlier conversation regarding my skills as a horseman.

  When I was finished, the three of us headed toward the auction grounds, which were already packed with people. Stone Road typically started off by auctioning tack at eight and then switched over to horses at ten. It was probably a little after nine right now, which meant we still had some time to check out the offerings before we would have to take our seats at the ring.

  As we neared one of the holding pens, I gave Priscilla a glance, but I couldn’t tell if she was excited or nervous or what. Mostly, she seemed distracted, which I supposed wasn’t all that surprising. There was a lot to take in here, and for a first-timer it could be a bit overwhelming. She asked Amos about the general layout of the place and then said she would meet us in half an hour at the entrance to the stands.

  “Don’t you want to help pick out the ones we’ll be bidding on for you?” her uncle asked, clearly startled.

  She didn’t answer. She had already wandered away.

  Amos gave me a perplexed look, but I was as surprised as he. For a girl who was about to be given a new horse, she certainly didn’t seem all that grateful.

  Regardless, he grabbed a program and the two of us stepped up to the rails to get a look at the horses on the day’s listing. We saw some Standardbreds that seemed healthy and weren’t too young or too ancient. We decided on six good possibilities, and then we went inside the holding pen to give each of them a quick going-over. There wasn’t the room or the time to do a full exam, but I was able to check their hooves, fetlocks, and knees while Amos looked at their teeth, ears, and eyes. Together, we narrowed our list down to four solid choices, and then we came back out and moved toward the bleachers.

  The tack auction wasn’t quite finished yet, so I offered to buy Amos some coffee while we waited to go in. He declined, turning and giving a hearty greeting of “Hoe gaat het?” to a familiar face, an Amish man I recognized as a welding customer. I headed off to get a cup for myself.

  I wasn’t sure whether Priscilla might want some too or not, so I scanned the crowd on my way to the food stands. I spotted her near a large cluster of men, most of whom were holding clipboards and chatting among themselves as they waited to go in. I’d expected to find her communing with the horses, so the sight of her standing there with actual people instead was odd, to say the least.

  I was about to approach her when I heard the sound of my name from the other direction. I turned, surprised to see my friend Eric, a fellow student from my Missouri farrier school, weaving his way toward me through the crowd. Despite the fact that Eric was Englisch and I was Amish, he and I had become friends on the first day of class because we’d been the only two there from Eastern Pennsylvania.

  Unlike me, he’d gone to the school not so he could become a farrier himself, but so that he could get a better understanding of what good horseshoeing involved. His family worked with show horses, so for him to learn the shoeing trade was, as he’d explained it, “kind of like a car dealer learning auto mechanics—it never hurts to understand how things happen under the hood.”

  We greeted each other now with a handshake and a quick one-armed hug, and then he asked me what I was doing. I told him I’d come to help my boss pick out a new horse for his niece.

  “How about you?” I asked, trying to remember exactly where he lived. I knew it wasn’t too far away, somewhere in Chester County, where the farms of the Amish gave way to the large estates of the Englisch. His family’s business involved the transporting of show horses—not just on the ground but in the air as well.

  “Same sort of thing. One of our clients needs a riding horse for her little girl, so I offered to come here with her to Stone Road. She’s never been to a horse auction before.”

  “Yeah, neither has the niece.” I glanced over to where Priscilla had been standing and was relieved to see that Amos had joined her. He seemed to be looking around for something, probably me, so I caught his eye with a wave and gestured toward the stands, indicating that they could go on in without me and I’d be along shortly. He gave me a wave and a nod.

  “Find anything promising?” I asked, turning back to my friend.

  “A couple possibilities. It helps that this woman’s pockets are deep. She doesn’t care what it costs. She just wants something with a good temperament.” He went on to describe the horses they were interested in, but I couldn’t weigh in because I hadn’t paid attention to any of those. Amos and I had been looking solely at workhorses.

  Eric went with me to the coffee stand, where we each bought a cup, and then we continued our conversation over by the baskets of sugar and creamer.

  “So how goes the dream?” he asked, confusing me for a moment before it struck me what he meant.

  Back in school, I had told him all about my hopes of one day combining a horseshoeing business with a horse-gentling business. I had no official training as a gentler. I just knew what I knew. And though I liked shoeing, I enjoyed even more the time I spent working with problem animals.

  “It’s going well,” I said, adding that I was about halfway through my two-year blacksmith apprenticeship.

  “And then what?” he prodded, so I went on to tell him about the plan, how in one more year Owen would be leaving the family business to take over his father-in-law’s dairy farm, freeing me in turn to step into Owen’s position at Kinsinger Blacksmith and Welding.

  “What about working for yourself, man? You wanted your own business. That was the dream.”

  I shrugged, wondering how to explain the complexities of the situation to a guy like Eric. I still harbored hope that someday I might have my own blacksmith shop that offered both farrier work and horse gentling, but in the past year of working at Kinsingers, I had begun to realize that it wasn’t going to come easily. There were a few big problems in the way. First was the simple matter of supply and demand—and noncompetition. A good blacksmith would always find work in Lancaster County, but Amos had hired me with the understanding that even if I didn’t stay with him in the long run, I would never work in direct
competition with him either. In the end, I’d had to agree to no blacksmithing within a ten-mile radius of the shop.

  As for the horse-gentling side of things, I’d always assumed I’d have some Englisch patrons but that my primary customer base would be Amish. Lately, however, I’d begun to realize that it would probably have to be the opposite of that. The Amish were never fully going to embrace my techniques. There was too much resistance, with lots of scoffing or changing the subject whenever I tried to explain. It wasn’t until they ended up with a problem horse themselves that they had any interest, but so far that hadn’t happened enough for me to make much money at it.

  I would always be there for my fellow Amish and their horse issues, of course, but for the gentling side of things, the Englisch were going to have to be my focus. They seemed far more amenable to “natural horsemanship,” as it was sometimes called, and I felt that I could make a success of things with them eventually. But such an endeavor would take years of hard work—and contacts I didn’t have. So for now, the dream was still just that—a dream. Not even close to being a reality.

  Eric seemed to get what I was saying, but before he could reply, we both realized the crowd noises were dying down, signaling that the bidding was about to start.

  “Let’s get together sometime, Jake. Maybe I can come up with a few ideas for you.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  We tossed our empty coffee cups in the trash and then began weaving through the crowd, past the booths for pies, hot dogs, and root beer and toward the metal bleachers that looked out over the oval auction ring. We parted there with a shake, and he walked off to join his party as I scanned the crowd for mine. By the time I spotted Amos and Priscilla, the auction was already underway, but it didn’t really matter. The horses we’d chosen wouldn’t be up for a while yet.

  Moving carefully, I worked my way to where Amos and Priscilla were sitting, but by the time I got there, I could tell something was wrong. Amos was going down the listing he held in his hand, describing the horses he and I had checked out and deemed acceptable, but Priscilla seemed to be ignoring his every word.

  Granted, there was nothing amazing about those particular horses we’d picked, but they were fine equine specimens—certainly good enough for a young woman to have to drive a cart—so I didn’t get her attitude. It was as if she couldn’t care less. She kept looking down at each horse as it was paraded around the ring during the bidding, and then her eyes would dart to the people holding up their bid cards, or the children scampering around with bags of popcorn, or the distracted parents who were more focused on the auction than they were on their own kids. Several rows below us was that same cluster of Englisch men with clipboards Priscilla had been standing near earlier, and they were laughing and joking among themselves between bids. Even their mindless conversation seemed to be of more interest to Priscilla than whatever her uncle or I had to say.

  I looked at Amos, and he shrugged helplessly. I could tell he needed me to jump in here. He’d thought having her own horse would cheer Priscilla, and he told me he’d even allotted a budget of up to six hundred dollars, plenty enough to get a decent animal. He was ready to plunk down that kind of money, and yet his reticent niece was more interested in her surroundings than in any of the horses he was offering to buy her.

  I looked again at Priscilla, miffed at her lack of gratitude. When Amos turned away, I tried to get her attention so that I could somehow communicate with my eyes that she was being unkind to her uncle, especially considering his generosity. But she wouldn’t look at me any more than she would look at him.

  “Everything okay?” I asked her. Amos didn’t deserve this.

  She was slow to turn and face me. When she finally met my eyes, I saw that hers were filled with… what? Anger? No, rage. Not just rage, but something else too, something like dread.

  Dread? Why?

  None of us spoke for a few seconds.

  “What is this place?” she finally said, the first words I heard her utter since she’d broken off from us earlier.

  Amos shot me a worried glance before turning his attention back to his niece. “It’s… it’s a horse auction. Priscilla, are you all right? Are you sick?”

  She didn’t answer, and for a moment I thought maybe she was having a breakdown of some kind right here at the Stone Road Auction. She turned her gaze again to take in the whole of the ring and the bidders and the men with their clipboards. It took me a moment, but then I realized why she was so upset. She’d figured out how part of it worked. She’d seen the other buyers. Heard the conversations between those men.

  Stone Road was not just a place to buy a nice horse. It was also a place where old horses were sold when they had outlived their usefulness, where troublesome horses were sold when they couldn’t be tamed, and where unwanted horses were sold when their upkeep was more expensive than their overall value. Horses like these were bought for their meat. Stone Road was known as a “kill auction,” a place where among the regular bidders were a number of “kill buyers,” or those who purchased horses specifically for slaughter.

  I supposed that could come as a bit of a shock to the uninitiated, and I tried to think of a way to explain it to Priscilla. We didn’t eat horse meat in America, but people did in many other countries throughout Europe and Asia. From what I understood, in some places horse meat was as common as chicken and pork chops were here. It was just the way it was. Sadly, I didn’t think too much about it anymore because that’s how it had always been, but this was all new to Priscilla, a young woman who loved horses more than people and who had never been to any horse auctions when she was a child living in Lancaster County.

  Getting her a horse at Stone Road had been a good idea. Bringing her here to pick it out was a bad one.

  “We should go,” I murmured to Amos.

  “What?” he said, his brows furrowing into one long rut.

  “Go?” Priscilla swiveled her head to face me, wide eyed. “You’re telling me you want to just go?”

  I blinked at her. “Uh. Yeah. Don’t you want to?”

  “You want to leave and not even save one of them? Not even one of these animals that those men down there are buying? Not one?”

  She had obviously figured out who the kill buyers were, the ones who were here to fill their quotas for the international demand for horse meat by buying low-priced horses that still had muscle and life in them and then shipping them off to Canada for processing. I didn’t like it either, but I didn’t make the rules.

  Below us, one of the men raised his card to bid on a dark bay Thoroughbred gelding that had attracted the attention of no one. The animal had no discernable flaws that I could see other than he was a Thoroughbred, not a workhorse, and thus was apt to have a bit of an attitude. The buyer was about to win him for a mere three hundred dollars when Priscilla grabbed Amos’s card and shoved her hand into the air. The caller acknowledged her bid of three twenty-five with a tip of his head, and the kill buyer turned to see who had taken a sudden interest. He slowly lifted his card to raise the bid to three fifty.

  “What are you doing, Priscilla?” Amos said, his voice incredulous.

  “Bidding on that horse.” She again thrust her hand in the air and raised the bid to three seventy-five.

  “That isn’t one of the horses we looked at!” Amos exclaimed.

  “She’s aware of that,” I muttered.

  “Priscilla, we don’t know anything about that horse,” Amos continued as the kill buyer raised his card.

  “I know enough.” She upped her bid to four twenty-five.

  The kill buyer contemplated his bid for a moment and then shook his head, letting the auctioneer know he was going to let the fiery young Amish woman have the horse. There was no reason not to at that price. Sadly, there were plenty of other horses just like that one he would likely have to fight no one for.

  The auctioneer declared Priscilla the winning bidder.

  “You bought that horse!” Amos’s eyes
were wide.

  “Actually, I think you did, Amos,” I said.

  “Priscilla, what is the meaning of this?” he demanded, ignoring me.

  She turned to him. “He’s the one I want, Uncle. You brought me here to get me a horse. He’s the one I want.”

  “But he’s not one of the ones we were looking at!”

  Priscilla put her hand on her uncle’s arm. “But he’s the one I want. I will pay you back for him, I promise. It may take some time, but as soon as I get a job, we can figure out a payment schedule and—”

  “What on earth are we going to do with him?” Amos interrupted. “He’s not a workhorse.”

  She stood. “We won’t have to do anything with him. He’ll be mine. I’ll handle everything.”

  She stepped past me to climb down the bleachers. She turned to Amos and me when we did not immediately follow. “Are we buying another? That’s fine with me if we are.” She nodded to the kill buyer, who was preparing to bid on a palomino mare.

  “I guess we’re done,” Amos said.

  He and I followed her down the steps.

  It did not take long to pay for the gelding and arrange for his transport to the house later that afternoon. Then we headed over to the pen area to get a closer look at him. He was a handsome animal, a bit on the skittish side—a race horse who hadn’t won enough competitions to earn his keep. He also had a name. Voyager.

  “I doubt he’ll want to pull a cart,” Amos said, after I’d inspected his hooves and legs and determined he was in adequate health.

  But Priscilla wasn’t listening. She was at the horse’s head, letting him nervously nuzzle her hand and familiarize himself with her voice and scent.

  “Something tells me that’s not going to be a problem,” I said. Priscilla hadn’t bought that horse to pull a cart.