The Cadence of Grass (27 page)

“Now is good,” she said.

A retired circuit court judge, T. William Slater, was assigned to mediate the divorce and division of property for Stuart Cross and Natalie. While things were sedate enough at first, Natalie was already offended by Stuart’s suit; he’d never dressed like this before, and she wondered about his need to suddenly display such fashion sense. She knew that his fortunes had improved at the bottling plant, that he was climbing fast and making more money than ever before. His modesty, though, was undiminished, and Natalie hoped it indicated that he’d lowered what she considered to be an extreme position with regard to her property. She took solace in the fact that Justice Slater came from a well-known pioneer family. Ranchers and legislators abounded in his background, and since the end of the Civil War there had been much mingling among Slaters and Whitelaws.

Holding a pencil crossways in his mouth and arranging papers at the same time, T. William Slater managed to say, “I take it that we agree that the divorce itself is desirable.” He put his briefcase under the table and looked up.

Natalie and Stuart each said yes, Stuart with palpable sadness he was trying to disguise.

“So all that’s outstanding is the division of assets.”

Both nodded.

“Are there specific items to which either of you are attached?”

They shook their heads.

“What about the house?”

“Not the house,” said Natalie emphatically.

“So, what I’m looking at here is house, cars, the proceeds of your equity in the business which I gather here has been sold and probated. Yes, of course it has.” Sliding out another sheet of paper. “Because here is all this cash. I seldom see so much uninvested cash.”

“In point of fact,” Natalie said, “I would be willing to let Stuart have the house.”

“Just sell it and we split,” said Stuart.

“What’s that?” asked a startled Natalie.

Justice Slater said, “I’m assuming unless either of you specifies otherwise that all of this can be made liquid, in which case division is simplified. Would either of you care to give me your feelings on this?”

“Sure,” said Stuart cheerfully. “Half and half. Isn’t that the law?”

Natalie’s eyes were wide with indignation as she turned to Justice Slater.

“Unless it’s contested,” said Justice Slater.

“Wait a minute here,” said Natalie. “The proceeds from the plant only arrived a short time ago. Where’s the fairness in that?”

“Does that seem to you to be pertinent?” Justice Slater asked Stuart.

“No.”

“Would you care to elaborate, Mr. Cross?”

“Sure. If I don’t get half, we won’t solve this in mediation. We go to court.”

T. William Slater tried to alleviate Natalie’s indignation with a colorful observation. “It looks like your husband intends to hang on like a bulldog in a thunderstorm!”

“What’s this about, Stuart? You hardly need all this.”

“I’m getting married.”

“You’re getting
married
?” Natalie’s lips were tight across her teeth, and she locked eyes with Stuart as though expecting him to flinch. Not often had she seen such a gentle smile on his face. Since he declined to say anything further, she thought she would shake a few facts out of him. “Some
slut
down at the plant?” Natalie’s jaw worked slightly as she awaited an answer, and Justice Slater busied himself among his papers.

“No,” said Stuart mildly.

“Where else would
you
meet someone?”

“Oh, she’s from the plant all right,” he smiled at Justice Slater, begging his indulgence, “but she doesn’t fit your description.”

“Not, I hope, the little brunette by the bottle washer.”

“Yes, it is.” Stuart smiled.

“I thought Paul had already been through that one.”

“I don’t think so,” said Stuart, staring red-faced at his unblemished legal pad. “He was busy with you.”

With a sudden flurry, T. William Slater resumed his role. “My job is to help us avoid a jury trial, and I heartily suggest you join me in that effort. I have noted that a spectacle is imminent, and I urge you, as long-time residents of this community, to avoid the damage to your standing that
public
resolution of your dispute will likely produce.”

Natalie had locked on to part of Judge Slater’s remark, and with a chivvying, rueful laugh made several observations. “Yes, Your Honor, we
are
long-time residents. But there is a difference. There is a difference. I am a Montana native, born here, raised here and
still
here. Stuart is an out-of-stater. There, I’ve said it. Stuart is from out east. The Whitelaw family established our fortunes by supplying the miners and cattlemen who built this town in territorial days. We’re the same Scots-Irish stock that fought the Indians, pioneered trails, brought cattle up from Texas and built these good towns. Stuart’s name isn’t even Cross. It was Crozoborski until his grandparents arrived here from Poland. I’ve got nothing against immigrants, Judge Slater, but you and I grew up here. We can still make out the old sign for Slater’s Blacksmith Shop on the side of the beauty parlor. Some of what we feel is just not part of Stuart’s world.”

“I get half or we go to trial,” Stuart practically sang.

Judge Slater, who’d barely peeked up from his papers during Natalie’s speech, said in the gingerly tones of one avoiding an explosion, “There seems to be plenty here to go around.” He extended his palms upward toward the ledgers and documents in a scooping motion. Clearly, he was hunting the exit.

Natalie shouted: “You have any idea what this guy spent on the adult channel? Forty-eight bucks to see
Lewd Trooper
three times in a row.”

Slater was gone. Natalie made a face of hideous detestation at Stuart. “Bad cop busts barely legals?”

By the end of the week, a chinook had started to blow and the temperature rose sixty degrees in four hours, turning the corrals into a sea of mud. Dirty water backed up into the barn where the cows had tramped snow into icy ridges. Bill and Evelyn dragged straw bales to make a dam around the head catch in case they had to pull a calf, then they saddled their horses and pushed the cows out of the mud into the closest pasture. The new calves, thrilled by the sudden warmth, played crazily as the sun flattened the snow.

Evelyn was glad to be back on a horse and sat for a long time in the hard south wind watching calves overcome by the wish to meet each other, while the cows, after a spell of absorbed eating, grew fearful of losing track of their babies and abruptly lumbered around the herd, each lowing among the crowd for the only acceptable calf. Part of Evelyn’s thrill of watching cattle from horseback lay in observing the distinct personalities in what at a glance seemed anonymous: the contented young mothers, the belligerent matrons, the bad mothers who wished they’d never had this calf, the poor milkers whose abraded udders pained them, the cows who seemed to know their calves were sickly and would not live. Some viewed the horsemen as the enemy and hurried their calves away, while others seemed to recognize the drivers of the hay truck in another guise. And on certain occasions Evelyn felt less herdsman than predator, protein viewing protein. In this game, the poor milker, the indifferent mother, and the mother who was also a grandmother were slaughtered alike. At the end, there were no exceptions. Man must dine. But Evelyn was tired of man.

When the chinook stopped blowing, it stayed still for two days. Skies were clear and the cattle scattered out to look for patches of bare ground, old grass and a change of diet. Bill and Evelyn took their horses into the summer pasture, Evelyn riding her colt Cree, crossing drifts until the Crazy Mountains arose like a silver wedding cake to the north. From there, the water courses, tree lines on a white expanse, made spindly courses to the Yellowstone. The Bridgers could be discerned, as well as the bench of Sheep Mountain, the low-humped Deer Creeks and, to the south, the blue crags and high, dark canyons of the Absaroka. This was altogether too much for the colts, who kept trying to turn toward home and were afraid of the crowds of deer at the bottom of every snow-filled bowl. Evelyn was aware of a great weight lifting off her as they rode along. The notion of not ever going back made her smile and think of the trail: Texas to Montana and never once turn your horse around. Her happiness began to be felt by Cree, who looked eagerly in the direction of their travel while Evelyn made plans with Bill for next year, the following year, the next five and ten years. A three-mile cross fence was in the wrong place and should be moved a half mile to the east. Springs needed to be improved, salt grounds moved, pastures rested, loafing sheds built. Somehow the money must be found for the tractor they coveted, a four-wheel-drive New Holland that would let them bale wild timothy for the horses. From the ridges, they could look down into their small valley and see flocks of pigeons trading between the barn and hay sheds, wings sparkling in the brilliant light.

That night, Paul beat her.

He arrived at suppertime, already upset, and sat in Evelyn’s front room with his coat on. “Rural peace,” he said spitefully. “I wish I had a taste for it.” Evelyn had already decided that she would try not to see him anymore, but she knew not to expect too much of herself and, because he was somewhat crumpled, decided to at least allow him to speak before explaining that their separation must resume.

He was clutching his cell phone.

“I went around to see Stuart,” he began, eyes ablaze with indignation. “He’s looking quite spiffy in my old office. He’s got people coming and going with armloads of paper. He’s got a phone ringing off the hook. He’s got my old secretary doting on his every need. He’s got his little girlfriend working down on the shop floor and a movie poster from
Down to the Sea in Ships
on the fucking wall. He’s got this whole hearty manner like a sea captain. It is to puke over.”

Instead of the intended picture, Evelyn imagined a Stuart unbound.

“I told him about my arrangement with Majub as a liaison man. I realized that you don’t find companies you can sell every five minutes. I told Majub that. I told him I need something to carry me between sales, to keep gas in the Chevette, for Christ sake.”

Evelyn could smell the liquor on his breath.

“But Majub is like, ‘Finders fee, period, and don’t ask again.’ When I tell him I can’t live on that, he tells me not to get my panties in a wad. So my proposal to Stuart is why don’t I go on calling on some of my old customers, kind of earn my way, use my own car and so on, can’t be anything but good for one and all. And Stuart says no. When I ask for clarification, he
spells
it for me: N-O. You believe this? I go straight over the top of his desk, and next thing I know he’s got goons dragging me out into the alley, where I receive unnecessary roughness at their hands. You have to understand, these are
my
former employees.”

Evelyn’s heart did pull somewhat toward Paul, but she thought she should be candid with him, despite the tight look of his face, the wildness of his eyes, and tell him how in her own view he was merely bringing trouble upon himself. The first blow astonished her with its ferocity. He had not beaten her before, and she was not expecting it. Soon he was knocking her through the furniture with such fury that she wondered if he meant to kill her. Curled on the floor, her head muffled in her arms, there was a sudden lull during which nothing could be heard at all. Then she heard Paul say, “Okay, Pops, I’m going,” and looked up to see Bill training his Winchester on Paul’s head, his finger through the trigger guard, his face the same expression of unemotional focus he bore when he cut the worms out of an old bull. After glancing toward Evelyn to see if she intended to intervene on his behalf, Paul laughed without humor and went straight out through the door.

Before Evelyn could explain the situation, which she badly wanted to do, Bill was gone too. Evelyn almost expected to hear a shot, but it never came.

She hardly slept. Her bruises were such that if she drifted off, moving or rolling over, pain awakened her again. Anxiety that she could have been so vulnerable ran through her like voltage, her life turning into one jagged question after another. She was ready to run, not from Paul or the place itself or her family, but from her own abasement. Around four, she gave up and went into the kitchen. From there she could see light from the barn, which meant Bill was pulling a calf. Evelyn began to feel some relief from her self-hatred as she imagined the calf’s craving for oxygen. Then after filling a thermos with coffee, she put on her coveralls and went out to face Bill. The snow danced in the halo of the barn door.

He sat on an old car seat that he had arranged for just such vigils. An unhappy young cow was secured in the head catch, and Bill was half asleep. He said nothing as Evelyn handed him a cup of coffee and poured herself one. She sat down next to him and they watched the cow, a pair of tiny black feet projecting from her rear.