They were all — Alice, Natalie, Evelyn — living under new restrictions due to Stuart’s lawsuit, which had frozen the distribution of proceeds from the sale of the plant. Stuart had managed to stay on at Eco Fizz, and his popularity with both the workers and the new owners positioned him to manage the company. The few times he’d been spotted by family members, he was wearing a dark suit and a top coat. This hardly seemed like Stuart at all.
The calves by now were coming in a steady stream. Bill was staying up for night-calving so Evelyn fed in the morning while he slept, picking up hay with hydraulic arms in the bed of the truck that held big round bales like spools of thread until she lowered them with controls on the dash, cut the twine and rolled out a ribbon of alfalfa. Its miraculous aroma of the previous summer unfolding in the winter air attracted a parade of cows and calves bawling with impatience. Early sun laid an annealed glaze over the snowfields. Tractors could be heard starting at various distances throughout the valley, and a school bus made its solitary way along the base of foothills. Evelyn had so disliked school that even this distant yellow shape still depressed her, all these years later. She went up to Bill’s house and cooked breakfast for them both.
The season was changing at last.
Broad community interest followed news of Paul’s arrest for parole violation. Only the general fascination he had aroused in himself as a company executive and ersatz man-about-town could explain why the newspaper gave the hearing such attention. He was charged with refusing to meet with his parole officer, Geraldine Cardwell, who not only initiated the charges but also, in high dudgeon, issued sweeping statements as to how she stood as a “firewall” between criminals and society. What turned out to be a coup for the paper, given a repressed atmosphere that played hell with getting sex on the page, was Paul Crusoe’s testimony in a crowded, unventilated courtroom. He admitted that he had grown fearful and weary of the sexual obligations imposed upon him by Miss Cardwell, causing the crowd to gasp in delighted disapproval. Trying to restore his relationship with his estranged wife against desperate odds had grown ever more difficult beneath the constant pressure to “service” his parole officer. Arms stretched low at his sides, a renewed vision of jail in his head, the supplicant offered motel receipts and a vague offer of “DNA evidence.” Under Geraldine’s quiet gaze and in a small, frightened, victim’s voice, he said, “I didn’t know where to turn, Your Honor. I was afraid that if I requested a new officer, somebody on the parole board would exact revenge. This could happen even now! These people look out for each other in ways that might surprise Your Honor!”
Geraldine Cardwell declined to respond at all. After the hearing, she returned to her office, gathered up the pictures of her parents, sisters, brother, nephews and nieces and, braving smirks in the outer office, returned to her house, where in a state-issued vehicle she closed her garage and asphyxiated herself. The brief note she left on the seat beside her read simply,
“To Whom—”
The next morning’s paper was filled with vituperative letters to the editor from citizens who, ignorant of her death, stated that Geraldine Cardwell was a perfect example of why we needed to get government out of our lives; the Constitution was frequently invoked. On learning of the suicide and Geraldine’s note, Paul said only that she was “no writer.”
Donald Aadfield called Evelyn on the day all this appeared.
“Evelyn, I had no idea you were living such a complicated life!”
“It’s news to me too.” She felt almost too subdued to speak.
“This man Paul! Is he still your husband?”
“That’s unclear to me, Donald.”
“But the paper says he’s trying to save the relationship.”
“There’s some truth to that. But how are you, Donald?”
“Never mind how I am. I can’t believe what I’m reading. I’ve seen Crusoe in the paper before. And my neighbors! Two work the night shift at the bottle plant. I mean, I hope I’m not offending you, but according to them, people at the plant actually talk about pushing him into a vat.”
“That’s all behind us now. The company’s been sold.”
After Donald demanded an immediate visit, Evelyn directed him to the ranch and by afternoon he arrived in his truck, a steel flatbed with a headache rack in the rear and so encumbered with tires, jacks, fence stretchers, spools of barbed wire and fuel drums that it looked like a junkyard on wheels.
Donald jumped out, hugged Evelyn and asked immediately how many acres she had. When she told him, he said, “Ooh Evelyn! And how many cows do you run?” At that, he rubbed his hands in glee and asked to see the calves. She agreeably led him to what had arrived thus far. Bill was in the corral and helped conduct the tour, clearly liking Donald on sight as being a real rancher worthy of Evelyn’s company. He particularly admired Donald’s crap-laden truck. “I got a tough customer down here to the barn,” he said. “Don’t want to have this calf, and I think we may be gettin’ kind of a crossways presentation.”
Donald said, “If they can get in trouble, they will, won’t they, Bill? I had an old cow last week started chasing her afterbirth in a circle and ground her calf to mush. I tried to get in the middle of it and got knocked on my butt.”
Bill put the cow in the head catch, where she bawled at the calf she couldn’t see with just its head out but no legs yet visible.
Donald plunged his hand into his beard in thought, then picked up a piece of binder twine from the barn floor and tied her tail to one side. He took his coat off, rolled up his right sleeve and slid his arm up alongside the calf into the cow. “Once they get junior in the birth canal, they’re not too good at kicking. Anyway, here’s our problem….” By now he was crouched against the cow, cheek mashed against her dilated genitals, and struggling as though arm wrestling a giant. “I don’t like to use the snare here, for fear we’d push something through the uterus, but what we’ve got is junior’s turned one front leg backward, and, wouldn’t you know, there’s so much musculature to this cow’s hymen or else we’ve got some damn incomplete dilation. But we’ll get him sorted out here.” He straightened to withdraw his arm, and the small black hooves popped into view behind his hand.
He stood back, and the three of them watched for a long moment until, after mighty straining by the cow, the calf made a little dolphin-dive for his mother’s heels and was born. Donald carried him around so that the cow could see him. As the amnion sac emptied its amber contents into the straw, he said, “Turn Mama loose.”
Bill was smiling. Later as they discussed calving out the heifers, Donald cried, “No, no, Bill, You mustn’t do this to yourself. Next year AI them and calve the whole batch in a matter of days. I’ll help you. After doing it for years I’ve got it down. We’ll freeze-brand them first, synchronize them and buy straws of semen that fit your cattle. Then the nice man comes out from town with his nitrogen tank and you kiss the guesswork of first-calf heifers good-bye!”
Bill even liked the prissy wave at the end wherein Donald said good-bye to all problems associated with heifers.
“These days, Bill, you have to measure everything there is to measure on a cow, test them for efficiency on feed and index them for performance. But I can see you’re like my old man: you’re not buying any of it.”