Her breath kept coming out of her, and some of her clothes had accumulated next to the armchair.
“You get out there around Glendive, Forsyth, Miles City, it’s quiet, real, real quiet.”
Evelyn could see none of the light in the room. She heard Paul say, “How about now,” but waited until her breathing and her thoughts were going at the same speed.
“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.