Thomas Mcguane - The Cadence of Grass

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.”

“Your dad and me are too old.”

Over coffee and a sheet of overbaked cinnamon rolls, Evelyn learned that the Aadfields were in an identical rut to the one she’d seen them in last. Donald tried to explain it but even the explanation seemed part of the problem.

“They could sell the place, but they can’t picture what they’d do with the money. They never had any, so it doesn’t interest them. Realtors come out and it’s like talking to a stone. The trouble is, they can’t hold that ranch together without me, and there are things about me that they don’t need to know. So the small part of me that lives on the ranch and does all the work makes the rest of me too tired to have any other life, and besides, secret lives are incredibly tiring and sort of unreal in the long run, and I just have this feeling I’m going to end up some lonely old bachelor rancher leaning on a number-two Ames irrigating shovel, and not one tourist driving past admiring me as a traditional part of the landscape on the northern route to Yellowstone will ever realize that once upon a time I was an honest-to-God California faggot!”

Afterward Bill said, “Anything ever happens to me, that’d be the feller for you.” She liked being drawn out by Donald, by the vigilance and stillness when he listened to her, his hands folded atop his gloves or reaching for his coffee cup but never moving his eyes away. Consequently, she told him a surprising amount about her life. Such as: “The ranch belongs to Bill and me. God knows where that might lead, so I guess I’m sort of in transition. It hasn’t been that long since my father died, and my mother needs me. I wish I could have my life here, just live it out, y’know? But these little ranches don’t work anymore.”