Besides the stress of the holidays and the weird schedule with the boys, Big Jeff sort of dropped a bomb on me on Friday, and his mom and I have been anticipating the explosion ever since then.

I have alluded before to the tension between Big Jeff, who’s serving in Iraq, and his former fiance, the cheating whore. That’s mostly his story to tell, but the last few days has swept me up into the sea of drama. Now that I’m reasonably sure that I’m not going to get sued or thrown into jail, I consider my part in it fair game to talk about.

Jeff emailed me on Friday morning asking if his mom had called me. That was a bad opening, since I really only know one reason for her to, other than generic Christmas wishes. We’d had a dry run at kicking the cheating whore out of the house last month, but she refused and cajoled Jeff into letting her stay. So the moment that he acted all serious, I knew that’s what he was talking about.

And sure enough, he’d had enough and wanted her out of his house, and the sooner, the better. His mom and his friends and I started to gather our resources and think about strategy. Since we expected her to be extremely antagonistic towards us, we were being pretty damn conservative about covering our own asses.

Jeff’s original plan was to give her notice that she had to leave while she was at work so that we would have time to enter the house and take things that belonged to him; important things, and not so very insurable things, like his guns and his animals and his grandfather’s flag. My plan was to document the hell out of everything with the camera too, before and after we took things. That would both make a record of what we took and of what kind of condition the house was in when we left it, in case we trashed the place.

Then Jeff decided to just email her an ultimatum, since he had a hell of a time getting to a phone on Christmas day in Iraq. And now that threw her location into doubt. She could have gone to work as planned, and we’d be free to work alone, or she could be holed up in the house with the guns, who knows? We were trying our best to do this cleanly and legally, so we talked about law enforcement backup. Jeff’s ex-wife’s current husband is a cop, and planned to be there, but he’s a little too involved to be an objective observer. I told everyone that I would call the County Sheriff’s Department and request a civil standby, which I did.

But when I met the deputy down the road on Tuesday morning and told him what was going on, he said that we couldn’t go into the house without her present and giving permission or having a court order in our hands. Never mind that Jeff’s mom holds his power of attorney and I had written permission from Jeff authorizing me to take what I felt necessary; we couldn’t go in if she wasn’t there. All the deputy would be able to do would be to interfere if she was there and demonstrated a criminal act against us. Since it is nowhere near out of the scope of possibility that that broad would take a swing at one of us, most likely me, I was fine with that part of it.

But of course, she wasn’t there when we got there. Jeff’s mom had already entered, not knowing any different, and our other people showed up to help not long after. I felt horrible, having wasted everyone’s time and possibly giving her warning and time to do some serious damage to his house. After the deputy officially witnessed us re-securing the house, he left, telling us that he could not witness us entering it, and that if we did, she’d have every right to call it in as a burglary. And, also of course, now it was my name and information on the police report for requesting the standby in the first place, so guess who they’d arrest first? Sure, there’s no way they could make it stick, but I do not have the kind of time or money that I’d need to fight a charge like that in court.

We stood around and debated the hell out of it, even getting Jeff on the phone from Iraq. The other cop insisted that the deputy was wrong, that we were authorized to enter the house, but that he wasn’t going to argue with the guy in his own jurisdiction. And of course not; that is the guy who has to make that call. Both the military counsel and the lawyer that Jeff’s mom talked to also insisted that we did have the right, and suggested that we start going up the County food chain to get their approval.

By this time, Jeff’s mom had just about completely lost her voice, so a lot of the calling and researching fell to me. I have no legal standing; I’m just his friend and business manager, but I am a pushy broad and I’m willing to use that when it’s needed. She and I hit a roadblock by the afternoon though, when no one important would return any of our phone calls. It’s hard to get things to happen extremely quickly during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. A lot of people are on vacation.

So we laid it down for the night. I did some internet research on landlord/tenant laws and stepped back down to my own life with the kids for a while.

Just as I was dropping off to sleep, I got a late-night phone call from Iraq’s early morning. It was Jeff, and she had received the email and they’d talked on the phone. And for what must be the first time in this woman’s life, she decided to be the bigger person about something. She said that she’d move out on Friday and that she wouldn’t touch any of his things. She even volunteered that she’d leave his engagement ring and the keys behind, which surprised the hell out of me. We’ll see, of course. She did also promise several times not to sleep with other men while he was gone, and we all know how that turned out.

She did request that we wait until she was gone to go up there; the extremely large cynical side of me is suspicious that this guarantees her some time to trash things, but I really don’t think she’ll have time. Friday’s her only day off, and she really has to be ashamed to face us. A rational woman would be, but then, a rational woman probably wouldn’t have cheated on an honest man two weeks after he left for war. It’s hard to predict what the insane and immoral will do. Jeff seems to believe her (this time) at least, so we’ll have to carry on as if she won’t touch anything. But come Saturday, we’ll be up there changing the locks and securing the place.

Jeff did tell her that I was going to take the animals today though, as I promised him that I would take care of that. So Cowboy rode to my rescue today to pick up the horses and move them somewhere else while I grabbed the dog and hauled down Jeff’s horse trailer, which is full of hay. Angus and Ringo are now becoming great buddies, and Ringo will have to figure out that my house is where he belongs for a while. He’s already jumped the fence once, but now he’s tied up until he decides that it’s OK.

And even though I spent most of yesterday convinced that I’d wasted five other adults’ time and completely let my friend down by not being able to retrieve his things from the house, it’s worked out OK. I’m sure that Jeff didn’t intend for me to get arrested and he didn’t seem to hold the delay against me too much, although he was obviously disappointed. I’m just trying to take as much of the load off him as I can, so he can get his mind back to the project of staying alive in a war. They’re having mortar attacks on their base several times a day, and the last thing he needs is to be a little too slow to get to the bunker because some cheap-ass bar whore is messing with his mind.

I still hold her in the deepest contempt, but now that things are easing for my friend a little bit, they’re easing for me too. I tried to keep my mind on the business end of it; to get these specific things done and in this order. When my order got scrambled, I fell right down into the emotional side of it, which I’d been trying to stay out of. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep tonight now that part of it is done. It doesn’t matter though. What matters is keeping my friend sane and alive, and if I have to crack heads or chase horses or clean filthy houses to do it, so be it.