Sylvie's Cowboy by Iris Chacon

truck
to the tack room of the barn, where he kept his rain slicker.
Donning the slicker, he ran through puddles and roaring downpour to
the house.
    A light from the hallway showed the two dogs
lying near Walt’s favorite living room chair. Lightning flickered
across the living room windows. Thunder boomed outside.
    Walt entered, shook off his wet slicker and
Stetson, and hung them on a wall hook. He approached his chair with
an armload of mail he had collected on his way in from the barn. He
reached to turn on the reading lamp. Click, but no light. Click and
click again, but the lamp was dead.
    Thunder and rain continued outside.
    Walt searched for the problem and found it at
the end of a cord hanging ragged-ended from its wall plug. Severed.
He wagged the ruined cord at Maude and Butch, lying on the floor
nearby. Maude hid her face, ashamed. Walt slapped the broken cord
down on the end table and stalked out of the room.
    In the bathroom, thunder and rain were less
audible, but lightning flashed across a tiny, high window. Sylvie
luxuriated in a steamy, noisy shower. With her eyes closed and head
back, she was oblivious to the storm outside.
    The bathroom door opened. A shadowy figure
entered the steam-filled room and moved toward Sylvie’s silhouette
on the shower curtain. The figure passed the steam-fogged bathroom
mirror, a hunting knife upraised in one hand. With the knife lifted
high, the shadowy figure clank-clanked the blade against the metal
curtain rod.
    Sylvie’s eyes flew open, her hands crossed
her breasts, and she screamed.
    “Calm down!” Walt shouted over the shrieking.
“I knocked, but you didn’t hear me.” He stood outside the shower
curtain, a huge, menacing shape. Sylvie shrank back against the wet
tile wall.
    “What do you want?” she said when she could
catch her breath.
    “I gotta cut the circuit breaker.”
    “What?”
    “I gotta cut the circuit breaker.”
    “Why are you telling me this?”
    “Because you just hate to be inconvenienced
by any little ol’ thing and I’m tryin’ to be considerate—gimme some
slack here. So, can I cut it?”
    “Where is it?”
    “In the breaker box in the kitchen,
naturally.”
    Naturally,
she mimed and stuck her
tongue out at his shadow. “I don’t care. Yes, cut the stupid
thingamabob if you want to.” Under her breath she muttered, “Shear
it off at the roots, if it makes you happy.”
    Walt was out the bathroom door and gone.
Thunder rolled outside. Lightning streaked the window.
    Sylvie lathered her hair, enjoying the
pelting massage of the hot shower until suddenly the water ran icy
cold. She jumped back with a yelp and a loud string of curse
words.
    In the living room, by the light of a candle,
Walt was sitting on the floor peeling chewed lamp cord with his
hunting knife. Sylvie stalked in, dripping, wrapped in the
terry-cloth robe, with her hair twisted up in a towel. Thunder,
lightning, and rain outside mimicked the storm she wanted to
unleash in the living room.
    “What happened!” she demanded of Walt.
    He continued working calmly. “Maude ate the
lamp cord.”
    “No, Thomas Edison, what happened to the hot
water!”
    Walt stopped working to stare at her. “I told
you. I had to cut the power to this end of the house. The water
heater is at this end of the house.”
    “You told me you were going to trim the
whatzit, the breaking thing. Cut the—
    “Cut the circuit breaker. And I did.”
    “And you also turned off the hot water!” she
shrieked.
    He spoke as if she were a five-year-old:
“That was a side effect. Yes.”
    “I want to see this breaker thingy,” she
demanded.
    Walt looked at her a moment, decided all city
dwellers were probably crazed, and opted to humor her quickly so he
could go on about his business. He gestured toward the doorway.
“Fine. It’s right out there in the kitchen. Take a look.”
    Sylvie stomped off in search of the
electrical grail. Walt turned back to splicing the lamp cord. Maude
leaped up to