Sylvie's Cowboy: Cinderella In Reverse

CHAPTER 6: THE ROOMMATE

        

It was mid-afternoon, and Silvie was convinced she was totally lost, when the pitted dirt road through palmetto bushes and scrub oak onto which she had turned finally ended in the yard of an old ranch house. She parked under a tree, took Maude under one arm, and went to knock on the ranch house door.

The door opened. Walt McGurk took a good look at Silvie, then at Maude, then back at Silvie. "Surprised you remembered how to find the place," he said.

"I didn't. I asked for directions at the yellow house down the road."

"Oh, thanks. That's got a few rumors started."

He stepped past Silvie into the yard and whistled. Butch, Walt's massive mongrel cow-dog, loped from behind the house, greeted his master with happy wiggles, and stood slavering before Silvie and Maude.

Silvie lifted Maude from waist to shoulder high.

Walt grinned.

Butch drooled.

Silvie lifted Maude as high overhead as she could.

Looking from Butch to Walt, eyes wide with fear, Silvie stammered, "I couldn't ... I had to ... Maude and I didn't have anywhere else to go ...."

"Yeah, I sorta been expectin' ya," Walt said, lifting Maude into his arms. He looked at the little dog. "Maude, is it? Lord, that's perfect. Looks just like her."

"Just like whom?" asked Silvie.

"Maude Stokes. Old busybody, lives in that yeller house where you stopped and gave her gossip fodder to last into next month. She always gave Harry -- and me -- a hard time."

He placed Maude on the ground and restrained Silvie with an outstretched arm while the two dogs disappeared playfully around the corner of the house. Silvie stared after Maude, obviously concerned. Meanwhile, Walt studied Silvie's motley car.

"Nuther one of Harry's 'classics,' huh?" he said.

"What? Oh, yeah. 'Harry's Folly' I call it," answered Silvie.

Walt nodded. "Yeah. Can't park it here, though. I mean, it's okay 'til we get ya unloaded, but I'll show ya a place in the truck shed to park it."

Silvie tried to put her puppy out of her thoughts for the moment. Butch had probably swallowed Maude whole by now, anyway. Silvie straightened her shoulders and prepared to enter her new domain.

"Would you have someone bring in my things, please? I'd like to freshen up." She sauntered past Walt, went into his house, and closed the door. Walt looked at the closed door for three long seconds, then shrugged and began unloading the Volkswagen.

Silvie was using the bathroom mirror and fixing her face when Walt staggered past the bathroom door, navigating the hallway from the living room to a bedroom on his left. He entered the room, dropped the luggage on the floor, and pushed past Silvie, who had followed him in. She gave the bedroom the same horrified look she had given his dog.

"I can't sleep in this room!"

The only answer was the front door slamming as Walt went out for another load of luggage. Silvie took a long, slow look around the bedroom.

She saw a plain, heavy, wooden bed, dresser, wardrobe, Navajo blanket for a bedspread, and old Venetian blinds on the windows. The antlers of a ten-point buck, a bearskin with head and claws intact, a moose head, mountain lion bust, big horn sheep trophy, and rifle rack crowded the walls. The front door slammed again; Walt returning.

Thinking out loud, Silvie murmured to herself, "My own father was a cold-blooded killer! The man who cried in 'Bambi' when I was seven went out and blasted warm, fuzzy creatures to kingdom come the minute my back was turned!"

Walt schlepped into the room and dumped a final load of luggage on top of the first. He leaned against the doorjamb to catch his breath.

"There are ... are parts ... and things ... of dead animals hanging on the walls!" Silvie told him, as if warning him to run for his life. He didn't respond. She clarified for him: "I can't sleep in this room!"

"You want to sleep in mine?" he said.

Silvie looked at him as if he had asked her to swallow live cockroaches.

"That's settled," he said. "Somethin' to drink?"

"Sparkling water, please. Swiss, not French. With a slice of lemon. Make sure the lemon is freshly sliced, not sitting in the refrigerator since breakfast. And crushed ice, no cubes." Silvie bent to inspect the Navajo blanket for vermin. She didn't see the look Walt gave her before he shook his head and left the room.

Walt entered his homespun, cozy kitchen whistling "Your Cheatin' Heart." He plundered through a cabinet of mismatched glasses, found one tinted green, and put it on the Formica counter.

He opened his refrigerator and studied a case of diet root beer, many jars of homemade preserves and pickles, fresh vegetables and fruit, bread, and sandwich condiments. No sparkling water, Swiss or French. No lemons, sliced or otherwise.

Closing the refrigerator door, Walt filled the green glass with tap water. He opened a cupboard, found the Alka-Seltzer, broke a tablet in half, and dropped it into the glass. Predictably, it fizzed.

He scooped a yellow squash from a basket on the floor and impaled it on a countertop cutting board with the hunting knife from his belt. Then he sliced a thin wagon-wheel shape off it and, using his knife, poked the piece of squash to the bottom of the green glass of Alka-Seltzer.

Whistling all the while, he shed his work shirt and then his sweat-stained undershirt. He sacked a handful of ice cubes from the freezer in his undershirt. He slipped his outer shirt back on, hefted the ice-filled undershirt, and opened the kitchen door.

He stepped out onto the porch and bashed the undershirt against the concrete stoop in rhythm with the tune he was whistling. Voilá! Crushed ice.

In her new bedroom, Silvie was staring at the walls and muttering to herself, "Why not just bury them all at once instead of keeping pieces of them in the house? It looks like Druids have been sacrificing in here." She looked heavenward and addressed the Higher Power: "This is not what I meant when I asked to be smothered in fur!"

In the kitchen, Walt scooped crushed ice from his undershirt and dribbled it into the green glass. He tossed the wet undershirt into the sink.

In the bedroom, Silvie was controlling the urge to cry.

In the kitchen, Walt held the green glass up to the light and decided it would do.

When Walt arrived in the bedroom and presented the green glass to Silvie, she had regained her composure with a stalwart effort.

"I could just take them down and give them a decent burial," she suggested. "Then I can redo the room the way I want it -- in Laura Ashley or Ralph Lauren, maybe."

"Yeah. Knock yourself out, Mrs. Audubon," said Walt. He gestured to her drink. "We're all out of little umbrellas. Listen, I gotta go run some errands in town. You just settle in. Help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen."

After he left the room, Silvie sipped the Alka-Seltzer/squash concoction from the green glass. She made a sour face. "Oh, great," she said. "Neither one of us can cook." And she continued sipping the drink and surveying the room with little hope for the future.