Cable to Nowhere

The coaxial cable hung limp between her fingers like a dead snake. Maureen had spent thirty years climbing poles and crawling through crawl spaces for Comcast, and today was the day she finally understood the metaphor.

"Bullshit," she muttered, staring at the severed line where lightning had struck the oak tree on Elm Street. The storm still raged overhead, each flash illuminating the gray in her hair that she'd stopped coloring six months ago.

Her phone buzzed. David. Again.

She'd left him two days ago. Not because he'd done anything wrong—he hadn't—but because she'd woken up at 3 AM, stared at the ceiling, and realized she'd been performing contentment for a decade. He wanted children. She wanted... she still didn't know what. But she knew it wasn't suburban compromise with a man who referred to their relationship as "a good investment."

The client whose cable she'd come to repair—Mr. Henderson—watched from his porch, umbrella in hand. "Everything alright out there?"

"Just need to splice in a new section," she called back. Her hands moved automatically, muscle memory from thousands of repairs. Strip the wire. Twist the copper. Seal it tight.

Lightning cracked closer this time, and the hair on her arms stood up. A primitive fear, older than her job, older than her marriage. Older than her.

She remembered the bull that had broken through the fence on her grandfather's farm when she was seven. How it had stood in the yard, massive and terrifying, breathing in great heaves, while she'd pressed against the barn wall. How her grandfather had finally coaxed it away with patience and apples. Some problems couldn't be forced. Some things required stillness.

Her grandmother had taught her that, her silver hair braided tight against her scalp. "The lightning that strikes is the one you didn't see coming," she'd say. "But the thunder that follows? That's just noise."

Maureen finished the splice and tested the connection. The signal meter jumped to life. Mr. Henderson's television would work again. His internet would stream his shows and news and distractions.

She packed her tools and climbed into the truck. The rain blurred her windshield. She could go back to David. She could keep climbing poles. She could do both or neither.

Instead, she sat in the driver's seat and watched the lightning arc across the sky, fingers in her gray hair, and waited to see what the thunder would bring.