No Mercy

No Mercy

I slammed the front window shut and crawled back between the cool cotton sheets. When my father’s phantom voice nagged me for sleeping in, I jerked the quilt over my head.

Go away, Dad. I’m too damn old to feel guilty about not getting up at the crack of dawn to do chores.

It took me a while to get back to sleep. When I did drift off, the scorching summer afternoon from thirty years past came rushing back, dreamlike, except it hadn’t been a dream:

“Momma had a baby and its head popped off.” I sited my target and pulled the trigger.

Crack.

An immediate pain-filled screech morphed into prairie silence.

My heart thumped. I held the Remington tight even after the recoil pad bit into my shoulder. Heard the hollow click as the spent brass cartridge ejected out the side and chinked on the rocky ground.

Bluish smoke eddied around me. Gravel dug into my forearms. Powdery gray dirt coated my sunburned skin even as gnats buzzed around my ears and inside my nose.

I didn’t care.

Exhilarated, I eyed the headless body through the scope and surveyed the bloody chunks of meat spread across the soil in the ultimate buzzard’s buffet.

“Got ya dead-on, ya dirty bastard,” I whispered to the decimated prairie dog, my tone reminiscent of Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales.

Dad chuckled, shifting his position on the slope. “Your mom’d have a conniption fit if she heard you talkin’ like that.”

“Then it’s a good thing she’s not here.”

“Yeah.” He squinted at me, finding something on my face that made the laughter bleed out of his eyes. “Real good thing.”

A clement breeze stirred the smell of sage, skunkweed, and hot dirt. Scents I’d forevermore associate with death.

He eased back on his haunches and stood, wincing. The lack of circulation in his legs was getting worse, though he tried to be a tough guy and hide it from me. I let him. When he held out his big hand to help me up, I let him do that, too.

“Come on, sport. Let’s see what damage you done. You ain’t a bad shot -- “

“For a girl,” I supplied.

He spit a stream of tobacco juice next to my ropers. Just like my hero, Josey. He looked me dead in the eye. “Anyone who ever says that to you, Mercy Gunderson, is a fool.”

I woke with a start. At least the combat flashbacks had tapered off, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a decent night’s sleep. Maybe I should fill that prescription for Ambien next time I was at the VA.

After I’d finished my yoga practice, I wandered outside. The thermometer read 87 degrees. In the shade. I snagged a Crystalyx feed cap off the hook by the door and detoured to the activity by the barn.

The semitruck was backed up to the loading gate. Flies buzzed everywhere. Familiar, pungent smells of dirt and manure hung in the dry air. Most people gagged at the odors, but I’d gotten used to them again, the scents of home. I hoisted myself atop the fence and watched the action unfold.

Copyright © 2010 by Lori Armstrong