“Just let her shoot, Owen,” Rose added. “Your turn was a lot longer.”
“But it’s useful for me to learn. It’s stupid for a girl.”
“Back off for a minute,” her mother’s brother said in her ear.
Mercy took her finger off the trigger and looked over her shoulder. Owen wore his pouty face, and Rose was shaking her head. Beside her Levi crouched, ignoring the small squabble and drawing something in the dirt with a stick. It was a rare moment when all the siblings got along. Discord between at least two of them was the norm.
Her uncle John stopped in front of sixteen-year-old Owen. “You don’t think your sisters deserve to learn to shoot?”
Owen shrugged. “I don’t see the point.”
“What if they’re out hiking and come across a pissed-off bear? What if someone breaks into their home when they’re adults and tries to attack them? What if their husband is hurt and unable to defend them?”
Owen looked away and gave a smaller shrug. “I guess.”
“Everyone benefits from learning to shoot. Being able to defend ourselves is our right.”
“It seems stupid to teach a child.”
Uncle John slowly shook his head, and disgust filled his tone. “How do you think you learned? Your dad and my brothers agree it’s best to learn early respect for weapons to eliminate the fascination of the untouchable. A kid who’s taught the proper respect is less likely to cause an accident. This is serious business, and I’m proud your daddy let me have a hand in teaching all of you.”
“Even me,” Rose said. She’d learned right alongside all of them. Studying the weapons with her fingertips, learning the recoil of each gun. She couldn’t hit a target, but she knew how to fire, and their uncle had said she just needed to fire in the right direction to scare off any threat.
“That’s right,” he said to Rose. “You never know when a person will have to take up a weapon to defend themselves,” he told Owen. “Maybe even defend yourself from your own government. I hope it never comes to that one day, but if it does, we’ll be ready.”
“Why would the government attack us?” Owen asked.
Her uncle ran a hand over his beard, his gaze distant. “That’s not something you need to worry about now. Just be prepared for every uncertainty and you won’t have to worry about anything. Now keep your mouth shut until I’m done with your sister.”
Mercy turned her eye back to the sight, deliriously happy that Owen had gotten in trouble.
“Quit your grinnin’,” her uncle whispered in amusement next to her ear. “Take a deep breath and let it out and then shoot. Five shots.”
Mercy did as he asked and was pleased to see five holes in the third and fourth rings of the bull’s-eye fifty yards away.
“Nice job, Mercy.”
She beamed and lined up her next series of shots.
That night at the adults’ dinner table, her uncle bragged about her precision. It was a packed table. Her parents, her mother’s four brothers, and two of their wives had squeezed together while the five kids ate on folding chairs around a card table. Owen had sulked because he’d been made to eat at the kids’ table, and her uncle’s statement about Mercy’s shooting made his shoulders sag even more.
As he sank lower, Mercy sat up straighter. She listened closely to the adults’ talk, and ignored Levi and Pearl’s argument about who got to ride which horse tomorrow. She enjoyed visiting her uncles’ ranch. The four men had lots of horses, which made the long car ride worth it to her. Mercy loved to ride the horses, explore the vast ranch with her siblings, and help her aunts cook big meals for the ranch hands.
Her aunts were always very quiet at dinner, letting the men do most of the talking. Even her mother spoke less here than at home. Probably because there were more people to listen to. Her uncles had a way of talking over one another, each one getting louder than the others to get his words heard. Especially when they talked about the government. That subject was certain to get them fired up. They didn’t trust the government and would argue over the best way to avoid any interaction with it.
She grew bored as the adults changed the topic to cattle, and her gaze strayed to the family photos on the wall. She knew them by heart. They never changed from visit to visit. There were pictures of her mother’s parents, who had both died before Mercy was born, and there were pictures of her mother as a little girl, younger than Mercy was now. Everyone said Mercy looked just like her mother as a child, but Mercy didn’t see the resemblance. Her mother had worn impossibly short bangs and had a ton of freckles. Her uncle Aaron had a place of honor on the wall. He’d been camping near Mount St. Helens when it erupted and been one of the nearly sixty deaths. Multiple pictures of him were hung in a circle around his high school senior picture.
She had no memories of this uncle who’d died in his early twenties before she was born, but his picture showed a strong resemblance to her other uncles. Uncle John was her favorite; he was always a lot of fun.
“Eat your peas,” Pearl ordered her.
Mercy glared at her older sister. “You’re not the boss of me.” She hated peas.
“Pearl’s the boss when Mom’s not here,” Levi stated, shoveling peas in his mouth. He chewed and then showed her a tongue covered with green mush.
“Mom’s here.” Mercy shot a nervous look at the adult table to see if her mother was paying attention to their argument. Any other day she would have told on Levi for being gross, but she didn’t want to call her mother’s attention to the uneaten peas on her plate. “And I ate all my carrots. So there.”
She glanced at the big table and caught her uncle John’s eye. He’d been listening. He winked at her and made a show of pushing his peas to the edge of his plate. Her heart warmed, and she ducked her head in embarrassed happiness.
Even with the large number of men on her uncles’ ranch, she didn’t feel outnumbered as she did at home with just Levi and Owen. Her brothers had a way of dictating every moment of her life.
There were three more days left in their visit, and Mercy planned to enjoy every minute.
FOURTEEN
“I heard Tom McDonald is out of town,” Jeff, Mercy’s supervisor, commented as she stopped in the doorway to his office.