Pistol of Peace (1st Place Fiction)

I woke up without Ma’s familiar warmth by my side, nor her saw-like snore filling my ears. Blinking, I realized that the sun had somehow risen. I sat up, sore all over from sleeping in the wagon with what was left of our earthly possessions: a butter churn, a pan, a Book of Mormon, and two blankets. Most of our things had burned with our little house in Nauvoo.

Where was Ma?

Fear gripped my neck and threatened to choke the breath right out of me. I couldn’t help but wonder if another mob had found our sad little wagon and taken Ma. After the mobs burned our house, they chased us out of Nauvoo with cannon balls. If that weren’t bad enough, they harassed our retreat. Calling us evil names, stealing our guns, food, supplies, and our old dairy cow, Repentance. I missed that cranky old beast even more than her sour milk.  

Taking a quick breath, I climbed out of the wagon, only to find Ma sitting against a wheel and pulling something out of her shirt. Whereas my endowments could only be described as flat as a pancake, Ma was so well endowed in her bosoms, that she could have hid a frying pan in there and no one would been any the wiser. But what she pulled out was no pot—it were a pistol.

I breathed in quickly and somehow, smelled the beautiful aroma of bacon fat. My stomach rumbled hungrily. It had been days since we’d had a proper meal and we hadn’t eaten a bite since the day before yesterday.

“About time you stirred, lazy bones,” Ma said, using the bottom of her skirt to wipe the pistol clean—well as clean as her mud-caked skirt could make it.

“What you doing, Ma? I was terrified when you weren’t in the wagon.”

She smiled. “What they say in the Book of Mormon, child. I be resurrecting this here pistol from the dead.”

“That’s not what resur—never mind,” I said. There was no point in correcting Ma.

“They say in the Bible to be peaceful,” she continued, pulling off her stocking and dumping bullets onto the muddy ground. She replaced her stocking and boot, then loaded the pistol. “There’s no better instrument of peace than a pistol.”

“I’m pretty sure they don’t say that in the Bible.”

Ma snapped the barrel back in place of her resurrected pistol. “Well perhaps not those exact words, but the meaning tis the same.”

I kicked my big toe in the mud. “We need to find food, Ma. And catch up with the rest of the saints. Not fool around with Pa’s old pistol.”

Ma clucked and shook her head. “I remember it now. It was St. Francis of the Asses who said to be an instrument of peace.”

I couldn’t help myself, I smiled at Ma’s dirty mouth. She loved using scriptures to curse. “Do you mean St. Francis of Assisi?”

She tapped the side of her nose twice with her index finger. “That’d be the one.”

“He’s a Catholic saint, Ma,” I said. “And we’re Latter-day Saints now.”

“Trust a child named Charity to correct her elders,” Ma said, touching her bosom and sighing dramatically. “I should have named you, Patience, because Lord knows you give me plenty a’ cause for patience… Besides saints is saints.”

I jumped when I heard the sound of horses’ hooves. Like a jack rabbit, I longed to dive back into my hole. But I could already see three men on horses coming our direction and there were no way I could move Ma in time. Let alone hide someone of her girth. The three men converged on us from all directions. I stood unable to move, like my foot was caught in a steel trap.   

“Give us your guns!” one of the men yelled.

Ma played stupid, like she didn’t speak English. She often did that when she didn’t want to hear what someone was saying to her.

“I said give us your guns,” the man repeated, and one of his followers, a young man, pointed his shotgun at Ma. 

The mobsters had already taken away my home because of my religious beliefs, I wasn’t about to let them take my mother. I stepped in front of her. “Your friends already took our food and our cow. We have nothing.”

“I want that pistol,” he said, pointing his dirty finger at Ma and smiling menacingly.

“Well, I’d be happy to give it to you, young man,” Ma said, all polite-like, while I quivered in my boots. Only Ma would call him young. He was at least forty and missing his several teeth.

The head of the mob got off his horse and walked toward Ma, a look of triumph on his face like he’d just won a wrestling contest at a barn raising. He took off his hat and held out his hand. Ma got to her feet with a speed I didn’t know she was capable of.  

“Oh my, did I forget to mention,” Ma said, sounding all apologetic. “That I’d have to use it first before I can give it to you.”

She cocked the pistol back and pointed it between the man’s beady eyes. The man stepped back and put his hat back on.

“Do you still want my pistol?” she asked, smiling widely.

My heart was racing, but I couldn’t help but grin at her audacity.

“Crazy Irishwoman!” one of the men on the horses said, before cantering away the same direction he’d come from.

“Crazy I may be, but a bad aim, I ain’t,” Ma said, positioning herself in front of me and pointing the gun at the young fella with the shot gun. “So, you’d better hightail it out of here, before your giving my regards to the Prophet Joseph Smith and the angels in heaven. Best prepare yourself, because you’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”

The young man, holding the shotgun, bolted like an unbroken horse. The ringer leader was now all alone and on foot. He backed up slowly to his horse. His eyes never leaving Ma’s smiling face and her shiny pistol which pointed back at him. Bumping into his horse, he turned to put his foot into the stirrup.

“Drop your bag,” Ma called.

He climbed into the saddle. His bag still on his shoulder. I winced as Ma’s pistol went off, blowing a hole in his hat.

“I said, drop your bag. It ain’t polite to make a lady repeat herself,” Ma said, cocking her pistol and aiming it once again at the man.

Slinging the bag off his shoulder, he dropped it into the mud. 

“Peace be with you, brother,” she called.

The man used curse words that weren’t in the Bible and galloped away. Yet, I stood, still unable to move. “You were right Ma, your pistol was an instrument of peace.”

She gave me a shove before picking up his bag. “That’ll show you not to correct your elders, Charity. Now hitch up the asses before those fools realize we are only two women with one gun.”

As fast as my shaking hands could, I harnessed our donkeys, Faith and Hope, to the wagon. Ma was already sitting in the coachman’s seat. I swung up next to her and she handed me the reins.        

“May Faith and Hope lead us to the promised land,” she said primly, like she was wearing her Sunday silk dress and not covered in dried mud.

But maybe the mud didn’t matter. Maybe what made Ma a saint wasn’t on the outside.

“Do you mean Zion?”

“What did I say about correcting me, Charity?”

“Sorry, Ma,” I said as I flicked the reins, our donkeys heehawed before starting forward.

I glanced over at Ma who was opening the man’s bag. She was holding a loaf of bread that wasn’t fresh, but it looked more delicious than any morsel of food I’d ever eaten.

“Now, what were you saying about finding food?” Ma said, pulling off a chunk and handing it to me. “The Lord will provide manna from heaven.”

I switched the reins to one hand. With my free hand, I took a large, greedy bite and I was sure it tasted sweeter than any Biblical manna bread. “Or bread from mobsters.”

Ma took a few bites of bread before uncocking her pistol and stuffing it back down her dress between her bosoms. “The source tis the same, child.”

I nodded. Finding food in all of this mud was truly a miracle. The next bite I took was smaller, I savored the flavor of the wheat—imagining tasting ever single grain. But then a nagging thought kept playing over in my head as I took bite after bite, until my chunk of bread were gone. “How’d’you know the mobsters were coming, Ma?”

“From the Holy Spirit, o’course,” she said, touching her heart. 

“Of course,” I said, chastised.

Ma for all her faults, was full of faith.

“And I smelled their bacon.”