Mercy's First Lesson

Flash Fiction | 5 Minute Read

Oct 14, 2022

This week’s story is out of my Writing Prompt Party notebook. This is a story I wrote back in February with the Stop Writing Alone community during one of our Writing Prompt Parties. We used The Storymatic Cards. The four prompt cards selected were cowboy, grandparent, bounced check, and large wild animal.

This is a 5 minute read.

Mercy’s First Lesson

Mercy Jeffords didn’t want to live on a ranch. Mercy Jeffords loved living in an apartment building in New York City. After two years of being trapped mostly inside due to remote learning and the ever-changing rules of pandemic and post-pandemic life, Mercy had learned to love the predictability of it all. She found safety in her home, her classes, and her routine in the face of all the fears the world kept throwing at her. She wasn’t interested in changing any of it.

Mercy Jeffords’s grandmother had a different way of looking at things. She insisted that Mercy move across the country to live on her ranch. Unfortunately for Mercy, her mom and dad thought that was a great idea. Mercy couldn’t help but notice that they didn’t think it was a good enough idea for them to join her.

She took her first plane flight alone, spending the whole time with her head in a book by Laura Ingalls Wilder. When the plane landed, her grandmother was waiting at the gate wearing jeans, a button down plaid shirt and a big, old hat. She looked like a scarecrow come to life. Mercy felt the familiar sting of familial embarrassment until she looked around and saw that pretty much everyone else at the gate looked very similar. The fact was, Mercy was the one who looked out of place.

On the ride to the ranch, Mercy got an introduction to her grandmother’s grand plans of turning Mercy into some sort of cowboy. “Mercy, ranchin’s in your blood,” her grandma started in the slow drawl that usually frustrated Mercy on long phone calls. “I got you a gift to get you started!” After the long cruising drive through the nothing as far as Mercy could see, the truck rolled to a stop at the side of a field that looked, to Mercy’s eyes, just like all the others. “I want you to go out there, find your gift and bring it on home.” The older woman pointed down the road to two buildings that looked like they may actually be big once you got close, but currently looked like Monopoly game pieces.

“What am I getting, Gamma?” Mercy asked, squinting across the field. “I don’t see anything!”

Her grandmother was out of the truck rooting around in the back of her pickup. She came up with a long rope with a loop tied at the end of it. She opened Mercy’s passenger side door encouraging her out of the truck into the dusty road beside her. “Well, honey, I got you every little girl’s dream, of course.” She pressed the rough rope into Mercy’s soft hands. “I got you a pony.” Her eyes were as wild and bright as her smile. She clapped her hands to dust them off before closing the passenger door behind Mercy. “Problem is, the check bounced, so the damn wrangler got all pissy and let her loose. He said it was on us to bring her in on account of him not getting paid in full and all that.” Mercy followed her grandmother around the truck and watched as she pulled herself back up into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. “So there you have it,” she said, leaning out the window talking down to a very confused Mercy. “Try to get home before sundown so you don’t hafta deal with them wolves everyone’s been talking about.” She locked the doors.

Mercy reached up to grab the window opening. “But Gramma! I don’t know nothin’ about catchin’ wild animals!”

Her grandma blinked, tapped Mercy’s hands softly and said, “Well, then Baby Girl, I imagine you’re ‘bout to learn something new today. Can’t wait to hear about it at supper.”

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