The Night Mercy Flat Awakened - Part 1

1. A Town So Quiet It Hurt In the little frontier town of Mercy Flat , nothing ever happened, which was exactly how the men liked it and exactly why so many of the women had begun to feel, in the deepest and most private chambers of themselves, that they were slowly turning to dust while still alive. The mornings began with stove smoke and prayer, with biscuit dough and wash water, with men barking harmless little instructions as if they had discovered the wheel and the weather both, and the women moving from kitchen to porch to yard to church to market and back again, all of it neat, all of it respectable, all of it unbearably repetitive, as if a whole life could be reduced to folding shirts and nodding at sermons about patience. Mae Holloway, who was thirty-three and prettier than she had any right to be for a woman so rarely admired by her husband, stood at her stove on Friday morning with flour on her wrists and a look in her eyes that suggested she had recently imagined setting the entire skillet against the wall. Her husband, Ellis, sat at the table with coffee and sausage and the morning paper, which he held as if it were a matter of urgent state importance, and said, without looking up, “Mae, don’t forget I’ll be late tonight. Friday’s for a man to unwind.” Mae set down the spoon and smiled in the way only married women can smile when murder is briefly considered and rejected as impractical. “Of course,” she said sweetly. “You work terribly hard sitting on crates and discussing other people’s horses.” Across town, Clara Bell, the schoolteacher, was straightening the collar of her blouse while listening to her fiancé Caleb explain, for the fiftieth time, that once they were married she would naturally want fewer books and more sensible priorities. “Not fewer books,” Clara said. “Not no books,” Caleb corrected, as if he were being generous. “Just fewer of them. A house looks friendlier when it doesn’t resemble a law office.” Clara stared at him for a beat, then asked, “Do law offices frighten you, Caleb?” He frowned, because he never knew when she was laughing at him until it was too late. At the edge of town, Ruth Mercer—who had once dreamed of traveling to Denver and seeing theaters and electric lights—hung shirts on the line while her boyfriend Gideon repaired a fence badly and loudly. He had the kind of confidence that only mediocre men possess, and he kept stopping to explain simple things as if Ruth had never encountered wood, rope, weather, or gravity before. “And if I’m lucky,” Ruth called back, squinting toward him, “someday I’ll learn how a fence works.” At the saloon, June Mercer—no relation to Ruth, though they shared a surname and a temperament sharpened by boredom—polished glasses behind the bar and watched the same men order the same whiskey in the same voices while staring at the same card hands as though their lives depended on a pair of queens. The only thing more exhausting than being the only woman in the room, June often thought, was being the only interesting woman in the room. That afternoon, after church committee work and market errands and a final round of silent resentment folded into domestic efficiency, several women gathered outside the mercantile where the shade was decent and no man was likely to listen long enough to understand what was being said. Mae leaned against a barrel and sighed. “If Ellis says ‘peace and order’ one more time, I may give him unrest and surprise.” Ruth laughed. “Gideon told me yesterday that women prefer quiet lives.” “And how would he know?” Clara asked dryly. “He’s never listened long enough to hear one.” June arrived last, wiping her hands on a towel from the saloon and rolling her eyes so hard it was a miracle they stayed in her head. “The Friday crowd is already polishing their stupidity,” she said. “I swear if one more man winks at me like he invented charm, I’m going to charge him a stupidity tax.” Mae grinned. “And if one more man calls me lucky to have a dependable husband, I’m going to ask whether luck is meant to feel like laundry.” The women laughed, but there was something beneath the laughter, something old and hungry and restless. Nothing ever happened in Mercy Flat. The men liked it that way. The women were beginning not to. 2. Friday Night, as Usual By sundown, the pattern of Mercy Flat had clicked once more into place, as predictable as a hymn, as dull as cold potatoes, as suffocating as politeness. The men drifted toward the saloon in twos and threes, joking loudly and leaving behind half-finished chores and wives who had long ago learned that male leisure was considered a necessity while female leisure was treated as a decorative rumor. Lamps were lit in windows, children were settled, supper dishes dried, collars unbuttoned, aprons folded, and all across town the women experienced that peculiar hour in which the work is done and the life waiting after the work turns out to be no life at all. Mae sat on her porch while Ellis marched toward town in his best boots, calling over his shoulder, “Don’t wait up.” Mae murmured, “You say that as though I’ve been tempted.” Ruth was shelling peas with her mother, who had long ago mistaken endurance for wisdom. “You’re lucky,” her mother said. “A steady man is worth his weight in silver.” Ruth popped a pea into her mouth and said, “Then Gideon’s overvalued.” At the schoolhouse, Clara finished marking copybooks, shut the door, and stood alone for a moment in the warm violet twilight, listening to the distant clatter of men heading toward pleasure while women were meant to head toward bed. June, meanwhile, was behind the saloon bar, where every Friday was nearly identical and every man believed his complaint to be original. “June,” one ranch hand called, “you’re lookin’ too serious for a Friday.” June set down a glass and looked him dead in the face. “You’re lookin’ too cheerful for a man with that mustache, so I suppose life is full of mysteries.” The men laughed, because they never noticed when June was cutting them apart. Sheriff Owen Pike entered around eight, adjusted his vest, and surveyed the room with the smugness of a man who has never in his life faced a real emergency. “Quiet night,” he said. June stared at him. “Congratulations, Sheriff. You’ve jinxed us.” Outside, the town settled into its ordinary hush. Inside, cards slapped wood, whiskey sloshed, boots scraped the floor, and all of Mercy Flat seemed determined to remain exactly as it had always been. And then, from somewhere beyond the dark edge of town, came the thunder of horses. 3. The Outlaw Women Rode In The first gunshot cracked through the evening like a whip made of lightning. Every head in the saloon jerked toward the doors. Cards froze in midair. A glass slipped from someone’s hand and broke across the floor. Sheriff Owen Pike straightened so abruptly his chair nearly tipped over. A second shot rang out, then a third, not aimed at anyone, but sent joyfully into the air, accompanied by a burst of laughter so bright and reckless it sounded almost impossible in a town like Mercy Flat. The saloon doors slammed open. Six riders came down the center of the street like trouble with excellent posture. At the front was Sadie Crowe , broad-shouldered, dark-eyed, thirty-eight, with a weathered black hat, a long dust-coated coat, and the lazy confidence of a woman who feared very little and enjoyed even less being told what to do. Beside her rode Pilar Reyes , thirty-six, all wicked smile and quick eyes and silver-buckled swagger. Behind them came Wren Tallhorse , tall and composed as stormlight, Odessa Blue , laughing with her head thrown back, Bonnie Vale , who wore mischief like jewelry, and Tess Mercer , whose grin alone could have started a riot. They reined in hard outside the saloon, horses snorting, dust lifting in gold clouds around them, and Sadie spun her revolver once before holstering it with a flourish that seemed less threatening than theatrical. “Well,” she called, voice ringing down the street, “is this Mercy Flat, or did we accidentally ride into a funeral with chairs?” Several townsmen backed away from the saloon entrance as though comedy were contagious. Sheriff Pike stepped onto the porch, one hand hovering importantly near his holster. “You women will settle down at once.” Pilar looked up at him and smiled. “Sheriff, if I settle down, I might die of disappointment.” Bonnie laughed. Odessa fired one more harmless shot into the air just because she enjoyed the sheriff’s expression. “We are armed,” Pike announced. Sadie leaned in her saddle and said, “So are we, darling, but we’re also entertaining.” Inside the saloon, June had come to the doorway and was staring with parted lips, not frightened in the slightest, but newly, vividly awake. Pilar tipped her hat toward her. “Now there’s the first friendly face we’ve seen all week.” June crossed her arms. “Friendly depends on your manners.” Pilar smiled wider. “Then I’ll use my best ones.” The outlaws dismounted in a storm of leather, dust, laughter, and jangling spurs, and it seemed to the whole town, though later no one could quite explain why, that the very air pressure changed. Men muttered. The sheriff sputtered. Horses stamped. Lamps glowed in windows as women began opening doors, hearing the racket, sensing the shift. Sadie pushed through the saloon doors and spread her arms. “Ladies,” she said to the room at large, “we’ve had a long ride, we’ve got money enough to behave badly, and unless there’s some local custom against fun, we’re taking over.” June, without hesitation, set six clean glasses on the bar. “Welcome to Mercy Flat,” she said. “Please improve it.” 4. They Took the Saloon The saloon had never looked so alive. Within minutes the outlaws had spread through the room like wildfire through dry grass, not smashing or pillaging so much as rearranging the emotional furniture of the place. Men who had strutted moments before now hunched protectively over their drinks. The piano, usually abused by one bored rancher with three songs to his name, was claimed by Tess, who banged out something lively enough to wake the dead, while Odessa danced with Bonnie between the tables, and Wren leaned at the bar with one long arm draped over the polished wood, watching everything with calm amusement. June poured drinks faster than she ever had in her life, grinning now, truly grinning, as Pilar perched on a stool and looked at her as if the barmaid were the most interesting creature in the territory. “You always this quick with a bottle?” Pilar asked. “Only when the company deserves it.” “And do we?” June slid a glass toward her. “Ask me again in five minutes.” Sadie, meanwhile, had confiscated the room without ever raising her voice. She sat backward on a chair near the center and announced, “All right, gentlemen, new house rules. First: no whining. Second: no calling any woman ‘yours’ unless she publicly agrees to the arrangement. Third: if any of you think staring counts as charisma, stop proving yourselves wrong.” A few men laughed nervously. Ellis Holloway did not. “This is indecent,” he muttered. Sadie turned her head slowly toward him. “Sir, I have not even begun to be indecent. Mind your blessings.” At the doorway, more women had gathered, drawn by the noise and the improbable sight of joy happening after dark in Mercy Flat. Mae stood in front, eyes shining, followed by Ruth, Clara, and a half dozen others who had never in their lives stepped into the saloon except perhaps once in daylight to fetch a husband and leave disappointed. Sheriff Pike saw them and said, “Ladies, you ought to go home.” “Why?” June called from behind the bar. “There’s finally something worth seeing.” Pilar spotted Mae and tipped her glass. “You all going to stand out there like saints in a painting, or are you coming in for a proper Friday night?” The men began objecting at once. “Now see here—” “My wife doesn’t belong in a place like—” “That ain’t respectable—” Odessa slapped her palm flat on the bar, and the whole room went quiet. “No one asked for a sermon,” she said. Then Wren, who had barely spoken all evening, looked toward the women at the doorway and said in a voice low enough to command attention without demanding it, “You’re welcome here if you want to be. No one’s dragging you in. No one’s pushing you out.” It was such a simple thing, that sentence, and so unfamiliar in Mercy Flat, that several women looked startled by it. If you want to be. As if wanting mattered. Mae lifted her chin. “Well,” she said, “I’ve spent long enough watching men enjoy themselves badly.” Clara followed her in. “And if anyone objects, I should love a fresh argument.” Ruth smiled with the dangerous brightness of a woman halfway to bravery. “Move over, then. I intend to scandalize somebody.” One by one, then three by three, the women of Mercy Flat entered the saloon. The room inhaled. The night began.