Mrs. Winnie

on the wall a framed pistol red velvet backing simple wooden frame sixty years or more old old as the vinyl record or a real rootbeer float maybe the year of the color tv I imagine it as a day she might have been hanging clothes on an old clothesline in the back and maybe a neighbor across the fence, some garden club lady named Eleanor yells “Your old man has been shot,” and I could see how she might have dutifully been worried but silently felt relief as she slowly made her way in the old ’49 Ford driven by the preacher to the hospital she finds him alive and learns that his known mistress finally had enough and shot him she regrets to learn that his “woman disease” hasn’t killed him yet and she watches him heal up and dreads his return many nights she thought maybe the good lord would relieve her of the beatings caused by that moonshine and night prowling she sits on the porch one quiet night as the crickets sing and the lightening bugs decorate the humid summer night the radio playing “Some enchanted evening” and she decides she’ll at least go after a sentiment the mistress answers the door with a cigarette decorated with stains of her red lips and she offers her hand in a dainty handshake once their conversation has ended she smiles and strolls down the walk with this pistol in her apron pocket stained with homemade apple pie filling and fried chicken grease she waits until his death to frame it and now at 91, she smiles still gazing upon it hanging on her wall karma has no age and that day it smiled on Mrs. Winnie