Sharp Shooter

  I picked a friend of a friend up at the Atlanta airport who needed a ride to nearby County Fair, where she was some sort of big top celebrity.
  A tiny woman in her '70s who wore one of those embroidered country western outfits with purple roses down the sleeve of her fringed cowhide jacket and along the bottom of her skirt.  And on the front above each breast pocket, there were crossed long barrel 6-shooters embroidered over a bulls eye target. Of course with matching boots and hat.  She carried a wooden box as big as a mailbox with the same western  pattern of crossed handguns elaborately carved and inlaid with mother of pearl. "Goddamn TSA wouldn't let me take my shootin' irons in my carry-on bags!"
  She grumbled and hopped into my truck. "You don't look like a Romeo!" She chuckled. "I hate planes!" Her name was Jennie Lee Sacks and before we left the kiss-ride, she started reciting her famous history. At 7 years old she travelled the U.S. with Ringling Brothers as a solo trick sharpshooter riding a painted pony bareback, that jumped through flaming hoops as she shot bottles tossed in the air and even doing a headstand could shoot a cigar from a man's mouth while the pony leaped over logs.
  She was a prodigy shooter and horse rider known throughout the west. She said she held the record for consecutive target hits with 137 bottles shot in one minute. "Got paid good money for a kid in 1953! Sent me to college where I majored in finance!" Retired from the rodeo circuit at 20 she got a good job as a CPA  for Exxon and now just does seminars.
 She said she shows up at rodeos and country fairs just to sign autographs and get a smell of the manure.  She showed me a poster of her doing the hangman trick, hanging from one leg over the saddle taking shots at a spinning wheel with candles on the rim. "Well look at that! Impressive!"
  As we drove through the darkness she became quiet. After 30 minutes she fell asleep and folded herself up into a tiny little ball. She still seemed very childlike with her western outfit and curlicue hairstyle.
 As I rounded a curve, I saw a horrible site!  Right in the middle of the road was a magnificent 14 point buck, braying and bloody, trying to stand up.
  Two young men in a camo painted truck had hit the deer and it couldn't stand up.The two guys, dressed in camo coveralls we're panicking and hollering at each other. I parked and ran over to them. "Calm the fuck down!" I said. "Goddamn it Patton" the bearded one said. "Hell, I tried to stop, Chase!  What can we do?"  I said, "The poor guy is in pain! Don't you have a rifle or something in that big truck?" " Shit I never actually shot a deer before!" "What?" I said.
They both got more hysterical and they just started pulling the buck by his huge antlers, when  we heard a BANG! We saw the deer collapse with a single drop of blood drip down his nose. All 3 of us turned to see my passenger standing in front of the headlight with her pistol still pointing towards the deer as she flipped it caught it with her other hand, twirled it around her finger, flipped it back to her other hand and slid it into her holster.  The two men just stared with curiosity. "There's your trophy boys! Suitable for mounting!" She laughed and crawled back into my truck and said "Pussies- Come on Romeo, I have to be in Greensboro by 8:00!"