Annie and the Wolves Read online

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  Copyright © 2021 by Andromeda Romano-Lax

  All rights reserved.

  Published by

  Soho Press, Inc.

  227 W 17th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Romano-Lax, Andromeda, author.

  Title: Annie and the wolves / Andromeda Romano-Lax.

  Description: New York : Soho, [2021]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020020023

  ISBN 978-1-64129-169-9

  eISBN 978-1-64129-170-5

  Subjects: LCSH: 1. Oakley, Annie, 1860–1926—Fiction.

  2. GSAFD: Biographical fiction. 3. Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3618.O59 A84 2021 | DDC 813'.6—dc23

  Interior design by Janine Agro

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To my sisters: Honoree, Eliza and Nikki

  Homo homini lupus [Man is wolf to man].

  Who in the face of all his experience of life and of

  history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?

  —Sigmund Freud, 1930

  1

  Annie

  1901

  She woke to the shriek of the whistle and the squeal of brakes. Three in the morning, yet the sleeper car was flooded with sparking, shuddering light.

  In that bright silver moment as the trains collided, she felt herself lifting from the bed, time slowing as it had always done at the bottom of a breath when she lined up a shot. She was floating, her gowned body surrounded by twinkling glass and feathers, every barb aglow. Then she slammed into the wall. A blast of pain raced across her pelvis and up her spine. Too much to bear.

  Annie Oakley thought, Away.

  And then she was.

  Annie was on her back, laid out on a piece of canvas within sight of the toppled train car, a wool blanket over the bottom half of her body. For the moment, no one attending to her.

  Turning her head, she could see other passengers from the demolished show train being escorted, limping and stunned, toward an upright stock car that had been turned into a makeshift hospital, its large panel doors open and dozens of people crowded inside. Other wood-sided cars had been reduced to splinters, their contents thrown into the swampy North Carolina lowlands alongside the tracks. Outside were cowboys, Indians, train crew, all trying to help. A bison from the show stood in a ditch, unharmed, its massive beautiful head turned toward her, backlit by the yellow dawn.

  The sun was rising. Hours had passed. But it had not felt like time passing. She had skipped from the moment of the crash until now, like a stone across a pond.

  She rolled to one side and cried out in pain, attracting the attention of a man in a gray cap who was pointing a rifle at the head of a downed horse. The man hesitated and looked Annie’s way while she stared past him, wanting to help the creature, but it was useless. Moving even a few inches had brought her to the edge of a blackout.

  The horse was on its side on the ground, ribs moving with uneven, quivering breaths. The man settled his shoulders and aimed the rifle again.

  Pearly smoke, that burning acrid smell, and her thought—No!—but she knew it must be done, and done well. Eyes closed, she listened and counted. Three shots. A pause. Four more. She felt her anger rise. The placement must be exact for it to be merciful. It shouldn’t take so many shots.

  She opened her eyes and saw the man step a little way down the tracks toward a second, equally lame horse. It was one of her favorites: a dark chestnut with a white blaze down its face. This time, it was as if the rifle were being placed on her own forehead, the steel muzzle set between her own eyes. Skipping forward had been no reprieve; it had only brought her to the next terrible place. She closed her eyes, felt her heart slow. Again, she thought, Away.

  And she was. Back on the train just as the light filled the sleeper, just as everything turned a glimmering silvery white. She felt herself floating, falling, knowing.

  It is trauma that sends us away, but there is pain also where we land.

  2

  Ruth

  2018

  Friday

  Ruth was just out the door for her speaking engagement at the local high school, laptop bag over her shoulder, when the delivery truck pulled into her driveway. She paused with a hand on the knob, fresh fall Minnesota air filling her lungs, watching as the man in brown shorts approached.

  She wasn’t expecting a package—was she? Hope was dangerous, but she couldn’t hold back a smile as he handed over the box.

  “Something good?” he asked.

  “Possibly.”

  Taking it, she noted the Vermont return address and heard the soft slide and thud of what could be a rare journal, more than a century old and certainly improperly packed. But she wasn’t about to rebuke the sender. Not when he was trusting her with this, Annie Oakley’s own words, unknown to any scholar.

  The sharpshooter had left behind an unfinished autobiography and some everyday correspondence when she’d died in 1926, but little else of substance written in her own hand.

  Ruth’s last email exchange with an antique collector who called himself Nieman had ended inconclusively. He’d agreed to send her a few scans or mail select photocopies on the condition that she understood he was in a hurry, with a large-scale purchase planned pending the journal’s authenticity. She promised to take a look, despite his refusal to provide any details on how the item had come into his possession.

  Context matters, she had replied. The more you withhold, the less reliable my analysis will be. Also please keep in mind that an original provides much more information than a photocopy. I’ll work pro bono; that isn’t the issue. But I can’t do much without quality source materials.

  The journal was only the first step. Nieman had gotten a glimpse of a letter and wanted to purchase an entire set of rare correspondence, all of it somehow related to the journal in terms of content, about which he had offered only meager clues.

  Your call, she’d responded, trying to play it cool. I have some time this week. Next month is busier.

  It was a lie. Aside from the speech she was giving to a history class in thirty minutes—make that twenty—Ruth had nothing scheduled for the rest of the year, aside from trips to the chiropractor and putting her house up for sale.

  Watching the truck back out, Ruth tried not to wish or want too much. She ran a hand through the curled ends of her auburn hair—styled, for once—trying to prolong this feeling of well-being. She was wearing a corduroy jacket she’d ordered online and her luckiest blue-stitched cowboy boots. She’d removed the knee brace she normally wore under baggy sweatpants in order to squeeze into jeans she hadn’t bothered to take out of a drawer for months. She felt the warm sun on her face and smelled burning leaves.

  History is well and good, but the present is worth noticing, too. Remember this. For a few lovely seconds, time didn’t matter.

  But as soon as the delivery truck was out of view, it mattered again. No time to slice through the layers of fibrous brown packing tape. Definitely no time to make sense of journal entries. She should be able to summon some patience, considering she’d been stuck with no new leads for several years.

  Ruth unlocked the door and hurried to the kitchen count
er, planning to leave the box there. Then she spotted the kitchen scissors, sticking out from her jar of wooden spoons.

  Just a peek.

  She ran the point of the scissors down the flap and pulled. Inside she saw bubble wrap. Bubble wrap! Nieman should have known better. Through the plastic she saw a color: burgundy edged with dark brown. The real thing. Not a set of photocopies. She wouldn’t have taken the risk, but he had, and bless him for it.

  Her fingers reached to pull the wrapped journal out of the box, but then she caught sight of her watch. She was due in Holloway’s class at 2:05. The walk, about three-quarters of a mile from the end of her road, down a trail and to the back entrance of the public school, took a fit, healthy person fifteen minutes. For Ruth, it would be twice as long.

  She felt her stomach flutter with joy at what she’d received, overlaid by nerves about being late. She shouldn’t have opened the box, but she was too excited to feel any regret. She reached into the ceramic dish next to her mail basket, grabbed the key to her Honda Fit and proceeded through the garage door before reason could stop her.

  Door open, laptop bag on the passenger seat, thumb drive with her slideshow ready as backup in case her own computer was wonky and it was easier to use Holloway’s. Garage door up. Seatbelt. Key in the ignition.

  Maybe today. It had to happen sometime. Why else had she put off selling the car, once she’d broken up with Scott and had no one else to drive or even halfheartedly maintain it?

  Because you’re going to want to drive again. You’re going to be ready at some point.

  The hatchback didn’t look anything like the small Subaru sedan she’d smashed up. This was new and bigger, silver, ridiculously clean. Well, of course it was clean. It had less than fifty miles on it.

  Her hand gripped the gearshift without taking it out of park. She touched her toe to the gas pedal just to feel the positioning—no surprises—then placed the slippery bottom of the boot squarely against the brake. Quick glance at all mirrors. Another squeeze, preparing to shift into drive. Out on the dead-end road, there wasn’t a single car or pedestrian to worry about. Look forward. Look right, even though there were only woods that way; still, there could be cyclists or walkers coming from the trail. Look left. Right one last time.

  Ready.

  Then she saw it all at once. New Year’s Day. The bridge, the car with its hungover driver braking too fast on the icy road ahead of her, the guardrail.

  She knew what would come next—the vision, terror-fed illusion, whatever it had been. She couldn’t let her mind go there, or her body would follow into a full panic attack.

  Heart in her throat, Ruth yanked her foot off the pedal and her hand off the gear shift.

  “Oh, god,” she sputtered.

  She took a deep breath as her mind slammed that door shut just in time. She fumbled with the seatbelt, hands shaking, desperate to be free of the strap. She would move slowly, tricking her body into a state of calm. She would gather up her things and exit the garage without drama. She swallowed and inhaled again. As she opened the door, she checked her watch. Ten minutes to two.

  Now you’ve done it.

  At the school, Ruth hurried toward the metal detector, eyes focused on the yellow banner beyond: we love our visitors / horizon high. But the seated security guard called her back.

  “Quick look at your ID and you’ll be on your way.”

  “I don’t have anything on me.”

  “You don’t have a faculty ID?”

  “I’m not faculty.”

  “But I’ve seen you around here, haven’t I?”

  “My fiancé teaches here.” She’d barely spoken the words before regretting them. Scott wasn’t her fiancé anymore. It just slipped out sometimes.

  “Another official ID from this list, then. You can’t enter the school without one of these. Plus, you have to sign the visitors log.”

  She hadn’t brought anything except her laptop and keys. In her flustered state leaving the garage, she’d forgotten her purse.

  Past the security station, classroom doors opened and teenagers spilled out, the halls echoing with squeaky footfalls.

  “I’m running out of time,” Ruth said. “Is there something we can do?”

  From the corner of her eye she noticed a student, maybe sixteen or seventeen, standing behind her: dark hair, tall. Skinny jeans and a collared plaid layered over a graphic T-shirt, jacket hanging from one hand. The guard gestured for him to go around Ruth and show his school ID, but the boy remained where he was.

  “That’s okay,” the boy said. “I’m not in a hurry.”

  “Oh, sure.” The guard laughed. “You just want an excuse to be late for class. Tell ’em you were stuck behind a terrorist.” He added for Ruth’s benefit, “This isn’t the airport. We can make jokes.”

  “But you can’t make exceptions.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  So she was not only late, but apparently a “ma’am” at thirty-two. Wonderful.

  Ruth asked, “Can you at least get a message to Mrs. Holloway for me?”

  Making no move to rise from his chair, he gestured back outside. “Main visitor center. South side. Past lots B and C, then swing a left past the bus zone. Guard there can send someone to hand-deliver a note, but she probably won’t see it till end of the day.”

  At the beginning of the year, she’d given herself until December 31st to make a professional appearance—anywhere. When Jane Holloway issued the invitation in September, Ruth knew this was the easiest way to finally check one item off her Rehab Resolution List. Someday she’d work outside the house again, and the last two years, terrible as they were, would be sealed away, moved into deep archival storage.

  But that was someday. For now, she’d settle for much less: just one good, purposeful, dignified hour.

  From among the scattered students still milling around, pocketing gadgets or fumbling with backpacks, a familiar figure emerged.

  “Scott!” she called out. “They won’t let me in.”

  He paused, squinting. New sweater, same old glasses.

  “Jane Holloway’s looking for you.”

  “I know. I left my wallet at home. I don’t suppose you could vouch for me? All this new security . . .”

  “Tell me about it.” He approached, calling to the boy in line behind her. “Reece, get going. You’re late for your next class. And hey, you weren’t in calculus.”

  The boy slid his school ID out of a tight back pocket and handed it to the guard. “Did I miss anything?”

  Scott’s most detested question, Ruth remembered.

  “Did you miss anything? Oh, no—we were just hanging out. Besides the quiz and the chapter review.” He turned to Ruth. “I’ll send someone to tell Holloway you’ve got a hitch. And Ruth—sorry. I’d drive you to your house if I could, but my own class is starting. You can take the shortcut, right? Ten-minute walk?”

  Reece was still lingering, fists crammed into his tight pockets. “I’ve got a car.”

  “That’s all right,” said Ruth.

  “No, really. I can drive you.”

  She glanced at her watch. “It’s okay. You get to class.”

  “It’s, what, three minutes by car?”

  Surely he couldn’t just leave campus without permission.

  “That doesn’t seem . . . weird to you?”

  “Weird is good,” he said.

  Scott frowned at Reece and gestured toward Ruth’s laptop. “Do you have a scanned ID in your files? Passport, maybe? I might have put that in a folder for you when we were . . .”

  Planning to go on vacation. Thailand or Vietnam, they’d never decided.

  “Maybe. It takes about ten minutes just to boot this thing up.”

  “Ten minutes?” Reece said. “That’s messed up.”

  Scott shook his head. �
��He’s right. You’ve got to get that into the shop.”

  “Defrag it, at least,” Reece said. “Free up some space on your hard drive.”

  “You’re both right.” The computer shop was fifteen miles away, not on any bus route from this side of town. Nothing was easy or quick these days. “I’ll get to the mall this weekend.”

  Scott must have heard the catch in her voice. “Reece here could do it for you, after school. Hire him for a house call. He’s a whiz at that stuff.”

  “I don’t know—” she started to say, but Scott wasn’t listening.

  “Reece, you know the cul-de-sac on Pine Street, behind the school? She lives in the A-frame.”

  “All right, all right,” Ruth said, in a tone that meant, Stop. It’s my life now. You were liberated from the landscaping and recycling and laptop fixing. Maybe he was trying to reconnect. Still, this wasn’t his problem. It wasn’t appropriate for him to give out her address, though she hadn’t objected last spring when he’d sent over a pair of students who mowed lawns and cleaned windows.

  “Scott, thank you for your concern. You should get to your class. And Reece, nice to meet you, but you’re late, too.”

  “Holloway’s my last period,” Reece said. “I can tell her they won’t let you in.”

  Resigned, Ruth took a deep breath and really looked at the teenager standing on her side of the guard’s station, refusing to walk through. “That would be a big help. Thanks.”

  He was six inches taller than her, long arms jutting out of rolled-up flannel sleeves. There was a black infinity symbol on his forearm. Maybe a real tattoo, or maybe just a temporary pen-inked doodle.

  She spotted it and, for a moment, couldn’t look away. So familiar.

  The nape of her neck tingled. She didn’t know this kid, but she’d just had the sudden urge to step forward, lean in, tell him something. Something important. Thankfully, she stopped herself. But what had she wanted to say?

  Blink, she told herself. Blink and breathe.

  Maybe seeing her ex again was a bad idea, as Dr. Susan, her first therapist, had said. Running into him could’ve tripped some switch in her brain, even though she was nearly mended now: stable, rational, mostly delusion-free. Or maybe this was just the price for having sat behind the wheel of a car. Or for having gotten too worked up about the journal.