Annie
1905, 1869
Annie opens her eyes and sees the rutted track leading past trampled grass to the old house and knows she has arrived. This is the right place and the right time. Autumn of a familiar year. The oak tree shades the western side of the house. There is no swing hanging yet from its thickest, blackest branch. The white paint on the old house is fresh. A dog barks once and then yelps, silenced inside the house by an unkind hand. The oak’s leaves are red and curling: October, maybe. The baby was born in summer. He’ll be three months old now.
Annie creeps carefully, head low, rifle tucked close to her chest, stalking. She half-expects to see her own figure coming around the side of the house, carrying firewood or peeking out of the kitchen window. But that makes no sense. She’s never collided with herself before. The wagon is gone, but a thin spiral of smoke curls above the chimney.
It’s like dreaming all night of thirst and then waking and tipping a pitcher into a cold, clean bowl and preparing to dip one’s hands into that beautiful, fresh water. That moment of intense thirst will soon be quenched, need and satisfaction just a hair’s breadth apart. Is that what she’d always loved about hunting? The promise of satisfaction, as close as the pull of a trigger? Or did she simply love that it was something that she was good at, that put food on the table, that made her feel safe and strong and like everything would turn out fine? But it didn’t turn out fine, even with a gun. Even with the talent she had, even with her confidence in herself, which this man—this beast—had almost managed to destroy.
But what does she plan to do now? Try as she might, she hasn’t been able to face the thought squarely. Her body is telling her: walk softly, don’t be seen. Rifle ready. Resolve firm. She brings the gun even closer, presses it hard into her flat chest. From inside, she feels so much like a woman—a woman of some forty years—that she keeps forgetting this is the body of a girl: arms thin, ankles narrow, long brown hair in a single braid almost to her waist.
For a moment, the recognition of her own bodily youth scares her. But there’s no reason for fear. She’s never been weak, even as a girl of nine or ten. She’s just been confused and unaware. For years, she blamed herself for not standing up to him. It sickens her to remember him moaning and pressing into her, whispering in a hoarse, oddly high-pitched voice that she liked his attentions, that he wouldn’t keep coming back except that she was such a little tramp. He accused her even as his dribble ran down her trembling, pinned leg and into her skirts. He claimed that she liked it more than he did. In time, he became even more bold, asking the question out loud. “Do you like me, girl? Do you?” He yanked her head back by the hair until she answered, not with what he wanted to hear, but only with a gasp. That seemed to be enough. He just wanted to hear a voice, any voice. “I’m so lonely, Annie,” he said once, catching his breath as he lay, collapsed on top of her, not yet fully spent but resting, panting. She lay, stiff and silent, waiting for him to remove his bulk so she could slip away, caring not one whit for his so-called loneliness. Then she felt him harden and start again.
And the She-wolf knew. She had to know. Especially when, just as they were stoking the fire the first time or the tenth, he told Annie to follow him out to the woodshed—said it right in front of the She-wolf, as she put away her sewing and shifted the baby’s crib closer to the fire—and they did not come back for an hour, carrying a handful of kindling. Once he fell asleep lying on top of her. Her toes started to tingle inside her too-tight boots; she was losing feeling in her legs, but still he didn’t move until hours later, when he woke with a start and stumbled out of the shed with her trailing behind, silver light marking the path. She hated everything at that moment: even the creaking oak tree, even the full moon that had risen over their heads, tracking slowly across the cold sky. Everything went about its own business, pretending not to see. That was what she had learned, living at the house. In the end, nothing and nobody cared.
Except, perhaps, for one person: Mrs. Edington, the lady who ran the infirmary in Greenville and had loaned Annie out as a laborer to the strangers in the first place. But it didn’t take much for the Wolves to fool her. Annie had seen a letter arrive from Mrs. Edington, and a few days later, saw the He-wolf bent over a piece of paper, scribbling a half-literate reply. No doubt he told her that Annie was getting her wages and being taught to read and write. No doubt Mrs. Edington believed him. One day, Annie would escape back to the poor farm where she’d be taken back in. But not yet, and meanwhile every day was an eternity.
Creeping up to the cabin now, Annie remembers it all. Biting her lip to stop her teeth from chattering, she stalks closer, wishing for the world to be quiet for her, to aid her quest. Her boots silently grind the dry leaves into frost-speckled mud. Everything is dying with the season. One more pathetic old man won’t shift God’s balance terribly much.
Then suddenly, the little cabin’s door swings open. A woman stands there, hand over the front of her shabby checked brown dress, drawing in a breath of welcome surprise. “Oh, Phoebe Ann.”
The Missus takes a step forward, hand raised over her brow. It’s a bleak autumn day, clouds streaking by, but still bright compared to the shadows of the dark home. “I’m so glad you’re back. Come quick.”
Annie hesitates, trying to match this moment to what she pictured, and that is the problem. She never pictured it in enough detail. What to do about the woman, the baby and the mutt, who runs out the door and past her now, stumpy tail wagging, happy to escape the nag who hit him just moments ago.
Seeing her balk, the woman misunderstands and calls out reassuringly, “He’s gone to town.”
It doesn’t feel right to call her the She-wolf in her own cabin, as the thin-faced Missus bustles from woodstove to narrow kitchen table, hurrying to fill two chipped mugs with water from the kettle. “I saw you’d taken the rifle. I was afraid you were gone for the whole day.”
Annie doesn’t know how to answer.
“Even if we need the grub, even if he told you to stay out for a good spell,” the woman says, “I’d rather have your company. Jack was crying so long and hard I really thought he was going to stop breathing. I tried everything you do, but he wouldn’t quit. Walking and rocking and cold air until he was gasping and every bit of my milk was gone, so I wetted the cloth with sugar water for him to suck on, and I even went looking for that little blue bottle the doctor gave us . . .”
She is rambling without a breath, as if she won’t get it all out otherwise and she can’t decide if she should laugh or cry. The woman’s whole body is trembling with what she has almost done just to make the cabin quiet again. It’s hard not to throttle a child who is screeching in your ear and punching your sore breast with those mad little red fists. “But you know, I think someone in this house went and drank that solution? I guess my husband has trouble sleeping, too.” And she laughs again, the most unnatural, unmusical laugh Annie has ever heard: a stuck window forced open, screeching.
But here’s the thing that Annie forgot. The She-wolf did not, in fact, despise her. Did not, in fact, always mistreat her. Even the He-wolf, bad as he was, didn’t always do wrong by her. It’s been hard enough to remember the pain and the sorrow. It’s equally hard to remember this: that Annie felt, at moments, that she could almost belong here, if he would just stop the worst of what he was doing.
Does a sheep ever refuse to run from a wolf, not just from the paralysis of fear, but from stupid hope?
That thought makes Annie angrier, and the rage, turned inward now, makes her confused. She knows what happens when she gets confused. The face of the She-wolf fades. The view of the cabin flickers. The smell of apples lingers. Darkness falls.
“Give her water,” says Sitting Bull’s gentle voice.