Annie Oakley's Girl (3 page)

This time when I come back, I bring her a present. Annie unwraps the boxes and laughs at the paper with the flapper-girl designs. When she first pulls out her newly laundered fancy skirt and jacket, she doesn't recognize them, then she does. “Well, land o' goshen, honey, what'd y' do t' these thangs?”

“I had them dry-cleaned, Annie.”

She looks at me and nods with that tentative nod you give when you feel like you should say, “yes,” but you don't really know quite why.

“And weather-proofed,” I add proudly.

She looks at me and squints.

“Feel that?” I take her hand and rub it over the newly treated leather. “That'll protect it from the rain and keep it stronger.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, her face still puzzled. She brings the jacket to her face, looks at it closely, sniffs it.

“Never needed it before,” she says.

I nod, “I know, but this is better.”

Annie takes the skirt and jacket and the three special blouses from the box. She gingerly places them out flat on the table and looks them over again. “Hmmm-mm,” she mutters.

The ladies at the dry-cleaner had been impressed. They'd ooh-ed and aah-ed at the leather and fine handwork. I'd told them they'd been in the family for many years and asked them to be extra careful. I'd hoped Annie would be pleased they looked like new. I was.

This night when I wake up it's not a nightmare; it's a storm. When my eyes spring open I see Annie sitting by the bed, polishing her boots in the dim light of the oil lamp. When I sit up, she looks at me and I ask, “What are you doing? Why are you awake?” The canvas cover of the wagon heaves with blowing air. Lightning cracks and thunder interrupts her voice.

“I thought y' might wake up and git afeared, so I thought I'd be here in case y' did.”

I look at her and I don't know what to say.

She looks away from me then tries to sound buoyant and matter-of-fact, “Besides, I hadda polish these dang thangs.”

I pretend that I accept all this for what it is and think nothing more. I close rny eyes as if I were asleep and listen to her breathe, and the swish and buff of her hands at work beneath the sound of rain.

We're out in the open and it's almost fall. I try to read in the changing light of the open fire. The only sounds are the crack of flame and the soft wet sound of Kid and Cowgirl chewing, then the sound of Annie's boots walking back from checking on the horses. Her boots scrape across the rough dry ground.

“Nice night,” I say as she returns to the fire and stretches her hands to the warmth.

She nods and looks into the flame, but I don't think she's looking at anything.

“How's Kid and Cowgirl?”

“Oh, fine . . .” She nods. Her voice is tired. I watch her as she sits down by the light. She stoops, puts her hands on her thighs, then on the ground beside her. She exhales as she finally sits then breathes in loud. She brushes back the hair that's fallen in her face then rubs her eyes. She pulls her hand down over her whole face, stretching her cheeks, then she rubs the back of her neck and twists her head. Her eyes are closed and I can't tell if it's the shadow of flame or if it really is bags under her eyes, and wrinkles at the outer edges. And I tell myself that now I will tell her. I say very softly, “Annie?” But Annie doesn't hear me.

There's a feeling you get when you're away and you think, “If only I was there . . . if only I was with . . .” and you look forward to it and you save up things for when you are. You think, “If I was there, if I was with . . . then I'd say this and this . . .” But then you are there, truly and at last, and you think, “This is what I wanted. This is when I can say those things . . .” but something happens and you can't or don't say them. Then you tell yourself that things aren't what you hoped they would be. You still can't speak and now you wonder if you'd have been better off never to have learned this other meaning of “alone.” If it would have been better always to have been able to look forward, or back, and think, “If only . . . when . . .”

But I don't not miss her when I go: I do.

The next time I come back I tell her, “Annie, I want you to come with me. This time. When I go away.”

Annie looks straight at me, smiles, tells me, “OK, pardner.”

My favorite show was “Have Gun Will Travel.” The second was “Gunsmoke,” then “Bonanza,” and “Batt Masterson.” Next, “The Rifleman.” You knew what day of the week it was by who you'd get to watch. And the next day the playground buzzed with recaps. We talked about everything, debated points of character, how things could have turned out, “if only . . .” We tried to top each other by saying how early on we knew just who'd done it and how it was going to end. We guessed about the fate of future episodes. We screened our own scenarios and we fantasized a meeting of all the greats together — all of them — Batt Masterson, Matt Dillon, Palladin, the entire Cartwright family. I wanted to be there. I started all these talks.

“Tarnation, honey, I never saw a damn thang like it.” Annie's standing on the balcony of my thirty-second floor apartment suite in Manhattan. She's looking out at the city. I push aside clothes in my closet to make room for her things.

Annie and I walk the city for weeks. Some parts of it she'll recognize, or tell me what used to be at this address. She reminisces about performing in the Wild West Show with Buffalo Bill at Madison Square Garden. She can't believe how the city's grown, how many cars and lights, the height of buildings, noise and speed of everything. She loves the accents that she hears in delis, clothes stores, on street corners. But her favorite things are movies.

The first Western I take her to see is
High Noon
. We have a great time and start haunting old movie houses and taking in all the Westerns. Pretty soon, that's all we do. We see
Shane, The Great Train Robbery, The Gunfighter, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Covered Wagon, Man With a Gun
. At first she laughs at them, she can't believe we take them seriously. But after a while she's fascinated. We have to see one every night. Every night when we hit a theater, Annie dresses in her cowgirl best and I in something chic and new. And though sometimes we get glances, this is the city and people don't look twice.

After a while she gets restless during the day. The city is too crowded and fast and loud for her. We buy a video cassette machine so she can always have a Western on hand.

I start to get concerned. Is she unhappy? I throw a huge party and invite all the most interesting people I know. This is the first night we don't go see a Western. I hope that she'll be happy. The night goes beautifully. My friends all think she's great and we have fun. Annie tells stories of her growing up, her early career, the nation's adolescence. Everyone's entertained. “Oh, Annie,” they say, “you should write a book.” Everyone thinks her clothes are just right and ask her where she found them.

Late that night we start a hand of cards. I urge Annie to challenge everyone to poker and she does. While I refill my guests' daiquiris, Bloody Marys and Perrier-and-limes, Annie measures out her own shots of whiskey. They all lose to her and love it. At the end of the night they owe her millions, but Annie says, “Y'all have already paid me more 'n enuf in kindness.”

Early that morning when the last guest is gone, and Annie and I are emptying ashtrays and wiping up spilled booze and dip, I thank her and tell her that this is the best party I've ever given. I say, “I haven't had this much fun since I was a kid.” I tell her and she smiles. “They loved you, Annie,” I nearly shout.

“Well, yer friends are most obligin'.”

“Come on, Annie,” I insist, “it's
you
. You're the greatest. There's something about you. It's . . . everybody loves it . . .”

“Yer very, very kind.”

Annie kneels over a spot in the carpet trying to pick out bits of crushed-up macadamia nut. I look at the bottoms of her boots then up at her cowgirl hat. I step over to her, take the hat off her head and put it on mine as I flop down on the couch beside her.

“Hey, Annie, do you like it here?”

She continues what she's doing. “Yup. Enuf — ”

“Come on, Annie, what do you really think of this — well, all of this — ?” I sweep my arms out wide though she's not watching me.

When she answers me she's still looking at the floor. “Well, I think . . .” she hesitates, “yer here . . .” she hesitates even longer, “so I like it.”

I'm so busy with my train of thought I almost miss her meaning. In fact, part of me tries to miss her meaning, but the part that doesn't imagines itself kneeling down with her and touching her, holding her in its arms. But the other part hastens away from that, pretends that things never mean anything more than they seem to. And this part stays frozen, seated, nervously pats Annie's hat down tighter on my head and tells her:

“Annie, ol' girl, I think you're gonna be a hit.”

When Annie looks up at me from her chore, I put my index finger to my lips, look out the window at the city getting pink with light, and say, before the one part of me tells the other part to change its mind, “Yeah, I think you could be
very, very
big.”

I try to explain the finer points to her. But she's never even heard of most of these things. “A self-fulfilling prophecy is when you say something and just the act of saying it is magic; it makes it happen. Foreshadowing and symbols are names you give to things in art, but they happen in life as well. Are you listening, Annie? Sometimes I look at you when we're happiest and that's when they come on me and I wish we weren't happy. Because once you have something, you want it. And you still keep wanting it when you can't have it.” Her face is curious and calm and puzzled. She genuinely doesn't hear me.

I tell her, “Dear Annie, one day we'll wish none of this had happened. There's a price you pay for having what you want. You pay with the wanting that stays on after you stop having. You can want everything, but you can't
have
everything.”

I explain these things to her when she's asleep. I tell myself I'm practicing and when I finally get it right, I'll tell her straight, out loud.

Your first lessons you have to ride around a ring. They teach you how to walk and trot and canter. You have to do everything with everyone and that is no adventure. I always wanted to be let out on my own and ride free through the woods that started just fifty yards or so from the lesson corral. I'd never been in there but I saw where the trail went in and you couldn't see any more. I saw people ride in there sometimes. Older people, people that worked there who always wore boots and hats. I wanted to go into those woods by myself and ride and ride and ride. One lesson I brought a canteen and a sandwich in my brother's Boy Scout bag and wore them on my belt because that day, I swore to myself, when the teacher wasn't looking, I would go. I'd gallop to the woods and follow that path as far as it went and then go farther. I'd ride and ride and ride. I'd spend the night in the woods and live off nuts and berries. I'd drink water from streams and tie my horse to a tree and sleep by a dying fire. I'd meet up with some cowboys and they'd show me how to get to the open plains and I'd go and find a cowtown and I would visit there, and go from cowtown to cowtown, meeting people and living like a cowgirl.

Annie's signing autographs at Saks. We've timed it so the release of her authorized biography coincides with the arrival of the special line of new fall fashions — Annie Oakley Western Wear. Annie sits on the ladies' sidesaddle which they've rigged up on a chair and chats with customers and buyers. Saks fashion models dressed in cowgirl Western wear scurry in the crowd around her. They smile a lot and offer free champagne and hors d'oeuvres, and turn to show the catchy lines their outfits cut. They all wear hats and underneath their hats their hair is permed or streaked or blow-dried. They make sure each buyer gets the right amount of time to say hello to Annie, joke with her, buy her book. Then they subtly, persuasively, draw people away to buy some Western clothes. Annie laughs and sometimes she does a quick-draw show or spins a tight, fast lasso. The whole crowd loves her, listens rapt to her stories about the range, six-shooters, the setting sun. Clearly she is a hit. They laugh at every joke she tells and sigh at every story. When they say things to her they sound sincere and grateful and loving. She is their heroine. They're all in love with her.

I stand apart, sipping my champagne by the escalator. I keep one eye on everything around her while I pretend to enjoy the chit-chat with the customers. When it gets near time to close the crowd thins out, the “cowgirls” begin to go back to their rooms and change. Annie's pretty much left alone. I duck into the ladies' room and when I return I see her talking to one of the workers undoing the display. They're laughing with each other and Annie's face is live with animation. I watch her tell her story for some minutes, then when the story gets too long I walk over and tell her briskly, “You don't have to do this anymore. You've put in your time.”

Annie's face falls. The worker snaps back to the job.

That evening in our hotel suite after our bags are packed for our night flight to L.A. we start to dress for dinner.
High Noon
plays on the VCR. We aren't watching it but we don't dare turn it off and listen to the silence. Annie's pulling on her boot and I'm holding her pair of spurs when I say, “All right, Oakley, spill it.”

She stops, her leg outstretched, the boot poised at an angle in the air. She looks at me and doesn't say anything. I step over to the tube and turn the volume all the way down.

“Go on,” I start into her, “tell me how much you love having all those good clean folks ooh-ing and aah-ing over you. Tell me about that precious little janitor sighing up at you. Christ.”