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 counter, 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.