Page 58 of Deathmarch
Mike shrugged. He hesitated, but then he said, “When my grandfather was dying from cancer, my grandmother and I used to go into the hospital every day. We’d tell him jokes until he laughed. My grandmother told me, when she was a little girl in her village in Ireland, there was a wisewoman who used to say laughter was medicine. Even if you were really sick, you wouldn’t die on a day you laughed. So we told stupid jokes.” He looked away. Rolled a shoulder. “Gramps lived for another year.”
Harper swallowed, feeling like an idiot. “I’m sorry, man.”
“It’s all right.” Mike shrugged. “My grandmother is gone now too. I don’t know why I keep…”
Billy Picket patted him on the shoulder, then turned to the cab of his tow truck.
“Hold on,” Harper told Billy before the guy could turn on the winch to lift the front of the car. Then he nodded to Mike, “Go ahead.”
Mike shot a few dozen more pictures, outside first, then inside, front seat and back. When he was finished with that, Harper popped the trunk.
Mike snapped pictures of the black gym bag in there before they switched places again.
“Let’s see what we have here.” Harper didn’t touch the tab on the zipper. Instead, he pushed his index finger in the miniscule gap in front of the zipper, and pushed the metal teeth open.
One inch, two, three, four. A little more, and then they could see inside.
Billy, who peeked from behind when he shouldn’t have, whistled. “Damn!”
Chapter Fifteen
“It’s our largest crowd ever,” Ginny Knapp whispered to Allie. The sprightly seventy-year-old, on her sixth husband—and she’d told Allie about all of them within a minute and a half of meeting her—peeked at the audience through the curtain she kept open a crack. “Full house. Sold out.”
Allie resisted asking whether Harper was there, but then a text from him popped onto her phone, and her question was answered.
Good luck tonight. Looking forward to the show. I’ll walk you back to the B and B when it’s over.
Her stomach fluttered. How weird was that? She wasn’t used to having emotional support, having someone in her corner. She was used to the aloneness, her way of life, although, she preferred to call it self-sufficiency. She hadn’t contemplated before how a friendly face might make a difference, that it would feel this…nice.
Well, don’t get used to it.She slipped the phone into her bag that sat on the corner of the voice equipment table next to her.
“Ready?” Ginny asked.
“I was born ready, ma’am,” Allie responded in an Old West cadence, slipping into character.
Ginny pushed through the curtain, then walked to the middle of the stage. She smiled as she drew a deep breath. “Welcome, all, to this highly anticipated event. On behalf of the Broslin Historical Society, it is my great pleasure to welcome Annie Oakley.”
She clapped, and so did the rest of the audience, although their enthusiasm was decidedly lackluster. Allie was Tony Bianchi’s daughter, after all. She had a feeling they weren’t entirely buying her try at an honest occupation. Especially since just days ago, she’d been arrested for murder. They were there to judge her for themselves.
Let them.
Allie took in the stage where she’d spent some of the best hours of her high school years. Same scuffed floor, same blue curtains, same brass lights—as close to feeling that she’d come home as she was going to get.
She allowed herself a second to feel, then she put the past away, shut all noise out of her mind, and strode forward with her saddle bags, her all-purpose antique rifle slung over her shoulder. Not the Parker Brothers 12-gauge shotgun Annie used inBuffalo Bill’s Wild Westshow to impress Queen Victoria and others, but close enough as far as the audience would be able to tell from the distance.
A stack of wood occupied the middle of the stage, lit with a red light from below to look as if a fire burned. In the “fire,” on a fat stone, a tin coffeepot waited for her.
“Howdy, folks.” She looked at the audience, touching two fingers to her hat. “Mind if I share your fire? Night’s mighty cold.”
When a few brave voices invited her to join them, she dropped her saddlebags at her feet, shook out her bedroll, and sat.
“Coffee would be appreciated. I thank you for your kindness.” She pulled her tin cup from a saddlebag and poured. Sipped. “Can’t repay you with much beyond a tale or two. But I’d be glad to tell those, if you’d like to hear them.”
The audience responded. If Harper was among them, Allie didn’t see him. She couldn’t see past the spotlight pointed at the stage.
“Best start with who I am.” Annie settled in. “I was born Phoebe Ann Mosey, in a year so dry, the bushes followed the dogs around.” She paused while the audience laughed. “These days, most folks know me as Annie Oakley. You might have seen me in the papers wearing a fancy dress, but I wasn’t born no lady. I was born in a log cabin in Ohio, to Quakers, poor as dirt. Sixth of nine children. Well, fifth of seven that survived,” she amended.
“I didn’t go to school much, ’specially not after my father died.” She sipped some coffee and looked off into the distance. “I started trapping for the family at seven, hunting at eight. Them were hard times. And then they got harder. You know how it goes.”
