by Tim Champlin
"We need to meet with Cody again," Frank said.
"I'm not up to it right now," Annie replied, sliding gently out of his arms.
"On the ship going home, then, after the tour is over in a week or two. We need to find out if he's going to keep Lillian Smith."
Frank could have said anything without bringing up that chubby teenager's name, Annie thought. Aloud, she said, "Okay. Then we'll ask about our contract and decide about next year."
"See you at supper, then." He smiled and ducked out of the tent.
Annie dug out her needlework and sat down in her favorite rocking chair. Winter was coming on and she couldn't sit outside in the sunshine as she'd grown accustomed to doing all summer. Their Franklin stove was warming the tent and she let down the flaps to retain some of the heat.
"Matt, when you finish cleaning those guns, you're free for the rest of the day."
"Yes, ma'am."
While her hands were busy, the routine stitches left her mind free to wander. The source of her distraction was Inspector Abberline's visit yesterday. She couldn't get his strange request out of her mind. She'd turned him down. Scotland Yard must be desperate to make such a preposterous offer. She should have forgotten the whole thing ten minutes after Abberline left. But here she was, twenty-four hours later, still turning it over in her mind, to the point where she'd misfired on one easy shot and one fairly difficult shot, but one she'd made hundreds of times. That must not continue.
What if…just supposing…she agreed to try to lure this Jack the Ripper character into a trap? The very idea gave her a chill and she shrugged her shoulders and settled more comfortably into the rocker. This man who'd been slashing women—he had to be stopped. So what if he selected only prostitutes for his attacks? They were helpless women who took money for a pleasurable act that was normally related to love. She wasn't shocked by prostitution, as many self-righteous women proclaimed to be. It was simply something that existed and she ignored it. When she thought of it at all, she felt pity for these vulnerable women. If she knew any of their backgrounds, she'd lay odds the majority of them had not set out to make it their chosen profession. From what she'd read, many of them had been forced into it by circumstances. In any case, she was in no position to judge.
There was a time when she'd beenvulnerable as well—when she was not the world famous sharpshooter, Annie Oakley. It was a time when she was just dirt poor Phoebe Ann Moses, living in the backwoods of Ohio. She didn't willingly resurrect those memories. Maybe the pain of her childhood would soften with time, but now the scenes flashed, unbidden, into her mind's eye again.
In 1855, her father, Jacob Moses, had pioneered a homestead in Darke County, Ohio, eighteen miles north of the county seat of Greenville. With the timber he cleared from the plot of land, he built a log house. It was there she was born in August, 1860, and christened Phoebe Ann, but her older siblings dropped the Phoebe and called her 'Ann'. It was subsistence living, but the family did reasonably well for the first few years of Annie's childhood. They butchered a cow and tanned the hide to make shoes. They smoked hams, pickled beans and stored apples for the winter. Annie remembered her fascination with nature and the surrounding woods where she loved to walk, pick flowers, wild cherries and blackberries.
That early, hard-working but idyllic life ended abruptly when her father set out on a blustery day in early l866 to drive a buckboard full of wheat and corn to a mill, fourteen miles away. A blizzard roared in and he finally arrived home after midnight, nearly frozen. Even though a doctor was called, he sickened and died.
Not long after that, Annie's oldest sister, Mary Jane, died of consumption, and mother, Susan, had to sell the milk cow to pay for the funeral. Susan attempted to support her family as a midwife, but could not. She sold the hardscrabble farm and rented a small wooden house. But Susan finally had to let her youngest, Hulda, four years Annie's junior, go live with another family named Bartholomew. When Annie was ten, Susan sent her to live at the county poor farm, a place known as the Infirmary, near Greenville. Before she could really get settled into her new environment, a man came to the Infirmary looking for a girl to serve as a companion for his wife and new baby.
It was this period of her life that still haunted her. The farmer and his wife used Annie as a slave. She got up at four in the morning, fixed breakfast, milked the cows, washed dishes, skimmed milk, fed the calves and pigs, pumped water for the cattle, fed the chickens, rocked the baby to sleep, weeded the garden, picked wild blackberries and got dinner. Even though she received a letter from her mother to come home, the family wouldn't let her go. She was held a virtual prisoner. They beat her for the slightest thing, raising welts on her back. One night the farmer's wife threw her outside into the snow and barred the door because Annie fell asleep over some darning.
Even now, Annie shivered at the terrible memory. The farmer finally came home from town and let her back in, or she would've frozen to death. And things got worse from there. Some abuse her mind had completely blocked out and only hazy impressions remained. From that time to this, she'd never uttered their name in public. They were fixed in her memory as "The Wolves".
Shortly before her twelfth birthday, she finally escaped by running away and returning to the poor farm. There she lived with the new superintendent, Samuel Edington, and his wife, Nancy, who was a friend of her mother's. They treated her as a daughter and she began attending school with the Edington children. After a time, the Edingtons paid Annie to work as a seamstress and she sewed dresses and quilts for the Infirmary inmates. She learned to embroider and stitched fancy cuffs and collars to brighten up the orphans' dark dresses. Seeing that she was very responsible, the family put her in charge of the Infirmary dairy. She milked the cows and made butter of the cream, all the while saving what money she could.
She finally returned home when she was fifteen. All the time she'd been away, she hadn't touched a gun. But she recalled being a natural marksman after she'd first shot her late father's old muzzle-loader when she was eight.
At the Katzenberger brothers' grocery store in Greenville, she saw hunters and trappers selling their wild game and made a deal with the owners to provide them quail, pheasant, rabbits and other small game which the store would then sell to restaurants in Cincinnati.
Taking up the old long rifle again, she discovered her natural skill came back to her. She made it a practice never to shoot an animal that was standing still. "They have to be running or flying to have a fair chance," she explained to her mother when describing her hunting technique. "And it makes me quick of eye and hand."
The grocery store owners later told her they preferred her game because they were head kills and the meat wasn't riddled with buckshot for a diner to break his teeth on. She remembered with fondness the Katzenberger brothers who, as a Christmas gift, gave her a can of the best gunpowder made--DuPont Eagle Ducking Black Powder, along with five pounds of shot and two boxes of percussion caps. It was like having a cake, but not wanting to eat it. More than a week passed before she could bring herself to open the tin of powder and begin using it.
At about the same time, the brothers presented her with her first, real modern gun--a Parker Brothers 16-gauge breechloader, complete with one hundred brass shells. As she thought back on it, the Katzenbergers probably had an ulterior motive for their gifts—with a good shotgun, she could bag more game for them. Game was plentiful in the Ohio woods then, and there were no limits or seasons. She studied the habits of the small animals, and recalled her father teaching her how to set traps for them. Surrounded by nature, she felt at home, and learned the identity of most of the native plants. Tramping the woods in homemade woolen skirts and leggings, she used her new gun to kill more game than ever. She cleaned and wrapped them in bunches of six or twelve and sent them by mail coach to the Katzenbergers who shipped them to hotels in Cincinnati, eighty miles away. Her ability to help support the family gave her a sense of pride. She became such a good wing shot that she began enteri
ng local shooting contests. But her skill was eventually her downfall; she won so many of the matches, the organizers finally banned her from entering. She couldn't understand why everyone considered marksmanship so difficult. "It's just like pointing your finger," she used to say.
Not long after that, friends had encouraged her to take on the touring marksman, Frank Butler. Now, here she was, twelve years later, in old England, using an assumed stage name of Oakley--a name that had a better ring through a megaphone than "Phoebe Ann Moses".
"Ma'am, I'm all done, and the guns are put away."
Annie blinked and realized she was staring at the tent wall, the embroidery hoop lying in her lap. Her former life disappeared like a dream that fades upon waking. She turned. "Oh, Matt… Yes, thanks." She smiled. You're a great help to me and Frank. But I have one further request that I know you'll pay no attention to: Please don't call me 'ma'am'. It makes me feel like an old lady."
"But I can't call you 'Annie'."
"Why not? Everyone else does, except Colonel Cody when he refers to me as 'Little Missie'."
"Sitting Bull used to call you 'Little Miss Sureshot'."
"I know. He was a great friend."
"Why don't I call you 'Miss Oakley'?"
"Too formal. Besides, I'm not 'Miss' anybody. I'm Missus Frank Butler. Please, just call me Annie, and I'll call you Matt. I'm not even ten years older than you are. You could be my younger brother."
"Okay, Annie, but I'll have to get used to it," he said, flushing slightly. "It doesn't sound right on my tongue."
"Here, maybe this will help." She reached into a nearby jar and tossed him a stick of peppermint candy. She knew it was one of his favorites.
"Thanks." He thrust the end of the stick into his mouth and left the tent.
Annie savored the silence and solitude for several minutes. The wood shifted in the Franklin stove as the fire burned down. Since being constantly surrounded by people, she found it very relaxing and peaceful to have some time to herself. She occasionally wondered how different her life would be if she had children to care for. Or would she choose her career over domesticity and hire a nanny to care for the little ones while she toured the world? Frank had two children by a prior marriage, but it didn't appear she'd ever have any. Maybe it was for the best. She played the role of beloved "aunt" to many children she invited to her tent each week to be entertained, to socialize and be fed cookies and lemonade. Yet, she realized she could never stand being tied down by the responsibility of having her own children. Domestic chores bored her and she tended to avoid them. She and Frank had been on the road their entire marriage. She'd done just enough cooking over a gas ring in a hotel room or ironing on the flat lid of a steamer trunk to know she didn't want to make a full time job of it. She admired women who were good mothers and took satisfaction in their calling. But it wasn't for her.
She got up, opened the stove and added two more small sticks of wood from the stack beside it. Then she set a teakettle on top to boil. It was nearing four o'clock and she'd adopted the British habit of having afternoon tea. She found it helped offset a bit of a sinking spell she had in late afternoon. She pulled a shawl about her shoulders and stood close to the warmth, reflecting on why her mind was troubled. She should have been happy, carefree. And generally, she was. She had a good husband and a career doing what she loved and excelled at. She was admired by literally millions of people, and enjoyed many friends and acquaintances.
But something still nagged at her. She knew the source of her discontent, but avoided looking it in the face. It was Inspector Abberline and his damned offer. Why had that man barged into her ordered world and planted his irritating proposal? Now he stood in the wings of her mind, silently crooking a finger at her, beckoning her to come and help lend her courage and skill in stopping this phantom the police couldn't catch—this man who'd dubbed himself, Jack the Ripper, and continued to strike down women in the East End. What did he have to do with her? He was just another crazed killer. It was none of her business. But she connected his type to "The Wolves" who'd enslaved her as a child. The abuse she'd suffered was more prolonged and less deadly, but it was still abuse—the worst details of which she'd managed to blot from constant memory. How many more "Wolves" were out there, doing the same thing? This Ripper fellow was probably only the most notorious. And she'd been offered a chance to stop him. How ironic that Abberline knew nothing of her past. He'd come to her because of her fame and skill with weapons.
She didn't necessarily believe in Divine Providence or in the inevitability of events. Individuals were free to pick and choose and make decisions that affected their own and others' lives. Nothing, in her view, was predetermined.
The kettle whistled its high pitched signal and she set a mesh strainer full of loose tea overtop her porcelain mug and poured the boiling water over it. Just breathing the steamy aroma of the spiced tea made her feel better. She desperately wanted to make herself believe everything was going to be all right—without her intervention or discomfort. Yet, deep down, she knew everything would not be all right. She sipped the tea, then took a deep breath, warming her hands on the thick cup. Could she stand by while this man continued to kill these helpless women? She had some skills that might end it. She had to make a decision once and for all.
So she did.
Before she put on another show, she would go see Abberline and offer her help. Succeed or fail, she would try, or she'd never know another day of peace.
CHAPTER 15
After supper she told Frank in an off-hand way she had an errand to run the next morning in the city, but would return in plenty of time for the afternoon performance. This was something she often did. She usually mentioned where she was going; if she didn't, he never questioned her about it. Her comings and goings were almost always such innocent things as shopping for yard goods for a new costume, visiting Lancaster's custom gun works to examine a particular fowling piece, or occasionally even buying him a present in one of the London shops, or purchasing tickets for a play.
"Shall I have one of the boys drive you?" was all her husband asked.
"No. I'm not exactly sure where I'm going, so I'll take a cab." She knew where she was going, she just didn't know how to get there.
He nodded, shaking out a copy of a newspaper and leaning toward the lantern for a better view.
They'd traveled all over the United States and much of Europe already, so she knew he had no fear of her traveling alone in a large city. Some men were overprotective of their wives; he wasn't one of them. Early on in their marriage, she'd established the fact that she could take care of herself, and the ground rules were set. If she needed help, she'd ask for it.
Next morning as dawn was graying the fog, Annie hailed a Hansom cab passing along the street outside the arena. To avoid being recognized or hailed by any early risers connected with the show, and as protection from the dampness, she wore a hooded traveling cape. The driver, muffled against the breeze, reached down and swung open one of the lap doors. "Where to?"
"Scotland Yard." She stepped in and sat down snapping the door shut behind her. The driver's whip popped overhead and the two-wheeled cabriolet swung away down the street, the mist swirling around them. Annie shivered inside her cape. She'd be glad to get back home and see more of the sunshine. Winter was fast approaching here, and it promised to be wet, cold and dreary. The miasma that enveloped them was unfit to be drawn into the lungs as air, and Annie covered her face with the deep hood and breathed inside her cloak.
The iron-shod hooves rang a rhythmic clatter on the cobblestones as the horse pulled them down one street and then another, twisting and turning until Annie lost all sense of direction.
The early sun struggled, but failed, to penetrate the dense atmosphere.
The Hansom finally drew up at a nondescript red brick building, and Annie climbed out, absently handing the driver a coin.
"Mum," the driver acknowledged, touching his plug hat.
She toy
ed with the idea of asking him to wait, but then decided not to, as she had no idea how long she'd be. A clerk inside the main entrance directed her to the office of Inspector Abberline. As long as she kept her hood up, no one recognized her as the person whose face graced thousands of posters and handbills throughout the city.
She passed a young man who was working at a desk in an open area near several offices—evidently a shared clerk.
Hesitating at the door labeled, Chief Inspector Abberline, she took a deep breath and knocked softly. The door was ajar and swung inward.
"Enter."
She pushed inside, shoving back her hood as she did so.
Abberline looked up and thrust a desk pen into its holder.
"Miss Oakley," he said, heartily, a wide smile stretching his mustache. "Please, do come in. Close the door."
He came out from behind the desk and pulled up an armchair for her. "Let me have your wrap." He hung the cape on the coat rack and then returned to seat himself near her.
She noted he could hardly contain his enthusiasm.
"I must say, regardless of the purpose of your visit, this is the brightest thing that's happened to me this week."
"Thanks, inspector. I hope you don't live to regret that statement." Then she paused, unsure of how to proceed. Americans had a reputation for being straightforward. So that's what she'd be. "I want to volunteer to help catch this Jack the Ripper."
"Excellent!" Color came into his face and he beamed at her. As if unable to sit still, he got up and began to pace. "Have you shared this decision with your husband and with Colonel Cody?"
"They'll know about it in due time."
He turned toward her. "Then they would not agree."
"I make my own decisions. This Ripper murders helpless women. I know what it's like to be abused. I was in slavery as a child, and I feel I should do all I can to assist in this man's capture."