by Mike Nappa
Annabel looked from the dog to Trudi and back again. “I’ll make sure he behaves,” she said. The girl said it with conviction, but for some reason Trudi felt like she was trying to convince herself as much as she was Samuel.
Trudi’s ex-husband checked his watch.
“Go,” Trudi said. “If you leave now, you’ll get there just in time to meet him. Bring him back here and we can all be on our way.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he said.
“Sure it is,” Trudi said. She walked over to Annabel and took her hand. “We’ll have fun. It’ll be like girls’ night out.”
“I’ll protect her,” Annabel told Samuel, and she said it with such seriousness that even he stifled a chuckle.
“Yes, I think you will,” he said at last. “Okay, I’ll go. I’ll get The Mute and bring him back here, and then we can all go someplace safe to talk about what happens next.”
Samuel reached into his pocket and produced his key to the bunker. He handed it to Trudi. “You lock that door as soon as I close it, and you keep it shut and locked until I get back. Promise?”
“Of course,” Trudi said. “But you’d better get going or you’ll be late. We’ll be fine. Just go.”
Samuel nodded toward his ex-wife. Then he knelt down in front of the girl. “I’m glad we met, Annabel. I’ll be back soon. And someday you’ve got to remind me to tell you some great stories about your crazy uncle.”
The girl at last let her face relax into a real smile.
“I look forward to hearing you tell them stories, sir,” she said. He patted her quickly on the shoulder.
“You can call me Samuel.”
“Okay.”
He stood and pointed at the steel door. “Don’t open this door again until I get back. Until you hear me say Annabel’s safe code from the other side. Got it?”
Trudi and Annabel both nodded. Satisfied, he turned and walked into the tunnel, pulling the heavy door closed behind him.
“Trudi?” he called through the steel.
“I’m doing it, I’m doing it,” she said, jumping toward the door. Only after Samuel was convinced all three dead bolts were locked in place did they hear him jog away from the door and down the tunnel.
Trudi turned to the girl and smiled. “So, nice place you got here. What’s the neighborhood like?”
34
Annabel
It don’t take long for me to decide I like this Trudi lady.
She’s nice, for starters. And she laughs easy. But mostly I’m impressed at how comfortable this woman is in front of that dog. She shows absolutely no fear, barely even looks in the animal’s direction. The dog seems to have figured that out too, because after a time he quits watching her and just lays his head down on the floor, over by the outhouse where I’m making him stay.
After Samuel Hill leaves, Trudi glances around and then sits comfortably on the bottom mattress of one of the bunk beds.
“Want to tell me a story?” She smiles.
I shrug. I can’t think of any good stories at this particular juncture.
“All right,” she says. “How about a game? You ever play the Question Game?”
I shake my head.
“It goes like this. We take turns asking each other questions until we get to know each other enough to become friends. Do you want to go first?”
I shake my head, but I also walk over and sit on the bed with her. Out of habit, I pull a sleeping bag over my legs to keep warm.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” she says. “What’s something everybody should know about Annabel Lee Truckson?”
“I am an educated girl,” I say without thinking. I’m surprised at first by my response, then I realize that fact is important to me, that I want this lady to know that about me.
“Really?” She says it with genuine interest. “I would have guessed. Where do you go to school?”
“No schools,” I say. “Truck says that’s a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. I learn stuff from Truck.”
“I see,” she says. “What kind of things did Truck teach you?”
“Math. Reading. Geography. Languages. That kind of stuff.”
She laughs lightly. “I’m pretty good at English, but I was never much with foreign languages. ¿Dónde está el baño? That’s about the best I ever got with Spanish.”
Where is the bathroom? My mind translates it automatically.
“I can speak some Spanish,” I say. “But I’m best at German and Creole.”
“Amazing,” she says. “Four languages, and you’re only eleven years old?”
I shrug. Truck spoke more than that, but I guess four or five languages ain’t bad neither.
“So you really are an educated girl,” she says to me, and I hear admiration in her voice. “You are something special, Annabel. That’s for sure.”
“Is it my turn to ask a question now?” I say.
“Of course. Ask away.”
“Are you an educated girl?”
She dimples. “Well, yes, but in a different way than you. I went to college at the University of Georgia. That’s where I met Samuel.”
“What you learn there?”
“I studied English literature and world mythologies.”
That sounds like a lot of gobbledygook to me, but I try to look appreciative. She laughs at my expression.
“Mostly that means I spent my time reading a lot of great old stories and poems and tried to understand them.”
I decide right then that if I ever go to college, I’m gonna study English literature and world mythologies. Spending long days and nights reading stories in old books sounds like heaven.
“Is that why you knew my poem?”
“Well, I guess so,” she says. “But, you know, I’ve always liked Edgar Allan Poe, especially his poetry. I’ve been reading his work since I was younger than you.”
“So are you a teacher now?” I ask. “Do you teach people about all those old stories?”
“No, no I don’t.” She looks rueful. “Sometimes a person’s education doesn’t translate well in the real world, and for some reason, not many people want to hire a girl who spent four years reading stories and memorizing poems by Edgar Allan Poe.”
“So what do you do?”
“Believe it or not, I’m a private investigator. I help people solve problems, kind of like a police detective, but I work on my own instead of working for the police.”
“Telling stories sounds like a better job. Maybe you should try to be a teacher.”
“Maybe I should, Annabel Lee, maybe I should.”
“And Samuel?”
“CIA.”
“Right. I forgot. He seems like the kind who should be a private investigator though.”
“Well, he has done that too.” I see her rubbing the empty ring finger on her left hand. “It’s complicated.”
That’s what grown-ups always say when they don’t want to talk about stuff, so I decide to let it drop. “What about this?” I ask, pointing to a thick, silver cross hanging on a steel chain around her neck.
“What about it?”
“Truck says that sometimes he thinks that’s all a myth too.”
“What do you think?”
“I ain’t so sure.”
“Mmm.”
“Ain’t it now when you start preaching at me?” I say. I’ve been in this kind of conversation before. She grins.
“I think,” she says, “somebody else is already talking to you about this subject.”
I nod. Maybe she’s right. Maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about that unknown God out there. Maybe he’s already talking to me, deep inside, telling me to believe. I’m gonna have to deal with that possibility someday. Someday soon, I think.
“You have questions you want to ask?” Trudi says. I shake my head. No, not yet at least.
“All right,” she says, and it seems like she’s made some kind of decision in her head. “When you have a question, you let me
know and we’ll see what we can find out. Together. Meantime”—she reaches up and removes her necklace—“you take this. It’ll remind you that God sometimes comes calling when you least expect him. And, of course, it’ll remind you of me too.” She dimples, and I can’t help but mirror her smile.
“Okay,” I say, taking the necklace and putting it in my pocket. “Your turn.”
“Do you like stories?” she says.
I can’t keep myself from grinning. “The way a possum likes june bugs for breakfast.”
Trudi laughs again, and I’m noticing that I like it when she laughs. She looks at her watch. “Well,” she says, “we’ve got probably an hour or so before Samuel gets back here with The Mute. Want me to tell you a story?”
I nod and settle back under the sleeping bag.
“Okay,” she says. I notice she’s rubbing her legs with her hands. She’s wearing a thin wool coat over jeans and some layered shirts. Probably fine for upground, but maybe she’s getting cold down here in the bunker. I lift up an edge on the sleeping bag. She looks a little surprised but then slides under it next to me.
“Thanks, honey,” she says. “It is a little chilly in here.”
I like the warmth of her next to me. It reminds me of when Truck used to sit me in his lap and read to me. It reminds me of family.
“All right,” she says. “How about Greek mythology. Do you know the story of The Iliad?”
I shake my head, and she continues.
“Well, The Iliad is the story of the Trojan War. Bunch of men fighting over a woman, as usual. But a long time ago in the ancient world, the warriors of Greece sailed a thousand ships to fight the warriors of the city of Troy. One of the princes of Troy had married a beautiful maiden named Helen. Problem was, she was already married to one of the princes in Greece. So the Greek fighters came to steal her back.
“The Iliad starts right in the middle of that war. The Greek kings had banded together and taken over most of the cities and towns surrounding Troy, and now, every day the Trojan armies and the Greek armies fought battles to see who would win possession of the city of Troy—and of the beautiful Helen. Agamemnon was leader of the Greek kings, but the best warrior among the Greeks was Achilles.”
“I’ve heard of Achilles,” I say. “Wasn’t he the guy that got stuck in the heel with an arrow?”
“Yes,” she says, “that’s him. But that comes later in the story. Right now he’s still an unstoppable warrior, cutting down anyone and anything that dares to stand in his path.”
“Okay,” I say. “Go ’head on.”
“Well, one day Agamemnon got jealous and demanded that Achilles give him a slave girl they’d taken captive in a previous battle. Achilles didn’t like that one bit. He was furious at Agamemnon about it, but what could he do? Agamemnon was the prōtos among the Greek kings, the big bad king. And so—”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “Wait. What was Agamemnon?”
“He was the main king for the Greeks, the leader in the kings’ coalition and council.”
“No, what’d you call him? Just now, what’d you call him?”
“Oh, I see. He was the prōtos.”
“What’s that mean?”
She leans back and looks at me in mock surprise. “What? Could it be?” she teases. “The remarkable Annabel, our finely educated girl, doesn’t know what prōtos means? There’s actually a language her mind has yet to unravel?”
I frown at her, but my eyes are smiling. “It’s ancient Greek, right? I know that much. I just don’t know what that particular word means.”
“Prōtos.” She says it loudly enough that my dog looks up from his spot by the outhouse. She don’t notice this, but I do. “It means ‘foremost,’ or ‘best of all.’ First over everything.”
“Like”—I think for a minute—“like chief dog in the pack?”
“Right. So when King Agamemnon gave an order, Achilles and the others had to follow that order because he was the prōtos, the ‘chief dog’ in the pack of Greek leaders. Make sense?”
I look over at my dog, and he’s got his eyes locked onto mine. It all makes sense now, Truck’s words when he put me in this place. Truck was the prōtos for that dog. The boss, the chief of him. And when Truck left me down here, he transferred that position to me. In that dog’s eyes, I became the prōtos, the one person the dog had to obey.
Truck gave me his own place in that dog’s eyes. From the moment when he forced that dog to smell my fist and take me as his prōtos, this dog became my dog.
“You okay, honey?” Trudi has stopped telling me her story. She watches me closely, also now keeping an eye on the dog across the room from us.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I just made sense of something I hadn’t figured out before.”
“Something to do with that dog?” she asks. I nod.
“Can we finish The Iliad in a minute, Trudi?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says. Then she waits.
I get up and walk over to my dog. He pushes up on his front legs and sits tall, waiting for me to give a command.
“Du bist ein guter Hund,” I say. “Ein guter Freund.”
You’re a good dog. A good friend.
The animal seems pleased. His tail swishes on the carpeted floor. I go over to the shelves and pull a strip of beef jerky out, giving it to my dog as a treat. To her credit, Trudi don’t say nothing, she just watches. When Dog finishes his treat, I say “okay” and release him from the spot by the outhouse. Trudi don’t respond, but I see in her eyes that she’s suddenly concerned about having this dog loose inside this cooped-up space. I decide to do something about that.
I walk over to sit next to Trudi on the bunk bed, and I call to the dog.
“Komm her.” The animal steps warily over to us. He seems to sense that Trudi is not a threat, but he don’t trust her neither.
I take Trudi’s hand in mine and form it into a fist. Then I push it out toward the dog. Trudi don’t resist. She trusts me, and that makes me decide to trust her as well.
The dog sniffs at her fist but don’t bare his teeth or growl.
“Schützen,” I say to him.
The dog looks at me and then at Trudi. He sniffs her hand once more and then gives a light snort.
“Schützen,” I say again.
The dog pushes his nose against her hand, then trots to the door, where he lies down across the opening.
“Annabel?” Trudi says.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “He’ll protect you now. I told him to protect you, and I am his prōtos. He has to obey.”
“I see,” she says. But she seems unconvinced.
I climb back under the sleeping bag next to her and get comfortable.
“So,” I say, “what happened next with Achilles and Agamemnon?”
Before she can answer, Dog jumps to attention. My animal stares hard at the steel door, baring his teeth. Like before, there ain’t no growling. Just full attention, fangs slightly showing, tail standing at high alert.
There’s an unexpected pounding on the door.
“Annabel,” Samuel’s voice says. “Are you in there?”
“I’m here,” I call out just before Trudi claps a hand across my mouth. “Wait,” she hisses in my ear. “It’s too soon for him to be back. Quiet.”
There’s a grunt on the other side of the door. Did Samuel bump into something?
“Ooookay,” he says slowly. He sounds disappointed. “So you’re in there after all.”
What’s he talking about? He knows I’m in here. He left me here himself.
Trudi’s whisper is so close it’s almost inside my head.
“He shouldn’t be here for at least another half hour,” she says. “Ask him for the safe code.”
“What’s the safe code?” I call out. I hear a rustling sound on the other side of the door. Then he speaks again.
“I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Wait a minute, ain’t that the Bible? What’
s that supposed to mean?
Trudi reacts almost immediately. She pulls us both out of the sleeping bag until we’re standing on the floor by the table. She kneels very close to my ear.
“He’s not alone,” she whispers. “It’s not safe.”
“Annabel?” he says. “Did you hear the code? I said, ‘I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.’”
“Tell him okay.” Her whisper is still almost inside my head. “Stall. Tell him you’re coming to open the door.”
“Okay,” I holler at the door. “Give me a second. I’ll be right there.”
“Good,” Trudi hisses.
She reaches into the back of her jeans and comes out with a small pistol. It reminds me of the Beretta guns Uncle Truck showed me in Mobile, and I wonder, briefly, if he would’ve really gotten one for me when my birthday came ’round in December. But that thought quickly shunts away as I watch Trudi. She handles her gun like she’s greeting an old friend.
“Take the dog and go hide in that room.” She points toward the outhouse. “I’m going to have to fight now, and I don’t want to have to worry about you getting caught in the mess, okay?”
Dog still isn’t growling, but he does skitter a bit, searching for just the right place for an attack. I walk over to him and put my hand on the nape of his neck. He divides his attention between me and the door, and somehow I manage to convey to him to follow me. We go into the outhouse. I put the dog inside, away from the opening, but I stand where I can see what’s going on in the main room of the bunker.
I hear Samuel grunt again. Then: “Annabel? Are you still in there?”
Trudi nods at me.
“I’m comin’,” I shout.
Trudi flattens herself just inside the doorway, against the wall. She raises the gun over her head with one hand. With the other, she takes out Samuel’s key and begins unlocking the dead bolts, going from the bottom to the top.
Click.
Click.
Trudi takes a deep breath.
Click.
A moment later, the handle turns from the outside, and the door begins to push open.
My dog growls beside me, low and even.
35