Danforth glanced down at the gun as LaRoche continued his description of its technical superiority, a recitation that seemed designed to convince Anna that it was the finest pistol ever produced, one in whose performance she could feel the greatest possible confidence. It was small and black with an elliptical design on the side and a three-inch barrel that Danforth assumed would be called snub-nosed, and which he guessed would make the gun easy to conceal.
LaRoche drew a box of cartridges from the pocket of his overcoat, and in three simple steps taught Anna to load, unload, and reload it, timing her efforts with an old pocket watch until her juggling of cartridges and pistol became sufficiently smooth. He closed the lid of the watch and peered out into the woods behind the house.
“You try it now,” he said.
With that lackadaisical instruction, he led Anna out the back door, Danforth following behind, feeling very much a fifth wheel and yet undeniably curious as to how this diminutive young woman would handle the weapon.
LaRoche stopped a few yards out into the grounds, then pointed to a small tree in the distance. “Walk there.”
Anna did as she was told, her feet leaving gray tracks through the snow.
“Stop,” LaRoche called.
Anna halted.
LaRoche looked at Danforth. “No need for you to stay,” he said in a voice that made it clear that Danforth’s continued presence was both unnecessary and unwanted.
Danforth nodded and headed back to the house. He’d reached its back porch when he heard LaRoche call, “Aim.”
He turned and saw Anna, small and still, standing before a slender maple. From where he watched, she appeared to be very close to the tree, so close that when she lifted the pistol, its barrel seemed only a few feet from the trunk.
Would she be that close to peril? Danforth wondered. Would danger come so near? He imagined her trapped in a garret in some foreign town or village, men coming up the stairs, pounding on her door, then bursting through it; Anna reaching for the pistol at her bedside, aiming, firing again and again, though knowing that the men would keep coming, whole armies of them streaming through the door.
“Fire,” LaRoche said quite casually, the way he might have asked her to pass the salt.
Anna fired; her shoulder jerked backward slightly, and she gave what seemed to be, at least from a distance, a quickly contained shudder.
“Anna?” Danforth whispered before he could stop himself.
She didn’t turn but stood facing the tree, her arm stretched out, the report of the pistol still reverberating through the surrounding woods.
“One step back,” LaRoche called. “Fire.”
She stepped back and fired a second time.
“Step back,” LaRoche said. “Fire.”
Again, Danforth envisioned a dreadful scene: Anna rushing about some foreign room, reaching for the pistol as the door bursts open to reveal a troop of German soldiers or policemen or some other gang of men who’d come for her. But this time he imagined the scene with no hint of his earlier inner quaking and so he felt himself, even if just in his imagination, in training alongside Anna, both of them growing more able and more ready to face her peril.
Danforth went inside. The shooting went on for several minutes, Anna emptying and reloading the gun again and again, though Danforth knew that no matter what the scenario of her discovery and capture, she would likely never get off more than a few shots. LaRoche had clearly not been apprised of this, however, so his training was all about firing and reloading and firing again, as if he expected Anna to be holed up and fending off a sustained attack. Perhaps Clayton had told him just that, Danforth thought, given LaRoche the idea that Anna was part of some larger contingent, a ruse designed to lead LaRoche’s mind in the wrong direction.
After a time, the shooting stopped. Danforth glanced through the cold-misted window. In the distance, LaRoche and Anna stood shoulder to shoulder, her small hand cupped in LaRoche’s disproportionately large one so that it was impossible to determine which of them actually held the revolver.
For a moment they talked, LaRoche clearly giving more instructions. Then they turned and came back into the house. By then LaRoche had tucked the pistol into his belt, as if he thought Danforth’s seeing it might disturb his tender sensibilities.
“She’s good,” he said quietly. He looked at Anna. “To fire is easy. The will to fire is hard.”
Anna sat down on the sofa, a large window behind her, and through it came brilliant morning light.
“We go back tomorrow morning,” LaRoche said to her.
She nodded, then looked toward the window just as a deer emerged from the edge of the woods, rather scrawny and with a patch of hairless skin at the side of its neck.
“Beautiful,” she said, her eyes trained on the deer, her gaze ever more intense, a slight smile on her lips.
LaRoche laughed. “With what you’ve learned today, you could kill it with one shot.”
Anna continued to stare at the deer, but her expression had taken on something distantly sad and tragic. Quite inexplicably, Danforth suddenly thought of the Triangle Factory fire, the many young women who’d leaped from the sweatshop’s flaming windows. She didn’t speak, but as he would later recall, many times, it seemed to him that all those falling girls were in her eyes.
~ * ~
Century Club, New York City, 2001
