Washoe Annie

 

In spite of the gathered flies at her table “Washoe” Annie’s eyelids widened with curiousity, dragging her skeptical disposition up by it’s boot-straps when the stranger pushed his way in through the batwing doors. “Funny,” she thought to herself, “how a night’s prospects can change on a dime.” Her patrons here-about were mostly young, mostly Texan, and she was mostly bored of their ilk. But here was a different sort. In fact, if Washoe Annie were to want a man of her own she reckoned she might choose a man like this one... if she were to want one at all. 

The stranger was not a dandy. Annie abhorred a dandy. His striped trousers and broadcloth coat were not showy, as a dandy’s would be, but were still carefully brushed, and his down at heel boots shone with oil. He looked sharp, which cast him out of place here amongst these dull young cowboys fresh off the range in their grime polished homespuns, calicos, and Stetson’s. Sadly, the stranger did not strike her as the kind of man who would be seeking out her sort of woman, but then, her sort came in many flavors, didn’t it? A gaudily wrapped package needn’t always contain as tawdry a gift. If it was a lady the stranger wanted… well, she could at least give him the illusion of one. After all, Annie had not earned the sobriquet “Washoe” from lack of talent, nor the fame that came along with the name, for Annie was famous (though that fame limited her to the one, chippier side of Main Street). And Washoe Annie did indeed have talents; both the obvious ones and some hidden.

In brushing off the young Texans gathered around her table Washoe Annie cut them deep, but even still the whole courteous lot rose along with her. Excusing herself, she sliced easily through the brash talking, though exceedingly respectful youngsters who cleared her a path with their hastily swung boot-toes and elbows, pushing others in the cowboy herd aside as they sensed the urgency in her step. At the piano Annie stopped, pausing there to watch him more discreetly through the mirror behind the bar, curious to see if the stranger had noticed her, as if anyone would not notice this rose in a rock garden. Unlike the others, however, he paid her no mind, which irked her backbone just enough to grate a nerve. Bellied to the bar now, he sipped at the unwatered whisky laid before him, only now it was he who was ignored as the satin of Annie’s gown slid lightly onto the piano’s stool, where she carefully smoothed the wrinkles in those skirts before reaching for the keys.

Their lives lived among men it was a woman the cowboys came to see, any woman really. They arrived in Washoe fast and hard; their pistols barking, their horses lathered, a month’s worth of hard-earned pay weighting their pockets. She needn’t be a beautiful woman. And truth be told they would have preferred a “good” woman, but in this harsh land there were none of those to be found, so they settled on the imported kind… on Washoe Annie’s kind.

Her song’s initial notes drowned in the din. But slowly they rose, the notes did, meeting the clamour on it’s way down, then soaring onward, circling bravely above it. One by one the shouts dropped off, and the laughter, and the drunken voices, and the tinkling glasses, and finally even the whispers until the notes on a kite’s wings diminuendoed away. And then she began to sing. 

Slack-jawed they watched. Captured they listened, these astounded cowboys who could have only been familiar with Annie’s more readily displayed talents. Slow was her song, and soft her chords, as up from some lowly place ascended a voice which melodically seesawed almost visibly on delicate, parachute wings; rising up as from a prairie canyon, propping the piano’s tinkling notes up ever higher into the wide Montana skies where they soared freely away on her heavier, throatier air. The song was of home, a place they all missed, though few had ever known. Her musical tendrils probed each cowboys’ loneliest spots, stirring there, painfully weighing on them until throats choked, and breasts ached, and uninvited tears welled up for a place, a woman, and a life which they had only ever dreamt of. And when the last note finally landed the room laid still as a tomb, it’s soul as opened and bared as the hearts of the tough young men clotting it. Annie stood then, her dress a crimson shadow seen through misty eyes as it glided past them and to the stairs, where without the merest hesitation it took the hand of the last, luckiest cowboy it passed and led him upward to cowboy heaven.

Afterward, her cowboy slept, his steady breath a lifeline in the darkness. The bedroom roiled hot and musky around her, seared by activity, and by the raucous, whisky-fanned flames below whose crackles and pops called to her through the chinked-wood floor. Annie wondered if he was still down there, her stranger, seated at the bar, quietly sipping his whisky amidst the chaos. She wondered what effect her display might have caused in him? If he’d even given her a thought? Or if for better effect she might have stripped naked and walked directly up to him on his stool, situating her mounds and crevices on his unexpecting lap? Yes, that might have done it. But not forever. It would have done only for one night, she knew. But isn’t that how fame is made for the Washoe Annie’s of this world?

She had to pee, but couldn’t risk waking the cowboy. He might want another go, and Annie was not up to it. No, “Washoe Annie” was finished. As always she was saddened after, almost desperate, and so she remained as cold and still as death beneath the heated young Texan’s overthrown leg, arm, and stench. And she wondered again if he was still down there, her stranger? Perhaps he would return tomorrow night? If so, would it mean her voice had finally been heard? 

Annie surprised herself then with an unaccustomed prayer. 

As if somehow, somewhere, her voice might be heard.