The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel (14 page)

“Dave,” Bob corrected. “Could be it’s not night enough yet, Dave.”

Jesse unfolded his pocket knife and whittled with the stick so close his eyes crossed. Blond shavings boated on the water eight or nine feet below them. When the stick was arrowed, he gave it to Tim. “You want to go play?”

The boy slid down the weeds without saying, going down to the water his father had walked in and then flinging the arrow into it. Jesse sighed as he watched the stick navigate the currents out and then he unlidded a mason jar that was not there when last Bob looked. The odor was that of lager beer. Jesse drank and sleeved his mouth and mustache. “You want some?”

Bob swallowed some but tilted the mason jar too much, spilling beer on his chin.

“Good?” Jesse asked.

Bob grinned. “Good as baby Jesus in velvet pants.”

Jesse scowled at the blasphemy but then sat back on an elbow, clicking stones in his palm. “Your people God-fearing, Bob?”

“Oh heavenly days, yes. My daddy’s a part-time preacher.”

“Rich or poor?”

Bob thought about it. “Prosperous, I guess. He could give me plenty of money but he’s got this philosophy that his boys ought to feel some hardships or else they’ll all spoil.”

“A man of principles;” Jesse said.

“People say that about themselves when really they only want to make you unhappy.”

Tim swatted the river with a washed-up board but when Jesse called, “What’re you doing down there?” the boy said he was letting minnows tickle his fingers. Jesse called, “Don’t get yourself all soaked now, you little honyock.” And on second thought, in a voice meant only for Bob, Jesse asked, “You ever meet Zerelda? Mrs. Samuels?”

“Haven’t had the pleasure.”

“The Good Lord really accomplished something. Giant woman; eight feet tall. If she’d been a man she’d be governor now.” Jesse looked for his red socks and rolled them onto his feet without brushing the silt off his ankles and soles. He then lunged his stockinged feet into his high boots and stuffed his gray trouser legs inside. He said, “You ever hear any gossip about my father and Frank’s being two different men?”

“Yes.”

“They say that was the reason my papa went West in the gold rush: he couldn’t support the shame of it. What do you think of a story like that?”

Bob said, “I’m personally more interested in what
you
think about it.”

Jesse glared at him and in a growl of a voice said, “I think it’s a goddamned lie.”

“I’m with you then; and I won’t hear another word of it if the subject ever comes up.” Bob removed his stovepipe hat and scratched at the circled indentation of his ginger brown hair. “Since we’re telling stories, have you ever heard the one about the James gang robbing this one railroad?”

“You’re not giving me enough clues.”

“It’s a funny story.”

Jesse shook his head in the negative and then raised the mason jar, swallowing a long sentence of the lager beer.

Bob continued, “You see, the James gang is robbing this railroad train like you do, and going through the passenger cars and on board is this Quaker minister or something, some old coot with a long beard and, you know, a mean disposition? You can tell he’s no joy to be around, but he’s got this pinched-up wife with him and she’s shivering with fright and clutching the preacher’s sleeve and so on. You’re sure you haven’t heard this?”

“I would’ve stopped you by now.”

“How’s it go? I’ve gotta get this right. Oh! I guess it’s you. You stand in this railroad coach and everybody’s cowering, of course, and you holler, ‘I’m Jesse James! And here’s what I’m gonna do! I’m gonna grab all your money. I’m gonna grab all your watches and jewelry! I’m gonna grab everything you own!’ The preacher’s wife is cringing now and the old coot’s guarding her and you say, ‘And then I’m gonna go down the aisle and rape all you women!’ ”

Jesse said, “I don’t like the way this story’s headed.”

“Well, everyone knows it’s not true, Jess; it’s just sort of comical. You see, after you say what you do about raping the women, the Quaker ups and says, ‘Surely you wouldn’t rape a preacher’s wife!’ And this is the funny part; his wife gets mad and gives her husband an elbow and says, ‘Shut up, Homer! It’s Jesse’s train. Let him rob it the way he wants to.’ ” Bob’s eyes slanted to Jesse and he saw the man wasn’t laughing. “You don’t think it’s funny?”

“Well, hell, how could I if it isn’t true?”

“Jokes don’t need to be, Jesse.”

“You’re gonna have to explain “why I oughta laugh then.”

Bob said with great impatience, “Why don’t we just forget it,” and instantly felt in jeopardy, for his impudence was plain and Jesse’s countenance was stern and it seemed just possible a boy might find Bob chambered in the river some morning. His hair would float in the water, his body would yeast until his clothes’ buttons popped, an elm blowdown would bash out his eye, and then the river would abandon him on a levee where snails would feel his skin with cold horns and red crawdads would cling to his ankles. He said, “I didn’t mean to sound sharp just then.”

Jesse simply adjusted his jacket sleeves on his arms and said, “I’ve got a good story for you that’s true as a razor. This’ll give you an example of Frank and me putting a man in his place, and it don’t depend upon any prevaricating. Once me and Frank were riding in the countryside and got hungry, so we went up to this farmhouse and asked would this widow lady make us some supper.”

“Oh, that one,” said Bob.

“You’ve heard it?”

“Only about twenty times.”

Jesse was as still as a shut-down machine.

Bob said, “I’d love the chance to hear you tell it, though. I imagine you’ll make it more interesting.”

Jesse resumed, “ ‘I’ll gladly pay you,’ I say, and she said that was all right, we looked like genuine Christians and she’d do us the good turn. Kid, I want to tell you, that was one scrumptious supper. She went all out. But Frank saw she was crying and when he asked why, she said the mortgage was coming due and that the loan manager or whatever was going to be there any minute to repossess the place. And her a poor widow! Can you imagine? Well now, Frank and me, we insist on paying her something; and you know what we gave her?”

“Enough to pay off the mortgage,” Bob said.

“You
have
heard this one.”

“But no one ever said the supper was scrumptious. This is fascinating.”

“So we gave her what she needed and we go, and on the highway who’s coming our way but the loan manager. He greets us but doesn’t give Frank and me a second thought, he’s that greedy to get hold of that farm. Much to his surprise, of course, she paid him off and in no time he was plodding along the road with his wallet bulging his coat out and his grin a little tighter. And that’s when Frank and me come out of the woods with masks on and steal all our money back.” Jesse laughed uproariously, like a plowboy. He even slapped his thigh.

“And you’re saying that’s a true story.”

“Is!”

“Jesse!”

“You calling me a liar?”

Tim crawled back up from the river, pretending to be something that he was not, and when he approached the two he said matter-of-factly, “I saw your pole dip, Cousin Bob.” And Jesse slipped out of anger into eager regard for their fishing, winding the line around his right hand as he pulled it up to check on Bob’s hook. The smelly mystery compound he’d gobbed on the hook was gone and he charged himself with the responsibility of baiting the snare again, adding to it a smear of tobacco that he wiped from inside his cheek. With that accomplished, Jesse swigged some more lager beer and put his boy in his lap, snuggling his chin beard into the boy’s neck and munching his lips along Tim’s ears in order to make him giggle. He said, “Do you know how to make a fire, Timmy?”

“Yes.”

“Bob’ll say you’re lying if he don’t see it.”

The boy angled forward to glance at Bob. He said, “I can.”

“You go ahead and make one for us. Show Cousin Bob you’re a six-year-old.” Tim got matches from his father and then went into the woods again to gather kindling and rotted logs. Jesse sipped some beer and then covered the mason jar with oiled paper and screwed on the lid. “You remember John Newman Edwards?”

“Newspaper man,” Bob said.

“He’d misbehave himself for two or three weeks at a time; drink himself nearly cross-eyed; and then he’d come back to Kansas City and say, ‘I’ve been to the Indian Territories.’ Always tickled me to hear that.”

“I’ve been to the Indian Territories,” Bob said to get it right.

There was a pause and then Jesse said, “Garfield is dying real gallantly,” and he went on to speak of the published newspaper interviews with Charles J. Guiteau.

On July 2nd President James A. Garfield had strolled into the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station with Secretary of State James G. Blaine in order to meet a morning train that would take the president to Long Branch, New Jersey, where his wife, Lucretia, was convalescing. They’d crossed a ladies’ waiting room without noticing a deranged evangelist and general miscreant named Charles J. Guiteau who’d spent the preceding three months in pestering them for the Paris consulship, and since June had been preparing to “remove” the Republican president. He crept up behind Garfield, straightened a .44 caliber British Bulldog revolver, and shot the president once in the right of his back, and as the man struggled around and cried out, “My God! What is this?” shot him again in the arm. Guiteau then slipped out of the station but was caught by a policeman, to whom he said, “Keep quiet, my friend, keep quiet. I wish to go right to jail.”

Jesse knew a great deal about Charles J. Guiteau: that he was five feet five inches tall and thirty-nine years old and once claimed his employer was Jesus Christ and Company. He was a swindler, insurance salesman, debt collector, a member of the Illinois bar; he skipped out on hotel bills, published a book on religion called simply
The Truth
, and had assigned his collected papers and .44 caliber pistol to the State Department library.

Jesse James, Jr., would grow up to be a good-looking man but he was a grouchy, ill-favored boy with ash blond hair that spiked up from his scalp and a mouth that was always pouting. But he put together fire sticks with some proficiency and was squatting by his woodstack, guiding a match along some kindling in a grandfather way, as his father continued to speak about the July assassination and Bob attended to what he was saying like a paid companion.

Tim plopped down in his father’s lap and asked Bob, “Do you see the fire?”

“It’s really burning, isn’t it?”

The boy said, “I made it myself.”

“Hup?” Jesse said. “I just felt something. Might’ve had a nibble.”

Bob gingerly cupped his fingers around the bamboo pole and gazed down into the night-blackened water. The moon was out and the evening was cooling. Tim threw a rock and the river glunked and Jesse said, “Don’t do that, son. You’ll scare all the fishes away.”

“Daddy, I’m boring.”

Jesse laughed and said, “You mean, you’re bored.”

“Yes.”

Jesse hugged the boy to him with his right arm. “Maybe a fish will come and you can get all excited.”

“I don’t like fishing.”

“Sure you do.
I
do. You must.”

The boy shrugged and sank into the man’s wool jacket. Bob unscrewed the mason jar and swallowed the lukewarm bottom inch of beer. The river was the only noise.

Jesse said, “You know what we are, Tim? We’re nighthawks. We’re the ones who go out at night and guard everything so people can sleep in peace. We’ve got our eyes peeled; no one’s going to slip anything past us.”

“I’ve got something!” Bob said.

“You sure?”

“It’s heavy!” Bob had whipped up the bamboo pole at the first twitch and then jumped to his feet, bending the tip so low it made a parabola.

Jesse sidled next to him and clearly struggled with the temptation to grab the pole from Bob’s grip. “Don’t horse it, kid. Bring it up easy.”

There was no reel on the pole, so Bob stepped on the bamboo and tugged the fishing line up with his right hand, looking over the cliff into the river but getting no sight of his catch. He could hear it thrash out of the water and he began hauling the weight up with both hands and with great strain heaved onto the river bank a gruesome fish that seemed overdue for extinction. It was orange in the firelight and round as a dog and over its eyes were crimson feelers that moved like thumbs on its skull. Tim backed into his father’s leg but Jesse crouched close to examine the catch. “God damn it, but that’s an ugly thing.”

The fish seemed unperturbed even though cruelly hooked in the mouth. Its teeth meshed and unmeshed with a click, its red tail and gill wings undulated, and its frosted blue eye stared with calm accusation at the fishermen until Jesse grew disgusted and said, “Kill him, kid.” And Bob did as he was told, taking a burning stick from the fire and stabbing it into the fish over and over again until Jesse said, “That’s enough!” and then looked at Bob as if he’d been given a sign and would now act accordingly.

BOB WAS SENT AWAY
cordially the next day, just as he knew he would be, with a goodbye from Jesse but nothing from Zee beyond what good manners demanded. It was forty miles to Martha Bolton’s farm from Kansas City and it was already noon by the time he attained Liberty, where he watered his common horse at a trough and sank a dipper in a water pail outside a dry goods store. But as he lifted the dipper he viewed himself in the store window and was discouraged by the picture of a scroungy boy in a ridiculous stovepipe hat that was dented and smudged, in an overlarge black coat that was soiled and stained and plowed with wrinkles and cinched at his waist by a low-slung holster. He thought he looked goofy and juvenile, so he went inside the store and cruised the aisles.

A gentleman’s clothes then were generally English: Prince Albert suits, greatcoats with caped shoulders, knee-length frock coats and knee-high Wellington boots into which pin-striped pants legs were stuffed. Men wore bowlers, derbies, fedoras, slouch hats, and short-crowned, wide-brimmed felt hats that were cooked stiff as boaters and were worn tilted back on the head so that a pompadour showed. Robert Ford was not yet extraordinary in his clothes and at the dry goods store selected a fine white shirt and a starched white collar that could be attached with a stud, white underwear with wooden buttons that ran down its middle, and a heather green suit with lapels that were abbreviated so they could be fastened nearer the throat than has been the fashion since. And he crowned his head with a black bowler hat that was ribboned with black silk, a hat that suited a boulevardier but did not particularly suit Robert Ford.