The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel (15 page)

The store owner stacked the bundles and scratched their prices on a newspaper and totaled them after licking his pencil. “You come into some money, is that it?”

“You might say that.”

“Do you mind if I ask how you got it, being’s you’re so young?”

“I can’t see that it’s any of your business.”

The store owner tore off a long sheet of brown paper and folded it around the bundles with a great deal of noise. “I’d just like to know out of curiosity. Maybe I could get into your line of work and buy myself a year’s clothes in one afternoon.”

“Only thing necessary is a great aunt who loves her nephew to pieces.”

“Inheritance. I see.”

Bob put his finger on the twine intersection so that the store owner could make a knot. “You were probably thinking I got the cash like the James gang would. Am I right or wrong?”

The store owner leaned his arms over the counter and winked. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate the business.” He looked out the window as Bob rode off and then he crossed to a livery stable, where he talked to Sheriff James Timberlake.

MRS. MARTHA BOLTON
rented the Harbison farm in 1879, just after becoming a widow, and she made a good income by giving rooms and meals to her brothers, Charley, Wilbur, and Bob, in exchange for chores and fifteen dollars per month. The wood frame house was two storeys high, the roof was buckled, an elm tree raked the shingles in storms. White paint blistered and scaled from the boards, oiled paper was tacked over the broken windows, the road door was nailed shut and a calico skirt insulated the cracks of the sill and sides. Martha raised chickens that nested under the porch and cows that watered at a wooden tank near a windmill. Elias Capline Ford ran a grocery store in Richmond, but mowed and maintained the agriculture on weekends. Wilbur, a brother two years older than Bob, was the enormous and morose hired hand and he lived a secret life in a room that clutched the earth brown barn.

When Bob arrived a black surrey sat in the weeds, a barn cat licking its paw on the surrey’s seat, and a number of horses drowsed in a rickety limb corral in which straw scattered on the wind. Dick Liddil was at the yard swing with Bob’s niece, Ida, twisting the slat seat until the raveled ropes squashed down on her hips. He released the seat and she twirled, squealing, her auburn hair flying out, and Dick fell backward and admired the girl. Wood Hite stood on the roofless kitchen porch, his fists on his hips, stern as John the Baptist. He called, “You’re gonna make her sick! She’s gonna upchuck, you don’t watch out!”

Dick ignored Wood and rose to cuff the girl’s dress so that it bloomed and revealed her thighs. She wailed unconvincingly, “You’re not supposed to peek, Dick!”

“But you’re so pretty! I can’t help myself!”

Bob hollered hello to Dick but the man was inattentive. Wood slammed the kitchen door behind him. Bob rode into a barn stable and had removed most of his tack before he saw his brother Elias on his back under a borrowed McCormick reaper that was clotted with weeds.

“Howdy do!”

Elias smeared grease from his brow, a screwdriver in his left hand. “Here to work, Bob?”

“Well, I’ve been on the road and—”

“Didn’t think so,” his brother said, and continued with the machine.

Bob clomped into the farmhouse, saw Wood on the sofa frowning at no one in particular, and heaved the clothes bundle onto Martha’s bed downstairs. She and Clarence Hite and Charley sat in the kitchen at a round oak table that was wide as a pond. Clarence slouched in a chair with his socked feet on an upended basket and sawed at warts on his hands with a paring knife. Blood trickled down to rags that were tied around his wrists. Charley slumped over the table with his chin on his thumbs, his sunken eyes closed, his boots hooked around the rear legs of the chair as he listened to Martha read about him from an astrological almanac.

Bob said, “Howdy!” but there was no response.

Martha read: “July ninth. ‘Diligence, tact, a keen sense of responsibility, and a capacity for detail are your dominant traits. Your sense of duty is strong. You have poise and meet every situation calmly and resourcefully. Home means much to you in your daily existence.’ ”

Bob said, “Howdy!” a second time, but it appeared that snubbing the last-born was a custom his siblings still kept. Bob snuck over behind Martha as she distributed her long reddish hair away from her cheeks, and he idiotically pulled her apron bow through the slats of the chair. Martha fetched the ties with a nuisanced look at her kid brother, and with a smile as wide as a kazoo, Bob said, “I’m finally home!”

Martha riffled the almanac and said, “I’m real glad, Bob.”

Clarence said, “Read the birthday sayings for Jesse James.”

And Bob asked, “Do you want to know where I’ve been?”

Clarence said, “Read Jesse’s birthday.”

Bob uncinched his cartridge belt and holster and clattered them onto a counter. He smiled. “I’ve been to the Indian Territories.”

Martha asked, “What day was Jesse born on, Bob?”

“September fifth, eighteen forty-seven.” He swiveled a chair around and sat on it and scowled at Clarence Hite’s slashed fingers and the blood that cross-hatched his hands. “What are you
doing
, Clarence?”

“Skinning off warts.”

Martha read, “September fifth. ‘You are a person of quick and rash judgment, violent moods, and vast enthusiasm. Temper your emotions with poise and self-control. You are lively, always active, and fond of pleasure and the society of friends.’ ”

Clarence said, “That isn’t Jesse.”

Charley said, “Why, I was about to say the opposite! That’s him like he was sitting in that chair and sipping Doctor Harter’s Iron Tonic.”

Bob said, “Read mine.”

The girl, Ida, had come in from swinging and she moved over to the round oak table with an apple in her hand, the red peel corkscrewing from the pulp. She looked down with consternation and said, “Clarence! What—”

He interrupted to say he was skinning warts off, and Charley said, “He’s about twelve shy of a dozen in the smarts department, Ida. He’s about a half-bubble off level.”

Bob said, “Read January thirty-first, eighteen sixty-two.”

Martha flicked several pages without care about whether she tore the sheets. “For some reason I thought you were January twenty-ninth.”

“No. That’s Zerelda Samuels, Jesse’s momma. Eighteen twenty-five.”

The congregation in the room all looked at Bob strangely. Charley sniggered and then said, “Isn’t he something?”

Bob justified himself by saying, “I don’t
try
to remember those things; I just
do
.”

“January thirty-first,” Martha read, and Bob rocked forward so that the chair back rubbed the oak table. “ ‘You are kind, generous in judgments of others, and possess a discerning, artistic temperament. You are not afraid of hard work,’ ” (Charley hooted) “ ‘yet are easily disheartened by obstacles and temporary failures. Be firm in your resolves and keep trying.’ ”

Bob took the almanac from Martha and said, “How come mine is the only one that’s negative?”

“Generous,” Martha said.

“Just that.”

“Artistic,” she said.

“You bet,” Charley said. “Bob can’t make the ends of a circle meet and he’s supposed to be artistic.”

Bob grinned and said, “I can’t even draw flies.”

Wood Hite clomped in from the sitting room. “How come you all are in the kitchen chatting, and I’m all by myself?”

Martha said, “You old stick-in-the-mud! What do you expect? Always fuss-budgeting around, telling people what they can and can’t do.”

Robert Woodson Hite was a man in his late twenties who was so crotchety and orthodox that he seemed almost elderly and was known among the James gang by the nickname “Grandfather Grimes.” His mother had contributed many of the James genes to his physical characteristics and he looked more brother to Frank than Jesse did—the same large ears, the same anteater nose, the same scorn and malevolence in his scowls. Martha had spurned his affections, so he pursued her daughter, but Ida was too young to be more than perplexed by his attentions, thus he’d spent most of the afternoon in a pout.

But Bob Ford rocked back in his chair and experimented one more time. “Wood?” he said. “I’ve been to the Indian Territories, Wood.”

Wood was in a mope. He dully asked, “How was it?” and frowned at Clarence’s wart work.

Bob couldn’t think of a sassy answer. He thumped his chair forward and said, “About like you’d expect.” He stood from the table. “Guess I’ll go get myself duded up. These clothes are a little rancid.”

And Wood said, “I’m in that room too, Bob. Don’t mess up my things.”

Bob sneaked from the overcoat a cigar butt smoked on September 7th after the Blue Cut robbery and then he scurried up the stairs to a room with twin beds and a cot in it. The cot was against an east wall that was covered with the corset advertisement pages from newspapers and Wood’s razor, comb, toothbrush, and toothpowder were laid out at the foot of the cot on his folded green blanket as if it were a toiletries salesman’s display. The twin bed next to the mullioned north window was Charley’s, the mating bed was Bob’s, a slat bed with a duck feather mattress that lumped like melons as he slept. Close to the closet door was a lady’s white dresser and screwed to it was an oval dresser mirror where Bob could watch himself practice moves and feints he hoped to use, veering left and fanning his thumb like a gunslinger’s hammer, blowing muzzle smoke from his index finger.

Bob kicked under his bed with his foot and hooked out a shoebox. He sat on his mattress with the box in his lap, removed the lid and clamped it against his neck with his chin. He rolled the cigar butt inside the white handkerchief with the cock-eyed holes cut into it, and poked it into a corner. He squirmed his boots off and flung off his month-old clothes until all he wore was a nasty union suit, then he took on loan a towel and cake of Ivory soap and a tile brush from Ida’s pink bedroom across the hall, and he crept downstairs and across the cold earth to the cattle lot and broad water tank.

Two calves stared with worry as he stripped off his underwear and they trotted six feet when he shooed them. Scum floated on the water but rocked away when he washed his hand across the surface. He lifted a snow white leg and sent it into cold water, then crashed over into the tank with such noise Martha was at the kitchen window when he stood, catching his breath. She smirked at his nakedness, so he lowered and rotated. His neck, wrists, and ankles were black in the creases and murked with road dust and wood smoke and his skin was reddened wherever he scoured with the tile brush. A breeze puckered the water and cast goose pimples over his back. He bent over to rinse soap from his hair and shook water like a hound. The calves backed a little and to terrify them more he smacked the water so that a clear sheet curved over the tank and tattered and tore apart in the air. And then he noticed an amused Dick Liddil standing as close as a tailor. He was hatless and his blond hair straggled in the wind.

“How long you been there?”

“Just now arrived. Did I miss much?”

Bob stalked the Ivory soap cake on the water. “Not unless you’ve never seen a man wash his dirty carcass before.”

Dick said, “Hear you’ve been to the Indian Territories.”

Bob scrubbed an elbow as if that could shift the conversation elsewhere.

But Dick continued, “It’s all anyone can talk about.”

Bob checked his other elbow. “Don’t try to fish me because I won’t hook.”

“Is that what the Indian Territories do? Make you turn over a new leaf?”

Bob swished his hands underwater and reexamined his nails. “That territories business is one of Jesse’s stories, is all.”

“You’ve got a big pecker for being such a little squirrel.”

“Is that what you come over here to see?”

Dick bent for the towel and some good nature slid from his face. He was perhaps five feet seven, an inch shorter than Bob, and twenty-nine years old. He grew a comma of light brown hair on his lower lip and his combed mustache was curled with wax so that he looked a Southern cavalier, and he considered himself a ladies’ man in spite of a right eye that strayed toward his cheek, the result of a childhood accident with a stick. He tossed the towel at Bob’s nose and nibbled his mustache as Bob rubbed his hair wild. “Your brother said Jesse kept you on in Kansas City some extra days. What was the reason?”

Bob covered his face with the towel as his mind motored a second or two. “Well, I’m not at liberty to say exactly. I will confess we had ourselves an adventure or two, the like of which
you’ll
never experience, but as for details and whatnot, that would be confidential.”

Bob straddled the tank and then hopped to the dirt. Drops of tank water pocked the earth where the cattle had churned it soft. Bob swatted the dust from his union suit and started to climb into it but Dick said, “Why don’t you burn that instead,” and Bob bunched it and surrounded himself with the towel.

Dick said, “Let me ask you this: did Jesse mention that me and Cummins were in cahoots?”

“Is that so?”

Dick smiled. “Oh dear. I’ve went on and said too much.”

“Who else is partners with you two?”

“You’ll just go and squawk about it to Jesse.”

“Ed Miller?”

“He’ll cut our throats if he finds out. You don’t know him like I do. You do Jesse dirt, you connive behind his back, he’ll come after you with a cleaver.”

“He can be spiteful, can’t he?”

“Ho. You’re darn tootin’.”

Bob cleaned between his toes with the towel and said, “Don’t see why he’d give a dang since he and Frank’ve called it quits and scattered the James gang hither and yon.”

Dick assayed Bob’s countenance for clues about what he understood or withheld but saw neither cunning nor deception. “Boy, you are slow as peach mold, you know that? Tucker Bassham’s already gone for ten years and Whiskeyhead Ryan’s in jail; soon as one or the other feels the urge he can give the government all he knows about Jesse and then go out on the street scot-free. Jesse don’t want us giving ourselves up and he don’t want us getting caught and he don’t want us gathering loot except if he’s in charge.”