The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (39 page)

“Don’t let Bob upset you,” Charley said.

I started; I’d forgotten Bob’s brother was still here. He gave me a sad-eyed smile. “Bob has that effect on some people,” he said. “But he’s got a good heart. He just tries too hard to impress people sometimes, that’s all.”

I moved the children onto makeshift beds in the front parlor, turning their former bedroom over to these two guests who were anything but welcome. Where Charley was easy-going and affable, Bob was a bundle of nerves, jumpy and agitated. While Jesse and Charley visited the local saloons and livestock sales, or spent long evenings on the back porch, smoking and discussing little of importance, Bob trailed along, contributing to the conversations, but never really part of them.

I was hanging laundry one morning when Bob was in the side yard, fooling around with something or other. I tried my best to ignore him, though his presence alone was enough to spoil my morning. I was just stretching up to pin a shirt to the line when a loud gunshot shattered the day’s peace.

I screamed, and looked around for the children. Jesse came barreling out of the house. “Zee!” he shouted. “Are you all right?”

It was the first time in memory he’d slipped and addressed me by my real name in public. “Yes. I’m fine. Just startled.” I glared at Bob, who had emerged from the side yard, a still-smoking revolver dangling from his right hand.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jesse reached Bob in a few long strides and snatched the gun from him.

“I was just shooting at some targets.” Bob thrust out his lower lip in a pout. “I wasn’t aiming at Josie or anything.”

“You want to shoot targets, you go out in the woods where there isn’t anybody around,” Jesse said. “A stray bullet could hit somebody, not to mention the neighbors might think it odd, a man shooting off guns in the middle of the day.”

Bob hung his head. “I’m sorry J—Dave. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

Jesse put his hand on the younger man’s shoulders. “Just don’t let it happen again.” He examined the gun. “What kind of weapon is this, anyway?”

“It was my grandfather’s. I know it’s not much, but it’s all I got right now.”

“It doesn’t look very reliable.” Jesse sighted down the barrel. “I doubt you could hit what you were aiming at with it.”

I collected my empty laundry basket and marched past them into the house, passing Charley on my way out. From the kitchen window I could see them, the three men with their heads together, deep in a discussion of weapons or horses or politics or any of the things I had no interest in, yet which occupied them for hours.

As much as I disliked Bob and even Charley’s intrusion into our lives, I understood a little their attraction for Jesse. If I missed Annie, how much more did Jesse miss Frank? The two had scarcely been apart in thirty-four years. Their estrangement had left a void in his life the children and I could not fill. Maybe talking to the Ford brothers helped take up some of that emptiness.

In November, Jesse decided we should relocate from Kansas City to St. Joseph, Missouri. Charley and Bob helped us move. They loaded a rented wagon with our furniture and other belongings and drove the wagon to our new residence and unloaded things at Jesse’s direction. I thought then they would leave us alone for a while, but they settled into the new house as readily as they had the old one.

“Why are they still here?” I asked Jesse. Even Dick Liddil, for all his false charm and sly looks, would be preferable to Charley, who always looked ashamed of something, and Bob, who followed after Jesse like an adoring puppy.

“I want the two of them where I can keep an eye on them,” Jesse said.

I stared at him. “If you don’t trust them, why do you want them in your house?” I asked.

“As long as they’re with me, I know they’re not out trying to stab me in the back.”

In St. Joseph, Jesse abandoned the name of Jackson, and once more called himself Mr. Howard, though he changed his initials from J.D. to J.T. and introduced himself as Tom. Howard had been his alias for so many years now, I expected he felt more comfortable with it. Or maybe it was because Tim was old enough now to wonder why the family’s name changed as often as its residence.

I liked the little house on the corner of Lafayette and Twenty-first streets in St. Joseph, but almost as soon as we settled into it, Jesse began looking for something better.

“I’ve found the perfect house for us,” he announced one afternoon in late December. I was in the kitchen, rolling out pie crust for the pecan and pumpkin pies I planned to serve for our Christmas dinner.

“We already have the perfect house,” I said.

“Charley and I checked it out this afternoon,” Jesse continued. “It’s just around the corner, so moving won’t be a problem at all.”

“Why move at all, if you’re only going around the corner?” I asked.

“This house is on a high hill.” Jesse helped himself to a handful of the pecans I’d shelled for the pie. “Off to itself.”

“Nobody could sneak up on you in this house,” Bob said. He reached out to take a handful of nuts as well, and I slapped his hand away.

“Four big rooms, good air circulation,” Jesse said. “And the rent’s only $14 a month. I told the agent we’d take it. We can start moving tomorrow.”

I glared at him, but he pretended not to notice. “I’ll move this time,” I said. “But no more. Not for at least a year. I want us to settle for a while.”

He gave me a look that passed for an apology and kissed my cheek. “No more moving, sweetheart,” he said. “I promise.”

The next day, Charley and Bob loaded a borrowed wagon with our furniture and other belongings and drove around the corner and up the hill to our new home. I had to admit the house was beautifully situated, with a view in all directions of the town and surrounding countryside.

The house was painted white, with green shutters, and large windows in every room promised relief from the oppressive summer heat and plenty of light even in winter. The front parlor and one bedroom faced the road, while a second bedroom and the kitchen looked out onto a neat yard.

We arranged the best furniture in the front rooms, and Jesse hung his prized painting of Skyrocket on the wall opposite the front door, so that it would be the first thing anyone saw when they entered the house. We’d had to leave the horse himself behind in Kentucky. Jesse feared the animal was too well-known and associated with Jesse James, so he’d sold him to his friend Carter. Now our stable held two new thoroughbreds, whose names I can’t even recall.

The move was exhausting, but when we were done Jesse, Charley and I bathed and put on our best clothes, then took the children with us to the Christmas Eve service at the Presbyterian Church. Bob stayed behind. “I’m not of a religious mind,” he said.

“I wish we had a lock on our bedroom door,” I told Jesse as we walked toward the church, Charley and the children trailing behind us. “Bob might decide to go through our things while we’re gone.”

“That’s not a very charitable thing to say at Christmas,” he said.

I didn’t feel Bob Ford particularly deserved my charity, but I kept my mouth shut.

“People take Bob wrong sometimes,” Charley said. “Being the baby of the family, he always felt he had to try harder to be noticed.”

“He’ll have to do like I did,” Jesse said. “Do something to make a name for himself at a young age.”

I was glad enough to reach the church and turn my attention away from Bob. Jesse, too, seemed to enjoy the service. He enthusiastically sang the carols in his slightly nasal tenor and nodded in approval as he listened to the sermon. When time came for the offering, he put a dollar in the plate.

Afterwards, we walked home in the crisp night air, Tim chattering excitedly about Santa Claus coming that evening.

In spite of my misgivings about the move and taking in the Fords, we had a joyful holiday. Charley helped Jesse decorate a tree, and Bob spent hours playing with Tim and the new toy soldiers Jesse had bought him. I’d made Mary new outfits for her rag baby, and she spent hours rocking the doll and singing to it—sweet, made-up songs about birds and flowers and angels.

Jesse presented me with a jet and gold breast pin, and a length of fine Spanish lace. I gave him a new knitted waistcoat and a set of pearl and jet shirt studs. We had a dinner of cured ham and fried potatoes and creamed onions, and the pies I’d made, with fresh whipped cream. Afterwards, Charley made Bob help him do the dishes so that I could rest. That was a nice Christmas present in and of itself!

Four days after Christmas,
Jesse and the Fords left again. “I haven’t heard from Wood in a while,” Jesse said. “That’s not like him, so I think I’d better go check up on him.”

The day after he left, I woke feeling sick to my stomach, and spent the morning alternately nibbling crackers and vomiting into a basin beside the bed. Tim fetched a neighbor, Mrs. Turrell, who made me tea and offered to look after the children for a few hours while I rested. “Do you think you’re coming down with something?” she asked, all concerned.

“Nothing I haven’t been through before,” I said, nodding to Tim and Mary. I had had my suspicions that I might be pregnant again, but this bout of morning sickness confirmed it. “The first few weeks are usually the worst.”

“Congratulations, then,” Mrs. Turrell said, beaming. “I recommend ginger tea. It’s always been a great help to me at times like this.”

Whether it was the ginger tea or the knowledge that I had to keep going in Jesse’s absence, the worst of the nausea passed quickly. I decided not to tell anyone else of my condition until Jesse was home. I knew he’d be thrilled, and maybe knowledge of my pregnancy would induce him to stay closer to home for the next few months.

Jesse failed to find his cousin Wood,
and no one would admit to having seen him for a while. Jesse invited Dick Liddil to go with him on a tour of Kansas, but Dick was recovering from a leg injury and declined. So Jesse took Charley with him, leaving Bob behind at his family’s farm. He returned at the end of the month alone, and for a brief period we enjoyed a kind of honeymoon in our little house on the hill.

A few days after Jesse returned home, it snowed. The city disappeared behind a veil of white. Snow sifted over trash heaps and toys that had been left out, and an old buggy Jesse had purchased and planned to repair. Everything old and ugly was transformed by a shroud of glittering white. All was silent as only a snow-covered landscape can be.

The children were beside themselves with joy and could hardly wait for me to dress them properly before they raced out into the yard. Jesse hurried after them, laughing and shouting as he galloped through the drifts. He tripped on some forgotten obstacle and the children doubled over with laughter at the sight of him stretched out on his back in the snow. “I meant to do that,” he declared, “How else could I make a snow angel?”

He fanned his arms and legs back and forth in the snow, making the perfect outline of an angel, then rose up with a shout and swept the two giggling children into his arms. “Come out and join us, Sweetheart!” he called to me.

Safe on the porch, I shook my head. I preferred to stay relatively warm and dry, enjoying the view of the snow-covered town spread out below us.

Jesse looked at Mary, then at Tim. “Mama doesn’t want to play with us,” he said. “What should we do about that?”

“Hit her with a snowball!” Tim said.

“Dave, no!” I protested, but he had already set the children down and bent to scoop up a handful of snow. I turned to retreat into the house, but before I could open the door, an icy wet sphere hit me squarely in the back.