The Woman Who Loved Jesse James Page 19

  But real life must always intrude. On January 31st a special commission formed by Congress awarded the election to Rutherford B. Hayes. Jesse was incensed. He ranted and paced about the house until I told him I had a headache and couldn’t bear anymore. A few moments later I heard him out back, firing off his pistols at cans he’d set up on a fence post.

  In early April, Zerelda sent word that she intended to travel to Nashville on the train. If it wasn’t safe for her sons to visit her, she would come to them. Reuben and her other children would remain behind to look after the farm.

  She arrived on a warm spring day, with two large trunks and three carpetbags, her massive form swathed in the black silk and bombazine she’d worn since Archie’s death. An artfully arranged shawl hid the fact of her missing arm, and an elaborately feathered hat drew attention away from her hawk nose and stern visage.

  “Careful with those trunks,” she barked at the Negroes hired to transport her luggage. “If I find anything broken, I’ll hold you responsible.”

  Luggage seen to, she turned to survey her offspring and their spouses. “Well, Dave,” she said, holding out her hand. “You’re looking better than the last time I saw you.”

  “I’m well, Mother.” Jesse embraced her. “How are you?”

  “It’s very dull around home,” she said. “The newspapers are hardly worth reading these days, with no mention of the James boys in far too long. The sheriff’s deputies have even stopped hanging around our front gate, and no reporter has called in weeks.”

  How that must have distressed her—Zerelda liked few things better than being interviewed by a reporter. I turned away to hide my smile.

  She turned to Frank and Annie. “Hello, Fannie. And how is that man you married?” She sent a sly look to Frank.

  “I’m very well, Mother Howard.” Frank smirked, enjoying the charade that Zerelda was not his mother, but his mother-in-law. By choosing different surnames for their aliases, Frank and Jesse had assured they couldn’t pass themselves off as brothers. Yet their obvious closeness spoke of a family relation, so they had decided that Annie would pose as Jesse’s sister. She didn’t look very much like Jesse, but then, neither did Frank.

  Though Frank’s farmhouse was larger, Zerelda had insisted on staying at our house. “I want to spend time with my grandson,” she said, and I didn’t dare argue. Despite the closeness we’d developed over the years, she still intimidated me.

  Whether speaking to a newspaper reporter, lawman or daughter-in-law, Zerelda was not one to mince words. And we soon discovered her purpose in coming to Tennessee was not so much to see her children and grandchild, but to persuade her boys to return to live closer to home.

  “It’s not right for you girls to be holding Frank and Jesse back this way,” she announced as she and Annie and I sat sewing in my front room the afternoon of her arrival.

  “Holding them back?” Annie asked. She was generally less intimidated by Zerelda than I was, perhaps because she hadn’t grown up with stories of the older woman’s fierceness.

  “You may think you’re protecting them by convincing them to move here, so far from their home and family,” Zerelda said. “But in reality, you are keeping them from their true purpose.”

  “I scarcely think it’s holding a man back to encourage him to stay safe and alive,” Annie said.

  “They managed to stay safe enough before you came along,” Zerelda said tartly. “Now you’ve exiled them here to this place where they don’t know anyone and have no useful work to do.”

  “Frank enjoys his work now, and he enjoys not having to look over his shoulder every second of the day as well,” Annie said.

  I couldn’t let Annie make her argument alone. “Don’t you think almost dying at Northfield might have had more to do with Jesse and Frank’s decision to leave Missouri than anything Annie or I said or did?” I asked.

  “My boys have been in scrapes before. They never worried about it until you two came along and saddled them with responsibilities.”

  Responsibilities that included the grandson she so doted on, I might have pointed out, but I held my tongue. I’d seen Zerelda’s grief over the loss of Archie, and part of me understood a mother’s wish to keep all her children close.

  “They aren’t boys anymore,” Annie said, her eyes flashing, her voice crisp with anger. “They’re men. And yes, they have responsibilities. Ones they gladly chose.”

  Zerelda never flinched. “They’ve spent their whole lives fighting for the cause,” she said. “I taught them there is nothing more worthy than the task of making sure the South’s grievances are heard. Now you’ve forced them to abandon that.”

  I’d heard plenty of stories about Zerelda preaching the gospel of Southern superiority. In her household, the bushwhackers her sons fought with weren’t merely heroes, they were next to gods. Her daughter, Fannie, bore the middle name Quantrill after the guerrilla William Quantrill, and her youngest son had been named for Jesse’s mentor, Archie Clement. The Confederate flag was still proudly displayed in her home, and no prayer was said without mention of the need for the Lord to avenge the downtrodden South.

  I’d never questioned her fervor, accepting it as one of the quirks of her personality, like her decision to wear black and to keep her empty sleeve pinned up as a badge of honor, rather than accept the prosthesis some had offered. But was she so blinded by devotion that she’d sacrifice her own sons’ lives for an ideal that didn’t even exist anymore?

  “There is no cause left,” I said. “The Confederacy is gone and can’t rise again.”

  She stared at me, horrified, as if I’d suddenly announced I no longer believed in God. I think even Annie was stunned that I’d uttered such blasphemy.

  I struggled to contain my emotions—fury that Zerelda would value anything more than the life of her sons, and despair that we should even be having this conversation. “Jesse and Frank are in Tennessee right now because that’s where they want to be,” I forged on. “Not because of anything I or Annie said or did.”

  Zerelda set her mouth in a hard line. “They belong in Missouri,” she said. “They belong home.”

  “Then you should talk to them about it, not us.” Annie punctuated her statement by stabbing her needle into the shirt she was mending.

  “I most certainly will,” Zerelda huffed.

  But if she said anything to Frank or Jesse, they chose to ignore her pleas. A few days later, she boarded the train for the return trip, and no mention was made of the four of us following.

  Chapter Twelve

  Summer began on a better note, when Annie shared the news that she was expecting her first child. Before the month of June was out, I was sure I was pregnant as well. The news cheered Jesse, and he and Frank reveled in the role of proud papas-to-be, while Annie and I sewed baby clothes and contemplated names for our new children. Unlike my previous confinement, this time I experienced little of the nausea and weakness that had so plagued me with my first child, though Jesse teased me about my ravenous appetite.

  I barely had time to celebrate this joy when I received word that my mother was gravely ill. Jesse didn’t feel it would be safe for him to return to Missouri at this time, so Tim and I took the train at once to Kansas City, to the boarding house my mother ran with the help of my oldest brother, Robert.

  The rest of my brothers and sisters were already there, seated in the parlor like people already in mourning. “I’m glad you could come, Sister,” Sallie said, taking my bonnet and coat while my sister Lucy’s daughter, Nannie, tended to Tim.

  “How is she?” I asked, glancing toward the stairs that led to the upper floors, and mother’s room.

  “Not well,” Sallie said. “The doctor says it’s only a matter of days.”

  I tip-toed up the stairs and peeked into the room where Mother lay. Robert’s wife, Nancy, rose from a chair beside the bed and smiled wanly. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “She’s been asking about you.”

  “Siste
r!” Mother’s voice was weak, but clear.

  “It’s good to see you, Mama.” I took the chair Nancy had vacated and cradled my mother’s hand in mine. Her bones felt fine and brittle as a bird’s, the skin like dry, wrinkled silk stretched over them. “How are you feeling?”

  “When the pain gets too bad, the doctor gives me morphine.” She managed a weak smile. “To think I’d become a drug addict at my age.”

  I couldn’t laugh at her little joke, but I tried to focus on brighter things. “I have some good news,” I said. “I’m expecting another baby.”

  “A baby. That’s wonderful. What does Jesse say?”

  “Oh, he’s beside himself. You know how much he loves children.”

  “Did he come with you?”

  “No. We didn’t think it would be safe.”

  Her expression sobered. “What is he doing with himself these days? I haven’t seen anything in the paper.”

  “He’s racing horses and buying and selling wheat and corn. Everything perfectly honest and legal,” I said. I didn’t mention the gambling. Mama wouldn’t approve and really, neither did I. But I suppose every man must have some vice, and at least I could be reasonably sure this one wouldn’t get Jesse killed.

  “And my little grandson? How is he?”

  “Not so little anymore. And talking up a storm. I’ll bring him up to see you later. I think he’s in the kitchen with Nannie right now. She’s probably feeding him sweets.”

  “You do that, dear.” Her eyes drifted shut and her grip on my hand lessened.

  Nancy came to stand beside me. “She tires easily and spends a lot of time sleeping,” she whispered. “She’ll rest easier now that she’s seen you.”

  Downstairs again, my brothers and sisters crowded around me.

  “Where is Jesse?” one asked.

  “What is he doing with himself these days?

  “How is Frank?”

  “Is it true they’ve gone straight?”

  “How long is that likely to last?”

  My sister Catherine listened to the barrage of questions and my answers, her expression growing increasingly distressed. “I thinks it’s disgraceful Sister has to live so far away,” she said. “And under an assumed name, like a fugitive.”

  “What else do you expect me to do?” I asked. “My husband is there and I must be with him.” And Jesse was a fugitive, with a price on his head. The reward made everyone who knew him suspect, even members of our family. Worse than the threat of prison time was the very real danger that his enemies wouldn’t wait for a fair trial, but would lynch him on the spot. My throat ached at the very idea.

  “You could leave him,” Catherine said. “You’ve no reason to stay with a criminal.”

  “Jesse is my husband and the father of my children and I won’t have you talk that way about him,” I snapped.

  “What else do you call a man who kills innocent people and steals from them?” she taunted.

  I looked to my other siblings and their husbands and wives, hoping someone would rise to Jesse’s defense. But they avoided my gaze. “You all know Jesse,” I said. “He’s your cousin. He isn’t the monster the papers make him out to be. He’s as kind and gentle as ever.”

  “I doubt the widows of the men he killed think so,” Catherine said.

  “That’s enough, Catherine.” Robert stood and brought the subject to a close. The last few years had aged him; his hair had grown gray and new lines etched his face. I was struck by how much he resembled our father. “Now isn’t the time for arguments like this,” he said. “Sister is here for the same reason as the rest of us—to say good-bye to our mother. Nothing else is important.”

  I gave him a grateful smile, and turned my back on Catherine. I told myself grief for our mother had brought out this meanness, but that didn’t lessen the pain of her words. I couldn’t deny that Jesse had killed men. I’d always told myself they were men who had given him no other option—that they would have taken his life if he hadn’t stopped them.

  But had the bank president in Gallatin and the cashier in Northfield been a real threat to him? Of course, who was to say Jesse had even fired the fatal shots? It was easier to imagine someone else—even Frank, who was known to have a sharp temper when riled—killing someone than Jesse. Jesse knew the Bible better than I did, had more patience with Tim than I did, never failed to kiss me good-bye before leaving the house, and kissed me hello upon every return, even if he’d only walked to town to buy a paper. How could the ruthless killer I read about in the papers, and the tender husband and father I saw at home, be the same man? Had love blinded me to this other side of Jesse? Or was he better than most at keeping the two sides of his nature segregated?

  Did everyone possess a light and dark nature? Did I?

  My instinct was to deny such a charge, but looking back over my life, I saw evidence that refuted my denial: I was an obedient, dutiful daughter, yet I had defied society’s conventions and my family to be with Jesse. I was an honest Christian woman, yet I had not hesitated to move to another city and live under an assumed name.

  I told myself I had no choice; a wife must follow her husband. But I was not a slave to Jesse. I could have refused to join him and found safe haven with my family.

  I had followed him willingly. Gladly. I welcomed the excitement of becoming a different person. I savored the sting of danger that heightened my senses and made me feel more alive.

  Love sealed me to Jesse, but something within me—the darker nature I had not admitted to before—had drawn me to him in the first place and made me a willing partner in the life he offered.

  My mother died on the morning of July 23, 1877, slipping quietly away from a morphine-induced slumber. My Uncle William James, the same who had joined Jesse and me in marriage, came over from Kearney to conduct the funeral, and my niece, Nannie, sang Amazing Grace in a voice so sweet and pure I felt I was in the presence of an angel.

  After the graveside service, the mourners gathered at Robert’s house to offer their condolences over plates of fried chicken and baked ham and coconut cake. I had little appetite, but made a show of eating to keep the older neighbor ladies from fussing.

  Esme was there, with Mr. Colquit, whom I’d once thought of as unfortunate, but whom I now saw as a man who’d been blessed with a good wife and seven beautiful children. The older ones from his first marriage had turned into fine young gentlemen, and from the looks of things, Esme was expecting again. She had the kind of life she had often talked of when we were girls.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, pulling me close in a hug. “Your mother was a dear woman, and I know you’re going to miss her.”

  I nodded, and tried to swallow past the tightness in my throat. “She always thought a great deal of you,” I said.

  “Walk with me?” Esme hooked her arm in mine, and led me toward the back door.

  Outside, the air surrounded us like a heavy quilt, hot and stifling. We headed for a grove of trees at the edge of the property, which offered the only shade and the faint promise of coolness. “How are you, really?” Esme asked.

  “I’m doing well,” I said. “Looking forward to the new baby.”

  “I miss having you close,” Esme said. “You were like a sister to me.”

  “I miss you, too, but you know you can write to me any time.”

  The faint lines around her mouth tightened, making her look older than her years. “It’s not the same, Zee. Not when I can’t even call you by your real name.”

  “It’s just a name. It doesn’t change who I am.”

  “But you have changed. Jesse’s changed you.”

  “No more than marriage ever changes a person,” I protested. “No more than Mr. Colquit has changed you.”

  She shook her head. “If anything, I’ve changed him. Since our marriage he dresses better and his manners have improved. He respects me and honors me by seeking my advice.” She lowered her voice, as if someone might overhear us even at this
distance from the house. “He tells me all the time that I’m smarter than him, and I never disabuse him of the notion.”

  “And you think Jesse doesn’t honor and respect me?”

  “All I know is that marriage always changes one partner more than the other. When I met Tony, he wasn’t the perfect husband for me, but I’ve made him into a man who more closely fits that ideal.”

  “I saw no need to change Jesse,” I said. “I love him the way he is.”

  Esme continued to look unhappy. “When we were girls, you were always so much more daring and outspoken than I,” she said. “I admired that spirit in you, even if sometimes you made me afraid. What happened to that brave girl?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Don’t you think living with a man who’s wanted by the law, living under a name not my own, is daring enough?”

  “I never thought you’d let yourself get caught in such an impossible situation,” she said. “I always thought you, of all women, had the power to make a man behave as he ought.”

  “Are you suggesting I’m responsible for Jesse’s behavior?” I asked. The idea was so absurd I wanted to laugh, but the mirth remained locked in my chest.

  “A woman is supposed to have a civilizing influence on a man,” she said.

  “First of all, Jesse is living an honest life now in Tennessee,” I said. “He’s turned his back on crime.”

  “Then why do you have to hide and pretend to be someone you’re not?”

  “Because there are people out there who want Jesse dead. Men who would hang him before he ever received a fair trial. Men who would shoot him in order to collect the reward money.”

  Esme looked doubtful. “There ought to be some way for you to live as an honest woman again.”

  “I am an honest woman!” I struggled to rein in my emotions. “And secondly, I wouldn’t want to live with a man who was so weak he would change on my say-so. Your husband may wear the shirts you pick for him and do the things you tell him, but Jesse has a mind of his own about such things and I’m glad of it. I want a man I can depend on, not another child to look after.”