The Woman Who Loved Jesse James Page 21

  “What if you run into Sheriff Endicott?”

  “What if I do? I’ll greet him like an old friend.”

  “An old friend who disappeared overnight. Don’t you think he’ll find that suspicious?”

  “People move all the time for one reason or another. I’ll explain that your mother was ill and we had to rush to see her.”

  Jesse! It’s not right for you to use my mother as an alibi when she isn’t even here to give her approval or not.”

  “Then I’ll use my mother. It doesn’t matter. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

  Over the next few months, letters and accusations flew back and forth between Jesse and Mr. Johnson and the various lawyers on either side of the argument. The trial was finally set for June, and Jesse and Frank prepared themselves. Frank, as B.J. Woodson, had agreed to testify in Jesse’s defense. Annie and I fretted, but were ignored.

  Then, a letter arrived from Jesse’s lawyer, telling him that the case had come before the judge on May 30th, and because Mr. Howard was not present, the ruling had gone in favor of Mr. Johnson. He would not be required to pay anything to Jesse.

  Apparently the letter informing Jesse of the change of date for the trial had gone astray.

  The failure hit Jesse hard. “I was robbed,” he declared. “As surely as if Johnson stuck a gun to my head.”

  “It’s a legal robbery,” Frank said. “The court ruled against you, so there’s nothing you can do now.”

  “I could go over there and threaten to kill Johnson if he doesn’t return my money,” Jesse said.

  “Then you’d end up in jail for sure, and probably hanged,” Frank said. “And once the authorities started digging around in your business, they’d likely find out about me and arrest me as well. So if you’ve got any sense left in your head at all, you’ll forget about it and get on with your life.”

  Jesse was smart enough to acknowledge the wisdom of his brother’s advice, but accepting this loss was a bitter pill that didn’t go down easily. He’d struck back at every other failure in his life. When Union militia attacked his family, he fought back by joining the bushwhackers and wreaking havoc. When the Union used his past to deny him his full citizenship rights, he retaliated by robbing banks and trains controlled by Union businessmen. Even Northfield, a grand failure for the James/Younger gang, had been a kind of personal triumph for Jesse and Frank. They’d made it safely home against impossible odds, and thumbed their noses once more at the many lawmen who pursued them.

  The loss of $56 to Mr. Johnson was a less-public failure, but one that stung more than most. Jesse had tried by honest means to earn his living and provide for his family and ended up at the mercy of the law he had spent so much of his life flaunting. More than the loss of money, the blow to his pride cut deep.

  He was no longer Jesse James, the famous outlaw, fleeing in a hail of bullets and living to fight another day, but Dave Howard, ordinary citizen, whose downfall was scarcely worth a mention in the local paper—a man who tomorrow would be remembered by no one.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In July, I turned 33 years old, though I felt years older. Jesse presented me with a narrow-brimmed felt hat, trimmed with a cockade of feathers, and a pair of yellow kid gloves. “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” he said, and kissed my cheek.

  I found and held his gaze. “Thank you, dear, but the very best gift you could give me requires no money or wrappings.”

  “Oh?” He cocked one eyebrow in amusement. “And what would that be?”

  “It would be for you to come to my bed tonight and make love to me.”

  His cheeks pinked. “After your ordeal this winter, I’m not sure that’s wise.”

  “I’m all well now, Jesse. And I miss you.” I grasped both his lapels and pulled him close. “I want to be a wife to you again.”

  He smoothed his hands down my arms. “I’ve missed you, too,” he said. “But maybe you ought not risk having another baby. After I almost lost you . . .”

  “Hush.” I covered his mouth with my fingers. “There’s no reason to think another baby would endanger me again. Or that I couldn’t have other healthy children. What happened was horrible, but it doesn’t have to happen again.”

  His face twisted, as if in pain. “I just don’t know if we should risk it.”

  “Don’t make me beg, Jesse.” My voice trembled, and I feared I might ruin the moment by suddenly bursting into tears. I slid my hands beneath his coat, across his broad chest, down toward a stomach that showed no sign of a paunch. With no hesitation or shame, I moved my hands lower, to his trousers, beneath the gun belt slung there, under the waistband of his drawers. I brushed the tip of his erection, and a thrill raced through me at this evidence of his desire for me.

  He grasped my wrist and pulled my hand away. “I can’t hardly think when you do that.”

  “You don’t need to think,” I said. “Just act.” I stood on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “It will be all right, I promise.”

  If Tim wondered why we insisted he go to bed early that night, he made no protest. He’d had a busy afternoon, accompanying Jesse to the barber and the bootblack, then taking a long ride into the countryside. I wasn’t sure if Jesse was trying to tire the boy out or work off his own frustration, but never mind. The result was the same: Tim was asleep within minutes of saying his prayers and crawling under the covers, and Jesse and I retired to our bedroom and shut the door.

  We moved tentatively together, almost like strangers, each fearful of giving offense. Jesse’s hands shook as he unfastened my gown, and in my hurried clumsiness I tore a button from his trousers. He turned the lamp low and we crawled beneath the sheets, and for a long moment merely held each other, catching our breaths, letting some of the urgency recede, enjoying the feel of being in each other’s arms once more.

  Jesse was usually the impatient one when it came to our lovemaking, but this night he waited for me to make the first overture. I began to kiss his neck, tasting the salt of his sweat and the sweetness of the talcum powder the barber had used. I traced my tongue along the hollow of his collar bone, and down to the twin indentations on his chest, where bullets had long ago marked him, one still buried within his body.

  He smoothed his hands down my back, and twined his fingers in my hair as I continued to map his body with my mouth, laying a trail down his ribs and along the ridged muscle of his abdomen, delving into the indentation of his navel.

  Before I could go further, he grasped my arms and dragged me up his body, silencing my half-hearted protests with a long, quenching kiss. I clung to him, savoring the return of a passion I’d feared lost.

  His hands roamed my body, soothing and stroking, tracing each curve and hollow as if reassuring himself everything was as he remembered. He cupped my bottom, then gently squeezed, his smile as wicked and devilish as any he had flashed at me in his younger years. “Are you ready to go for a ride, sweetheart?” he asked.

  “I’ll ride with you anywhere, darling. You know that.”

  Then he lifted my hips until I was straddling him, his erection hard against my entrance. “You set the pace,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You won’t hurt me,” I said, and proved it by spearing myself over him. The sensation of him inside me after so many months’ absence was enough to bring joyful tears to my eyes. I tightened around him and was rewarded by the dazed look that came over him, and the smile that curved his lips.

  Then I began to move, rising above him, then sinking into him once more. He grasped my hips and fixed his gaze on my face, his blue eyes almost violet in the dim light. I began to feel a little self-conscious, with him watching me so intently, and closed my own eyes in order to shut out his stare.

  He moved his hands to my breasts, hefting them in his palms, toying with the nipples. Any semblance of self-control I had left vanished with these movements, and I came with a loud cry.

  Jesse grasped my hips firmly, and began to thrust more s
trongly beneath me. I realized he must have been waiting for me, and it made me wonder how he’d dealt with his needs in the months we’d been apart.

  But these thoughts vanished as his climax shuddered through us both. He bucked hard beneath me, and I tightened my thighs around him to keep from being thrown off the bed. Then he wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close, crushing me against his chest until I could scarcely breathe. “God, Zee, I’ve missed you,” he whispered, his voice roughened, as if by tears. “I’ve been so alone without you.”

  I had scarcely left his side in all these bitter months, but I knew exactly what he meant. Grief and pain had wrapped us each in dark cloaks, shutting out each other and everyone else. Not even our love for each other had been able to penetrate those veils. But tonight I felt them rip asunder. Jesse had come back to me, and I would never let him leave me again.

  By November I was certain I was pregnant again. My joy was restrained by fear, and I saw the same uncertainty in Jesse’s eyes. While I dealt with my doubts by praying and endeavoring to focus on each positive sign of a normal pregnancy, Jesse coped by ignoring my condition altogether. He never spoke of the baby or my approaching confinement, and went about his business as if nothing at all had changed.

  During this time, he spent much of his time at tracks around the country, indulging his passion for horse racing. He owned several racehorses either outright or in part, and they had won races at Hot Springs, Arkansas; Monegaw Springs, Missouri; Saratoga Spring, New York; and Long Branch, New Jersey. He and Frank regularly visited with breeders in Kentucky and Virginia, appraising new stock.

  Newspaper reports about the James Gang often commented on the horses they rode. The fine thoroughbreds stood out amongst the work-worn nags and plow-horses more commonly seen. The sheriff’s deputies and civilian posses who pursued the gang after a robbery were never able to keep up with Jesse and his men’s swifter mounts.

  Jesse talked about his horses the way some men talked about their children, going on at length about the merits of Tadpole or Jim Malone or Jim Scott—all horses he had raced at one time or another.

  Several years earlier, he had acquired a new favorite, a black gelding named Skyrocket. The horse was a frequent winner at the track. When he retired from racing, Jesse brought Skyrocket home to our stables and made him a favorite saddle horse. He fed the horse treats of apples or carrots and groomed him until he shone. I chalked up this attachment as proof of the softer side of my husband few people ever saw, but I wasn’t prepared when he came home one day with a flat, paper-wrapped package under his arm. He kissed me on the cheek and deposited the package on the table.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Is it a present?” Tim asked hopefully.

  “It’s a painting I commissioned.” Jesse took out a pocket knife and cut the twine that held the paper in place, then removed the wrappings to reveal an oil painting of a horse.

  “It’s Skyrocket!” Tim exclaimed.

  Jesse held the painting at arm’s length and admired it. A small brass plaque at the bottom identified the horse, shown in profile standing beneath a tree, as Skyrocket. “It looks just like him, doesn’t it?” Jesse said.

  “What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

  “I thought I’d hang it in the front parlor. Tim, fetch me the hammer.”

  Tim retrieved the hammer from the back porch and followed his father into the front room. A few second later, I heard hammering.

  I turned back to the bread I was kneading, relieved. I’d been half afraid Jesse would want to hang the picture in our bedroom. It was one thing to have a horse vying for my husband’s attention during the day; I didn’t welcome the same sort of competition at night.

  Several weeks after the portrait of Skyrocket arrived, Jesse discovered my scrapbooks. Not that I had ever tried to hide them from him; he had seen me cut out articles from the papers many times, but I suppose he never gave any thought to what I did with them. And I’d never thought to show him the two volumes I’d collected before we were married—accounts of every crime attributed to him, as well as various re-tellings of his and his brother’s other activities.

  “What are these?” he asked, bringing the stack of books into the parlor, where I was sewing, and setting them on the table beside me.

  “Those are my scrapbooks,” I said, focusing on inserting tiny stitches into the hem of a receiving gown. Normally, the scrapbooks resided in the blanket chest at the end of our bed. “What were you looking for in the chest?”

  “That bearskin coat I bought last winter. Have you seen it?”

  “It’s hanging in the closet in the children’s room. What do you want with it in July?”

  “I think I left some gold coins in the pocket.” He pulled a chair up to the table and opened the first scrapbook. “What do you do with these?”

  Evenings when he was away, I enjoyed turning through the pages, re-reading accounts of daring getaways and exciting exploits. Even the negative articles held a tone of admiration, while the most flattering portrayed Jesse as a hero of the common man, a kind of Robin Hood exacting revenge upon crooked railroads and banks.

  “They’re all articles about you.” I continued to sew, but I watched him out of the corner of my eye. Would he be upset that I’d kept these things? By tacit agreement, we never talked of what he did while he was away from home.

  Each time he returned, it was with a polite fiction. “I got a good price on a hundred bushels of wheat in St. Jo,” he’d say. “I made a good profit.” Or “I lucked onto a sale of cattle that netted me a good paycheck.” Whether he thought I really believed these explanations for a new influx of cash into his pockets or he merely shared them as a way of keeping in practice, or in case someone overheard, I never knew.

  His eyes scanned the articles. “All the annals of romantic crime furnish no parallel to the exploits of Missouri’s bold rovers,” he read, then chuckled. “John Edwards always had a way with words. The news business could use more like him.”

  He turned more pages, stopping now and again to read through a clipping. “He robs from the rich and gives to the poor,” he read, then added, “Tell me what outlaw in his right mind would bother robbing from the poor?”

  At last he came to a series of blank pages—the end of my collection. The last clipping was dated almost two years previous. He stared at it a long moment. “I guess everybody’s forgotten about old Jesse James by now,” he said, and closed the book.

  I looked at him sharply, something in his tone putting me on guard. “Everyone but the police and Pinkertons and all the people who’d like to collect the reward money the government and railroads have offered,” I said. “Those rewards still stand—that money is there waiting for someone to collect it.”

  He looked unconcerned. “The lawmen must be getting bored without the James brothers to chase after.”

  “Then let them stay bored,” I said.

  “Too much sedentary living isn’t good for a man,” he said. “It makes him feel old before his time.”

  I watched him walk away, a cold chill in the pit of my stomach. Yes, our life now was mundane in many respects. And I hated being so far from family and old friends. But as Mr. and Mrs. Howard we were safe. Though Jesse still slept with a loaded gun on the night stand, I had stopped feeling it was necessary. Money was scarce at times, but it seemed little enough to pay for peace of mind we hadn’t known in years.

  For a while my father had farmed, and he’d taught me about seeds. Some could be freely sewn in fresh-tilled ground and would sprout almost immediately. But others required scarring with a file or soaking with water before they would grow and bear their fruit.

  Jesse was like those tougher seeds, unable to flourish if left undisturbed. He needed to be bruised and battered in order to really live. Fighting for him was as natural as breathing. I could only stand on the sidelines and watch, and pray that he wouldn’t destroy himself, and me in the process.

  June
17, 1879 Mary Susan James was born. Jesse was at a horse sale in Kentucky when I delivered. I think he planned the trip, knowing my time was near and unable to bear the thought of seeing me suffer as I had before. A neighbor stayed with me and looked after Tim until the doctor came, but my labor was uneventful. Mary was born healthy, wailing lustily and clawing at the air—her father’s daughter, determined to seize all life had to offer.

  When Jesse returned the next day, Tim greeted him at the door. “I have a new little sister,” he said proudly.

  “You do?” Jesse picked the boy up and balanced him on his hip. “Then we’d better go see her.”

  Jesse held his daughter as if she was fashioned of spun sugar, his eyes locked to hers, studying every detail of her tiny face. “She’s beautiful,” he said at last. He glanced at me. “She looks like her mother.”

  Mary had my dark hair and eyes, but her father’s upturned nose and slightly cleft chin. “Now you have another woman in your life,” I teased him.

  He stroked her cheek with the tip of one finger. “Don’t worry, little one,” he whispered. “Your papa will always take care of you.”

  For the next few weeks, Jesse returned to the role of devoted family man. He spent hours with Tim, reading to him, or riding with the boy in front of him on the saddle. In the evening, he would rock Mary to sleep, then sit with her in his arms, studying her as if she was a rare treasure, memorizing every detail of the curve of her cheek or the tilt of her nose. When she woke in the night, he would get her and bring her to me so that she could nurse. There in the darkness, the two of us would talk as we hadn’t since our courting days—of memories we shared, and of our hopes and dreams for the future. Our lives were so intertwined, it was difficult for me to remember a time when we had not been together, and impossible for me to picture a future without him.

  “I’ve been thinking about going out West,” he said one early morning when Mary had awakened us with her cries.