The Woman Who Loved Jesse James Read online

  In late October, Major Price’s troops were defeated in the Battle of Westport and Confederate forces were driven from Missouri. Three days later, a Union Scout named Samuel Cox captured and murdered Bloody Bill. The rest of the guerrillas, including Jesse, were said to be on the run.

  That winter was the hardest we’d yet endured, with no word from Frank or Jesse and no sign of the war’s end. We ate a wild turkey my father shot for Christmas dinner. It was the first fresh meat we’d had in months. I made a duster out of the feathers and presented it to my mother, who gave me a pair of stockings she’d knit out of a vest of hers she’d unraveled.

  In January, word came down that Aunt Zerelda had been banished from the state, forbidden to live here on pain of death. She was staying in Nebraska with friends, and sent frequent letters declaring her hatred of the Northerners who would persecute an innocent woman so. My mother read the letters, then burned them in the stove, unwilling for their venomous words to taint our family by association.

  In April, the final blow came. General Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse. The Confederacy was dissolved and everyone was required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Union.

  Many did so gladly, anxious for peace and hopeful for a return to the prosperity we had known before the war. But our oaths were not enough for the federal troops who now descended upon our part of the state. These men went out of their way to take offense and to mete out punishment. It was as if the victor in a horse race had turned around and trampled the loser.

  Still, I was naïve enough to believe those I loved would be safe. My father had an excellent reputation as a man of God, and my mother was known for helping anyone who needed nursing or a hot meal, or assistance of any kind. I was no longer allowed to come and go as I pleased, without my father or brothers accompanying me. I chafed at these restrictions, but I recognized their sense. The Union men were a rough lot, and not to be trusted.

  But all my innocence was shattered on the day in May when my younger brother, Thomas, raced into the house, face flushed and eyes wide with excitement. “The militia men have taken Mrs. Peabody!” he shouted.

  I almost dropped the kettle of blackberries I’d just removed from the stove. “Taken her? Taken her where?” I asked.

  “It happened last night.” Thomas snatched a blackberry from a bowl on the table and popped it into his mouth. At eighteen, he was a charmer who could talk himself out of almost any trouble, and he was a favorite of my mother. “I heard folks talking about it in town just now.”

  “Who took her?” I asked. “And where did they take her?”

  “Some militiamen put her on a boat early this morning. Folks said they’d bloodied her nose and she was wearing nothing but her shimmy and a petticoat. They hung a sign around her neck that said “Confederate Whore.” He glanced at Mother, ready to dodge any blows she might mete out for using such language.

  But Mother was too distressed over his news to scold him. “Where was the Sheriff while all this was happening?” she asked, her expression grim.

  Thomas shrugged. “I guess he wasn’t there.”

  With trembling hands, I stripped off my apron and flung it to the floor. “I have to go see,” I said.

  “Sister, no!”

  But I ignored my mother’s words, running out of the house and down the road toward Mrs. Peabody’s cabin. Tears blinded me as I ran, the horror of my friend’s disgrace filling my head.

  Ever since President Lincoln’s assassination the month before, times had been hard as ever on anyone who formerly sided with the South. Groups of men—former Union soldiers and militiamen—had taken it upon themselves to punish those they deemed not sufficiently loyal to the Union. But why would they attack a defenseless woman who had never harmed a soul?

  By the time I reached the cabin my side ached and my hair had come undone. Before I even entered the yard I saw that the jasmine arbor had been pulled from the porch, and the front door hung loose from its hinges. I heard footsteps pounding behind me and turned to see Thomas. “I figured I’d better come with you,” he said.

  I nodded, grateful for his company in the eerie silence of this once-familiar cabin. Slowly, we walked up onto the porch and into the house. Broken pottery littered the front room, the remains of a tea set that had once held pride of place in a corner cupboard. Furniture was overturned, the drapes ripped from the windows. In the kitchen, sugar crunched under our feet and flour drifted over everything like lime dust.

  Thomas stepped into the bedroom first, then blocked the doorway. “Don’t go in there, Sister,” he said. His face was pale, but he was doing his best to be manly.

  I shoved him aside and stepped into a scene of more chaos. The bedclothes were dragged to the floor, the dressing table mirror shattered. The silver dresser set Mrs. Peabody had prized was gone, along with a blown-glass bird that had been a gift from Mr. Henry.

  Only when I had absorbed these things did I recognize the other, more grisly evidence of what had happened here—the things Thomas had tried to keep me from seeing. Frayed rope hung from the four posts of the bed, knotted, then cut with a knife, as if someone had been tied there. Rusty stains flecked the linens of the bed, along with a single muddy print from a man’s boot. I turned away, fresh sobs escaping as my imagination filled in the story behind these ugly details.

  Thomas took my arm and led me back onto the porch. The swing had been chopped to splinters, so we sat side by side on the top step. He gave me his handkerchief and I struggled to control my sobs. “What else did people in town say happened?” I asked. “Tell me everything.”

  “There’s nothing else to tell,” he said. “They said she was put on the boat at dawn, so the militiamen must have come here some time during the night.”

  “Why wasn’t Sheriff Henry here?” I wailed. “They wouldn’t have dared do this if he’d been here to stop them.”

  “He didn’t usually spend the night here,” Thomas said. “Not all night, anyway.” His cheeks burned. “Leastways, that’s what I heard.”

  So Henry had been safe at home in his own bed while his lover was abused and driven out of town in disgrace. Mrs. Peabody had said the moments of pleasure she enjoyed were worth the moments of pain—but surely not this much pain.

  “What did Henry do when he found out about this?” I asked.

  “I don’t guess he did anything. Nobody mentioned it.”

  If he loved her, why hadn’t he gone after her? Why hadn’t he raised a posse to hunt down the men who had done this? How could he claim to love her, yet do nothing to avenge her? Was his reputation worth more to him than the woman he loved?

  The cruelty of the answer to that question showed me the kind of man he really was. No matter that he was the Sheriff and a veteran of the war; Henry had been weak. He’d professed to love Mrs. Peabody, but hadn’t had the strength of his convictions to stand by her in her time of need.

  While Mrs. Peabody had loved enough to give up whatever her life had been, to move here and live alone under the censure of her neighbors, Mr. Henry’s feelings had not moved him to raise even a word of protest in her defense.

  One night not too many weeks later, her old cabin burned to the ground. Six months later Mrs. Henry, who was apparently not so much of an invalid after all, gave birth to a son, named Thomas Wayne Henry, Jr.

  And still I had no word from Jesse.

  The summer dragged on long and hot. I vowed to no longer think of Jesse. What was he to me but a boy I had kissed once?

  But Jesse was a man I could not ignore. Though I banished him from my thoughts during my waking hours, he visited my dreams—as an avenging angel robed in white, or a laughing man who lobbed dirt clods at my skirt, then caught me up in his arms and kissed me until I was breathless.

  Then Jesse came back into my life, not as the avenging angel I’d dreamed of, but as a ghost of a man who frightened me more than anyone ever had.

  Chapter Three

  He arrived on the night train, born o
n a stretcher carried by his mother and his brother, Frank. Under cover of darkness, they brought him to our house, where they were met with many tears and cries of alarm.

  Already in bed, I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders and raced down the stairs to discover the cause of such commotion. Then I saw Jesse laid out on the floor of the kitchen, swathed in blankets, his face pale as death, unmoving. I gasped, and stumbled back, into the arms of my Aunt Zerelda. “No need to take on,” she said briskly. “Your cousin lives. Despite the graveness of his injuries, the Lord has spared him.” There was a note of pride in her voice, as if she had personally charged the Lord with keeping her favorite son alive, and knew that even the Almighty would not dare cross her. “I’ve brought him here where he can safely mend.”

  “What makes you think he’ll be safe here?” my mother asked. Her face was pinched, the lines on her pale forehead deeper as she struggled to face her sister-in-law’s glare. “What if the soldiers followed you here?”

  “No one followed me,” Zerelda said. “And he’ll be safe because I trust you to have sense enough not to tell anyone he’s here. Carry him into the parlor,” she barked at Frank. “And someone find him a bed.”

  Mother hesitated. I knew she didn’t like Zerelda ordering her around, yet she wouldn’t turn away a dying man. “Thomas, bring your bed down and set it up well away from the window,” she ordered. “You can make a pallet on the floor until Jesse is well. Sister, tear some fresh bandages—but first, fetch me a good handful of rosemary from the garden. And strip as many leaves as you can carry from the black walnut tree and bring them to me.”

  With shaking hands I lit a lantern and carried it into the yard. The moon was a silver sliver overhead and the stars shown like shards of glass. Dew wet my bare feet and soaked the hem of my nightrail as I made my way to the garden. I’d forgotten to bring a knife, so I ripped handfuls of rosemary from the herb bed, filling the air with the sharp, astringent aroma. Then I hurried to the black walnut tree and filled my shawl with the long, narrow leaves.

  I deposited the greenery in two bowls my mother had set out on the kitchen table, and covered them with boiling water from the kettle on the stove. The rosemary infusion would be used to clean the wound, then a poultice would be made from the black walnut to draw out infection. The herbs steeping, I raced to the parlor, where my brother and father were reassembling the bed. I joined my mother and Aunt Zerelda at Jessie’s side. They had peeled back the blankets and unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a corset of blood-soaked bandages around his torso. I must have gasped, alerting the women to my presence, for my mother looked up and said, “Go away, Sister. We don’t need you here.”

  “No. She should stay,” Aunt Zerelda said. “She can help you nurse him. It’s not safe for me to stay here and you’ll need her help.” She thrust a section of old sheet at me. “Start tearing bandages.”

  I bit at the linen to start a tear, then ripped a long strip of bandage, forcing my eyes to remain fixed on Jesse. The women gently cut away layers of linen, revealing an angry hole on the right side of his chest. He groaned and I flinched, at the same time rejoicing at this sign of life. “What happened?” I asked.

  “He was shot through the lung by a Union Patrol,” Zerelda said. “His friend, Archie Clement, cared for him and got word to me.” She pointed to a second scar very close to the first. “This isn’t the first time he’s been wounded,” she said. “He was shot last summer in a skirmish with the Missouri militia.” Rather than expressing dismay at the injury to her son, Zerelda sounded pleased at this evidence of her son’s bravery.

  My mother laid a hand across Jesse’s forehead. “His fever’s high,” she said.

  “The train trip was hard on him.” Zerelda discarded the last of the bloody bandages. “But he’s strong. If he was going to die from this, he would have done so before now.”

  I could tell my mother didn’t share Zerelda’s optimism, but she kept silent. She went to the kitchen and returned with the steeping rosemary and clean rags, and began to swab Jesse’s wound. He opened his eyes, their blue darkened almost to violet, but he gave so sign of recognition of any of us.

  Aunt Zerelda stuffed the bloody bandages and Jesse’s blood-stained shirt into the parlor stove and struck a match. They burned red and orange behind the isinglass stove door. Mother handed the bowl and rags to me. “Keep cleaning the wound while I make a poultice,” she said.

  I knelt beside the pallet, and gingerly touched the wet rag to the edge of the wound. Even through the cloth I could feel the heat radiating from Jesse. The smell of putrid flesh and fever-sweat overpowered even the camphor smell of the herb, and I swallowed hard, determined to keep control of my feelings.

  The man who had kissed me last fall had been broad-chested and muscular. This Jesse was wasted away to skin and bones, the outline of each rib clearly visible beneath his blue-white skin. His chest scarcely moved with each shallow breath, and fresh blood bubbled from the wound with each swipe of my cloth.

  My mother returned with the poultice and Aunt Zerelda moved from the fire to help with the job of bandaging it in place. The bed was together now, and I helped Thomas spread it with fresh sheets and blankets. Then the women sent the rest of us from the room while they bathed their patient and dressed him in a clean nightshirt of my father’s.

  When I returned, Jesse was in bed, covers pulled to his chin like a little boy tucked in for the night.

  “Where’s Frank?” Thomas asked.

  “He left already,” Zerelda said. She sat on the edge of the bed and sponged Jesse’s face with cool water. “He couldn’t risk being seen here. I have to go, too.” With obvious reluctance, she stood. “Someone should stay with him tonight,” she said. “To make sure he doesn’t become delirious from the fever.”

  “I’ll stay,” I said. I knew I wouldn’t sleep if I returned to my bed. And I welcomed the chance to be alone with Jesse, to discover if my feelings for him were merely fantasies engendered by a single kiss, or something more.

  I was left with a single lamp burning low on a table by the parlor door and the admonition to wake my mother if Jesse took a turn for the worse. My father knelt beside the bed and said a long prayer for healing, to which we all echoed “Amen,” then Aunt Zerelda vanished into the night after Thomas and the others trooped upstairs.

  I pulled a chair close beside the sick bed and studied Jesse’s face in the dim light. Several days’ growth of sandy beard made him look older than he had before, or maybe it was the lines of pain around his eyes that added a maturity beyond his eighteen years. His hair had grown long in the months he’d been away, curling up at the collar, dark gold against the whiteness of the pillow case.

  He slept poorly, each breath coming in an anguished gasp that made my throat ache. The fire had burned out and despite the summer’s heat the room felt cold. I wrapped my shawl more tightly around my shoulders and drew my bare feet up under my nightrail, my eyes never leaving Jesse. I had never seen a person die before, and I was terrified he would be the first. How could I bear to lose him when I had only just begun to know him?

  Yet how could a man live with such a wound?

  For several hours nothing happened. Jesse slipped into a deeper sleep and I felt some of my tension ease. I even dozed, sitting up in my chair, but was awakened by a moaning and the rattle of the metal legs of the bed against the floor.

  Jesse had thrown off the blankets, and thrashed about so wildly I feared he would fall out of bed and injure himself further. “Shhhh. Shhh.” I rushed to his side, and pressed his shoulders against the mattress. He quieted some at my touch and stared at me with wide, uncomprehending eyes. “C . . . c . . . cold,” he groaned, his jaw clenched against the shivers that rattled his frame.

  I pulled the blankets over him once more, but still he shook. The fever burned and I tried to cool it with wet compresses. But any coolness they offered disappeared almost immediately. His body, so wracked with pain and loss of blood, shook uncontrollably, his te
eth chattering.

  Desperate to ease his suffering, I searched the room for more blankets, but there were none. I could start a fire in the stove, but I’d have to go outside to fetch wood, and I dared not leave him alone in his condition. I could fetch my mother, but again—how could I leave him?

  I put a hand to his chest, trying to hold him still, and felt the dampness of fresh blood seeping through the bandage. If I couldn’t keep him still and get him warm again I feared he would bleed to death, or the life left in him would simply burn up.

  On winter nights when ice formed in the bowl on our dresser and the heat from the kitchen stove had no chance of warming our attic room, my sister Sallie and I would huddle together beneath the covers, drawing on each other’s warmth until we were able to settle into sleep in each other’s arms. What other way did I have to keep Jesse warm now?

  Scarcely pausing to consider the audacity of what I was doing, I folded back the blankets and slipped into the narrow bed beside him. Pulling the covers over us both, I wrapped my arms and legs around him and held him close. His skin burned and he continued to shiver, but I closed my eyes and held on tightly, murmuring soothing nonsense beneath my breath.

  After a very little while, he grew calmer. The tension drained from his muscles and his breathing became more shallow as he slipped back into sleep. I tried to leave him then, but he clung to me with a fierceness that belied his weakened condition. “Don’t leave me,” he whispered, a plea that held me as surely as his grasp.

  I would have to extricate myself somehow before the rest of my family awoke, but for now I was content to stay with him. I rested my head in the hollow of his shoulder and listened to the reassuring beat of his heart. Anyone coming upon us might have assumed it was a commonplace matter for me to share a bed with a man I scarcely knew. How was it that I could be so at ease with Jesse, who was a stranger to me in spite of our family connection?