The Woman Who Loved Jesse James Read online

  Yet for all our differences of gender and experience, I sensed in Jesse the same longing for adventure that stirred so often within me. As a man, he had found outlets for this spirit in war, while as an impoverished female, I was limited in my rebellions. Jesse had a wildness about him that drew me like a bee to honeysuckle.

  I became aware of the heat of his body seeping into mine, and of the thin layers of cotton between the hard lines of his form and the soft curves of mine. I had younger brothers; I knew what men looked like below the waist. I had grown up on a farm, one of eleven children—the details of mating and procreation were no real mystery to me.

  But lying so close beside a man, heat building within me that had nothing to do with fever, I was an adventurer into unknown territory. I craved Jesse’s touch, yet if he was incapable of touching me, I could not help but touch him.

  Hesitantly at first, then with increasing boldness, I skimmed my hand across his bandaged chest, down to the faintly ridged muscle of his stomach. I rested there a moment, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing, and the faint pulse beneath my fingers. Gaining courage, I moved my hand lower, across thighs hardened by hours on horseback.

  Jesse stirred and mumbled words I couldn’t understand. I stilled, heart pounding, scarcely daring to breathe. His arm reached around me, pulling me closer with surprising strength. My hand slipped, coming to rest between his thighs, finding evidence that in one respect at least, he was far from dead. I froze, appalled at what I had done, but powerless to undo it. I waited, feeling the heat and hardness of him, but he had lapsed into insensibility once more, his hold on me weakening.

  Slowly, careful not to disturb him, I eased from his grasp and out from under the covers. He continued to sleep peacefully. I thought he was less warm than before, and a fine sheen of sweat dampened his forehead. I returned to my chair and tucked my feet up once more, arms wrapped around my knees, as if I might hold in the whirlwind of emotion that rocked me. I felt giddy at my own boldness, yet bereft with the knowledge that the pleasure had been one-sided. Jesse had not known I had lain with him. He would have no memory of my hands on his body. Would he even want me if he were in his right mind? Had that kiss in the trees months ago meant anything at all to him, or was it a mere diversion, one of dozens—even hundreds—of such kisses he had bestowed in his roaming across the country?

  I wanted to believe in romantic notions of love and fate, but the South’s defeat and Mrs. Peabody’s banishment had stolen my trust in such fantasies. Jesse wasn’t a character in a book or a hero in a song. He was a real flesh and blood man. But I believed him to be a man of conviction, a man who had stood strong in battle. Would he be true to me as well—the kind of man I could truly depend upon?

  “Zee, is that really you?”

  Two days after Jesse was brought to our house, he looked up at me with clear eyes and spoke with a voice grown raspy with disuse. “Yes, it’s me,” I said, smoothing the covers over him. “Your mother and Frank brought you to our house two nights ago.”

  “I don’t remember . . . I don’t remember much after that bullet tore into me.” He wrinkled his brow, concentrating. “Archie was there.”

  “Yes. Your mother said he took care of you until she could get to you. How do you feel?”

  “Weak as a baby.”

  “You should eat something. Mother made broth. We didn’t have beef, but one of the neighbors brought some venison.”

  I started to rise, but he waved me back down. “Don’t go yet. Stay and talk to me a minute. Who knows I’m here?”

  “No one. My mother told people I was sick. I’ve been looking after you, so no one’s seen me to know different.”

  “You’re a better-looking nurse than Archie.” He smiled, a look that made my stomach quiver. “How many days has it been?” he asked.

  “You’ve been here two, but I don’t know how long before that you were shot. What happened?”

  “We rode right into a Union cavalry patrol. We were caught like a bear in a trap.”

  He tried to sit up, and I rushed to his side. “You shouldn’t move,” I cautioned. “You could start bleeding again.”

  His face had blanched with the effort, and I feared he might pass out again, but his grip on my arm was strong. “Prop me up, then. I think I could breathe better.”

  I did as he asked, bolstering him with pillows from the parlor sofa. He patted the bandages around his chest with one hand. “How bad’s the damage?”

  “The bullet left a good-sized hole. I imagine it bled a lot at first, and more after you were brought here, though it’s mostly stopped now. The bullet’s still in you. I guess the doctors thought it was too dangerous to try to take it out. You had a terrible fever and we feared infection, but that’s come down considerably now.” I swallowed hard, blinking at the tears that stung my eyes. “We were afraid you might die.”

  “I imagine I came close.” He smiled at me, but his expression sobered when he saw the tears that threatened. “Hey, now, don’t you cry over me. I’m going to be fine, thanks to your good care.”

  “I’ll get the broth,” I said, turning away. “You need to eat to keep up your strength.” And I needed a moment to get away from him, to regain my composure.

  He was still too weak to hold the spoon, so I fed him half a bowl of rich broth. “Ain’t this a sorry state?” he said as I wiped his chin with a napkin. “A grown man reduced to being fed like a baby.”

  “You’ll be stronger soon,” I said.

  “In the meantime, I can’t complain about the company.”

  My mother and father came in to see how our patient was doing, and banished me while they bathed him and checked his dressing. I took the opportunity to change into a fresh dress and a new hair ribbon. If my job was to include providing entertainment for Jesse as well as nursing, then I needed to look my best.

  He tired easily in those early days, but before the week was out he was able to sit up for longer periods, and to take a turn about the room, supported by my father or Thomas. By the next week, he refused to wear the borrowed nightshirt any longer and asked that his trousers and shirt be returned. The shirt had been burnt at the same time as his original bandages, but mother had cleaned and patched the trousers, and Thomas gave up one of his shirts to clothe his cousin.

  Thus attired, Jesse was able to leave his bed to sit on the parlor sofa, though he was still too weak to move much further. In any case, he couldn’t have gone far; Union militia were still active in the area, and not hesitant to punish their old enemies. Our family told no one of his presence with us; visitors were kept from the house by the convenient fiction that I was ill and not to be disturbed. Even Esme was turned away when she came to call, though I looked forward to the time when I could confide these adventures to her.

  When we were able to get a newspaper, Jesse asked me to read it to him. “My eyes hurt when I read too long,” he said. “And the sound of your voice is soothing.”

  So I read to him the news of the day: an account of James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok’s shootout with Davis Tutt, Jr. in Springfield; and discussions of the fight in Washington over whether or not to readmit Southern states to the Union.

  When we tired of reading, we talked, and in those quiet conversations we learned to know each other better—our hopes and ambitions, our secret fears and dreams. I learned that Jesse idolized his father, who had died when Jesse was only three; that he loved peach pie more than any other food; and that he both revered and resented his brother Frank, who had been both his teacher and his tormentor since childhood.

  He, in turn, discovered my tendency toward secret rebellion, such as hiding my mother’s recipe box when I knew she was determined to make the molasses pie I loathed; and my love of romantic poetry.

  In those hours of conversation or silent contemplation in one another’s company we fell in love. If that first kiss beneath the elm tree had been the thunder clap that woke me to his presence, those hours in my parents’ parlor were
a drenching rain that soaked me with longing for him to never leave me. I blossomed in his attentions, as if something inside of me, long locked away, had been set free and allowed to grow with his encouragement. With Jesse I was no longer Sister, one of too many children in a poor preacher’s family. I was Zee, the woman who had returned the light to Jesse’s eyes, who had the power to make him well.

  By his sixth week in our home, Jesse was much stronger. He ventured out of doors some, and even took short rides with Thomas, though he returned looking gray and in obvious pain. “He insisted on galloping,” Thomas said, helping Jesse to his parlor bed once more.

  “I’m not going to know what I can do unless I try,” Jesse said through gritted teeth.

  Despite mine and my mother’s insistence that he rest, he prowled the house and grounds like a stallion intent on breaking out of its stall. He carried full feed buckets and lifted logs over his head until the muscles of his chest and arms strained the seams of his shirt.

  He could have moved upstairs to share a room with Thomas, but his bed stayed in the parlor, pushed against one wall and piled during the day with his personal belongings: two pair of Colt’s Navy revolvers, a Henry rifle in leather scabbard, leather saddlebags, brass spurs, the Bible which he read each morning, and a sheaf of maps rendered on oilcloth. They were military maps he’d taken from a Union soldier. I assumed he’d killed the man, but never asked. In the evenings when Jesse had exhausted himself, he reclined on the bed and studied the maps, tracing the hatch-marked lines of railroads and the broad meanderings of rivers and sinuous courses of roads.

  “I can’t bear being laid up here while there’s so much work to be done,” he complained one evening as I sat on the sofa across from him, embroidering a pillowslip. “If I could sit a horse I’d be out there now, helping in the fight.”

  I set aside the pillowslip—meant to be part of my trousseau, which, like every young woman of my age I had been working on since childhood—and turned my attention to Jesse. “What fight?” I asked.

  “Just because the war’s over doesn’t mean the fighting’s done,” he said. “The North wants to take away everything—our farms and families and way of life. They’ve made us sign their oaths and give up our seats in the government and they expect us to lie down and take it. But we won’t let them get away with it.”

  His eyes flashed and his voice rose in anger. I shivered, glad I wasn’t on the receiving end of such ire. But it would be a long time before he was well enough to do any fighting, or to ride very far at all. Selfishly, I didn’t mind that he was slow to mend. I enjoyed our time together and was loathe to see it end.

  In August, a letter came from Aunt Zerelda, letting us know that she and Dr. Samuel had returned to their farm in Kearney. She ordered Jesse to join them. He read the letter through twice, then folded it and laid it on the table beside his cot in the parlor. “I don’t see how I can go home for several weeks yet,” he said.

  “We’re happy to have you stay as long as you like,” I said.

  “The time I’m with you passes pleasantly, anyway.”

  Our conversations continued, endless hours of words flowing effortlessly between us. Even Esme and I had not conversed so freely. We talked not about the war or his experiences with the guerrillas, but about ordinary things—the crops coming in, who was getting married or giving birth, who had died or moved away. We shared childhood memories, too. “Do you remember that time a few years back when we came to visit and I hid in the barn and launched dirt clods at you and your sisters when you walked past?” he asked.

  I laughed. “I’d just been allowed to wear my hair up and I was trying to be such a lady, but all I really wanted to do was to chase you down and make you say ‘uncle.’ I thought you were the most horrid little boy.”

  “And I thought you were beautiful. Being horrible was the only way I knew to get your attention.”

  “Did you really think that?” I asked, shy in the face of such flattery.

  “I did. I still do.”

  I wondered if he was thinking of kissing me again. I certainly wanted him to, but it was broad daylight and my mother and sisters were in the kitchen canning beans so there was no way we could risk it. But the way he looked at me, blue eyes as clear and deep as a mountain lake, was almost as good as a kiss, and had much the same effect, making me feel weak at the knees.

  “You’ve had an effect on me, Zee, and that’s no lie,” he said. “Ever since I kissed you at Lucy’s wedding, I’ve thought about you. I even dreamed you crawled into bed with me, here in this parlor. Does that shock you?”

  My face burned, but I shook my head. “That was no dream,” I said.

  “No?”

  “No.” I lowered my voice, fearful of being overheard. “It was the first night you were here. You were suffering horribly from fever and chills. I was afraid you’d injure yourself if I didn’t find some way to warm you.”

  He took my hand and squeezed it. “It was the best dream I’ve ever had. Would you consider doing it again, now that I’m sensible enough to enjoy it?”

  I caught my breath, scarcely believing what he was asking.

  He wrapped both his hands around mine. “I’d never ask you to do something you wouldn’t enjoy, but I can’t help thinking on these nights when I can’t sleep for the pain, how nice it would be to have you with me.”

  “How could I manage it?” I asked. He no longer needed anyone to sit up with him nights.

  “Sneak down here after the others are asleep.”

  I should have been appalled by the idea. Instead, I remembered how good it felt to be so close to him. “We might be caught.”

  “We won’t be. Not once in all these nights has anyone come down to check on me, though many times I couldn’t sleep and would have welcomed the company.”

  “All right. I’ll try to slip down tonight.” The thought of spending the night with him thrilled me as much as the idea of doing something so daring and outrageous.

  I took extra care washing before bed, and left my hair loose, then slipped under the covers to wait. I would have thought sleep would escape me, but I must have dozed, for when I woke moonlight streamed through my open window. The world was utterly silent; not even a cricket chirped. Careful not to wake Sallie, I crept to the window and peered out. No sign of sunrise on the horizon; morning was still hours away.

  I moved down the stairs on tip-toe, scarcely putting my weight on the treads. I’d expected to have to make my way to the parlor in the dark, but a faint glow guided me, and I found that Jesse had left a lamp on the table by his bed, turned down low.

  He waited to speak until I stood beside the cot. “I’d about given up on you,” he said.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “My watch is there by the lamp.” He rose up on one elbow and picked up the silver pocket watch and held it to the light. “It’s just after one.” He held back the covers. “We have plenty of time.”

  I slid in beside him and he pulled the covers over us and blew out the lamp. Darkness closed around us, shutting out the rest of the world and driving away some of my nervousness. The bed was narrow, and I had no choice but to lie pressed tight against him, but I made no protest. The sensation of his body pressed to mine thrilled me.

  “This is better than any dream,” he said, smoothing his hand down my back. “Thanks for coming down to keep me company.”

  I rested my head on his chest and closed my eyes. His heart beat strong and rapid as a military tattoo. “Do you often have trouble sleeping?” I asked.

  “Often enough.”

  I put my hand over the bandages that covered his wound. “Are you in much pain?”

  “It’s not the pain in my chest that bothers me so much as the pain in my heart.”

  I rose up to study him, trying to fathom his meaning from the look in his eyes. But the darkness swallowed up his features. “I don’t understand,” I said. “What pain?”

  “When I left home to ride with
the bushwhackers, I never thought about the danger,” he said. “I wanted adventure and glory, and for folks to be proud of me.”

  “We are proud of you,” I said. “All of us.”

  He patted my shoulder. “That means a lot. We had a lot of scary times, but we believed in the cause, in fighting for the South. We believed we could make a difference and that made it worth it. Even if it meant doing things I never thought I’d do.” His hand traced a path along my side, up and down. “Brutal, bloody things. Things I can’t begin to tell you.”

  “Is it those memories that keep you awake?” I asked.

  “Some, but it’s not so much what I did as what was done to me.” His hand stilled. “I left home a boy, believing nothing bad could ever happen to me, and I came home near a dead man. Knowing I almost died shook me to the core. It makes me wonder how much time any of us have left.”

  “But you didn’t die. And you won’t. Not for a long time.”

  “How can any of us say?”

  The desolation in his voice distressed me. I searched for some way to comfort him. “At Lucy’s wedding, you told me your destiny was to fight for the South,” I reminded him. “Doesn’t the fact that you survived prove God has more great things in store for you?”

  “All I know is, I feel the need not to waste any time. I want to take advantage of every opportunity that comes my way—whether it’s to right a wrong or to enjoy what time I can with you.”

  He pulled me to him and his mouth found mine. I responded as ardently as I knew how, pressing my lips to his with heated fervor, arching my body to him without shame. His hand on my hip steadied me, as his tongue urged my lips apart.

  His kisses grew bolder, and I grew bolder still in my response. I opened my mouth to him and twined my tongue with his, reveling in the taste and feel of him. All my hours of fantasy were nothing compared to the reality of this moment. To have him here with me, solid flesh and blood, when he had so nearly died, was reason enough to abandon caution and enjoy these new sensations without thought to consequences.