The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The weather had modified into a mild shower, the night sky grumbled in the east, runnels glittered in the street, somewhere a rooster crowed. Jesse lowered into a hickory rocker and Bob Ford took the mating chair. Bob saw his trousers drip rainwater as he bent forward over the candle and resettled, blowing cigar smoke in a gush. Jesse had nibbled off the end of his cigar but let the chew lump under his lower lip to induce drowsiness. It was almost one o’clock and he assumed correctly that a posse from Kansas City would have reached Glendale and begun an investigation.

Bob said, “I can’t believe I woke up this morning wondering if my daddy would loan me his overcoat, and here it is just past midnight and I’ve already robbed a railroad and scared the socks off some Easterners and I’m sitting in a rocking chair chatting with none other than Jesse James.”

“It’s a wonderful world,” said Jesse.

Bob’s cheeks collapsed when he sucked on the cigar and the button of gray ash absorbed him. “Have you ever heard outlaws call dollar bills ‘Williams’? I read that in Morrison’s Sensational Series. You see, Bill is a nickname for William.”

“I see.”

“You haven’t heard anybody say it though?”

“Can’t say so.”

“You know what I’ve got right next to my bed? The Trainrobbers, or A Story of the James Boys, by R. W Stevens. Many’s the night I’ve stayed up with my mouth open and my eyes jumping out

, reading about your escapades in the Wide Awake Library.”

“They’re all lies, you know.”

“ ’Course they are.”

Jesse carved cigar ash off with his thumbnail. “Charley claims you boys once lived in Mount Vernon.”

“Yep. Played in Martha Washington’s summerhouse, even made a toy of the iron key to that jail, the Bastille? Lafayette gave it to General George Washington and neither one of them ever guessed that Bob Ford would use the dang thing to lock his sisters up in the attic.”

Jesse eyed Bob and said, “You don’t have to keep smoking that if it’s making you bungey.”

Bob was relieved. He reached over the bannister and dropped the cigar into a puddle. It wobbled and canoed in the rain. “I was seven when we moved to Excelsior Springs. Everybody was talking about the sixty thousand dollars in greenbacks the James-Younger gang stole in Liberty. My Uncle Will lived close to you, over by Kearney—Bill Ford? Married Artella Cummins?”

“I know him.”

“How we did love to go over there for Sunday dinner and spend the afternoon getting the latest about the Jameses.”

Jesse searched his pockets and brought forth a cake of camphor that he rubbed over his throat. “You know what he also said? Charley said you once had a shoebox practically filled with James boys mementoes.”

Bob submerged his resentment and acrimony behind a misleadingly shy smile. “That must’ve been a couple of years ago.”

“Or maybe it was Bunny who did that.”

“You’re making sport of me, aren’t you.”

Jesse caught Bob’s wrist and put a finger to his lips in order to shush the boy, and then inclined out over the porch rail to inspect the composition of the night. He resettled and patiently rocked the chair on its complaining runners and then Bob saw a stooped man with a lunch pail tramping through the rainmuck of the street. He was Charles Dyerr, assistant foreman at the Western Newspaper Union and next-door neighbor to a man known only as J. T. Jackson. Dyerr would much later claim he rarely saw Jackson engage in gainful employment and guessed he was a gambler, just exactly the sort of man that Dyerr held in deepest contempt.

Jesse called out, “Evening, Chas!”

Dyerr glanced to the porch and changed the grip on his lunch pail. “J.T.”

“They’ve got you working late again.”

“James gang robbed another train.”

“You don’t mean it!”

Dyerr apparently felt he’d already spoken at compromising length, for he crossed up into his yard without another word.

Jesse called in his shrill voice, “If they put a posse together get me into it, will ya?”

They heard a woman speak as Dyerr opened the screen door and the man responded, “Just that so-and-so next door.”