“But you’re so pretty! I can’t help myself!”
Bob hollered hello to Dick but the man was inattentive. Wood slammed the kitchen door behind him. Bob rode into a barn stable and had removed most of his tack before he saw his brother Elias on his back under a borrowed McCormick reaper that was clotted with weeds.
“Howdy do!”
Elias smeared grease from his brow, a screwdriver in his left hand. “Here to work, Bob?”
“Well, I’ve been on the road and—”
“Didn’t think so,” his brother said, and continued with the machine.
Bob clomped into the farmhouse, saw Wood on the sofa frowning at no one in particular, and heaved the clothes bundle onto Martha’s bed downstairs. She and Clarence Hite and Charley sat in the kitchen at a round oak table that was wide as a pond. Clarence slouched in a chair with his socked feet on an upended basket and sawed at warts on his hands with a paring knife. Blood trickled down to rags that were tied around his wrists. Charley slumped over the table with his chin on his thumbs, his sunken eyes closed, his boots hooked around the rear legs of the chair as he listened to Martha read about him from an astrological almanac.
Bob said, “Howdy!” but there was no response.
Martha read: “July ninth. ‘Diligence, tact, a keen sense of responsibility, and a capacity for detail are your dominant traits. Your sense of duty is strong. You have poise and meet every situation calmly and resourcefully. Home means much to you in your daily existence.’ ”
Bob said, “Howdy!” a second time, but it appeared that snubbing the last-born was a custom his siblings still kept. Bob snuck over behind Martha as she distributed her long reddish hair away from her cheeks, and he idiotically pulled her apron bow through the slats of the chair. Martha fetched the ties with a nuisanced look at her kid brother, and with a smile as wide as a kazoo, Bob said, “I’m finally home!”
Martha riffled the almanac and said, “I’m real glad, Bob.”
Clarence said, “Read the birthday sayings for Jesse James.”
And Bob asked, “Do you want to know where I’ve been?”
Clarence said, “Read Jesse’s birthday.”
Bob uncinched his cartridge belt and holster and clattered them onto a counter. He smiled. “I’ve been to the Indian Territories.”
Martha asked, “What day was Jesse born on, Bob?”
“September fifth, eighteen forty-seven.” He swiveled a chair around and sat on it and scowled at Clarence Hite’s slashed fingers and the blood that cross-hatched his hands. “What are you doing, Clarence?”
“Skinning off warts.”
Martha read, “September fifth. ‘You are a person of quick and rash judgment, violent moods, and vast enthusiasm. Temper your emotions with poise and self-control. You are lively, always active, and fond of pleasure and the society of friends.’ ”
Clarence said, “That isn’t Jesse.”
Charley said, “Why, I was about to say the opposite! That’s him like he was sitting in that chair and sipping Doctor Harter’s Iron Tonic.”
Bob said, “Read mine.”
The girl, Ida, had come in from swinging and she moved over to the round oak table with an apple in her hand, the red peel corkscrewing from the pulp. She looked down with consternation and said, “Clarence! What—”
He interrupted to say he was skinning warts off, and Charley said, “He’s about twelve shy of a dozen in the smarts department, Ida. He’s about a half-bubble off level.”
Bob said, “Read January thirty-first, eighteen sixty-two.”
Martha flicked several pages without care about whether she tore the sheets. “For some reason I thought you were January twenty-ninth.”
“No. That’s Zerelda Samuels, Jesse’s momma. Eighteen twenty-five.”
The congregation in the room all looked at Bob strangely. Charley sniggered and then said, “Isn’t he something?”
Bob justified himself by saying, “I don’t try to remember those things; I just do.”
“January thirty-first,” Martha read, and Bob rocked forward so that the chair back rubbed the oak table. “ ‘You are kind, generous in judgments of others, and possess a discerning, artistic temperament. You are not afraid of hard work,’ ” (Charley hooted) “ ‘yet are easily disheartened by obstacles and temporary failures. Be firm in your resolves and keep trying.’ ”