The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Bob straddled the tank and then hopped to the dirt. Drops of tank water pocked the earth where the cattle had churned it soft. Bob swatted the dust from his union suit and started to climb into it but Dick said, “Why don’t you burn that instead,” and Bob bunched it and surrounded himself with the towel.

Dick said, “Let me ask you this: did Jesse mention that me and Cummins were in cahoots?”

“Is that so?”

Dick smiled. “Oh dear. I’ve went on and said too much.”

“Who else is partners with you two?”

“You’ll just go and squawk about it to Jesse.”

“Ed Miller?”

“He’ll cut our throats if he finds out. You don’t know him like I do. You do Jesse dirt, you connive behind his back, he’ll come after you with a cleaver.”

“He can be spiteful, can’t he?”

“Ho. You’re darn tootin’.”

Bob cleaned between his toes with the towel and said, “Don’t see why he’d give a dang since he and Frank’ve called it quits and scattered the James gang hither and yon.”

Dick assayed Bob’s countenance for clues about what he understood or withheld but saw neither cunning nor deception. “Boy, you are slow as peach mold, you know that? Tucker Bassham’s already gone for ten years and Whiskeyhead Ryan’s in jail; soon as one or the other feels the urge he can give the government all he knows about Jesse and then go out on the street scot-free. Jesse don’t want us giving ourselves up and he don’t want us getting caught and he don’t want us gathering loot except if he’s in charge.”

The two heard a gate creak and saw big Wilbur strew a shock of garden corn stalks into a feed trough next to the barn. He doused the stalks with salt water from a tea kettle in order to lure the milk cows, and then seemed inclined to visit his shivering younger brother. But Bob shook his head in the negative and Wilbur changed his mind and maundered across the yard to the kitchen, banging the tea kettle with his knee. It was near dusk and the weather had cooled and Bob wanted a coat, but instead he asked, “So what’re you three cahoots cooking up?”

“Don’t know that I should say.”

“Much loot in it?”

“Thousands and thousands of dollars.”

“I don’t want to wheedle the dang news from you, Dick.”

“How about let’s leave it a mystery and then we won’t neither one of us regret our little chat.”

Bob clamped the tile brush with his teeth and crossed his eyes at Dick in a measure of exasperation, then clutched the towel around himself and reached down for his holster. Dick pinned it with his boot. “Let me carry your six-gun for you, Bob.”

Because of the brush in his mouth, Bob’s “All right” came out “Awri.” And he had taken no more than two strides toward the house when he felt Dick cuddle to him with the cold revolver insisted under the towel and blunt against his scrotum. Bob let the brush drop and shrank a little from the ice of the nickel barrel. He said, “Feeling lonely, are you, Dick?”

“You and me, we horse around and josh each other with lies and tomfoolery, but now and then we need to get down to brass tacks. Which is: you so much as mention my name to Jesse, I’ll find out about it, you better believe that. And then I’ll look you up, I’ll knock on your door, and I will be mad as a hornet, I will be hot.”

“You be careful with that iron.”

Dick removed the revolver and smacked it into Bob’s leather holster. He walked beside Bob. “You know where I stand on these matters and that’s all there is to it. We can be friendly as pigs from now on.”

“Could be I’ll never see Jesse again.”

Dick drew the screen door wide for Bob and restricted it with his shoulder as he pried his boots off on a mud-caked iron jack. He said, “Oh no. I’ve got a hunch about it. Jesse will come a courtin’ Ed and Jim and me, and then he’ll find himself in the neighborhood and call on them two Ford brothers. Jesse don’t miss much. He has a sixth sense.”

Inside, cooking smells maneuvered through the house: cow liver, sweet potatoes, stewed onions, cabbage—scents that were as assertive as colors. Dick moved sock-footed into the kitchen, bumped Clarence aside, tendered Martha’s rump with his hand and removed it before she could skirt from him, and spoke heartily to the assembled. Bob went to his sister’s bedroom, where he ripped the brown shop paper from his clothes and dressed in his new white underwear. Over Martha’s chiffonier was a square mirror that he could tilt to admire himself from toe to topknot, and he’d just noted his cowlicked, straw-wild, ginger brown hair when an intuition sickened him and he rushed the stairs to the room overhead, where Wood and Charley were rooting through his mementoes. The shoebox was crushed, newspaper clippings skidded on the floor with each wind puff, everything he’d stolen or saved was sinking shadowed cups in his soft pillow: a compass and protractor encased in a box of blue velvet; a green tin of playing cards missing only the three of clubs, once used by a Mr. J. T. Jackson at Ed Miller’s Thursday poker game; an item that was short as a thumb and wound in a linen handkerchief; a barkwood pocket knife with two blades and an awl, filched from Jesse’s stepbrother, John; a magnifying glass; brittle licorice that no one could chew; a sardine can that clattered when Wood shook it; a bag sachet that smelled of lavender.

Bob shouted in a juvenile voice, “You two have some nerve!”

Wood looked at him with more consternation than guilt. “What is this junk?”

Charley said, “Thievings; isn’t that right, Bob.” He was at the nightstand drawer, stirring his finger among yellowed book pages and tattered newspaper columns that were knitted together with shirt pins. His brother bodied Wood aside and gleaned the articles on the bed as Charley peered at a

Civil War photograph and skittered it into the drawer. “This ain’t Jesse.”