The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

“What should I say about you if he asks?”

Dick let himself slide down into a corner and consider for a moment, then said, “Just tell him I’m in K.C. with Mattie.” Dick swaddled himself in yanked-down petticoats and crinolines as Bob closed the closet door.

When Bob shied into the kitchen, Jesse was at the stove in a mountain of clothes that included a reddish beaver coat that was stolen, he claimed, from a Hapsburg crown prince on a buffalo hunt in Nebraska. He turned with a coffee cup at his mouth but lowered it when he viewed Bob. “Why, it’s The Kid!”

“How’s everything?” Bob asked.

Jesse ignored the question and took off his hat with care and slid it onto a breadbox that was crudely ornamented with painted gladiolas. His skull was encompassed by a brimline that divided reddened skin from white and scored his oiled brown hair. He wrestled out of his massive coat and laid it over a chair, then unbuttoned a cardigan sweater that showed a burn hole at the belly. No one talked as Jesse moved—it was as if his acts were miracles of invention wondrous to behold. Martha stared at Jesse as she cooked, Ida was moonstruck as she set down another dish, Charley and Wil

bur grinned gregariously whenever his eyes floated near. He said, “I never take off my gunbelt.”

And Wilbur said, “Good thinking.”

Jesse walked back to his coffee and Charley hitched aside. “Hurt your leg?”

Charley smiled. “I slipped off the roof and smacked down into a snowbank like a ton of stupidness. One second I’m screaming, ‘Whoa, Nelly!’ and the next second, poof! I’m neck-deep in snow.”

“The roof! Whatever possessed you to climb on the roof in December?”

Charley lost his smile and saw the criticism in Bob’s expression. “There was a kite—what am I saying? There was a cat. A cat was on the roof and I went after him. A torn cat. Yowling and whatall; and I slipped.” Charley rubbed his slanted right eye and coughed into his fist.

Jesse winked and said, “I thought maybe your clubfoot was gaining on ya,” and Wilbur guffawed as if that was funny and Charley noised the room with his hee-haw laugh and Jesse smiled at his own zaniness as Martha carried a bowl of ham hocks to the table.

Bob said, “Dick was here for a little bit and then he went on to Kansas City to be with his wife.”

Jesse acted as if he hadn’t heard and presumptuously sat down at the table and there tickled Ida’s side and stomach, saying, “Kootchy kootch,” as if she were two, until the girl was sore with giggles and the fun was over and Martha at last said, “Oh, quit it, you two.”

Jesse’s mood was genial and he reacted to Martha’s regulation without anger, immediately diverting his attention from the daughter to her mother and tucking a napkin under his collar as he began a disquisition on the subject of Charles Guiteau. His court trial for the assassination of President Garfield had commenced just three weeks ago and was already a gaudy spectacle, one or two columns about it opened every newspaper, and Guiteau gloried in the publicity, giving outrageous speeches, interrupting the prosecuting attorneys, generally playing the wild-eyed maniac as correspondents ecstatically copied down his every pronouncement. Following prosecutor Corkhill’s examination, Guiteau jumped up and said, “It is the unanimous opinion of the American people that you are a consummate jackass,” and as a surgeon gave his testimony, Guiteau screamed, “Is there any limit to this diarrhea?”

Jesse went on and on about it, a one-man show, a sorcerer, so physical and passionate his audience seemed no more than weeds. For more than an hour over a meal and chocolate cake and coffee, Jesse’s shrill voice contained the Fords, contained the room; he seemed to fill the house like a foot in a shoe; and it was only Bob and Martha who seemed to remember the Sunday murder, the body covered in apple leaves in the snow, Dick Liddil upstairs concealed in a closet, Cousin Albert roughed up by this man. Ida was girlishly in love with Jesse, Wilbur chuckled and shook his head with mirth at each sentence, Charley toyed with his gossamer mustache and crossed his legs like a gentleman and rivaled Jesse now and then with his own penny yarns and paltry jokes about Charles J. Guiteau. Jesse graciously gave him audience and acknowledged the news items with “Fascinating” and then developed another description.

At seven Martha collected the dishware and Ida scraped garbage into a battered tin bucket for swill and Charley said, “Here’s a cute story, Jess. Bob and me went to the Moore School as children over toward Crescent Lake? And what with it so near Kearney, conversations just naturally had to do with the exploits of the James-Younger gang. Well, Bobby was—what—eleven or twelve? And he couldn’t get enough. He practically ate the newspaper stories up. You were by far his most admired personage. It was Jesse this, Jesse that, from sunrise to sunset.”

“Fascinating,” Jesse said.

“No; there’s more. This is cute. We’re at supper and Bob asks, ‘You know what size boot Jesse wears?’ ”

Bob said, “Jesse doesn’t care about this, Charley.”

“Oh, shush now, Bob. Let me tell it. Bob says, he says, ‘You know what size boot Jesse wears? Six and a half,’ Bob says. He says, ‘Ain’t that a dinky boot for a man five feet eight inches tall?’ Well, I decided to josh him a little, you know, him being my kid brother, so I said, ‘He don’t have toes, is why.’ ”

“Really stupid,” Bob said.

“Shush. Then my momma pipes up and says, ‘He what?’ and I’m not letting on. I say, ‘He was dangling his feet off a culvert and catfish nibbled his toes off.’ Well, Bob taxed himself trying to picture it until Momma let on that I was playing him the fool. And Bob says—I want to get this right. What was it exactly you said, Bob?”

“I said, ‘If they’d been catfish he’d a drilled them with his forty-four.’ ”

Charley clapped his hands sharply and laughed. “Yep, that’s the exact words, exactly.”

Jesse looked at Bob without comment.

Bob said, “It’d be a good joke if it was funny.”

“You’ve got to picture it though. Bob saying you would’ve shot them catfish, then smiling in every direction, real satisfied with himself. Oh! And you know what he said next? He said, ‘You need your toes.’ ”

“How’d I miss this?” Wilbur asked. “Where was I?”

Charley carved a shred of pork from between his bucked teeth and licked the meat off his nail. “ ‘You need your toes.’ ”