The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Bob gripped the rocking chair arms and tried to appear simply inquisitive.

Jesse said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d spread the word that I’m offering a reward for Dick. One thousand dollars, dead or alive. And let people know I’d prefer him dead.”

“You’re saying that in the heat of passion.”

Big Wilbur came in with a jar of honey and a finger in his mouth. “Merry Christmas, Jess!”

“One thousand dollars,” Jesse said.

Bob indicated the sheet that skirted the Christmas tree and asked, “Did you notice there was a present under there for you?”

Jesse beamed. “You’re teasing.” He stooped under a cincture of popcorn blossoms sewn with a thread and retrieved a cardboard box that was the size of a brick and wrapped in blue tissue paper. He shook the box and the contents clobbered inside. “Heavy!”

“I can’t wait to see your eyes twinkle.”

Wilbur grinned at his brother. “It’s a gun, ain’t it, Bob.”

“You’ll see soon enough.”

Jesse ripped off the paper and the box flap and with childish astonishment withdrew a black, ironworked model of a salacious naked woman, her arms crossed beneath her head, her legs lewdly cloven and lifted.

“It’s a bawdy bootjack,” Bob said.

“I’ve wished I owned one a thousand times.”

“Well. Now you do.”

Jesse stroked the woman’s round breasts with his thumb and blushed as he smiled. “I love Christmas.”

“I can see that.”

He imitated shame. “But I don’t have anything for you! I never dreamed—”

“Your friendship is plenty.”

Charley slunk in from the kitchen and then warily approached Jesse to examine the articulation of the ironwork. He asked his brother, “What is it?”

“It’s a bawdy bootjack,” he said.

“It’s something I’ll cherish always,” said Jesse.

“Then we both have something to cherish,” said Bob.

JESSE REMAINED on the farm that Christmas night and Bob remained awake. The moon was in the window and a window of moonlight was on the floor so that Jesse was unkenneled, released from the room’s darkness and there on the cot like a man on a coffin, a man collected and in arrangement. Bob sat in his bed in his gray underwear, his wrists crossed, his ankles clasped, incapable of movement. He could see that there was a gun on the nightstand to his left and could imagine its cold nickel inside his grip, its two-pound weight reached out and aimed, but he couldn’t even maneuver toward it, it was like a name he couldn’t remember. He was a boy again, a rube, there were connections he was missing; and there across the room was Jesse, placid and sovereign, certain of both Heaven and Earth. His color in the night was the blue in veins of marble and the handsome head that rested on the pillow was appetitive and proud and pleased with itself.

And even then, with the man asleep, with his acute senses unattended, his keen reflexes numbed and slowed, the exact location of his firearms possibly forgotten, Bob could not screw up the courage to act. It was as if some spell or sorcery had rendered him meek, infirm, confounded. He could contrive many ways of snaring Jesse; he could invent a thousand deaths; but Bob feared it would always come to this, he would see a chance and then he’d interpret it and speculate on its consequences, he would ponder each option and particular and soon the opportunity would pass away, or qualms would overmaster him, conscience make him impotent.

Bob consoled himself with the thought that next time he would not stall so long—later, when Jesse was sickened or sorely distracted or the right situation presented itself, when Bob had mustered his courage and was not so susceptible to uncertainties. Bob was not yet twenty, after all, while Jesse was thirty-four and in physical decline; each calendar week subtracted from Jesse the powers that Bob accrued. So Bob could afford to wait if Jesse would only let him. And that, of course, he did.

With that, Bob slid under the covers and closed his eyes in imitation of Jesse and he woke next at sunrise to noises in the kitchen. Charley still snored to his left, but the cot across from Bob was vacated and downstairs a tea kettle piped once before it was removed from the stove. Bob skulked down the staircase and across the sitting room, tomfoolishly tiptoeing to the kitchen entrance and peeking around the doorjamb.

Jesse had amassed his suit clothes next to the butter churn and skidded a laundry boiler into the pantry, where he stood naked in two inches of steaming water, wringing a soaped washcloth over his skull, spitting the water that trickled into his mouth. He didn’t notice Bob in the room. He scrubbed his elbow and knuckles with a tile brush and rinsed his arm and coughed twice and then again until he was racked like a chain-smoker for more than a minute and Bob smiled as he thought, You are old, Jess. You are dying even now.

His skin was white as sheep’s wool and the scars on his chest were red as slaughter. He was muscular in the back and shoulders and sinews crossed his pectorals like laces and his biceps bunched when he lifted his wrist to tenderly examine it, but his ankle was knurled where he’d broken it, varices mapped his calves and thighs, his buttocks were flat as books, there were wrinkles of skin at his kidneys and neck, his ribs could be easily numbered, his shoulder clicked when he circled it, he bent with apparent pain. The many injuries of a reckless career had made him prematurely decrepit, as ancient as the Noah that Ham spied on in the tent.

Jesse coughed into his fist once more and swished his hand in the water at his feet, then lifted an ocean shell ashtray and sacredly doused the crown of his head. It was then that he saw Bob Ford and said, “Go away.”

“It never crossed your mind that I was here and it’s been nigh on to three minutes at least.”