Bob caught a glimpse of Mrs. Samuels as Jesse pushed open the door. A black net covered her hair and the doctor eased his sore neck with a red hot-water bottle, his eyes shut so tightly his face frowned. Zerelda asked if Jesse was liverish and if that was why he was so moody, and Bob heard him answer, “I guess I’m not feeling well tonight. I’m a little low-spirited.” And then there was a silence in which Jesse’s expression or stance must have changed and he continued melodramatically, “Maybe I’ll never see you again.”
It seemed more a calculated statement than a candid one, it was as if it were meant to arouse her operatic emotions, or as if it were meant to be overheard. Zerelda exclaimed, “No! No! No!” and cried without restraint and noisily called for the intercession of angels and saints, and Bob scuttled over to the corner where Charley was plucking the straw flowers in a porcelain vase.
Bob murmured, “He knows.”
Charley didn’t turn. “Knows what?”
“I’ve talked with the governor about him.”
Charley scowled over his right shoulder at his kid brother, no nettled conscience in his look, only a toothache of concern and skepticism.
“He needs to be stopped,” said Bob.
Charley reconsidered the vase without comment and Bob walked back to a chair, where he sat as a model student sits when the teacher is out of the room. Jesse came to them with a bottle of sherry smuggled inside his long coat and asked the Ford brothers, “Ready?” and the three rode in a cold rain until they reached a Lutheran church twenty-eight miles from St. Joseph.
It was wooden and painted white and the cross atop the steeple had a lightning rod attached. The minister was a cook in a restaurant that was known for its clam chowder. The double doors were unlocked, as Was the custom then, and inside the church was clean and dark and smelled of floorwax and candles. Jesse threw his greatcoat on a pew and lit an altar candle that he carried into the sanctuary. Bob kicked his bedroll flat on the floor as Charley climbed on a rear pew to light an unornamented chandelier.
Bob said, “If we’re ever alone for more than a minute, I’d like a chance to speak with you further.”
Charley carried a flame from one candle to the next and pretended not to have heard.
Jesse came back from the sanctuary with a crockery jug cradled in the crook of one arm, a ribboned Bible in the other. He smiled at the two and said, “Grape juice and sherry,” but only remained with them a short while before he cloaked his shoulders with his coat and riffled the Bible, seeming to read whichever page his thumbnail settled on.
Bob slept twenty minutes on the punishing floor and then awoke with the sensation that he’d been unconscious for much longer and might have missed something vital. He sat up and saw his brother in a vacant, animal slumber, saw Jesse curled over the book like a monk. Bob wandered over and sidled into the pew.
Jesse licked an index finger and flipped a page. He said, “Go to the Good Book when you’re sore distressed, and your soul will be comforted.”
“Your mother sure seems to know her scripture.”
“She’s been an example to me all my life.”
Bob rolled his head on his neck to relieve a crick and then canted a little to ascertain which section the man was on.
“The Book of Psalms,” said Jesse. “Ever come across it?”
“Well, I’ve never read it one right after the other, but I’ve listened to that poem about the Lord being my shepherd.”
Jesse recited, “ ‘Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.’ ”
Bob nodded. “You hear it at funerals.”
Jesse let the book divide from his finger and sought Psalm 41, which he scanned, vigorously scratching his two-inch beard, gingerly petting it smooth. He ironed out the page with his fist and knee and smiled wryly at Bob and then began a private study of the words, as if he were without company.
Bob tried to imagine how Jesse’s children saw him: he would be the giant figure who could fling them high as the ceiling. They knew his legs, the sting of his mustache against their cheeks, the gentle way that Jesse had of fingering their hair. They didn’t know how he made his living or why they so often moved; they didn’t even know their father’s name; and it all seemed such an injustice to Bob that he asked, “Do you ever give your past life any thought?”
Jesse squinted at him. “I don’t get your meaning.”
Bob managed a grin and asked, “Do you ever give any thought to the men you’ve killed?”
Jesse moved the candle forward so that it was near his left hand and he angled a little in-the pew. “Give me an example.”
“I just thought you’d’ve imagined it maybe: how it must’ve been for that cashier in Northfield or that conductor you shot in Winston. You’re doing your job, you’ve just ate maybe, you’re subtracting numbers or you’re collecting tickets from passengers and then—bang!—everything’s changed and a man you don’t even know is yelling at you with a gun in his hand and you make one mistake and—bang!—you’re killed.”
Jesse shut the book and rubbed a thumb across the two gold words on the black leather cover. Rainfall was the only noise. He said, “I’ve been forgiven for all that.”
Bob said, “You might’ve had a good reason for killing them. I don’t know. I’m just saying it must’ve been like a nightmare for them, and maybe it is for you too, right now.”
Jesse said again, “I’ve already been forgiven,” and then leaned to his left and blew out the candle.