The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

“It’s more than I could hope for!” said Bob. He clicked the chamber around, cocked and released the hammer, cocked the hammer and aimed the revolver at a red ball on the floor, investigated the play in the trigger, squeezed the trigger until the steel hammer snapped forward, listened to the mechanisms as he recocked the revolver at his ear, straightened his right arm and shut his left eye, skated his thumb across the serial number (3766), measured the full length: twelve inches. “I want a gunsmith to engrave this; some sentence with our two names and the city and the year of presentation. It’ll be a prize that can be passed on from one generation to the next.”

“I figured that granddaddy Colt of yours might blow into fragments next time you squeeze the trigger.”

Bob grinned and said, “You might have something there.” He substituted the New Model Smith and Wesson for the tarnished revolver in the scrolled black leather holster that he then buckled and let slant across his right rear pocket. He slapped it out like a gunfighter, snugged it, slapped it out again. The gun chuckled against the rigid leather but after repeated pulls and replacements it made no more noise than a man’s swallow.

Zee called from the dining room, “Dave? You ready for supper?”

“Pretty soon, sweetheart.”

Bob said, “I might be too excited to eat.”

Jesse smiled broadly and rose from the spindle chair. “You know what John Newman Edwards once wrote about me? He said I didn’t trust two men in ten thousand and was even cautious around them. The government’s sort of run me ragged, you see. I’m going the long way around the barn to say I’ve been feeling cornered and just plain ornery of late and I’d be pleased if you’d accept the gun as my way of apologizing.”

“Heaven knows I’d be ornerier if I were in your position.”

“No. I haven’t been acting correctly. I can’t hardly recognize myself sometimes when I’m greased. I go on journeys out of my body and look at my red hands and my mean face and I get real quizzical. Who is that man who’s gone so wrong? Why all that killing and evil behavior? I’ve been becoming a problem to myself. I figure if I can get you right I’ll be just that much closer to me.”

Bob looked at the man in bewilderment and couldn’t find the words for an answer, so he said, “I need to wash my hands if supper’s on. The gun’s made them feel sort of public.”

“Go ahead,” the man said, and graciously opened the door.

Bob exited from the children’s room and smiled meekly at Zee as he entered the kitchen and leaned on the counter for a moment. He spilled pitcher water into a pan and as he sank his hands in it he listened to Jesse greet his children, listened to chairs sliding away from the dining room table and sliding underneath it again. Jesse began to say grace without him and Bob raised a brick of yellow soap to his nose, smelling its ingredients: rainwater, sal soda, unslaked lime; tallow, rosin, salt.

APRIL 2ND was Palm Sunday and Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Howard, their two children, and their cousin Charles Johnson strolled in sunshine to the Second Presbyterian Church in order to attend the ten o’clock service. Bob remained at the cottage, claiming he’d stomached all the religion he could when his father was a minister of a timber church that was called Jasper. So they went without Bob and he slyly migrated from room to room in his white-stockinged feet, a shining revolver slung near his thigh, a coffee cup near his mouth. He ate a slice of cold toast and walked into the master bedroom, where he rested the cup and saucer on the chiffonier and investigated each of the six wide drawers. Hanging from a mirror hook was an eighteen-karat-gold watch in a hunting case, made by Charles J. E. Jaeat and stolen from John A. Burbank in the Hot Springs stagecoach robbery of 1874. Bob listened to the ticks and chimings of the clock, gave it timidly to air, savagely grabbed it back. He walked into the closet and inventoried the clothes on the hangers and hooks; he slipped on one of Jesse’s worsted wool coats and inspected its tailoring in a mirror. He ironed the bed’s rumpled sheets with his hands, he sipped from the water glass on the vanity, he smelled the talcum and lilacs on a pillowcase that was etched here and there with snips of cut hair. He reclined on the mattress so that he could be in meeting with it and he situated each coal-oil lamp in the room by the smoke stains it made on the ceiling. He rolled to his left as Jesse must have rolled to marry with his wife in the evening. He resisted a temptation. His fingers skittered over his ribs to construe the scars where Jesse was twice shot. He manufactured a middle finger that was missing the top two knuckles. He imagined himself at thirty-four; he imagined himself in a coffin. Morning light was coming in at the window and pale curtains moved on the spring breeze like ghosts. Bob raised his revolver and straightened it on the door, the mirror, the window sash, a picture made from a fruit can label, a nightgown that hung from a nail. He went out to the sitting room. He considered possibilities and everything wonderful that could come true. He remembered the set-down coffee cup and saucer and removed them from the chiffonier, wiping a ring from the wood with his sleeve. And he was at the dining room table, oiling his gun, when the churchgoers returned to the cottage, each with a sword of green, palm.

THEY WENT on a picnic at noon. Jesse and Charley and the boy skimmed stones off the river and skulked around the bleached bones of a sheep that rocked in a shallow pool. The sleeves of their white shirts were sloppily rolled up past their elbows, exposing the farmer brown of their hands and wrists and the gradations into white. A dog plunged into the river and struggled out and chomped at the water as if it were meat. Bob reposed on his elbow and exchanged pleasantries with Zee as she scraped corn relish out of a jar and onto some cold mashed potatoes. He chewed a blade of grass and coolly watched Jesse swing his screaming and then giggling daughter over the river. Bob asked, “How come you married him?”

Zee changed position to remove covered bowls from the market basket. Her gingham dress rose and subsided. Her pregnancy didn’t yet show. She said, “Oh, he was so dashing and romantic and cast-out by the world, I couldn’t help but love him.” She smiled over the river, recollecting. She caught a strand of blond hair that flew near her eyes and refastened it with a small comb. “He was a figure out of a girl’s storybook. Gentle, adoring, dangerous, strong.” She looked at Bob. He was marking the checkered groundcloth with a spoon. “Surely you must’ve felt the same things. He has a magic about him. He steps straight into your heart.”

Bob looked for an exit and asked, “Your middle name is Amanda, isn’t it?”

She looked puzzled but replied that it was.

“I’ve got a sister whose name is Amanda.”

Tim waded in six inches of water. A couple fifty feet east of them was singing gospel hymns. Somewhere a girl was being tickled. Zee uncorked a mustard jar. “Do you have a sweetheart, Bob?”

“I’ve kissed a girl or two, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“You don’t have a sweetheart though.”

“Nope.” He tapped the spoon against his palm and then set it across a plate. He said, “That’s the one thing that’s been denied me. Otherwise my life’s been a bounty.”

“You’re young yet.”

Bob smiled uncertainly. “You hear people mention being in love. It’s like a sickness I’ve never had.”

Zee stared at Bob sympathetically and simply said, “I know.”

&n

bsp; JESSE LOUNGED as he ate and grinned at the sunlight and after their picnic lunch moseyed along the river with Zee, her right arm engaged in his left as he gave names to birds with his pointing finger. Charley put on the blue spectacles that were supposed to keep his identity unknown and galloped to the rope swings with Tim piggy-backed. Bob catnapped with Mary in shade and twenty minutes later opened his eyes to see Jesse squatted beside him. “You’ve got a habit of startling me.

Jesse moved a toothpick in his mouth and asked, “Can I talk with you a minute, Bob?”

Bob said, “I’m just lying here with nothing better to do.” Jesse looked straight ahead. “I’ve got a grapevine of spies; I guess you knew that.”

Bob wasn’t sure what to say. “I guess maybe I didn’t.”