The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

“One of my spies told me you’ve spent a good portion of time in Kansas City lately. Could you tell me what your primary reasons would be?”

“I’ve been making purchases.”

“You haven’t come across Dick Liddil by any chance?”

“Nope.”

“When would you say was the last time you saw him?”

Bob pretended to speculate. “December.”

“That long ago!”

“If you’ve heard otherwise, they’re mistaken.”

“You don’t have any idea where he might be?”

“Actually no. You hear plenty of stories but they contradict each other.”

“He hasn’t given himself up to get that reward?”

“Sorry I can’t be more help to you but I’ve been sorely placed since Christmas—no one drops any good gossip in Richmond; it’s mostly about who’s been tippling or about some boys swiping pigs.”

Jesse seemed to be in agreement. He gave his attention to Charley, who was walking in high grass in sunlight with Tim, his blue spectacles on his nose so that he could see over them and read aloud from a rain-damaged book he must have unearthed by the swings. “ ‘They were ready with their reins between their teeth,’ ” he read, “ ‘a loaded Colt’s revolver in each hand.’ ”

Jesse got up from his squat, jiggling his legs out to get feeling back in them. He frowned and asked, “What sort of garbage is he reading to my boy?”

Charley continued, “ ‘A wild yell from Jesse, and the eight sprang upon the unprepared greasers, and before the first awful fire of Jesse and his clan, half the Mexicans were killed.’ ”

Jesse strode over and Charley smiled hugely at him. “I’m getting to the good part. ‘The miserable Bustenado missed his mark but Jesse, quick as thought, sent a bullet between the Mexican’s shoulders, and he fell upon his horse’s neck, as dead as a bag of sand.’ ” Charley grinned again and showed a book cover that read The James Boys Among the Mexicans. “Someone forgot it over yonder.”

Jesse slapped the man’s cheek with his left hand and the blue spectacles flew. Charley staggered a little and became pale except for the hot pink of the skin where he was struck. Jesse yelled, “Don’t you ever read them lies to my boy again! You understand me? My children are growing up clean!”

“I’m sorry!”

Bob could see water in Jesse’s blue eyes. He said to the Fords, “I’m real angry,” and then gently lifted his sleeping daughter to his shoulder and crooned words of affection as he walked away with Tim.

LATE SUNDAY NIGHT Charley scrunched close to the wall in the sitting room bed. His mouth was so muted by the pillow that Bob could just barely perceive that his older brother was crying. Bob asked what was the matter and Charley said one word: “Scared.”

Bob snuggled close to his brother and curled his left arm around him. “He isn’t going to kill us.”

Charley sighed and shook a minute and scoured his nose with the pillowcase. Once he’d collected himself he said, “Yes he is. We’re going to leave here for Platte City tomorrow and he’s going to shoot us like he shot that conductor at Winston. Maybe he’ll wait till we’re asleep in the woods and then slit our throats like he said about that cashier.”

Bob looked over his shoulder to check the room and then murmured into Charley’s ear, “I’ll stay awake so he can’t.”

Charley rolled to his back and gazed at the ceiling and then glanced at his kid brother. “This was the ninth day, right? And Craig gave you ten? So maybe we’ll get surrounded up here and maybe we’ll go to the bank and when we run out it’ll be a crossfire and maybe fifty guns’ll be shooting every whichway at Jesse and who gives a golly goddamn about the nobody Fords or if you and me get killed in the bargain?”

“You’re imagining things.”

Charley covered his eyes with his arm, respirated great, calming breaths of air, and coughed rackingly. Quiet came to the room again and then he said, “Isn’t going to be no Platte City. That’s Jesse fooling with us.”

Bob considered the notion for a minute and then slipped out of bed and into his clothes. Charley looked at him and asked what he had in mind but Bob merely said in a low voice, “Go to sleep,” and walked through the sitting room, dining room, kitchen, and stepped off the wooden porch into the night. The earth was cold as marble to his feet and the grass stabbed like a broom. He wore gray wool trousers over his longjohns but the chill convinced him to shawl his shoulders with a tattersall quilt that was being aired on the clothesline. He could see a mare asleep on three legs next to the stable—the fourth leg was canted rather coyly, as if a curtsy were coming. The wind in the sycamore branches made a sound like “wish.” He could make out Severance, Kansas. He could smell fruit trees in the way that one can smell a neighbor’s cooling pie. He settled himself on a plain bench under the clotheslines that sagged from the cottage eave. A mangled spoon was in the dirt; a straw doll was in a tin bucket.

He heard the screen door creak and clap shut, heard his brother limp over and stand to the rear of him. He seemed to ponder their predicament, the past, the galaxy. He lowered onto the long bench like a man who weighed six hundred pounds, and Bob saw that it was Jesse.

“So you and me are the nighthawks.”

Bob made no reply.