The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel

by Ron Hansen

  Dick ignored Wood and rose to cuff the girl’s dress so that it bloomed and revealed her thighs. She wailed unconvincingly, “You’re not supposed to peek, Dick!”

  “But you’re so pretty! I can’t help myself!”

  Bob hollered hello to Dick but the man was inattentive. Wood slammed the kitchen door behind him. Bob rode into a barn stable and had removed most of his tack before he saw his brother Elias on his back under a borrowed McCormick reaper that was clotted with weeds.

  “Howdy do!”

  Elias smeared grease from his brow, a screwdriver in his left hand. “Here to work, Bob?”

  “Well, I’ve been on the road and—”

  “Didn’t think so,” his brother said, and continued with the machine.

  Bob clomped into the farmhouse, saw Wood on the sofa frowning at no one in particular, and heaved the clothes bundle onto Martha’s bed downstairs. She and Clarence Hite and Charley sat in the kitchen at a round oak table that was wide as a pond. Clarence slouched in a chair with his socked feet on an upended basket and sawed at warts on his hands with a paring knife. Blood trickled down to rags that were tied around his wrists. Charley slumped over the table with his chin on his thumbs, his sunken eyes closed, his boots hooked around the rear legs of the chair as he listened to Martha read about him from an astrological almanac.

  Bob said, “Howdy!” but there was no response.

  Martha read: “July ninth. ‘Diligence, tact, a keen sense of responsibility, and a capacity for detail are your dominant traits. Your sense of duty is strong. You have poise and meet every situation calmly and resourcefully. Home means much to you in your daily existence.’ ”

  Bob said, “Howdy!” a second time, but it appeared that snubbing the last-born was a custom his siblings still kept. Bob snuck over behind Martha as she distributed her long reddish hair away from her cheeks, and he idiotically pulled her apron bow through the slats of the chair. Martha fetched the ties with a nuisanced look at her kid brother, and with a smile as wide as a kazoo, Bob said, “I’m finally home!”

  Martha riffled the almanac and said, “I’m real glad, Bob.”

  Clarence said, “Read the birthday sayings for Jesse James.”

  And Bob asked, “Do you want to know where I’ve been?”

  Clarence said, “Read Jesse’s birthday.”

  Bob uncinched his cartridge belt and holster and clattered them onto a counter. He smiled. “I’ve been to the Indian Territories.”

  Martha asked, “What day was Jesse born on, Bob?”

  “September fifth, eighteen forty-seven.” He swiveled a chair around and sat on it and scowled at Clarence Hite’s slashed fingers and the blood that cross-hatched his hands. “What are you doing, Clarence?”

  “Skinning off warts.”

  Martha read, “September fifth. ‘You are a person of quick and rash judgment, violent moods, and vast enthusiasm. Temper your emotions with poise and self-control. You are lively, always active, and fond of pleasure and the society of friends.’ ”

  Clarence said, “That isn’t Jesse.”

  Charley said, “Why, I was about to say the opposite! That’s him like he was sitting in that chair and sipping Doctor Harter’s Iron Tonic.”

  Bob said, “Read mine.”

  The girl, Ida, had come in from swinging and she moved over to the round oak table with an apple in her hand, the red peel corkscrewing from the pulp. She looked down with consternation and said, “Clarence! What—”

  He interrupted to say he was skinning warts off, and Charley said, “He’s about twelve shy of a dozen in the smarts department, Ida. He’s about a half-bubble off level.”

  Bob said, “Read January thirty-first, eighteen sixty-two.”

  Martha flicked several pages without care about whether she tore the sheets. “For some reason I thought you were January twenty-ninth.”

  “No. That’s Zerelda Samuels, Jesse’s momma. Eighteen twenty-five.”

  The congregation in the room all looked at Bob strangely. Charley sniggered and then said, “Isn’t he something?”

  Bob justified himself by saying, “I don’t try to remember those things; I just do.”

  “January thirty-first,” Martha read, and Bob rocked forward so that the chair back rubbed the oak table. “ ‘You are kind, generous in judgments of others, and possess a discerning, artistic temperament. You are not afraid of hard work,’ ” (Charley hooted) “ ‘yet are easily disheartened by obstacles and temporary failures. Be firm in your resolves and keep trying.’ ”

  Bob took the almanac from Martha and said, “How come mine is the only one that’s negative?”

  “Generous,” Martha said.

  “Just that.”

  “Artistic,” she said.

  “You bet,” Charley said. “Bob can’t make the ends of a circle meet and he’s supposed to be artistic.”

  Bob grinned and said, “I can’t even draw flies.”

  Wood Hite clomped in from the sitting room. “How come you all are in the kitchen chatting, and I’m all by myself?”

  Martha said, “You old stick-in-the-mud! What do you expect? Always fuss-budgeting around, telling people what they can and can’t do.”

  Robert Woodson Hite was a man in his late twenties who was so crotchety and orthodox that he seemed almost elderly and was known among the James gang by the nickname “Grandfather Grimes.” His mother had contributed many of the James genes to his physical characteristics and he looked more brother to Frank than Jesse did—the same large ears, the same anteater nose, the same scorn and malevolence in his scowls. Martha had spurned his affections, so he pursued her daughter, but Ida was too young to be more than perplexed by his attentions, thus he’d spent most of the afternoon in a pout.

  But Bob Ford rocked back in his chair and experimented one more time. “Wood?” he said. “I’ve been to the Indian Territories, Wood.”

  Wood was in a mope. He dully asked, “How was it?” and frowned at Clarence’s wart work.

  Bob couldn’t think of a sassy answer. He thumped his chair forward and said, “About like you’d expect.” He stood from the table. “Guess I’ll go get myself duded up. These clothes are a little rancid.”

  And Wood said, “I’m in that room too, Bob. Don’t mess up my things.”

  Bob sneaked from the overcoat a cigar butt smoked on September 7th after the Blue Cut robbery and then he scurried up the stairs to a room with twin beds and a cot in it. The cot was against an east wall that was covered with the corset advertisement pages from newspapers and Wood’s razor, comb, toothbrush, and toothpowder were laid out at the foot of the cot on his folded green blanket as if it were a toiletries salesman’s display. The twin bed next to the mullioned north window was Charley’s, the mating bed was Bob’s, a slat bed with a duck feather mattress that lumped like melons as he slept. Close to the closet door was a lady’s white dresser and screwed to it was an oval dresser mirror where Bob could watch himself practice moves and feints he hoped to use, veering left and fanning his thumb like a gunslinger’s hammer, blowing muzzle smoke from his index finger.

  Bob kicked under his bed with his foot and hooked out a shoebox. He sat on his mattress with the box in his lap, removed the lid and clamped it against his neck with his chin. He rolled the cigar butt inside the white handkerchief with the cock-eyed holes cut into it, and poked it into a corner. He squirmed his boots off and flung off his month-old clothes until all he wore was a nasty union suit, then he took on loan a towel and cake of Ivory soap and a tile brush from Ida’s pink bedroom across the hall, and he crept downstairs and across the cold earth to the cattle lot and broad water tank.

  Two calves stared with worry as he stripped off his underwear and they trotted six feet when he shooed them. Scum floated on the water but rocked away when he washed his hand across the surface. He lifted a snow white leg and sent it into cold water, then crashed over into the tank with such noise Martha was at the kitchen window when he stood, catching his breath.
She smirked at his nakedness, so he lowered and rotated. His neck, wrists, and ankles were black in the creases and murked with road dust and wood smoke and his skin was reddened wherever he scoured with the tile brush. A breeze puckered the water and cast goose pimples over his back. He bent over to rinse soap from his hair and shook water like a hound. The calves backed a little and to terrify them more he smacked the water so that a clear sheet curved over the tank and tattered and tore apart in the air. And then he noticed an amused Dick Liddil standing as close as a tailor. He was hatless and his blond hair straggled in the wind.

  “How long you been there?”

  “Just now arrived. Did I miss much?”

  Bob stalked the Ivory soap cake on the water. “Not unless you’ve never seen a man wash his dirty carcass before.”

  Dick said, “Hear you’ve been to the Indian Territories.”

  Bob scrubbed an elbow as if that could shift the conversation elsewhere.

  But Dick continued, “It’s all anyone can talk about.”

  Bob checked his other elbow. “Don’t try to fish me because I won’t hook.”

  “Is that what the Indian Territories do? Make you turn over a new leaf?”

  Bob swished his hands underwater and reexamined his nails. “That territories business is one of Jesse’s stories, is all.”

  “You’ve got a big pecker for being such a little squirrel.”

  “Is that what you come over here to see?”

  Dick bent for the towel and some good nature slid from his face. He was perhaps five feet seven, an inch shorter than Bob, and twenty-nine years old. He grew a comma of light brown hair on his lower lip and his combed mustache was curled with wax so that he looked a Southern cavalier, and he considered himself a ladies’ man in spite of a right eye that strayed toward his cheek, the result of a childhood accident with a stick. He tossed the towel at Bob’s nose and nibbled his mustache as Bob rubbed his hair wild. “Your brother said Jesse kept you on in Kansas City some extra days. What was the reason?”

  Bob covered his face with the towel as his mind motored a second or two. “Well, I’m not at liberty to say exactly. I will confess we had ourselves an adventure or two, the like of which you’ll never experience, but as for details and whatnot, that would be confidential.”

  Bob straddled the tank and then hopped to the dirt. Drops of tank water pocked the earth where the cattle had churned it soft. Bob swatted the dust from his union suit and started to climb into it but Dick said, “Why don’t you burn that instead,” and Bob bunched it and surrounded himself with the towel.

  Dick said, “Let me ask you this: did Jesse mention that me and Cummins were in cahoots?”

  “Is that so?”

  Dick smiled. “Oh dear. I’ve went on and said too much.”

  “Who else is partners with you two?”

  “You’ll just go and squawk about it to Jesse.”

  “Ed Miller?”

  “He’ll cut our throats if he finds out. You don’t know him like I do. You do Jesse dirt, you connive behind his back, he’ll come after you with a cleaver.”

  “He can be spiteful, can’t he?”

  “Ho. You’re darn tootin’.”

  Bob cleaned between his toes with the towel and said, “Don’t see why he’d give a dang since he and Frank’ve called it quits and scattered the James gang hither and yon.”

  Dick assayed Bob’s countenance for clues about what he understood or withheld but saw neither cunning nor deception. “Boy, you are slow as peach mold, you know that? Tucker Bassham’s already gone for ten years and Whiskeyhead Ryan’s in jail; soon as one or the other feels the urge he can give the government all he knows about Jesse and then go out on the street scot-free. Jesse don’t want us giving ourselves up and he don’t want us getting caught and he don’t want us gathering loot except if he’s in charge.”

  The two heard a gate creak and saw big Wilbur strew a shock of garden corn stalks into a feed trough next to the barn. He doused the stalks with salt water from a tea kettle in order to lure the milk cows, and then seemed inclined to visit his shivering younger brother. But Bob shook his head in the negative and Wilbur changed his mind and maundered across the yard to the kitchen, banging the tea kettle with his knee. It was near dusk and the weather had cooled and Bob wanted a coat, but instead he asked, “So what’re you three cahoots cooking up?”

  “Don’t know that I should say.”

  “Much loot in it?”

  “Thousands and thousands of dollars.”

  “I don’t want to wheedle the dang news from you, Dick.”

  “How about let’s leave it a mystery and then we won’t neither one of us regret our little chat.”

  Bob clamped the tile brush with his teeth and crossed his eyes at Dick in a measure of exasperation, then clutched the towel around himself and reached down for his holster. Dick pinned it with his boot. “Let me carry your six-gun for you, Bob.”

  Because of the brush in his mouth, Bob’s “All right” came out “Awri.” And he had taken no more than two strides toward the house when he felt Dick cuddle to him with the cold revolver insisted under the towel and blunt against his scrotum. Bob let the brush drop and shrank a little from the ice of the nickel barrel. He said, “Feeling lonely, are you, Dick?”

  “You and me, we horse around and josh each other with lies and tomfoolery, but now and then we need to get down to brass tacks. Which is: you so much as mention my name to Jesse, I’ll find out about it, you better believe that. And then I’ll look you up, I’ll knock on your door, and I will be mad as a hornet, I will be hot.”

  “You be careful with that iron.”

  Dick removed the revolver and smacked it into Bob’s leather holster. He walked beside Bob. “You know where I stand on these matters and that’s all there is to it. We can be friendly as pigs from now on.”

  “Could be I’ll never see Jesse again.”

  Dick drew the screen door wide for Bob and restricted it with his shoulder as he pried his boots off on a mud-caked iron jack. He said, “Oh no. I’ve got a hunch about it. Jesse will come a courtin’ Ed and Jim and me, and then he’ll find himself in the neighborhood and call on them two Ford brothers. Jesse don’t miss much. He has a sixth sense.”

  Inside, cooking smells maneuvered through the house: cow liver, sweet potatoes, stewed onions, cabbage—scents that were as assertive as colors. Dick moved sock-footed into the kitchen, bumped Clarence aside, tendered Martha’s rump with his hand and removed it before she could skirt from him, and spoke heartily to the assembled. Bob went to his sister’s bedroom, where he ripped the brown shop paper from his clothes and dressed in his new white underwear. Over Martha’s chiffonier was a square mirror that he could tilt to admire himself from toe to topknot, and he’d just noted his cowlicked, straw-wild, ginger brown hair when an intuition sickened him and he rushed the stairs to the room overhead, where Wood and Charley were rooting through his mementoes. The shoebox was crushed, newspaper clippings skidded on the floor with each wind puff, everything he’d stolen or saved was sinking shadowed cups in his soft pillow: a compass and protractor encased in a box of blue velvet; a green tin of playing cards missing only the three of clubs, once used by a Mr. J. T. Jackson at Ed Miller’s Thursday poker game; an item that was short as a thumb and wound in a linen handkerchief; a barkwood pocket knife with two blades and an awl, filched from Jesse’s stepbrother, John; a magnifying glass; brittle licorice that no one could chew; a sardine can that clattered when Wood shook it; a bag sachet that smelled of lavender.

  Bob shouted in a juvenile voice, “You two have some nerve!”

  Wood looked at him with more consternation than guilt. “What is this junk?”

  Charley said, “Thievings; isn’t that right, Bob.” He was at the nightstand drawer, stirring his finger among yellowed book pages and tattered newspaper columns that were knitted together with shirt pins. His brother bodied Wood aside and gleaned the articles on the bed as Charley peered at a
Civil War photograph and skittered it into the drawer. “This ain’t Jesse.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Never wore no mustache; never was anywheres near a cannon.”

  “I can’t even calculate what I’m lookin’ at,” said Wood.

  “Ever since he was a child, Bob’s collected whatsoever he could find about the James brothers. Got himself a little museum in this room.”

  Bob rammed the nightstand’s drawer closed. “Next time you snoop around up here, you’d better strap on a shootin’ iron.”

  Charley showed his buck teeth when he smirked. “You can see how scared I am.”

  Bob scowled at Wood and said, “You too, Wood Hite. You cross me again and I’ll put a bullet through your head.”

  “Now is that any way to talk?” Charley asked.

  But Wood simply extended his fingers to Bob’s chest and disdainfully flicked a wooden button on Bob’s union suit and Bob sat on the mattress as if he’d been muscled backward. Wood sneered, “You better recollect who my cousin is. You seem to’ve misremembered that Jesse loves me like the Good Book. Jesse’s my insurance. You can play like you’re a dangerous person with people at the grocery store, but don’t you misremember who you’ll be accounting to if I so much as have my feelings hurt. I’d be gooder than you’ve been to me if I was in your shoes.”

  Martha climbed a stair riser and called. “Do I have to yell suwee?”

  Charley said, “Why don’t everybody make up and be pleasant for once? Why don’t we pass the evening like pleasant human beings?”

  IT WAS THE EVENING of September 19th and President Garfield was on the New Jersey shore, fighting chills and nausea as surgeons talked about his degeneration and newspaper correspondents smoked cigarettes on the seaside lawn. An aneurysm that had developed over a ruptured artery apparently collapsed at about ten o’clock, for the president woke from sleep, complaining of an excruciating pain close to his heart. And at 10:35 p.m. James A. Garfield died.