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

by Ron Hansen

  Charley and Wilbur laughed for a suitable period of time and Jesse laughed with them until coughing made him stoop with the cigar near his ear and scrub his mouth with the checkered tablecloth. He rubbed the water from his eyes as he said, “My goodness, that Zerelda. She’s a caution.”

  Bob said, “You oughtn’t think of me like you do George Shepherd.”

  “You just brought him to mind.”

  “It’s not very flattering.”

  Martha waitressed around them and took their cups and saucers; Jesse returned the cigar to his mouth and made himself complimentary. “Good eating, Martha.”

  “Glad you liked it,” she said.

  Bob asked, “How come George had a grudge against you?”

  Jesse cocked an eyebrow. “Hmm?”

  “You said George Shepherd had a grudge against you and I’ve been wondering what it was.”

  “Oh. George asked me to protect this nephew of his during the war and it so happens the kid had five thousand dollars on him. The kid winds up killed, and all that money swiped from him, and when George was in prison someone whispers to him it was Jesse James slit the boy’s throat.”

  “Just mean gossip, was it?” Charley asked.

  Jesse looked at his cigar and saw it was out. He then made a comic gesture of presenting it to Bob, who glared at him icily, and dropped the cigar in a pocket, saying, “Bob’s the expert; put it to him.”

  Bob rose with his knuckles on the table and was cautious lest he shove his chair awry on exit and appear a stamping boy in a snit. “I’ve got something to do,” he said.

  “I’ve made him cranky,” Jesse said.

  Wilbur snickered and Bob said with august gravity, “I’ve been through this before, is all. Once people get around to making fun of me, they just don’t ever let up.”

  Martha said, “Someone’s speaking awful fresh over there!”

  Bob was forced to walk past Jesse to reach the main room and Jesse kicked his left leg out across Bob’s path, clouting the floorboards with his boot. Bob glanced down at the bogus grin of a playground bully, and at the suggestion of menace that was beneath Jesse’s antics. Jesse said, “I don’t want you to skip off to your room and pout without knowing why I dropped by for this visit.”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell us how sorry you are that you had to slap my cousin Albert around.”

  Such great heat seemed to come then from Jesse’s eyes that Bob nearly glanced away as from sunlight, but in a second the man cooled and said, “I come to ask one of you two Fords to ride with me on a journey or two. I guess we’ve agreed it ought to be Charley; you’ve been acting sort of testy.”

  Bob was pale and silent. He stepped around Jesse’s obstructing boot, calmly climbed the stairs to the upper room, and carefully shut the door. Dick shoved open the closet door with his toe and stared at Bob from among the women’s things. “I’d say that was really stupid.”

  Bob covered his mouth and slid his back down the newspapered wall to a sit.

  JESSE AND CHARLEY rode west at nine and after twenty miles in the cold chose to risk a Pinkerton investigation by staying over at the Samuelses’ long, ramshackle house.

  A dog slept by the fireplace in the kitchen, an alphabet sampler was on one wall, the ceilings were only seven feet high; snores came from the sleeping rooms and Mrs. Zerelda Samuels sat in a motionless rocking chair as Jesse sipped the cocoa she’d cooked. She was a huge, mannish, careworn woman with a mercurial temper and the look of a witch. A robe sleeve was limp where her right hand and wrist had been blown off, her white hair scattered wide when let down, and she sucked her lips over violet gums that contained no more than twenty teeth. She said, “You’re Charley Ford.”

  “Yes, ma’am. You seen me once or twice with Johnny.”

  “But you’re not my son’s age.”

  “No; that’s my brother Bob.”

  “You got the consumption or don’t you eat right?”

  Charley shrugged and grinned at Jesse with shame. “I guess what it is is that I’m just skinny.”

  She massaged her right forearm and said to her boy, “I got a letter from George Hite. Hasn’t seen hide nor hair of him.”

  Jesse squinted at Charley. “And you say you haven’t seen Wood?”

  “Can’t imagine where he could be.”

  Zerelda rose from the rocking chair and said, “I best get some shut-eye. I’ve gotta be up and at ’em by six.”

  After his mother left, Jesse settled down on a cot that was under a window the size of a man. Charley tucked his wool bedroll into a pink davenport and was out as soon as he completed his prayers. But he awoke at four and saw Jesse seated on an abused Queen Anne chair, absently scratching the sole of a foot through his sock. “You finished with your sleeping?”

  Charley switched cheeks on his bedroll. “I could use one or two more hours if it’s no trouble. I can’t operate on less than five. I run into walls and fenceposts.”

  Jesse said, “I’ve been holding a discussion with myself over if I ought to tell you this or no. My good side won out and now, well, I’d like to make a clean breast of things.”

  “My mind is cobwebby yet, is the only drawback.”

  Jesse crossed to the davenport and sat so close his right knee encroached and Charley retracted his leg. Jesse smelled of onions and camphor. He asked, “Can you hear me when I whisper this low?”

  “Just barely,” Charley said.

  “You knew I went into Kentucky?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m talking about October now. I come back through Saline County and thought to myself, ‘Why not stop by and see Ed Miller?’ So I do and things aren’t to my satisfaction at all. Ed’s got himself worked up over something and I can tell he’s lying like a rug and I say to myself, ‘Enough’s enough!’ and I say to Ed, ‘Come on, Ed; let’s go for a ride.’ Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Going for a ride is like giving him what-for.”

  “Exactly. Ed and Jesse, they argued on the road and when push come to shove, Jesse shot and killed him.”

  “Jesse did.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “You.”

  Jesse condescendingly patted Charley’s knee and rose up from the davenport. “So you see? Your cousin got off easy. I was only playing with Albert.”

  Charley said, “I’ve made him squeal once or twice myself. I’m just not as thorough as you are.”

  “You want to swap a tale with me now?”

  Charley camouflaged his fright with ignorance. “I don’t get your meaning.”

  “If you’ve got something to confess in exchange, it seems to me it’d only be right for you to spit it out now.”

  “Can’t think of a single thing.”

  “About Wood Hite, for example.”

  “I’ve been saying over and over again I can’t figure out where he’s gone. I’m not going to change my story just to have something to spit.”

  “Why was your brother so agitated?”

  “Which?”

  “Bob.”

  “It’s just his way. He’s antsy.”

  The dog in the kitchen sighed; Jesse reseated himself in the Queen Anne chair. He said, “You can go back to sleep now.”

  “You got me agitated now: you see?”

  “Just ain’t no peace with Jesse around. You ought to pity my poor wife.”

  “Ed Miller was a good friend of mine. He introduced me to you at that one poker game. I’m a little angry with you, if you want the God’s honest truth.”

  Jesse crossed his legs at the ankles and shut his eyes. He pushed his hands deep in his pockets. He said, “You ought to pity me too.”

  THEY AROSE with the colored cook but did not remain for breakfast. Instead, Jesse fished around in the chicken coop until he could show off three brown eggs crammed between the fingers of one hand. He chopped the shells open with a pen knife and drank the yolks down, slobbering his chin with the clear albumen, and proffered one to
Charley.

  He shook his head in the negative, saying, “I can get along without breakfast. I’ll eat something on the way.”

  “It’s a good journey.”

  “It isn’t Kansas City?”

  “I moved again. San Hose-say!”

  “Don’t know that—”

  “Saint Joseph!”

  “Oh.”

  It was late afternoon when they arrived and their horses were sore in their mouths from the clove bits, and yet they were spurred into a leisurely walk so Charley could see the wonders of a city of thirty-four thousand. Jesse saved for the last the marvel that was the grand, red-bricked World Hotel, where wooden chests that contained bathtubs were rolled from room to room by bellboys, where gas lamps burned all night long in the corridors, where a sanitarium for epileptics covered one entire upper floor and was run by Dr. George Richmond, the inventor of an elixir called Samaritan Nervine.

  Charley was nearly overcome. “There must be something to see every dad-blamed place you look!”

  “It takes getting used to; there’s no argument on that score.”

  Shopkeepers were locking up and girls in long woolen coats were crouching out of the evening cold as Jesse and Charley roamed south on Twenty-first Street to Lafayette, where Jesse had rented a cottage in November. It was common and white and sat on a corner behind the shade of a wide porch that curved around it like the bill of a cap. Because the lot was small, they stabled their horses elsewhere and on the walk back Jesse instructed Charley about his assumed identity. He said he was listed in the city directory as Thomas Howard. His occupation was supposed to be that of a cattle buyer, so he made a point of visiting the St. Joseph stockyards once per week, but he spent much of his time there in speaking about two fillies he was racing in Kentucky so that his nonappearances wouldn’t be suspect.

  “I can’t remember all this.”

  “You’ve got to, Charley.”

  “Do I get another name? I mean, I can’t be plain old Charley Ford, can I?”

  Jesse considered options as they walked through a crust of snow to the cottage and stomped their boots on the porch. “Johnson,” he said at last. “Why don’t you call yourself Johnson?”

  (It was not until much later that Charley learned Johnson was the name of a man in Tennessee whom Jesse had sued for “acting under false pretenses.”)

  The front door sucked open and the storm door rattled in its frame. Zee was there in an orange gingham apron and Mary was riding the saddle of her broad hip, her face lowered as she cried. Zee looked sadly at Jesse and then pushed open the fogging storm door. “So. It’s Charley this time,” she said.

  DICK LIDDIL RECOVERED from the gunshot slowly because of a maroon-colored infection that swelled from his thigh muscle like a split apple, but within a week of Jesse’s visit he had mended well enough to ride and it became common for Dick and Bob to eat lunch in Richmond and clerk or play checkers at Elias Ford’s grocery store. They claimed they were looking for income opportunities, but they also claimed prior commitments if work was offered. They made some vague inquiries about the James gang, the sheriff’s office, Allan Pinkerton’s detectives, and the manhunt for the perpetrators of the Winston and Blue Cut train robberies. And increasingly Bob noticed a man alone at a cafe table, jotting notes in a journal, leaning on a pool cue and staring at Dick over the foam on a beer, or riding on a chestnut horse on the street and swiveling in his vast gray soldier’s coat to see them stamp the snow from their boots and walk into an apothecary.

  At last at lunch in Christmas week, Bob carried a plate of pigeon pie over to a round rear table and cut the meat with a spoon as he measured the stern man sitting there. Compared to Bob he was enormous, as tall as Frank James but more muscular, six feet two at a minimum and wide as a gate in his shoulders and chest. He was exceptionally handsome in a foreign, somewhat villainous way. He looked like a circus lion tamer or the leering remittance man in a melodrama; his skin was as chestnut brown as his horse was, his mustache covered his mouth like a crow’s wings, and his eyes evinced the black shimmer of coffee in a cup as they studied Bob with an arrogance that was close to animosity.

  Bob said, “Sorry for the intrusion. I didn’t mean to interrupt your meal, but I’ve seen your face off and on around Richmond and I can’t place who you are.”

  “I own a livery over to Liberty; maybe that’s where you seen me.”

  “Of course. That must be it.”

  The man looked around Bob to Dick. “Why don’t you call your friend over here and we’ll get acquainted.”

  Bob considered it for a second, then motioned, and Dick slid off a stool and limped over with a mug that sloshed pennies of coffee on the floorboards. The man skidded two chairs out with an unseen boot and Bob and Dick warily sat down.

  “I was constable of Liberty Township for two years; that could be where you seen me too.”

  “No, it must’ve been the livery,” said Bob. Dick bent over his coffee in order to conceal as much as he could of himself.

  The man continued, “And I’ve been sheriff of Clay County since eighteen seventy-eight, so I’m in the public eye a lot.”

  Dick kept his face lowered but angrily kicked Bob in the shin. Bob restrained his ouch.

  The man rose an inch from his seat and shook Bob’s limp hand. “My name is James R. Timberlake.”

  “Very pleased to meet you,” said Bob and then sat back on his fingers.

  “You’re?”

  “Bob.”

  The sheriff looked with interest at Dick and he responded without raising his eyes from his coffee. “Charles Siderwood. I’m just on a visit and…Well, there isn’t no and, I’m just visiting is all.” He drank from the mug as if he were suddenly parched.

  Timberlake licked a thumb with his lower lip and flipped the pages of his journal, scanning each like a librarian until he located the correct description. “Robert Newton Ford. Born January thirty-first, eighteen sixty-two. Presently living on the old Harbison farm. Single, average height and weight, brown-haired, clean-shaven. Occupation unknown. No prior arrests.” He smiled very briefly and then looked at Dick and reviewed several pages before he ironed one flat with the heel of his hand. “You’re Charles Siderwood?”

  Dick glanced at him from under his eyebrows. Timberlake wrote down the name. Bob said, “I’ve always wanted to be written about in a book.”

  Timberlake inclined massively toward Bob, overwhelming the table. “Do you think I care about you two and who you are and who you aren’t? It’s the James brothers I want. I’ve been on the loop for Frank and Jesse since eighteen seventy-six and by God I’m going to get them.”

  Timberlake withdrew a little and considered his thoughts; a round businessman made an entrance into the cafe, making noise about the cold, whacking snow off his trouser legs and calling, “Mollie, why don’t you cut me some of that good apple pie?”

  Mollie said she’d sold the last of it and the businessman winked inclusively at Bob. “Well, give me some of that good chocolate cake so I don’t shrink away to nothing.”

  Timberlake rolled a cigarette and licked it and struck a match off Dick’s coffee mug. He winced when the smoke broke against his eyes. He said, “Do you know about the governor’s proclamation?”

  Dick gave Timberlake his rapt attention but Bob pushed away from the table and said, “This is all very interesting, but if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to order some of that good chocolate cake I’ve heard so much about.”

  “Sit down.” The sheriff picked a shred of tobacco off his tongue, flicked it onto the floorboards between his boots, and dried his finger on the tablecloth. Then he unbuttoned a broadcloth shirt and retrieved from inside it a parchment that was torn at the corners and folded in quarters. He slid the parchment across to Dick, and Bob reached across the aisle to slide his cold dish of pigeon pie onto another table.

  Dick perused the document as he imagined an attorney might, with concentration and no little scorn and with occasional n
ods of concurrence. “It mentions Glendale and how certain parties confederated and banded together to steal what was on the train. It goes on about the Winston shebang last summer and how ‘in perpetration of the robbery last aforesaid, the parties engaged therein did kill and murder one William Westfall,’ and so on. Ta-da-ta-da-ta-fo, ‘I, Thomas T. Crittenden, Governor of the State of Missouri, do hereby offer a reward of five thousand dollars—’ ” He looked for a reaction from Bob and then from Sheriff Timberlake, who canted into the windowsill and placidly smoked without comment. “ ‘And for the arrest and delivery of said Frank James or Jesse W James, and each or either of them, to the sheriff of said Daviess County, I hereby offer a reward of five thousand dollars, and for the conviction of either of the parties last aforesaid of participation in either of the murders or robberies above mentioned, I hereby offer a further reward of five thousand dollars, in testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand,’ and ta-da-ta-dum.”

  Timberlake took Dick’s coffee mug for his cigarette ashes. “You know why I gave that to you, don’t you, Mr. Siderwood.”

  Dick scratched at a circle of starchiness in his trousers, where his wound had festered into the cloth. The pain seemed to reach into marrow and muscle like the roots of a sturdy weed. Dick said, “I meet a friend of mine, a friend who’d made some mistakes and maybe got himself into a mean scrape or two. You think I could tell him the government will erase whatever’s on the slate just for helping your people?”

  “You go talk to Henry Craig in Kansas City if you want to make arrangements.” Sheriff Timberlake drew on a cigarette stub that was now so short it must have charred his mustache. He released it into an inch of coffee, where it hissed succinctly and floated. He said, “You tell your friend the governor’s got a regular toothache over the James gang. My guess is he’d agree to do just about anything if it’d make the pain go away.”

  SOMETIME IN CHRISTMAS WEEK, Thomas Howard and his cousin, Charley Johnson, ascended Lafayette Street on foot, in slush, with a city councilman named Aylesbury who wanted to rent out a seven-room house owned by Mrs. August Saltzman. The rise was steep as a playground slide and on several occasions Aylesbury needed to rest in order to catch his wind.