by Gene Logsdon
A Wicker Park Press Book
Published in 2007 by
Academy Chicago Publishers
363 West Erie Street
Chicago, Illinois 60610
www.academychicago.com
Cover and interior design by Sarah Olson
Copyright © 2007 by Gene Logsdon
Printed in the U.S.A.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without the express written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with the publisher.
To the SBDC Boys, with affection
CHAPTER 1
The mail train rumbled slowly out of St. Paul, announcing its road crossings up the Minnesota River Valley as if each were some terribly momentous event. The steam whistle was a soothing nightly occasion for, well, who knows how many people within hearing range, people whose lives were quiet and solitary enough to appreciate the plaintive wail or who had an ear for lonely sounds contrasting with the social clatter that usually circumscribed their lives: for Marge Puckett surely, trying to study in her apartment near the University of Minnesota campus, but counting the days until classes were over and she could return to her parent’s farm outside Grass Prairie thirty miles away; for professional escort Kadie Crockin, floating naked in her canoe on Fish Lake, counting stars, wondering what the hell life was supposed to be all about; for Ed Hasse, on his farm near Flying Cloud, milking his cows, counting the seconds between train whistles, a thousand one, a thousand two, a thousand three, knowing the distances between the crossings, and allotting for time between whistles, determining how fast the train was rolling, not that he gave a damn; for Axel Barnt, counting his jars of moonshine in the vault ruins of the long abandoned brewery along the Minnesota River upstream from Shakopee; for Nash Patroux, in his Western Range restaurant near Savage, checking the Colt revolvers his waiters wore as part of the decor, making sure none of them were loaded—a waiter had once shot a man; for Red Blake, sitting in the now quiet dugout of the town baseball diamond at Chaska, counting up his strikeouts after a game, glorying in the fact that he had beaten every team in Carver and Scott counties; for Fr. Abelard Broge, of the Oblates of St. Joseph, counting the minutes as he waited at the Shakopee station to pick up the new class of oblates coming to Ascension Seminary. None of these people could know that on this particular night, June 15, 1953, the high, thin scream of the train did announce something momentous for them, a human cargo that would touch their lives in strange and traumatic ways.
No one listened to the train whistle more closely than did Jesse James waiting near the Savage station, a dusty old black Stetson askew on his head, a pistol stuck in a silver-buckled belt under a worn, white-embroidered, black cowboy shirt, his jeans so tight that he could barely walk without discomfort. His eyes blinked queerly as he listened for the approaching train, his head swaying back and forth as if he were slightly addled, which indeed he was.
Jesse James had dreamed of this night for many years, perhaps as long ago as the day, growing up, when he realized that he had been cursed with the name of a famous outlaw. Carrying a moniker like Jesse James could affect one’s mind. Jesse James the First had tried to rob the bank at Northfield, not so far away, and Jesse James the Second’s aged father, Donald James Brown, claimed that he could remember the event from childhood. That is why he named his son Jesse, he said. But Minnesotans in general did not take robbing their banks kindly, and although Jesse James the First might have been a culture hero in Missouri, Minnesotans were extremely proud that Northfield had been his downfall. To counteract the hundreds of thoughtless jibes that Jesse the Second had to endure, he had convinced himself that he was a descendant of the outlaw. He had in fact assembled in a cardboard box a jumble of random newspaper clippings to prove it. The clippings proved nothing except the probability that he was “not quite right in the head,” as local judgment had long ago concluded.
But he would have the last say. He had planned his revenge for days while drinking cream sodas at the Western Range, where he was allowed to hitch his old horse, Blaze, out front, as other equestrians were encouraged to do to add western ambience to the restaurant. His horse was an aged trotter given to him by the town jokesters in Savage as another way to tease him about his name. But as they well realized, the horse served a useful purpose. Jesse could not drive and in fact possessed an almost irrational fear of automobiles and other motored vehicles. The horse enabled him to get where he wanted to go which was mostly to the Western Range and back to his father’s farm. He was allowed to wear his pistol openly, as the waiters in the restaurant did, because the firing pin was missing and the trigger mechanism broken. Patroux seldom allowed him to drink beer because alcohol contrarily seemed to make him dully normal and not nearly as amusing as when he was cold sober.
Jesse James the Second had endured the taunts and made his plans. He had waited three nights now for the train to actually have passengers on it. He was going to resurrect the honor and glory of all the downtrodden Jesse Jameses of the world. He was going to rob the train.
Riding on the train, priesthood seminarian Blaise Rell was trying without success to see into the darkness outside the windows. He was sure that great adventures lay in wait for him in this new stomping ground of Minnesota. To his overworked imagination, Minnesota was “the west,” or at least as far west as he thought he would ever get from his birthplace in Ohio. To him “west” was a magical word, part of the fantasy world that he constantly lived in, where roamed cowboys and outlaws and gunfighters. Perhaps here in the “west” he would find the little valley of his dreams, where he would raise cattle and where no one else could enter without his say-so because he owned the whole damn thing. As another indication of what his priestly superiors called “Peter Pan syndrome,” he preferred to spell his first name, Blaise, given to him when he took vows, as “Blaze.” Sounded more dashing that way, like Flash as in Flash Gordon. Of course there was some risk involved. His classmate, Gabriel Roodman, seated next to him, liked to point out that horses were often called Blaze and that it was a good name for a horse’s ass too. Oh well. Better than a klutzy name like Gabriel.
Aside from his name, Blaze, at 21, was not sure just who the hell he was. He fantasized about becoming a cowboy, or sometimes a farmer as his father had been before he went broke at it. Other times he wondered if he might not find a way to play shortstop in the Major Leagues. So why, he constantly asked himself, was he becoming a priest? He wished he could answer that question sanely. He had once possessed an inordinate desire to help people. That was it, as far as he could figure out, but he was no longer sure if he could help anyone or if anyone deserved help. Or if help could actually be given. Other than that, the whole idea of being a priest was crazy in his case. Could a priest take Lou Boudreau’s place on the Cleveland Indians? Could a priest herd cattle? On the other hand, a priest had a better chance than a layperson of taking over the Catholic Church, striking the superstitious beliefs from its theology and moving its headquarters out of Rome, another of his favorite fantasies. He smiled inwardly, stared out the train window and shook his head. Black impenetrable night. Black impenetrable future. Black like the mournful suit he wore, which, with the little blue insignia of a cross on the lapel above the initials OSJ, announced to all the world that he was a member of the Oblates of St. Joseph, a Catholic religious community of seminarians, priests and lay brothers bound by vows of poverty, chastity and obedience forever and ever amen.
Beyond the insignia, what was an Oblate of St. Joseph after all, he mused as he listened to the clackety-clack of iron wheels on iron track. He was not even sure what “oblate” meant literally, even a
fter four years of seminary high school, a fifth gruelling year in St. Joseph’s Novitiate in Indiana, the Josephians’ equivalent of the Marines’ Paris Island, and two years of seminary college in Detroit. Religious training and education had only succeeded in turning him into a heretic, a fact that he had managed not to reveal to anyone so far and could just barely admit to himself.
“Just what the hell is an oblate?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth, evidently a question aimed at the equally black-suited Roodman beside him.
His companion did not bother to turn his head either. Gabe Roodman had been sitting next to Blaze Rell now for seven years, and like blood brothers they were friends except when they were fighting. They were in fact always next to each other in the seminary because in any alphabetical listing of the names of their class, Rell and Roodman came back to back. Seminary tradition believed that chaos could be avoided by keeping everything in alphabetical order.
“An oblate is a species of reindeer found only in the Congo where it is the staple food of pigmies,” Roodman replied solemnly. “Colloquially it also refers to the animal’s dung. When in the Congo, if someone tells you that you are full of oblate, don’t take it as a compliment.”
Blaze laughed, always quick to laugh, always laughing at something. The two were a study in contrasts, Blaze with hair the color of ripe wheat, eyes pale blue, skin fair but tanned to a near bronze color, character outgoing, unable to keep from speaking his mind even when he knew it would only get him in trouble; Gabe, swarthy, brooding, reserved, eyes as bituminous black as his hair, as black as the suit he wore. However different they were, Blaze did not mind being chained to Gabe by the alphabet because he could never predict what was going to come out of his colleague’s mouth. It would almost always be something funny, and if it were something serious, it would be even funnier. It was for such sentimental reasons that Blaze stayed in the seminary, he told himself. Where else could life be so drolly amusing while also secure from the financial fangs of the real world?
A black suit in the seat behind them leaned forward and spoke. “Take a gander straight ahead up the aisle.” Neither Blaze nor Gabe turned to look at the speaker because they knew it was Fen, their only classmate who would ever say “take a gander.” “If that’s not a coal oil lamp, I’m full of oblate.”
Blaze laughed louder then, for in truth, the swinging light was a lantern and to an incurable romantic, a delightful omen of the occasion. They really were travelling west, back in time, as he fantasized, in a coal-burning, lamplit rocket ship. He said as much. The fact that Fen was cradling a western-style guitar which he was idly strumming accentuated the feeling of time warp.
Gabe rolled his eyes. He endured having Blaze tied to him by the alphabet, even if his comrade did talk too much, because of Blaze’s uncommon ability to see something enjoyable or exciting in their lives no matter how depressing or dull the situation. Most of the oblates were complaining about the coal dust and sulfurous fumes blowing through the coach windows, which had to be kept open because the temperature on the hot June night was only slowly coming down from daytime nineties. Not Blaze. He would have found life in a dungeon somehow enchanting and opportune, Gabe believed. Take the way the idiot had provided tobacco in the Novitiate year when there seemed no possible way to get tobacco. One of the quirks of Josephian religious life allowed seminarians to smoke pipes but not cigarettes. However, their pipe tobacco was severely rationed. Without money they could not buy tobacco, even on the sly, and so they were constantly suffering from nicotine withdrawal. Far from persuading them to quit smoking, which had been the intent of their superiors, all of whom smoked, the shortage only made Blaze more contrary and creative. He had looked out upon the real world and saw in it an unlimited supply of free tobacco in the form of cigarette butts strewn along sidewalks and streets, in public parks, even out of the ashtrays in the priests’ rooms, which the seminarians had to clean. The butts he carefully straightened, unrolled, removed the filters, if any, and the ashy ends, and mixed the nicotine-soaked remains with their usual ration of Prince Albert. The tobacco supply in the Prince Albert can rarely diminished because Blaze kept adding to it. Gabe referred to it as the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
“This isn’t 1953 after all. It’s 1853!” Blaze now blurted, beaming with pleasure at the thought. Fen smiled too, as much at his friend’s delight, which he had expected, as at the unexpected lamp. Fen was short for “Fenderbender” because of his skill at crashing seminary cars without injuring anyone. Some of his classmates thought this could be explained because Fen’s real name was Christopher, as in St. Christopher, the patron saint and protector of travellers.
Now the whole crew of black suits began to point and laugh at the lamp: Banana Banahan, Clutch Pedali, Very Reverend Lukey, Danny Danauau, rhymes with bowwow, Little Eddie Sacher, Martin Luvore, and Melonhead Mullaney, who with Blaze, Gabe and Fen, made up the OSJ high school class of ’49, the most troublesome class ever to have graduated from St. Joseph’s Prep Seminary, according to their schoolmaster, Fr. Hildebrand. Not that Hildebrand minded. Never before in the history of the Oblates of St. Joseph had there been gathered together in one class so much sheer intelligence, at least by I.Q. standards. The Provincial, who was the equivalent of a Chief Executive Officer over the Josephians, and his Advisory Council, believed in I.Q. testing as much as they believed that the Virgin Mary had been physically carried by angels beyond the clouds and into heaven. They also believed that in brains lay the future of their Community, apparently seeing no possible oxymoron between intelligence and religious beliefs like Mary’s “Assumption” up, up and away in the general direction of the pearly gates. Brilliant priests would bring honor and money to the Josephians by occupying high, well-paid posts in universities and writing bestselling books. The fact that the Class of ’49 had an average I.Q. of 132 and highs of 145 and 150 in the despicably insolent Rell and Roodman, was viewed as a special blessing from God, a treasure trove to be coddled the way a farmer coddled his highest producing milk cows, even if they kicked too much during milking. One had to put up with a certain amount of travail when dealing with geniuses.
Gabe choked on the smoke in the train car, but it was Fen’s incessant and mindless guitar strumming that was getting on his nerves. Even Blaze, who occasionally joined Fen in singing, began to hope that they would soon reach Shakopee and their destination, Ascension Seminary. There were only four coaches making up the train, two for mail and sundry other deliveries, one empty and one occupied by the oblates. Only a few years earlier, the train had stopped at little creameries all along its way up the valley to pick up milk or to bring back the empty milk cans from the previous pickup. It was a train soon to become obsolete—fit transportation, Blaze thought, for oblates who were also a throwback to the past.
The train slowed even more. From the rear of the car, the conductor announced the next stop, Savage, halfheartedly, knowing that his only passengers, in their strange black suits, were getting off at Shakopee. But if he did not call out the stations, it might occur to the railroad officials that conductors weren’t really needed on trains like this anymore. He then went back to the mail car to toss off the bags of mail. The sleepy station master, standing by on the dock, had already indicated there would be no boarders, so there was hardly reason for the train to come to a full stop. As the mail bags plopped down on the dock and the train lumbered on, neither the conductor nor the station master noticed the figure that slipped out of the shadows behind the station and jumped onto the passenger car ahead.
The train picked up speed again, or rather increased from slower to merely slow. Blaze’s eyes turned from the window to behold, with a start, a most unusual sight. In the Brigadoonish light of the coal oil lamp ahead a figure so strange was advancing toward him that for a moment he thought he was delirious from breathing the sulfurous smoke. He punched Gabe in the ribs with his elbow, and Gabe, in the act of punching him back, noticed the transfixed stare on his comrade’s face an
d followed it with his eyes up the aisle. It was rare for Gabe to show total surprise about anything but now he did. Apparently the ghost of a long-ago train robber was swaying and weaving toward them, brandishing a pistol. Ratty gray hair dangled from under a dusty old black Stetson. A red bandana covered the lower portion of the face, above which a set of eyes showing mostly white, peered wildly from one side of the coach to the other.
The cocksure attitude of the seminarians dissolved and their faces paled. They remained totally motionless, Fen with his strumming hand poised above the guitar, as if some sudden cataclysmic weather change had brought on an instantaneous ice age and frozen them solid. Jesse James spoke his well-rehearsed lines.
“Pilgrims, git your hands up where I can see ’em. This here’s a holdup. Put your money and jewelery into this here hat of mine or I’ll blow your heads off.”
Not a seminarian moved. Not a seminarian was capable of movement. Jesse James saw their fear and felt already vindicated. For once he was somebody. He stole a glance at his watch but it had apparently stopped again. Oh well, no need for it. Soon the train would slow again as it peaked the grade near Murphy’s Landing where he had hidden his horse in the woods. He had to have the robbery completed before the train started downhill again, so he could leap safely to the ground. Then he would unpeel the once-fancy cowboy shirt which he had fetched out of the trash at the town dump, in favor of the blue chambray shirt underneath, his usual attire. He would stuff the shirt, bandana, and the old black Stetson in his saddlebag, don his usual white cowboy hat hanging from the saddle horn, ride off to the Western Range hardly a mile away, swagger into the bar, quaff a cream soda or two, establish an alibi. No one would raise an eyebrow because this was what he did every night. That asshole Nash Petroux behind the bar liked to make fun of him because he dressed western and wore a pistol like the waiters did, but ole’ Jesse knew what he was doing.