by Gene Logsdon
“You deef, boy? Put your money and jewels in this here hat ’fore I cave your pukey little face in.” He shoved the pistol into The Reverend Lukey’s forehead and The Reverend Lukey promptly fainted.
Jesse James was not prepared for this, and for a second slipped from his role.
“You okay, bub?” Then he remembered his mission, stepped back and brandished the gun in the air again. “Don’t none of you undertakers try to pull anything on me or I’ll blast you all to hell.”
Bypassing Lukey who had slumped over in his seat, the train robber thrust his hat in front of each seminarian in turn, very much like an usher in church taking up the Sunday collection, Gabe would later relate. Each in turn dropped his wallet into the hat.
Fen, possibly in the same spirit with which he wrecked seminary cars without injuring anyone, decided to object. “Sir, we don’t have any money or jewels.”
Jesse leered at the speaker. He had never before been addressed as “sir” and that was nice, but he was not buying this no money crap from a bunch of undertakers. Undertakers were rich.
“You triflin’ me, boy? You can’t breathe without money in this here goddam world, much less ride around in trains. Fork it over and be damn quick about it or I’ll bust that geetar over your head.” Fen thought he could discern a lack of resolve creeping into the robber’s voice. Blaze thought he could discern the end of Fen’s life approaching.
“Honest, we don’t,” Fen pleaded. “Look in those billfolds. We’re religious seminarians.”
“What the hell’s that?” Jesse growled, trying to keep his eyes on the speaker while peering into one of the billfolds. By God there wasn’t but two dollars in the first one.
Lukey came out of his swoon and began to pray aloud: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed …” Jesse looked at him with consummate pity. And people thought he was crazy.
Little Eddie took up the prayer; “… hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy …”
“This is your last chance,” Jesse James thundered, waving the pistol like a baton. “Your money or your life.”
Now Little Eddie fainted. The Very Reverend Lukey prayed on. “Hail Mary, full of grace …”
The train was starting up the grade at Murphy’s Landing. Jesse James knew he had to make his getaway soon.
“You won’t find ten dollars altogether in those wallets,” Fen continued, growing bolder, but still holding on to the guitar as if he were about to begin a concert. “We don’t carry much money.”
Blaze knew that Fen was going to get them all killed. There were two twenty-dollar bills rolled up to the size of cigarettes and flattened to hide in the deepest folds of his billfold. Vow of poverty or no vow of poverty, he had kept a little security beyond what the lilies of the field required, just in case. If this maniac found the money, he’d think that Fen was lying and kill them all.
Jesse James was having a difficult time keeping the pistol levelled with one hand while unfolding the wallets with the other and wedging his collection hat between his body and his elbow. Son of a bitch, there wasn’t but a dollar in the next one he examined. None at all in the one after that. Son of a bitch. Time was running out.
“Okay, stand up, you dudes,” he ordered. “Turn your pockets inside out.”
Everyone did as ordered except Little Eddie who was still swooning away. For a swift second, Gabe was tempted to fake a faint, but he feared that one more swoon would convince the thief to shoot.
Jesse James peered closely from one pocket to another and collected another few dollars in change and a couple of necklace-like strings of beads with little crosses attached to them. Didn’t look like jewelry but who knew about undertakers. There was no more time for a more thorough frisk. The train had reached the top of the grade. It was time to deliver his speech.
“I am Frank James, back to avenge my brother and all the poor Jesse Jameses of the world. Northfield ain’t heard the end of us. I have risen on the third day, for you have seen me, and tell all them Bob Fords of the world to watch their backs because I am back.” He thought his play on the word “back” was particularly clever. He stepped to the front of the coach, paused, and suddenly changing his mind before he leaped into the darkness, threw the wallets, petty cash, rosaries and watches back into the aisle.
“And you’re the sorriest bunch of broke bastards I ever did see.”
CHAPTER 2
After due consideration, Prior Robert, at Ascension Seminary, decided to do nothing about the harrowing experience that had befallen the newly-arrived class of oblates. Doing nothing, he had found, was often a wise policy. Most problems resolved themselves, given a little time. No one had witnessed the attempted robbery except the seminarians. Nothing had been stolen. Morever, investigation of the robbery attempt, if pursued, could only bring untoward publicity to the Josephian Order. In fact, Prior Robert, studying the records of Oblate Blaise and Oblate Gabriel, would not have been at all surprised if the two young men had made up the whole affair and talked the others into going along with it.
While their classmates lost interest in the event within a month, Blaze, Fen and Gabe continued to view the experience as a signal event in their lives. Their version of the “robbery” grew more harrowing with every telling and eventually the older seminarians at Ascension, not unfamiliar with the pranks of Oblates Blaise and Gabriel from previous years in college and high school with them, became more and more suspicious. Most of them decided, like their Prior, that the story was made up.
“Can you believe that?” Blaze protested to Fen. “They think we’re lying.”
“Maybe it was all hallucination,” Very Reverend Lukey suggested, wishing fervently that it were true in order to cast doubt also upon whether he had actually fainted. Blaze stared pityingly at him. No wonder religious myth took such a hold on people. They actually wanted to ignore what really happened in life. Easier that way. He resolved on the spot to start keeping a journal. He would call it “The Story of My Weird Life,” by Other Blaze. The world had to know what was going on here.
“We’ve got to find a way to get back to Savage and find that guy,” Blaze said. “I gotta know what that was all about. I think he was crying out for help.”
“I think you’re afraid we saw a vision,” The Very Reverend Lukey said primly. “You could never handle that.”
Since the seminarians were rarely allowed to leave the seminary grounds and even more rarely were assigned duties that required car travel, Blaze’s chances for documentation of the train robbery were slim. But not impossible. Life at Ascension was proving to be something quite different from the life they had experienced in other seminaries. This one had previously been a health sanitarium called Mudpura. It had fallen on hard times during the Depression and closed, after which the buildings began to suffer from neglect. So in addition to their studies, the oblates were expected, at least until the proper lay brothers could be enlisted, to help restore the deteriorating buildings, operate the dairy farm, and do the cooking for the whole community. Prior Robert thought doing work like this was good for students, despite the fact that it upset the younger priest professors who perceived the Josephian future to be in higher education. Seminarians should be studying scriptural theology and Thomistic philosophy even in their spare time, they grumpily complained, not learning how to make hay and lay bricks. But because the Josephians were poor in earthly goods, befitting their vow of poverty, fixing up the property, which had been given to them, made a certain amount of economic sense if not examined too closely. For the time, some of the traditional seminary schedule was suspended temporarily. Instead of rising at the crack of dawn to chant the breviary psalms and meditate on the Scriptures and attend Mass, followed by a long day of study and more breviary chanting in the evening, those oblates who showed aptitude or willingness for manual labor rose at the crack of dawn to milk cows or cook, or work at construction jobs.
For most of the Class of ’49, anything was preferable to chanting the brevi
ary. For Blaze, exemption from chapel exercises also might mean opportunity to find Frank James. From upper classmen, Blaze had learned that the farm crew was most often excused from chapel exercises. Pointing out that he was the only oblate who knew how to milk cows by hand except Walt, the lay brother in charge of the farm, he promptly got himself assigned to barn duty. That was Step One.
In principle, Brother Walt was not in favor of seminarians working on the farm. His experience with the three who had been sent to help him previously led him to remark often that “if someone gave all three of them each a wit, they would not altogether amount to a half wit.” But this Blaze fellow actually could milk cows by hand, so he might be tolerable. Blaze said that Gabe had farm experience too, which was a lie, but Blaze knew his alphabetical partner was a fast learner. Gabe soon joined him in the barn. That was Step Two.
Surely there was a feed mill or farm supply store in Savage or Shakopee that could be used as an excuse to hunt for leads to the erstwhile train robber. That was Step Three.
Little Eddie and Very Reverend Lukey who, as Very Reverend Lukey wanted everyone to know, were not frustrated cowboys like their classmates, volunteered for the cooking crew because after farm work, cooking was the job most frequently exempted from chapel. Very Reverend Lukey denied that this was his intent. He said he actually liked chanting the breviary, learning the rubrics of Mass and bowing and genuflecting and lighting candles and burning incense. That’s how he got his nickname, remember. But if he spent all the customary time in chapel that seminarians were supposed to spend, he might miss out on the adventures he was sure that that damned Blaze would be getting into.
All of the new class of oblates at Ascension were thus able to lead lives hitherto unknown in Catholic seminaries. Melonhead Mullaney, who secretly wanted to be a doctor, had himself put in charge of the infirmary and worked on the paint crew when not employed in dispensing aspirins and enemas. Danny Danauau and Banana Banahan became bricklayers, figuring that lifting bricks all day would strengthen their wrists and forearms, enabling them to swing a baseball bat faster. Mart Luvore and Fen, the latter irritated because Blaze could not get him on the farm crew, took up carpentry. Clutch Pedali landed the best assignment of all. He befriended the engineer hired to take care of the steam furnaces that heated the water and kept the buildings warm through sub-zero Minnesota winters. Being a clever lad, he soon mastered the workings of the furnaces and talked Prior Robert into letting him take over the job and dispensing with the engineer, thus saving that salary. Clutch, feigning infinite concern for the boilers, hardly ever had to go to chapel and could leave any time he felt that the temperature of the buildings demanded it, which was, well, most of the time.
“Who would ever have thought that the ability to read a gauge on a boiler might mean freedom someday,” Fen remarked drolly.
Strangely enough, while others grumbled, “the most troublesome class in the history of the seminary” actually liked the more or less medieval Benedictine lifestyle in which they found themselves, although they put quite a bit more emphasis on labora than on ora, and managed to work in a considerable amount of sporta too.
Blaze decided that next to the phantom train robber, Brother Walt was the most fascinating person he had met yet in Minnesota. In his journal, Other Blaze wrote: “Brother Walt was a bartender before he came into the Josephians, can you believe that? He knows a lot about the world. He has all sorts of quaint expressions. When he’s feeling good, he stands up on the tractor seat, flaps his arms, crows like a rooster, and hollers ‘I’m the best in the west.’ He says that oysters, especially raw, are an amazing aphrodisiac. (That’s probably why they are never on our menu.) He says that he had oysters for dinner on the train coming to Ascension and that afterwards he ‘creamed his jeans.’ I’m not sure I know what that means, but I think I do.”
“Do you guys like beer?” Brother Walt asked one day after he had become acquainted enough with his two new barn assistants to know that the answer would probably be affirmative. All three were busy forking manure out of the gutters behind the cow stanchions and into the manure spreader. Blaze and Gabe were once more re-hashing the mysterious train robber.
Blaze pondered the question of beer, not yet quite sure how well Walt could be trusted. Although lay brothers and priests were both allowed free access to beer, it was forbidden to seminarians without special permission, which was given only on festive occasions. This was a sore point with the seminarians.
“Well, I don’t know as how I really like the stuff,” Blaze said tentatively, “but I’ve been known to drink it.”
“Oh yeah,” Gabe said. “In seminary college, he stole a beer out of the priest’s rec room refrigerator ten days in a row. Just to beat my record.”
Walt hooted. He pointed with his fork at a milk can sitting in the corner of the barn. “Take a look.”
A few bottles of beer bobbed in ice water in the can. The beer was Royal Bohemian. “If you notice, the label doesn’t give the alcoholic content,” Walt said. “Just says ‘STRONG’.” They all laughed, sat down, and had some STRONG.
The liquid emboldened Gabe. “Walt, you’ve got to help us. We have to find that guy who tried to rob us. Honest to God, it really happened. Somewhere between Savage and Shakopee.”
Walt smiled. After years of standing behind a bar listening to all sorts of fantasies, he knew that it was best just to nod sympathetically.
“We hafta try to find that guy,” Blaze repeated. “The train was going up a grade so we ought to be able to locate about where he jumped off. He had to know about the grade. He probably is a local. Surely someone saw something. Isn’t there a feed mill over that way, or a cattle auction, or a tractor supply store that you might need to go to sometime? Something that would need our help loading on the truck or whatever.”
“Don’t know of any farm supply over that way, though that doesn’t mean there ain’t none,” Walt said, mulling the possibility for adventure. “Tell you what is over there though. The damnedest saloon you’ve ever seen. I mean really. There are guns all over the walls. The waiters wear pistols. There’s sometimes horses tied to the hitchin’ rail out front. You’d swear you were walking onto a western movie set.”
“You’re bullshittin’,” Blaze said.
“No, really.”
“Wow. Hey, maybe that’s a good place to start the search for a guy who thinks he’s Frank James.”
The three were silent as they considered the risks involved in going to a saloon. Bars were not places that even old softie Prior Robert would give them permission to enter. But unlike the seminarians, Brother Walt was allowed to carry money and go wherever he needed to conduct the farm’s business. No reason why his helpers couldn’t tag along, he thought. Once they were on the road, well, they’d need to eat lunch someplace. He’d speak to the Prior. He remembered that he needed protein supplement for the hogs.
Jesse James was half-way through his fourth cream soda when Nash Patroux, winking at another patron, asked him the question. “Robbed any trains lately, Jesse?” Although Jesse was accustomed to jibes like that, and in truth it was that jibe that started him thinking about doing just that, but he could no longer just grin like an idiot, even though grinning like an idiot and thereby entertaining Patroux and his regular customers was how he earned free meals at the Western Range. The people of Savage took care of him because he gave even the stupidest among them somebody to look down on. But after the ill-fated robbery, Patroux’s taunt might be more than a taunt. Did that fox know something?
Jesse had been living in torment ever since he had tried to rob the undertakers on the train. He could not imagine how he had actually worked up the courage to endure the stress of his escapade. Nor could he imagine why the undertakers had not reported the affair. Every day he expected the sheriff to stomp into the saloon and arrest him. No more cream sodas. Who would feed his trusty old horse, Blaze? Jail would at least relieve his father of the burden of caring for him. Hardly a day wen
t by that Pap didn’t look at him and mutter something about what would happen to Jesse when he was gone. Jesse could not bring himself to assure Pap that he would do just fine, that he was not as retarded as everyone thought he was. Exaggerating his mental quirks had been an effective way to avoid working for a living. But now his little game might be coming to an end. When the sheriff came to arrest him, he thought of using his fast draw and then the sheriff would have to shoot him, like in the movies. But of course, the sheriff knew Jesse’s pistol didn’t work and would just laugh.
Even while he tried to figure out if Patroux was only joking like usual, Jesse spied three strangers walk into the restaurant. They were not regular customers because they gazed around at the walls full of guns and stared at the pistol-holstered waiters with open mouths. Maybe they were Pinkertons looking for him. Jesse slouched over his cream soda, trying to pull his head down between his shoulders like a turtle, eyeing the strangers in the mirror behind the bar. He was sure he had seen two of them someplace before but could not place them. Maybe they’d been shadowing him and he had seen them but not consciously.
Walt had to lead the gaping Gabe by the arm to steer him to a table. Gabe was not sure he had ever been in a bar of any kind before, much less one like this. Blaze was so transfixed that he would not budge. He thought he had entered his fanstasy world again, or one of them anyway. Here was the old west, alive. There had been a horse at the hitching rail outside. Inside, the walls were full of firearms along with paintings of almost naked ladies over the bar. Oh wow. The chairs were framed in cattle horns instead of wood. Waiters really did wear holstered pistols. Tables were bedecked in red-checkered tablecloths. A shelf of books on the far wall caught his eye and he proceeded to it, ignoring his comrades. “Oh wow,” he said out loud, reading one of the titles. “They got a copy of Cole Younger, By Himself.”
Nash Patroux, behind the bar, perked up his ears. “You know that book?” he asked, surprised.