The Woman Who Loved Jesse James

by Cindi Myers

  But I would not sit and wait forever. I searched for a way to force Jesse’s hand, and end this impasse between us.

  All of Jesse’s success, and both the acclaim and censure it had brought him, had made him famous. While a single man could afford to be reckless, a husband and father had to take more care. I reasoned that marrying me might induce Jesse to settle down and exercise more caution; it might even save his life.

  So I sat down and wrote Jesse a letter. I told him he had to come see me, that I had news that couldn’t be delivered in a letter. I knew his first assumption would be that I was pregnant. How quickly he answered me—and if he answered me at all—would be the first test of his feelings toward me. If he’d only been leading me on all these years I’d know soon enough.

  But Jesse didn’t disappoint me. Scarcely four days after I sent my letter to his mother’s house, he rode up on a chestnut mare. Another in Jesse’s growing collection of fine horseflesh, the mare had a black mane and tail, and warm brown eyes that watched him adoringly as he strode across the yard to meet me.

  “You’re looking well, Zee,” he said, studying my face intently. “Your letter made me fear you were indisposed.”

  I almost laughed at this choice of words, but decided to pity him and put him out of his misery. Out of one misery, that is, and perhaps into another. “Come sit with me on the porch,” I said, leading the way to the wooden swing that hung there.

  He took a seat beside me, hat in hand. He wore a black wool frock coat and hat, with a paisley silk vest and a black silk cravat. He looked like a man on the way to an important meeting—or a funeral. His sandy hair was slicked back with pomade and his face was clean shaven. He was the kind of man any woman would have noticed, but the blue eyes and the sly curl of his lips made him a man they remembered. I often thought if women had clerked in the banks and express companies of the day the lawmen would have collected better descriptions of the bandits, and Jesse might not have run free so long.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?” he asked, settling his hat on one knee, his eyes searching my face.

  “We’ve been engaged nine years,” I said. “It’s past time we marry. Either you set the date today, or I won’t see you any more.”

  I had my doubts whether I could keep this pledge, though if it took finding another man to wed, I would do it. I would not see thirty without a ring on my finger.

  I was prepared to argue my case. To berate him for leading me on. But my carefully rehearsed words were unneeded.

  To my amazement, Jesse gave in without a protest. “You’re right, Zee,” he said. “It’s high time we married.”

  “Do you mean that?” I asked, still wary of his sincerity.

  “I do.” He took my hand in his. “You’ve waited for me so patiently all these years. I’m tired of us being apart. I want us to be husband and wife, as soon as possible.”

  “No more delays?”

  “No more,” he said. “I know you think I’ve been purposely putting you off all this time, but I’ve lived a rough life, and I didn’t want to put you through that. Now I know I’ll never have real peace until you’re with me every day. I need you, Zee. “

  With those few words, my torment ended, and my heart melted. Jesse was not a man who needed anyone. He chafed at any restraint or dependence, but now he had willingly surrendered to me. “I’ll be a good wife to you, Jesse,” I promised. “I’ll make us a good home.”

  “I’ll make sure you never lack for anything with me,” he promised. “I’ll always take care of you.”

  My mother was not happy with my announcement that Jesse and I were finally to wed, but she saw the futility of trying to change my mind. My brother Robert gave his blessing, perhaps happy to transfer the responsibility for me and my upkeep to another man.

  Now came the challenge of finding someone to conduct the marriage ceremony and a place to hold the nuptials. I asked my uncle, Reverend William James, to perform the service, but he refused. “I won’t see you wed to a man with so much blood on his hands,” he told me, his face somber as a funeral.

  “You’re wrong!” I protested. “Jesse hasn’t done half the things people say he has. He’s a good man. He’ll be good to me.”

  Still, Uncle William refused to budge, until Jesse himself went to him and swore his innocence. Jesse’s charm and sincerity softened even the hard heart of our uncle, and he agreed to perform the ceremony.

  My sister Lucy and her husband, Bowling Browder, had moved to Kearney by this time, and it was decided we should hold the wedding at their house. On April 24, 1874, I stood with Lucy and Esme in my sister’s bedroom and prepared to say my vows.

  I stared at my unnaturally pale face in the mirror over my sister’s dresser and pinched my cheeks, hard, trying to bring some color to them. “Maybe I should use some rouge,” I ventured.

  “Don’t be silly,” Esme said. “You look beautiful. That dress is very becoming.”

  My wedding gown was made of pale blue silk, with a demi-train draped over a full bustle. I smoothed the skirts and the crinoline beneath rustled like dry leaves. “I’ve waited so long for this day, I can scarcely believe it’s here,” I said.

  “You weren’t the only one who had doubts.” Lucy handed me a bouquet of jonquils from her garden that she’d tied up in white ribbon. “More than once I feared Jesse was leading you on.”

  “Jesse never led me on.” My family and friends could think what they would about him, but I knew his intentions toward me had always been the best.

  A knock on the door interrupted us. Thinking it was Uncle William, I hurried to answer it. But instead of my uncle, I came face to face with Aunt Zerelda.

  Jesse’s mother regarded me with the air of someone observing a bug from great height. “Are you happy now that you’ve gotten your way?” she asked.

  “I’m very happy to be marrying Jesse,” I said, refusing to let her cow me, though beneath my full skirts my knees shook. “Jesse’s very happy too.”

  She blew the breath out her nose, like a bull snorting before a charge. “Jesse needs a wife like a bucket needs a hole. And he especially doesn’t need a penniless spinster like you.”

  “I’m exactly the woman Jesse needs,” I said. “He doesn’t care about money, only that together we’ll be happy, whether you wish it or not.”

  Her face reddened, only the muscles at her jaw showing white. “Don’t do this,” she said.

  “Jesse and I are going to marry,” I said. “I’m going to bear his name and live with him as his wife. You can either welcome me to the family, or risk losing him altogether.”

  “Jesse is my son. Marrying you doesn’t change that.”

  “And he’s going to be my husband. Even the Bible says a man shall forsake his parents and cleave to his wife. If you make Jesse choose, do you want to take a chance on the choice he’ll make?”

  Zerelda squared her shoulders. “I wouldn’t dream of not welcoming Jesse’s wife into our family,” she said stiffly. Then her eyes met mine, their blue as cold as steel. “But if you do anything to make him unhappy—ever—you’ll have me to answer to.”

  I nodded, afraid my voice would shake if I tried to do more. Zerelda loved Jesse and I loved Jesse—but she and I would never love each other. We could only circle warily, two dogs in possession of the same bone.

  Uncle William appeared in the hallway behind Zerelda. “Ladies, the guests are all here,” he said. “Are you almost ready?”

  “We’re ready,” Lucy called.

  The three of us made our way down the hall to the front parlor, where Jesse stood with Frank and Bowling Browder. Robert waited to give me away. My mother and younger sisters sat in chairs on one side of the room, while Zerelda and Doctor Samuel and Jesse’s younger siblings filled the chairs on the other side of the room.

  I thought for a moment of Lucy’s grand wedding, and felt a pang of regret for the modesty of my own celebration. But a larger gathering had been out of the question. “I
t’s impossible to keep a large party like that a secret,” Jesse had pointed out. “The Pinkertons and their like would be sure to take advantage of the occasion to make a raid.”

  The last thing I wanted on my wedding day was for the groom and his best man to be arrested, so I’d readily agreed to this smaller celebration with guests who could all be trusted to keep their mouths shut about what was happening here today.

  Jesse looked as handsome as ever in a black wool morning coat and brocade vest, his face solemn, his blue eyes shining when he looked into mine.

  Esme leaned close. “Is Jesse wearing a gun beneath his coat?” she whispered.

  My gaze shifted to Jesse’s side, and the disconcerting bulge of a gun belt at his hip. Frank, who stood up with him, was also armed. “I imagine a number of the men in the room have weapons,” I said. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Zerelda carried a gun somewhere on her ample person.

  “It seems sacrilegious for him to say his vows while armed,” Esme said.

  “I’m used to Jesse wearing a gun,” I said. “He almost doesn’t seem properly dressed without one.” Other men might go about unarmed, but Jesse wasn’t like other men. His gun marked him as different from them—dangerous and daring. The knowledge sent a thrill through me.

  “All right, let’s begin.” Uncle William arranged us at the front of the room, Jesse and I together in the center, our attendants around us. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and these witnesses . . .” Uncle William’s voice rose above us, rich and deep. My heart pounded wildly and I struggled to breathe. All the nervousness and excitement that had been building for years was pent up inside me, and I feared at any moment I might burst forth in either tears or shouts of joy.

  But I held my composure and repeated my vows, my eyes fixed on Jesse, who looked as calm as a summer pond.

  We’d gotten as far as ‘in sickness and in health’ when my young nephew, Robert Browder, burst into the room. He’d been stationed in the front yard to keep watch for suspicious characters. “Two men coming!” he shouted. “Strangers. They’re headed right this way.”

  Before I could utter a sound, Jesse and Frank whipped out pistols and raced to the door. Some guests dove for cover, but most, like me, stared at the curious spectacle of half a dozen grown men peering around the doorframe and from behind the front curtains at the two men walking down the street.

  I told myself I should be afraid, but fascination and frustration beat out fear. Knowing Jesse was marrying me under threat of danger somehow made his vows to ‘love, honor and cherish’ all the more precious. And the incident confirmed my hope that I was not binding myself to a life of dull drudgery, but one of excitement and adventure, with a man who would be sure to never bore me.

  “Those aren’t strangers,” Bowling declared, hauling his son up by the collar. “That’s Mike and Author Delwood. They live two houses down and wouldn’t harm a flea.”

  Looking sheepish, everyone holstered their weapons and filed back into the parlor. Uncle William mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Shall we start over?” he asked.

  “Can’t we pick up where you left off?” I asked. I was afraid if we had to start over every time something spooked the crowd I might have to wait another nine years to be married.

  The ceremony concluded and we invited everyone into the dining room for refreshments. As soon as I had cut the cake, Esme spirited me away into a side bedroom. “I have something important to tell you,” she whispered.

  I thought maybe she was going to announce that she was pregnant again. Instead, she took my hand in hers and squeezed. “I just wanted you to know that Mrs. Peabody was right.”

  “Mrs. Peabody?” I couldn’t think of my missing friend without a pain. “What was she right about?”

  Esme’s cheeks turned a rosy pink. “She was right when she said the wedding night could be most pleasurable—for the man and the woman.”

  I didn’t bother telling Esme I knew what a pleasure it could be. But I was grateful that Jesse and I would now be able to make love in a bed, and not have to worry about who knew what we were up to. “Thank you, Esme,” I said. “That’s good to know and relieves my mind greatly.”

  Jesse and I spent our wedding night in St. Louis, at the Lindell Hotel, registered under the name of Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Howard. After a pleasant dinner in the hotel dining room (where Jesse sat with his back against a wall, facing the doorway so that he could observe everyone who entered) we retired to our room. I was surprised to find that I was suddenly nervous. The brief encounters we’d stolen under cover of darkness hadn’t prepared me for the prospect of an entire evening with Jesse—with the lights on if we so desired.

  Jesse locked the door, then turned the gas lamp down low. “You look beautiful, Zee,” he said, moving toward me. “I’m a lucky man.”

  “I’m glad we can finally be together,” I said.

  “Me, too.” He leaned down and I thought he would kiss me, but instead, he began to take the pins from my hair. “I want to take my time with you tonight,” he said. “To get to know you all over again.”

  Despite the years we’d known each other, that night really was like the first time. We undressed each other slowly, fumbling with buttons like children tearing at the wrappings of a long-awaited gift. I traced my finger down the twin indentations from the bullet wounds in his chest. “Do they still hurt?” I asked.

  “Sometimes.” He dismissed the idea with a shrug.

  We crawled into bed and he pulled me into my arms. “I’ve missed you, Zee,” he said—words he said every time he came to me after months apart, but this time they rang with a deeper emotion, the relief of a man who is well and truly home.

  The hotel bed was broad and wide, with a feather mattress and linen as white and soft as clouds. When Jesse laid me back on it I felt almost as if I was floating, and when he sank into me I came back to earth with the exultant knowledge that this was not a dream or a fantasy. Jesse was mine and he would be for the rest of our lives.

  Afterwards, we lay in each other’s arms. I thought Jesse was asleep, until he broke the silence. “We’ll make a good home together,” he said. “We’ll have a family, maybe even put in a few crops. It’ll be a real home.”

  “I’d like that,” I said.

  His voice was wistful. I realized how lonely he must have been, hunted like an animal, always on his guard. Even now his pistols hung on the end of the bed, with another on the table beside his head, within reach if he should need it.

  I tried to put these things from my mind as I lay in the shelter of his arms. The outside world didn’t matter now. Nothing was as important as the fact that I was finally Mrs. Jesse James.

  From St Louis, we traveled to Galveston, Texas. Jesse delighted in showing me around the bustling port city that had once been home to the pirate Jean Lafitte. The flamboyant privateer fascinated Jesse, and he listened eagerly to tales of buried treasure with which saloon owners and local venders entertained tourists such as ourselves. I’m sure that in another time or place, Jesse would have been a pirate, way-laying the rich government ships the way he now way-laid the trains.

  And I would have been his lady, arrayed in jewels and gold—the bounty from his sea raids. I admit the idea appealed to me. After a lifetime of self-denial, I was ready for a little indulgence.

  For the most part, Jesse and I indulged ourselves in each other’s company—hours of lovemaking, getting to know every inch of each other’s body as we had not had the leisure for before. He told me I was beautiful. He thought I was smart. He made me feel special in the magical way he always had.

  We strolled the boardwalk by the ocean, past grand hotels that looked like castles. We ate salt-water taffy and ices purchased from carts along the shore, and took off our shoes and splashed in the warm ocean. In the evenings, we dined by candlelight on fresh fish, exotic fruits and wines imported on that day’s steamers, then retired to our opulently-furnished room to make lo
ve until we fell asleep, exhausted, in each other’s arms.

  Far from the familiar faces and climes of Missouri, and the accompanying political tensions, Jesse was a new man. Rather than being a notorious outlaw or a dangerous criminal with a price on his head, he was simply another young, handsome tourist on his honeymoon. Even the gun belt strapped about his hips beneath his finely-cut suit coat was not out of place here, as every other man seemed to go about armed in this country not so long removed from the frontier.

  Of course, Jesse was not a complete stranger to Texas, and friends and acquaintances found their way to him. One of these was the journalist, John Newman Edwards. A distinguished, sad-eyed man with a drooping moustache, Major Edwards had served with General Shelby in the war. He had championed Jesse in his newspaper, The Kansas City Times, since before the Gallatin Bank robbery in 1869, and was considered one of the James brothers’ staunchest allies. “It is a delight to meet you, Mrs. James,” he said, bowing low over my hand when we were introduced. “You are every bit as lovely as Jesse has led me to believe.”

  Jesse delighted in reading Edwards’ praise of him. Each morning before breakfast he would buy whatever papers were available and read them while he enjoyed his coffee, porridge and toast. When we were alone, he would read his favorite parts aloud. “Don’t he make me sound grand?” he’d say, with a boyish grin.

  It was John Edwards, writing under the name of Ranger, who broke the news of our marriage to the world in an article in the St. Louis Dispatch. The article was full of errors intended to throw off any officer of the law who might be on Jesse’s trail. By the time it was published, we had left Galveston and were in Sherman, staying with Jesse’s sister Susie and her husband, Allen Parmer, a former bushwhacker.

  I saved the article in my scrapbook. It is one of my favorites, if only because of these words, which I have underlined. Jesse told the reporter, “Through good and evil report, and notwithstanding the lies that had been told upon me and the crimes laid at my door, her devotion to me has never wavered for a moment. You can say that both of us married for love, and that there cannot be any sort of doubt about our marriage being a happy one.” My most fervent wish was for those words to be true.