The Woman Who Loved Jesse James

by Cindi Myers

  Mr. Carter returned to the room. “There might be trouble,” he said.

  Those words turned my heart to ice. My chair clattered to the floor as I shoved up from it. Jesse put a hand on my arm. “Stay here,” he said. Then he drew his revolver and followed our friend into the front room.

  I followed, moving quietly so that Jesse wouldn’t hear and order me away. But I was determined to know what was going on. Jesse and Carter stood on either side of a large front window, guns raised, watching the road. Carter’s son stood near the door in a similar pose.

  “What is going on?” Carter’s wife, Liv, spoke from behind me.

  “The sheriff is out there with four other men on horseback,” Carter said. “I suspect there are others hidden in the woods back there, maybe some circling around.”

  I swallowed hard and fought a wave of faintness. “Are we surrounded?” I asked, my voice thin and high-pitched.

  Jesse spoke without looking at me. “We don’t know. Right now they’re not doing anything but sitting there and looking at the house.”

  “Maybe we should fire a shot to warn them off,” Carter’s son said. He was seventeen, a big, broad-shouldered young man with the beginnings of a moustache on his upper lip. His face was pale, but he wore a determined expression.

  “No,” his father said. “We’ll wait. Force them to make the first move.”

  We remained frozen in place, a tense tableaux vivant. The only sound was the steady tick of the mantel clock as it counted off the seconds. I stared at the back of Jesse’s head, wishing I had the power to see through his eyes what waited on the road in front of the house. He stood so still, seemingly calm, eyes fixed on the road, gun at the ready. Was he afraid of facing death, or did he cope by refusing to consider the possibility? Did he have a strategy for dealing with the situation, or would he react on instinct?

  As if feeling my gaze on him, Jesse turned and looked at me. “Sweetheart, go upstairs and check on the children,” he said. “Stay with them until I come for you.”

  I started to protest, but part of me very badly wanted to know that the children were okay. So I turned and raced up the stairs, pausing at the door of our room to catch my breath before I tip-toed inside.

  The children were asleep, Mary on her side, one knee drawn up to her chin, the other leg stretched out. Tim lay beside her on his stomach, arms folded beneath him. I noticed how tall he was getting, the hem of his trousers up above his ankles.

  I tucked the blanket around them and smoothed my hand down Tim’s back, careful not to wake him. Then I went to the window and pushed the curtain aside a scant inch so I could look out.

  The scene I saw chilled my blood. Five men on horseback, guns at the ready. They faced the house, expressions unreadable from this distance but their intent clear. I gripped the windowsill to keep from sinking to the floor, heart racing, every breath a tortured gasp. I had lost countless hours over the years in fear for Jesse’s life, but that anxiety was a poor counterfeit of the terror that gripped me now. Those guns held the promise of real death—an end to the life I knew.

  An end to the man I loved.

  I glanced at the children again, at their sweet, innocent faces. I tried to remember a time when I had been so unaware of danger. It seemed another lifetime ago, in a different world.

  I bent to kiss each sweet head then, one hand in my pocket, stroking the grip of the pistol Jesse had given me so long ago, I slipped out the door and down the stairs. If Jesse was to die tonight, then I would be with him. I would not let him leave without me there.

  I stepped into a scene unchanged from moments before. Jesse and Carter still stood on either side of the window, Carter’s son by the door, weapons drawn. Liv waited in the passage between living and dining room. I took up a post beside her. The minutes stretched on—five minutes, then ten. I wanted to scream or weep or do anything to find release. But like the others, I could only wait.

  Then the three men drew away from the window and door at once. “They’re leaving,” Carter’s son said. “Why the hell are they doing that?”

  I rushed to Jesse, though I didn’t touch him. I didn’t want to hinder him if he should suddenly need both hands free to shoot. Instead, I looked past him out the window, at the billowing dust that was the only sign a group of riders had been there.

  “Maybe they’re going for reinforcements,” Carter said.

  “We’ll leave now.” Jesse holstered his gun.

  “The first train you could catch doesn’t leave the station until nine o’clock,” Liv said. “What are you going to do with Zee and the children for the next seven hours?”

  “We don’t have to act hastily,” Carter said. He turned to his son. “Go to town and see if you can find out what’s going on.”

  “Be careful,” his mother said.

  The boy was already shrugging into his coat. “I won’t let them see me,” he said. “But I’ll find out.”

  Jesse and I retreated up the stairs—I to check on the children, he to make sure our luggage was ready to go at a moment’s notice. Carter had headed to the barn to saddle horses for all of us. The thought of fleeing cross-country with the children terrified me. “If I have to go, you and the children will stay here,” Jesse said as he closed and locked our trunks.

  I nodded, mute. I’d already decided that would be the safest course. “I’ll meet up with you in Kansas City when I can,” he said.

  “I wonder why they left like that,” I said.

  We had our answer soon enough. Within the hour, young Carter had returned. He must have galloped his horse all the way from town, but he burst into the kitchen in high spirits. “They left because they’re all cowards,” he crowed.

  “What do you mean?” His mother helped him out of his coat and took his hat from him.

  “It’s the talk of the saloon,” the boy said. “They followed Jesse’s trail here, so they were pretty sure they had him. But when it came time to bust in, they lost their nerve. They started talking about how he probably had a bunch of men with him, and what a good shot he was. One of the men said he didn’t have anything personal against Jesse—that the James boys hadn’t done anything to hurt him or his family or even this town. Another suggested they didn’t even have the proper jurisdiction. They might be risking their lives, only to have to let Jesse go. Someone else said something about you being wanted in Missouri, not Kentucky. In the end, they talked themselves out of doing anything.”

  I stared at the boy, incredulous. Jesse laughed. Carter joined in, and clapped him on the back. “Saved by your reputation,” Carter said. “If that don’t beat all.”

  Once again, Jesse’s uncanny luck had come through for him. He really did seem invincible.

  But it was a long time before I slept that night. We see so much of life through a lens ground by others. The first part of my life I viewed the world my parents wanted me to see. Then Jesse had guided my vision, presenting life as he saw it—the legend of the outlaw who would never know defeat.

  This day I had seen things for myself. I had faced the dark side of the legend, felt the chill of the grave, glimpsed a future draped in black. I could no longer shrug off the danger as something abstract and distant. It was a monster that sat on my doorstep, one I knew would never really leave.

  The next few weeks passed in a fog of weariness and tension. When we finally moved into a little house on a quiet street in Kansas City, I slept for twelve hours, while Jesse watched the children and kept them quiet.

  Jesse grew his beard long and began carrying a walking cane. He assumed the name of Jackson, which I always had trouble remembering. Thankfully, the children were too young to notice.

  Annie and Frank settled nearby. Annie was happy to be near her family once more, but Frank was more unsettled than ever. He missed his farm and the friends he’d made in Nashville; he and Jesse spent long hours in our front parlor, talking and sometimes arguing.

  Other men joined them—Jesse’s cousins, Wood and Clare
nce Hite; Dick Liddil; and a new man I hadn’t met before, Charley Ford. I liked Charley right away. He was young and affable, shyly polite, with rough country manners. He lacked Dick’s polish and looks, but he always seemed to me to be honest and sincere. He was the first to offer to help me with a heavy package, and would chop wood or light a fire in the stove without being asked.

  We lived off the money from the Muscle Shoals robbery, and what was left of the funds I’d put aside from the sale of the racehorse, Kentucky; for once Jesse resisted the impulse to gamble it away. When he wasn’t riding the countryside with Frank and the others, he visited saloons, where he drank a single beer and debated politics with other men. I began to hope that we might return to the quiet life we’d known in Tennessee, before Jesse reverted to his outlaw ways.

  July third, word reached Kansas City that President Garfield had been shot. The assassin, Charles Guiteau, was reportedly a madman. The idea that a lunatic would approach a man—even the president of the United States—and shoot him for no reason, left the whole country reeling. Jesse spent the day downtown, waiting with other men in front of the newspaper office for word of the president’s condition to be posted. For a little while, at least, the country had forgotten about Jesse James, and I breathed easier.

  The president still lingered on July 14 when Jesse kissed me after supper and told me not to wait up. “I may be gone a few days, but don’t worry,” he said.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Don’t let that concern you, sweetheart.” He shrugged into his coat and reached for his hat.

  “I wish you weren’t always leaving,” I said.

  “You know I don’t like to be away from you,” he said. “But that’s how things have to be.”

  Why do they have to be that way? I wanted to shout after him. But I knew my pleas and protests would have no effect on Jesse. He was a slave to his own restlessness, and I was a slave to him. As much as I had grown to hate some of the things he did, I hated the thought of life without him more.

  I had just put the children to bed when knocking at the front door startled me. We rarely had visitors, and certainly not at night. Leaving the lights off, I tip-toed to the front window and looked out. I could make out only a shadowy form on the steps. The knock sounded again. “Josie, let me in, it’s me, Fannie!” Annie’s voice was thin with agitation.

  Heart pounding, I jerked open the door. “What is it? What’s wrong? Is someone hurt?”

  “No. Not yet anyway.” She moved past me, Rob in her arms. “Is Jesse here?” she asked.

  “No. He left a little while ago.” I followed her over to the sofa, where she settled Rob and wrapped him in blankets. I lit a lamp and turned it down low. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Why do you want to see Jesse?”

  “I’m here because I couldn’t stand to stay in that empty house another second,” she said.

  “Where’s Frank?”

  The lamplight shadowed her eyes and cheekbones as she turned to face me. “He’s gone off with Jesse,” she said. “I’m sure they’re up to no good. Those others—the Hite boys and Dick and Charley—were all with them.”

  My stomach knotted. Like Annie, I knew of only one reason such a group of men would ride out after dark. But still, I tried to deny it. “Maybe they just went for a ride,” I said.

  “They’re going to hold up a train or rob a bank or something, I know it.” She clenched her fists at her sides. “And after Frank promised me!”

  That Frank would be involved surprised me. He’d seemed determined to leave his outlaw ways behind, and he’d never hidden his disdain for the Hite brothers and Charley Ford, dismissing them as feckless rubes who knew nothing about fighting. “What makes you think Frank is going to commit a crime, when he’s been law abiding for so many years now?” I asked. “Even when Jesse formed a new gang, Frank never took part.”

  “He’s been restless since we came back to Missouri,” she said. “He says he doesn’t have enough to do, and Jesse’s over at the house all the time, talking to him. I know they’ve been planning something.”

  “Jesse hasn’t managed to persuade Frank to join him thus far—why now?”

  She sank into a chair. “I know he’s been worried about money.”

  “So you think he’s doing it for money? For you and Rob.” If she thought Frank was doing this for their family, maybe it would be easier for her to accept.

  “I don’t want him to break the law for me,” she protested. “What if he’s shot? Or killed?”

  I sat across from her. “I worry about those things, too,” I said. “But there’s nothing we can do.”

  “I should have put my foot down. I should have told him I knew what he was up to and wouldn’t have it.”

  “I don’t know, Annie. If I tried that with Jesse, it would only make him angry—and more determined than ever to do what he wanted.”

  She looked at me, her eyes full of misery. “How do you stand it, Zee—knowing he’s out there making himself a target?”

  “I don’t think about it.” Denial had helped me survive thus far, though since that afternoon in Kentucky it was more difficult to pretend our life was normal.

  “What do we do now?” Annie asked.

  “We do what we’ve always done,” I said. “We wait and hope and pray no harm comes to them.”

  She nervously pleated her skirt between her fingers. “When Frank and I first married, I was so ignorant and naïve. I thought being an outlaw’s wife was glamorous and exciting. The conventional life of my friends seemed boring in comparison.”

  I nodded. “I never wanted an ordinary life,” I said. “But I never thought much about the danger.”

  “There’s nothing glamorous or exciting about it,” she said firmly. Her eyes blazed with anger and the muscles of her jaw clenched.

  “The key is to stay busy.” I patted her hand. “Find something else to pass the time and occupy your mind.” I stood and walked to my workbasket. “You can help me wind some wool I just bought to knit Jesse a waistcoat.”

  So Annie held the skeins of wool while I wound the yarn into balls. “Frank tells me you and he have been reading Shakespeare,” I said, hoping to take our minds off our wayward husbands. “What is your favorite story?”

  “Much Ado about Nothing,” she said. “I like the character Beatrice, who is independent and stands up to the men in her life.”

  As Annie had always been independent. When she’d wanted to marry Frank, she hadn’t let her father’s disapproval stop her; she’d run away and eloped. If Frank really was going against her wishes now, would she stand up to him as well? “Once before, you told me you’d leave Frank if he went back to being an outlaw,” I said carefully.

  “Yes, I said that.” Her shoulders sagged. “I thought I could do it, but now . . .” She looked to where Rob had fallen asleep on the sofa. “I can’t imagine living without Frank in my life.”

  “I know,” I said. “We worry about them and wish they would consider our feelings more—but we’re tied to them now.” We were bound by vows and children and a web of memories and tangles of meaning that held us as tightly as any net.

  On the night of July 14, a Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific train was robbed east of Winston, Missouri by five masked men who emptied the express safe. The robbery began badly, when a conductor and another man died as the results of being hit by stray bullets. Everyone agreed the men were shot accidentally and not intentionally, but the deaths of two innocent bystanders made even Jesse’s supporters uneasy. In the days that followed the holdup, people were more free to criticize him, and many called for his arrest, and even demanded he be hanged.

  As I clipped these articles and added them to my scrapbooks, I pondered this change from avenging hero of the people to common criminal. Jesse hadn’t changed. He was still the handsome charmer who carried out his thefts with flare and daring. He still targeted the rich express companies, railroads, and banks, and he still presented himsel
f as a champion of the South.

  Jesse had not changed, but times had. Maybe the majority of people no longer saw the banks and railroads as enemies, but as the means for their own prosperity. The men interviewed in the newspapers seemed to see Jesse as stealing from them, and not some faceless corporation. His thefts benefitted no one but himself, and hurt the reputation of Missouri.

  Though Jesse’s own cunning and luck had played a part in keeping him safe over the years, he primarily owed his life to the protection of friends and neighbors. If even one of them had turned on him, he would have been imprisoned—or worse—years before. By returning to Missouri, Jesse and Frank sought refuge in the country and with the people they knew best. But I wondered if in these changing times they could truly count on the loyalty of their countrymen.

  On July 28, 1881, Governor Crittenden issued a proclamation offering a $10,000 reward each for the capture and conviction of Frank and Jesse James. A man could labor twenty years and not earn such a sum. With $10,000 he could buy a fine house, a new carriage and horses, jewelry and clothes and furniture of every kind, and still have money left over.

  It was the kind of money that could turn a man’s head and make him question his loyalty to anyone.

  While I worried about the price on Jesse’s head, he dismissed the sum with a shrug. “The money just shows how desperate they all are,” he said. “The railroads and the government men hate me because I make them look bad. All of them together haven’t been able to stop me before now, and a dollar sign on a wanted poster isn’t going to change that.”

  If anything, Jesse enjoyed the new spotlight focused on him. He read the best articles from the papers out loud at the breakfast table, and laughed whenever a lawman was quoted as saying the James Gang would soon be apprehended.

  True to her word, Annie did not leave Frank, but she could scarcely stand to be in the same room with Jesse. She clearly held him responsible for what she saw as her husband’s downfall. When she and Frank came to dinner the first week in September to celebrate Jesse’s thirty-fourth birthday, she sat as far from Jesse as possible and avoided looking at him.