The Woman Who Loved Jesse James

by Cindi Myers

  “Frank says he’s only participating in the robberies because he’s worried about Jesse,” she whispered to me later, as we sat in the parlor sewing while the men smoked on the back porch. “He thinks Jesse needs his steadying hand along to prevent him from doing something foolish. I told him his brother was a grown man—let him be an idiot if he chooses. If he’s going to risk his life, there’s no reason Frank should do so.”

  “Jesse is not an idiot,” I said sharply.

  Her mouth tightened. “You can’t say he’s not being reckless,” she said. “Risking more than he ought. How much longer can he flaunt the law this way before all that reward money tempts someone to turn him in? And Frank has the same reward on his head—when all along, everything has been Jesse’s fault.”

  I gave up the pretense of sewing and laid my needlework aside. “Frank is Jesse’s older brother,” I reminded her. “He joined the guerrillas first and Jesse followed. He was with Jesse at every robbery until after Northfield. Jesse didn’t lead him into anything. And wasn’t it you yourself who said Frank was the one who planned the robberies—that Frank was the one really responsible for their success?”

  “Jesse takes advantage of Frank’s goodness,” she countered. “He knows how responsible Frank is. How he has such a strong sense of duty. Jesse can be as reckless as he wants, knowing Frank will be there to clean up after him.”

  “That’s ridiculous! If Jesse wasn’t smart enough to plan everything out, there’s no telling what Frank would bumble into. It was Jesse who made friends with John Edwards and got the press on their side. And it was Jesse who helped a wounded Frank get home safely after the disaster at Northfield.”

  “Jesse planned that fiasco at Northfield,” she snapped. “Frank never wanted to go up there. He only did it to try to protect his brother.” Her hands shook so much it took three tries to secure her knitting needles in a ball of yarn. She shoved the whole mess into her bag and stood. “I can see you’re as foolish as Jesse,” she said.

  “I don’t call it foolish for a woman to defend her husband from ridiculous accusations.” I rose and faced her.

  “The only thing ridiculous is how you’re still so besotted with the man after all these years. I’d think you’d have grown up enough to see him for the cruel, manipulative braggart he is.”

  “How dare you say such things about my husband!”

  “I’m only telling the truth!”

  We had long since ceased whispering. Our shouts drew the men from the back steps. Frank rushed in, Jesse following. “What’s going on?” Frank demanded.

  “Sounds to me like we’ve interrupted a good, old-fashioned cat fight.” Jesse leaned against the door jamb, a half-smile on his lips.

  “What is this about?” Frank asked Annie.

  She avoided meeting his gaze. “I’m ready to go home now,” she said. Without another word, she turned and walked out the front door.

  Frank looked at me. “What were you two arguing about?” he asked.

  I turned away. “It doesn’t matter. You’d better take her home.”

  When Frank and Annie had gone, Jesse pulled me close. “Were you defending my honor?” he asked.

  “You heard?”

  “Enough to gather that Annie blames me for leading Buck astray.” He laughed. “Trust me, Buck never needed anyone to lead him into trouble. He always knows exactly what he’s about.”

  “Do you know what you’re about?” I asked. “Committing these robberies when the government is making things so hot for you?”

  “Now’s the perfect time to strike,” he said. “The banks and railroads think this reward has made them safe—that ordinary men would be driven into hiding. They forget that we aren’t ordinary men.”

  “Oh, you aren’t, are you?”

  He smoothed his hand down my backside and pulled me tight against him, pressing me into the hard ridge of his arousal. “I don’t feel very ordinary when I’m with you.” He kissed my temple, his lips resting over my steadily-beating pulse. “Are you still besotted with me, Zee?”

  “Yes.” But my infatuation was tempered by the knowledge that I had aligned myself to a man I would never fully understand or control.

  I took Jesse’s hand, and led him toward our bedroom. “Show me how extraordinary you are tonight,” I teased.

  “An invitation I can’t refuse.”

  I smiled, even as I blinked back tears. I was no longer a blind girl who believed love would solve all our problems and erase all our differences. From the early days of our love, Jesse had fascinated and excited me. Now at times he terrified me as well.

  I knew Jesse would do things to hurt me, even when he didn’t mean to. I accepted that, even though I wished for a different kind of life. Loving Jesse came with a price I’d agreed to pay.

  Two days later, Jesse and Frank stopped a Chicago and Alton train east of Independence Missouri, at a place called Blue Cut. They piled rocks and limbs on the track and signaled the locomotive to stop, then ransacked the express safe and robbed the passengers. According to newspaper reports, Jesse talked and joked with the passengers even as he relieved them of their valuables.

  The robbery at Blue Cut took place five years to the day after the tragedy at Northfield. I wondered if this, more than concern for his brother or a desire for money, had persuaded Frank to come out of retirement. Was this Jesse and Frank’s way of redeeming that date—of proclaiming to the world that they remained undefeated and uncowed?

  “Did you really tell them you intended to keep robbing trains all your life?” I asked Jesse a few days later, as we pored over reports of the hold-up. “And that you would do so even if they loaded the train with soldiers?”

  “I wanted to send the message that I wasn’t afraid,” he said. “And that I had no intention of slowing down.”

  But he was forced to slow down for a little while. Shortly after the Blue Cut raid, Frank and Annie announced they were moving east, to Baltimore. I don’t know what exactly precipitated this move; Jesse refused to discuss it. Perhaps, having made an effort to return to his old outlaw ways, Frank found them not to his liking.

  More likely, Annie had persuaded him to lay down his guns for good. Had she promised to carry out her threat to leave him? Had she forced him to choose between her and his son and the James gang?

  The announcement hit Jesse hard. He and Frank had always been close. For years, they’d lived parallel lives, fighting the same enemies, working together to pull off robberies in half a dozen states, seldom living more than a few miles apart. Their public personae were also a unit: ‘Frank and Jesse James’, or sometimes, simply ‘the James boys.’ Not even I could claim to know Jesse better than his brother.

  But tension between them had increased in recent months. Whether this was due to Annie’s influence, or because Frank had grown more cautious with age, while Jesse had grown more reckless, I couldn’t say. I don’t recall a single big argument that signaled a break between them. There was no visible animosity in their interactions, but I sensed a heavy sadness between them—the grief of two people who loved each other, yet who could not be reconciled.

  I believe no one was happy about the separation except Annie. I sensed her triumph when she and Frank stopped by our house to make their farewells their final morning in Kansas City. The brothers said a stiff good-bye on our front steps while Annie waited in a carriage in the street. The men’s grim expressions and overly formal address said more than their words about the tension between them. “Don’t bother to write; it’s too dangerous,” Frank said.

  Jesse nodded. “You know if you ever change your mind and want to come back, you’re welcome here.”

  Frank glanced toward the waiting carriage. “I don’t think I’ll do that.”

  “Then I wish you safe travels.” They didn’t shake hands, or embrace, or make any of the gestures of two men who had once been so close.

  Frank straightened his hat on his head and nodded. “You take care of yourself, Ding
us.” Then he turned and climbed into the buggy and drove away.

  Jesse watched them, the muscles of his jaw clenched, until they turned the corner and disappeared from sight. I came to stand beside him. “Do you think Annie put him up to this?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Buck hasn’t been happy since we left Tennessee. I thought taking up arms again would cheer him, give him a sense of purpose, but he’s lost the heart for it. And he’s lost his nerve, which is dangerous for any man in our business. It’s better that he go away. Better for both of us.” But there was no conviction in his words.

  He glanced at me. “Of course, Annie being so disapproving didn’t help,” he said.

  “If I told you I disapproved of what you’re doing, would it make any difference?” I asked.

  “No. But then, you knew that before you asked.” He tucked my hand into the crook of his arm. “I am what I am, and you accept that. It’s the one thing I’ve always counted on in this world.”

  He was right, of course. I loved Jesse because of the man he was, and in spite of it. Nothing he could do could change that, any more than I could will myself to stop breathing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jesse left the next day, and I was sure I’d soon read in the papers about another robbery. But he returned a week later with Charley Ford, and a skinny boy who turned out to be Charley’s younger brother, Bob.

  “Charley and Bob are going to stay with us a while,” Jesse announced. “Tell everyone they’re my cousins, the Johnsons.”

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” Bob wiped his hand on his shirt front and offered it to me. “I’m more than pleased to meet the wife of the outlaw Jesse James. I’ve been following your husband’s career since I was a tyke. Ask me anything you want to know about Jesse and I could tell you.”

  “Why would I want to ask you anything about my husband?” I asked. “I’ve known Jesse practically my whole life.”

  “I just want to prove to you I’m an expert on the subject of the James gang,” Bob said. “Even though I just met him, I bet I know him almost as well as you.”

  “I’m not a gambling woman, Mr. Ford.” I glanced at Jesse, who stood behind Bob, looking amused. Apparently Jesse didn’t find the younger man’s adoration as disturbing as I did.

  “I have to figure a woman who would marry Jesse James has a more than usual inclination for risk,” Bob continued. “It’s not something I’ve spent an overly great deal of time pondering, but meeting you now, I’m sure I’m right.”

  Jesse put a hand on Bob’s back and steered him toward the door. “Don’t go picking at Zee like a sore tooth,” he said. “You don’t want to get her riled. She’s a lady through and through, but she won’t stand for any nonsense.”

  “Oh, I know she’s a lady, Jesse. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Bob said. “I only meant that she’s an uncommon one.”

  “Call me Dave. And leave Zee alone. That’s not a request, it’s an order.”

  They stepped onto the back porch and shut the door behind them, so I didn’t hear Bob’s answer. I hoped he would leave me alone. A minute in his company and already I was wishing him gone.

  “Don’t let Bob upset you,” Charley said.

  I started; I’d forgotten Bob’s brother was still here. He gave me a sad-eyed smile. “Bob has that effect on some people,” he said. “But he’s got a good heart. He just tries too hard to impress people sometimes, that’s all.”

  I moved the children onto makeshift beds in the front parlor, turning their former bedroom over to these two guests who were anything but welcome. Where Charley was easy-going and affable, Bob was a bundle of nerves, jumpy and agitated. While Jesse and Charley visited the local saloons and livestock sales, or spent long evenings on the back porch, smoking and discussing little of importance, Bob trailed along, contributing to the conversations, but never really part of them.

  I was hanging laundry one morning when Bob was in the side yard, fooling around with something or other. I tried my best to ignore him, though his presence alone was enough to spoil my morning. I was just stretching up to pin a shirt to the line when a loud gunshot shattered the day’s peace.

  I screamed, and looked around for the children. Jesse came barreling out of the house. “Zee!” he shouted. “Are you all right?”

  It was the first time in memory he’d slipped and addressed me by my real name in public. “Yes. I’m fine. Just startled.” I glared at Bob, who had emerged from the side yard, a still-smoking revolver dangling from his right hand.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Jesse reached Bob in a few long strides and snatched the gun from him.

  “I was just shooting at some targets.” Bob thrust out his lower lip in a pout. “I wasn’t aiming at Josie or anything.”

  “You want to shoot targets, you go out in the woods where there isn’t anybody around,” Jesse said. “A stray bullet could hit somebody, not to mention the neighbors might think it odd, a man shooting off guns in the middle of the day.”

  Bob hung his head. “I’m sorry J—Dave. I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

  Jesse put his hand on the younger man’s shoulders. “Just don’t let it happen again.” He examined the gun. “What kind of weapon is this, anyway?”

  “It was my grandfather’s. I know it’s not much, but it’s all I got right now.”

  “It doesn’t look very reliable.” Jesse sighted down the barrel. “I doubt you could hit what you were aiming at with it.”

  I collected my empty laundry basket and marched past them into the house, passing Charley on my way out. From the kitchen window I could see them, the three men with their heads together, deep in a discussion of weapons or horses or politics or any of the things I had no interest in, yet which occupied them for hours.

  As much as I disliked Bob and even Charley’s intrusion into our lives, I understood a little their attraction for Jesse. If I missed Annie, how much more did Jesse miss Frank? The two had scarcely been apart in thirty-four years. Their estrangement had left a void in his life the children and I could not fill. Maybe talking to the Ford brothers helped take up some of that emptiness.

  In November, Jesse decided we should relocate from Kansas City to St. Joseph, Missouri. Charley and Bob helped us move. They loaded a rented wagon with our furniture and other belongings and drove the wagon to our new residence and unloaded things at Jesse’s direction. I thought then they would leave us alone for a while, but they settled into the new house as readily as they had the old one.

  “Why are they still here?” I asked Jesse. Even Dick Liddil, for all his false charm and sly looks, would be preferable to Charley, who always looked ashamed of something, and Bob, who followed after Jesse like an adoring puppy.

  “I want the two of them where I can keep an eye on them,” Jesse said.

  I stared at him. “If you don’t trust them, why do you want them in your house?” I asked.

  “As long as they’re with me, I know they’re not out trying to stab me in the back.”

  In St. Joseph, Jesse abandoned the name of Jackson, and once more called himself Mr. Howard, though he changed his initials from J.D. to J.T. and introduced himself as Tom. Howard had been his alias for so many years now, I expected he felt more comfortable with it. Or maybe it was because Tim was old enough now to wonder why the family’s name changed as often as its residence.

  I liked the little house on the corner of Lafayette and Twenty-first streets in St. Joseph, but almost as soon as we settled into it, Jesse began looking for something better.

  “I’ve found the perfect house for us,” he announced one afternoon in late December. I was in the kitchen, rolling out pie crust for the pecan and pumpkin pies I planned to serve for our Christmas dinner.

  “We already have the perfect house,” I said.

  “Charley and I checked it out this afternoon,” Jesse continued. “It’s just around the corner, so moving won’t be a problem at all.”

  “Why move at all,
if you’re only going around the corner?” I asked.

  “This house is on a high hill.” Jesse helped himself to a handful of the pecans I’d shelled for the pie. “Off to itself.”

  “Nobody could sneak up on you in this house,” Bob said. He reached out to take a handful of nuts as well, and I slapped his hand away.

  “Four big rooms, good air circulation,” Jesse said. “And the rent’s only $14 a month. I told the agent we’d take it. We can start moving tomorrow.”

  I glared at him, but he pretended not to notice. “I’ll move this time,” I said. “But no more. Not for at least a year. I want us to settle for a while.”

  He gave me a look that passed for an apology and kissed my cheek. “No more moving, sweetheart,” he said. “I promise.”

  The next day, Charley and Bob loaded a borrowed wagon with our furniture and other belongings and drove around the corner and up the hill to our new home. I had to admit the house was beautifully situated, with a view in all directions of the town and surrounding countryside.

  The house was painted white, with green shutters, and large windows in every room promised relief from the oppressive summer heat and plenty of light even in winter. The front parlor and one bedroom faced the road, while a second bedroom and the kitchen looked out onto a neat yard.

  We arranged the best furniture in the front rooms, and Jesse hung his prized painting of Skyrocket on the wall opposite the front door, so that it would be the first thing anyone saw when they entered the house. We’d had to leave the horse himself behind in Kentucky. Jesse feared the animal was too well-known and associated with Jesse James, so he’d sold him to his friend Carter. Now our stable held two new thoroughbreds, whose names I can’t even recall.

  The move was exhausting, but when we were done Jesse, Charley and I bathed and put on our best clothes, then took the children with us to the Christmas Eve service at the Presbyterian Church. Bob stayed behind. “I’m not of a religious mind,” he said.