American Outlaw

by James, Jesse

  Finally, after about a week of lying around, sluglike and depressed, I pushed myself back into gear. The kids were staying with me for the weekend, and it was up to me to step it up and act like a parent.

  “Daddy, what happened to you?” Jesse Jr. asked me. He was five years old, and at the stage where every word out of his mouth seemed to be a question. His hands played against the blue sling that covered my left arm and shoulder.

  “I hurt myself playing around too much,” I said, hugging him to me with my good arm.

  “But is it ever going to get better?” he asked, looking concerned.

  “Of course it is,” I said, laughing. “Very soon. Right now, Daddy just has to be patient and let it heal, okay?”

  Being on my feet energized my spirit. I looked at the house around me: it had been several weeks since Janine had disappeared. She’d never bothered to call, so I just figured she had no intention of coming back.

  I called Bill Dodge.

  “Bill,” I said. “Look, can you help me out with something?”

  “No problem, man. What is it?”

  “I need you to rent a moving van for me, and then come on over here. Get a couple of guys from the shop to help. We’re going to get rid of Janine’s stuff.”

  It was time. I needed to clear my home of her.

  Bill showed up soon thereafter with the van and the extra sets of hands, and we got down to work. My kids watched us curiously as we carefully loaded all of Janine’s possessions up into the van.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” asked Bill, grinning.

  “It’s just time,” I said.

  We were about three-quarters of the way done with the job when Janine showed up.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she cried.

  “I didn’t think you were coming back,” I said calmly. “So we’re moving you out.”

  “How could you do this to me? We’re in a partnership!” Janine cried. “We are there for each other, can’t you understand that . . .”

  “You haven’t exactly been THERE for me this whole time,” I said. “Fuck, Janine, living with you is like living with a crazy person. I never know who’s going to be there for me: the wife who’s normal, or some psycho bitch who’s ready to throw her keys in my face . . .”

  “Daddy?” Jesse Jr. said, appearing at the door. He looked ready to cry. “What are you yelling for?”

  “Go back inside,” I said to him. “Go on, Jesse. Back inside, this very instant.”

  Jesse looked at me, confused and scared, then turned around and padded back to his room.

  “You see,” I whispered angrily to Janine. “See what you made me do?”

  “That’s fucking nonsense,” she said. “I didn’t make you yell at me—you yelled at me! You have an anger issue, and a control issue, Jesse, and I think it’s time to face it!”

  “I am so tired of this endless mind-fuck,” I said. “So over it. So over you.”

  “You gutless man,” Janine said, spitefully, pushing past me into the house. “There’s nothing good about you when you’re like this, do you know that?”

  “Keep your voice down,” I warned, following her. “I don’t want the kids to hear you like this.”

  “You GUTLESS FUCK!” she screamed. “How’s that, Jesse? Is that what you mean?”

  “Stop it,” I warned, stepping closer to her. We edged into the kitchen. “I am goddamn serious, Janine. You better shut up, right now, and get out of my house.”

  Bill appeared next to me. “Hey man, I think we better call the cops, okay?”

  “Yeah, call the cops,” taunted Janine. “Or what? You gonna punch me, you fucking COWARD? You gonna punch me?”

  “Daddy!” cried Jesse Jr., appearing at the top of the stairs. He was sobbing, tears running down his face.

  “Janine, STOP IT!” I screamed, stepping closer to her.

  She whirled and picked up a large stainless-steel knife from our cutting board. “Don’t FUCKING TOUCH ME!” she screamed. “I will cut you wide open!”

  I was stunned. Holding my hand up, I backed away from her.

  She jabbed the knife toward me threateningly. “Move!”

  Slowly, I backed my way up the stairs. When I reached the top of the landing, I picked up my son with my one good arm.

  “Daddy’s so sorry,” I whispered to him. “I’m so, so sorry. I never meant for this.”

  He cried into my chest. I placed him gently into his bed, walked out into the hallway, and shut the door firmly behind me.

  “I called the cops, man,” said Bill. “They’ll be here any minute.”

  “You understand what’s going on, Janine?” I said.

  She sneered. “I can’t wait until the police come. I’ll tell them how you mentally abuse me, day in and day out, every day,” Janine said, laughing loudly. “I can’t fucking believe it. You are so out of control, you know that, right?”

  “Janine, I swear to God, keep your fucking voice down. You just scared my son half to death.”

  “Because you MADE me!” Janine cried. “Oh my God, it is SO hard being your wife! This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do!”

  “I’m going downstairs,” I said. “To wait for the cops. You are staying up here in the bedroom. Is that understood?”

  “Oh, so you can give them your story first, and make me out to be the bad guy, as usual? Thanks, but no thanks!”

  I went down the staircase, with Janine following on my heels, only inches behind me.

  “You big, fucking bully,” she taunted me. “Calling the cops on your WIFE? That’s a new low. Messing with your pregnant wife! I can’t wait till these cops get here, I’m going to give them an earful!”

  “Please, be quiet, Janine,” I breathed, unlocking the front door, looking both ways down the street, in hopes of seeing an approaching squad car. “Just shut your mouth. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “Really?” Janine said. “Why don’t you make me shut up, then?”

  “The police will be here any second, Janine,” I said, walking as far away from her as I could, back toward the living room, “so honestly, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll calm down . . .”

  Janine tackled me, clawing at me. The force of her attack made me fall against the couch. She punched me hard in the face, and then I rolled on top of her and used my knees to pin her underneath my body.

  “Do not hit me again,” I said. “Dammit, Janine! Stop moving!”

  She squirmed under me. With all the strength in my body, I struggled to keep her pinned down. Using my good arm, I forced her writhing shoulders down.

  “What’s going on here!” said the police, as they burst through the open front door.

  Reflexively, I held my good arm up in a gesture of surrender. Janine, seizing upon the opportunity, reached across me to the side table next to the couch. With her right hand, she picked up a ceramic vase, and with all her might, smashed it against the side of my head. The vase shattered on my temple, and I went down.

  ——

  Janine was taken to jail that night, and I had her charged for spousal abuse. Jesse James: bodyguard, motorcycle outlaw, domestic abuse victim.

  The next day, I had the locks changed. I was completely, finally done.

  14

  My skull ached for days from the impact of the blow. But a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

  I couldn’t avoid the truth anymore. Conclusive separation from Janine wasn’t just a potential scenario. It was the only responsible move I could make for myself and my kids. My second marriage was ending for real, with no more chances. And that definitely filled me with grief. But I knew that I no longer had any choice in the matter.

  Once, I’d loved Janine and the way that she made me feel. The chaos we created together was almost transcendent. But our vicious fighting made me feel outraged. I felt like I was going crazy. There was just no way that I could allow my children to be around her and still believe that I was actually being a go
od parent. I felt desperately guilty for what Jesse Jr. had seen, knowing that, even though I hadn’t intended for it to happen, I’d played a part in repeating the cycle of abuse that I’d grown up with.

  She was pregnant with my baby. But Janine and I were never going to be partners. We were never again going to live under the same roof. It was time for me to face it, and to move on with my life.

  “You’re actually not too bad at welding, I guess,” Rick said, with his hands on his hips, watching me work. “I mean, for a one-armed dude.”

  “Light of heart,” I explained. Tentatively, I wiggled my healing arm around in its sling. “Been to hell and back.”

  I’d returned to the shop bruised and bandaged, but with renewed optimism. What I really needed, I thought, was a week or so of hard labor to lift my spirits. Life would get back to normal soon enough if I just kept on wrenching, sweating, and cussing over broken gears, listening to heavy metal, and leading my team. As long as I could immerse myself in tools, dirt, and grease, I was going to be all right.

  “Got any new chicks in the wings?”

  I laughed, but with some difficulty. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked. “Dude, I’ll say it once, and you can quote me on this: I’m going to be a fifty-five-year-old bachelor. Bet on it.”

  My assistant returned to my side, explaining to me that the show in Japan was still on for Thanksgiving, and would I be attending?

  “Yeah,” I decided. “I’m gonna go. And I’m going to bring my daughter.”

  I loved traveling, and my kids were getting to the age where they made the trips just that much more fun. Jesse Jr. was still a little too young to handle a long flight comfortably and then do a week in a strange country, but my nine-year-old daughter would be just fine. So I proposed the idea to her.

  “Hey, Chandler, you want to taste the best sushi in the whole world?”

  “What’s sushi?”

  “It’s raw fish.”

  “Yuck!” Chandler said. “I can’t eat that!”

  “Okay, I’ll find you a hot dog,” I promised, laughing. “Don’t worry. Japan is gonna be a blast.”

  I set about packing for the trip, really feeling lighter and happier than I had been in almost a year. When it came down to it, the most important thing in my life, no question about it, was being a dad. I couldn’t believe that I had almost endangered my children’s safety by allowing them to be around someone so unstable. My priorities had been jumbled. As I’d gotten caught up in the seductiveness of Janine’s high-wire drama, I’d nearly forgotten what mattered most in my life.

  About one week before Chandler and I were set to fly to Japan, I made a quick stop after work to check in on Tyler, the young boy with leukemia.

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been by in a while,” I said, when his mother answered the door. “How’s he doing?”

  “Oh, Jesse,” she said, looking distraught. “It’s so nice of you to come by, but Tyler’s health has declined.”

  From the tone of her voice and the look on her face, I realized how grave the situation was. “Can I see him?”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Tyler’s mother said. “He’s so weak now. He’s sleeping. Could you come back another time?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Although, my daughter and I are going away for a while, to Japan . . .”

  Suddenly, I cut myself off, feeling guilty for having a daughter who had her health. Who could board a plane without any problem.

  “Well, you just give us a call when you get back,” Tyler’s mother said, nodding woodenly. “I’ll be sure to tell him you stopped by.”

  Chandler and I went to Japan as planned, both of us excited: her to be alone with her dad on an adventure, and me to experience a new culture in the best way possible, through the eyes of my nine-year-old daughter. But just as our trip began, I received a voice mail from Tyler’s mother. He had died. I spent the holiday saddened inside, yet at the same time more grateful than ever for the blessing of my kids.

  When we returned home a week later, another message awaited me: it was Janine, who had been living on her own for months. She was nearly due to give birth, she said, and she wanted badly to be with me when it happened.

  “I want to do this as a couple,” she pleaded. “You and me. One last time.”

  I weighed her proposal in my mind. After all, this was a life that we had created together. In that respect, it made perfect sense that Janine wanted me there when the baby was born. But she had hurt me so badly, I was reluctant to form another bond with her.

  “Call me when you go into labor,” I said, finally. “I’ll be at the hospital. But that’s all I can promise.”

  Tyler’s funeral was announced in the papers. It would be held on the day of his eighth birthday. As much as it would have been easier to sit it out, I went to the ceremony. When I arrived, I saw Tyler’s entire third-grade class gathered at his grave, looking sad and confused.

  Their teacher hushed them all, then gave a signal for them to begin.

  “Happy birthday, dear Tyler,” the children sang. “Happy birthday to you.”

  I just lost it. The force of the emotional storm that had been my life for the past year hit me full on. I began to weep, and I couldn’t stop. My whole body was wracked with sobs.

  Leaving the young boy’s grave site, I realized more fully than ever that life was unfair. More than anything, it was brief. We were here for a limited time, and I could not keep giving my love to someone who would never truly know how to accept it. My separation from Janine was going to have to be complete. It was going to have to be real.

  She called me on the day she went into labor. As I’d promised, I came to the hospital. But I didn’t go inside the room when she gave birth, choosing instead to stay outside. Hours later, when my child had been born and had been moved to the newborn wing, I requested to hold her.

  “Mr. James?” the nurse said. “It’s time. You may see your baby now.”

  Gently, I picked up my child, and held her tiny body in my arms, awed by her exquisitely small, puckered features. I felt her tiny heart beat against my chest. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, I took a pocketknife from the back pocket of my jeans, and carefully cut the baby bracelet off her wrist, so someday, years later, I could prove to her that I had been with her and held her in my arms on the first day of her life.

  Sunny. Her name was Sunny.

  ——

  My life moved on, and I adjusted to being a single man. Kid Rock had watched the whole Janine thing happen, and he was a good friend to me during my time of need. Tyson Beckford also came over often, and he talked sense to me. Karla was a sympathetic and wise conversation partner, too. All of them made a huge difference. I felt embarrassed by having fucked up in front of all my friends, but emotionally, I definitely felt like I was on the mend.

  Time has a way of putting things in greater perspective, and eventually, I started to understand why I’d put up with Janine for so long, why I’d kept on taking her back every time she’d hurt me. The truth was, Janine fit handily with my childhood sense of myself. I’d grown up in a home with zero stability, where the only common threads were violence, chaos, and my never-fulfilled need to be valued and acknowledged. Janine was a perverse consolidation of all the pissed-off, tweaked-out stepmoms I’d ever had. It was almost stunning how craftily I’d managed to create this psychodrama that wasn’t good for me, but that had satisfied me in some deep way, maybe because it felt so familiar.

  But I was finally outside of the eye of the storm, and the relief was enormous. At last, I had the solitude necessary to be able to think clearly and begin to gain my bearings. Of course, there was an incredibly painful side to the separation, which was that for a time, I wouldn’t be with my own child.

  “I want to be a dad to her,” I told Karla. “Of course I do. But I know that the moment I step in, Janine will tangle herself up in my life again. And then I’ll end up involving Jesse Jr. and Chandler, too. Soon we’ll be right bac
k where we started.”

  “None of this is easy, is it?” Karla asked.

  “It sucks,” I agreed.

  It left a huge, guilty hole in my heart to entrust my own child to a woman I considered unstable. But I swore to myself that it would only be temporary. Someday soon, I would be in my child’s life again.

  During this rebuilding period of my life, Monster Garage continued to chug onward. By now it had become a reality TV juggernaut in its own right. Our ratings were terrific. The fame still felt strange to me, but I felt kind of gratified that we were making mechanics and hot rodders cool again. Blue-collar dudes, messing around in their own garages at home, hopefully felt at least a little bit proud.

  I yearned to do more, though. Now that I had a little showbiz capital to throw around, I wanted to do something useful. Since I had the power to do it, I figured, why not do something that would actually make a small difference in people’s lives?

  In early 2004, I told the guys in my shop, “I want to go to Iraq.”

  They all looked at me like I was crazy. “What for?”

  “For the kids fighting over there,” I said. “To remind them that there are people stateside who support them.”

  I didn’t envision doing anything all that complicated: instead of some massive USO tour, I just wanted to take a team of soldier mechanics and transform a standard Humvee into a badass custom truck with a giant engine and some gold rims. It would be like an episode of Monster Garage, I reasoned. Just set in the desert. You know, in the middle of a war.

  I’d befriended a producer on Monster Garage during the third season named Hildie Katibah, and I started to bend her ear with the Iraq idea every time I saw her.

  “Do you get where I’m going with this? It would just be a real simple build, but something the kids involved would remember for a real long time.”

  “It’s a great idea, Jesse,” Hildie said. “I think there’s a show there. But you know that Iraq’s probably not the safest place to go right now, right?”