The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (14 page)

“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 waylaid 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 love 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.

The gun was heavier than I’d expected, the grip cool and smooth in my hand. Jesse showed me how to load and unload the weapon, and made me practice over and over, cautioning me to keep the barrel aimed firmly at the ground.

When he felt I was proficient at this task, he had Allen set up a bottle on a tree stump some distance away and invited me to aim at it.

I proved a miserable shot. In six tries I never even hit the stump. The acrid stench of burnt gunpowder stung my eyes and my arm and wrist hurt from the kick of the weapon.

“You have to accommodate for the recoil,” Jesse said. He moved behind me, wrapping his arms about me and steadying the pistol with his own hands around mine. I enjoyed the physical closeness, even if I wasn’t deriving much pleasure from the rest of the lesson.

“Now, fix your eye on your target,” he said. “And bring the pistol up, in line with your vision. Don’t move your eyes to the gun—bring the gun up to where your eyes are aiming. Then, when your target’s in sight, squeeze the trigger slowly but firmly, bracing your arm to hold the gun steady.” He demonstrated, his finger over mine on the trigger guard. Though he was left-handed and I favored my right hand, he was able to shoot well enough from the right side to shatter the bottle into sparkling bits.

“Now you try,” he said, releasing his hold on me and stepping back.

I waited while Allen walked out and set up a second bottle, then squinted toward it, trying to remember everything he had told me. I focused on the bottle, raised the gun slowly, then braced the gun with two hands and fired. I jumped and squealed as the bottle exploded.

“That’s it, sweetheart.” Jesse clapped me on the back and kissed my cheek. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon shooting, and I began to see the fun of it. My everyday accomplishments had been limited to neatly ironed shirts or a well-cooked dinner; there was something very satisfying and empowering about firing a weapon and seeing the object I’d been aiming at destroyed. I didn’t think of myself as a destructive person, but I appreciated the immediacy and permanency of the result.

The men took turns testing their marksmanship, shooting lines of bottles at various distances, or tossing them into the air and shattering them before they hit the ground. Susan proved adept at firing even Allen’s heavy Navy Colt, and I began to feel more comfortable with my little revolver.