The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (27 page)

Esme flushed. “I can’t believe you’d say such mean things to me,” she said. “We were so dear to one another once; now I feel as if I hardly know you.” Not waiting for an answer, she turned and hurried back to the house.

I sagged against the trunk of a tree and closed my eyes, the buzz of cicadas in the afternoon heat melding with the hum of conversation from the funeral guests. To think I had looked forward to the comfort of family and friends in this time of loss. But apparently it was easier for them to judge me than to try to understand me. They saw only the external trappings of my life with a man who was more myth than human to many. They imagined themselves pulled from their staid, safe existence and thrust into a life of uncertainty and half-truths and were sure they would not endure it.

They didn’t see the other side of that picture. My life was never boring, and Jesse was never dull or predictable. The name others used to address me didn’t matter to me, anymore than the address at which I lived. Jesse had given me the freedom to experiment with my life. I could be as ordinary as a housewife one day and as exotic as a concubine the next. If I made a mistake, we could pack up and move on, change our names, write a new story for our lives and try again.

What I found fascinating, they only feared. Their refusal to understand frustrated me, but I knew better than to try to make them see things my way. They could judge me as they wished. I knew the value of what I had, and I could never happily return to their brand of boring, conventional life again.

February 6, 1878,
Frank and Annie’s son, Robert Franklin James, was born. Annie told me later that Frank, a man not given over to displays of emotion, wept when the nurse placed his son in his arms.

We had had a bitterly cold winter, and ice and snow kept me confined to the house after Christmas, so I was unable to visit my new nephew and his parents, but Jesse rode over and reported the boy and his mother were both doing well. “Buck is strutting around like a rooster,” he said, laughing. “If anyone would let him, he’d talk for hours about how perfect his son is.”

“Of course he’s perfect,” I said. “All babies are perfect.”

“And they grow up to be perfect little boys.” Jesse pulled Tim into his lap and gave him his watch fob to examine. “It’s only when they grow to be men that they mess things up.”

I gave him a sharp look. Did he feel he’d ‘messed things up?’ “We have a good life,” I said. “I’m happy.”

He nodded, though his expression remained somber. “That’s good, sweetheart. I always wanted you to be happy.”

“I want you to be happy, too,” I said. “Is something wrong?”

He began weaving the watch chain through his fingers for Tim’s amusement. “I’ll be happy when the baby is safely here,” he said.

I hoped our new child would be a cure for Jesse’s melancholy, but how long would that happiness last? Jesse was never satisfied staying in one place or doing one thing for long. I sometimes wondered if having been thrust into battle so young—having grown to manhood as part of the guerrillas, who roamed the countryside for months at a time, and who spent each day in chaos of their own creation—hadn’t shaped Jesse in ways that could never be undone. He was always restless, always craving excitement, always searching for something I couldn’t name.

I had not expected to deliver
until mid-April, but recently I had grown alarmingly huge, and I began to feel I’d calculated wrong. On the morning of February 27, I recognized the signs of labor. I was more comfortable in my role as Mrs. Howard now, less fearful of uttering anything that might reveal my husband’s identity, so when I felt it was time I sent Jesse to fetch the doctor.

At first, things progressed normally. The labor pains came in waves, but I did my best to bear them. Jesse had retreated to the barn with Tim, telling him they must wash and groom the horses, so I felt free to cry out against the pain that tore through me.

Whereas my first child had been delivered with seeming ease, this second baby seemed determined to remain in the womb. Dr. Montgomery, the first to attend me, became more and more concerned as the hours passed. He conducted an examination, then he left the room to consult with Jesse.

Soon my husband was at my side. By this time I was almost too weary and pain-wracked to open my eyes, but I looked up at Jesse when he said my name. “What is it?” I asked.

He held my hand, his fingers ice cold. “The doctor says the baby is turned wrong,” he said. “He wants to call in a colleague who’s had more experience with these things. I’m going to fetch him now.”

“All right.” I swallowed hard, trying to find courage where I felt there was none. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

“I’m taking Tim with me. I’ll drop him off with Buck and Fannie.”

I mustered the strength to squeeze his hand. “Maybe the baby will be here by the time you get back,” I said.

But it would be many hours before my baby would be born, hours in which Jesse would wear a path in the dirt of the barn floor, pacing back and forth in anguish, littering the ground with the butts of smoked cigars.

On the afternoon of February 28, after almost twenty-four hours at my side, Dr. Gould delivered a baby boy, followed a few minutes later by a second son.

I knew none of this for several days, slipping into unconsciousness after the second baby’s birth. The doctors were forced to turn their attention from my sickly infants to me, as I began hemorrhaging dangerously.

When I next awoke, the room was dark and quiet, no sound but the ragged sough of my own breath. I blinked into the darkness, trying to focus, unsure of where I was or what had happened.

Then a shadowy figure emerged from the darkness at the end of my bed. “Child, how are you feeling?” my mother asked.

She was just as I remembered her, in an old-fashioned white lace cap and a gray dress with a white fichu. She came and stood beside me, smiling down on me with such sweetness tears pricked my eyes.

“Where’s Jesse?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

Mother’s smile vanished and she shook her head.

I tried to sit up, but an incredible lethargy paralyzed me. “Where’s Jesse?” I asked again. I had to see my husband. I had to hold his hand and know that he was all right.

My mother’s eyes filled with sadness, and she shook her head once more. “I never should have let you marry him,” she said.

“I love him,” I protested. “I want to see him.”

“Jesse has a wildness in him that can’t be tamed,” she said, repeating the warning she’d given when she’d first discovered my love for Jesse. “He is plagued with a restlessness even your love can’t overcome.”

You’re wrong
, I wanted to tell her, but I no longer had the strength to speak. I closed my eyes, thinking to rest a bit and muster the strength to get out of bed and go in search of Jesse, but almost as soon as my eyelids shut I succumbed to blackness.

When I woke again, Jesse was there,
slumped forward in a chair beside the bed, his fingers twined in mine, forehead pressed to the blankets beside me. “Jesse?” I rasped. I licked cracked lips and tried again. “Jesse!”

He raised his head and stared at me with reddened eyes. His hair was uncombed, his shirt wrinkled. “Oh, Zee,” he said, and kissed my hand. “Thank God.”

His obvious distress upset me. “How long have I been sleeping?” I asked.

“Two days.” Tears streamed from his eyes. “Zee, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry about what?” Then full wakefulness returned, and with it the memory of my protracted labor. “The baby?” I asked.

“They’re gone.” He bowed his head. “Both of them. They were just too weak, the doctors said.”

“Both of them? I don’t understand—” I tried to sit up, but he hastened to urge me back against the pillows.

“Don’t excite yourself,” he said. “You need to get your strength back.” He kissed my cheek and smoothed my hair. “I’ll get Fanny.”

A moment later, Annie came in. Her face was pinched and pale, but her grip was firm as she squeezed my hand. “It’s good to see you awake,” she said. “We’ve been very worried about you.”

“What happened?” I asked. “Jesse said there were two babies?”

She nodded, and bent over me, smoothing the blankets. “You had twins. Little boys we named Gould and Montgomery.” She paused and caught my eye. “I hope that’s all right. Jesse said you didn’t have anything picked out, and he was too distraught to think of anything, so I chose the names of the doctors who attended you.”

“Gould and Montgomery.” I tested the names on my tongue. “Yes, those are good names.” Tears stung my eyes as I struggled to accept the reality of two babies, dead before I had a chance to know them. “Can I see them?” I asked.

“Oh, sweetie. We had the funeral yesterday, not knowing when you’d be well enough to attend.” She squeezed my hand. “We had a photographer take a picture, and I saved you little locks of hair. And I dressed them myself. They looked like little angels. We buried them together, in the same coffin, since we didn’t think it was right to separate them.”

I nodded, crying now, too weak to fight the tears. Annie sat on the side of the bed and pulled me close. “I’m sorry as can be about this,” she said. “I can’t even imagine how much it hurts. But you mustn’t distress yourself too much. You need to save your strength and concentrate on getting well. Tim and Jesse need you.”

I lay back on the pillow, trying to pull myself together. “How is Jesse?” I asked. “He looked worn out.”

“He’s spent every minute with you,” she said. “He took losing the babies hard, but when the doctors said we might lose you, too, he was wild with grief. He threatened to shoot them if they let anything happen to you. Frank had to drag him from the room and calm him down.”

“Oh my God.” I put a hand to my mouth. “What did the doctors do?”

“Frank convinced them it was just grief talking, and then Jesse apologized. That and the gold he paid them went a long way toward easing their suspicions.” She patted my hand. “I never saw a man so torn apart,” she said. “If you had died, I think we might have lost him, too.”

“He would have pulled himself together for Tim,” I protested. “Jesse is a strong man.”

“Yes, he’s a strong man. And he can be a hard one, too. But for all that, he has a weakness where it comes to you, Zee.”

Annie and Frank moved in with us
for a while, to help look after me and Tim and Jesse. I think having his brother around helped Jesse. Frank would take him for long rides and let him talk—about regrets of the past and wild plans for the future. More even than I, Frank knew his brother—knew his mind and his heart and how to handle him. Though many in the press and public saw handsome, outgoing Jesse as the leader of their gang, ahead of his more taciturn, morose older brother, those of us within the family knew how much Jesse looked up to Frank. Where Jesse was volatile and quick to air his emotions, Frank plotted strategy, though when riled he had a fearsome temper. Whenever he spoke in anger, people were sure to listen, and to shrink back in fear. Frank was the only person Jesse ever deferred to, and Frank was the one most able to offer him comfort now.

Frank and Annie stayed with us a month, while I slowly regained my strength. When they left us, the house echoed with their absence, and an emptiness that should have been filled with crying babies and all the bustle and joy of caring for them.

Jesse wrapped his grief around him like bandages holding closed a dire wound. He no longer slept the night, but prowled the house and yard, a restless wraith. Gray began to show amid the sandy hair of his sideburns and new lines fanned out from his eyes, which burned with a private pain.

I woke one night to a steady squeaking noise I couldn’t identity. I rose and wrapped myself in a shawl and followed the sound to the front porch, where Jesse sat in our old hickory rocker. The stub of a candle burned at his feet, casting orange light up onto his face, and the face of our son, Jesse Edwards, known as Tim. The boy was sleeping, wrapped snug in a patchwork quilt my sister Sallie had made out of the scraps of old shirts and dresses, cut into triangles and sewn together in a pinwheel pattern. As Jesse rocked, the pinwheels moved in and out of the light, their bright colors muted to duns and grays.

Jesse had both arms wrapped around the sleeping child, his cheek pressed against the top of Tim’s head, sandy whiskers to sandy curls. His eyes were closed and he made no noise, but tears glinted in the hollows beneath his eyes and caught in his beard, like bits of sleet snared in brush.

Pain tore anew at my heart as I watched this tableau of sorrow. I had been raised to have faith in a good and just God, and had turned to Him time and again in times of trouble, and found comfort there. But there was no comfort for me now. Where was the justice in the death of two helpless infants? Where was the goodness in visiting such tragedy on a man who had forsaken his sins and was trying his best to live a good and honest life?

I turned away, and crept back to my bed and my own tears. I wondered if we would ever be allowed to be happy again. The very idea of happiness seemed a phantasm.

Tim kept us from slipping further
into the darkness of our sorrow and grief, and it was Tim who pulled us together. He was growing fast, a solemn, bright boy who was his father’s shadow. Man and boy worked together each morning and evening to care for the horses. Jesse patiently showed Tim how to clean hooves and curry manes. When they were done, he would set the boy in the saddle and lead him at a slow walk around the paddock.

He took Tim with him to town to run errands, and set him up beside him at lunch counters and in pinochle parlors and introduced him solemnly, “This is my son, Tim. He’s a big help to me.”

With Tim, some of the heaviness lifted from Jesse’s walk, and the old light returned to his blue eyes. Tim loved to be read to, and while I prepared breakfast each morning, Jesse would read aloud from the newspaper to both of us.