The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (29 page)

Jesse talked about his horses the way some men talked about their children, going on at length about the merits of Tadpole or Jim Malone or Jim Scott—all horses he had raced at one time or another.

Several years earlier, he had acquired a new favorite, a black gelding named Skyrocket. The horse was a frequent winner at the track. When he retired from racing, Jesse brought Skyrocket home to our stables and made him a favorite saddle horse. He fed the horse treats of apples or carrots and groomed him until he shone. I chalked up this attachment as proof of the softer side of my husband few people ever saw, but I wasn’t prepared when he came home one day with a flat, paper-wrapped package under his arm. He kissed me on the cheek and deposited the package on the table.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Is it a present?” Tim asked hopefully.

“It’s a painting I commissioned.” Jesse took out a pocket knife and cut the twine that held the paper in place, then removed the wrappings to reveal an oil painting of a horse.

“It’s Skyrocket!” Tim exclaimed.

Jesse held the painting at arm’s length and admired it. A small brass plaque at the bottom identified the horse, shown in profile standing beneath a tree, as Skyrocket. “It looks just like him, doesn’t it?” Jesse said.

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

“I thought I’d hang it in the front parlor. Tim, fetch me the hammer.”

Tim retrieved the hammer from the back porch and followed his father into the front room. A few second later, I heard hammering.

I turned back to the bread I was kneading, relieved. I’d been half afraid Jesse would want to hang the picture in our bedroom. It was one thing to have a horse vying for my husband’s attention during the day; I didn’t welcome the same sort of competition at night.

Several weeks after the portrait
of Skyrocket arrived, Jesse discovered my scrapbooks. Not that I had ever tried to hide them from him; he had seen me cut out articles from the papers many times, but I suppose he never gave any thought to what I did with them. And I’d never thought to show him the two volumes I’d collected before we were married—accounts of every crime attributed to him, as well as various re-tellings of his and his brother’s other activities.

“What are these?” he asked, bringing the stack of books into the parlor, where I was sewing, and setting them on the table beside me.

“Those are my scrapbooks,” I said, focusing on inserting tiny stitches into the hem of a receiving gown. Normally, the scrapbooks resided in the blanket chest at the end of our bed. “What were you looking for in the chest?”

“That bearskin coat I bought last winter. Have you seen it?”

“It’s hanging in the closet in the children’s room. What do you want with it in July?”

“I think I left some gold coins in the pocket.” He pulled a chair up to the table and opened the first scrapbook. “What do you do with these?”

Evenings when he was away, I enjoyed turning through the pages, re-reading accounts of daring getaways and exciting exploits. Even the negative articles held a tone of admiration, while the most flattering portrayed Jesse as a hero of the common man, a kind of Robin Hood exacting revenge upon crooked railroads and banks.

“They’re all articles about you.” I continued to sew, but I watched him out of the corner of my eye. Would he be upset that I’d kept these things? By tacit agreement, we never talked of what he did while he was away from home.

Each time he returned, it was with a polite fiction. “I got a good price on a hundred bushels of wheat in St. Jo,” he’d say. “I made a good profit.” Or “I lucked onto a sale of cattle that netted me a good paycheck.” Whether he thought I really believed these explanations for a new influx of cash into his pockets or he merely shared them as a way of keeping in practice, or in case someone overheard, I never knew.

His eyes scanned the articles. “All the annals of romantic crime furnish no parallel to the exploits of Missouri’s bold rovers,” he read, then chuckled. “John Edwards always had a way with words. The news business could use more like him.”

He turned more pages, stopping now and again to read through a clipping. “He robs from the rich and gives to the poor,” he read, then added, “Tell me what outlaw in his right mind would bother robbing from the poor?”

At last he came to a series of blank pages—the end of my collection. The last clipping was dated almost two years previous. He stared at it a long moment. “I guess everybody’s forgotten about old Jesse James by now,” he said, and closed the book.

I looked at him sharply, something in his tone putting me on guard. “Everyone but the police and Pinkertons and all the people who’d like to collect the reward money the government and railroads have offered,” I said. “Those rewards still stand—that money is there waiting for someone to collect it.”

He looked unconcerned. “The lawmen must be getting bored without the James brothers to chase after.”

“Then let them stay bored,” I said.

“Too much sedentary living isn’t good for a man,” he said. “It makes him feel old before his time.”

I watched him walk away, a cold chill in the pit of my stomach. Yes, our life now was mundane in many respects. And I hated being so far from family and old friends. But as Mr. and Mrs. Howard we were safe. Though Jesse still slept with a loaded gun on the night stand, I had stopped feeling it was necessary. Money was scarce at times, but it seemed little enough to pay for peace of mind we hadn’t known in years.

For a while my father had farmed, and he’d taught me about seeds. Some could be freely sewn in fresh-tilled ground and would sprout almost immediately. But others required scarring with a file or soaking with water before they would grow and bear their fruit.

Jesse was like those tougher seeds, unable to flourish if left undisturbed. He needed to be bruised and battered in order to really live. Fighting for him was as natural as breathing. I could only stand on the sidelines and watch, and pray that he wouldn’t destroy himself, and me in the process.

June 17, 1879
Mary Susan James was born. Jesse was at a horse sale in Kentucky when I delivered. I think he planned the trip, knowing my time was near and unable to bear the thought of seeing me suffer as I had before. A neighbor stayed with me and looked after Tim until the doctor came, but my labor was uneventful. Mary was born healthy, wailing lustily and clawing at the air—her father’s daughter, determined to seize all life had to offer.

When Jesse returned the next day, Tim greeted him at the door. “I have a new little sister,” he said proudly.

“You do?” Jesse picked the boy up and balanced him on his hip. “Then we’d better go see her.”

Jesse held his daughter as if she was fashioned of spun sugar, his eyes locked to hers, studying every detail of her tiny face. “She’s beautiful,” he said at last. He glanced at me. “She looks like her mother.”

Mary had my dark hair and eyes, but her father’s upturned nose and slightly cleft chin. “Now you have another woman in your life,” I teased him.

He stroked her cheek with the tip of one finger. “Don’t worry, little one,” he whispered. “Your papa will always take care of you.”

For the next few weeks, Jesse returned to the role of devoted family man. He spent hours with Tim, reading to him, or riding with the boy in front of him on the saddle. In the evening, he would rock Mary to sleep, then sit with her in his arms, studying her as if she was a rare treasure, memorizing every detail of the curve of her cheek or the tilt of her nose. When she woke in the night, he would get her and bring her to me so that she could nurse. There in the darkness, the two of us would talk as we hadn’t since our courting days—of memories we shared, and of our hopes and dreams for the future. Our lives were so intertwined, it was difficult for me to remember a time when we had not been together, and impossible for me to picture a future without him.

“I’ve been thinking about going out West,” he said one early morning when Mary had awakened us with her cries.

“Where out West?” I asked.

“Nebraska. Or maybe California. I hear there’s lots of good country there. Places a man could live and not be bothered. The kind of place we could really start over.”

“I’d like that,” I said. “I hear there are places in California where you can pick an orange right off a tree. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“I could raise horses and race them. Buck could go in with me and we’d train them. He’s always had a good way with animals.”

I began to picture this dream of our own family compound—a ranch somewhere green and open, with neatly-fenced pastures inhabited by handsome horses. The brothers would each have their own home, but they’d be close enough for frequent visiting. Our children would all grow up together.

And no one there would know or even suspect, that Mr. Howard and Mr. Woodson were anything but what they said they were—ranchers with a talent for turning out fast horses. After a while, people back East might even truly forget the James brothers, and they’d be able to stop looking over their shoulders.

To live a life as ordinary people do.

This last thought pulled me from my sleepy daze. Jesse might live a different life one day, but it would never be an ordinary one.

“Whatever you decide to do, you know I’ll be there with you,” I said. I yawned, my eyes drooping. “Will you take the baby back to her cradle now? She’s asleep and I almost am.”

He took Mary from me and I slid down under the covers. I was asleep before he returned to me, and I dreamt that night of wild horses racing across the open prairie. Horses that would never be caught or tamed.

But Jesse’s contentment
with domestic life was short-lived. By the end of July he had returned to his old habit of going for long rides in the countryside, sometimes staying out past dark, saying upon his return only that he had been thinking, and his thoughts came easier on horseback.

One night in August, I woke very late to the sounds of him fumbling around in the kitchen. He had set out earlier that night, intending to ride to the river and back “for some fresh air.” Hours had passed since then. I’d finally given up waiting for him and retired to my bed. I didn’t allow myself to worry about him; he had stayed out much longer than this before, and always returned eventually. Though he was reckless in some things, he never took chances that might lead to his discovery, and he would stay away for days if he even suspected someone he didn’t trust might trail him back to the house.

So I was relieved when he finally returned this night. I thought the rain we’d had earlier had driven him home, and I lay back on the pillows, intending to scold him for going out in such uncertain weather. But he delayed so long coming to bed that I finally rose and went to greet him. I found him standing at the table with a bottle of morphine granules, trying to measure a spoonful into a glass, but his hands shook so badly he spilled more than he caught. “Darling, what is it? What’s wrong?” I rushed to his side.

“Got c
. . .
caught in a storm over n
. . .
near the river.” His teeth chattered like castanets and his face had a sickly pallor that showed even in the lamplight.

I took the morphine from him and measured a dose into the glass of water. He only took the drug when the pain from the old wounds in his chest plagued him. “Is it only your chest hurting, or is there more?” I asked.

“I’m just a little feverish.” He took the glass in both hands and drank the contents in one long gulp, screwing up his face at the bitter taste. “I’ll be better in the morning.”

I put a hand to his forehead. “You’re burning up!” I began tugging at his heavy overcoat. “Let’s get you to bed right away.”

Without protest, he let me lead him into our bedroom, where I helped him out of his sodden clothes and into clean underthings. He fell asleep before I even crawled in beside him, though he slept restlessly.

The next morning, he was not improved. Tim cried when I wouldn’t let him in to see his father. “I want Daddy!” he wailed.

“Daddy is sick,” I said. “He needs to rest.”

As the day progressed, I grew more and more worried. Jesse drifted in and out of delirium. In one of his more lucid moments, I shared my fears. “I really think you need to see the doctor,” I said.

He nodded. “Send for one.”

His easy compliance frightened me even more than the fever and delirium. I flagged down a neighbor boy and paid him a nickel to fetch a physician, and quickly.

Dr. Hamilton arrived within the hour. A distinguished man with a neatly trimmed black beard, he listened while I described Jesse’s symptoms. “Has he had spells like this before?” he asked.

“No. Nothing like this.”

He went into the bedroom with Jesse, shutting the door and leaving me to fret on the other side. When he emerged a half hour later, he said, “Your husband tells me he’s had malaria before, but it’s been several years since his last attack.”

“Malaria? Is that very serious?”

“It can be serious, but fortunately, your husband is strong and relatively healthy. I’ll leave you some quinine to dose him with. In a few days he should recover his strength, but it’s important for him to avoid chills.”

“Of course. Will he be well then?”

“There is no cure for malaria. Once stricken, sufferers are always subject to further attacks. The best we can hope for is to ward off its return as long as possible, and to lessen the severity of each subsequent attack.” He opened his bag and took out a blue glass bottle and began writing on the label. “While I was examining Mr. Howard, I noticed two old gunshot wounds in his chest,” he said.

My heart stopped beating for a breath, then began to pound, but I did my best to hide my terror from the doctor. “He was injured in the war,” I said.