The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (35 page)

“Hello, there!” A portly, red-faced man approached the box. Grinning, he seized Jesse’s hand. “I’ll be hornswoggled, if it isn’t Jesse. Jesse James.” He turned to Frank. “And Frank! Amazing to see you both here, in the flesh.”

Jesse pulled his hand from the man’s grasp. “You are mistaken. My name is Howard. J.T. Howard. This is my brother-in-law, Mr. Woodson.”

Frank scowled at the man, one hand tucked beneath his coat, I was sure resting on the butt of his pistol.

“Aww sure. I get it.” The man winked. “Imagine, the famous James brothers, right here in Nashville.”

“Do
you
live in Nashville now?” Frank asked.

“Oh no. I’m just visiting. A day at the races, you know.”

“So are we,” Frank said. “Just visiting.”

The man turned to Jesse again. “You’re not going to hold the place up are you, Jesse? Could you at least wait until after the fifth race pays out? I’ve got a tidy sum wagered on a horse in that race.”

It was clear the man had had too much to drink. He spoke in the loud, overly enunciated tones of the inebriated, and his eyes held a glassy sheen.

Jesse gripped the man’s shoulder. “I told you my name is Howard.” His fingers dug into the man’s shoulder, bunching his suit jacket, crumpling the man in pain.

“Let go of me!” The man squawked. “What are you doing?” His skin was the color of paste, sweat beading on his forehead.

“I’m teaching you a lesson.” Jesse’s face was impassive, but his eyes were icy with fury. The man sank to his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks.

I stared at Jesse, stunned by such cold cruelty in a man from whom I and my children had known nothing but kindness. “Dave, please,” I protested.

Jesse glanced at me, then released his hold on the man, who fell forward into our box, clutching his shoulder. “I’ll have you arrested!” the injured man wailed.

“Not if you know what’s good for you.” Jesse nudged the man with his boot. “Get up.”

The man struggled to his feet, his eyes never leaving Jesse’s face, fear sobering his expression.

Jesse took a gold coin from his pocket and pressed it into the man’s hand. “Buy yourself a drink on Dave Howard,” he said, as pleasantly as if he’d been treating a friend.

The man took the coin and backed away, out of the shadow of the grandstand. Then he turned and ran.

I looked around, expecting a crowd to have gathered, sure I would see a phalanx of police making their way toward us. Yet no one even looked our way. The exchange had taken less than a minute, and I realized now that Frank and Dick had positioned themselves to shield the scene from the rest of the crowd.

“Mr. Howard, don’t you think that was a little excessive?” Annie asked, her voice frosty.

“I had to shut him up and I did.” Jesse stepped into the box, pulling the door to behind him, and took his seat beside me.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“Never saw him before in my life,” Frank said, sitting between Annie and Dick.

“You put the fear of God into him,” Dick said. “That’s the way to do it. Show ’em who’s boss.”

Jesse ignored this praise. “The race is about to start,” he said, consulting his racing form. “I like a horse called Gussie’s Gumption in this one. What do you think, Buck?”

“They’re all two-year olds,” Frank said. “I didn’t see anything worth betting on.”

Gussie’s Gumption lost the bet, and fifty dollars for Jesse. He tore the losing ticket into tiny pieces and let them drift to the floor of the box, watching them fall with all the concentration of a child admiring his first snow.

Jim Malone raced in the second heat. Jesse, Frank, Dick and even Annie stood to cheer the horses around the track. I sat silent, unable to shake the haunting image of the portly man crumpled at Jesse’s feet, and the impassive cruelty of my husband’s actions. Always before, I had dismissed news accounts that portrayed Jesse as a heartless killer as over-dramatization by the press. The Jesse I knew was no more a killer than I was.

Tonight I had seen another side to my husband—a side that frightened and confused me.

Jim Malone won the race. Jesse was ebullient, slapping Frank on the back, then pulling me close and kissing my cheek. I smiled, feigning delight, but the day was ruined for me. Even the money Jesse won did little to ease my dismay.

I kept watching the crowd for the portly man, but saw him no more. Mrs. Peabody and her escort left soon after the second race, the man smiling smugly. Mrs. Peabody ducked her head as they passed our box.

We stayed for two more races after Jim Malone’s win, but Jesse grew restless, rising from his seat and pacing our box. “There’s no point staying here any longer,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

Annie looked as if she wanted to argue, but Frank gave her a quelling look. “Yes, we’d better go,” he said, and stood also.

Jesse sent Dick to fetch the hired carriage. We rode in silence to Frank and Annie’s farm and collected the children, who were sugar-smeared and full of tales of helping Mrs. Morrison with her baking.

Dick hung around our house for half an hour or so, as if he expected to be invited to supper, but Jesse finally sent him on his way.

Later that evening, when the dishes were done and the children sent to bed, after Jesse had smoked the day’s last cigar and helped me out of my corset and combed out my hair, I crawled into bed beside him and turned down the lamp. I lay on my back, staring into the darkness, the image of the lamp flame still glowing on my retinas. Beside me, Jesse rearranged his pillow and settled under the covers.

“Would you have killed that man today?” I asked.

“What man?”

I wouldn’t believe he’d already forgotten; he was being contrary, a tendency I’d always disliked in him. “The man at the track. The one who recognized you and called you Jesse.”

“He had enough sense to shut up before I killed him.”

I rose up on one elbow and tried to see his face in the darkness; it was only a blur of darker shadows against shadows. “Are you saying you would have killed him if he hadn’t stopped talking?”

“I would have done what I had to do.”

The icy calm of his voice chilled me. “How could you kill a man merely for talking?” I asked, trying to see the reasoning behind such a judgment.

“It was his choice. I drew a line and he had to decide whether or not cross it.”

“Who gave you the right to draw the line?”

“Life is all about drawing lines. Every day. Surviving is a matter of knowing when to draw them—and when to step across.”

“So if a man crosses your line, you kill him?”

“He had a choice. He didn’t have to step across.”

“And you don’t have to shoot him!”

“But I do.”

“No you don’t. Plenty of men go their whole lives never shooting anybody.”

“Sure. Men who live soft, safe lives behind a desk or store counter. That’s not the kind of life I live. But if I start living like a store clerk or an accountant or a man like that—if a man crosses my line, and I don’t make him pay, then I might as well hang it up tomorrow, because I’ll be dead or behind bars within the week.”

I lay back on my pillow, ignoring the hot tears that spilled from my eyes, anger and fear churning my stomach. “Sometimes I wish you
were
a store clerk or accountant,” I said.

“No you don’t.” He entwined his fingers in mine. “Because then I wouldn’t be me. You love me as much for
what
I am as for
who
I am.”

I wanted to pull my hand away, to deny this accusation. But I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. “How do you know that?” I asked.

“It’s the way we’re made.” He raised my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles. “There’s a wildness in you that nobody but me sees—that part of you would never be happy with a clerk or an accountant. Just like I’d never be happy with a schoolteacher like Annie.”

He rolled to me and gathered me close. I made no protest, but clung to him. “Jesse, I’m scared,” I whispered.

He smoothed my hair and kissed my forehead. “Sometimes, I am too,” he said. “But it always passes after a while. It will for you, too.”

For the rest of the year,
Jesse and Dick traveled back and forth between our house in Nashville and who knows where. I heard rumors of stagecoaches waylaid and stores robbed, but these were easy enough to discount. For years, the James Gang had been credited with every robbery between Tennessee and California. Apparently the disgrace of being taken advantage of by robbers was lessened if the culprits happened to be the notorious Jesse James and company.

I knew he spent some of this time at racetracks around the country, watching Jim Malone win purse after purse. The horse’s victories thrilled me, not because I cared about horse racing, but because I thought the excitement of racing and the winnings he collected might encourage Jesse to set aside some of his more dangerous pursuits.

But at the end of the racing season, Jesse sold his interest in the horse. “I got a good profit for him,” he explained when I questioned this decision.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

His smile gave me no comfort. “Oh, I expect I’ll find something.”

In January, Frank turned thirty-eight, and Annie invited us to dinner in his honor. Jesse presented his brother with a new Colt revolver in a handsome case, which seemed to please Frank, but made Annie frown. I knew if she had her way, Frank would never have cause to fire a gun again.

Talk at the dinner table was all politics. President Garfield, a Republican, had won the last election and would be sworn in in March. “Garfield seems more moderate than Grant or Hayes,” Frank remarked as he helped himself to creamed potatoes.

“Who’s president doesn’t matter as much to me as the man in the governor’s chair,” Jesse said. “Crittenden may be a Democrat, but he’s no friend of ours.”

Governor Thomas T. Crittenden had taken the oath of office that week as governor of Missouri. Though we had lived in Tennessee for three years now, Missouri would always be home, and Jesse and Frank paid keen attention to politics there. Crittenden’s election had animated Jesse as few politician’s had done before.

“Did you read his inaugural address in the paper?” he asked Frank. “The old goat practically declared war on us and our supporters.”

“Times have changed,” Frank observed mildly. “People want to put the past behind them and focus on earning a good living for themselves and their families.”

I wondered if Frank was talking about the citizens of Missouri—or about himself.

“Since when has any politician cared two cents for the common working man?” Jesse asked. “Old Crittenden’s concerned about taking care of the rich bankers and railroad men who got him into office in the first place. It sticks in his craw that a handful of former guerrillas—men he fought against in the war—have those bankers and railroad men shaking in their boots.”

“The governor of a state can marshal a lot of firepower behind him,” Frank said. “If Crittenden really is declaring war on the James Gang, the smart thing to do might be to find another line of work.”

“Better men than him have been after me for the past fifteen years and none of them have succeeded yet,” Jesse said. “I’m not afraid of Crittenden and any army he can muster.”