The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (9 page)

Remembering the tirades he’d made before against the men who now controlled Missouri, I suspected he wasn’t referring to work to be done on the family farm, but I didn’t press him. “You’ll tell your mother about us?” I asked.

“I will.” He squeezed my shoulder. “It will be all right, Zee. You’ll see. I’ll write to you soon.”

The next day, I stood with the rest of my family and watched him ride away, my heart heavy. I would have been more sorrowful still if I had known then how long it would be before I’d see him again—and how much longer it would be before I would be his wife.

Two weeks passed before I heard
from Jesse again. Every day I searched through our mail, longing for word from him, for reassurance that his love for me was real—that the passion we’d shared had not been my imagination.

I had begun to despair when my younger brother Thomas brought the letter from the post office, and waved it at me. “A letter for you from Cousin Jesse,” he said grinning. He winked at Sallie. “Do you think it’s a
love
note?”

“Give me that!” I snatched the letter from him, my heart pounding, my face heated.

“Open it,” Sallie commanded. “We want to see what it says.”

“No,” I said. “It’s private.” I turned and ran all the way up the stairs and locked the door of my room behind me. Then I sat on the edge of the bed and slit the envelope with trembling fingers and eagerly withdrew the single sheet of paper.

Dear Zee,

I am on the mend, though still not as pert as I would like. Frank is home now and he and I have been keeping busy, doing what we can to help on the farm. You may have heard I was baptized recently. After coming so near death, I thought it only right to cleanse myself of my sins when I had the chance.

You’ll be happy to know Mother took the news of our engagement well. She knows what a fine young woman you are and wishes us every happiness. But she advises we wait to make our vows. We are young and with so much unrest, now is not the best time to start a life together. I think her advice is wise and we should not rush into marriage when there is no reason we shouldn’t wait.

Wait! I thought I knew my aunt well enough to know what was behind her supposed ‘happiness’ at the news of our engagement. She wouldn’t risk Jesse’s anger by forthrightly opposing the match. Instead, she’d counsel delay and hope that time and distance would accomplish what her opposition could not.

I hope this letter finds you well. I must go now to help Frank with the horses.

Love, Jesse.

I stared at the letter, my heart heavy as lead. This was the great declaration of love I had been waiting on? These were the words of undying passion I had longed for? That single word ‘love’ above his signature was a poor substitute for the sentiments I had imagined.

Where was the man who had swept me off my feet—and into his bed? I didn’t see him on this page, in words he might have written to a casual acquaintance—or a maiden aunt!

Heart breaking, I refolded the page and returned it to the envelope, then hid it under a corner of my mattress, wondering if, in giving myself to Jesse, I had made a huge mistake.

I waited for Jesse to return for me.
When he did not, I decided to go to him. In late January of 1866, I wrote to Aunt Zerelda, and told her I would like to pay a visit. I made no mention of my engagement to her son or of any other issue that might be likely to raise her ire. Instead, I flattered her with soft words and appealed to her sympathy.
I long to see you, dear Aunt, for whom I was named. I know you could teach so many things that as a woman I should know. My mother is so busy with the duties of running the boarding house that it would relieve her of a burden to have me stay with you for a few weeks.

Whether it was flattery or persuasion on the part of Jesse, or merely Zerelda’s decision that the best way to control an adversary was to keep them close, she replied within a few days, stating she would love to have me come to the family farm in Kearney, to stay as long as I wanted.

Jesse was not there when I arrived. Indeed, no one met me at the train station. I stood on the deserted platform and shivered in the Arctic wind for almost an hour before, half-frozen, I left my trunk on the platform, and set out on foot. I didn’t pass a single rider in the four miles to the Samuels’ farm along a road rimed with frozen mud. By the time I reached the house my cheeks burned with the cold and I could no longer feel my toes.

The Samuels’ farm was a prosperous looking place, with a whitewashed board fence encircling the yard around a low-slung wooden house, also whitewashed, and several out buildings. Empty fields flanked the long drive, last year’s dried corn stalks rattling in the wind like dancing skeletons.

The first person I encountered was five-year old John Samuel, Jesse’s little half-brother. “Hello,” he greeted me from the branches of a coffee bean tree in front of the house. “Are you come to visit?”

“Yes, I am.” I craned my head and just made out his overall-clad figure in the branches of the tree. “Where is your mother?”

“She’s in the kitchen with Charlotte.”

I went around back and found Aunt Zerelda in the kitchen with the family’s Negro cook. The two women were scalding a pair of roosters, the pungent odor of singed feathers filling the air, more feathers spilling from a bucket by the back door.

“Hello, Aunt Zerelda,” I said.

She looked up from the chicken. Zerelda would never be pretty—her features were too coarse, her expression too sour. But like her son, she had the kind of presence that drew the eye whenever she entered a room. Many people were afraid of her, though I was determined not to be.

“Zee!” She barked my name like an order. “You weren’t supposed to be here until tomorrow.”

“I’m sure I wrote I’d come today,” I said.

The furrows on her brow deepened. “I’m sure you didn’t. But seeing as you’re here now, put on an apron and help with this chicken.”

The hired man was sent to fetch my trunk from the station, and I rolled up my sleeves and went to work. We made dinner for eight that night: Zerelda and her husband, Doctor Reuben Samuel, the children Sarah and John, myself and three rough-looking men whose names I never learned.

The meal began with a long prayer, during which Dr. Samuel asked the Lord to bless not only the meal, but all those gathered around the table, and all those who fought for the cause of the glorious South. The wrath of the Lord was called down upon the enemies of the Rebel cause, and thanks were given for the return of the South to power, which we were sure was soon to come.

The others around the table responded to this sentiment with a hearty Amen, while I stared in wonder. Even the most ardent supporters of the Southern cause that I knew had given up hope with the Rebels’ surrender at Appomattox. Only Aunt Zerelda and her tribe held out such fervent belief that the South would rise again.

The conversation that evening was about crops and livestock and the sad state into which the economy had fallen. No mention was made of Jesse and Frank or their whereabouts.

Jesse did not appear at breakfast the next morning, either. I was a little put out that he, of all people, was not here to welcome me. Wasn’t he as anxious to see me as I was to be with him? Zerelda remained silent on the subject, though she must have known I was curious. I debated waiting her out, but my longing to know won out over any desire to best her. “Where are Jesse and Frank?” I finally asked.

“Their whereabouts are none of your concern,” she said. She set down her coffee cup with a loud thump. “When you’ve finished your breakfast, you can help me with the laundry.”

I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it. If Zerelda was going to work, I couldn’t very well sit idle. I’d prove to her I could do my share, and give her no excuse to dismiss me as lazy or incapable.

Zerelda built a fire under the wash pot in the back yard. The incessant wind whipped the smoke into my eyes and fought to drag the wet laundry from my arms as I carried the piles of sheets and shirts from boiler to scrub pail and back again. The harsh lye soap made my fingers burn and the icy weather made the rest of me numb. Zerelda ignored me as we worked, except to bark orders to stoke the fire or stir the pot or to drape an armload of heavy wet sheets across a row of privet to dry. She deflected my attempts at conversation and refused to talk at all about Jesse or Frank.

The next day was devoted to scrubbing floors and polishing silver. Still no sign of Jesse or Frank. As I crawled into bed that evening I decided that Zerelda had determined to work me until I cried Uncle and returned home. But I was as least as stubborn as my namesake, and determined to stick it out.

And I definitely would not go home before I saw Jesse and spoke to him. What did he mean, staying away when he must have known I’d come to be with him? Were all his words of love merely empty boasting, good only as long as I remained a two days’ journey from him?

So I mended blankets and cleaned stoves, peeled potatoes and blacked boots and every other job Zerelda assigned me without complaint. I was stirring a stinking vat of soap over a smoking fire in the back yard on the afternoon of my fourth day with Aunt Zerelda when Jesse came striding across the yard toward me. I peered at him through the smoke, unsure if the man I saw was real or merely a phantom born of my intense longing for him.

Then he was at my side, flesh and blood and blue eyes that burned into me. “Zee, what are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’ve come for a visit. Didn’t your mother tell you?” I searched his face for some sign that he was glad to see me. But all I could find there was fatigue and a wariness I hadn’t known in him before. His clothes were wrinkled and dirty, his trouser legs and boots caked with mud. Dark half-moons hung beneath his eyes, and several days’ growth of beard roughened his jaw. “Where have you been?” I asked. “What have you been doing?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.” He turned from me, headed toward the house.

“Jesse, aren’t you glad to see me?” I asked, hating the plaintive sound of my voice, but unable to keep the words back.

He stopped, and that was enough to give me the courage to go to him and put my hand on his shoulder. “Of course I’m glad to see you, Zee,” he said, and covered my hand with one of his. The heat of his touch sent a shudder through me, burning away my resentment and fear.

“Then show me,” I said, and leaned close to kiss him on the lips.

“Zee, no, not here.” He gently held me away from him.

I laughed at this sudden show of propriety. “Jesse, we’re engaged,” I said. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t greet each other with a kiss.”

“We’ll talk later,” he said, and released me and headed for the house once more.

I stared after him, and I might have hurled the soap paddle at him, if I’d had any confidence that I could hit him with it. I wanted to shout that this was not the welcome I’d expected. This was not the greeting of lovers who had too long been apart. But Jesse had already disappeared into the house, leaving me to silently fume.

Frank returned later that afternoon, and Zerelda and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen with Charlotte, preparing a feast for the prodigals. At dinner the two men ate with the silent concentration of the starving and exhausted. No questions were asked and no explanation was made for the brothers’ absence.

I wanted more than anything to go to Jesse’s bed that night, to hold him close and be held, to whisper plans for our future and hear once more the promises we had made during his weeks at my family’s home. But Jesse shared a room with Frank and their brother John, while I slept with his sisters Susan and Fanny. We had no opportunity to be alone at night, and I saw little of Jesse the next day. I began to suspect he was avoiding me. My heart broke as my anger increased. I told myself I should take the next train home, and never speak to him again.

But I stayed, unable to tear myself from him. I wouldn’t leave until he’d told me to my face that he no longer loved me.

That evening, all of us sat in the parlor after supper. Beneath the large Rebel flag that decorated one wall, the men read while Zerelda and I sewed, though I was having trouble staying awake after a day spent cleaning the Samuels’s attic. Dr. Samuel folded back the paper and cleared his throat. “It says here a group of masked bandits robbed the Clay County Savings Association over in Liberty—in broad daylight,” he said. “They made off with over $58,000.”

“That’s a lot of money,” John said.

“Not that the bank will miss it,” Jesse said.

Something in his tone made me turn to him, so that I caught the sharp look Frank sent him. Jesse’s smile was almost a smirk, the expression of a boy who has pulled a good prank.

“What else does the paper say?” Frank asked.

“It says the men were described as bushwhackers.” He paused, silently scanning the columns of newsprint. “Among the men present, several have been identified as Jim and Bill Wilkerson, Frank Gregg, and Archie Clement.”

“Well, what do you know about that?” Jesse drawled, and smiled a lazy, satisfied smile that sent a chill up my back. All those men were friends of Jesse and Frank, men they’d served with during the war.

“A young man was killed,” Dr. Samuels continued. “Name of George Wyman, eighteen years old. The bank’s offering a five thousand dollar reward for apprehension of the criminals, and the governor has sent a platoon of militiamen to track them down.”

“A whole platoon,” Jesse said. “After a few masked men that everybody seems to have identified in spite of their masks.”

“Shut up, Jesse,” Frank said, but there was no heat in his words. He rose and stretched. “I think I’ll go out and check on the horses.”

“I’ll come with you,” Jesse said.