Read Online The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: A Novel by Ron Hansen - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ron Hansen
Ads: Link
someday leave the Mimms boardinghouse without discerning her affection; she hoped—and then chastened herself for it—that Jesse would never get well but would forever need her and demand her attentions so that she could surrender her father’s prissy name, renounce her unimpassioned life, and marry into the grueling pursuit of caring for and worshipping this Jesse Woodson James.
On Thanksgiving Jesse decided he could venture downstairs and did, leaning on her and smiling with mortification as the diners toasted and cheered. He asked to make a benediction over the food and recited from Luke, “When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee.” He had become reverent and grateful in his recuperation and intimated his vocation would be to follow his deceased father into Georgetown College in Kentucky and vest himself as a minister of God. He interlocked his fingers with those of his nurse and said he was so indebted to her it brought him to the brink of tears. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said.
Zee answered softly, “I can think of a way,” and on Christmas he proposed marriage.
THE ENGAGEMENT LASTED nine years. He returned to the farm of his mother and stepfather, three miles northeast of Kearney, Missouri, about twenty miles from Kansas City. He was reinstated in the New Hope Baptist Church and went to the river on christening day in order to cleanse the Civil War from his soul, but received no instructions in religion beyond those he could glean from revival tents and what were then called protracted meetings. His mother scoffed at his inspiration of joining the clerical life and he could find no other work so he divided his time between agriculture and Sundays with Zee at the Samuels table.
The farm had remained much as it was when his mother inherited it from Reverend Robert Sallee James’s estate: about three hundred acres of corn and oats and meadows, thirty sheep, some cattle, a stable of horses, a yoke of oxen, a barn, a four-room house with seven-foot ceilings and a portico lifted by white posts, and two freed black servants left over from a chattel of seven slaves. The house contained two brick kitchen fireplaces that were wide as a jail, secondhand furniture hauled up from Kentucky and polished with linseed oil, and a library that dealt with mathematics, theology, astronomy, horticulture, oratory, Latin, and Shakespeare. Jesse would escort his cousin into the sitting room and break the binding of a book to read aloud whatever passage caught his fancy and then he’d grin at Zee as if he’d done something beguiling and quaint.
He’d visit his fiancée in Harlem and they’d stroll in the cold, embracing their fleece coats, or trade sips of cherry squeeze and soda water near the furnace at the apothecary. They’d chat about neighbors and relatives, give each other nicknames, or recline on their backs and oversee the fire’s slow extinction behind the sitting room grate. His health was still so precarious that he needed to stop on each step he climbed and his stomach couldn’t always completely capture his food, so their activities were constrained, their nights early, their social engagements were often fraught with illness and regrets.
She introduced Jesse to her girlfriends at parties but it seemed all he could do not to nod off over his tea; sometimes she lost him entirely to other rooms and attics where he could browse like an auction bidder. Whereas his own chums delighted him; he sent coded letters to aliases at tavern addresses and was jubilant when a note came back; even after his friends had taken leave he would savor their conversations, retell stories to Zee that were still vile and indelible in her mind, indicate the characteristics he found most attractive in the rowdies.
Jesse introduced Cole and Jim and Bob Younger to her in Kearney and she sat through a meal and several foul cigars with
On Thanksgiving Jesse decided he could venture downstairs and did, leaning on her and smiling with mortification as the diners toasted and cheered. He asked to make a benediction over the food and recited from Luke, “When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee.” He had become reverent and grateful in his recuperation and intimated his vocation would be to follow his deceased father into Georgetown College in Kentucky and vest himself as a minister of God. He interlocked his fingers with those of his nurse and said he was so indebted to her it brought him to the brink of tears. “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said.
Zee answered softly, “I can think of a way,” and on Christmas he proposed marriage.
THE ENGAGEMENT LASTED nine years. He returned to the farm of his mother and stepfather, three miles northeast of Kearney, Missouri, about twenty miles from Kansas City. He was reinstated in the New Hope Baptist Church and went to the river on christening day in order to cleanse the Civil War from his soul, but received no instructions in religion beyond those he could glean from revival tents and what were then called protracted meetings. His mother scoffed at his inspiration of joining the clerical life and he could find no other work so he divided his time between agriculture and Sundays with Zee at the Samuels table.
The farm had remained much as it was when his mother inherited it from Reverend Robert Sallee James’s estate: about three hundred acres of corn and oats and meadows, thirty sheep, some cattle, a stable of horses, a yoke of oxen, a barn, a four-room house with seven-foot ceilings and a portico lifted by white posts, and two freed black servants left over from a chattel of seven slaves. The house contained two brick kitchen fireplaces that were wide as a jail, secondhand furniture hauled up from Kentucky and polished with linseed oil, and a library that dealt with mathematics, theology, astronomy, horticulture, oratory, Latin, and Shakespeare. Jesse would escort his cousin into the sitting room and break the binding of a book to read aloud whatever passage caught his fancy and then he’d grin at Zee as if he’d done something beguiling and quaint.
He’d visit his fiancée in Harlem and they’d stroll in the cold, embracing their fleece coats, or trade sips of cherry squeeze and soda water near the furnace at the apothecary. They’d chat about neighbors and relatives, give each other nicknames, or recline on their backs and oversee the fire’s slow extinction behind the sitting room grate. His health was still so precarious that he needed to stop on each step he climbed and his stomach couldn’t always completely capture his food, so their activities were constrained, their nights early, their social engagements were often fraught with illness and regrets.
She introduced Jesse to her girlfriends at parties but it seemed all he could do not to nod off over his tea; sometimes she lost him entirely to other rooms and attics where he could browse like an auction bidder. Whereas his own chums delighted him; he sent coded letters to aliases at tavern addresses and was jubilant when a note came back; even after his friends had taken leave he would savor their conversations, retell stories to Zee that were still vile and indelible in her mind, indicate the characteristics he found most attractive in the rowdies.
Jesse introduced Cole and Jim and Bob Younger to her in Kearney and she sat through a meal and several foul cigars with
Similar Books
