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He was already gone when Jesse and Dick approached the Ford house in late November, and Bill Ford was out in the meadow, doctoring sheep. His boy, Albert, scrunched at a tall window off the sitting room and stared at the two as they climbed down from their saddles at the rail fence. Then the raised curtain dropped from the boy’s shoulder and the stuck mahogany door screeched open.
Albert was fourteen and good-looking in a choirboy way—his cheeks dimpled when he smiled and there was a scampishness to his eyes. He wore black trousers with a scrim of straw and mud on the cuffs, and a green pullover sweater that was rotted at both elbows. The boy said hello but was ignored for a minute as Jesse reconnoitered the yard and then gravely ascended the steps. Dick could see past Albert to the kitchen, where Mrs. Ford and her daughter, Fanny, stirred clothes in a steaming laundry boiler. Jesse peered into other rooms.
The boy asked Dick, “Are you friends of my pa’s? Because if you are, he isn’t here right now but you’re welcome to sit a spell and enjoy our hospitality until he gets back.”
“We’re friends of Jim Cummins,” Jesse said, and rolled a cigar in his mouth.
“Oh?” said, the boy. His Uncle Jim had schooled Albert on how to answer a sheriff’s interrogations. Albert gained thirty years, became sullen. “Well, it so happens he’s been gone since August and never said where he gone to.”
“I’m Matt Collins,” Dick said, and shook the boy’s hand.
“Very happy to meet you.”
Jesse strode over and clenche
d the boy’s hand and introduced himself. “Dick Turpin.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Jesse smiled around his cigar but stalled the shake and crushed Albert’s hand in his until the boy winced. Albert was about to cry out when Jesse clamped his left hand over the boy’s mouth and yanked him into the yard. Dick softly shut the mahogany door.
Jesse manhandled the boy toward a red barn, once slamming Albert into a cottonwood tree so that he lost his wind and water came to his eyes. Dick shambled after the two, looking apprehensive and ashamed, backing sometimes so he could check the road, blowing on his red fingers.
When he was rear of the barn, Jesse twirled and threw the boy to the earth and stepped a boot onto Albert’s throat. “Don’t you yell,” he said. “Don’t you say nothin’ except how I can find Jim Cummins. Matt, aim that six-shooter.”
“Come on, Jesse! He’s just a kid.”
Jesse glowered at Dick for letting his name slip, then returned his attention to the choking boy. “He knows where his Uncle Jim is and that’s gonna make him old pretty soon.”
The boy shook his head as he brawled and kicked at Jesse.
“Maybe he doesn’t know,” Dick said.
“He knows.” Jesse fell to his knees on the boy’s biceps and Albert cried “Ow!” and his mouth was clutched closed in Jesse’s left hand. Four bruises later colored his cheek like blue nickels. “You need to ask and ask sometimes. Sometimes a child won’t remember much at first and then it’ll all come back.” He twisted the boy’s ear like a clock wind-up and Albert’s eyes showed agony, his body racked wildly, his boots thudded against the earth. “Just tell me about your Uncle Jim, that’s all! Where’d he sneak off to; where’s he hidin’ out?”
The boy purpled and his swats at Jesse lessened with exhaustion. Jesse screwed the left ear more and Albert’s scream was snared in Jesse’s palm as he bent over with the cigar in his cheek and scrutinized the injury. “My gosh, I believe it’s about to tear, sweetie. Just a little more to get her started, then I can rip your ear off like a page from a book.”
Dick was slumped against the barn, sick to his stomach and overwrought. He moaned, “Let the kid go.”
“He’s lying.”
“Jesus; he can’t even talk!”
“Where’s Jim?” Jesse asked, and then chanted it: “Where’s Jim? Where’s Jim? Where’s Jim?”
“Quit it!” Dick yelled and slapped Jesse’s hat off and immediately felt juvenile.
But Jesse squatted back and reconsidered and rubbed his hands on his thighs and the boy wept but couldn’t make words. He wiped his nose and eyes with his hands and shuddered with sobs as he sucked for air and when at last he spoke his voice scaled like a child’s. “You bastard! I don’t know where he is and you won’t believe me and you never gave me a chance you kept my mouth squeezed shut so I couldn’t breathe and my ear, my ear’s burning up, how’d you like me to do that to you? I never know where Jim is or when he comes so leave me alone, get off me, you son of a bitch!” Grunting, Albert bucked under Jesse and shouted again, “Get off!” and Jesse rose.
The boy rolled over and Dick walked around the barn and to the road, his hands fisted inside the pockets of his sheepskin coat, his neck splotched crimson with fury and disgust. When Jesse came forward, Dick was already in his Texas saddle. His face was moon white, his mouth was weak, and he looked at his boot toe in order to talk. “I’m worn out, Jesse. I can’t—” He sighed and abandoned the sentiment and squinted down the road a mile until it was not more than a needle. The curdled sky was the color of tin and the woods were rose and gray in the twilight. Dick said, “My mind’s all tangled anyway. Little deals like that just make me feel dirty.”
Dick looked over to collect Jesse’s reaction to this and was astonished to see him caved forward into his bay horse, his nose flattened against its neck and mane, his mouth in the crescent of a man noiselessly crying, a grimace of affliction in his face.
“You all right, Jesse?”
He nuzzled into the gelding’s winter hide and muttered words that Dick couldn’t master. The boy limped toward the Ford house, tenderly cupping his left ear and crossing his nose with his sweater sleeve.
Dick said, “Maybe you better ride on to wherever it is you’re living now, and maybe I’ll sell this animal and skeedaddle on over to Mrs. Bolton’s and, you know, apologize to the Fords; put everything in its best light and so on.”
