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“ ’Course you do,” Jesse said.
“Isn’t that a cute story?”
Jesse suppressed his opinion. He was no longer galvanic; he’d turned the voltage down. He seemed preoccupied, slightly pained; he regarded Bob in a way that implied the sight was disappointing. He searched under his cardigan sweater and removed a cigar that he skewered with a tine of his fork. “Give me some other conversations, Bob.”
Bob was reluctant. “You know how children are.”
“It’d be cheery to hear what you fancied about me,” Jesse said. “It might make me laugh and help me forget my cares and woes.”
“I can’t recall much of any consequence.”
“I got one,” said Charley. He smiled at Jesse, whose eyes were crossed on a match flame below the green cigar. “This one’s about as crackerjack as the one about your toes.”
“Which?” Bob asked.
Charley looked over at him. “About how much you and Jesse have in common.”
Jesse said, “Why don’t you tell it, Bob; if you remember.”
Bob inched forward in his chair. “Well, if you’ll pardon my saying so, it is interesting, the many ways you and I overlap and whatnot. You begin with my daddy, J. T. Ford. J stands for James! And T is Thomas, meaning ‘twin.’ Your daddy was a pastor of the New Hope Baptist Church; my daddy was part-time pastor of a church at Excelsior Springs. You’re the youngest of the three. James boys; I’m the youngest of the five Ford boys. You had twins as sons, I have twins as sisters. Frank is four and a half years older than you, which incidentally is the difference between Charley and me, the two outlaws in the Ford clan. Between us is another brother, Wilbur here (with six letters in his name); between Frank and you was a brother, Robert, also with six letters. Robert died in infancy, as most everyone knows, and he was named after your father, Robert, who was remembered by your brother’s first-born, another Robert. Robert, of course, is my Christian name. My uncle, Robert Austin Ford, has a son named Jesse James Ford. You have blue eyes; I have blue eyes. You’re five feet eight inches tall; I’m five feet eight inches tall. We’re both hot-tempered and impulsive and devil-may-care. Smith and Wesson is our preferred make of revolver. There’s the same number of letters and syllables in our names; I mean, Jesse James and Robert Ford. Oh me, I must’ve had a list as long as your nightshirt when I was twelve, but I lost some curiosities over the years.”
Jesse was still as a photograph; he could have been a man of cultivation at a concert. His hands were assembled at his stomach, his collar was concealed by his two-inch brown beard, smoke spiraled from his cigar in a line and then squiggled above him like sloppy handwriting; but his eyes were active, cagey, they calculated and appraised and then carefully looked at the green cigar as Jesse tapped ashes into his coff
ee cup.
He said, “Did I ever mention that scalawag George Shepherd to y’all?” He grinned at Bob and reached a right hand to grip Bob’s forearm in apology while saying, “George was one of Quantrill’s lieutenants and he gave me a story like Bob’s, is why I thought of him, giving me everything we had in common and so on, just so he could join the gang. How could I know he had a grudge against me and was lying to get on my good side? I said, ‘Come on aboard, George. Glad to have ya,’ and so on, but I got good old Ed Miller to keep his eye peeled.” Jesse gripped his fingers once more and then released Bob’s forearm, bringing his right hand back to shave the ash from his cigar with the lip of the coffee cup. He said, “I’m talking about eighteen seventy-nine. November. I was arranging to rob a bank in Galena, Kansas, and sent George on in to look at it. Did I say he only had one eye? Used to wear one of them pirate eyepatches and flip it up or down, depending on how much he wanted to scare ya. So: he goes to Galena, but then my spy, Ed Miller, comes back and reports that Shepherd went and sent a telegram to Marshal Liggett, giving him the date of the robbery and whatall. It’s ten o’clock the following morning and Shepherd comes riding into camp, bump-be-dump-be-dump, and much to the poor man’s surprise about twenty guns open up on him. He’s banging away and hating himself for being so goddamned stupid when I hear a ball whiz by my head and just then I make up my mind to pretend I’m a goner and flop to the ground. George hightails it with Jim Cummins giving him what-for for maybe a mile or two, and the next thing I see in the papers is George Shepherd running off at the mouth about killing Jesse James. Yes! Lordy; here’s the end of my cares and woes, I’m thinking. Jim Cummins goes up to Clay County and says what George is been saying is true, and I get some of the boys to slaughter a cow and once it’s stinking pitch it into a coffin that they wagon on through Kearney, I even get Zee to put on black and weep her way up to my momma’s place. I forgot to let Momma in on all this, though, and she’s the one got the sheriffs onto me again. She says, ‘Don’t you all have any common sense? You need two eyes to get Jesse.’ ”
Charley and Wilbur laughed for a suitable period of time and Jesse laughed with them until coughing made him stoop with the cigar near his ear and scrub his mouth with the checkered tablecloth. He rubbed the water from his eyes as he said, “My goodness, that Zerelda. She’s a caution.”
Bob said, “You oughtn’t think of me like you do George Shepherd.”
“You just brought him to mind.”
“It’s not very flattering.”
Martha waitressed around them and took their cups and saucers; Jesse returned the cigar to his mouth and made himself complimentary. “Good eating, Martha.”
“Glad you liked it,” she said.
Bob asked, “How come George had a grudge against you?”
Jesse cocked an eyebrow. “Hmm?”
“You said George Shepherd had a grudge against you and I’ve been wondering what it was.”
“Oh. George asked me to protect this nephew of his during the war and it so happens the kid had five thousand dollars on him. The kid winds up killed, and all that money swiped from him, and when George was in prison someone whispers to him it was Jesse James slit the boy’s throat.”
“Just mean gossip, was it?” Charley asked.
Jesse looked at his cigar and saw it was out. He then made a comic gesture of presenting it to Bob, who glared at him icily, and dropped the cigar in a pocket, saying, “Bob’s the expert; put it to him.”
Bob rose with his knuckles on the table and was cautious lest he shove his chair awry on exit and appear a stamping boy in a snit. “I’ve got something to do,” he said.
“I’ve made him cranky,” Jesse said.
Wilbur snickered and Bob said with august gravity, “I’ve been through this before, is all. Once people get around to making fun of me, they just don’t ever let up.”
Martha said, “Someone’s speaking awful fresh over there!”
