Hansen - Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Hansen, Ron

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now a major motion pictureStarring Brad Pitt

&Finalisti

Ron Hansen has turned low history intohigh art. This is a terrific book."

The

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iSASSINATION

Of '

JESSJAMES

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ROBERT FORD

RON IIA>.'Si:.>

Al TIIOR OF ATTICU8 AM)

THE ASSASSINATION

OF JESSE JAMES

BY THE COWARD

ROBERT FORD

ALSO BY RON HANSEN

Isn't It Romantic?

Hitler's Niece

Atticus

Mariette in Ecstasy

Nebraska

Desperadoes

Essays

A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction

For ChildrenThe Shadowmaker

Editor

You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers

Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe(with Jim Shepard)You Don't Know What Love Is: Contemporary American Short

Stories

L

To John Irving, John L 'Heureux, John Gardner

Part One

LOOT

Digitized by the Internet Archivein 2012

http://www.archive.org/details/assassinationofjOOronh

SEPTEMBER 7th, 1881

His manner was pleasant, though noticeably quiet and reserved. Helistened attentively to every word that Scott Moore or I uttered but hehimself said little. Occasionally he would ask some question about thecountry and the opportunities for stock-raising. But all the time I wasconscious that he was alertly aware of everything that was said and donein the room. He never made the slightest reference to himself nor did heshow the least trace of self-importance or braggadocio. Had / not knownwho he was I should have taken him for an ordinary businessmanreceiving a social visit from two of his friends. But his demeanor was sopleasant and gentlemanly withal that I found myself on the whole likinghim immensely.

MIGUfcL ANTONIO OTEROMy Life on the Frontier

He was growing into middle age and was living then in a bunga-low on Woodland Avenue. Green weeds split the porch steps, awasp nest clung to an attic gable, a rope swing looped down from adying elm tree and the ground below it was scuffed soft as flour. Jesseinstalled himself in a rocking chair and smoked a cigar down in theevening as his wife wiped her pink hands on a cotton apron andreported happily on their two children. Whenever he walked about thehouse, he carried several newspapersthe Sedalia Daily Democrat,the St. Joseph Gazette, and the Kansas City Timeswith a foot-long.44 caliber pistol tucked into a fold. He stuffed flat pencils into hispockets. He played by flipping peanuts to squirrels. He braided yellowdandelions into his wife's yellow hair. He practiced out-of-the-bodytravel, precognition, sorcery. He sucked raw egg yolks out of theirshells and ate grass when sick, like a dog. He would flop open the limpHoly Bible that had belonged to his father, the late Reverend Robert S.James, and would contemplate whichever verses he chanced upon,getting privileged messages from each. The pages were scribbled overwith penciled comments and interpretations; the cover was cool to his

cheek as a shovel. He scoured for nightcrawlers after earth-batteringrains and flipped them into manure pails until he could chop them intowrithing sections and sprinkle them over his garden patch. He recordedsales and trends at the stock exchange but squandered much of hiscapital on madcap speculation. He conjectured about foreign relations,justified himself with indignant letters, derided Eastern financiers, seededtobacco shops and saloons with preposterous gossip about the kitchensof Persia, the Queen of England, the marriage rites of the Latter DaySaints. He was a faulty judge of character, a prevaricator, a child atheart. He went everywhere unrecognized and lunched with Kansas Cityshopkeepers and merchants, calling himself a cattleman or commodi-ties investor, someone rich and leisured who had the common touch.

He was born Jesse Woodson James on September 5th, 1847, andwas named after his mother's brother, a man who committed suicide.He stood five feet eight inches tall, weighed one hundred fifty-fivepounds, and was vain about his physique. Each afternoon he exercisedwith weighted yellow pins in his barn, his back bare, his suspendersdown, two holsters crossed and slung low. He bent horseshoes, helifted a surrey twenty times from a squat, he chopped wood until itpulverized, he drank vegetable juices and potions. He scraped his sweatoff with a butter knife, he dunked his head, at morning, in a horsewater bucket, he waded barefoot through the lank backyard grass withhis six-year-old son hunched on his shoulders and with his trousersrolled up to his knees, snagging garter snakes with his toes and gentlyletting them go.

He smoked, but did not inhale, cigars; he rarely drank anythingstronger than beer. He never philandered nor strayed from his wife norhad second thoughts about his marriage. He never swore in the pres-ence of ladies nor raised his voice with children. His hair was fine andchestnut brown and recurrently barbered but it had receded so badlysince his twenties that he feared eventual baldness and therefore rubbedhis temples with onions and myrtleberry oil in order to stimulate growth.He scissored his two-inch sun-lightened beard according to a fashionthen associated with physicians. His eyes were blue except for irispyramids of green, as on the back of a dollar bill, and his eyebrowsshaded them so deeply he scarcely ever squinted or shied his eyes froma glare. His nose was unlike his mother's or brother's, not long andpreponderant, no proboscis, but upturned a little and puttied, a puck-ish, low-born nose, the ruin, he thought, of his otherwise gallantlyhandsome countenance.

Four of his molars were crowned with gold and they gleamed,sometimes, when he smiled. He had two incompletely healed bulletholes in his chest and another in his thigh. He was missing the nub ofhis left middle finger and was cautious lest that mutilation be seen.He'd had a boil excised from his groin and it left a white star of skin.A getaway horse had jerked from him and fractured his ankle in thesaddle stirrup so that his foot mended a little crooked and registeredbarometric changes. He also had a condition that was referred to asgranulated eyelids and it caused him to blink more than usual, as if hefound creation slightly more than he could accept.