Testing, one, two, t--
Ron Hansen.
Writers at Work would like to thank the English department
and the Poetry Center for helping
us put this on, and a special thanks to Lois
Shelton for a lot of direction.
There will be punch and cookies after this.
Our first reader will be Jean Rukkila.
Jean is a graduate student in creative writing here
at the university.
She has a degree in journalism from Arizona State University,
and she works in the summer in Lookout Towers out
in the forest.
Our first reader is Jean Rukkila.
[APPLAUSE]
I was perfectly prepared to be terrified tonight.
I mean, I was almost looking forward
to experiencing fear of public speaking,
but then this, half the neighborhood
I grew up with in Phoenix showed up, and somehow
that cheering section just kind of puts me right at ease.
Could you turn it up?
Ah, OK.
Oh, maybe I can stand closer.
How do you turn it up?
Is that a new mic?
Bend it more towards you.
Bend the mic up towards you.
OK.
How's that?
Better?
[LAUGHTER]
I've found myself thinking about my sister
in the last week or two.
She recently moved to Connecticut
to live on a farm with her husband.
And I keep getting these letters about how
she's taking care of her sick pigs
and raising big vegetables in her garden,
and it all seems pretty foreign to me.
I think she'd probably find it foreign to see me standing up
here, with my hair combed, reading my fiction aloud
to the public.
It used to, oh, make me nervous or set me on edge
to imagine that my family would become strangers to me, as we
all got older and led our different lives,
but lately, I've found myself thinking of it as being
kind of interesting, really.
It's like reading a very, very long novel
that you can hardly put down.
So with my sister, my twin sister Joyce, in mind,
I'd like to read this story tonight called "Andi and Ann."
"I'm up a tree with my cheerful independence,
trying to figure something out, and because I can,
I'm staying entertained by spying on my mother and sister
below.
I scraped my elbow getting here.
It stings, and the feel of it reminds me of being a girl--
how I was often too busy keeping up with the boys
to stop for small injuries.
I'm not a girl anymore, but I'm still
growing up to be comfortable sitting
in the fork of this mulberry, leaning against a branch,
enjoying a crisp December Phoenix day.
My sister is the quiet Ann, and I'm the less quiet Andi.
I've always figured my parents had a boy name
and a girl name picked out.
And when they had twins, they changed the y to i
and use both names anyway.
It turned out the boy's name fit me.
I was the twin, who usually had one knee sock
sagging, especially in the school class picture.
I was hard of hearing at supper time.
I was the twin who threw the softball farther,
punched more often, and had blacker moods.
Mom doesn't remember why I became Andi and Ann was
picked to be Ann.
She does remember that we blink [AUDIO OUT]
quite alike and had our own language when
we crawled around the house.
We put off learning to talk, content
with our very own combinations of eye contact and nonsense
words.
Mom is 63, and Ann and I are 30.
It may be odd to sit around in a mulberry tree on a working day,
but I'm not crazy.
I'm just a reasonably respectable teacher
of eighth grade English.
People are usually impressed by my confidence in the classroom.
I have a new car, a subscription to New Yorker,
and season tickets to the local theater group.
I also have this street that sends
me splashing right through the rain puddles in the parking
lot, especially when I know my students are looking,
and up trees on a whim, when I visit my mother.
It is shirt sleeve weather, but there's a possibility of frost
tonight, so mom is stripping the tangerine tree.
She reaches into the tree with one hand
and holds a paper sack with the other.
She can't quite reach the last of the bright orange balls
at the top of the little tree.
In my sister's yard, there are sheets draped
over the wire clothesline.
They slowly fill with the sighing breeze,
and the way they move, standing out a bit,
makes me think I'm in the crow's nest,
at the top of a square rigger, judging the sails below.
There's a hedge that separates Ann's yards from mom.
They don't see each other, and they don't see me.
Ann has the hiccups.
I can hear her from here.
She's being very loud with those hiccups because she doesn't
think anybody is listening.
They soften, those great plopping tuneful gasps of air
when she hears my mother crumpling a paper
bag in the next yard.
I watch mom's tennis shoes bobbing through the wet grass.
I hear the note of inquiry, and my sister's voice,
and the rising and falling pitches
of mom describing things.
Ann is hanging up her husband's shorts now.
There they are in a line, the new white shorts,
the shorts with the holes in them,
and the ones that got a little pink, probably when
I volunteered to do their laundry with mine
and mixed in a new red sweatshirt.
That line of wet shorts leap out at me
as some kind of symbol of married life.
Symbol often leaps out at me, I guess, because I read so much.
Today, I read this story in The New Yorker
that has a woman in it, who climbs a tree,
but I can't figure exactly why she climbs the tree.
So I think the tree must be a symbol,
but I'm not sure of what.
So symbols are on my mind, and now, out
of all of Ann's laundry, it's her husband's shorts that
seemed to stand for something.
There she is-- my married twin below me with the mom we share.
Maybe they're talking about me, although I doubt it.
They aren't laughing or shaking their heads.
I am, as usual, out of the conversation,
and sitting in a tree is just about where I often
wanted to be when they were discussing the many topics that
bored me growing up.
Basically anything my sister was interested in bored me.
She grew squash in the backyard.
I decided I didn't like the taste of them.
She was a good swimmer.
I wouldn't get in the water.
She married.
I didn't, and today she's hanging up a man's wet shorts.
She looks so calm about it, so relaxed,
like this is the most perfect part of her day--
this stretching her arms up to the sagging clothesline
to clip wet shorts to the breeze.
I don't know how she can make something
so dreary look so peaceful.
From where I sit, Ann is starting
to look like another version of mom.
Something about that makes me feel
lucky to be sitting in a tree.
Mom, I say to the tops of the two heads below.
Annie!
They look up to me in the mulberry, only a little
surprised.
What are you doing up there, asked mom,
not like it is so strange to see me in a tree,
but like she is kind of interested, like she thinks
I might be doing research, or taking a photograph,
or looking for something.
And she's maybe wondering if she should join me.
I'm just thinking I've been reading
this story about a woman who climbs a tree.
Well, she's in the park with her kids actually,
and she's thinking about life and stuff,
and then she climbs this tree.
I can see they're puzzled and not sure whether to take me
seriously.
Ann is sending me "what are you talking about"
signals with her knit-together eyebrows.
Mom picks up a shirt, choosing the practical over the puzzle.
She snaps wrinkles out of it, kindly shaking off my nonsense,
but it's not nonsense.
I really-- figured out the author's point of view.
I can teach Treasure Island to eighth graders
and make perfect traditional sense.
But I really don't know why this 20th century
writer has put her character in a tree,
especially without describing the actual climbing tree, which
seems to me, to be, at least, as interesting as a perspective.
Pippi Longstocking, right?
And calls up to me, she thinks I've been
rereading Pippi Longstocking.
I'm surprised and pleased she remembers that girl,
with the freckles and strong arms,
who used to lift the spirits of our second grade class
by lifting horses and living with a monkey.
She did climb trees, didn't she?
I say, but no, that's not who it was.
She had a monkey not a kid, and what
was the name of that monkey of hers anyway?
Neither of us can remember.
That makes me feel old, and I start
to feel the way to my years on my skinny ankles.
I sit so I can let my legs dangle.
Forget to go to work, mom asks?
I'm taking a professional day, I say.
The faculty is meeting to discuss the curriculum,
but I thought it more professional to avoid
the jargon.
Have you considered how dull it would
be if you had to meet once a month, with 10 other mothers
to decide how to describe how you'd spent your week?
Figuring out which words sounded important enough
would drive you crazy.
Mom shrugs.
She's heard my lectures on the administrative wasteland
before.
So Andi, this woman in the story,
why did she climb the tree anyway? asked Ann.
Was she being chased, is she nuts, or what?
I don't think she's nuts.
No one is chasing her.
She just decides she needs to sit on a branch.
It's a mystery to me, I say.
I swing my legs, and let my feet bang together,
and look at my sister's apron so neatly tied behind her neck.
Why should wear an apron to do the laundry
is also a mystery to me.
What kind of tree was it?
Asked my mother.
My mother often reminds me that fiction
takes place in a real world.
I don't know, I say.
It's in Brooklyn.
What kind of trees grow in Brooklyn?
She doesn't remember.
She was a busy working girl when she lived in Brooklyn.
And says, it was probably a walnut, or a maple,
or maybe an oak.
Why would a writer go out on a limb, I call down to Ann.
What is this, a chicken road joke?
I don't know why, she laughs.
Her laundry basket is empty.
A slight breeze blows her husband shorts
against her cheek.
I can almost feel that wet cloth against her cheek
and her affection for it.
She reaches to feel the sheet she hung up earlier,
and I imagine the inside of her head,
busy calculating the task of the rest of her day.
So Andi, did this woman in the story
ever come down out of the tree?
says Ann.
Hints between twins can be very subtle to outsiders
and look big as newspaper headlines to each other.
I don't need eyeglasses to catch Ann's meaning.
She's hinting I should come down and join them.
I haven't got that far yet, I say to her face, tilted up
to the mirror of my face.
Ann turns to chat with mom about when irrigation is coming,
and whether the local Mexican restaurant is crowded,
and when brother John is arriving for Christmas--
the many topics mothers and daughters have in common
at the bottom of trees.
I look down at them, and I wonder if my mother's hair
will change color with age.
I look at my sister and try to decide if that really
is what I look like from above.
Probably not, her hair is more full
and is always neatly combed, and there's
that little bit of extra weight that keeps her
from borrowing my pants anymore, and there's
that ring on her finger.
They continue their conversation,
and I climb a little higher, trying to show off.
When my foot slips, my fingernails
pick up bits of the soft mulberry bark,
and the entire weight of my school
teaching body jerks against my skinny arm.
I find a foothold and steal a glance out of the corner
of my eye to see if they've noticed, but they haven't.
The rough crotches of the limbs feel smaller than I remember,
and I do remember.
I often climb trees through the troubles of my growing up,
and this tree, in particular, because it had the best view.
There was a certainty to feeling the weight of my thin body,
hanging from one arm, pulling so severely
at one shoulder and five fingers.
You dangle pretty long for a girl,
the boy next door told me once, and I punched him,
intuitively suspicious about what being a girl meant.
I try it again, holding on to a branch overhead
and lifting my feet, and it still feels like strength
after all these years how my arm holds,
how my wrist carries weight, the tree by-- fingers.
From foot to knee, the inside of my leg
slides along the roughness of the bark, feeling for a bump.
My toe snags a nub.
I trust my balance to that foot and lean into a thick branch.
Released from weight, my whole arm
tingles from the contrast between flexed and un flexed.
Ann and mom look even smaller, still
planted below in the Bermuda grass, still content
with words only, while I have to climb trees.
Some days, at my teaching desk, when the class
is asleep at their books, I look like I'm grading papers,
but I'm really daydreaming, seeing the old neighborhood,
seeing mulberry trees and the hedges I played Indian behind,
and the fields where I stirred ant nest and chased my sister.
In this tree, too, I feel like I'm
daydreaming, seeing all those places of my history
from above, laid out like neatly paragraphed scenes in a book.
I look for the horse.
Two yards in a vacant lot away there
used to be a field with a horse in it,
beside an old trailer, where Mr. Bates lived.
The trailer, the horse, and Mr. Bates
were gone before Ann and I made that transition
to talking with the rest of--
Our older brother told us about Mr. Bates.
He self-importantly described touching the horse,
but to us, the horse was only a shape we reached for,
each in a parent's arms, opening and closing our baby fingers
when mom said, see the horsey, Ann.
See the horsey, Andi.
The horse was gone before we were old enough
to make complete sentences and name things.
But the horse stayed in that mental vocabulary
between twins, where things are understood
more by sense than sentences.
Do you see the horse?
Became a way of asking, are you OK?
Does it make sense to you?
are we still reaching for the same things?
Fields that are parking lots, I murmur,
trying to recover that stretch of dry grass
and brown dirt, that dark shape against a wire fence that shook
its tail and stamped its feet.
I'm in the top of a tree from my youth,
and I can't quite see the games I grew up
playing because there is a new asphalt parking lot in the way.
A story I've been reading, however, is coming into focus.
Maybe it takes looking down from above to see
how a neighborhood, that nurtured children,
has changed into a bank, a restaurant, an office complex.
It takes a small distance to sister
as changed from a comforting mirror into a stranger's wife.
Is Mr. Bates at home, asked Ann quietly,
penetrating my thoughts, like she's
sitting on the next branch.
I smiled down at her and her empty laundry basket.
Wife of a stranger or not, I wish
I'd helped her hang those shorts.
We're going to lunch.
Want to come-- want to come?
Asked my mother.
Sounds interesting, I say, where?
Pablo's.
Pablo's, the neighborhood Mexican beanery,
I exclaim, and put my foot on the next highest
branch and strike a seafaring pose, with hand to brow.
Let me see if it's crowded.
I loved the extra attention from below, plenty of tacos
to go around to all hands, I called down.
Tortillas blowing in from the North,
I pause, testing the barometric pressure of Mexican food.
A big wind, Ann groans, guessing a joke about beans is coming.
Well, all right already, I'm coming.
I'm coming, I say, and begin a quick descent.
I do remember this tree.
I know I can balance one step only,
before the branch under my foot will shake.
The ranch-- single step my knees crack, when I bend them,
and the little girl in me wants to jump
to the ground for the sheer terror of a moment of flying.
But my grown woman's head is a little
dizzy from my rapid descent of mulberry.
The ground wavers between close and far.
I turn to the trunk and wrap my arms around it,
like an old lady or a fat kid, and slowly, without grace,
inched my way down to the grass, scraping pink streaks
on the insides of my arms.
Did you see the horse, asked Ann,
picking up the conversation we carried
on as children, whenever I was brave enough
to climb higher than her.
It's gone, Ann, no more horse, lots of parking lot,
but no horse, I say, standing next to her eye to eye.
Some fiction I've been reading, however,
is beginning to make more sense.
Climbing a tree is one way of seeing what kind of story
you're in.
On the ground, my mother looks so short,
but she still knows how to shoo us along with authority.
Let's go girl, she says.
What are we waiting for?
She is smiling at her independent, single daughter
and her quiet, married daughter.
And I can see we're really 12 years old and still identical
after all.
I feel a familiar panic--
that trapped feeling from people assuming I
naturally want the same things Ann wants.
But Ann looks happy.
Her face softened by that connection we can't do anything
about anyway.
I look at the face so much like my face,
and suddenly, I'm glad of those identical girls still buried
beneath the not so identical layers of adults in us.
I don't say that, of course, but I
do ask my sister Ann if she'd like to do a little reading.
I've got a magazine with a good story in it,
and she's more than welcome to borrow it."
[APPLAUSE]
Our second reader tonight is Ron Hansen.
Ron Hansen's published numerous short stories and two novels,
novels are Desperados and The Assassination
of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Our second reader's Ron Hansen.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Is that satisfactory, the voice level?
I'm going to read four sections from the novel for all,
about four or five pages long.
The first is the beginning of the novel where
I gave all the information I knew at the time
about Jesse James.
"He was growing into middle age and was
living in a bungalow in Woodland Avenue.
Green weeds split the porch steps, a wasp nest clung
to an attic gable, a rope swing looped down
from a dying elm tree, and the ground below it
was scuffed soft as flour.
Jesse installed himself in a rocking chair
and smoked a cigar down in the evening and his wife--
as his wife wiped her pink hands on a cotton apron
and reported happily on their two children.
Whenever he walked about the house,
he carried several newspapers, the Sedalia Democrat,
the St. Joseph Gazette, and the Kansas City Times,
with a foot long, 44 caliber pistol, tucked into a fold.
He stuffed flat pencils into his pockets.
He played by flipping peanuts to squirrels.
He braided yellow dandelions into his wife's yellow hair.
He practiced out of the body travel, precognition, sorcery.
He sucked raw egg yolks out of their shells
and ate grass when sick, like a dog.
He would flop open the limp Holy 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 over with pencil comments
and interpretations.
The cover was cool to his cheek as a shovel.
He scoured for night crawlers after earth-battering rains
and flipped them into manure pails,
until he could chop them into writhing sections
and sprinkle them over his garden patch.
He recorded sales and trends at the stock exchange,
but squandered much of his cap-- madcap speculation.
He conjectured about foreign relations, justified himself
with indignant letters, derided Eastern financiers,
seeded tobacco shops and saloons with preposterous gossip
about the kitchens of Persia, the queen of England,
the marriage rights of the Latter-day Saints.
He was a faulty judge of character, a prevaricator,
a child at heart.
He went everywhere unrecognized and lunched with Kansas City
shopkeepers and merchants, calling himself
a cattleman or a commodities investor, someone
rich and leisured, who had the common touch.
He was born Jesse Woodson James on September 5th, 1847,
and was named after his mother's brother,
a man who committed suicide.
He stood 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighed 155 pounds,
and was vain about his physique.
Each afternoon, he exercised with weighted yellow pins
in his barn, his back bare, his suspenders down, two
holsters crossed and slung low.
He bent horseshoes.
He lifted a surrey 20 times from a squat.
He would until it pulverized.
He drank vegetable juices and potions.
He scraped his sweat off with a butter knife.
He dunked his head, at morning, in a horse water bucket.
He waded barefoot through the lank backyard grass
with his six-year-old son, hunched on his shoulders,
and with his trousers rolled up to his knees,
snagging garter snakes with his toes
and gently letting them go.
He smoked but did not inhale cigars.
He rarely drank anything stronger than beer.
He never philandered, nor strayed from his wife,
nor had second thoughts about his marriage.
He never swore in the presence of ladies,
nor raised his voice with children.
His hair was fine in chestnut brown and recurrently barbered,
but it had receded so badly since his 20s
that he feared eventual baldness,
and therefore rubbed his temples with onions and myrtleberry oil
in order to stimulate growth.
He scissored his two-inched sun-lightened beard
according to the fashion then associated with physicians.
His eyes were blue, except for iris pyramids of green,
as on the back of dollar bill, and his eyebrows--
so deeply he scarcely even squinted or shied his eyes
from a glare.
His nose was unlike his mother's or brother's, not
long and preponderant, no proboscis,
but upturned a little and puttied,
a puckish, low born nose--
the ruin, he thought, of his otherwise gallantly
handsome countenance.
Four of his molars were crowned with gold,
and they gleamed sometimes when he smiled.
He had two incompletely healed bullet holes in his chest
and another in his thigh.
He's missing the nub of his left middle finger
and was cautious let at-- 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 the saddle strip,
so that his foot mended a little crooked
and registered barometric changes.
He also had a condition that referred
to as granulated eyelids, and it caused
him to blink more than usual, as if he found creation slightly
more than he could accept.
He was a Democrat.
He was left handed.
He had a high thin-- of a voice, a contralto that
could twang annoyingly like a catgut guitar
whenever he was excited.
He owned five suits, which was rare then,
and colorful brocaded vests and cravats.
He wore a 32-inch belt and a 14 and 1/2 inch collar.
He favored red wool socks.
He rubbed his teeth with his finger after meals.
He was persistently vexed by insomnia,
and therefore experimented with vast number of soporifics,
which did little besides increasing his fascination
with pharmacological remedies.
He could neither multiply nor divide without error
and much of his science was superstition.
He could list the many begotten of Abraham
in the 66 books of the King James Bible.
He could recite Psalms and poems in a stentorian voice,
with suitable histrionics.
He could sing religious hymns so convincingly,
that he worked, for a month, as a choir master.
He was marvelously informed about current events,
and yet, he thought incense was made from the bones of saints,
that leather continued to grow if not dyed,
that if he concentrated hard enough,
his body's electrical currents could stun lake as he bathed.
He could intimidate like King Henry VIII.
He could be reckless or serene, rational or lunatic from one
minute to the next.
If he made an entrance, heads turned in his direction.
If he strode down an aisle, store clerks backed away.
If he neared animals, they retreated.
Room's seemed hotter when he was in them, rains fell straighter,
clocks slowed, sounds were amplified.
His enemies would not have been much surprised
if he produced horned owls out of beer bottles
or made candles out of his fingers.
He considered himself a southern loyalist and a guerilla
in a Civil War that never ended.
He regretted neither his robberies nor the 17 murders
that he lay claim to, but he would brood about his slanders
and slights, his callow need for attention, his overweening
vaingloriousness.
And he was excessively genteel and polite,
in order to disguise what he thought was vulgar, primitive,
and depraved in his origins.
Sickness has made him smell blood each morning.
He visited rooms at night.
He sometimes heard children in the fruit cellar.
He waded into prairie whea-- stared at the horizon.
He had seen another summer under in Kansas City, Missouri,
and on September 5th, in the year 1881,
he was 34 years old."
All right, skipping ahead to December of 1881.
He has met Bob Ford.
Bob Ford participated in the last train robbery
that the James Gang ever committed
in Blue Cut, Missouri.
And Bob Ford has managed to insinuate himself
as one of the members of the gang
and one of Jesse's confidants, to a certain extent.
Jesse has stopped by after a ruinous Christmas
dinner with his family, where his mother thoroughly dominated
him, so he decides to go visit the Ford
family at their Christmas.
Charley Ford, Bob's brother, was with Jesse at the Christmas
celebration, and he's accompanying Jesse
over to the Ford house.
Charley has just come in the door.
"Bob was in a chair.
Juan and Charley startled.
His arms beneath the oak table that--
like a schoolboy sticking gum.
Charley asked, is Dick here?
Kansas City.
Anything you should hide?
Jesse, Bob said.
Charley nodded and removed his coat.
Don't let him see us so much as wink at each other.
He's suspicious as a dang coyote,
and he don't trust you one iota.
Bob lifted a cocked revolver from under the table
and carefully let the hammer click forward.
I guess that makes us even.
Then Jesse came inside in his reddish brown Beaver coat,
frost in his dark brown mustache and beard, moisture in his eyes
from the cold, and communicated amicably with Bob,
joshing as he jigged at the stove fire,
creating Christmas cheer.
Then as Charley vagrantly talked about the weather,
Jesse played truant and roamed the second floor of the house,
nosing into closets and cabinets, seeking evidence.
As footfalls overhead were faint,
Bob presumed that Jesse gently pushed the shut door,
so that they swung ever so gracefully
into the night of the rooms.
Bob told Lips to stop Charley from speaking,
and the two brothers listened as Jesse knocked a chair a kilter
and carefully righted it.
Bob said, Dick might be making an arrangements
with Henry H. Craig.
Oh, and who would that be?
Charley said.
Martha came into the kitchen, fastening a yellow robe
around herself.
Her auburn hair was wrecked with sleep,
and her complexion was very pale.
She murmured, are you telling him?
Maybe you better sit, Bob.
I'll stand at the door.
Charley said in a constrained voice, this is mysterious.
Martha poured water into a tumbler
and turned with it near her mouth.
It's just a guess on my part.
She sipped water and put the tumbler down.
Mr. Craig is an attorney and a Kansas City police
commissioner, has an office in the Times building.
Dick said he was going to give Mattie a Christmas gift.
My guess is he's actually going to see Mr. Craig
and give him you two for the reward.
Bob bent into the sitting room and craned to see the chairs.
Jesse was apparently motionless somewhere above them,
letting his fancies run like red-eyed fer-- letting
the experienced air educate his sense.
Bob could just make out his sister's words,
as she informed Charley about the governor's reward,
about plea bargaining and immunity, about exoneration.
She sipped water and told him, Craig could only
negotiate for Jackson County, so she and Bob
were considering a visit with Governor Crittenden,
to see if he couldn't guarantee the Ford brothers wouldn't
be prosecuted.
In exchange for that, they'd promised the governor
to help him capture Jesse James.
Bob leaned his back against the kitchen door frame
and saw Charley contemplating his toes, his face temporarily
60 years old.
Charley, Bob whispered.
His brother raised his brown eyes.
You can forget about Wood Hite and about Jesse getting back
at us.
You won't go to jail for your train robberies,
and you'll be a rich man come spring.
You're both talking too fast for me.
I can't get a straight in my mind.
Martha said, just let us take care of it then.
They listened to the crump of Jesse's slow descent
on the staircase, and Bob started
to move out of the kitchen.
Charley, he'll kill us, if he catches wind of it.
He'll cut our throats in our sleep.
He's already put away Ed Miller, said so like it
was something piddly he'd done.
Bob sauntered into the sitting room
and saw Jesse crouched on the stairs,
scratching his thumbnail on a riser.
Jesse considered the nail, and then sniffed it.
Is this blood?
Bob sat nonchalantly in the rocker.
Could be.
Clarence Hite was here for a week
and never could get the best of that miserable cough.
Could be he was spitting blood and had himself an accident.
Jesse rubbed his thumb on the seat of his trousers.
Don't suppose it's consumption, do you?
Oh, Lord, I hope not.
I never gave it a thought.
In England, they eat lemons.
Twelve per day isn't too few.
Jesse removed his broad hat and attended
to the almost inaudible conference near the kitchen
stove, and they sip boiled water at bedtime.
He turned to Bob.
They talking about me.
Bob rocked and smiled, probably, you're
the topic of conversations in every part of the country.
Jesse extricated himself from his heavy coat and li-- sofa
with his hat.
Did I ever tell you about meeting Mark Twain?
No?
He was in this country store, and I recognized him,
of course.
And I went over to shake the man's hand
and congratulated him on his good writing.
I said, you're Mark Twain, ain't you?
He nodded, said yes, he was, and I said, guess you
and I are about the greatest in our line.
He couldn't very well agree since he didn't
know who I was, so I asked--
he asked, and I say, Jesse James, and scoot on right
out of there.
Hear tell that he still talks about that.
They say you go over to Europe and the only Americans
they know, all for certain, are Mark Twain and yours truly.
I'm not surprised, Bob said.
Jesse seemed to peer at Bob through a jewelers bifocals.
Got a bullet hole in your bedroom door.
Oh, could have been put there when Old Man Harbison ran
the place, I guess.
You never can tell, Bob said.
If you look, you'll find holes in the kitchen, too,
gun cleaning, gun cleaning accidents maybe.
Jesse batted the Christmas ornaments
on a measly spruce that was wired into a tin bucket,
and Wilbur-- from the privy, rigorously
abrading his sleeves.
Jesse asked, Dick Liddil come by yet?
Nope.
You know why he hasn't?
Maybe Mattie's got him on a short leash these, leash
these days.
I've got my own theory.
I say it's on account of him and Wood having a run-in like they
did in Kentucky.
It's my theory he killed my cousin,
and he's scared he'll meet me here.
Bob gripped the rocking chair arms
and tried to appear simply inquisitive.
Jesse said, I'd appreciate it if you'd
spread the word that I'm offering a reward for Dick,
$1,000, dead or alive.
And let people know I'd prefer him dead.
You're saying that in the heat of passion, Bob said.
Big Wilbur came in with a jar of honey and a finger
in his mouth.
Merry Christmas, Jess!
$1,000, Jesse said.
Bob indicated the sheet that skirted the Christmas tree
and asked, did you notice there was a present up there for you?
Jesse beamed, you're teasing.
He stooped under a cincture of popcorn blossoms,
sewn with a thread, and retrieved a cardboard
box that was the size of a brick and wrapped
in blue tissue paper.
He shook the box, and the contents clobbered inside.
Heavy.
I can't wait to see your eyes twinkle.
Wilbur grinned at his brother.
It's a gun, ain't it, Bob?
You'll see soon enough.
Jesse ripped off the paper and the box flap,
and with childish astonishment, withdrew
a black, ironworked model of a salacious, naked woman.
Her arms crossed beneath her head.
Her legs lewdly cloven and lifted.
It's a bawdy bootjack, Bob said.
I wished I've owned one a thousand times.
Well, now you do.
Jesse stroked the woman's round breast with his thumb
and blushed as he smiled.
I love Christmas.
I can see that.
He imitated shame, but I don't have anything for you.
I never dreamed.
Your friendship is plenty.
Charley slunk in from the kitchen and then wearily
approached Jesse to examine the articulation of the ironworker.
He asked his brother, what is it?
It's a bawdy bootjack, he said.
It's something I'll cherish always, said Jesse.
Then we both have something to share, said Bob.
Jesse remained on the farm that Christmas night,
and Bob remained awake.
The moon was in the window, and a window of moonlight
was on the floor.
So that Jesse was unkenneled, released from the room's
darkness, and there on the cot, like a man
in a coffin, a man collected and in an arrangement.
Bob sat in his bed in his gray underwear.
His wrists crossed.
His ankles clasped, incapable of movement.
He could see that there was a gun,
on the nightstand to his left, and could
imagine its cold nickel inside his grip.
Its two pound weight reached out and aimed,
but he couldn't even maneuver toward it.
It was like a name he couldn't remember.
He was a boy again, a rube.
There were connections he was missing, and there,
across the room was Jesse, placid and sovereign,
certain of both heaven and earth.
His color in the night was the blue
in veins of marvel, marble, and the handsome head
that rested on the pillow was appetitive, and proud,
and pleased with itself.
And even then, with a man asleep,
with his acute senses unattended,
his keen reflexes numbed and slowed,
the exact location of his fire possibly forgotten,
Bob could not screw up the courage to act.
It was as if some spell or sorcery had rendered
him meek, infirm, confounded.
He could contrive many ways of snaring Jesse.
He could invent 1,000 deaths, but Bob feared
it would always come to this.
He would see a chance, and then he'd
interpret it and speculate on its consequences.
He would ponder each option in particular,
and soon the opportunity would pass away,
or qualms would overmaster him, conscience make him impotent.
Bob consoled himself with a thought that the next time,
he would not stall so long--
later, when Jesse was sickened, or sorely distracted,
or the right situation presented itself,
when Bob had mastered his courage
and was not so susceptible to uncertainties.
Bob was not yet 20 after all, while Jesse was 34
and in physical decline.
Each calendar week subtracted from Jesse
the powers that Bob accrued.
So Bob could afford to wait if Jesse would only let him,
and that of course he did.
With that, Bob slid under the covers
and closed his eyes in imitation of Jesse,
and he woke next at sunrise to noises in the kitchen.
Charley still-- his left, but the cot across from Bob
was vacated.
And downstairs, a tea kettle piped once,
before it was removed from the stove.
Bob skulked down the staircase and across the sitting room,
tomfoolishly tiptoeing into the kitchen entrance
and peeking around the doorjamb.
Jesse had amassed his suit clothes
next to the butter churn and skidded a laundry
boiler into the pantry, where he stood naked
in two inches of steaming water, wringing
a soaked washcloth over his skull,
spitting the water that trickled into his mouth.
He didn't notice Bob in the room.
He scrubbed his elbow and knuckles with a towel brush,
and rinsed his arm, and coughed twice, and then again,
until he was racked like a chain smoker for more than a minute.
And Bob smiled as he thought, you are old, Jess.
You're dying, even now.
His skin was white as sheep's wool,
and the scars on his chest were red as slaughter.
He was muscular in the back and shoulders,
and sinews crossed his pectorals like laces,
and his biceps bunched when he lifted his wrist
to tenderly examine it.
But his ankle was knurled where he'd broken it.
Varices mapped his calves and thighs.
His buttocks were flat as books.
The skin, and his kidneys, and neck, his ribs
could be easily numbered.
His shoulder clicked when he circled it.
He bent with apparent pain.
The many injuries of a reckless career
had made him prematurely decrepit,
as ancient as the Noah that Ham spied on in the tent.
Jesse coughed into his fist once more
and swished his hand in the water at his feet,
and then lifted an ocean shell ashtray
and sacredly doused the crown of his head.
It was then that he saw Bob Ford and said, go away.
Never crossed your mind that I was here,
and it's been nigh on to three minutes, at least.
You sure of that?
Jesse stepped from the laundry tub
onto a red flannel shirt on the floor.
He covered his face with a dish towel,
and then wrinkled his dark brown hair with it,
as he smiled insincerely at Bob.
Maybe I was fooling you.
Maybe we were playing cat and mouse.
I've never seen you without your guns neither.
Jesse towed a bath towel off a chair
and revealed almost, almost incidentally,
a 12-inch Remington revolver on the seat.
Don't happen more once a year.
But Bob simpered with self-satisfaction.
Isn't no one can sneak up on Jesse James
is the way it used to be.
Jesse shuffled himself from a white bath towel
and sat down on the chair to soothe his feet in the laundry
tub.
And now you think you know otherwise.
Maybe that's just what I wanted.
I'm making fun is all, you understand.
I wouldn't dream of mocking you or causing
you any ill feelings.
Jesse rounded forward under the towel
and cozied his feast feet in the bath water.
It was as if no one else were around,
and Jesse was once again alone and at ease
with his meditations.
He said, I can't figure it out--
do you want to be like me, or you want to be me?"
I'm going to skip ahead now until April 1882.
Bob and Charley Ford are living with Jesse James
in St Joseph, Missouri, where Jesse
is under living under the name of Thomas Howard.
It's April 1st.
"Saturday introduced summer was--
state the skies were blue, the sun insistent,
the temperature close to 80 at noon.
The river flashed light from its rills and currents,
and Zee could look up from her scullery work
and see Kansas shimmer, like a reflection in water.
The Fords removed the storm windows and Jesse
raised each sash so that sweet air could
stir through the rooms.
But they were too lazy or lumpish to attach screens,
so flies crawled over the rising loaves,
and birds flew into the rooms.
Jesse went to the market, with Tim and Mary,
and came back at 4:00, with a crate of groceries
and a black box clamped under his right arm.
He kissed Zee, and rubbed her fanny,
and asked her how she was feeling.
She saw that he'd subjected his skull to a barber--
a smear of white talcum powder was
on his neck and his chestnut hair smelled of lilac water,
but he looked much handsomer now than when she married him,
a quality of aging that she'd often envied in men.
Jesse saw cousin Bob, and she told him
she thought Bob was resting in the children's room.
Sunshine was diagonal in the room,
and curtains flirted in the air.
I wasn't sure what woke him.
He pivoted in the child's bed and saw
Jesse in a spindle chair peering at him with great interest.
Jesse said, I never learned what your nationality was.
How long have you been studying me, Bob asked.
You look French.
Bob rolled to a sitting position.
My grandfather married a French girl in New Orleans.
He was with the Virginia volunteers in the war of 1812.
I guess I take after my Grandma.
You're going to break a lot of hearts Bob arched
an eyebrow, how do you mean?
Jesse revealed a black box from behind his back
and reached it over to Bob.
It's a present.
Bob raised and reckoned what it was.
Heavy, he said.
You're going to look inside?
Why are you being so nice to me?
You gave me that bawdy bootjack.
This is my Christmas gift to you.
The wooden lid was nailed shut.
Bob crammed a coin in the interstices
and twisted it until the lid released.
Its April Fool's Day, you know.
Isn't a joke, said Jesse.
[AUDIO OUT] Box nestled in red velvet,
was a pearl-handled 44 caliber revolver,
a New Model Smith and Wesson number 3,
with a 6 and 1/2 inch nickel barrel.
Bob beamed at Jesse and said, such extravagance, and then
turned the revolver to admire it.
Doesn't that nickel shine though?
It's more than I could hope for us, said Bob.
He clicked the chamber around, cocked and released the hammer,
cocked the hammer and aimed the revolver to red ball
on the floor, investigated the play in the trigger,
squeezed the trigger until a steel hammer snapped forward,
listened to the mechanisms as he cocked the revolver at his ear,
straightened his right arm and shut
his left eye, skated his thumb across the serial number,
measured the full length--
12 inches.
I want a gunsmith to engrave this,
some sentence with our two names on it, in the city
and the year of presentation.
There'll be a prize that can be carried on from one generation
to the next.
I figured that granddaddy Colt of yours
may blow into fragments, next time you squeeze the trigger.
Bob grinned and said, you might have something there.
He substituted the New Model Smith and Wesson
for the tarnished revolver in the scr-- leather holster,
that he then buckled and let slant
across his right rear pocket.
He slapped it out like a gunfighter, snugged it,
slapped it out again.
The gun chuckled against the rigid leather,
but after repeated pulls and replacements,
it made no more noise than a man swallow.
Zee called from the dining room, Jesse, you ready for supper?
Pretty soon, sweetheart.
Bob said, I might be too excited to eat.
Jesse smiled broadly and rose from the spindle chair.
You know what John Newman Edwards once wrote about me?
He said, I didn't trust two men in 10,000
and was even cautious around them.
The government sort of run me ragged, you see.
I'm sort of going a long way around the barn to say,
I've been feeling cornered and just plain ordinary of late,
and I'd be pleased if you'd accept
a gun as my way of apologizing.
Heavens know, I'd be ornerier if I was in your position.
No, I haven't been acting correctly.
I can't hardly recognize myself sometimes when I'm greased.
I go on journeys out of my body and look at my red hands,
my mean face, and I get nickel.
Who is that man who's gone so wrong?
Why all that killing and even evil behavior?
I've been becoming a problem to myself.
I figure, if I can get you right,
I'll be just that much closer to me.
Bob looked at the man in bewilderment
and couldn't find the words for an answer, so he said,
I need to wash my hands if supper's on.
Gun's made them feel sort of public.
Go ahead, the man said and graciously opened the door.
Bob exited from the children's room and smiled meekly at Zee
as he entered the kitchen and leaned
on the counter for a moment.
He spilled pitcher water into a pan.
And as he sank his hands in it, he
listened to Jesse greet his children,
listened to chairs sliding away from the dining room table
and sliding underneath it again.
Jesse began to say grace without him,
and Bob raised a brick of yellow soap to his nose,
smelling its ingredients-- rainwater, sal soda,
unslaked lime, tallow, rosin, salt."
The last section I'll read from you
was the day of Jesse's death April 3rd, 1882.
"Much later, Bob would remember that he
woke at sunrise on April 3rd, looking
at a racehorse named Skyrocket.
Charley was climbing into a rough wool shirt,
that he wore whenever he worked with the animals.
Bob dangled his fingers to the floor
and walked them over his gun.
Zee was already at the stove, and Bob
could see steam escape from a covered saucepan
and shy phrases of smoke.
Tim was in the children's room annoying his little sister Bob
would recall that Jesse then came out of the master bedroom
and scolded the children for pestering each other,
when it wasn't more than 7:00.
He wore the crisp, celluloid collar
and the dazzlingly white linen shirt
that he stole from the Kansas hotel highboy,
and he adjusted the silk cravat in a looking-glass that
revealed a section of shut door, a chair woven with rushes,
a marred wall with the heights of Tim
and Mary designated in crayon.
Bob slithered from under the covers,
in order to conceal an erection, and struggled his legs
into nut brown trousers, then struggled his stocking feet
into boots, that were so worn in the heels,
that his ankles caved out.
Charley slumped to the stables via the front door,
and the screen door clapped off a sinking mist of street dust.
Jesse buttoned his black cashmere Prince Albert coat
over a vest and over his two crossed holsters and guns.
He informed Bob without nastiness
that he could stay inside and sleep some more,
and he walked out into sunlight just as Zee angrily
banged shut the oven door, muttering, Oh, shoot.
Bob tucked in a yellow shirt and called,
is that you make it all that smoke?
He saw Zee flip some burnt cottage biscuits
from a blackened baking pan and say
to no one, this ornery stove.
He fingered combed his ginger brown hair in the looking-glass
and slipped through gray, oven smoke to go out to the privy.
He stepped over puddles that an overnight rain
had put in the yard, and he closed the privy door
behind him.
The temperature forecast was 80 degrees and already,
the April morning seemed as warm and moist as cooking papers.
Mary crouched outside with a coffee grinder
that she'd ruined with sand.
Tim-- himself, on a rope swing, that
rasped against the Sycamore bough.
Bob walked over to the backyard cistern, buttoning his fly,
and the cistern brayed foolishly when he worked the iron handle.
Charley came up from the stables and scraped off
manure on a rusted rake that was forgotten in the grass,
and though Bob said good morning to him,
his only gesture of recognition was
to slouch down the slope of the yard away's and squat
for some time inside cigarette smoke.
Jesse caught the swing set and gentled Tim down to a stop,
and then the two strolled down Confusion Hill
for the subscription newspapers.
Cold water that was slightly orange
splashed into Bob's lifted white enamel bowl
and spotted his trouser cuffs and boots.
He brought the water to his face gratefully,
as a man might have sweetheart's fingers,
and he imagined, without willing it,
the gruesome fish he caught in September.
When he looked up, Zee was peering at him
through the porch screen.
How much do you want to eat?
She asked.
[AUDIO OUT]
--s fingers, and he imagined, without willing it,
the gruesome fish he caught in September.
When he looked up, Zee was peering at him
through the porch screen.
How much do you want to eat?
She asked.
Just a smidgen, Bob said, and got up on his legs.
I'm feeling sort of peculiar.
He pushed Mary in the swing for a while,
responding to a two year old's questions,
and then grew weary of that, flung her higher than before,
and straggled into the front yard, where
he leaned over the white picket fence
to look down Lafayette Street.
Sunlight flashed off the city's windows.
The railroad yards to the west were cielinged with smoke.
The river moved with a slow advancement of blood.
He lingered there for five minutes
or so, his thumbs cocked by his pockets.
He could have been a man at the races, a gambler with money
on Skyrocket.
Craig and Timberlake would be sitting at breakfast, perhaps,
making prep-- for Tuesday, eating sweet croissants.
Craig would enrich his coffee with cream.
A crew would be in the freight car, strewing straw
for the deputy's animals.
Bob watched the great man and his child
climb the steep ascent of the sidewalk,
with shoes on their feet, and grand aspirations,
and a common language between them.
But Bob figured that only meant they were slightly more
intricate animals.
It meant they were given more mechanisms than guns.
Bob saw Jesse move a cigar in his mouth
and squinted his eyes from the smoke.
He said, how come you're looking so interested?
Bob asked, do you think it's intelligent to go outside
like that, so all creation can see your guns?
Just ignored him, threw the cigar so that it sparked
and rolled, screwing smoke, and then he rushed his daughter,
monstering, catching Mary as she ran squealingly to the screen
door, and swinging the girl around
so wildly, her right stocking foot lost its shoe.
Zee called everyone into breakfast that was cooling,
and Mary hugged her father's neck, as he gracefully
walked to the dining room.
Tim carelessly threw down the rolled newspapers
in the sitting room, next to his sister's high chair.
Bob sled open a brown paper sleeve
and spilled out the Kansas City Times, seeing instantly a story
about the rest--
the arrest and convict--
confession of Dick Liddil.
Charley slouched into the dining room
late, looking weak and afflicted,
lying about some complaint with horses, to which Jesse
paid scant attention.
Bob slipped the newspaper under a shawl and strapped
on the gun he had been given, tying the leather holster
to his thigh with a string.
Zee called Bob again, slightly irritably,
saying everything was getting cold,
and Bob seated himself across from Jesse,
accidentally scarring the chair with his gun.
Zee jellied a biscuit for Mary and mentioned
she'd invited a girl, from across the street,
to go shopping with her for Easter clothes that afternoon.
She asked Jesse to give her some money,
and he removed two $5 bills from a small roll secured
with a rubber band.
She asked if Jesse wanted some sandwiches for his journey.
She asked if he'd come back for the Holy Thursday services.
Jesse frowned at her old son, who was staring blankly
at the sunshine wall gathering, his oatmeal spoon in his mouth.
What do you think goes on in that noggin of his?
Nothing, said Charley Ford.
Jesse laughed.
I was referring to his mind, not yours.
Bob snickered cravenly, and Jesse looked askance at him.
He then stood from his chair and fetched the newspapers
that Tim had abandoned on the sofa,
almost missing the Kansas City Times that was incompletely
concealed by a shawl.
He sat again with solemnity and stirred a spoon in his cup,
swirling ghosts from the coffee.
Bob noticed every motion, every physical event,
the crease in the man's brow, the fret in his reading eyes,
the stain on a finger from the cigars he smoked.
Bob sled the second newspaper around and scanned the items
on the front page, legislation in politics,
advertisements for curatives and clothes,
the outrages visited on a young woman
in Memphis, the shedding of innocent blood,
a man in Grandview was ruled insane,
a farm was lost to incendiaries.
It was the 22nd anniversary of the start of the Pony Express.
Jesse unfastened his Prince Albert coat
and snared it over his guns.
Tim excused himself from the table with a rasher of bacon
in his mouth, and Mary climbed down from her high chair
after him.
Jesse flattened the Kansas City Times
over the newspaper he'd finished and lowered his crossed arms
to scour the articles.
Hello, now, he said, the surrender of Dick Liddil.
Charley said, perhaps to urgently, you don't say so.
Jesse lifted a coffee cup close to his mouth
and stared at Bob through the vapors.
Young man, I asked you yesterday, and you said,
you didn't know anything about Dick.
And I don't.
Jesse moved his finger down the page,
guiding his eyes as he read.
It's very strange, he said, and made no other comment
as he continued to the conclusion.
Zee was scraping the children's breakfast plates in the kitchen
and immersing them in soaked dishwashing water.
They fluttered together with the wooden sound
of a muscular heart, pumping blood.
Jesse sipped some coffee without looking up from the newspaper.
He said, it says here Dick surrendered three weeks ago.
He glanced at Bob with misgivings.
You must have been right there in the neighborhood.
Apparently, they kept it secret, Bob said.
Jesse slumped back in the chair with his fingers
knitted over his stomach and glared at Bob and then Charley.
It looked sort of fishy to me.
Bob said, if I get to Kansas City soon,
I'm going to ask somebody about it,
and then he left the dining room with his right hand on his gun.
He raised the Venetian blinds and the screenless
sitting room windows and reacquainted himself
with a rocking chair, his body fidgety.
Tim hunkered down on the stoop outside,
coercing the crank on the coffee grinder.
His little sister squatted beside him,
pushing her pale dress down between her thighs,
stabbing at the earth with a crooked spoon and repeating
for some reason, don't.
Jesse retrieved some remedy from the medicine cabinet and pantry
and murmured privately with his wife.
Charley walked into the sitting room
and remarked on the sultry weather,
said the afternoon would be hot as a pistol.
He sat on the mattress and looped his holster
off the bedpost, looking significantly at Bob
as he put it on.
Jesse paused at the sitting room entrance, as if to reconvene
and then proceeded across the tasseled green rug,
with a long linen duster over one forearm,
the other cradling packed saddle bags and a folded newspaper
that carried a gun.
Bob jumped up from the rocker, and it reared and rode,
clubbing the floor, until he could
still the chair with his hand.
Jesse asked, you two ready?
And Charley said, I will be by noon.
And Bob strode over to the hanging straw portfolio,
and as he snatched out, a children's book,
he could feel Jesse glared his gun.
Bob shouldered into the floral wallpaper
and vagrantly read to himself the first sentence
of chapter one--
the kitchen had quieted down from the bustle and confusion
of midday.
Jesse rammed a raised window sash higher,
making the snug fittings moan.
Clouds were shipping in and accumulating,
and most of the Eastern sky was the color of nails.
It's an awfully hot day, Jesse James said,
and Charley thought so much of his earlier statement
that he said once again, it was going to be hot as a pistol.
Jesse took off his Prince Albert coat,
and Bob concentrated on the man, stowing Five--
and How They Grew among some magazines.
Jesse folded the fine black coat on the oak bed,
and then removed a six button, black vest
that was extravagantly brocaded with red stitching.
Charley shambled over to the screen door to scan
Lafayette Street.
Sunlight streaked off Jesse's two revolvers.
He leaned on the window sill and gazed at skittish weather.
A suspender was twisted once across the back of an iron
shirt that coins of sweat made the color of smoke.
He proclaimed it in a sentence that seemed composed just
for Bob, I guess I'll take my pistols off
or fear the neighbors will spy them
if I walk out into the yard.
Charley instantly turned from the screen door
with vexation in his face and saw
his kid brother's right thumb twitch as Bob
lowered his hand to his gun.
Jesse unbuckled the two crossed holsters with their two
unmatched revolvers and carefully placed them
on the mattress, as if creating some exhibit,
and it seemed to Bob that the man was pretending.
Each motion seemed stressed, adorned, theatrical,
an unpolished actor's version of con-- nonchalance.
Jesse lent his attention to the racehorse named Skyrocket
and said, that picture is awful dusty,
and withdrew from a wicker sewing basket, a furniture
duster that was made from the blue eyed feathers of peacocks.
He could easily reach the picture by standing,
but he skidded the rush bottom chair across the rug
and climbed onto it, as if the floor were
inclined and uncertain.
Bob slunk from the wall in order to stand between Jesse
and the two revolvers.
He shook loose his fingers like a gunfighter
and instructed his brother with scared eyes
as Jesse stood above them and feathered the walnut frame.
Charley winked and the two Fords slipped out their guns.
Bob was the speedier and his 40--
had his 44 extended straight out from his right eye
as Charley was still raising his.
And Jesse appeared to hear the three clicks as a Smith
and Wesson was cocked because he slightly
swiveled his head with authentic surprise,
strain his left hand toward a gun that he'd forgotten
was gone.
Then Robert Ford's 44 ignited, and a red stamp seemed
to spence the outlaw's chestnut brown hair,
one inch to the rear of his right ear,
and his left eyebrow sucked into the glassed watercolor
of Skyrocket.
Gunpowder and gun noise filled the room,
and Jesse groaned as a man does in his sleep
and then sagged from his knees, and tilted over,
and smacked the floor like a great animal,
shaking the house with his fall.
He looked at the ceiling.
His fingers curled and uncurled.
His mouth worked at making words,
and then the two Ford brothers saw he was dying.
Charley leaped out the window and into the yard,
and as Zee rushed into a room that was blue with smoke,
Bob slowly retreated and straddled the sill.
She screamed, what have you done?
And the boy looked as if he wanted to apologize,
but couldn't.
Zee knelt and cried, Jesse!
Jesse, Jesse, and cradled his skull in her apron
and smothered his right ear in petticoats
that soaked red with his blood.
Tim was at the screen door, seeing everything,
and Bob was still crouched at the sitting room
window, gawking at the man.
She asked with anguish, Bob, have you done this?
And he answered, God, that I didn't!
The man sighed and grew heavy on her legs.
His eyes seemed yellow.
His muscles slack.
The blood was wide as a table.
He made a syllable like, God, and then everything inside him
stopped.
Charley skulked inside the cottage
to collect the Ford's two hats and riding coats
and to look again at the man they'd shot.
He told Zee, James, the pistol went off accidentally.
Then Charley was outside again, and the two Fords
ran down Confusion Hill, their coats flying,
cutting through yards, and down alleys,
until they achieved the American Telegraph Office.
Wentz was sent to Sheriff Timberlake, Henry H. Craig,
and Governor Thomas Crittenden, an abbreviated message,
a message that read, I have killed Jesse James.
Bob Ford."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]