The Woman Who Loved Jesse James (3 page)

“Likely they’ll have enough guests to fit out their own regiment,” Mrs. Peabody said. She leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “My friend, Mr. Henry, tells me you’ll be having some very special guests at the wedding.”

“Who?” I asked, confused. Why would Sheriff Henry know more about the wedding guests than we did?

“He’s heard your cousins, Jesse and Frank James, plan to attend—they who’ve lately distinguished themselves with Bill Anderson’s men.”

“Frank and Jesse James?” Esme turned to me, eyes wide. “I’d forgotten they were your cousins. Are they really going to be there?”

I shrugged. “They might be. There’s no reason they shouldn’t.” Though I was named after Jesse and Frank’s mother Zerelda, their father, my mother’s brother Robert James, had died many years previous. Zerelda had married a prosperous farmer, Ruben Samuel, and the family lived in Kearney, a two days’ ride from our home in St Louis, so we didn’t see them often.

“Those boys aren’t very popular with the Yankees at present,” Mrs. Peabody said. “Jesse in particular is said to have quite distinguished himself on their raids, inflicting heavy damage on the Union men.”

“Jesse?” The last time I’d seen my cousin, he’d been a gangly fourteen-year old, a pale Mama’s boy who had terrorized us girls by throwing mud balls at our skirts. I couldn’t fit this image with that of an elite soldier.

“No doubt he’s out for revenge,” Esme said. “After the scandalous way the Northern Militiamen treated his mother and stepfather.”

“It was disgraceful, hauling a woman in her condition off to jail simply because she refused to tell what she didn’t even know,” Mrs. Peabody said.

“And poor Dr. Samuel almost
died
from their ill treatment of him,” Esme said.

That spring, a group of militiamen had descended on my aunt and uncle’s home and demanded to know the location of William Quantrill and his men. Though Jesse was still at home at the time, his brother Frank was said to be riding with the famous guerrilla. Zerelda and her husband, Dr. Samuel, refused to provide any information to men they viewed as their enemies, and for their trouble Dr. Samuel was beaten and hanged to within an inch of his life and Zerelda, pregnant with her sixth child, had been jailed for many miserable weeks. Shortly after this, Jesse had joined his older brother in riding with the bushwhackers, aligning himself with one of Quantrill’s lieutenants, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson.

“He and Frank will have to watch themselves today,” Mrs. Peabody said. “Lest some Northern sympathizer decide to try to make himself a hero and take them out.”

I shivered at the idea. I might not care for Jesse and his brother much, but they were still my kin. “The Browders wouldn’t invite any Yankees to the wedding,” I said.

“A party that large, who’s to tell?” She smoothed her skirts, then looked at us expectantly. “Now surely you girls didn’t come all this way on a hot day to show me your dresses. What really brings you here?”

“We were hoping you’d read our tea leaves,” Esme said. “And tell me who I’m to marry.” She glanced at me. “Though my father says such things are tools of the devil.”

“And who’s to say the devil doesn’t know the truth as well as the Lord, considering Satan was once said to be the highest angel?” Mrs. Peabody laughed at Esme’s shocked expression. Then she turned to me. “What about you, Zee? Do you want to know what type of man you’ll wed?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

Mrs. Peabody rubbed her hands together. “It’s too hot for brewing tea, so I’ll read your palms instead. You first, Esme.”

Esme hesitated, then thrust out her hand, as if she half-expected Mrs. P. to sever it at the wrist. Our hostess grasped Esme’s arm and held it steady while she bent low over the palm.

“You will live a long life,” Mrs. Peabody said, tracing the crease across the center of Esme’s palm. With her forefinger, she followed another line. “You will marry a man with three children. A farmer, I think.”

Esme’s eyes widened. “That sounds like Mr. Colquit! Does my future husband have a mole?”

“A mole? I can’t tell that. But he will treat you well and you will be happy and have
. . .
” She paused and studied Esme’s palm again. “You’ll have five children of your own.”

“Five?” Esme grinned. “I hope you’re right.”

“My turn.” I offered my hand. Mrs. Peabody took it, her skin cool and dry against my own, her fingers work-roughened and red as she traced the lines across my palm. Deep furrows marred her brow as she studied my hand for a long time, saying nothing.

Esme and I exchanged glances. “What is it?” I demanded. “What do you see?”

She hesitated. “You’ll marry a handsome young man.” She released my hand. “A man who will make you the envy of many.”

“What else?” I asked.

She shook her head, avoiding my gaze. “Nothing else. I wish you every happiness.”

“There was something else,” I said. “You saw something that upset you. What is it?”

She pursed her lips. “I saw that it won’t all be happiness for you,” she said. “There will be
. . .
hard times.”

Hard times were nothing new, but the way she said the words sent a cold shiver up my spine—the feeling my mother referred to as ‘someone walking across your grave.’ I wanted to ask for more details. What kind of hard times would these be? But I was a coward and kept silent.

Mrs. Peabody refilled our cups. “Enough of worrying about the future,” she said. “Tell me what your mother is wearing to the wedding. And your sister.”

“Mother is wearing the best dress she made before the war,” I said. “Lavender checked taffeta with leg-o’-mutton sleeves. Lucy has a new dress—white cotton lawn worn over big hoops and trimmed in yards and yards of handmade lace.”

“I heard the groom’s friends talked about kidnapping the bride tonight and having a chivaree,” Esme said.

“Bowling told them if they tried he’d shoot to kill.” I shivered. “I don’t know if he meant it, but my father spread the word he wouldn’t stand for any trouble where his daughter is concerned.”

“She’ll have enough on her mind with the wedding night, without worrying about a bunch of drunken young men dragging her away from her new husband,” Mrs. Peabody said.

“Is it so awful?” Esme asked. “The wedding night?”

Mrs. Peabody let out a bawdy laugh. “Who told you a wedding night is awful?”

Esme blushed. “I overheard my mother talking to my older sister, Liz, before she was married. Mother told her a lady doesn’t enjoy lying with a man, but it’s necessary in order to bear children, so the best thing to do is to submit quietly.”

“That’s the biggest bunch of horseshit I ever heard!”

The words were as shocking as the sentiment behind them. “My mother says men always enjoy marital relations more than women,” I said. “That it’s part of women’s punishment for what happened in the Garden of Eden, when Eve tempted Adam.”

“So Adam holds no blame for taking the apple from Eve?” Mrs. Peabody waved away the notion, then leaned toward us and spoke in a confiding tone. “Believe me, girls. Women can enjoy sex every bit as much as men—provided they’re with a man who knows what he’s doing.”

“But how would we know if the man knows what he’s doing or not?” Esme protested.

“You know because you learn for yourself what pleases you and you inform him if he comes up lacking.”

Esme and I exchanged glances again. We had eavesdropped on enough conversations among the older, married women to know that men had strong sexual urges. It was a wife’s duty to satisfy these urges, but the closest I had ever heard any woman come to admitting to enjoying the marital bed was once when my Aunt Zerelda said her husband, Dr. Samuel, was ‘considerate’ of her feelings in this regard.

“Don’t look so owl-eyed, both of you,” Mrs. Peabody chided. “Don’t tell me you’ve never touched yourself for pleasure.”

Esme and I couldn’t even look at each other now. Yes, I had touched myself. I had enjoyed discovering the changes in my body as I grew into my womanhood. And sometimes, on lonely nights in my rooms, the caressing and fondling of my own body had been a kind of comfort. But I would never admit such depravity to anyone else.

“It’s all right if you have,” Mrs. Peabody said cheerfully. “Everyone does. It’s how we learn about our own bodies. And about the most pleasurable ways to be touched.”

Cicadas hummed in the trees just beyond the porch. Or was that my own head, buzzing with this onslaught of dangerous ideas?

Esme looked as distressed as I felt. “Is it true what people say—that you and Mr. Henry are lovers?” she blurted.

Mrs. Peabody frowned at her. “My relationship with Mr. Henry is a private matter,” she said.

“But he’s a married man,” Esme protested.

“A man whose wife is an invalid, whom it would be dishonorable for him to leave.” She leaned toward us. “I don’t expect either of you girls to understand this now, but I want you to listen to me and take what I have to say to heart. When you find a man you truly love, with both your body and your heart, you will be willing to endure a great deal of pain for those moments of pleasure. Not merely sexual pleasure, though that is not to be undervalued, but the pleasure of knowing that he loves you with the same intensity and passion.”

Passion
. The word and the sentiment it conveyed were as exotic as a rare orchid or a tropical bird. It was a word that hinted at sex and sin and emotions not kept demurely in check. The ideas made me shiver and started an ache deep inside me. That was the kind of man I wanted—not cool Mr. Colquit and his good manners, but a man of passion.

“Mr. Henry?” Esme’s astonishment reminded me that the man to whom Mrs. Peabody was so devoted was not the sort to make my own heart beat faster. The sheriff was a stout, graying man who walked with a limp from a ball he had taken in the leg at Antietam.

Mrs. Peabody laughed again. “A man’s looks and age have little to do with his skill at pleasing a woman,” she said. She patted my knee. “Now that I’ve sufficiently shocked you, why don’t you take off those bonnets and let me fix your hair? I have a new issue of
Godey’s
that shows some very fetching styles.”

The wedding of my sister Lucy
to Mr. Bowling Browder was the social event of the year in our part of the county. Easily a hundred buggies, traps and saddle horses filled the pastures and lined the drive leading up to the Browders’s house, a two-storied, whitewashed manse with a broad front veranda.

Lucy looked happy and not at all nervous as she stood with her husband-to-be to say her vows. My father performed the ceremony on the top step of the verandah while friends and family looked on. Bowling stammered a little, but recovered enough to plant a not-so-chaste kiss on his new wife, while his friends whistled and cheered.

Afterwards, Esme and I joined the crowd making its way to the buffet spread beneath trees behind the house. Darkies in crisp white aprons delivered trays of smoked meats, pickled and fresh vegetables, fried chicken, baked beans, and steaming rolls. To finish, there was a huge white-frosted cake decorated with sugared flowers, its layers rising three feet above the table where it sat, watched over by a small black boy who kept away the flies with a palmetto fan.

Esme and I filled our plates and found a spot on a blanket beneath a spreading oak, from which vantage point we could observe the crowd. “There’s Mr. Henry,” Esme said, nodding toward a group of men who loitered near the cookhouse. The sheriff stood at their center, gleaming pistols just visible beneath his open coat. I studied his stout, stocky figure. This was Mrs. Peabody’s skilled lover?

“He must be over thirty-five,” Esme said. “Almost as old as my father.”