The Woman Who Loved Jesse James by Cindi Myers

brother Frank, who had been both his teacher and his tormentor since childhood.
    He, in turn, discovered my tendency toward secret rebellion, such as hiding my mother’s recipe box when I knew she was determined to make the molasses pie I loathed; and my love of romantic poetry.
    In those hours of conversation or silent contemplation in one another’s company we fell in love. If that first kiss beneath the elm tree had been the thunder clap that woke me to his presence, those hours in my parents’ parlor were a drenching rain that soaked me with longing for him to never leave me. I blossomed in his attentions, as if something inside of me, long locked away, had been set free and allowed to grow with his encouragement. With Jesse I was no longer Sister, one of too many children in a poor preacher’s family. I was Zee, the woman who had returned the light to Jesse’s eyes, who had the power to make him well.
    By his sixth week in our home, Jesse was much stronger. He ventured out of doors some, and even took short rides with Thomas, though he returned looking gray and in obvious pain. “He insisted on galloping,” Thomas said, helping Jesse to his parlor bed once more.
    “I’m not going to know what I can do unless I try,” Jesse said through gritted teeth.
    Despite mine and my mother’s insistence that he rest, he prowled the house and grounds like a stallion intent on breaking out of its stall. He carried full feed buckets and lifted logs over his head until the muscles of his chest and arms strained the seams of his shirt.
    He could have moved upstairs to share a room with Thomas, but his bed stayed in the parlor, pushed against one wall and piled during the day with his personal belongings: two pair of Colt’s Navy revolvers, a Henry rifle in leather scabbard, leather saddlebags, brass spurs, the Bible which he read each morning, and a sheaf of maps rendered on oilcloth. They were military maps he’d taken from a Union soldier. I assumed he’d killed the man, but never asked. In the evenings when Jesse had exhausted himself, he reclined on the bed and studied the maps, tracing the hatch-marked lines of railroads and the broad meanderings of rivers and sinuous courses of roads.
    “I can’t bear being laid up here while there’s so much work to be done,” he complained one evening as I sat on the sofa across from him, embroidering a pillowslip. “If I could sit a horse I’d be out there now, helping in the fight.”
    I set aside the pillowslip—meant to be part of my trousseau, which, like every young woman of my age I had been working on since childhood—and turned my attention to Jesse. “What fight?” I asked.
    “Just because the war’s over doesn’t mean the fighting’s done,” he said. “The North wants to take away everything—our farms and families and way of life. They’ve made us sign their oaths and give up our seats in the government and they expect us to lie down and take it. But we won’t let them get away with it.”
    His eyes flashed and his voice rose in anger. I shivered, glad I wasn’t on the receiving end of such ire. But it would be a long time before he was well enough to do any fighting, or to ride very far at all. Selfishly, I didn’t mind that he was slow to mend. I enjoyed our time together and was loathe to see it end.
    In August, a letter came from Aunt Zerelda, letting us know that she and Dr. Samuel had returned to their farm in Kearney. She ordered Jesse to join them. He read the letter through twice, then folded it and laid it on the table beside his cot in the parlor. “I don’t see how I can go home for several weeks yet,” he said.
    “We’re happy to have you stay as long as you like,” I said.
    “The time I’m with you passes pleasantly, anyway.”
    Our conversations continued, endless hours of words flowing effortlessly between us. Even Esme and I had not conversed so freely. We talked not about the war or his experiences with the guerrillas, but