Chapt Ten- Mother of Infamy

Chapter 10

Zerelda Elizabeth Cole James Simms Samuel

Mother of Infamy

Every second counts. Zerelda bounds out to the walnut tree in her back yard where her husband wriggles and suffocates at the end of a hangman's rope. If she can get to him in time, she can support him on her shoulders and keep him from dying. He is out of air, no longer able to even moan in relief as she screams that she is on her way.

“God help us!” she cries as she waddles to the tree frantically, goose like, “He's a good man, never deserved to be hung like a cri mi nuhl!” But how long can she hold him?

She begins to blurt incoherently, tears streaming, using all the strength in her tall body to lift him up into hope, perhaps a few more minutes of life before she cannot hold him any longer. Her daughter and little boy watch helplessly, too little to be of use. Doc Samuel gasps, as the noose loosens ever so slightly, perhaps an attempt to thank this brave woman, his devoted wife who dares to defy the soldiers who are almost out of sight. There is no dignity left in a man strangling from his own weight. His children watching wide-eyed, it is a hell of a way to to die.

“Sarah! Get me a butcher knife, NOW!” Five year old Sarah disappears in a flash, leaving little John Thomas, just a toddler, standing and crying, but not really understanding what is happening.

Sarah reappears in a moment, and Zerelda reluctantly lets go of her now silent husband and cuts the rope- he falls to the earth instantly like a heavy sack of oats, with a numb crack at the end. Doc lies limply as she gets down on her knees, and curses liberally as she loosens and pulls the narrow rope off of his reddened neck... and frozen with shock, she stares at his lifeless body. Perspiration begins to flow from her body, as if she were a wet rag being wrung violently.

Zerelda Samuel

After a moment her face contorts into a bitter, frozen grimace... and finally she lets out a long, loud, desperate cry of deep grief... total despair... and anger. She thinks he is dead, and then she hopelessly lays her head on his chest.

Then Zerelda senses motion in his diaphragm, and quickly sits up and begins to shake him, and slaps him, and shakes him again. Perhaps ten minutes passes as she wonders what to do. The children gather around her, now silent, Sarah fearfully touching her mother to comfort her.

“Mama, is daddy sick?”

Jesse James

Then, before she can form an answer, Zerelda hears a feint holler from the west field. She remembers that Jesse was working there. Then she sees a man marching across the pasture. No, a boy, bloody and head down. It is her son Jess, and he has heard her cry out. He is hurt, and downcast, and appears shamed. Just fifteen, he is still growing, a little clumsy, but his gait betrays an injured man with a slight limp, and then he stops. He bends over and throws up, and then drops to his knees. He begins to cry like a little boy.

“Jesse! Come here and let me clean you up!” she cries. He just stays in the weeds, and does not look up. “Sarah, go get Jesse and tell him to come, right now!” Sarah nods and flies to Jesse, the love of her life. It takes her awhile, and they talk several moments. Then Jess springs up as if stung by a bee and begins to half run, half limp to the house, finally realizing that his stepfather is worse off than he is. As he gets nearer he slows down and wipes his face with his shirt. He is covered in his own blood. The soldiers found him in the field and beat him, trying to find out where his brother, thought to be a Confederate spy, might be.

Zerelda is distracted, trying to get something out of Doc, a tiny sign that he is coming to. Jess sees the rope, the tears, and instantly knows what has happened. Many people in Missouri have suffered similar treatment. His own blood dripping onto his feet, onto his mother's back, he leans over his mother and gasping stepfather. He pushes back his sweaty hair, and finds blood clotted in a mass behind his ear. He realizes how close the Yankee bullet came to his brain. Zerelda shakes Doc, slaps him, screams angrily, shakes him again. Doc is alive but barely. Jess is angry, tears well up in his eyes, one swollen shut, but he is too shocked and fatigued to do more. It is a moment of fear and rage and suspense. Jess drops to his knees, as if to pray. Where is God now?

Doc Samuel

He focuses on Doc's gray, expressionless face; not his father, but the doctor who had delivered him, who had raised him as his own, the only father he had ever really known. An innocent man, who happened to be the stepfather of a Confederate guerrilla. He immediately thought of his brother, Frank, somewhere fighting the damned Yankees, a brother who would be crushed to think that his actions had caused the brutality and death of this fine man. Not to mention his own wounds. The Northern soldiers seemed to be determined to seduce Frank back to his home by brutalizing his family. And if Frank heard of it, he would be coming.

“You must not tell Frank” his mother blurts. “Not until the war is over! He would never come home! Be out killin' damned Yankees till doomsday.” She drags poor Doc into the shade of the tree, “Jesse get me some water, I think he is still alive.” Jesse bolts, limping and hurting to the well, he could use some water himself. “And get me some rags!” she adds. She has still not looked upon Jesse's wounds.

Doc remains unconscious. But he is breathing. Flies begin to gather on his face, and the blood on the ground. Zerelda looks at it for a few confused moments, sees the flies, waves them off, hears them buzzing around, none of it makes any sense. Where did the blood come from? They had beaten poor Doc before they hung him. Perhaps...

“Here mama” Jesse kneels down with a gourd ladle full of water. Some of it leaps out in the excitement. Then Zerelda sees blood all over his arms and hands...

“Oh my GOD! WHUT have they done tew YEW? Oh my bayby!” She grabs the teenager and hugs him and cries a long, wailing, lonesome cry. Jesse wants to break loose, but he knows better than to try. Mama is strong, and willful, best let her get it out of her system. She pushes him back to arm's length and studies his eyes. She reads them intensely, as if they are a gauge. And a look of relief suddenly changes her countenance. “You will be alright...” She tears up for just a second or two, as the warrior in her heart is giving in to the mother in her soul.

“Better try to give him some water...” She has spilled most of what he has dipped out for Doc. He holds up the bucket for her to dip again. She shakes her head.

“He's unconscious Jesse. We need to get him into the house. Are you able? She is exhausted, but she is game if he is. “Maybe we can use the horse...”

“I don't know, but we have to try.” He sets the bucket down, Zerelda is already picking Doc up, pulling one of his arms around her shoulder...

“Grab his other arm Jess.”

“Step when I step.” Their walk is slow and quiet, only their heavy breathing and intermittent dragging break the stillness of the yard. The chickens are beginning to recover, moving back into the yard as they lay Doc gently on the back steps, to rest. The slaves have come out of hiding, fearful they would be taken away by the Yankees. Jess and his mother sit slumped and sweaty. They are both spent.

“Let's clean you up honey.”

Her tears are already dry on her broad cheeks. Zerelda is like a she-wolf looking after her pup. She uses the rags to wipe off the sand and blood, now almost black, from her baby's arms and neck. “Git me some fresh water!” she orders to one of the slaves. “And Doc's whiskey!” Jess is alright, thank God. But the war has come to her own back yard now. The Union soldiers have beaten and abused her men, against the laws of a free society, against the laws of humanity.

It had to be answered. Whether or not Doc lived, it had to be answered. They might kill all of them, but by God, it had to be answered!

“Son, you are going to have to go to town. I'm afraid he has been bad hurt... we need a doctor.” Jesse nods, of course- anything. But he already has a plan. He looks away.

“I'll go.” Jesse sips a little more well water, and goes to Doc's desk, a place he is usually forbidden to meddle with. He lowers the desk writing board and his hand flies into a drawer. Zerelda watches but does not say a word. Jesse pulls out a .32 calibre Colt Navy revolver and checks to make sure it is loaded. It is. He smells the powder. It is fairly fresh.

Zerelda wraps some bread in a flour sack and hands it to him. “Don't tarry son, every minute could matter.”

“Yes'm, I know.” Jess pulls open the heavy old door made of planks, screeching as it drags across the floor. “An' Mama, after I find the doctor, I'm not comin' back.”

“I know son.” She whimpers and half smiles. She could not be more proud. “I know how you feel Jess, but you have to come back, you are the man of the house for a little while, maybe until the war is over. Those Yankees will keep. I need you here son. Now go get the doctor and tell 'im your daddy was hung by them Yankee bastards and may be dead! Now go!”

                                     "//"

“For the life of me- I don' know how it all came down to this. I was raised a good Christian... from a good family, married a preacher and thought I would have a good life, in service to God... anyway I never imagined that I would have had so many husbands... or so many troubles.

“I was raised Zerelda Elizabeth Cole... but I married preacher James when quite young, too young, and I had too many wrong ideas about marriage and such. He was a good man, but he had some contrary ideas himself. Gave me a daughter an' two fine boys... Jess looks jus' like 'im, but he acted more like Frank. But then he got religion. He left us to preach in California, wanted to see the gold fields... and never came back. Heard he died of exposure. I imagine he was robbed, probably murdered out there, he was always too trustin' you know.

Susan James Samuel

“I was awful alone... just me and the boys an' baby Sue then... so I married old man Simms out of desperation... terrible mistake, he was a drunk and he beat me an' the kids... the boys run him off one day! Little sue an' I cheered! I gotta say, Frank made me proud the way he stood up to the man. That's when he learned the power of a gun...

“Then Doc Samuels courted me, he claimed I still owed him for doctoring... he delivered some of my children... and anyway we got hitched when the boys were still young, and he was the only father they knew. Doc was a good-natured cuss, mischievous but not ever offensive. The boys loved him. And he loved them. When the soldiers tried to get him to tell where Frank was, he would not give them a hint. Even when they threatened him. Truth was, he had no idea. I was afraid when they came back a couple of weeks later that they would get what they wanted or he would pay the devil. That was one of the darkest days of my life.

“They held me back, and would hang him up and let him struggle, God bless him, and then let him down and ask him if he was ready. And he would shake his head and they would hoist him up again. Each time a little longer. The third time I thought they had killed him for sure. Then they left him hangin'.

“I got him down, but it was too late, he was alive, but he lost his speech, and never really was himself again. He liked to sweep, wash the dishes, kind of became my housekeeper, bless his soul. Some called him a simpleton. It's true he wasn' all there. But the hangin' didn' affect his manhood... he gave me two more children after that... so some of him was still there!

“Those dirty Yankeess were hard men. War turns men into animals. It did my boys. And Quantrill led a battalion of boys just like 'em. My baby fell in with Bloody Bill Anderson... God, the things he seen, the things they did... what them Yankees started? My boys are still finishing.

Bloody Bill Anderson

“That day changed our lives, changed all of us in some way. Of course Doc caught the brunt of it. Jesse went off eventually to fight in the war. He was like caged animal, no boy should ever go through what he did, but the war put a tiger in my baby. Both my boys fought for the South and they fought harder after those bastards hung Doc. The war made them mean, hard-hearted, an' when they came home I could barely recognize them. Frank had aged ten years. Each of them had gotten their vengeance, till there was no softness, no boy left in them.

“If it is possible for a whole family to find unity in hate and blood vengeance, we did.

“And when Lee surrendered? It was as if both sides were against us. If they thought that tea party in Appomattox was going to settle things... Lee had no right. There could never be surrender for us. Not for me, not for my boys, Frank and Jesse James.

“I know you have heard of them. The whole world has. Strange how two boys, just boy soldiers, caught up in a bloody civil war, come out of it outlaws, local heroes, wanted by so many sheriffs, marshals... and them damn Pinkertons. They took my arm you know. Threw a smoke bomb into our living room! Trying to drive us out of the house. They thought Frank or Jess might be inside. Doc, God bless 'im was just trying to get rid of the damn thing... half-witted... made sense to him to toss it in the fireplace. I tried to stop him and then it exploded, killed my baby boy, Archie... destroyed my right arm.

“Could've bled to death.”

“It was William Pinkerton and his Yankee thugs. They had vowed to catch Frank and Jesse, and they had already lost several of their damned detectives who came snooping around. It was still war I tell you. Nothin' got settled at Appomattox. Our lives have been hell ever since. Pinkertons say they never sleep. I believe it. They hounded my boys all over the country.

William Pinkerton

“But they never caught 'em.”

“Yes, my boys became robbers... train robbers, bank robbers... anything to hurt the U.S. Government or railroads. And people loved 'em for it. They had more friends than any lawman. They never wanted for food or ammunition or a place to hide. I could never say for sure, but I would bet there were men in high places who helped them...

“They were never captured. My Jess was killed by his own men. Frank turned himself in after that. He was worth too much dead. You can't trust anybody when it comes to that much money... Ten years from now, all anybody will remember will be the stick ups- nobody will talk about poor Doc, all he ever done was love his family, or little Archie, just a baby... or my arm. Nobody will remember what the Union army or the Pinkertons done. Just the outlaw James Gang.

“Jesse James... an' he really was such a sweet boy.”

I'll never forget that day, him walkin' across that field, a bloody, sweaty plowboy changin' into an angry man, with man-sized hates. They did that to him. Many people have tried to convince me that I could've done something... I could have taught him different, or maybe calmed him down... or some say I should have turned him and Frank in. But who could blame him? It was hard to argue with 'im... especially... if I was a man, I would have gone with 'em!

“I would have”

“I don' know you, and you might be different, but I'll bet, if you... if soldiers from any army came into your yard and threatened you, and beat up your men, nearly killed them, if hired bounty hunters killed your innocent baby son, terrorized your whole family, even your in-laws... crippled you for life... every time I wash a dish, or comb my hair, and do it with one arm, I hate them bastards with every inch of my being... and I think you would too.

“Like I say, I don' know how it all came down to this...”