Читать книгу A Road Trip Into America's Hidden Heart - Traveling the Back Roads, Backwoods and Back Yards - John Drake Robinson - Страница 9

Almost every St. Joseph museum tells some part of the town’s most sensational story, the killing of Mawmaw’s boy.

Mawmaw raised some ornery children. Hellraisers. But she knew it wasn’t their fault. Other folks made ’em mean. Other folks caused young Jesse to take up swearing. Some folks even think he invented the term “Dingus,” a nickname brother Frank started calling him. Nobody else did, to his face anyway.

Mawmaw was a nickname, too, of course, and by that name or any other name, Zerelda James was the family’s matriarch. To the children she was Mawmaw. To adults she was a force to be reckoned with. She must’ve been a role model of toughness for the boys. She must’ve earned some respect from the girls, too, or at least their parents, because Zerelda’s son Jesse married his first cousin Zerelda, who was named for his mother. When the feds swept through and put a noose around Mawmaw’s husband’s neck and strung him up, she cut him down, saved his life. The Union later threw her in prison, accusing her of being a spy. And years after that, because of transgressions committed by two of her grown boys, the Pinkertons firebombed her house, blowing off her hand and killing her youngest son.

In downtown St. Joseph I parked right in front of the little house where Dingus died. The house used to be on the edge of town, but promoters moved it next to the Patee House museum downtown. I walked around back and entered through the back door. Jesse probably felt more comfortable going in that back door, too, even though around St. Jo he used an alias. Back when he and Zerelda lived there, most neighbors called him Mr. Howard.

The back door opened into the kitchen, where I stuck my fee in a jar and walked into the killer’s living room. It was ugly, Victorian, dated. The ugliest decoration was on the wall, a frame around a bullet hole. I knew the significance of the bullet hole, the one made after the bullet exited Jesse’s head. The existing wallpaper shouted like bad drapes, but within the frame the old wallpaper looked like Vincent Price picked it out. It was hideous, in a way that could highlight a 130-year-old bullet hole.

Jesse’s bed still sits in his bedroom, along with other personal items. The walls are covered with family photos. But among all that history, that tiny square of the living room’s original wallpaper with the bullet hole may be the single most scary background since the movie, “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

On my way out of town, I passed one more museum. It also does business as the Heaton-Bowman-Smith & Sidenfaden Funeral Home. Back in 1882, the Sidenfaden Funeral Home was on 4th Street, near the spot of Jesse’s murder. When the victim’s family notified the undertaker to pick up the body, Sidenfaden brought a wicker corpse basket to carry Jesse’s remains. That basket is on display at the modern funeral home, along with a ledger showing an entry for the Jesse James funeral, and a few other relics from the past, like an icebox casket for long-distance transport.

Jesse’s body didn’t need an icebox casket, since he was buried nearby. Some folks think Jesse’s body was stolen by grave robbers. Others believe that Jesse faked his death. All this modern brouhaha about the whereabouts of Jesse James’ body is silly, if you know anything about Mawmaw. For the 30 years she lived after Jesse died, Zee James made sure that nobody stole Missouri’s most infamous dead body. That’s because she had him interred next to her rural Kearney, Missouri, house, so she could chase off any body snatchers.

Her house still stands today off the back roads of Clay County. It’s a rough-hewn cabin in the middle of the woods. Hard to sneak up on. For years, local folks presented a stage play in the front yard of the house, recreating the Pinkerton attack on the homestead, and visitors sat in a portable grandstand rigged right in the front yard. Jesse would have been skeptical of the spectacle, but Zee would have taken the money, I suspect. Indeed, decades before the reenactments began, Zee James charged a quarter apiece for tourists to view Jesse’s grave, and she’d give each visitor a stone, supposedly chipped from his headstone, but just as likely retrieved from a nearby creek.

When Zee died, Jesse’s body was moved to Mount Olivet Cemetery in Kearney, where he rests next to his wife, Zee James the younger. The original tombstone on Jesse’s first grave has been chipped away by grave stone robbers, sometimes also called tourists.

So far, nobody has succeeded in stealing Jesse’s body from its new resting place. A few years ago some scientists dug Jesse up, just to lay the rumors to rest. Turns out they are his bones, all right. And within minutes, people started chipping pieces off his new headstone. With such a carnival sideshow fascination with dead legends, it’s no wonder Frank James requested cremation for his own body. He didn’t want to end up in a circus sideshow. In an ironic twist, the ashes of Frank the bank robber hid in a bank vault until his wife died in 1944. Now both lie in the Hill Park Cemetery in Independence.

Frank always respected dead bodies. Some folks say he had a hand in the honorable return of one corpse. It happened after the Civil War Battle of Wilson’s Creek near Springfield. During that battle, General Nathaniel Lyon became the first Union general killed in the War Between the States. Not particularly loved by his troops, Lyon’s body was left on the battlefield when the Union withdrew to Springfield. The Confederates recovered the body and took it to a makeshift hospital and morgue. They cleaned General Lyon and prepared the body for burial. They sent a messenger to the Union forces, who agreed to accept the general’s body. A teamster wagon caught up with the retreating Union forces and delivered the corpse. One of the teamsters was Frank James, so the story goes.

There are a million stories about the James Gang. But I know this one is true: My Dad and Frank James were invited to work at the same job. Not at the same time, of course. In his later years, Dad was drafted to become a doorkeeper at the Missouri Senate, a job he held until he died. In 1904, legislators invited Frank to become a doorkeeper at the Missouri House of Representatives. But Democrat leaders got cold feet at the last moment and withdrew their offer. Hell of a thing to do to a lifelong loyal Democrat. That made Frank mad. He never voted for a Democrat again.

I headed south into Clay County, Jesse’s back yard, veering around Smithville Lake, a man-made beauty which has attracted hundreds of homes to its shores. I wonder what Mawmaw would think about all this settlement so close to her homestead on the outskirts of Kearney. She’d probably be more upset to learn that Jesse has been laid to rest three times now. But that’s what happens to real-life legends who won’t hire Pinkertons to guard them.

Personally, I think Jesse would appreciate the fact that today from the James homestead, he could ride two miles west after supper, hop on I-35 in a BMW and be in Northfield, Minnesota, by the time the bank opens. Better yet, he could fly to Northfield from the Roosterville Airport, minutes from his family’s homestead.

If you believe all the stories about his whereabouts, Jesse is the only person who has been to more places in Missouri than I have. I’m okay with that.