Bob took the almanac from Martha and said, “How come mine is the only one that’s negative?”
“Generous,” Martha said.
“Just that.”
“Artistic,” she said.
“You bet,” Charley said. “Bob can’t make the ends of a circle meet and he’s supposed to be artistic.”
Bob grinned and said, “I can’t even draw flies.”
Wood Hite clomped in from the sitting room. “How come you all are in the kitchen chatting, and I’m all by myself?”
Martha said, “You old stick-in-the-mud! What do you expect? Always fuss-budgeting around, telling people what they can and can’t do.”
Robert Woodson Hite was a man in his late twenties who was so crotchety and orthodox that he seemed almost elderly and was known among the James gang by the nickname “Grandfather Grimes.” His mother had contributed many of the James genes to his physical characteristics and he looked more brother to Frank than Jesse did—the same large ears, the same anteater nose, the same scorn and malevolence in his scowls. Martha had spurned his affections, so he pursued her daughter, but Ida was too young to be more than perplexed by his attentions, thus he’d spent most of the afternoon in a pout.
But Bob Ford rocked back in his chair and experimented one more time. “Wood?” he said. “I’ve been to the Indian Territories, Wood.”
Wood was in a mope. He dully asked, “How was it?” and frowned at Clarence’s wart work.
Bob couldn’t think of a sassy answer. He thumped his chair forward and said, “About like you’d expect.” He stood from the table. “Guess I’ll go get myself duded up. These clothes are a little rancid.”
And Wood said, “I’m in that room too, Bob. Don’t mess up my things.”
Bob sneaked from the overcoat a cigar butt smoked on September 7th after the Blue Cut robbery and then he scurried up the stairs to a room with twin beds and a cot in it. The cot was against an east wall that was covered with the corset advertisement pages from newspapers and Wood’s razor, comb, toothbrush, and toothpowder were laid out at the foot of the cot on his folded green blanket as if it were a toiletries salesman’s display. The twin bed next to the mullioned north window was Charley’s, the mating bed was Bob’s, a slat bed with a duck feather mattress that lumped like melons as he slept. Close to the closet door was a lady’s white dresser and screwed to it was an oval dresser mirror where Bob could watch himself practice moves and feints he hoped to use, veering left and fanning his thumb like a gunslinger’s hammer, blowing muzzle smoke from his index finger.
Bob kicked under his bed with his foot and hooked out a shoebox. He sat on his mattress with the box in his lap, removed the lid and clamped it against his neck with his chin. He rolled the cigar butt inside the white handkerchief with the cock-eyed holes cut into it, and poked it into a corner. He squirmed his boots off and flung off his month-old clothes until all he wore was a nasty union suit, then he took on loan a towel and cake of Ivory soap and a tile brush from Ida’s pink bedroom across the hall, and he crept downstairs and across the cold earth to the cattle lot and broad water tank.
Two calves stared with worry as he stripped off his underwear and they trotted six feet when he shooed them. Scum floated on the water but rocked away when he washed his hand across the surface. He lifted a snow white leg and sent it into cold water, then crashed over into the tank with such noise Martha was at the kitchen window when he stood, catching his breath.
She smirked at his nakedness, so he lowered and rotated. His neck, wrists, and ankles were black in the creases and murked with road dust and wood smoke and his skin was reddened wherever he scoured with the tile brush. A breeze puckered the water and cast goose pimples over his back. He bent over to rinse soap from his hair and shook water like a hound. The calves backed a little and to terrify them more he smacked the water so that a clear sheet curved over the tank and tattered and tore apart in the air. And then he noticed an amused Dick Liddil standing as close as a tailor. He was hatless and his blond hair straggled in the wind.
“How long you been there?”
“Just now arrived. Did I miss much?”
Bob stalked the Ivory soap cake on the water. “Not unless you’ve never seen a man wash his dirty carcass before.”
Dick said, “Hear you’ve been to the Indian Territories.”
Bob scrubbed an elbow as if that could shift the conversation elsewhere.
But Dick continued, “It’s all anyone can talk about.”
Bob checked his other elbow. “Don’t try to fish me because I won’t hook.”
“Is that what the Indian Territories do? Make you turn over a new leaf?”
Bob swished his hands underwater and reexamined his nails. “That territories business is one of Jesse’s stories, is all.”
“You’ve got a big pecker for being such a little squirrel.”
“Is that what you come over here to see?”
Dick bent for the towel and some good nature slid from his face. He was perhaps five feet seven, an inch shorter than Bob, and twenty-nine years old. He grew a comma of light brown hair on his lower lip and his combed mustache was curled with wax so that he looked a Southern cavalier, and he considered himself a ladies’ man in spite of a right eye that strayed toward his cheek, the result of a childhood accident with a stick. He tossed the towel at Bob’s nose and nibbled his mustache as Bob rubbed his hair wild. “Your brother said Jesse kept you on in Kansas City some extra days. What was the reason?”
Bob covered his face with the towel as his mind motored a second or two. “Well, I’m not at liberty to say exactly. I will confess we had ourselves an adventure or two, the like of which you’ll never experience, but as for details and whatnot, that would be confidential.”