Jehovah Jesse

Your horse buckles forward, kneels in prayer, and dies. “You’ve forsaken me,” you say to Jesse. “I have no food, no money, and now no horse.”

Jesse holds his arms out to the sky, swaying in the saddle. The sun blazes a crown and shadows his face. He dismounts into a crouch, gliding palms over heated earth, reloads his revolver with bullets from his belt, and pockets the discharged cartridges to salvage later.

You sulk, dehorsed. Left to hoof around New Mexico. Chin down, your bolero hangs open over a white, buttonup shirt. Grit grates gums as you spit.

Together, you drag a splintery remainder of an old wagon across sand and baked clay in the over heat, then rest the wood on your dying horse Jesse shot for a reason.

“Take them,” Jesse says, “for coming this far.”

The coins clatter on the makeshift table. A few roll off the wood and stop in sand depressions formed by head thrashes. Your horse still exhales.

A map Jesse made the night before with charcoal outlines the town, and he explains, for the final time, the plan. The boys spiral dust as they reign in their mounts and circle. Hand on pommel, foot in stirrup, Jesse pivots into the saddle facing you and signals to the dozen at his back. The boys tornado away.

You bend down. Pluck coins. Breath tickles your fingers held by the nostrils of your animal. You rub its forelock with your other hand. Shhhhhhhh, you whisper like a rustle of leaves.

“Don’t you love me more than anything in the world?” Jesse asks.

“You know, I never named the beast. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel sorry,” you say.

Jesse laughs. The gun is out again. Silver nickel polished and deadly. He fires at the table and hits belly. “Nameless holds you accountable.” He levels the pistol at you. “Tell me, who am I in the play?”

You stutter, clutching coins and mane, and say nothing. The shot splits your temple. Your face knocks back and you crumple. The desert blood red. You thrash with Nameless. The rider and the ridden together again.

Jesse flicks his tongue and licks the residue that hangs in the air, holsters his gun, and rides away.

The boys wait in a stand of yucca with impatient horses and nervous ticks when Jesse creeps in chewing burrograss. Joe Baby, named because he tried to spare a baby’s life who Jesse dropped down a well, rubs his palms on his thighs. He dropped a gun in Tallahassee and blames the slippery heat. A knife scar diagonals his face and curls when he cries. When alone with a mirror, Jesse curls his face like Joe Baby, but the tears never come.

Jesse says, “God hungers. Let’s feed the lusty bitch.”

They ride out of the shadow of a mesa—under the wings of diseased, rabid vultures.

Jesse leads from the rear. His repeater lays fire into the street. Rifle shots pour into people, horses, windows, wagons. Joe Baby does the same when Jesse reloads, until the street clears. The boys are fine, following the plan. Jesse shoots the last rider rounding the bend so they have a casualty.

“Get it done, Joe Baby. Away!” Jesse says. The murdering awakes him. He calms his sorrel with his knees.

Joe Baby canters off, putting lead into bodies that still move in the street. Flies will come soon. Then the stink. The cowards will clean up first. Rape doesn’t just wash away, and that’s what the boys do. This place will stink forever.

Some windows are unbroken. Repeater raises and fires. Pop, pop, pop. The rifle is loose against his shoulder. Each trigger jolt cracks. Smoke clears, glass shatters, Jesse smiles. He sheaths the rifle and eases out of the saddle. Mestizo trembles until Jesse lets him nose his beard. Oneeyed horse gaze says the world.

“Stay, loyal Kent,” Jesse says.

A blue bonnet moves by an overturned box of apples. She looks married. A silver cross rests on lace covered breasts.

“Are these your apples?” Jesse takes a speckled green and bites. The juices seep into his beard. He suckles at the mouthful. Spits apple on her face because she does not answer. Her eyelids flutter. He admires the red wound on her stomach. It compliments her blue dress. He drags her out into the street. Let the cowards come. Lace rips. His eager fingers peel away. She animals—howling and clawing. He beats flailing arms with silver nickel. Her breasts are swollen. Pale skin oozes blood from the belly. Knees force her legs open. A barrel to the head freezes her. Jesse tears the dress away. He ejaculates in his pants and almost faints. The gunshot pierces euphoric thought. Awareness creeps in. The wound is not his own. Jesse’s revolver hovers over brains and hair in a blue bonnet.

Joe Baby comes with the boys and curls a little.

They ride to Sonora.

Months pass. Wheeler Peak stands tall and snowcapped. They travel northeast, away from Taos Pueblo, and are drunk. Jesse filched a gold cross from the cute little church where Joe Baby fell in love.

“You’re a Choctaw halfbreed. She’s just Mexican.”

Joe Baby grins. “Don’t forget my final act, Shakespeare. Make it tragic.” He yelps a mournful birdsong that echoes through the foothills.

They skirt a farmstead where a woman draws water from a well. She looks young and white.

“We’re stopping,” Jesse says.

Joe Baby slows and tilts the wide brim of his hat over his eyes. Jesse directs Mestizo through a pocket of aspen and spruce. The woman sloshes in a run for the door Jesse kicks open on his third try. He steps to the side. Wait. The rifle barrel pokes out, he yanks the man out, thrusts revolver against pecker and lets off a round. The second gashes neck. The woman fights and screams. Jesse throws an oil lamp against a wall which ignites the peat. Out of breath, he holds her neck and strokes her throat with the pistol barrel. Her golden hair ripples in his grip as she trembles, as if he cradles the stem of a breathing sunflower. Her eyes are calming. Jesse draws her to his chest. Holds her nose in his beard, feeling her move against him. He whispers as you did when she tries to pull away. The flames are beautiful. A stack of blankets against the wall radiate. The top one is red like the desert clay. Jesse steps over the wailing woman to save it. The gun tracks her.

“Fellate me,” Jesse says. The flames shine his teeth.

Joe Baby runs in and pulls Jesse out the door. The roof is roaring. Again Joe Baby goes and drags out the woman. She collapses beside her man and holds his neck closed. Jesse mounts Mestizo and leaves.

“You can be my best man,” Joe Baby says.

“We aren’t going back.”

“We can’t do this forever, Jesse.”

“I take what I want,” Jesse says and raises his arms, “before it is taken from me.”

They ride along in silence. Joe Baby wipes tears on his flannelled arm when they stop in an overhang of oak with branches spidering into the blue sky.

“Cry, Joe Baby.” Jesse seizes Joe Baby by the ears, almost pulling him clear of his horse who steers into nipping Mestizo. Saliva strings between them when he kisses Joe Baby’s mouth.

Jesse skins Joe Baby’s face to save the scar.

Virginia. His beard splits, flashing teeth at her name. Jesse likes humor. She poses on the banister. He eyes her silk haunches like horseflesh, checking gait and stamina. The steps lead to rooms, one hers. Cozy place. He needs this. Her bed creaks with their weight.

“Take my guns outside.”

“What?” Virginia asks.

“Put my guns out so I don’t kill you.”

She laughs but listens. Jesse twitches, naked and flaccid. They rut until she is spent.

“Stay here,” Jesse says.

Boots on, naked Jesse belts his guns and goes downstairs. A hundred dollar bet on himself against the bar’s gunslinger to set the mood. Going back upstairs, he ignores the stares because he fired prematurely, satisfied he can now finish. He does.

“I didn’t have to kill you,” he says. She laughs, purring against him. He asks, “Do you fool anyone with your name?”

“Sometimes. The young ones. The little heroes,” she says and rises. Candlelight defines her body. Jesse sighs, not wanting to go downstairs again. She goes to her bureau and opens a drawer. Stacks of letters from true lovers curl.

The campfire snaps and pops. Embers smoke up towards the stars. Jesse sits holding the piece of Joe Baby’s face. It is leathery. The scar rubbed smooth from Jesse’s thumb. Mestizo sleeps standing and the fire dies down to a fuzzy orange glow. Jesse lies in his bedding holding Joe Baby. He says as Lear, “I am old and foolish.” Unseen tears shhhhhhhh in the shadows.

Jesse takes goat paths and cattle roads eastward. Wagon trains welcome his guns in exchange for beans and coffee. Rustlers as well for more of the same. Kansas. Jesse happens upon an injured and fevered Mennonite mumbling Russian into an abalone harmonica, perhaps an ode to God. Rotted bandages marry flesh to bone. His one eye curls up at Jesse. Plain clothed, the pockets yield naught but sunflower shells. The seeds brittle bits in yellow teeth gnawing and swallowing Jesse’s fingers and the gold cross from Taos Pueblo. Jesse strangles. Russian gurgles. Life snuffs out with English whispers of burn, burn, burn. The good book is all the Mennonite carries. Jesse leaves him with it.

A diddy wheezes. Jesse tongues abalone. Notes steal across sorghum fields, river fat. The water timpanis on rock and Mestizo in the shallow crossing. On the eastside waits a mounted clutch of men with rifles out. Barrels spectacular in the sunset. The heat on Jesse’s back urges him forward. They squint at Jesse. One rides out to meet him. Garbed as a priest. Rifle cradled against preaching bands. Black wool dank with righteousness.

“Father,” Jesse says. They’re out of earshot. Still in gunshot.

“We seek a demon. Do you walk with God?”

“Sinners, Father. Us all.”

“God’s children cry of a western blight. They speak of horrors. Armageddon. I pray you’re cleansed of Lucifer’s taint.”

“Shall you have my confession, Father? Come close.”

Mestizo necks with the priest’s mare. Jesse eases his boot knife free. The priest’s men blind by the sly sun. One arc splays the throat open. The blade returns. In seconds the head drips loose in Jesse’s hands. Mestizo charges. A sunlight winged demon. Jesse shoots two men dead before the splash of the priest’s body scares the mare to screams.

Head throbs wake Jesse. Bloody lip flesh tastes sweeter than death. He smiles. Bruised, back buried in reeds. Forehead canyons of stuck blood and shredded skin tickled by wind carrying the scent of rancid horse breath. Mestizo guards. Neighs from above. Jesse’s broken foot hangs crooked from the stirrup. Pistols float in red mud. His blood. Shoulder shot to pink shit. One still twitches holding the priest’s head. His bowels are blown open leaving a trail of guts in the wake of his crawls. A crow hops from thigh to thigh. Nipping. Jesse limps over supported by Mestizo.

“Go to Hell priest killer,” the One says.

Jesse laughs. Goes to a knee. Leans close. “Hell is for the greatest minds of mankind and the most odious. I belong in no other place. Now meet your maker and your heaven for I am the one who is.” Jesse mutters Apache into Mestizo’s ear. The beast tramples the One to nothing on command. There’s the crunch of bone, the jeer of crows, and the distant song of the river.

Years pass. Jesse attends a theatre in St. Louis. Titania, Queen of the Fairies, captivates him. He whispers her lines, one face of hundreds, from the grandstands. I’m just a character in a play to you,” she says. Blurred figures move behind her. The flowers Jesse purchased look cheap and wilted. Her squared chin and freckled face crowd him in the hallway, but her soft voice draws him near.

“You are more to me than that,” Jesse says.

She laughs and turns away, leaving Jesse holding flowers.

The next show is a sellout. Jesse waits for the final act in the theatre alley. He wishes it was Lear when the King is at the height of his madness. “When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools,” Jesse says as he douses himself in kerosene. Fire eats the alley wall and licks the roof. Smoke chokes. Mestizo trembles until Jesse mounts, rides into the street with lit torches, and gallops into the theatre. Mestizo rears and the doors fall open to hooves, revealing the stage, a ball of light in the darkness. The screams are deafening. Rider and steed trample and burn as the roof ignites above them. A skilled leap places them on the stage. Jesse pulls out Joe Baby’s scar and lets it fall to curl at bloody fetlocks.