One hundred and ten years ago, Green Lake was the largest lake in Texas. It was full of clear, cool water and sparkled like a giant emerald in the sun. In the springtime it was particularly beautiful, when the peach trees blossomed along the shore in pink and rose-coloured blooms. There would be a town picnic every year on the Fourth of July. The people of Green Lake would play games, dance, sing and swim in the lake to keep cool. Prizes were awarded for the best peach pie and peach jam. A special prize was given every year to Miss Katherine Barlow for her spiced peaches. No one else tried to make spiced peaches, because they all knew none would be as delicious as hers. Every year Miss Katherine would pick bushels of peaches and preserve them in jars with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and other spices which she kept secret. The jarred peaches should have lasted all winter, but they never did. It was said that Green Lake, Texas was 'heaven on earth' and that Miss Katherine's peaches were 'the work of an angel'.
Miss Katherine was a young widow with a small son. She preferred to be called by Miss by the children she taught in the small, one-room schoolhouse. She was the only teacher in the town. The schoolhouse was old even for Green Lake standards. The roof leaked, the windows wouldn't open and the door hung crooked on its hinges. She was a wonderful teacher, full of knowledge and full of life. The children loved her.
She taught classes in the evening for the adults, and many adults loved her as well. She was a beautiful lady, with pretty blue eyes and long curly blonde hair. Her classes were full of young men, who were a lot more interested in the teacher than they were in getting an education. But all they ever got was an education!
One such young man was Trout Walker. His real name was Charles Walker, but everyone called him Trout because he had an incurable foot-fungus. It was the same foot-fungus that would inflict the major-league baseball star Clyde Livingston one-hundred-and-ten years later. At least Clyde Livingston showered every day!
Everyone in Green Lake expected Miss Katherine the pretty, young widow, to marry Trout Walker. He was rich and she was handsome. Trout Walker's father was the richest man in the county. His family owned most of the peach trees and all of the land on the east side of the lake.
Trout was disrespectful; he would turn up to lessons late and spend the entire time talking loudly over Miss Katherine while she tried to teach the other men. A lot of men in the town were not educated. They spent their time working hard on farms and ranches. That was why she was there- to teach them. But Trout Walker didn't want to learn. He was proud of his stupidity.
A man named Sam lived in Green Lake also. Since he was a black man he wasn't allowed to attend the evening classes with the rest of the adults. Sam picked onions. He told Miss Katherine of his onion field across the lake where the onions grew year-round and the water in the stream ran uphill.
"Onions, sweet, fresh onions," Sam would shout, leading his cart and the donkey, Mary Lou, to the green by the schoolhouse. Sam had strong arms and had a rowboat. Once or twice a week Sam would row across the lake to his onion field and pick a fresh batch. Miss Katherine traded Sam a jar of her spiced peaches for a burlap sack of Sam's onions.
When the season changed, and the rain-clouds started rolling in over Green Lake, the children in the schoolhouse would sit amid pots and pans that caught the cold raindrops. Sam arrived outside the schoolhouse one afternoon after the children were excused. Miss Katherine was wiping her desk with a sodden cloth. Sam looked up at the roof.
"I can fix that," he said softly. Miss Katherine laughed quietly.
"Sam, are you going to tell me your onions can cure a leaky roof?" she teased.
"Nah, I'm just good with my hands," Sam said. "I built my own boat, you know. I needed to get across the lake to my onion field."
"Well then I guess you'd be in real trouble if your boat leaked," Miss Katherine smiled prettily.
"I tell you what," Sam proposed a deal, "I'll fix that roof, in exchange for three jars of your spiced peaches." Miss Katherine didn't have much money to spend elsewhere other than herself and her son.
"It's a deal," she smiled. Sam worked on the roof after the children's school was out and before the adults arrived. When it was finished, Miss Katherine complained the windows wouldn't open, and she and the children would like a breeze now and again. When the windows were finished, she told Sam of the crooked door. Miss Katherine gave Sam more jars of her spiced peaches when the schoolhouse was painted.
But Miss Katherine's heart was broken. The rain poured down, and despite the newly repaired roof, tears dropped from Miss Katherine's eyes.
"I can fix that," Sam said quietly. Miss Katherine smiled and kissed him. Outside, Trout Walker saw them through the window.
Word soon spread that the schoolteacher had kissed the onion-picker. A mob, led by Trout Walker, destroyed the schoolhouse with fire. Miss Katherine ran to the jail, where the Sheriff was drinking his way through a bottle of whiskey.
"Give me a kiss," he growled, wiping his mouth. He tried to pull her closer.
"You're drunk," Miss Katherine said in disgust.
"I always get drunk before a hanging," the Sheriff slurred.
"If you hang him," Miss Katherine threatened quietly, tears splashing onto her cheeks, "then you'd better hang me too, because I kissed him back."
"It ain't against the law for you to kiss him," the sheriff said, "just for him to kiss you. Give me a kiss- you kissed the onion-picker." Miss Katherine snatched her hand away from the sheriff's grip and ran out of the jail, to the waterfront where she could see Sam in his little wooden rowboat. She could hear, with cold-dread, before she saw it, the Walker's new motorised boat.
"Sam!" The shot of a rifle punctured the air and punctured Miss Katherine's heart.
The next day Miss Katherine's son disappeared. Miss Katherine walked calmly into the jail, dressed prettily in red, and took her hat off.
"Mornin' sheriff," she said politely. "You still want that kiss?" The sheriff, with a terrible hangover, smirked. Miss Katherine produced a pistol from the pocket of her skirt and shot the sheriff. She calmly applied a fresh coat of red lipstick and kissed the sheriff. The people of Green Lake watched her ride off on one of her horses, and in the distance someone met her on the top of a hill.
For the next twenty years, Kissin' Kate Barlow was the most feared outlaw in the mid-west.