THE WAY IT WAS SERIES
Outlaw Summer
by Judy Nickles
I learned early on that, of my brothers, Hart was the least likely to succumb to my feminine charms. . Cary and Regina doted on me. Hart did not. He married soon after I arrived on the scene, and Sarah, his wife, wasted no time in providing him with a son, Trevor. Unlike Papa, Hart was a strict father. Papa asked, but Hart ordered.
In later years, Mother referred to the summer of 1889 as the outlaw summer, because together Trevor and I broke every rule (make that every law in Hart’s terminology) ever made on the ranch, in town, and elsewhere. I was not by nature a rebellious child, but that summer I became determined to repay Hart for every fancied slight.
It had begun, so I’m told, when I arrived at the ranch against Hart’s best legal advice. As all babies do, I woke regularly during the night to be fed and changed. I also woke up the rest of the house, and the next morning, Hart said that he had business in Amarillo, and departed abruptly. His parting words were, according to Regina, Mother and Dan had better get that baby on a schedule soon, or she’ll be thoroughly spoiled.
So, the summer that I was eight, I wasn’t enthusiastic about being left with Hart and Sarah while Mother and Papa spent a few days in Fort Worth.
“Why can’t I stay at the ranch with Cary?” I asked Mother.
“Cary will be busy getting ready to drive the herd to market. I’m afraid there’s no other choice but Hart’s house in town.”
I sighed. I enjoyed Trevor—most of the time—and Sarah was a pleasant person who tended to overlook most things. Unfortunately, Hart didn’t, and that was the problem.
“Now, Kate, I know that you aren’t as close to Hart as you are to the others, but perhaps this would be a good opportunity to get to know him better.” She eyed me keenly. “I know I can count on you to be good.”
“Good like you and Papa think is good, or like Hart thinks is good?”
It was her turn to sigh. “Just be yourself, Kate. Everything will be all right.”
Papa took me for a long walk in the morning before they drove me into Stockton. “Now, Kate, I know that you don’t relish spending three days at Hart’s house, but your mother has really looked forward to this trip to Fort Worth. I know that Hart is a little...shall we say, strict, compared to what you are accustomed to. However, I’m sure that you will understand the necessity of obeying his rules. It is his home, after all.”
“Yes, Papa.”
“And it’s only for three days, Kate precious.”
“Yes, Papa.” Those three days stretched out more like three weeks in my mind, but off I went with my valise, my favorite doll of the moment, Jennifer Jane, and many loving embraces from Mother and Papa.
Hart was at his office, but Sarah welcomed me warmly, and Trevor helped me carry my things upstairs to the guestroom. “Want to go see the new fish in the pond?” he asked. Hart’s goldfish pond with its tinkling waterfall was his pride and joy. He’d built it himself and diligently tended the fish and the water plants. “There are two new ones.”
“All right.” I closed the wardrobe door and pushed my empty valise under the bed. “Let’s go.”
I spotted the new fish immediately, their rainbow-colored bodies sparkling in the early afternoon sun.
“I’d like to be a fish,” Trevor said.
“Why?”
“They don’t have to take baths.”
“They live in the water, silly!”
“Or go to Sunday School, or keep their napkins in their laps at meals, or. . .”
“Or follow all of Hart’s rules!” I muttered.
He looked a little sad. “Yeah. I mean yes.” That was another one of the rules. Trevor had been speaking like an elocutionist since he could talk.
“Let’s take off our shoes and socks and put our feet in the water,” I suggested. “It looks nice and cool.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“Is it a rule?”
He frowned. “Well, no, I don’t think so, but. . .”
“Just for a few minutes.”
Trevor looked doubtful, but soon the fish were nibbling our toes. They scattered when I decided to wade across to the other side. By the time I got there, the bottom of my under drawers and the hem of my dress were very wet.
“Come on over, Trevor,” I called. He hesitated, then started across. Unfortunately, he tripped on something and ended up submerged to his hair.
“You’ll dry,” I assured him. “Come sit here on the big rock with me.” Hart had had the rocks for the pond hauled from the ranch, and some of them were almost as big as boulders. Trevor clambered up beside me. We were not completely dry when Hart came around the corner of the house and spotted us.
“Trevor! KatieBee! What in the world are you doing?”
“Watching the fish,” I replied.
“Have you been in the pond?”
I didn’t like the look on his face, but I knew better than to lie to him. “Yes,” I said. “We waded across.”
“Go in the house immediately and change your clothes!”
We obeyed. When we came downstairs again, Hart took us into the library and closed the door. “Trevor, haven’t I told you never to wade in the pond?”
“No, Father,” he replied, his eyes downcast.
“Well, I’m telling you now.” Then he turned to me. “You should have known better, Katherine.” No one ever called me Katherine, not even Papa when I tried to help by washing all his pipes and thoroughly ruined them.
“I go wading in the creek at the ranch,” I replied a little defiantly.
“This isn’t the ranch—it’s my home, and while you’re here, you’ll obey my rules.”
I nodded. “All right. The new fish are very pretty.”
“Now go find something to occupy yourselves until dinner.”
“Something not against the rules,” I muttered on the way out.
“What?” he called.
“Nothing,” I said. I took Trevor’s hand. “Let’s go build something with your new blocks.”
Trevor looked at me gratefully. “I’m glad you’re here, KatieBee,” he said.
I wasn’t, but I didn’t say so.
Things went from bad to worse after that. First, I spilled my milk at dinner. Sarah said it didn’t matter, that the table linens were scheduled for the laundry the next day anyway. But Hart frowned and said that I should pay more attention to what I was doing.
Trevor came into my room that night when the house was quiet. “Maybe I could come stay at the ranch when Grandfather Dan and Grammie get back.”
“Sure,”I said agreeably.
“I like it out there.”
“Me, too.”
He stretched out across the foot of my bed. “Grandfather Dan never gets mad, does he?”
“Never.”
“Grammie talks a lot about the wooden spoon though. Has she ever used it on you?”
“Once,” I admitted.
“Why?”
“I stamped my foot at her, but that was a long time ago.”
“I wouldn’t mind the wooden spoon.”
“No?”
“You’re lucky, KatieBee.”
Suddenly I felt very sorry for Trevor. “I know,” I said. “You can sleep in here tonight if you want to. Here’s a pillow.”
After breakfast the next morning, we wandered out back—carefully avoiding the pond—and sat down under a tree. “If you had a swing on that big limb up there, it would be nice.”
He followed my gaze. “Father said it would weaken the limb.”
“I have one in Galveston—and another one at the ranch. Cary put it up for me.”
“I know.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“We could walk uptown to the general store. I have my pocket money.”
He licked his lips. “We could buy a licorice.”
“Let’s go then.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“Is it a rule?”
He thought for a minute. “I don’t think so.”
“Then let’s go.”
“I ought to tell Mother.”
“Oh, come on. We won’t be long.”
He got to his feet. “All right.”
Mr. Barrows, of Barrows Emporium, greeted us heartily.“Well, good morning, Miss Kate! And Trevor—I don’t see you down here very often.”
“Good morning, Mr. Barrows. Trevor and I came for some licorice. I have my pocket money.”
“Don’t you know your pocket money’s no good at Barrow’s Emporium?” He opened the tall jar of licorice whips. “You two just help yourselves. And make yourselves at home. Look around as long as you like. There are some new toys that just arrived from St. Louis. You don’t want to miss those.”
We lost track of the time until Hart appeared and grabbed Trevor’s arm, then motioned to me to follow him. It was a long, silent walk home, where Sarah embraced us both and asked over and over if we were all right.
“I found them in town,” Hart said sternly. “Whose idea was it to run off that way?”
I lifted my chin. “We didn’t run off. I had my pocket money, and I told Trevor that we’d go and buy some licorice.”
I didn’t like the way Hart looked at me, but I stood my ground. “You will not leave the yard again. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Father.” Trevor’s lip trembled.
“Oh, Hart, they’re all right, and. . .”
He silenced Sarah with a look. Then he turned that look on me. “Do you understand, Katherine?”
“Yes.”
“Then go inside and wash your hands and faces—both of you. It’s almost time for lunch.”
Inevitably, I spilled again at lunch.
The next morning we played on the porch until it started to rain. I loved the rain. If it wasn’t storming or cold, Mother always let me dance with the fairies. She said I looked like a water sprite and that the raindrops made a crown of diamonds in my hair. Unfortunately, just as Trevor and I were really beginning to think of ourselves as water sprites, Hart came home for lunch.
“Get in the house right now!” he hollered. “But go around back to the kitchen so that you don’t drip all over the front hall!”
We scuttled off. Sarah said we weren’t that wet and dried us with a big towel before sending us up the back stairs. Wearing dry clothes, we presented ourselves for lunch. When Hart asked why we were doing such a silly thing as standing out in the rain, I said, “We weren’t standing in the rain! We were dancing with the fairies!”
He looked startled. Then, “I don’t like your tone of voice, Katherine. Do you talk to your parents this way?”
“No.” I almost added Mother and Papa didn’t talk to me in such a mean way as he did—but I thought of how Mother said she knew she could count on me to be good, so I kept quiet.
“Then don’t speak to me like that. You’re setting a bad example for Trevor.”
I told Sarah I didn’t want any milk and kept my eyes on my plate.
Mother and Papa arrived just after lunch the next day. To my great relief, Hart had a meeting in town and wasn’t home. “How did things go, Sarah?” Mother asked as she watched me pack my valise.
“Oh, fine, Olivia. KatieBee was good company for Trevor. I’m afraid he gets rather lonely in the summer with no other children near by.”
“May Trevor come to the ranch with us, Mother?” I asked.
“Why, of course! I was going to suggest it myself. You’ll be at loose ends with Cary away, and Regina and the boys won’t be here until next week.”
I thanked Sarah politely for letting me stay with her, then hurried downstairs to where Jose and Papa were waiting with the chaise. Papa hugged me for the fourth time. “We missed our Kate.”
“I missed you, too,” I said. “I really did!”
When Mother and Papa came in to say goodnight, they brought a surprise—a blue-enameled music box that played Clair de Lune. “We saw it in a little shop near the hotel where we stayed and thought of you,” Papa said. “It’s very fragile, and most people wouldn’t buy something so expensive for a little girl just eight years old. But you take such good care of your things, Kate. We knew that we could trust you with it.”
“You didn’t have to bring me anything, but I really like it.”
Mother smoothed my hair from my face. “How did things go for you at Hart’s house?”
“Everything was fine,” I said. “Just fine.”
Papa tipped my chin with a well-manicured finger. “Really, Kate?”
“Well—mostly fine.”
“Mostly fine. I see.” I knew that he did, too.
I sighed. “I got into trouble every day. Hart got mad because I waded in the fish pond, and then Trevor and I went uptown for licorice whips and stayed too long, and then we were dancing with the fairies when it rained, and he didn’t like that either, and I spilled my milk twice, so I didn’t drink anymore the whole rest of the time, and. . .” I ran out of breath.
“You never spill, Kate,” Mother said seriously.
“I didn’t mean to, but. . .”
“And perhaps you shouldn’t have gone uptown alone, but. . .”
Papa and Mother looked at each other for a long time. Then Papa tucked the sheet around my shoulders and kissed me. “Well, I’m sure you tried very hard to be good, Kate. It’s difficult to learn new rules overnight.”
“I don’t think Hart likes me,” I said. “And he’s mean to Trevor.”
Mother’s lips came together in a firm line that meant she was irritated at something—or someone. “Go to sleep now, darling. Tomorrow you and Trevor can hunt for the eggs in the barn, and perhaps we’ll take a picnic down to the creek.”
For four days, Trevor and I reveled in the freedom of the ranch. Every morning we gathered the eggs from the barn, scattering chickens and feathers as we scrambled up the ladder to the loft. Once we looked down and saw Jose drinking his coffee just below us and actually dropped an egg smack in his cup. As we ducked down, giggling, we could hear him muttering, “Huevos del cielo? Huevos?”
We tied my hair ribbons on the goats and had a grand parade before the goats ate the ribbons. Mother said that I would have to use my pocket money to buy more or go without.
We hid under the kitchen table and emptied an entire plate of ginger cookies in the time it took Mr. Amos to get another batch from the oven. He caught us, though, when we couldn’t help giggling at him standing there scratching his head over their disappearance. He dragged us out from beneath the cloth, confiscated all the uneaten cookies, and told us firmly that little ladies and gentlemen didn’t help themselves without asking first.
One day it rained, and we ran out to dance with the fairies while Mother and Papa applauded us from the terrace doors.
We persisted in sliding down the banisters, despite repeated scoldings from Mr. Amos who was always the one to catch us. The last time we landed in the foyer, we found him waiting , brandishing a wooden spoon. “Oh, Mr. Amos, you wouldn’t spank us, would you?” I asked.
“I surely would! I catch you comin’ down like that again, and I wear you out!” I had a feeling that he would, too—or, at least, call Mother and give her the spoon. That night Trevor and I snuck downstairs and hid every spoon we could find, and the next morning, we heard Amos muttering in the kitchen about how in the world he was expected to mix up griddle cakes without a spoon.
One afternoon, Papa took us wading in the creek. Trevor ripped his pants on a limb. I convinced him to take them off and hide them in the brush before we got back to the house. When Papa asked Trevor where his pants were, I said, “An alligator ate them.”
Papa didn’t ask any more questions, but Mother did, of course. She finally broke down Trevor’s staunch insistence that the alligator had gobbled down his pants, almost taking him with them, and made him go get them. Then she made me write fifty times, “Alligators do not live in the creek,” and tucked it into my mirror with the comment that there was a time and place for making up stories and a time and place for telling the plain truth.
The next day, climbing on the corral fence—something Cary had forbidden me to do while he was gone—I ripped my dress. Mother made me spend the afternoon in my room mending it. When she came in later to inspect my work, she asked. “How did you tear your dress, Kate?”
“I don’t s’pose you’d believe that a big grizzly bear reached out and grabbed me and nearly carried me off,” I said, not looking at her.
“I suppose I wouldn’t.” She picked up my dress. “You did a very nice job, Kate darling. Now brush your hair and come down to dinner.”
Just before dinner on the last evening, we found a pot of paint that Mr. Amos was mixing for his newest picture and smeared our faces like Indians. Tucking chicken feathers in our hair, we dashed through the house whooping loudly. When we reached the foyer, we realized that the minister and his wife had arrived for dinner—something Mother had told us in the morning but which we’d forgotten.
Mother took one look at us and pointed silently toward the stairs. Unfortunately, the paint didn’t remove easily, so we weren’t entirely clean when we presented ourselves at the table.
That night, unable to fall asleep, we put pillowcases over our heads and ran around squealing until we fell in a dizzy heap. Trevor threw up.
The next evening, Trevor disappeared upstairs shortly before his parents arrived to take him home. When Mother sent me to call him for dinner, I had to report that I couldn’t find him.
“He’ll come out when he gets hungry,” Mother said.
Hart’s face was like a thunder cloud. Sarah just looked sad.
I spilled my milk the first thing.
When Trevor still hadn’t appeared for dessert, Mother looked at me and said, “Kate, do you know where Trevor is?”
“No, Mother. Maybe an alligator or a grizzly bear got him.”
“The truth now, Katherine. . .” Hart began.
“Kate has answered her mother’s question.” Papa’s soft voice sounded unusually authoritative.
Hart flushed.
Papa turned to me. “Do you know why Trevor didn’t come to dinner?”
That much I knew. “He doesn’t want to go home,” I said, avoiding Hart’s face.
“He’s probably been allowed to run wild out here,” Hart said sharply.
I’d never seen Mother look so angry, but when she spoke, her voice was smooth. “What did you do when you were seven years old, growing up here on the ranch, Hart?”
He stared at her.
“I think it’s time we had a talk,” she said, folding her napkin. “In the library.”
Unnoticed, I slipped off my chair and crossed the foyer to the closed door of the library and put my ear against it. Mother’s voice came through clearly.
“I’ve been wanting to have this talk with you for a long time, Hart, but I hesitated to interfere. Nevertheless, I don’t like what I see happening to you—to Sarah—and to my grandson, and so I will have my say. Then you may choose to ignore my words—I can’t stop you.”
“For goodness sakes, Mother, we’re talking about a little boy who has been allowed. . .”
“To run wild? Of course, he has! Let’s see. . .he’s dropped eggs out of the barn loft, stolen cookies from the kitchen, aided and abetted Kate in losing all her hair ribbons, ripped his pants wading in the creek and then insisted—at Kate’s suggestion—that an alligator ate them, slid down the banister repeatedly until threatened with the wooden spoon, got himself soaking wet in the rain while dancing with the fairies, and greeted Reverend and Mrs. Forbes wearing war paint and feathers. Oh, yes, and then he played whirling dervish and threw up, narrowly missing Dan. And, I might add, he’s had a wonderful time! Do you understand now why he doesn’t want to go home where he has to be a perfect little gentleman because his father won’t let him be a little boy?”
“You’re out of bounds, Mother.”
“You’ve always been a perfectionist, and perhaps in your work, that’s important. But now you’re trying to be a perfect man with a perfect wife and a perfect son. It’s not going to happen. Trevor both loves and fears you—and I’m very much afraid that the latter emotion is taking over.”
“Mother, you’ve lost sight of. . .”
“Of how to parent? I don’t think so. Dan and I are totally involved with her, and I think that’s what you resent. Your father was never totally involved with any of his children. He was too busy building the Bancroft Empire and making money. And, he indoctrinated all of you with the idea that I could only be involved in a perfunctory way. Now you see me having a second chance to be the mother I could never be with you—and I believe it rankles you.”
“Mother, you’re wrong.”
Mother sighed. “All right, Hart, have it your own way. Raise Trevor however you think right. But as for Kate—Kate belongs to Dan and me. We won’t have as many years with her as you’ll have with Trevor—but they’ll be satisfying years that will leave her with many good memories. I hope you can say the same about Trevor someday.”
Mother almost tripped over me as she swept out of the library. “Kate, is there any place you might have forgotten to look for Trevor?”
“I looked in his room and up in the attic and in the barn loft. I called and called, but he didn’t answer.”
“I’m sure you did your best, darling.”
“We made a fort in the sewing room with a table and the old quilt you gave us. I forgot to look there.”
“Well, suppose we look there now.” She started for the stairs.
“I feel sad that Trevor isn’t happy like I am, Mother.”
“The two of you have had a happy time this week.”
“But I’ll be happy next week, too,” I said, fighting back more tears. “And Trevor won’t.”
We found Trevor fast asleep under the table in the sewing room. As he stumbled sleepily downstairs, he pleaded to stay on at the ranch. “Please, Grammie! I’ll be good, I promise!”
Hart came out of the library. “Trevor.”
He startled. “Yes, Father.”
“Are you ready to go home?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Then go upstairs and get your things.”
Trevor said all the polite things before he left with his parents, but I noticed that he clung to Papa’s neck just a little longer than usual. Then he was gone. Papa reached for my hand. “You didn’t get your dessert, Kate. It’s butter cream cake.”
“I’m not hungry, Papa.”
“Well, I’d like a piece,” he said. “You’ll keep me company, won’t you?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“I’ll fix a tray, and we’ll take our coffee and dessert to the library,” Mother said. “This will be one of our last really quiet evenings. Regina and the boys will be here in a few days.”
I stayed in the kitchen long enough to put my arms around Mr. Amos’s neck and tell him that I was sorry for stealing the cookies and getting into his paint pot. He patted me and smiled.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have spoken to Hart the way I did,” Mother said as she sipped her coffee.
“You spoke from your heart, Olivia. That’s never wrong.”
I rolled over on the rug so that I could see them. In the lamplight, their white hair looked like the snow on the ranch fence posts on moonlit winter nights. Mother’s words to Hart came back to me. We won’t have as many years with Kate as you’ll have with Trevor. . . Hot tears stung my eyes.
“Why, Kate precious, what’s wrong?” Papa asked.
I shook my head.
“Something, I think. Come and tell Papa.” He held out his arms.
“Kate was listening at the library door while I was speaking with Hart,” Mother said.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” I choked. “I won’t do it again.”
Mother’s eyes were shadowed with sadness. “I suppose you had to understand sometime.”
Papa cuddled me warmly in his lap. “Understand what, Olivia my love?”
“I told Hart quite bluntly that we won’t have as many years with Kate as he will have with Trevor, and that I hoped they’d be as satisfying as ours are and will be. That is what’s troubling you, isn’t it, Kate?”
I buried my face in Papa’s vest as the tears came again.
“Oh, Kate,” Papa said, kissing the top of my head. He used his clean handkerchief to wipe my face, but he couldn’t stop the tears that persisted in rolling down my cheeks and dripping off my chin onto his vest.
“Years aren’t promised to us, Kate,” Mother said softly. “So we must live each day as if it were our last—and with no regrets. I think that’s what you should concentrate on now.”
“Your mother is right, Kate precious. We must get up every morning with the intention of enjoying each moment of the day—and of loving each other completely.”
I tried to stop crying, but the great, sad truth that I’d sensed without completely understanding it, weighed me down. My parents weren’t like other girls’ parents.. As my life unfolded, theirs would come to an end.
From the journal of Dr. Katherine Bancroft Forrester:
For the rest of the years I had with them, I would put my hand over the face of the clock, knowing that I couldn’t stop time—but denying its passage nonetheless.
Mother’s words to Hart had the desired effect. By the next summer, there was a difference in Trevor’s relationship with his father. My own relationship with Hart, while never the same as with Cary and Regina, flourished in later years. He admitted to me, when I was an adult, that he had resented my coming—at first because Mother and Papa had disregarded his advice—but more because he saw me receiving from Papa what he had never gotten from his own father—unconditional love with no strings attached. I was free to be myself in a way that he had never been.
When his father died, Trevor said that there was no man he ever admired more. Speaking for the family at Hart’s funeral, he said that being “Hart Bancroft’s boy”—despite the fact that he was now a judge on the state supreme court—was the highest accolade he could ever want. After the service, when he introduced me to someone as “Hart Bancroft’s youngest sister”, I, too, felt very proud.
