Chapter 22

A hooded truck rolled in.

The truck was painted a greeny brown, the color of a rotten olive. It didn’t arrive alone. Two more trucks come too.

“It’s the National Guard,” somebody said.

The soldiers were real young. Not too many years older than I was, with faces that hadn’t much used a razor. They wore big orange boots, wraparound leggings, wing pants, high collars above a row of dull buttons, topped off with what appeared to be half a helmet. One bystander told me their rifles was Spring-fields.

They marched in lines, arms all swinging, for close to five minutes, as though they was fixing to git our attention. Then they broke ranks, stacked their arms, and smoked. Or chewed.

I didn’t know why they’d come, and neither did any of us who stood watching.

“Hyacinth, how come the National Guard’s here?”

She shook her head. “Dunno. Keep order maybe.”

One olive truck started up its engine, and left, carrying two of the Guardsmen.

Tar and I followed the National Guard as they marched again, this time without rifles. All a Guardsman carried now was a brown stick. I heard one of the soldiers call it a riot club. It looked hard enough to smart. Each Guardsman had a box pack strapped on his back. When it come time to eat, the soldiers opened the top flap and pulled out bread slices wrapped in gray paper, then ate. One of the soldiers wasn’t feeling so hungry so he tossed me his portion. Lady Luck and I ate it quick.

The Guard put up two tents, poles straight up, pounded in tent pegs, and tightened all the ropes. The tents were the same drabby color as the trucks.

Dirty tan.

The Red Crossers come to visit, and talked, pointing at the rest of us plain people without uniforms, and talked a lot more.

But then the National Guard gold-bar officer came over, saluted, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, your National Guard is reporting here for duty.” He laughed. “I’m not quite certain where here exactly is, but here we are. My name is Lieutenant Field. We’re here to protect you, your children, your livestock, and all property real or personal, by martial law.”

“Soldier boy,” said a woman, “we don’t got a anything to steal.”

We laughed.

So did the young officer. “I’m just a second lieutenant,” he said. “All I do is obey orders. Because if Captain Blanton tells me to keep order, that is what my platoon and I do.” He saluted once more, smiled, and left.

I followed, and so did Tar. Noticing us, Lieutenant Field fished two small pieces of chocolate out of the breast pocket of his tunic and gave Tar Calhoun and me a free treat. It was a wow thing to eat. “Thank you, sir,” I said.

“Say, you’re a very polite youngster. Do you mind telling me your name?”

“Arly… Arly Poole.”

“And his name?”

“Oh, this here’s Tar. Tar Calhoun. He don’t actual say a awful much, because he got washed here, jaybird naked, all the way from Moore Haven.”

Lieutenant Field stopped smiling. “Just yesterday,” he telled us, “my platoon and I visited Moore Haven. It is quite near here.” He sighed. “Or rather, its remains.” The officer shook his head. “Horrible. I never realized what a hurricane could do to a little city. It’s a bug beneath a boot.”

The officer sat on the truck’s tailgate, and then pulled Tar and me up to sit on either side of him. Tar Calhoun moved right away quick, so I’d be between him and the lieutenant.

“I don’t bite,” Lieutenant Field telled Tar.

“He’s shy,” I then explain. “Leastwise, that’s what Hyacinth usual says. He’s not afraid. Only shy.”

“Who is Hyacinth?”

“She’s … well, she’s sort of our … our mama.”

The lieutenant bit his lips.

“Are you boys … orphans?”

“No,” I said. “Not for sure. I got me a letter, so’s I can go live in Moore Haven.”

The officer put a hand on my shoulder.

“Arly, I hate to say this, but somebody ought to give you the facts. And here they are.” He swallowed. “Hardly anyone is alive in Moore Haven.”

“Nobody at all?”

He shook his head. “Very few. It’s a nightmare of wet death. I was here two years ago, in 1926. And it was dreadful even then. The water in Moore Haven was over ten feet deep, but briefly. And even so, more than a hundred people drowned.”

“How come you got saved?”

“I was in Clewiston, southeast of here, when the 1926 hurricane came. It destroyed Miami. I was staying with my mother, father, and sister at the Clewiston Inn, which had recently been built.”

I waited for the officer to remember.

“It rained, Arly. Lake Okeechobee was very high, and deeper than safety would allow. I listened to some of the old-timers in Clewiston, men and women who were friends of my parents, tell us about the recent floods.”

“What floods?”

“In Moore Haven, only six years ago, the flood waters were knee-deep due to excessive rainfall. That was 1922. The town flooded again in 1923. Nobody seemed to sense that the danger was building. Lake Okeechobee was a overfilled bomb of water, ready to be ignited by a major hurricane. And, as you know, it came.”

“I don’t understand it all,” I said, “or how it sudden come to happen so fast. How did it?”

Lieutenant Field jumped up, fetched a white tin washbasin, filled it at one of the truck’s water barrels, and returned to Tar and me.

“Picture this, if you will.” He set the basin on the flat tailgate. “Lake Okeechobee, because of years and years of generous rainfall, became a basin full of water. Filled to its brim. In fact, overflowing. So, here comes the hurricane, one of the largest and fiercest ever officially recorded, anywhere. A lot of hurricanes begin near Africa, and I presume ours did too. Now, then, the powerful wind, plus a lot more rainfall that comes along with it, raises the water level here, where we are now, at the southwest bank of Okeechobee.”

“What happened?”

“Arly, it’s as if a giant hand, or unforeseen force, tilted the basin. That’s what a wind storm can do. And over goes the basin, the lake, all over Moore Haven.”

Without warning, the officer dumped the basin at me and Tar. We jumped off the tailgate to stay dry.

“Do you understand, Arly? Do you, Tar?”

We nodded.

“Good. Because now, perhaps, you youngsters can explain it all to me. I’m rather unsure. My parents certainly did not raise me to become an atheist. And I am not. Yet, when I surveyed the community that was once Moore Haven, finding naught except need and wreckage and debris, it all made me wonder how a God in Heaven can allow such a tragedy.”

Lieutenant Field sadly shook his head.

Tar said nothing. He merely stared at the overturned washbasin that had earlier been filled with water. Then, much to my surprise, Tar said something. “Okeechobee,” he said, “dump us a lot mo water’n that.”

The officer smiled. “Indeed so.”

He jumped to the muddy ground. “Now,” he telled Tar and me, “I have my duties to perform. And orders to carry out.” He knelt down to us, to Tar and me, as though the three of us was comrades. “I’m very grateful,” he said, “that the two of you were spared.” He grinned. “Who knows? Perhaps old Lake Okeechobee knows enough to spare the best people, because our Florida deserves a tomorrow. A future generation. A few more little Tars and little Arlys.”

Lieutenant Field stood up tall. “Arly and Tar, I proudly hail you.” He gives us a sharp salute, and then he was inside the truck, barking commands, and was gone.

Tar and I waved goodbye.