To the person who has left the ugly links in our comments....
There are at least two kinds of people you don't fuck with...
Lawyers and Sys Admins.
You hit a double this weekend.
I am going to try an experiment in writing, publishing something I wrote a few years ago.
It's fiction, made up, not based on anything that ever happened.
You could walk across Lake Okeechobee and not get your hair wet, if you picked your path carefully. Pocked with holes ten to twenty feet deep, the greater part of the lake has an average depth of less than four feet. The fresh water grass flats are filled with catfish, bass and shell crackers. In the spring and fall, flocks of migratory birds join the year round residents to darken the sky with their numbers. From the mundane duck and mud hen, to the flamingos and roseatta spoonbills, to herons stalking small prey in the shallows. The spectacular sight of a flock of spoonbills, startled into flight, silhouetted against the orange and blue of a tropical sunrise, the choreographed swing of their wings, rhythmically lifting them all. Gators float, like automated logs, never straying far from their nests, tick birds following close behind, eating the bugs stirred by their passing. Over and through it all, the buzzing of mosquitoes, the low hum creating a soundtrack for the idyllic scene.
Small low islands dot the south edge of the lake, each with a copse of stunted live oak. For years, hunters have used their hog-dogs to catch piglets in the woods to the west and brought them out to these islands by boat, coming back on the weekend with slops and grain, using the isolation of the lake islands as pigpens.
Surrounded by sawgrass and cattails, hidden from view, more goes on there than raising pigs. Telltale wisps of smoke from the occasional still could be seen, the light breeze carrying the sour smell of corn squeezings. In later years, that same breeze has blown the acrid stench of ether from meth labs across the lake, dissipating the fumes and disguising their origins. More than one officer had disappeared, especially game and fish agents, after stumbling onto cat-fisherman supplementing their income with speed or moonshine and determined to never spend a day in jail. The body disposed of in gator holes, their boats found floating, deserted in the middle of the empty lake.
In the thirties, as part of the WPA, a channel was cut from Moorehaven to Pahokee, right through the middle of the open area of the Lake. Dug to allow large boat traffic traveling from the gulf to the Atlantic to avoid the Florida Straight with its reefs and unpredictable weather, it crossed the peninsula from Ft. Myers to West Palm Beach. A channel was dug around the rim and the fill piled high to create a levee along the south shore of the lake. The immediate reason for this massive realignment of nature was the Bean City Disaster of 1923.
In September of that year, a large storm formed off the coast of Africa and gathered strength as it crossed the Atlantic. A force four hurricane when it arrived in the neighborhood of south Florida, it glanced off the east coast, near Miami, and headed out to sea, towards the Bahamas, but never got there. Turning without warning, it made landfall near Jupiter Inlet and bore due west across the state.
Bean City was a town of 6000 people; most of them migrants working on the many truck farms laid out on the rich flood plain south of the lake. Setting seven miles south of Clewiston, it had a small downtown of stores and big houses surrounded by groups of shanties and lean-to's, extended family encampments, and the farms. A railhead on the north side of town provided transportation for winter vegetables grown in the dark soil.
Fresh zucchini, tomatoes and lettuce brought a good price in New York in February, and had made a few fortunes. Planting in the soft dirt was started in September and done mostly by hand, requiring many hands, so the foreman had been hiring and the Okies were crowded into the shanties, hoping for work.
The skies before a hurricane are deceptively calm. Squall lines had passed through all night and the day before that but nothing too unusual for Florida in September. The men had left for the fields, the women, and children just waking when the fringes of the storm came roaring down on them. They had become accustomed to powerful thunderstorms, a common enough occurrence, with wind gusting to seventy miles per hour, a half-hour of fear. Then the sun would emerge, lighting a freshly washed world, scrubbed clean by the wind and rain, so no one thought much as the dark clouds bore down from the east. Another storm, like the one last week and the one the week before.
This turned out to be quite different.
A major hurricane, this storm packed sustained winds of one hundred and seventy miles an hour, was dropping ten inches of rain an hour and was moving very fast. As it hit the slick, warm surface of Lake Okeechobee, it lurched, drunk with heat energy, and dove across the lake, dead on at Bean City.
The eye passed north of the town, bringing the most violent part of the eye wall to bear on the unsuspecting residents. The hurricane force winds pushed the entire contents of the lake out of its confines and threw a ten-foot wall of water, topped by the blasting winds, through Bean City.
The shantytown yielded without any noticeable slowing of the wave, sticks, canvas and human bodies mixed with all the accessories of life. Small tornadoes, spawned by the larger storm, randomly plucked articles, cars, horses, and people, from the mess, lifting them high into the air, to be caught by the gusts and thrown for miles.
The stores and houses of the city center afforded no more shelter than the shanties; all were swept before the storm. The frame buildings had not been built to withstand this onslaught, pine clapboard structures with tin roofs that were designed to provide comfort in the sub-tropical heat. The tin sheeting went first, sucked off by the wind. Once one section tore loose, the others quickly followed. The water poured into the streets, slamming against the buildings, pushing them off their foundations, collapsing the walls. The wind then yanked the siding off and ripped the exposed frames apart, with the rapidly rising currents tilting the remains so the gusts could reach underneath and start the houses rolling. As shards broke loose, the storm grabbed them, creating deadly missiles that cut through anything in their path.
The freight yard, along with all the packinghouses, switch engines and rail cars were smashed, pieces left tumbling in the wind whipped surf. A Steam locomotive, washed from its tracks, slowly sank into the softened earth, the hissing of the water dousing the firebox unheard in the gales.
There were no trees to stop the flow or break the wind, nothing to find shelter behind, no high ground to retreat to, only churning muck and roiling water with the wind snatching the screams out of the throats of the drowning, all sound swallowed by the roaring wind.
The lucky died quickly, smashed or severed by flying debris. Some were crushed in collapsing homes. Most were pulled under and drowned by the undertow, struggling in the black, muddy water, the sky so dark there was no light to swim towards.
It was all over in only six hours, from onset to aftermath. The few survivors came crawling from what little remained of the city and staggered about numbly, too shocked to do more than sob. The winds dropped to a tropical breeze and the clouds parted, allowing the late afternoon sun to peek through. The standing water rapidly receded from the streets, back into the swamps and lake, leaving a scene of total devastation.
Everything that hadn't been shattered, had sunk into the soft loam, leaving tell-tale lumps and humps, here and there, hints of what was buried beneath. Any exposed anchor had gathered a snag of flotsam, a jumbled tangle of remains, both inanimate and formerly animate. Battered human bodies, twisted into strange shapes, lifeless eyes staring at the calm sky, limbs all akimbo.
The spokes in the drive wheels of the locomotive had strained a logjam of corpses from the flood. The roadbed had washed out beside the derailed engine, forming a funnel in the current carrying the bodies, pouring them through the trap. The remains were pressed so tightly against the undercarriage of the over turned train, they did not appear human.
Exact numbers of dead were never compiled, so many complete families disappeared that there was no one to identify the bodies or report someone missing. Complicating the matter, coffins had floated out of the graves at the cemetery, the waves breaking them open, those bodies mixed with the fresh dead. The corpses were gathered and loaded onto flatbed trucks, taken north to higher ground near Sebring and buried in mass graves.
The loss of life was not the disaster that got the project approved. No, it was the loss of revenue the storm caused. Washington politicos didn't get their vegetables that winter and decided that would not be allowed to happen again. There were plenty of Okies, so no one much missed them, but the bankers and farm owners had lost an unsecured investment.
All that remains of Bean City is a gas station, the orange of its old Gulf Oil sign faded in the tropical sun, and a country store selling chewing tobacco and Nehi. Sugar cane fields have replaced the tracks and freight yard, featureless expanses of ten-foot grass cut every mile by dykes. The mass graves remain unmarked and forgotten, over grown meadows that will never be developed, only remembered when a prospective buyer has a them surveyed and rediscovers their history. The official memorial lies south of the Miami River Locks. In the median of US 27 stands a single signpost, alone in the middle of the divided highway, with two city limit signs hanging on it. One sign faces north, the other south.
Bean City
Population
4
The girl sat in front of her fathers hut, carefully weaving the vine fibers into a basket. In and out, she threaded the stems past each other, forming the tight bottom.
"Pay attention to what you are doing, you lazy girl!" The old man shouted as he swatted at her head with the back of his hand "Always day-dreaming about the city! I will take you there and sell you someday! Worthless child!"
She ducked, her hands never missing a stitch, and held her breath, awaiting another swipe from her father. The packed earth was hard against her butt, causing her legs to fall asleep but the threat of his punch kept her from shifting to relive the numbness. The tingling would stop eventually, to be replaced by no sensation at all. Better that than the sting of his hand.
She first noticed the boy when his father stopped to buy some of the dried monkey meat her father offered in the lean-to along the trail to the city. Tall and straight, his dark eyes matched the color of his hair, brown on the border of black. Dressed in a starched white shirt, black slacks and real, closed toe shoes, he stood out among the villagers in their coarse woven wool. The pale red dust of the road stained his pants to the knee and large rings of sweat spread from under his arms. A native of the city, he had never been this far into the mountains.
While his father dickered for lunch, he allowed his gaze to wander to the small woman weaving a monkey basket in front of the doorway to the hovel. A tiny, dark gem, her startling blue eyes met his and swiftly dropped then darted towards her father, looking to see if he had seen. Those eyes, set in that broad brown face, captivated him. Concentrating on her work, she whetted her lips, her tongue flicking in time with her dancing fingers. She had finished the bottom of the basket and had begun forming the sides, leaving wide gaps between the stems.
He walked directly through the shop and approached the girl.
"What are you making?"
She stopped, shocked that he would talk to her, her jaw open and twitching as she tried to answer. "Ah... it is a monkey basket." she stammered. He was so beautiful, smooth skin and straight white teeth, smelling like water flowers.
"What is it for?" At close range, he could see the scars on her hands from too many years of basket making, the tips of her fingers bloody and raw from a childhood of pushing the rough fibers back-and forth.
"We use them to catch the monkeys."
"A monkey couldn't fit in that basket!"
She could not stop herself from laughing at his foolishness. "No, no need for the whole monkey to get inside, only his hand." She reached behind the door and pulled out a finished basket. Tightly woven across the bottom and then up the neck-like opening, the weave is open around the middle "You see, we put a piece of fruit, a mango or banana, into the basket and tie it in a tree. The monkeys come by and see the fruit. They put their hand in the opening and grab the fruit and when they try to remove the fruit..." He had reached into the basket and formed his hand into a fist. Attempting to pull his hand out he found the neck too tight.
"Ah, you have found the secret of the trap."
"Why do they not just let go of the fruit and escape?" He rubbed at the skin of his wrist where the new basket had scraped it.
"Because the monkey is the greediest animal in the forest. He will not let go of the prize for fear that one of the other monkeys will steal it." The girl smiled, showing small white teeth.
"But he cannot eat the fruit, he cannot even get it out of the basket!" Thinking that the peasant girl was making fun of him, the boy became irate. She admired the fire in his eyes.
"Yes, that is true, but he does not believe it to be so. He keeps trying to find a way to get the fruit out, without letting it go." Shaking the confusion off his face, he set his jaw stubbornly and squared his shoulders.
" The hunters come up and club the monkeys and then have to pry the fruit out of their hands to get them out of the trap." She finished.
He looked at the stick of meat his father had handed him and winced. "That is silly. All he has to do is let go and he is free to gather all the other fruit. Why would he hold on like that?"
She smiled sadly, "The fruit in his hand is real, all the other fruit is not."
The city father called to his son and the boy returned to his side. Stopping to check the packs of meat, the beautiful boy turned and waved to the peasant girl, then ran to catch his father.
As they walked down the path towards the city, the girl returned to her weaving, sore fingers picking up speed.