Some Kind of Heroes — William Williamson

On one of the postage stamp size islands in the Florida Keys, forming a hundred and twenty-mile crescent chain, separating the Atlantic Ocean from the Florida Bay, is a small tropical island about four miles long and barely a half of a mile wide. The actual dimensions and population of the island does not matter. It was a tiny island to the local native Conchs who had lived there for all of their lives and worked there as adults. However, to the children growing up on Matecumbe, the island was a very big, adventurous, unexplored continent. The year was 1969. The second summer of love. The country was at war. So were the children of Matecumbe.

Henry Roberts, his two brothers and four other boys are playing war on twenty acres of tropical hammock densely shaded by Jamaican Dogwood, Gumbo-Limbo and Pigeon Plum trees that sloped down to a practically virgin slice of unspoiled sandy beach where The Lignum Vitae Inn was built sixty years ago standing proudly in its glory days overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

Thirty-four years after the Labor Day Hurricane destroyed the inn, towering Coconut palms, flowering hibiscus, colorful ixora shrubs, flaming rampant clusters of purple bougainvillea along with mango, guava, sea grape and other exotic fruit trees had grew back and flourished on the grounds. The boy's parents all had different rules they expected them to follow when they were outside playing war in the wooded hammock. They weren't allowed to go swimming in the ocean. Watch out for Portuguese man-a-wars washed up on the beach. Don't be climbing Poisonwood trees. Check in at lunchtime. Don't be playing with knives down there. Stay away from the small white cottage where two men lived who was caretakers for the property. Boys will be boys. They didn't listen.