Free Flood Friday by Lois Lenski

house go?” he asked.

    Sally suddenly came to her senses. “Well—no,” she said. “Ours is still standing.”
    The others all stared at her, as if having a house was something to be ashamed of. Tommy Dillon looked down his nose at her. “Just water damage, and the house didn’t go?” he asked.
    “Yes,” said Sally.
    “Well, you didn’t feel nothin’ then,” he said flatly.
    “We had to get out in a boat,” said Sally feebly.
    “Huh! That’s nothin’,” said Tommy. “What I want to know is, did you lose every single thing you got? Your bike and all?”
    “No,” said Sally, “we still got our beds upstairs and …”
    “Well,” said Tommy emphatically, “you don’t know much about a flood then.”
    Sally wanted to protest, but could not. Barbara, who had only had water in her cellar, had said nothing, had just listened.
    Values were twisted, somehow. Instead of a tragedy, losing one’s home had become something to be proud of. As with the adults, so it was with the children. The people who lost everything became heroes and achieved prestige. They would hardly speak to those who still had homes, even though those homes had been badly damaged.
    The children began to boast of their losses.
    “We lost two bikes,” said Jerry Nelson, “mine and my sister’s.”
    “My mother lost her marriage ring,” said Carol Rosansky. “She kept it in the top drawer of her bureau in a jewelry box. The whole bureau went.”
    “Our mother lost her Bible and her wedding picture and her cedar chest,” said Ray Marberry, who had come up.
    “And our daddy lost his projector that cost a hundred dollars,” said Ray’s brother Ralph.
    “Huh!” said Tommy Dillon. “That’s nothin’. We lost everything we ever had except the clothes on our backs. And our whole family—all nine of us—were rescued by a helicopter !”
    It was Barbara Boyd who had the courage to speak up.
    “You’re not the only one, Tommy Dillon,” she said. “My daddy said over ninety families in this town alone lost their homes and everything.”
    “Is that so ! ” said Tommy.
    Barbara turned to David Joruska. “Where are you living now, David?”
    “At Lakewood Acres,” said David.
    “Where’s that?” asked Sally.
    “Over at West Hartford,” said David.
    Tommy turned on David. “Are you living in that old Army barracks project?” he asked. “There’s not even a decent sewer there, and you have to pay $48 a month. In winter you freeze and in summer you bake.”
    David said quietly, “It’s better’n nothing. All my friends are over there—all the River Bend kids. They’re going to send a bus to bring us back to our own school, as soon as school starts.” David paused, then went on, “The only thing I don’t like about it, my dog died of distemper there. He drank some flood water. That first night after we got there, they told me my dog was dead. My father and mother were sorry too. They liked him. I carried him out in my arms.”
    Nobody said anything. We still have Rusty, thought Sally, remembering how the dog had jumped to the window sill when they were getting out.
    David turned to Tommy, “Where you living now, Tommy?”
    Sally wanted to know too. “You went to Vermont to your grandfather’s, didn’t you, Tommy?”
    “We never got there,” said Tommy in a low voice. “Couldn’t make it—all the roads was washed out.”
    “Where did you go then?” asked Barbara.
    “The Army men never stopped at Red Brick Road to let us off the duck, like they said they would,” answered Tommy. “They took us clear over to that school and then to that crazy barracks project where David lives. My Dad didn’t like it there, so some friends of his found us a Girl Scout cabin to stay in. It’s cold there, though, at night. It’s right in the dark damp woods and there’s no stove. So we’re just camping. ” He stopped for a minute, then went on bravely, “We’re gonna be living in a trailer by Monday. The Red Cross