I knew the Ten Commandments and The Golden Rule before I could spell my name on Big Chief tablet paper. Not just memorized, but absorbed—like extra ribs in my chest. I was reminded of the commitment whenever I saw others committing forbidden acts. I recalled friends who sneaked into the cloakroom at school to pop their bubble gum. I remember the gas station man who always told my Aunt Flossie she needed a quart of oil when she didn’t. Flossie would just smile and say, “Thanks, I’m about to get it changed anyway.” I figured her answer was the automotive equivalent to turning the other cheek.

I think I did just fine with my list of Eternal Rules, honoring them to the fullest as the years went by. Yes, all was close to textbook until that one day at Caddo Lake.

It was 1954, and I was twelve. It was one of those summers I returned to East Texas—a short vacation away from my soldier-of-fortune father’s duty station in the wilds of Indonesia. Caddo Lake was a getaway. It was so different from the tropical forests in Java, and the harried and sometimes dangerous life overseas. The lake restored me with its calmness, with its elixir of moss-draped cypress and caramel-colored waters. The glades were so open and inviting, like alleys into a happy realm I had long since lost. I bathed in the coolness of its brakes; I tasted its purity. It was the rekindling of my slumbering spirit.

This day, my Uncle Archie had driven me to the State Park at the lake. He left me with seventy-five cents to buy my lunch at Big Pines Lodge, a ‘river-rat’ sort of fish camp and eatery that stood on the banks of the Cypress River. Soaking up the soft sounds of the whispering pines, I meandered my way down to Big Pines’ pier—a gangplank used for boarding the Caddo Queen. The Queen was a relic of a paddlewheel boat that carried tourists down the river into the main lake. It was a hot August day, and my thoughts drifted back to the advent of another school year, less than a month away. I was reminded that summer was fleeting, like sleep being interrupted by shards of daylight through Venetian blinds. The reality was undeniable. I would soon be returning to Java to rejoin the dozen or so Americans and Dutch kids who attended the Baptist Missionary School there.