Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley, Ron Powers Read Free Book Online Page A

sophomore year the mysterious vandal struck again, writing obscenities on the wall of an outhouse next to the school. The principal launched his inevitable inquisition. When he got to Harlon, the boy nonchalantly allowed that he knew who’d done it, but he wasn’t going to tell. For this, the principal kicked him out of school.
    Harlon, and apparently the whole family, were ready for a change. They moved to the neighboring town of Weslaco, a flat, square speculator’s grid slapped down on the Valley floor. Its name was a crunching of its founding firm, the W. E. Stewart Land Company.
    At Belle’s insistence the other Block children continued at the Adventist school. But Harlon didn’t want to return. He felt he had absorbed all they had to teach him. More important, Harlon was athletically inclined and the Adventist school did not have a sports program. He wanted to make his mark in the sport that attracted the local crowds and created excitement in Weslaco, indeed, in all of Texas: football. Harlon wanted to be in on the action, part of a team.
    Belle didn’t like such talk. She felt Harlon should make an effort to get back into the Adventist school. And football! Well, football was a game of violence and the games were on Friday night, the beginning of the Sabbath, so football was out of the question.
    Belle presented her views forcefully to Harlon, who shrugged noncommittally like all teenage boys who are being told what to do. Belle appealed to Ed to discipline the boy, to focus him back on the church and get his mind off football. Ed, who thought Adventism was all well and good but didn’t take it as literally as Belle, didn’t see the harm in attending a public school. And he was excited by the idea of his son playing football.
    Belle was aghast. They argued, but Ed pointed out that they didn’t have to decide this right away: Because of the difference in the schools’ schedules, Harlon had a seven-month delay before he could enter Weslaco High School. So Ed bought some time and told Belle he’d talk with Harlon as they worked together hauling oil.
     
    A few years earlier, as the Depression deepened, milk prices had sagged. Oil had been discovered forty miles west of McAllen, and Ed had a money-making idea. He bought one, then two, finally four new oil trucks. The Rado refinery in McAllen gave anyone with a truck free gasoline if they’d haul the crude from the oil fields. It made for long, grueling days but Ed was a hard worker with a family to feed.
    As his sons matured, he got every one of them involved in hauling crude oil from the hill-country wells to the refinery in McAllen. So when Harlon had time on his hands and was old enough—before he was old enough, Belle thought—Ed enlisted him as one of his drivers. It was brutal work: long trips several times a week, even weekends.
    Harlon took the remainder of the school year off to haul oil with his father. Belle was alarmed, but Harlon relished the independence and the opportunity to do man’s work. He and his father shared the labor and grew close—“best friends,” as Ed would later say. Harlon was the perfect number-two man, ready to take over when the need arose.
    Ed loved nothing more than Harlon’s company, and he was torn when their months of working together drew to a close. But he couldn’t wait to cheer his most athletic son as he starred on the gridiron.
     
    Belle felt she was losing Harlon—he was the only Block child to leave the Adventist school—so she worked hard to involve him in the daylong Sunday socials—“convenings”—the church held. But Harlon was good-looking and gregarious and attracted the attention of the girls.
    Belle was troubled by what she saw as the waywardness of her son. And she was horrified when Harlon brought home a .22-caliber rifle. A gun in Belle’s home! Harlon’s friends all had guns to shoot rabbits in the fields, and Harlon wanted to have some fun. Belle came home one day to find Harlon