Friendly Fire by C. D. B.; Bryan Read Free Book Online Page A

of the Mullens, spoke of them as “hard workers.” They appreciated how difficult life had been for Peg having to take care of Gene’s sick parents and four young kids. They saw, too, that she did not give herself any rest when Gene’s parents died in 1960. Instead, to help pay for the hospital and funeral expenses, Peg returned to work. She became an executive secretary for an advertising specialty business in Waterloo. Peg had always been politically active in the local Democratic Party; she attended every state convention and always took time off to meet each candidate who came into town. But she continued active in volunteer work as well and remained teaching catechism classes at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church. By this time Gene had worked his way up to becoming a quality control inspector at John Deere.
    The Mullen children, too, were well liked. They stayed out of trouble, got good grades, were popular with their classmates. Peg and Gene Mullen are innately generous, decent people, and they brought up their children to believe in the same basic values with which they themselves had been brought up. When the Mullens spoke of themselves, they described themselves as being “average” or “typical” or “good, solid citizens” in no way different from others in their neighboring communities. They would explain their behavior and responses as that of the “working class,” as “farmers,” and if they identified themselves as representative of any groups, it was as “Catholics,” as “Democrats,” “Irish-Americans,” or “Iowans” and as being from a background typical of the “Silent Majority.”
    The Mullens did not avoid controversy; it is just that in a community like La Porte City controversial situations rarely arose. When the Mullens did discover something wrong, however, they tried their best to stop it.
    In 1965 Peg Mullen campaigned for election to the local school board. Peg is a very handsome woman with high, prominent cheekbones, a firm jaw and slightly upturned nose. She wears her gray-streaked hair short. Her face reflects enormous strength and determination, and yet, when she smiles, which is often, all that toughness shatters, and her blue eyes glisten and her cheeks dimple like a child’s. There is none of Gene’s Irish softness in Peg’s voice. She has a hard, abrasive accent, thin, but not flat, an accent which comes down heavily on the R s. When she is angry, her voice rises sharply and her consonants rip the air about her.
    Peg is a far more impatient, outspoken person than Gene, and when her aggressiveness and tenacity are directed toward local issues, she can precipitate the sort of small-town antagonisms that endure. Peg ran for the school board because she opposed the rising busing budget, because she discovered irregularities in the school-lunch program and because La Porte’s taxes were the highest in the state. Out of the $30-an-acre tax rate, $25 went to the local nonparochial schools. Since a school board generally reflects the politics and mood of its community, and since La Porte is Republican and conservative, Protestant and traditional, the sort of small town in which it is considered “imprudent to make waves,” Peg Mullen lost.
    The Mullens next became involved with the local telephone company. A neighbor complained to Gene that some board members of the telephone company were calling up some of the older people in town and offering them $50 a share for their stock. The bylaws prevented any person from owning more than one share of stock. The board members would then place their new stock, worth actually six to eight times that much, in their grandchildren’s or children’s or relatives’ names. Gene Mullen went into La Porte City and told them that if they didn’t stop, he would go to the state attorney’s office. As a result of Gene’s