Part 3 — Who Harlans Heir Really Was
The city attorney read the line again, and the council chamber went silent. The first name on Harlans list of heirs was Whitlock, and the nameplate in front of Brandon said Whitlock too.
Brandon stared at the paper as if it were written in another language. He said, That is my great grandfather. I knew he gave away some land, but nobody ever told me it was this land.
He could have been angry. He could have said the deed was meant for him, and that if the veterans ever stopped serving veterans, the dirt would be his family to claim. Under the deed, he was right.
Instead, he turned off the slideshow. He looked out at the twelve of us in our caps and said, with his voice a little rough, I called you guests on land that my own family gave you. I am ashamed of that.
I did not say anything. I did not need to. Then the doors in the back opened, and a very old woman came in on the arm of a deputy clerk. Her name was Dorothy Whitlock, ninety one, Harlans daughter.
She walked to the microphone slowly and said, My father gave that land to the men who came home when nobody else would feed them. He would be heartbroken to see a gas pump on the spot where those boys raised the flag.
A gift made with love and a notary stamp holds up better than any rendering on a slide.
The council voted six to zero to drop the truck stop. Brandon seconded the motion himself. The city attorney then drafted a perpetual easement, signed by Dorothy and by the post, protecting the parcel for veteran use for good.
The next Saturday, Brandon came to our pancake breakfast in an apron he had bought for the occasion. He flipped hotcakes for two hours without a word of complaint, and the boys let him have the last of the syrup.
He asked me to teach him the flag ceremony. I showed him how to fold the colors, thirteen folds, with the stars on top. He did it slowly and correctly on his first try.
Dorothy attends every Veterans Day now. The post set a chair in the front row with her name carved on the back, and it is always the first seat taken.
Last spring, we poured a new foundation for the flagpole. Brandon pressed a handprint into the wet concrete next to ours, and he wrote Whitlock beneath it.