Part 8

His voice was shaking. "I said yes. I'm saying it out loud, right here, so I can never take it back. I'm sorry, Mama." My grandmother looked at her son for a long time. Then she took his hand. The sun came up over the pecan trees. "Mitchell," she said. "It's time." She walked out to the flagpole, with my father beside her, and handed him the rope. Together, they raised the flag. A hundred and forty people stood still and watched it climb. The bikers raised their flags too. My soldiers saluted. Chad Sizemore got in his truck and drove away. Nobody watched him go. I stood under the flagpole as the sun went down behind the pecan trees. She lowered the flag herself. Then the three of us folded it together. Thirteen folds. My father's hands were clumsy, so she guided them with hers. When it was a tight triangle of blue and stars, she held it for a moment. Then she put the end of the rope in my hand. "When I'm gone, you raise it," she said. "Every morning. Until he comes home." "Yes, ma'am," I said. I couldn't say anything else. Grandpa Jimmy's note is in a frame in her living room now, next to the photo stamped SEP 67. Here's how the rest of it turned out. Two weeks later, the homeowners of Stonebridge held a special meeting. Almost every house came. They voted Chad Sizemore off the board. The new board canceled every fine against my grandmother, Mrs. Dolan, and Mrs. Kettering. The four widows filed complaints with the Texas Attorney General's office. Texas consumer protection law has extra penalties when someone targets people over sixty-five. Mabel Hutchins found a lawyer who took her case for free, and she sued to undo the sale of her house. In the spring, Lone Oak Land Partners settled. Mabel moved back home in May. The whole street came out to carry her boxes. My father sold his fishing boat to pay down his debts. He found work with a bigger roofing company. It was hard for him. He did it anyway. Then he did something I didn't expect. He put grab bars in Grandma's bathroom and a railing on her porch steps. He bought her a medical alert button she wears around her neck. And every morning at sunrise, he drives over and has breakfast with her and helps her raise the flag. "Should've been doing that for twenty years," he told me. My grandmother is eighty-three now. Last month, a little boy from the next street stopped his bike at her gate to watch her raise the flag, like the kids used to. She waved him over and showed him how to hold the rope.