Death Coming Up the Hill Read online

  or saying a word.

  Dad put the paper

  down and sighed. “I am tired of

  your mother’s protests.”

  ★ ★ ★

  Mom has always been

  sensitive, smart, and involved.

  She cries when she reads

  about the deaths in

  Vietnam, and the racist

  murders in the South,

  and anything else

  that shows people at their worst.

  She liked to tell me,

  “The Beatles are right,

  Ashe: all you need is love.” When

  she’d say that, Mom looked

  a starving kind of

  lonely. I knew she meant that

  America and

  the rest of the world

  would be better off if love

  somehow trumped hatred,

  but I also knew

  she wanted love for herself.

  Even though she lived

  with me and Dad, she

  was lonely, and no amount

  of activism

  could fill the awful

  emptiness that made her yearn

  for true, lasting love.

  February 1968

  Week Six: 400

  Mr. Ruby pinned

  a newspaper photo on

  the bulletin board.

  It wasn’t a stock

  picture of atrocities:

  no naked corpses

  littered the jungle

  floor, no burned-out huts smoldered

  with napalm. No dead

  bodies were in sight,

  but it was a scene of death

  caught right in the act.

  A Vietnamese

  police chief stood with his back

  to the camera;

  his right arm was raised,

  holding a pistol inches

  from a skinny kid’s

  head. The kid wore a

  baggy plaid shirt, and his hands

  were tied behind his

  back. The cop looked as

  quiet as the empty street

  behind them, and the

  fog of war cast a

  haze over the buildings in

  the background. The kid’s

  eyes were closed, and the

  side of his head looked flattened,

  as if a sudden

  burst of air had smacked

  him. Though I couldn’t see the

  bullet, I knew I

  was witnessing an

  execution in Saigon.

  In the photograph

  a Vietnamese

  soldier looked on, smiling. The

  looks of anguish, joy,

  and businesslike death

  in that photo made me feel

  sick to my stomach.

  ★ ★ ★

  Nothing good lasted

  at home. Mom attended an

  anti-war rally

  again, and Dad flipped

  out. Even upstairs in my

  hideout, I could hear

  the yelling. But last

  night was different. Mom used

  to stand up to Dad,

  to throw it right back

  at him, but the only voice

  I heard was Dad’s, and

  he was really cranked.

  There’d be a lull in his storm,

  and I’d listen for

  Mom to shout back, but

  nothing. I heard nothing. A

  terrifying thought

  seized me. Had he hit

  her? Was she hurt? In the past,

  nothing could silence

  Mom. I crept to my

  door, listening and waiting.

  And then Dad’s roaring

  returned, and I felt

  a weird kind of relief. Not

  because of his rage,

  but because it meant

  that Mom was okay. I mean,

  even Dad wouldn’t

  scream at someone who’s

  unconscious. Mom was still there,

  I knew that, but she

  wasn’t fighting back,

  at least not the way she used

  to. Something had changed.

  February 1968

  Week Seven: 543

  I was six years old

  when I realized that my

  parents didn’t love

  each other. Dad and

  I were playing catch in the

  backyard, and Mom sat

  on the patio

  reading a book. It took a

  little while to get

  the hang of it, but

  pretty soon I caught every

  ball Dad tossed to me.

  “That’s my boy,” he said,

  and patted my head. I leapt

  into his arms, like

  a puppy, and he

  hugged me. While in his embrace

  I pleaded, “Mom, come

  on!” She must have seen

  my eagerness, so she set

  her book down and stood

  next to us. I looped

  one arm around Dad’s neck and

  reached my other arm

  around Mom’s. Feeling

  their love for me, I tugged to

  pull them closer, to

  knit us into a

  tight group hug, but Dad leaned right

  and Mom leaned left, and

  I spanned the distance

  between them like a bombed-out

  bridge. The love I had

  felt fell into the

  gulf between them, and I knew

  they loved me, but not

  each other. That’s a

  crummy thing to learn when you’re

  only six years old.

  ★ ★ ★

  So I grew up in

  divided territory,

  a home with clearly

  defined boundaries

  that my parents rarely crossed.

  Most of the time we

  lived under a cease-

  fire interrupted by

  occasional flare-

  ups. Sadly, the key

  members of my family

  couldn’t hold

  together, so my

  heart was torn, equal shares of

  love for Mom and Dad.

  February 1968

  Week Eight: 470

  On the board, Mr.

  Ruby had “Orangeburg, South

  Carolina” and

  had written below

  that: “3: 17, 18,

  and 19.” I knew

  those weren’t the weekly

  Vietnam casualties,

  but they had to be

  important somehow.

  What happened in Orangeburg?

  That night, I went to

  the Tempe Public

  Library to see what I

  could find about it.

  ★ ★ ★

  The library was

  quiet when I entered, and

  the librarian

  shot me a look that

  said I better make sure it

  stayed that way. Nodding,

  I headed to the

  newspaper shelf that had a

  couple weeks’ worth of

  The New York Times in

  tidy stacks and started to

  go through them. It took

  a while, but I found

  a small article about

  a riot started

  by some Negro kids

  because they weren’t allowed in

  a segregated

  bowling alley. They

  commenced making trouble, and

  when the cops showed up,

  the mob threw rocks and

  bricks, and those Southern police

  don’t put up with that

  stuff, especially

  from Negroes, so they started

  shooting people.
When

  it was all over,

  twenty-eight people were hurt

  and three people were

  dead: eighteen-year-old

  Samuel Hammond, Jr.;

  a nineteen-year-old

  kid by the name of

  Henry Ezekial Smith;

  and a boy about

  my age, Delano

  Herman Middleton, who was

  only seventeen.

  I set the paper

  down and wondered what could make

  a bunch of people

  mad enough to start

  rioting when they knew the

  streets were patrolled by

  trigger-happy cops

  looking for an excuse to

  punish protestors.

  Blacks had it lousy,

  especially in the South,

  but did they really

  think a riot would

  make things better? Buried deep

  in the Times, like it

  didn’t matter, the

  story made me realize

  Vietnam wasn’t

  the only place where

  Americans were getting

  killed. It’s happening

  here at home, too, but

  no one is counting the ghosts

  sprouting on our soil.

  March 1968

  Week Nine: 542

  To Dad, the news was

  like church, and Walter Cronkite

  was its pastor. But

  after last Tuesday’s

  special report, Dad stared at

  the TV. “I’ll be

  a son of a bitch,”

  he said over and over.

  Surprise and anger

  rocked him, but Mom looked

  jubilant. Smiling like she’d

  won a victory,

  she stood up, winked at

  me, and went to the kitchen

  to finish cleaning

  up while Dad sat stunned

  by Cronkite’s betrayal of

  America. I

  agreed when Cronkite

  said we should leave Vietnam,

  “not as victors, but

  as honorable

  people who lived up to their

  promise to defend

  democracy, and

  did the best they could.” He was

  right. It was time for

  us to end the war.

  How many had already

  died? How many more

  would die if we kept

  fighting? How much more blood would

  it take to conquer

  a Southeast Asian

  country on the other side

  of the world? If the

  war didn’t end soon,

  would my own blood help pay the

  price of Vietnam?

  March 1968

  Week Ten: 509

  A new girl showed up

  in Mr. Ruby’s class. Tall,

  with straight blond hair that

  hung past her shoulders—

  and gorgeous without trying.

  White peace signs and doves

  covered her tie-dyed

  tee shirt, and while our teacher

  signed her admit slip,

  she looked around the

  room like she owned the place. No

  shyness. No fear. Just

  confidence. Plenty

  of confidence. When Mr.

  Ruby finished, he

  handed her the slip

  and pointed at me. “Take that

  desk behind Ashe.” My

  heart thumped when she walked

  down the row and took her seat.

  I’d never seen a

  high school girl like her.

  She looked like a goddess, a

  tall, beautiful blond

  goddess. I wanted

  to turn around and talk to

  her, to look at her,

  but Mr. Ruby

  must have read my mind. “Ashe, you’ll

  get to know your new

  classmate later, but

  now you need to focus on

  history, okay?”

  And then he started

  writing on the chalkboard. But

  all I remember

  from that class is the

  stunning look of the new girl,

  her perfume, and my

  hunger to find out

  why I felt like a magnet

  attracted to steel.

  ★ ★ ★

  Angela Turner

  was the girl’s name, and she was

  from Los Angeles,

  “L.A.,” she called it.

  Like me, she was the only

  kid at home; unlike

  me, she wasn’t her

  family’s only offspring.

  She had a brother

  in Vietnam. When

  I heard that, I felt ashamed

  by the “Hell no, I

  won’t go” tee shirt I

  had worn to school that day, but

  then I remembered

  that she was dressed like

  a hippie, and it surprised

  me that she would be

  anti-war with a

  brother stuck in Vietnam.

  The newspapers can’t

  print everything, but

  I could read between the lines,

  and I’d seen enough

  news clips and photos

  to know it was absolute

  hell, hell on earth. If

  I had a brother

  in Vietnam, what would I

  do? Probably I

  would oppose the war

  but support him as much as

  I possibly could.

  Unfortunately,

  I didn’t have a brother

  or sister to think

  about. I never

  had anyone share my room,

  my parents, my life.

  I grew up in a

  house that was quiet as a

  graveyard, except for

  the occasional

  explosions that ripped through our

  lives without warning.

  March 1968

  Week Eleven: 336

  Mr. Ruby’s eyes

  turned red and watery when

  he told us about

  the Tet Offensive.

  “They caught us by surprise, and

  we’ve lost too many”—

  his voice trembled, and

  we all listened, dead silent,

  while he took a deep

  breath and continued—

  “far too many of our boys

  there.” The sorrow on

  his face and in his

  voice paralyzed everyone.

  He looked down at the

  floor while, spellbound by

  his emotion, we waited

  for what would come next.

  He started crying.

  Standing in front of us with

  tears streaming down his

  cheeks, Mr. Ruby

  looked around, his eyes burning

  into us. “It’s a

  shame, you know, a damn

  shame that we’re in a stupid

  war that has led to

  senseless suffering

  for the civilians and the

  soldiers on both sides.”

  Then he went silent,