Death Coming Up the Hill (2 page)

every red-blooded

 

man's duty to spill

that blood when America

called on him for it.

 

Mom's an anti-war

dove who gave me a “Hell no,

I won't go!” tee shirt

 

for Christmas, and she'd

convinced Dad and me that I

had to enroll at

 

ASU as soon

as I finished high school. “The

student deferment

 

will keep you out of

the draft,” she said, “and unless

we're really stupid,

 

this war will be done

by the time you graduate.”

Dad didn't mind the

 

deferment. “You can

join the ROTC and

graduate as an

 

officer,” he said.

“The Army needs smart leaders

who can help put an

 

end to the spread of

Communism over in

Vietnam.” But when

 

I thought about the

four hundred seventy-one

guys who died last week,

 

I knew I'd go to

college to
avoid
the war,

not prepare for it.

 

I just hoped the war

ended before I had to

decide, because Dad

 

didn't need any

more ammunition to use

against my mother.

 

Everybody was

talking about the new team

coming to Phoenix.

 

At supper, Dad looked

over the newspaper and

said, “Pro basketball

 

in the desert?” He

shook his head. “It'll be a

huge waste of money.

 

Phoenix will never

have the market to sustain

an NBA team.

 

Besides, basketball's

a black man's game, and we don't

need to go out of

 

our way to attract

more of
them
to the valley.

It's already bad

 

enough with all the

Mexicans we've got to put

up with around here.”

 

Mom stood up and left

without finishing supper

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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?

 

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