Free Death Coming Up the Hill by Chris Crowe Page A

got
    Â 
    to do something, and
    back then, that something had been
    attending protest
    Â 
    rallies in Phoenix
    or over at ASU.
    Most nights she was gone,
    Â 
    and that really burned
    Dad and ignited a war
    at home. I learned how
    Â 
    to navigate the
    no man’s land between them, but
    then for some reason
    Â 
    their tactics changed, and
    instead of battling, they
    ignored each other.
    Â 
    Something on New Year’s
    Eve changed Mom; she seemed to have
    finally found peace.
    â˜…  ★  ★
    How does a guy deal
    with being torn between two
    people he loves? I
    Â 
    knew I was lucky
    that I hadn’t had to choose
    between Mom and Dad.
    Â 
    They’re opposites thrown
    together because of me,
    and they had managed
    Â 
    to keep a shaky
    truce for so many years. But
    it was difficult.
    Â 
    My dad was a flag-
    waving hawk who thought it was
    every red-blooded
    Â 
    man’s duty to spill
    that blood when America
    called on him for it.
    Â 
    Mom’s an anti-war
    dove who gave me a “Hell no,
    I won’t go!” tee shirt
    Â 
    for Christmas, and she’d
    convinced Dad and me that I
    had to enroll at
    Â 
    ASU as soon
    as I finished high school. “The
    student deferment
    Â 
    will keep you out of
    the draft,” she said, “and unless
    we’re really stupid,
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    this war will be done
    by the time you graduate.”
    Dad didn’t mind the
    Â 
    deferment. “You can
    join the ROTC and
    graduate as an
    Â 
    officer,” he said.
    â€œThe Army needs smart leaders
    who can help put an
    Â 
    end to the spread of
    Communism over in
    Vietnam.” But when
    Â 
    I thought about the
    four hundred seventy-one
    guys who died last week,
    Â 
    I knew I’d go to
    college to
avoid
the war,
    not prepare for it.
    Â 
    I just hoped the war
    ended before I had to
    decide, because Dad
    Â 
    didn’t need any
    more ammunition to use
    against my mother.

January 1968
    Week Five: 406
    Â 
    Everybody was
    talking about the new team
    coming to Phoenix.
    Â 
    At supper, Dad looked
    over the newspaper and
    said, “Pro basketball
    Â 
    in the desert?” He
    shook his head. “It’ll be a
    huge waste of money.
    Â 
    Phoenix will never
    have the market to sustain
    an NBA team.
    Â 
    Besides, basketball’s
    a black man’s game, and we don’t
    need to go out of
    Â 
    our way to attract
    more of
them
to the valley.
    It’s already bad
    Â 
    enough with all the
    Mexicans we’ve got to put
    up with around here.”
    Â 
    Mom stood up and left
    without finishing supper
    or saying a word.
    Â 
    Dad put the paper
    down and sighed. “I am tired of
    your mother’s protests.”
    â˜…  ★  ★
    Mom has always been
    sensitive, smart, and involved.
    She cries when she reads
    Â 
    about the deaths in
    Vietnam, and the racist
    murders in the South,
    Â 
    and anything else
    that shows people at their worst.
    She liked to tell me,
    Â 
    â€œThe Beatles are right,
    Ashe: all you need is love.” When
    she’d say that, Mom looked
    Â 
    a starving kind of
    lonely. I knew she meant that
    America and
    Â 
    the rest of the world
    would be better off if love
    somehow trumped hatred,
    Â 
    but I also knew
    she wanted love for herself.
    Even though she lived
    Â 
    with me and Dad, she
    was lonely, and no amount
    of activism
    Â 
    could fill the awful
    emptiness that made her yearn
    for true, lasting love.

February 1968
    Week Six: 400
    Â 
    Mr. Ruby pinned
    a newspaper photo on
    the bulletin board.
    Â 
    It wasn’t a stock
    picture of atrocities:
    no naked corpses
    Â 
    littered the jungle
    floor, no burned-out huts smoldered
    with napalm. No dead
    Â 
    bodies were in sight,
    but it was a scene of death
    caught right in the act.
    Â 
    A Vietnamese
    police chief stood with his back
    to the camera;
    Â 
    his right arm was raised,
    holding a pistol inches
    from a skinny