by Chris Crowe
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
April 1969
January 1968
January 1968
January 1968
January 1968
January 1968
February 1968
February 1968
February 1968
March 1968
March 1968
March 1968
March 1968
March 1968
April 1968
April 1968
April 1968
April 1968
May 1968
May 1968
May 1968
May 1968
May 1968
June 1968
June 1968
June 1968
June 1968
July 1968
July 1968
July 1968
July 1968
August 1968
August 1968
August 1968
August 1968
August 1968
September 1968
September 1968
September 1968
September 1968
October 1968
October 1968
October 1968
October 1968
November 1968
November 1968
November 1968
November 1968
November 1968
December 1968
December 1968
December 1968
December 1968
February 1969
May 1969
May 1969
Historical Note
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright © 2014 by Chris Crowe
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhco.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Crowe, Chris.
Death coming up the hill / Chris Crowe.
pages cm
Summary: Ashe Douglas keeps a weekly record of historical and personal events in 1968, the year he turns seventeen, including the escalating war in Vietnam; assassinations, rampant racism, and rioting; his first girlfriend; his parents’ separation; and a longed-for sister.
ISBN 978-0-544-30215-0
[1. Novels in verse. 2. Coming of age—Fiction. 3. Vietnam War, 1961–1975—Fiction. 4. Social change—Fiction. 5. Family problems—Fiction. 6. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 7. United States—History—1961–1969—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.5.C79De 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2013042812
eISBN 978-0-544-30174-0
v1.1014
976
for the 16,592
in 1968
April 1969
Week Fifteen: 204
There’s something tidy
in seventeen syllables,
a haiku neatness
that leaves craters of
meaning between the lines but
still communicates
what matters most. I
don’t have the time or the space
to write more, so I’ll
write what needs to be
remembered and leave it to
you to fill in the
gaps if you feel like
it. In 1968,
sixteen thousand five
hundred ninety-two
American soldiers died
in Vietnam, and
I’m dedicating
one syllable to each soul
as I record my
own losses suffered
in 1968, a
year like no other.
January 1968
Week One: 184
The trouble started
on New Year’s Eve when Mom came
home late. Way too late.
Worry about Mom—
and about Dad—knotted my
gut while Dad paced the
living room like a
panther ready to pounce. “Where
the hell is she, Ashe?
Those damn activists . . .
I shouldn’t have let her go.
Well, that’s the last time,
the absolute last
time she mixes with trouble-
makers. It ends now!”
He looked at me like
it was somehow my fault, but
I knew better. He
had to blame someone,
and I became an easy
target. But it made
me angry at him—
and at Mom, too. Why couldn’t
they just get along?
What I wished for the
new year was peace at home, in
Vietnam, and the
world. A normal life.
Was that too much to ask for?
The door creaked open,
Mom stepped in, and Dad
pounced. I crept up the stairs, closed
my door, and tuned out.
★ ★ ★
Later, Mom tapped on
my door and came in, timid
as a new kid late
to school. And she smiled
even though she’d just had a
knock-down, drag-out with
Dad. There was a light
in her that I hadn’t seen
in a long, long time.
She wanted to check
on me, to make sure I was
okay, to tell me
that May 17,
1951, was the
best day of her life
because it was the
day I was born, and even
though things had been rough,
she had no regrets.
Not one. Then she hugged me and
whispered that maybe,
just maybe, there was
light at the end of this dark
tunnel. “You never
know what’s coming up
the hill,” she said, then left me
alone, worrying.
January 1968
Week Two: 278
Even though he won’t
admit it, I blew up my
dad’s football career.
They say he had a
future in the NFL,
but his senior year
at the U of A
he quit football because he
got my mom pregnant.
Mom’s parents disowned
her, and to them, she and I
no longer exist.
She has a scrapbook
filled with photos and clippings
of Dad when he played
defensive back for
the Arizona Wildcats,
and my favorite
action photo shows
him leaping and reaching for
an interception.
The camera had caught
him right when he snagged the ball.
His head’s back, and you
can’t see his face, but
you can see his taut forearms
knotted with muscle
and the big number
seventeen on his jersey.
Even as a kid,
I recognized the
strength and grace in that picture,
and I knew he’d been
special, talented,
and I made up my mind to
be like him one da
y.
Maybe I’d never
be as good as he was, but
I thought that if I
worked hard and became
a great athlete, somehow that
would make up for his
loss. It turned out I
was wrong. I never had to
prove anything to
Dad. His love for me
was as sure and solid as
the U.S. Marines.
Too bad he didn’t
feel that way about Mom. He
resented her for
the mistake that killed
his football career, the same
mistake that forced him
to marry her. Back
in 1950, things worked
that way: if a guy
knocked up a girl, he
married her to make it right.
It doesn’t happen
like that nowadays.
It’s 1968, and
young people believe
in free love, and there
are plenty of ways to take
care of a mistake.
By getting married,
Mom and Dad did the right thing,
and they have been good
parents to me, and
I’m grateful to them both for
putting up with each
other for my sake.
I wish there was some way I
could make it right, make
them right, but ending
the long, cold war between them
was as likely as
a black man being
elected president of
the United States.
It’s not going to
happen, but, man, wouldn’t it
be great if it did?
January 1968
Week Three: 218
Mr. Ruby, my
U.S. history teacher,
wrote a number on
the board to begin
every class. Today it was
“two hundred eighteen.”
His gray hair was slicked
back, like always, and his shirt-
sleeves were rolled up, like
always. The faded
Marine tattoo inside his
wrist showed while he wrote
on the board. Then he
asked, “What’s the significance
of this number?” I
didn’t respond, but
I knew exactly what it
meant. I read the news.
Every Thursday, The
Phoenix Gazette reported
the casualties
from the previous
week. But nobody in class
knew that. They guessed all
kinds of dumb answers,
and no one even came close.
They don’t like thinking
about dead soldiers
in Vietnam; neither did
I, but I couldn’t
help looking for that
news article every week
and skimming it for
the casualty
report. Usually it’s
just numbers, but if
some guy from Tempe
or Mesa or Phoenix was
killed, they’ll mention his
name and maybe print
a photo of him dressed in
his uniform and
staring like he’s dead
serious. Well, now he’s just
dead. Looking into
his steely gaze made
me feel hollow, sick, and sad.
I looked anyway.
January 1968
Week Four: 471
Things mellowed out at
home. Motorola kept Dad
busy, and Mom stopped
attending rallies
at ASU. She’s not a
hippie or some kind
of freak, she just feels
too much. What’s going on in
Vietnam sickens
her, and what’s going
on in America makes
her sick, too. Well, it
doesn’t really make
her sick, it makes her mad. And
when she’s mad, she’s got
to do something, and
back then, that something had been
attending protest
rallies in Phoenix
or over at ASU.
Most nights she was gone,
and that really burned
Dad and ignited a war
at home. I learned how
to navigate the
no man’s land between them, but
then for some reason
their tactics changed, and
instead of battling, they
ignored each other.
Something on New Year’s
Eve changed Mom; she seemed to have
finally found peace.
★ ★ ★
How does a guy deal
with being torn between two
people he loves? I
knew I was lucky
that I hadn’t had to choose
between Mom and Dad.
They’re opposites thrown
together because of me,
and they had managed
to keep a shaky
truce for so many years. But
it was difficult.
My dad was a flag-
waving hawk who thought it was
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.
January 1968
Week Five: 406
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
