“Why don’t they tell us
something, Ashe? They have
to know where he is!” She got
worked up like this when
all the worrying
at home dominoed onto
her. She could hold up
when only her mom
freaked, but when her dad caved, too,
she couldn’t handle
it, and she’d call to
tell me to meet her at the
park. Last night a mean
desperation gripped
her, a kind of panic-laced
determination
to do something, to
fix things. When I got there, she
was pacing back and
forth in front of the
swing set; as soon as she saw
me, she unloaded:
the frustration and
pain, anger and sadness. I’d
heard it all before
and knew the best thing
I could do was to listen.
So I sat on a
swing while she paced and
talked and swore and cried. When she
finished, she turned to
me and said, “I’d do
anything to save him, Ashe.
Anything. Even
die.” The look on her
face told me she meant it, and
I wondered where that
kind of courage and
love came from. If I were in
her shoes, would I be
willing—would I be
able—to sacrifice my
life for a sibling?
August 1968
Week Thirty-Two: 173
After school, I found
Mom whispering into the
phone in the kitchen,
wiping tears from her
cheeks as she sat hunched at the
table. When she saw
me, she hung up and
dabbed her eyes with a tissue.
“Was that Dad?” I asked.
“A friend.” And I knew
she meant that guy. “Ashe, there is
something you should know
about . . .” But then the
front door opened, and Dad walked
into the kitchen.
Reading the surprise
on our faces, he said, “I
still own this house, you
know, even if I
don’t live here anymore. I
came to pick up a
few things.” The shock of
seeing Dad made Mom ready
for a fight. “You could
have called.” Dad stared at
her, then at me, and sighed. “I
tried,” he said, “but the
line’s been busy for
more than an hour.” Raw tension
smoldered between them,
a standoff just like
old times, but Dad ended it
by going downstairs.
Taking a deep breath,
Mom rested her head on her
hands. “This is a real
rugged patch for me,
Ashe, and I’m going to need
your help to get through
it.” The doorbell rang,
and before I could move, I
heard the door open
and Dad’s annoyed voice:
“What do you want?” Mom paled and
dropped her hand to her
belly. Angela’s
voice: “Is Ashe home?” At my front
door. With my dad. I
got up so fast my
chair crashed onto the floor, but
I arrived too late.
She saw me standing
behind my dad and smiled. “Hey,
Ashe.” Dad stepped back, took
a long look at her,
then turned on me. “Who is this?”
Icy slivers spiked
his voice, and I felt
hearts and hopes and doors slamming
shut as I fumbled
for answers that would
satisfy my father and
my hippie girlfriend.
August 1968
Week Thirty-Three: 159
Angela and her
mother brought dinner over
Wednesday night. When she
had heard about Dad,
she insisted on doing
something to help. “Mom
and I know something
about loss,” she had said. “And
it’s no fun dealing
with it alone.” When
they walked in, it felt like they
breathed life back into
our home. Angela’s
mom hugged my mother like they
were long-lost sisters,
and Mom’s eyes teared up
when she met Angela. “I’m
sorry about what
happened the last time
you came over. Ashe’s dad . . .
well, just let me say
I’m sorry, but I
am delighted to meet you.”
After eating, we
went downstairs to watch
the evening news, but when a
report on the war
came on, I jumped up
and changed the channel to a
news program about
a massive high-rise
office building project that
was getting started
in New York City.
These twin office towers, said
the reporter, would
be the world’s tallest,
a permanent monument
to America’s
ingenuity,
capitalistic system,
and democracy.
Mom started laughing.
“Isn’t it ironic that
we’re bombing the hell
out of one country
while we’re building monuments
to our own greatness?”
The room fell silent;
I felt the awkwardness of
Mom’s political
statement. But seconds
later Angela’s mom said,
“I hear you, sister.”
August 1968
Week Thirty-Four: 308
The attention from
Mrs. Turner really helped
my mom get through some
rough days, but still I
worried. Sometimes after work,
I’d find Mom in her
bedroom, panting and
moaning and dripping with sweat.
I’d never felt so
weak and desperate.
If Mom went into labor
at home, what would I
do? What could I do?
Call an ambulance and hope
it would get her to
the hospital in
time? What if something went wrong?
Complications—or
worse? If I lost my
mom, the baby, or both, what
would become of me?
August 1968
Week Thirty-Five: 408
Pounding dirt in the
pounding Arizona sun
darkened my skin and
hardened my body,
and Reuben Ortega made
me appreciate
the broiling heat. “You
think this is tough,” he said, “try
a couple days in
a muddy foxhole
with mortar shells dropping all
around you day and
night”—he’d stare into
the distance and his voice would
knowing if shrapnel
or a sniper will nail you
while you’re sweating in
a stinking hellhole,
just hoping to make it
through
the night.” Then he’d snap
out of it, focus
his eyes on me, and say, “Don’t
never go to war.
If it don’t kill you,
it’ll break you, and you’ll be
digging ditches with
burned-out war vets in
a hundred-ten-degree heat
the rest of your life.”
★ ★ ★
Working with Reuben
changed how I read the weekly
casualty reports.
He’d seen buddies shipped
home in body bags. He’d been
splattered by their blood.
He’d heard their panicked
cries and choking death sobs. He’d
lived through the carnage
and knew some of the
four hundred and eight men who
died last week. To me
they were part of an
abstract number, but to him
they were real flesh-and-
blood men sacrificed
on the altar of war. I
tried to make it real,
but to me and most
Americans, the men who
died were just part of
a tragic count that
changed each week. By the end of
the summer, when I
read the casualty
reports, I remembered the
haunted, wounded look
on Reuben’s face when
he talked about the war, and
I earnestly hoped
Kelly wasn’t part
of the tragic tally of
dead in Vietnam.
September 1968
Week Thirty-Six: 195
The Democrats named
Hubert Humphrey as their man
to face Nixon in
November, but their
convention exposed all the
conflict in the world
today. Protests in
Chicago led to police
violence that seemed
un-American.
Trouble also exploded
in Paris, Prague, and
cities everywhere.
It wasn’t just Vietnam;
the world had gone nuts.
★ ★ ★
The first day of school
felt simultaneously
new and old. Students
jammed the halls, buzzing
and bragging about all their
summer adventures.
My summer had been
a bummer I didn’t feel
like sharing at school,
and looking around,
I wondered how many kids
were walking wounded
like me. Our summer
scars didn’t show, but the pain
and damage lingered.
Angela met me
at my locker; we held hands
and walked to Mr.
Ruby’s room. When he
saw us, he grinned a welcome
and told us to choose
our own seats, so we
claimed the same desks as last year
and waited for class.
“One ninety-five” was
written on the board, and I
knew that his new course,
Contemporary
Civilization, would deal
with today’s real life.
September 1968
Week Thirty-Seven: 217
My father nagged me
him, but I knew I
couldn’t abandon
her, especially so near
to the baby’s birth.
He tried bribery,
legal coercion, even
intimidation
to convince me, but
that stuff just shoved us further
and further apart.
I did agree to
meet him for lunch at Pete’s Fish
and Chips one Sunday
after school started.
He looked like he hadn’t slept
well for a long time.
I got my food, sat
facing him, and prepared to
listen to his pitch.
He made it clear that
reconciliation was
out of the question.
“I know our marriage
was broken, Ashe. Your mother
and I haven’t seen
eye to eye on much
of anything since you were
born, but we tried to
hold it together
for your sake.” He blinked back tears.
“But this betrayal
is more than I can
bear. She has shamed me and you
and herself, and you
have no idea—
no idea at all—how
much this has wounded
me. I’m going to
fight for you, and I’m going
to make her pay for
what she has done. She
doesn’t deserve either one
of us anymore,
and I’ll spend my last
dime to make sure that she and
her bastard baby
are completely cut
off. She’s made her bed; she can
sleep in it.” He leaned
back and stared at me.
“It’s going to be scorched earth,
son, no prisoners,
all or nothing—and
you are going to be with
me or against me.”
September 1968
Week Thirty-Eight: 290
It started late on
Monday night. I heard Mom cry
out in pain. Then she
yelled for me to get
ready to drive her to the
hospital. She’d talked
me through all this in
advance, but something about
it scared the hell out
of me. I checked on
her, then went to the garage,
started the car, and
battled the panic
while I waited. When she got
into the car, pain
sparked off her, and she
panted and sweated like she
was going to melt.
“Should I call someone?”
I asked. She shook her head. “It’s
better this way. He’ll
find out soon enough.
Now hurry up, unless you
want this baby to
be born in the front
seat.” By the time we got to
the emergency
entrance, sweat soaked my
tee shirt, and my hands trembled
like an old man’s. They
whisked Mom away, and
I staggered to the waiting
room to worry and
wait. It was after
midnight, so nothing was on
the TV. I leafed
through old magazines
to stay calm, but with every
passing minute, the
worry cranked up a
notch. And then anger started
edging around the