By the time I graduated from MSU, the SDS had splintered into various factions and I was done with it. I joined the Peace Corps despite Mum’s absolute refusal to agree to my going. She worried where I would be sent and the potential physical danger I might be in. I said I didn’t care. One country, one war was as good as another. The Corps was my ticket out of my claustrophobic existence. I was sent to Samaipata, a small village in east Bolivia where I lived with the locals and worked with other volunteers to improve sanitary conditions. The place was primitive but so beautiful I wanted to stay indefinitely. My parents had other ideas and when my two years were up they demanded I return home. I said goodbye to my friends and that was that.
By then any rebellious streak in me had been quelled, at least temporarily. Viet Nam raged. The Tet Offensive killed Russell and Danny’s friend, Paul, from Paradise. MLK was dead. RFK was dead. People were burning their cities. The Chicago 7 were on trial. Herbert Humphrey was the best candidate the Democrats could put forth to run against Nixon. My God. What a mess. I spent most of my time alone in my room. I didn’t want to see anyone. I wanted to forget what had happened the night of high school graduation, but I couldn’t. The passage of time hadn’t dulled the memories. They were still fresh and raw.
I don’t know how I got through those first few weeks after Johnny’s death. Of course I blamed myself for not giving him hope. I was so concerned about telling the truth it never occurred to me the truth might be the worst thing I could have said. It wouldn’t have changed my plans for the fall. I still would have moved to East Lansing and attended Michigan State. Johnny knew that. He knew I’d be away until Christmas when I would have come home for a few weeks. I wouldn’t have returned for Thanksgiving. He knew that, too, but insisted he’d drive down to see me which made me feel suffocated. It wasn’t that I didn’t care for him. I did. I loved him, but I wasn’t in love with him. That was something he couldn’t understand.
When Mum called and told me Blew had died, my roommate, Angel, comforted me as visions of Blew filled my mind. I saw him in his cap and gown, giving everyone a salute as he practiced for the Army. I saw him the day he boarded the plane that took him away from us. It was almost too much to bear. Angel understood. The previous week she had received word that her brother, Byron, was dead. He was a Marine and his head was blown off during a Viet Cong ambush near Dong Son.
Blew had survived Viet Nam. It didn’t make sense he returned from war only to die in our river. Would people I loved never stop dying? It started with Johnny. I was furious when I heard what he had done. His suicide was meaningless. I told him I couldn’t promise to be his wife. For Christ’s sake, we were only eighteen. Our lives were ahead of us. Why didn’t he understand I couldn’t make a commitment on that night because secretly, the good girl he knew was a wannabe rebel.
* * *
I’ll do it today, she said to the empty rooms. If he could leave me then so can I. It made a lot more sense than continuing the nightmare called life without her brother. She had no friends, no family now that Byron was gone. She decided to walk into the lake and simply disappear. Since childhood Angel had thought about dying. She used to play pretend and would grip her neck and pretend to choke herself. She had an imaginary lover she called Quinton (she had not yet read about Faulkner’s Quinton) who would save her at the last minute. Bryon often teased her and asked why she didn’t like life. She was pretty enough. Slim enough. Smart enough. Why wasn’t she strong enough to endure the daily grind. Yes, the same genes passed from one generation to the next. The same problems with no solutions. War, poverty, disease. So what? Brother and sister knew, as did the whole of mankind, that such things would never end so why fly against them?
Lake Michigan was visible from their back porch. Waves, heavy with the chill of February, rolled underneath the ice that extended from the rocky shoreline. Among the rocks and discarded slabs of concrete, Angel gazed at ice crumpled into rough ridges like corrugated metal roofing. Jagged edges of white rose from the wreckage, reflected pale light that filtered through thick winter clouds and sharpened the cold, bone-dry air. She had no desire to return to this special place. She walked away from the water moving underneath the ice, walked towards the cottage Byron had bought for them, and absently gripped the doorknob.
The quiet of the foyer hit her first, slapped her like the icy wind she had left outside. Quiet squatted where there should have been voices. Quiet hid among her things and hung from the peg next to the Carhartt jacket Byron would never wear again. She buried her face in the material. She clung to his jacket, smelled the faint essence of his scent, and waited for some invisible strength to propel her deeper into the folds of the rooms. Something stirred inside her. Hope, maybe?
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Click here to read the rest of the story in SideRoad Kids Book 3
