My People Are Rising by Aaron Dixon Read Free Book Online Page A

weren’t really Mark’s style. We rang doorbells at night, wrapped houses in toilet paper, stole stuff from the drugstore, and plastered passing cars at the corner of 34th with eggs we’d swiped from the grocery store.
    David was full of ideas for troublemaking. Once he told us he knew how to make a bomb—all we needed was some saltpeter and powdered sugar. Off we went to the drugstore to steal some saltpeter. We got some powdered sugar, compressed the mixture in cans and bottles, and made a fuse. To our surprise, when lit, it exploded. We did this several times, blowing up cans and other things until David came up with another idea.
    Poppy had kept only one gun out of all the weapons he had brought back from the war, a 7.62 Japanese sniper rifle. He had taken out the firing pin, rendering the gun useless, or so he had thought. We had often played with the rifle, mimicking the soldiers in the countless war movies we watched. However, David had experience with hunting and knew a thing or two about guns. His idea was to take a nail and stick it into the bolt in place of a firing pin. Then we took some of the empty shell casings Poppy had, filled them with the saltpeter–powdered sugar mixture, and packed it in. Finally we melted some wax over it, making a hard, wax bullet.
    We took the rifle out onto the front balcony of the house, which faced the park, and pulled the trigger. We didn’t really think it would work, but to our shock it did, letting off a loud bang. Laughing, we went back into the house. Minutes later the police rang the doorbell. Mommy and Poppy had been downstairs in the kitchen, sipping highballs and listening to some jazz, oblivious to what had just transpired. Poppy answered the door.
    â€œWe just had a report that a weapon was fired from this vicinity,” said the officer.
    My father answered, “We don’t have any weapons in this house, so it didn’t come from here.”
    We later learned that the wax bullet had just missed the head of Peanut, one of the neighborhood bullies. We laughed for days about this incident but never revealed our secret to anyone.
    In junior high, I was in need of some extra money, so I got a morning paper route, which meant getting up at six in the morning to deliver the papers before school. Sometimes I teamed with Michael Lee, one of the older, tough guys in the neighborhood, who had a route parallel to mine. On Sundays we would get our papers and head to the Laundromat on Cherry Street, climb inside the dryers, and try to warm up before going out in the cold to deliver our papers.
    I hung out with an assortment of friends. One was Johnny Goodman, a red-headed white boy a year older than me. Johnny had done time at Green Hill School in Chehalis, a state juvenile rehabilitation institution, and had the muscles to prove it. He was a good baseball player who could often hit home runs.
    One day, Johnny and I went down to his house near the lake. “Hey, man, my father made some blackberry wine,” he said, grabbing two small beer bottles filled with his father’s home brew.
    We started drinking. The taste was sweet and slightly tart. In minutes we had emptied our bottles. I started to feel lightheaded and somewhat dizzy. The only wine I’d had prior to this were the sips that my siblings and I would occasionally sneak from our parents’ supply. After a while, I looked at my watch and it was nearly six o’clock. I almost freaked out. I had five minutes before I was supposed to be sitting at my spot at the kitchen table. And I would have to walk six blocks up steep hills, including a climb up a three-block-long staircase. I had no idea how I would make it in my condition. Pulling myself up the steel stair banisters and stumbling the last two blocks home, I barely made it to the kitchen table in time. My drunkenness went unnoticed.
    I also took to hanging with some Filipino boys who lived down the street, Danny and Jerry.