A Million Shades of Gray (11 page)

When Y'Tin had seen the bombed-out area of the jungle, he had thought,
Why drop a bomb
?
What sense did it make
? Now he wanted to drop a bomb on the soldiers who had killed two hundred and fifty people, who had burned his village and probably other villages as well. And he wanted to talk to
these soldiers. He wanted to ask them,
How does it feel? The village is decimated—how does that feel? Two hundred and fifty people are lying in the dirt—how does that feel?
Y'Tin was curious to hear the answers to these questions.

Y'Tin didn't like being this angry. He felt as if his heart was previously clean and now it was dirty with hatred. He wanted to see Lady, to lie on her back and cleanse his heart.

Rain began to fall heavily, but he still didn't move, just stared ahead. He didn't know how much time elapsed before he could finally stand up again. He wiped the water from his face.

Someone called out to him, “Hey! Hey!” His heart seemed to stop, and he ran back into the jungle, terrified. The voice called again. “Say! You are Rhade?”

Y'Tin took a second to decide whether to reply. The man seemed to have a fine Rhade accent. “I am Rhade,” he answered loudly.

“I'm from Ban Me Thuot.”

The man stood in the shadows near the remnants of the fence. He was very tall, taller even than the village shaman had been. Also, he was dressed like a soldier.

“Step forward,” Y'Tin demanded.

“You first. You're just a boy, aren't you?”

“Why are you here if you're from Ban Me Thuot?”

“The town was overrun. The war is nearly over.”

Y'Tin didn't trust the man and galloped into the jungle.

“Wait! Where are you going? Come back! I'm all alone!”

The bushes behind Y'Tin thrashed. Y'Tin ran faster, pushing through the jungle as branches scraped his face. He started to wonder whether it was a spirit and not a man at all who was chasing him. The man didn't seem to be losing ground, though Y'Tin moved swiftly. Maybe the man was one of the spirits of the dead. “Ah,” Y'Tin groaned as a branch snapped into his left eye. He fell down, tripping over his feet. His eye was closed. He knew it was bleeding but couldn't worry about it now. He shook off a fear that he would die—here, tonight.

“Ahhhh,” the man groaned. Y'Tin thought he heard him thump down, and he felt satisfied that the man was also in pain. His intuition told him the man wasn't from Ban Me Thuot. Both Shepard and Y'Tin's father had told him that it was important to
use intuition in a war. Anyway, it must have been a man, because a spirit would have caught him by now. After a moment the movement behind Y'Tin stopped, then started again. This time the movement was going away from him, not toward him.

Y'Tin began creeping forward, using his hands to guard his eyes from another branch. He concentrated on not making a single sound. He moved his feet so gently forward that he could not even hear the crunch of leaves. He passed a coconut tree on an odd angle. He knew that tree. The reason it was at an odd angle was that Lady had almost pulled it down once to get a coconut. Sometimes he thought Lady pulled down trees just to see Y'Tin scramble out of the way.

He listened for the man but could not hear a sound. If someone was behind him, that person was a master of staying quiet. Y'Tin crept forward. He liked to think he was a master of staying quiet himself.

As Y'Tin reached less familiar territory, he had no sense of where he was. Every so often a touch of moonlight seemed to flicker in his vision. But he didn't know whether the light was in his imagination. He didn't think of himself as having a lot of
imagination, so he decided that the moonlight was real. Then a gun fired somewhere behind him, and he wondered if someone had died.

Y'Tin kept his hands in front of his face and felt the ground with his feet before he stepped forward. A vine hit his face, and he almost cried out. Step by slow step, he moved farther and farther from the village. Once, he felt so overcome with stress that he had to sit down for a few minutes. For no reason his heart suddenly beat as hard as if he were running. He sat on the cold, dark jungle floor. Because he was losing his sense of direction, he did not think he should go on; on the other hand he did not think he should stay here. Then slowly, he felt better—not good, but better. He pulled himself up and continued in what he thought was the direction away from his village.

Even though he was getting exhausted, he didn't stop. Then he lost all sense of direction and finally fell to the ground with no idea where he was. The soles of his feet—as hard as wood—felt tender. He did not understand why it had come to this. He did not understand why his people had been cursed. It wasn't possible that all of the Rhade people had offended the spirits. Maybe the
shaman had been right and it was simply time for the Rhade story to end.

Y'Tin lay down on the mossy jungle floor. He hadn't brought the poncho because it rustled too much when you moved. Lying there, without cover, he felt completely alone for the first time in his life. Half of his village was dead.
Half of his village was dead.
He shivered, partly because he was cold and partly because he was afraid. He wondered if he would ever feel safe again or if safety was gone from his life forever.

He felt pebbles under his back and pushed them away, but underneath them lay more pebbles. He turned on his side and pulled his legs against his chest. That felt better, warmer. Trying to make himself smaller, he pushed his face toward his bent knees. He missed Lady.

A branch cracked and he stopped breathing. Something rustled the leaves and then headed away from Y'Tin. He let out his breath. He hoped he would live through the night.

The next morning he woke up before sunrise. The green shades of the jungle seemed gray in the dim light. A million shades of gray, just like the hide of an elephant. His heart filled with relief
that he had made it through the night. He closed his eyes and thanked Ai Die for letting him live and prayed that he would die of old age. Then he added that he hoped Lady would die of old age as well. Usually, elephants died by starvation because they grew only six sets of teeth during their lives. When their last pair wore down, the elephants starved. He had promised Lady that he would mash her food when her teeth gave out. After that thought, he amended his prayer once again by adding that he hoped his whole family would die of old age. Then he wanted to pray for his aunts and uncles, but he didn't because he didn't want to annoy Ai Die by asking for too much. He would pray for them later.

With the sun, his sense of direction kicked in and he set off. As he neared the spot where he'd last seen Tomas and Y'Juen, his heart beat faster. But when he got there, the camp was empty. Panic rose in his chest and he waited until it subsided. His mind shut off and then, eventually, turned back on again. He thought about the possibilities and decided there were only two. Either he had come to the right spot or he had not. He scanned the ground, looking for footprints, and felt panic
rising again. Then he found a place where the elephants had mashed down the grass. He squatted down. The footprints were covered over, as if Tomas and Y'Juen had hastily tried to hide their trail. But trackers who weren't particularly talented disturbed the environment so much that trying to hide their trail actually made it easier to follow them. Y'Tin knew that. You just had to know how to look. He jumped up, caught sight of the direction they'd headed in, and broke into a trot.

Now that he saw it, the trail was easy to follow. The tracks ended a couple of kilometers away at the river. Y'Tin crossed to the other side, pausing to drink some of the water. But at the other side he could not pick up the trail. Stupid mistake: They had not crossed as he'd thought but had merely walked in the water, probably to hide their footprints. He crossed back to the other side and searched for the trail. Nothing.

Once more Y'Tin crossed the river, panic returning even stronger than before. He tried to pick up the trail farther down from where he'd looked before. When he still couldn't find it, he needed to tell himself to stay calm.

Finally, he searched in the only place he had
not: across the river, north of where he'd searched before. And sure enough, he picked up the trail. He'd wasted about two hours searching. He broke into a jog until the tracks grew fresher and fresher. They were simple to follow now. Y'Juen and Tomas had broken a new trail in deep jungle and, eventually, had returned to the river. Y'Tin trotted along the riverbank. His father would be proud of him, the way he was using his panic. Then he heard elephant trumpeting and raced toward the sound. But when he reached a small clearing, he stopped short. Instead of Lady, Geng, and Dok, twelve elephants—eight cows and four calves, including an infant—were feeding under a patch of blue sky. He'd seen a wild herd only a couple of times before. The other two times, he'd climbed a tree and just watched them, soaking in their beauty.

The twelve elephants stopped eating at the sight of Y'Tin. At first they just stared, and then, agitated, they began moving back and forth on their feet, their ears fanned out. Suddenly, Dok appeared. She walked forward, and the wild elephants grew even more agitated. The biggest one looked like she was going to charge. Y'Tin called out, “Come back! Dok!” She looked at him but
did not budge. She would have listened to Y'Siu. In fact, Y'Tin had never seen her not come when called. Then he spotted Lady at the edge of the clearing. She was watching with fascination. He wished he had his hook with him.

The largest cow snorted into the air. “Dok!” Y'Tin called out again. Dok looked at him, hesitated, and then turned her back to him. The largest cow took a couple of steps forward. Lady also took a couple of steps forward. “Lady!” Y'Tin called crisply. She looked at him, and then she and Dok turned their attention back to the wild elephants. Dok's ears flared out, as they always did when she was upset.

A moment later Y'Juen and Tomas appeared. Y'Juen poked at Dok with a hook. “Dok!” Dok slowly turned to him. She looked angry, and for a moment Y'Tin thought she was going to rush Y'Juen. She raised her trunk in the air and trumpeted.

“Lady!” cried Y'Tin. “Come! Come!” She swayed from foot to foot, and then, to his great relief, she finally stepped away from the elephant herd. Dok also joined Y'Tin and Y'Juen. As they all carefully walked away, Y'Tin looked back toward the large cow. She hadn't returned to her herd, but a couple
of the other elephants were already starting to eat again.

With the wild elephants out of sight, Lady knocked Y'Tin down with her trunk. He laughed and got up. To his ears, his laugh sounded almost hysterical, so eager was he to be laughing.

“Did you have trouble finding us?” asked Tomas.

“It put me off for a few minutes,” Y'Tin lied coolly. He waited to see what Tomas would say next.

“We saw fresh human tracks close by and decided we should leave. What did you find out about the village?”

Y'Tin paused. How could he possibly explain what he'd seen? “I saw the hole in the cemetery. It was filled in. I don't know how many … the hole was big,” Y'Tin said. He couldn't bear to talk about the people who'd been killed—all he could talk about was the hole. “The hole was bigger than when I saw it the last time. And some of the longhouses are burned to the ground. Most of them. Some of the fence is burned. My home is gone.” He needed to stop for a moment as his voice caught. “Yours was half gone, Tomas.” He hadn't seen Y'Juen's house because it was on the far side of the village. “I saw the hole,” Y'Tin said for the second
time. “It seemed big enough … it seemed big.” He saw Tomas's throat move, as if he had gulped.

“Maybe they took prisoners,” Y'Juen said hopefully.

“I hope so,” Y'Tin said. That was the best they could wish for, but somehow he knew in his heart that the North Vietnamese had taken no prisoners. Sadness weighted him down, a sadness so heavy he couldn't stay standing. He lay down on the ground.

“You didn't find out anything for a fact!” Y'Juen said. “I already knew as much as you.”

“We should have gone ourselves,” Tomas said, shaking his head.

Y'Tin didn't want to believe what he'd seen either. Tomas and Y'Juen could resist him if they wanted, but that would not change the truth. “I dug into the hole and felt an ear and then filled the hole again. Ai Die would not like me digging up the dead that way.” He stayed on the ground until Lady sniffed at him with her trunk. She wanted a scratch.

As Y'Tin scratched Lady with her brush, Tomas and Y'Juen set up a spit. They'd caught a crow, a good catch because birds were hard to get.
Although you could hear them, you often couldn't see them because they were hiding in the trees. Tomas used bits of dry grass for kindling and dead branches for the fire, then picked thirty bamboo shoots and arranged them in a circle. That was Y'Juen's idea.

Then Tomas began to chant:

“We have almost nothing

We beg the spirits

To show us mercy

To give us luck hunting

The spirits are so powerful

And we are so meek

We, uh, we hope for meat

We beg for luck hunting

For the spirits are so powerful

And we are so meek.”

When they had finished eating the crow and some bananas, Y'Tin said, “I was worried we might see an elephant fight.”

Tomas paused before replying, “I was too. I've never seen Lady interested in other elephants before.”

“Neither have I,” Y'Tin agreed. Lady had never been overly friendly with elephants—she was almost aloof with Geng and Dok.

“We're lucky we've run into only one herd,” Tomas said “I hope there aren't any others in the area. We have enough to worry about.” Tomas and Y'Juen glanced at each other and then Tomas added, “We were talking about some things.” Y'Tin waited
in silence. Tomas glanced at Y'Juen again and went on. “We were just wondering about your attitude, Y'Tin. We need to try harder to get along.”