A Million Shades of Gray (14 page)

Y'Tin couldn't comprehend how everything was so different from what it had been only a few weeks earlier. He ached for his previous life. He didn't understand how time worked. For instance, did the past matter or not? The future definitely mattered, and of course the present mattered. But the past was gone, never to return. So did it matter? He thought and thought about this, but he couldn't figure it out.

Y'Tin finally left. He packed up his gear and headed northwest, in the direction Y'Juen and Tomas had gone. He knew Lady would miss him. She loved him. He'd heard of other people who had found an elephant after many years of separation. So he might find Lady again one day. Or maybe she would find him.

He could not possibly have felt worse. That was the truth. He did not have a family, he did not have a friend, and he did not have an elephant. On top of that, the rain poured on him.

That night he fell asleep to the sound of the rain dripping on his poncho. When he woke the next morning, his poncho had fallen off his legs and his shins were so itchy that they felt inflamed. He sat up and examined them. They were so covered with mosquito bites that they appeared diseased. He had never seen anything quite like it. The itchiness was already driving him crazy. It was just one more thing making him miserable. He thought of something Shepard used to say: When it rains, it pours. That meant that if you put ground salt into a container, it would come out really fast. Every grain of salt stood for a detail in your life. And if they all came out really fast, that meant you had a lot going on in your life … or something like that. Actually, who cared what it meant? The Americans had never come to help as Shepard had promised.

The only good thing about the morning was that he didn't feel worse than he had the day before. He certainly didn't feel better, though. Still, he kept going.

The canopy was so heavy, the sun didn't show through clearly, so it was hard to tell directions. An American Special Forces soldier had brought a compass to the village once. It was truly magical the
way it always knew the direction. The Americans could measure the invisible. And they liked to know all the facts, like exactly what time it was, exactly what temperature it was, and exactly what direction it was.

As he followed the trail, there seemed to be an awful lot of footprints—maybe five or six hundred—laid one upon the other in an ornate puzzle. He didn't bother to count as it would have taken him far too long. He thought the trail might belong to another village. But his intuition told him it was his fellow villagers.

He followed the trail day after day. When he closed his eyes, he saw footprints in his mind's eye. On the seventh day of following the trail, he saw many smaller trails coming and going, and he knew he must be close to camp. The tracks were fresh now, the edges of the prints crisp and clear.

And then, abruptly, he was there. He was so excited that he started running at full speed, shouting out, “Ama! Ama!” though he didn't see his father. Then he stopped. He realized there were too many people—it couldn't be his village. But then he saw several members of the Buonya clan.

“Y'Tin! Y'Tin!” Y'Tin saw his father running toward him, and he broke into a run again. When they reached each other, they had both been running so fast that they collided. Ama embraced Y'Tin, who felt something like ecstasy to see his father. He held on to his father with all his strength. Then Ama picked him up, flipped him over his shoulder,
and whirled him around. When his father finally let him down, Y'Tin could barely stand up because of his dizziness. The dizziness didn't bother him. It just seemed like part of his ecstasy.

“Y'Tin! My boy! We heard from Tomas and Y'Juen that you were alive. I went searching but couldn't find you.” He lowered his voice. “Nobody is supposed to go searching for lost relatives. The commander shouted at me. He said if we all went searching, there'd be nobody here to fight.”

“I was a week's walk away.”

“Ah, that's what happened, eh? I was only able to search for a few days before the commander sent a man out to retrieve me. There were many tracks out there. The jungle has become crowded with fugitives.”

Y'Tin looked around. “But where is Jujubee? Where are Ami and H'Juaih?”

“In the other camp. All the women with children are there. The women without children are here fighting alongside the men.”

“But, Ama, when the North Vietnamese came, I thought I saw Jujubee at the gate all by herself.”

“She was with me the whole time.”

“Are you sure? Have you seen her?”

“Of course I have. She's safe with your mother.”

Y'Tin let that sink in for a moment. That meant he had been haunted by a glimpse of the wrong little girl. That meant someone else's sister, someone else's daughter, was dead. He tried to think who it might have been, but his father began talking.

“Let's leave for the other camp now,” his father said. “Your mother will never forgive me if we delay even a minute.”

But Y'Tin wasn't quite ready to go yet. There were things he had to understand first. He looked around again. He didn't recognize many people. He spotted the Hlongs, of the heavenly cantaloupes, and the Nies, who enjoyed eating elephants. The camp was a mess—bags and weapons, blankets and baskets, all spread out beneath the towering canopy. They were on a plateau, hidden in the heavy bush, as if they were living in a large room in the middle of the jungle. A handful of old, torn tents had been erected, and a tattered flag hung on one of them. The flag looked exactly like a blanket that had been cut into a smaller piece.

“But, Ama … Ama …” Y'Tin wasn't sure what he wanted to say. It was just that he had expected everything to be okay the moment he found his
fellow villagers. But now, looking around at the ramshackle camp, he knew that everything would not be okay after all. “Ama, what is happening? Did you make a sacrifice? Are the spirits unhappy? Are they punishing us?”

“Someday I'll understand all this,” Ama said with determination. “But now—I don't know.”

“Ama?”

“Let's walk as we talk, Y'Tin.”

Y'Tin agreed, though he still had many questions. He pushed the bush away from his face and walked behind his father—they couldn't walk side by side because the foliage was too heavy.

In a few minutes Ama stopped, turned around, and spoke softly. “I wanted to leave before the commander noticed me. I'm going out on an action tonight, and the commander likes to practice first, the way the Special Forces did. First you practice, and then you go on a mission. But we need to go see your mother. She's been very upset about you being missing. Y'Juen's mother has been upset about you as well. She understands that to you, Y'Juen is your brother.” Ama placed a hand on Y'Tin's shoulder and pulled him gently but firmly. “But why am I pausing? Let's hurry.”

“Ama, wait!” His father waited, the furrows on his face looking even deeper than before. Y'Tin didn't know if it was an illusion caused by the lighting or if his father had recently aged. “Y'Juen and I are no longer friends,” he blurted out. “We quarreled.”

“About what?”

“Everything.”

Y'Tin's father nodded as if he understood. “The jungle changes a man.”

“Yes, I remember you said that.” Ama thought and thought about everything, and then once he had decided something was true, he accepted it as a certainty.
The jungle changes a man
. “Ama? What will we do? All of us? What will become of us?”

“We'll fight the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong until we can't fight anymore. We have guns and go out on missions nearly every night. There are some good soldiers here.”

“But how will we win?”

“We won't. Oh, we won't.”

There was a long silence. Y'Tin knew that when his father next spoke, he would change the subject. He did that a lot. He would fall silent like someone submerging himself in water, and then he would resurface elsewhere.

Finally, Ama said, “I need to get you to your mother. We can talk on the way.”

Y'Tin hesitated. It was all too much for his brain. He'd always wanted to be like his father, but suddenly, he felt like he didn't want to think and think, trying to figure out right from wrong and what would be or wouldn't be. That was for other men. He was an elephant handler.

Blood was already spilling out of the cuts and scratches Y'Tin was getting from pushing the bush away. He wiped blood off his face. “But what will become of Ami, of H'Juaih and Jujubee? If we lose the war, what will become of them?”

“I can't see the future, Y'Tin, unfortunately.”

“Ama, what do you
think
will happen to us?”

“Perhaps the Americans will finally come to help.”

“Do you think they will?”

“No. No, I don't. But it's something to hope for.”

From the soldiers' camp, Y'Tin heard the sound of a
ding nam
. Shepard had always called it a flute. The Americans liked to make up their own names for things. Now Y'Tin turned to see who was playing, but through the heavy bush, he couldn't make it out. It was a melody Y'Tin had heard many times before.
It had always seemed like a happy song, but here in the jungle, the song now sounded sad.

“Y'Tin. Hurry. I'll need to get back for my mission tonight. And you'll get only one night with your mother and sisters. After that you'll need to return to the soldiers' camp. You'll be assigned a job by the commander.”

Y'Tin felt a sudden outrage toward this commander. After all that Y'Tin had been through, he'd get only one night with Ami, H'Juaih, and Jujubee? “Who is this commander? And what kind of job?”

“He's from Ban Me Thuot. He worked with the Special Forces for many years. He's a good man. He's met Shepard,” Ama said, as if meeting Shepard made the commander a good man. “You can be a messenger like Y'Juen, or a hunter or a cook.”

“Where are Tomas and Y'Juen?”

“Tomas is in the other camp, with his mother. She's very sick with malaria and may die. Y'Juen is out on a job. Let's hurry.”

“But, Ama, I don't understand. Isn't the purpose of war to win? Isn't that why people fight? Or is it because it's the right thing to do?” Ama didn't answer, just turned around and started walking. Y'Tin knew
his father would stop in a moment with an answer.

After a while his father ran a hand through his thick hair and turned to Y'Tin. “To the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese,
they're
right. Who knows what's right?”

“But you always think about what's right or wrong!”

“It doesn't matter anymore,” his father said fiercely. He grabbed both of Y'Tin's shoulders, shaking him once. “Sometimes, without even thinking about it, you step over a line, and on the other side of that line you find you've stepped into a situation you didn't want. Do you see? I didn't make a decision to fight; I made a decision to step over a line.” Ama let go of Y'Tin but still leaned intensely forward. “Do you see what I'm saying?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Maybe I stepped over the line years ago when I fell in love with your mother. How could I not fight for her now? Or maybe I stepped over the line just last month, when I knew the North Vietnamese were on the move and yet I didn't take my family away from the village.”

“You mean you have no choice but to fight because you stepped over a line somewhere?”

“That's right. But son, son. Son. We need to hurry.”

Once again Y'Tin followed as his father resumed walking. After a few minutes his father stopped again and turned around. He was frowning. His forehead reminded Y'Tin of one of those maps Shepard used to have, where the mountains looked like a piece of paper, folded and unfolded. “I need to tell you something. The commander is talking about eating Dok and Geng.”

“What!” Y'Tin exclaimed.

“Y'Tin, the commander never worked with elephants. He doesn't feel the same way as we do. But he says he'll spare Dok and Geng if we can find the wild herd. Y'Juen told us about them. Do you think you could find them again?”

“But Lady's with them. She needs them. I don't know where they are … not exactly, anyway.”

“I'm sorry about Lady.”

Y'Tin suddenly wanted to cry about Lady leaving him. When he was with Lady, he had longed to be with family, and now that he was with family, he longed to be with Lady. He didn't see how he could be happy without both of them in his life.

“Y'Tin, there are thousands of Dega in the
jungle. Maybe tens of thousands. They're different from us, more Western. They think that the people from the remote villages are old-fashioned and less civilized. They think elephants are part of the old way.”

“Old-fashioned? Us?”

“They wear Western clothes and smoke cigarettes that come in packages.” Y'Tin didn't answer, and Ama changed the subject. “Y'Juen's mother is worried because he's late coming back. I was just thinking you might want to go find him. I'm very worried about him. Everyone is constantly worried now. It's very different from our life in the village. I thought I had worries before, but now I see those worries were nothing.”

Y'Tin stared at the ground, concentrating. Y'Tin understood what his father said about worries. Previously, his only worry was keeping Lady happy. Now he was worried about every single thing. He could not think of even one thing that he wasn't worried about.

The jungle was dense and humid, filled with the smell of decaying vegetation. Y'Tin watched a slug the size of his hand make its way slowly away from his feet. Then he looked up at his father. He felt as
tired as his father looked. They resumed walking, this time silently. Y'Tin's mind was a jumble of thoughts about all his new problems. There was the problem of the commander wanting to eat the elephants, the problem of his father thinking he could go find Y'Juen, and the problem of them losing the war. And, Y'Tin was sure, there were many, many other problems he couldn't think of at that moment.