A Million Shades of Gray (7 page)

When he turned normal, everyone jumped up at once, all running madly here and there. Y'Tin sought out his father and asked him urgently, “What should I do?”

“Dig up the rice wine,” Ama said, then turned his attention to the other men in the family.

Y'Tin ran toward his house.

The clan's many big jars of rice wine were fermenting beneath the ground under and around the house. That was the way to let the wine ferment perfectly, or so Y'Tin had been told. Y'Tin used his hands to dig the jars out of the ground. He dug like a dog, kneeling on his knees and digging one hand quickly after the other, dirt flying
everywhere. He didn't know how many jars his father wanted, but he decided to dig up all twenty of the jars. If they were leaving in two days, they might as well drink what they could before they had to leave it all behind. Y'Tin concentrated on his task, as if his family's life depended on how quickly he could dig out the jars. While his body was busy digging, his mind was busy thinking. Where would they all go? Would they ever return to their village? How long would they need to hide in the jungle? Would he be able to take good care of the elephants? Would they all stick together, or would they all spread out?

When he saw the men in his clan carrying a dead buffalo to the longhouse, Y'Tin paused. Blood poured out of the animal's lungs. Y'Tin watched as his father started a fire with one of the lighters he had bought during his last trip to the biggest Rhade city of Ban Me Thuot. One of his uncles began slicing the buffalo into sections.

As Y'Tin was finishing the digging, the scent of roasting buffalo filled the air. Y'Tin did not feel even slightly hungry. He told his father he was going to the elephant pen. As if they had all read one another's minds, Y'Tin, Tomas, and Y'Siu
were walking through the gate at nearly the same time. Y'Tin called out, “Tomas!”

Tomas waited for him impatiently. “Hurry!” Tomas yelled, and then he suddenly turned around and began running toward the elephants, leaving Y'Tin behind. Y'Tin ran as well, and Y'Siu followed. It was a good time to take the elephants for another drink at the river. Y'Tin saw that the elephants had not strayed from their pen.

It would feel good to walk to the river. Normal. Y'Tin found he loved the thought of doing something normal.

“What do you think would happen if we all stayed in the village?” asked Y'Tin. “
I
never worked for the Americans.”

“But your father did,” Tomas said neutrally. “And Y'Siu's father did. Anyway, how would the enemy know who worked for the Special Forces or not? They might suspect all of us because of a few—” He stopped, and Y'Tin wondered what he had planned on saying. To Geng, Tomas said,
“Nao!”
Geng immediately began the trek to the river. Geng was very obedient, but she listened only to Tomas.

Suddenly, they heard shouting. Y'Tin's sister
and Tomas's mother were racing across the field crying out, “Hurry! The North Vietnamese have been spotted nearby. The chief says everyone must leave immediately.”

Y'Tin sprinted toward them. “What? What,
now
?” he asked.

“Ama said we need to leave now!” H'Juaih burst into tears.

Y'Tin grabbed her hand, and they ran back to their longhouse. Their father was stuffing canteens into a bag. He turned to Y'Tin and said angrily, “Go take care of your elephant. Go now.”

H'Juaih screeched at him, “He said to go! Ama said to go
now
!”

For a moment Y'Tin couldn't move. “But what about Ami and Jujubee?”

“I've taken care of them,” Ama said, slowly this time, as if Y'Tin had a learning impairment. “You need to go now.”

So Y'Tin grabbed his crossbow, all seven arrows he owned, and a beautiful woven bag that his mother had made for him.
“Now!”
H'Juaih cried. She grabbed an empty bag and spun around as if she didn't have the slightest idea what to put in the bag. She tried to run down the steps, falling
down the last two. The pathways were strangely empty, but Y'Tin could hear shouting inside the longhouses. He rushed behind his sister, but at the gate they both paused. “Travel safely,” she said.

“Travel safely,” he said.

He ran toward the elephant pen and she toward the jungle.

He was the first one back to the pen, but he did not wait for Y'Siu or Tomas. His father had said to leave
now
. If his father said it, then it must be done. He grabbed everything he kept in the hutch: the special brush for washing Lady, a pipe his grandfather had given him, rope, and his hook. He rammed the hook into Geng's leg.
“Nao!”
Next he jabbed Dok.
“Nao!”
he cried.
“Nao!”
Dok hurried off, but Geng did not. Y'Tin rammed Geng's leg one more time. He threw the rope around Lady's neck, tied the bag to her, then scrambled to the roof of his hutch and slid across to Lady's back.
“Nao,”
he said. He poked her with the hook, but she hesitated, no doubt surprised at the poke.
“Nao!”
She broke into a trot toward the jungle. He looked back at Geng, still waiting for Tomas.

Y'Tin heard murmuring, then realized it was himself, murmuring in English, “I'm okay. I'm
okay.” He looked back toward the gate and saw people pouring out of the gateway, as if they had all finished shouting in their houses at the same time and now were all rushing toward the jungle at the same time. He thought he spotted his favorite auntie, but it was hard to tell in the rush of people. His heart started to pound. He wondered whether his father's heart was pounding as well. Maybe Ama was so brave that his heart never pounded at all.

Y'Tin's heart went directly from pounding to stopping, for Jujubee was crying all alone by the fence. He slipped off Lady and jabbed her with the hook. “
Nao
, Lady!
Nao!
” he cried out. She hurried away. He had to check to make sure Jujubee was taken care of. He just had to.

He ran toward the fence, tripping twice. He was running as fast as he could, but it seemed to take forever to span the distance to his little sister. As soon as he made the turn for the gate, he dropped to the ground in fear. North Vietnamese soldiers swarmed all over the gate like ants. Y'Tin got up again and started to run, but a soldier shouted, “Stop! Stop! Lie down!” Y'Tin fell to the ground and braced himself as he saw a foot lowering.
Pow
—it smashed against his nose. Ah, the pain in his face was excruciating. “Don't move!” said a voice that sounded almost like a girl's. Y'Tin froze; he felt desperate to stay alive. Surely this soldier must have more important things to attend to, but he was focusing on Y'Tin for some reason. Y'Tin peeked up and saw that the soldier seemed even younger than him. Maybe he didn't know what else to do other than harass another kid.

Then he became aware that the whole village was erupting. Guns were firing and people were running into the jungle and so many people were shouting that Y'Tin couldn't quite figure out what was going on. When he tried to turn his head to look, the boy soldier's foot crashed against his face again, making a strange cracking sound. Y'Tin wondered dazedly whether his nose or cheekbone was broken. His whole face hurt. He lay there, not moving, not knowing what was going on.

Finally the village grew quieter, and all the shouting was now coming from only the North Vietnamese—Y'Tin could tell by the accents. What did that mean? Did that mean the North Vietnamese had taken over the village? He felt dizzy and needed to close his eyes. He murmured as before, “I'm okay.
I'm okay.” Then he braced himself again, turned his head, and opened his eyes . . . and saw the butt of a rifle smash down repeatedly on the head of one of the village bachelors. Blood and brains spurted out of his skull. “Ah,” Y'Tin grunted. He retched and needed to close his eyes.

“Boys and men over here!” shouted a soldier from inside the fence. “Now!”

The boy soldier kicked Y'Tin more softly this time. “Go on. Get up,” he said. When Y'Tin got up, the boy was suddenly angry. “Go on!” he cried out. “Get inside the gate!”

Y'Tin hurried through the gate, the boy pushing the rifle into his back the whole time. He saw some of the Ayuns and the Buonyas and the Krongs, but he did not see any of his family. He thought that was a good sign . . . wasn't it? It meant his family had escaped . . . didn't it? A rifle jabbed his stomach. “Pay attention!” someone told him. The boy soldier had disappeared.

Y'Tin tried to strike a subservient pose. He knew that all he had to do was wear the wrong expression and he could be shot.

Another soldier—there were so many of them!—ran over to the one who appeared to be in
charge. “That house is big enough,” he said, pointing to the Buonya longhouse.

“All right, put them all in there,” said the man in charge. “Check it for weapons and food first.”

A couple of soldiers cleared the Buonya longhouse of guns, ammunition, and food. Y'Tin was shocked at how many guns they'd owned—maybe ten or twelve.

Y'Tin looked around wildly for his family or any of his friends. But he was all alone. A pretty girl smiled at one of the soldiers, who smiled back. Y'Tin stared in surprise at the girl. She was one of the shyest girls in the village, but you would never guess it at that moment. Y'Tin could see that beneath her smile was terror, and a will to live no matter what it took, no matter if it took smiling at the soldiers, or more.

Meanwhile, a boy named Y'Elur eagerly told the soldiers, “What do you need? I'll help you.” Scared as Y'Tin was of what would happen next, he could not bring himself to be like Y'Elur. Still, he looked for an opportunity to endear himself to the soldiers. For some reason he seemed to have started out on the wrong foot, especially with the boy soldier. He spotted Y'Juen suddenly, as if he
had appeared out of nowhere. His heart speeded up. They locked eyes for a moment. Y'Tin felt a huge relief to see someone he was close to, but then he felt guilty that he had felt glad to see him. He ought to have felt more glad
not
to see him,
not
to see anyone he was close to.

The Buonya longhouse became a jail as the soldiers herded the villagers inside. Before Y'Tin went inside, he stole a glance at some of the soldiers. They were very thin and very young. There may have been one hundred of them, which equaled one hundred guns. The oldest one looked like he was about nineteen or twenty. Y'Tin climbed up the Buonya ladder. Everyone was pushing their way toward the middle of the house, as if they would find safety there. Y'Tin followed the others. When he got there, he found a pregnant woman lying on one of the bedroom floors. Several women were tending to her while a handful of wide-eyed children pressed against a wall. The shaman was leaning over the woman moving his lips.

Y'Tin laid his forehead against a wall. He thought about how his voice had just changed. He knew that was bad and might draw attention
to himself, since he might seem more like a man than a boy. And, in fact, right after he had that thought, one of the soldiers started calling for all men twelve and up to separate from the boys. Then Y'Tin spotted Y'Siu and felt that guilty gladness again. They had just exchanged a glance when the screaming for men grew shrill. Y'Tin frowned at the floor, hesitated, and then headed back down the ladder.

It was illogical to send the men up to the longhouse and then call them back outside again. Because it was illogical, Y'Tin knew that anything could happen. These soldiers didn't have to follow orders or rules because nobody was around to enforce rules here in the jungle.

As Y'Siu was still climbing down, a soldier grabbed his arm and jerked him for no reason. Y'Siu lost his balance and fell to the ground. He covered his head with his hands as if to protect himself. “How old are you?” Then, before he could answer, the soldier bellowed again, “How old are you?”

“Fifteen!” Y'Siu cried back. “I'm just fifteen.”

The boy soldier appeared again and hog-tied Y'Siu, binding his wrists and ankles. The boy
pushed Y'Siu away, barking to another soldier, “Find out what you can from him.” He looked at Y'Tin. “What are you staring at?”

Y'Tin reared back in surprise. “Nothing!” he said shrilly. “I wasn't staring at anything!”

A gun fired and Y'Tin whipped around. Y'Siu lay on the ground, his eyes holding an eerie glow, the glow of terror. But he was alive. Y'Tin wondered who had shot the bullet and why.

Then someone knocked Y'Tin's legs from underneath him, sending him sprawling. His thoughts became a series of clicks, as if each moment were separate instead of part of a flowing river.

Click!
Live.

Click!
Die.

Click!
Pain.

Click!
Y'Siu.

Click!
Fear.

He lay still, unsure whether the soldiers wanted him to stay here or to get up. As rain started to spray down on him, he lay in the mud unmoving, promising the spirits that if he got out of this alive, he would sacrifice a buffalo. But if there were spirits in the village, they were not smiling on Y'Tin.

“Stand up! Stand up!” Y'Tin obeyed instantly, jumping to his feet. The soldiers herded the men toward one of the smaller longhouses. The hard rain grew harder, and Y'Tin doubted that even their captors were having a good time: Everybody was miserable. An old man—Y'Pioc's grandfather—tripped, and Y'Tin braced himself as a soldier raised the butt of his rifle. But nothing happened. The soldier turned away as if he couldn't be bothered with an old man. Y'Tin took a chance and helped Y'Pioc's grandfather to his feet. Luckily, none of the soldiers seemed to care.

But then the boy soldier noticed him again. He knocked Y'Tin's feet out from under him and tied a rope around his ankles. Y'Tin couldn't breathe for a second. He thought he was about to be killed. The boy soldier and another soldier picked up Y'Tin with a grunt and hung him upside down from a ladder at one of the longhouses. Y'Tin had no idea why. Then they left him, the blood flowing to his head until he felt like his scalp was going to explode. He tried to turn his head in different directions so he could see who had been captured. He still hadn't spotted anyone in his family. At least there was that. Then for the first time he
realized that if his family wasn't here, that could mean they'd escaped, but it could also mean they were dead. He tried to grab at the rope around his ankles, but somebody whacked his back with something, somehow causing not just his back but his whole body to feel pain.