A Million Shades of Gray

by Cynthia Kadohata

  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.

  Y’Tin watched upside down as the soldiers searched longhouse after longhouse for valuables. Every time one of the soldiers passed near Y’Elur, Y’Elur put his palms together and bowed his head and said something. Y’Tin couldn’t hear what he was saying. After a while Y’Tin’s eyeballs were pulsing from the blood pressure. The soldiers made a pile of valuables: lighters, guns, ammunition, canteens, rice.

  The North Vietnamese moved the rest of the men to a different longhouse. Then, again for no reason, someone cut Y’Tin down. He fell straight down on his head and crumpled to the ground. He was hoisted up and thrown under a different longhouse. “Don’t move,” a soldier snapped.

  Y’Tin lay still, his face in the mud, his legs still tied. The rain poured and accumulated in a puddle so that he thought he could actually drown down there. Little by little the water level rose until he realized that he really might drown. He braced himself in case someone was watching, and then he flipped himself onto his back. The rain reached the bottom of his ears. Then a thought filled his head: He was going to die. He fought down that thought and felt viciousness fill his heart. It was as if all his life, a person he didn’t know had been residing inside of him, and this person was a killer. He wanted to get free and kill these soldiers.

  “Get out of there,” a soldier suddenly screamed at him. Y’Tin shimmied out from under the longhouse. “Go on, get inside. Get that rope off.” With shaking hands, Y’Tin untied the rope from his ankles. He climbed up to the longhouse where the men had been herded. He was surprised at the silence among them. Nobody moved, nobody talked. Y’Tin sat down against a wall. He was still alive.

  Chapter Six

  The shaman was groaning in a monotone. “Uuuhhhh. Uuuhhhh.” Over and over again. Y’Tin spotted Y’Juen and made his way over to him. They walked to the back of the house.

  “We’ll have to escape,” Y’Tin said. “Why separate out the men unless they plan on killing us?”

  “Maybe they’re taking us to be reeducated.”

  “Maybe,” Y’Tin said, unconvinced.

  “Have you noticed the way Y’Elur is trying to get on their good side? I don’t trust him.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Then Y’Juen nodded almost imperceptibly. Y’Tin turned around and saw Y’Elur making his way to them. When he reached them, he nodded at each. “What are we talking about?” he asked. He put an arm around each of their shoulders. Y’Tin hardly knew Y’Elur. He could not even remember the last time he had spoken to him.

  Neither Y’Juen nor Y’Tin answered. Finally, Y’Tin said, “The rain.”

  “The rain?” Y’Elur repeated.

  Y’T
in could kick himself. What a stupid answer. The rain. “Yes, the rain. It’s coming down hard now.”

  “It’s pretty wet out there,” Y’Juen added.

  Y’Elur slapped them both on the shoulders and said, “All right, just wanted to say I’m here if you want to talk about our situation.”

  Y’Tin didn’t even talk to Y’Elur before this whole mess and he certainly wasn’t going to talk to him now. But he slapped Y’Elur back on a shoulder and said, “Thanks, Y’Elur.”

  In a minute he saw Y’Elur slapping someone else on the shoulder. He was turning himself into a spy, no doubt about it.

  That first night Y’Tin lay on the floor in one of the rooms beside Y’Juen and a number of other boys. It was cool that night, but the soldiers had taken all the blankets. Y’Tin tried to sleep as the wind whistled through the house.

  “What do you think they’re going to do with us?” Y’Juen whispered.

  Y’Tin didn’t answer because he had no answer. The question hung in the air until finally a voice said softly, “They’re going to kill us.”

  “Then why haven’t they already done it?” another boy asked.

  Y’Tin couldn’t stretch out on his back as he usually did because there wasn’t enough space. The room was pitch black. He began to wonder how many people had escaped. He guessed that about half of them had been captured, so he hoped the other half had gotten away. If he hadn’t come back for Jujubee, he would have escaped with Lady. He hadn’t gotten a good look at all the ladies, but as far as he could tell, Jujubee hadn’t been captured. But he couldn’t get the image of her at the fence out of his mind.

  Y’Tin listened to the rain falling. There was a leak in the roof right above him, and they were sleeping so close together, he couldn’t move. Drip. Drip. Drip. Right on the side of his face. Finally, he couldn’t stand it and said, “There’s a roof leak on top of me.” He felt his way toward the hallway as well as he could. He tripped over someone and thudded against a wall. He felt for where he thought the doorway was, but there was only wall. He maneuvered through the tangle of arms and legs.

  “What are you doing?” someone asked with annoyance.

  “Trying to get out.”

  “Who is that—Y’Tin?”

  “Yes . . . Y’Elur?”

  “Yes, it’s me. You’re stepping all over everyone.”

  “Sorry.”

  Y’Tin finally reached the doorway, where there was another tangle of limbs.

  “Who is that? Go to sleep.”

  “I’m trying,” Y’Tin responded. He found a space and squeezed between a body and the wall. He lay wide awake. In fact, he felt as if he had never been so wide awake. “Logically, there’s nothing to be gained by killing us,” he said to anyone else who was awake.

  There was a long silence. Then: “You can’t use logic to understand war. Who is that?”

  “It’s Y’Tin. Who are you?”

  “Joseph.” Joseph was the shaman. “Have you seen any of my family? I think I saw yours getting away.”

  “What?” said Y’Tin. “You did?”

  “I think so. But it was all happening so fast.”

  “Did you see Jujubee?”

  “No. I saw your parents.”

  Y’Tin wished he had seen Joseph’s family as well, but all he could remember from those early moments was the kick on his nose. He gingerly felt his nose now. It hurt to touch.

  His mind began racing. He was scared to sleep. Someone might kill him while he slept. It wasn’t logical, but it was possible. Why else had the soldiers herded them all to one place? But he was trying to use logic again. He realized that he heard wailing from a distance. One of the ladies. Then a gunshot sounded, and the wailing stopped. Why were the soldiers holding them here? There was no logic in it. But he had to get this idea of logic out of his head. It would do him no good, and it might do him harm if the soldiers were using emotions. He had to escape. But he couldn’t say anything now, with Y’Elur in the next room.

  “Go to sleep, Y’Tin,” Joseph said.

  Y’Tin wondered how the shaman had known he was still awake. He supposed that it was the shaman’s job to know everything.

  Now that the thought of truly escaping had entered his head, he couldn’t get it out. His heart filled with fear over this idea of escape. How would he do it? Would he go by himself? With Y’Juen? If no one would come with him, he would do it alone.

  He lay shivering, listening to the rain, wondering how Lady was, wondering how his family was, and wondering when he would finally fall asleep.

  Chapter Seven

  The soldiers kept the men inside for the next day and night, giving them water but no food. Y’Tin tried not to think too much about escaping in case one of the m’tao or k’sok—the lower-ranking evil spirits who served the great evil spirit Yang Lie—told the soldiers what he was thinking. Every so often he couldn’t resist going to one of the doorways to see what was going on. Tin wondered whether more soldiers were coming. The soldiers all seemed bored. The thought of whether the Rhade lived or died bored them, Y’Tin realized.

  On the second night everyone gathered around the shaman.

  “I was just a boy when I realized my talents,” he was telling them. “I liked to hunt like any young boy. I didn’t like farming, but I helped in the fields anyway. People started noticing that my friends never fell ill. They learned that ever since I could talk, I had told my friends what they should sacrifice to keep healthy and prosperous. Then the old shaman trained me in the ways of the stick. He would throw the stick to the ground, and it would shake and bounce though nobody was touching it. I saw this myself.” The shaman closed his eyes. “And now our story ends.”

  Y’Tin thought about this and realized that’s what was happening. The North Vietnamese were trying to end the Rhade’s story. And they were bored with this ending.

  On the third morning Y’Tin heard shouting outside, and he recognized one of the voices as Y’Siu’s. He wondered why Y’Siu was outside. Were they interrogating him? The shouting turned to grunts and the grunts turned into a gun firing. Then Y’Siu was quiet. It seemed unreal—almost impossible—that Y’Siu could be dead. Y’Tin rejected the idea. He could not comprehend it.

  He walked hesitantly to the front entrance. As soon as he arrived, the boy soldier looked up at him. Y’Tin spotted a body lying in the dirt. From the back, it looked like Y’Siu. It was Y’Siu. Blood dribbled out from under him. The boy smiled maliciously at Y’Tin. Y’Tin fought back a wave of nausea and backed inside.

  He turned to the men sitting on mats just inside the longhouse, then closed his eyes and slumped against the wall. When he opened his eyes, he saw Y’Siu standing among the men. “Y’Siu!” he cried out.

  “Take care of my elephant for me,” Y’Siu answered calmly.

  Y’Tin paused. “But . . .” Y’Tin paused again. He realized that Y’Siu’s body was wavering a bit, as if from a breeze. Y’Tin stepped forward.

  “Take care of Dok,” Y’Siu said again, and then he spread out, the way a cloud spreads out. Then he was gone.

  The men were all looking at Y’Tin with vague interest. “He’s gone,” he said, but nobody answered.

  Y’Tin thought, Why kill a boy who wanted only to tend to his elephant? And who didn’t have any friends except for me, Tomas, and Dok?

  That night the men could have slept on mats in different rooms, but instead, the men who couldn’t fit in the biggest bedroom slept in the hallway so that everyone could sleep close together. Y’Tin kept waking up, and when morning came, he felt as if he hadn’t had any sleep at all.

  It was barely light out. Y’Juen came up to Y’Tin. “Did you hear the screaming last night?”

  Y’Tin shook his head.

  “It was awful. She sounded like an animal.”

  Y’Tin studied the floor and then looked up and said quietly, “I wonder if they missed any guns. Maybe we can find some weapons.”

  “We’d need a hundred guns to match th
em,” Y’Juen replied.

  Y’Tin knew that was true and nodded in agreement. One boy said, “We can’t dream of guns where there are none. We need another plan.”

  Y’Tin didn’t know the boy well and didn’t say more. He didn’t know who he could trust.

  “If anyone escapes, they can retrieve the guns from the jungle where our fathers buried them,” another boy said.

  Y’Tin saw Y’Elur looking over and didn’t say more.

  For the next few hours the soldiers paid no attention to the captives. Y’Tin grew rather aggressive, sometimes standing on the front porch to see what was going on. But the soldiers were just loitering around, smoking, chewing gum, and occasionally spitting. At mid-morning one of them came up yelling for the men to get outside and line up. They always thought they had to yell. So different from the American Special Forces, who usually talked in calm, measured tones—except when they were playing practical jokes. Y’Tin climbed down with the others.

  “Straight line! Make a straight line!” the boy soldier cried. What was the difference? But the men lined up straight. No one had the slightest desire to stand out.

  White clouds filled the sky and gave the morning a dreamy, beautiful quality. A crow swept across the village and landed on the slanted roof of the Hlongs’ longhouse. Every day that same crow swept across the village and landed on the same roof. Some people thought it was a dead relative of the Hlongs come back as a crow. Y’Tin felt envious of the crow—life was the same as usual to the birds that lived around the village.

  An older man joined the boy soldier. They spoke quietly, and the man turned to them.

  Y’Tin expected more yelling, but instead, the man spoke so quietly that Y’Tin had to strain to hear. The man looked at Y’Tin. “Your father in FULRO?” FULRO was the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races, whose goal was the independence of the Dega tribes and a separate nation for them in the highlands. His father was indeed a member.