A Million Shades of Gray

by Cynthia Kadohata

  “No,” Y’Tin lied.

  “What about the Americans? Your father served in Special Forces?”

  “No, he’s a farmer.”

  For no reason the soldier turned to a quiet boy who lived across the village from Y’Tin and pushed the barrel of his gun into the boy’s ribs. “Come on, to the cemetery. All of you!” At first no one moved, because no good could come of them going to the cemetery. For all Y’Tin knew, he would come to rest there soon, and if that’s what the spirits had in mind for him, then so it would be. But if there was any chance to escape, he would. If he had rice wine or a chicken, he would make a sacrifice to the spirits, but he didn’t have chicken or wine or anything at all except his loincloth.

  At the cemetery Y’Tin looked at the mounds over each of the dead. For those who died of natural causes, the heads of each grave faced east, the way the spirits liked. For all others, the heads faced west. Thirty or forty shovels already lay in a pile on the ground. “Dig,” said a soldier. “Come on, dig!” he screamed, before anyone had had a chance to move. Y’Siu’s body was lying on the other side of the cemetery. Y’Tin wanted to dig a deep grave for his friend.

  He picked up a shovel and rammed it into the earth, digging until his palms were red and oozing with blisters. Unlike the other boys, he never worked in the fields, so he was unaccustomed to digging. By lunchtime they’d dug a hole about three times Y’Tin’s height in both length and depth. There could be only one purpose for the hole. He wondered how many people would fit in there. He tried to do the math, but his brain wouldn’t work.

  In the afternoon the NVA provided them with rice, which the men ate with their fingers like women. Lunch was such a relief that Y’Tin wanted to eat slowly and savor the rice. But he was starving and gobbled his food instead.

  Pain ran from Y’Tin’s neck down his spine. “I can’t keep going,” a man named Y’Buom said. Y’Buom was known for complaining; still, Y’Tin couldn’t stop a short, surprised gasp over someone daring to talk. But no one hit Y’Buom and no one shot him. Y’Tin didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  Y’Buom stood up and repeated to one of the soldiers, “I can’t go on.”

  Two guns fired almost simultaneously, and Y’Buom fell to the ground. A stocky soldier put him over his shoulder and walked to the other end of the cemetery to throw him on top of Y’Siu. Y’Tin looked into his rice bowl and tried to keep his hands from shaking.

  One of the older soldiers told them quietly, “Go on, back to work.” Y’Tin’s back and palms started to hurt so much that all this digging became a form of torture. He tried to separate his three spirits from his body, so that he wouldn’t feel the pain. But it didn’t work. His hands hurt and his back hurt, and he kept going anyway. He did not want to get shot down and thrown over his friend Y’Siu.

  The hole was now about four times Y’Tin’s height square and still three times his height deep. The soldiers gave no sign that the workday might be ending. The bigger the hole got, the more people they planned on killing. Y’Tin wondered whether he was helping to dig the grave for what was left of the villagers. If he died, he hoped Tomas would keep his word and take care of Lady.

  It was only when it started getting dark that one of the soldiers finally said, “That’s enough, get back to the longhouse.”

  The men didn’t get more rice for dinner, but Y’Tin was grateful for the water they received. “I hope they kill me first,” a man said. “I don’t want to have to go last.” Nobody answered him. Y’Tin didn’t want to go first or last. He wanted to escape . . . but he was so tired.

  When Y’Tin lay down to sleep later, his palms were crusted with dried blood. His hands were like useless claws. That was his last thought before sleeping. His first thought upon waking was fear—he thought the soldiers were shaking him awake because he was next to die. It was too dark to see who had awakened him. Then Y’Juen whispered, “Y’Tin. Y’Tin. Get up.”

  “What is it?” Y’Tin whispered back. He sat up. His back ached when he moved.

  “One of the old men just died. Y’Siu’s great-grandfather.”

  Y’Tin followed Y’Juen to where an oil lamp illuminated a small crowd standing around the dead man. He peeked out the side door and saw that it was unguarded. Then he went to the front door and saw the two guards talking to each other.

  He reported to Y’Juen, “The guard at the side door is gone. He’s in front talking.”

  “What?”

  “Shhh!”

  “Do you think we could get out?” Y’Juen said softly.

  “Yes.”

  “If we stay here, we’re safer,” Y’Juen pointed out. “If they were going to kill us all, they would have done it today after the hole was finished.”

  Y’Tin said, “Maybe the hole isn’t finished.” Y’Tin looked at the dead man. The dim room suddenly seemed liquid, flowing around him. Y’Tin tried to make it all stay still, but he was so scared. “I’m going,” he whispered. “Are you coming or staying?”

  “I guess I’m coming. Right now?” Y’Juen asked.

  “What do you mean, you ‘guess’?”

  “Yes, I’m coming with you.”

  They tried to look through the rooms for anything useful they could find, but the dim light made their search futile. They slipped down the long corridor, and at the side door Y’Tin saw that the guard was still gone.

  Y’Tin wanted to tell others about the unguarded door, but he was afraid that Y’Elur would report them. He poked his head out the doorway and looked around. He saw nobody. As he climbed down, a sense of vertigo suddenly made the world spin, and he stumbled down the last step. He lay on his stomach and didn’t move. He felt a drop on his arm and for a moment thought one of the soldiers was playing with them, somehow sending drops their way to torment them. Another drop fell, and Y’Tin noticed the sky was gray with clouds.

  Y’Tin wriggled forward, Y’Juen following. Y’Tin heard shouting and cringed, but the shouting had nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, the men were being held in a longhouse far from the gate. Y’Tin did not think they could crawl all the way out and not be seen. There were too many North Vietnamese for that.

  They crawled along, and a few longhouses down he turned to Y’Juen and gestured toward one of them. They climbed the ladder and sat for a second in the darkened hallway. “We can stay here until they leave,” Y’Tin whispered. Y’Tin’s mouth didn’t seem to be working right. He could barely enunciate the words. And his hands were shaking.

  They crept to a middle bedroom and lay silent, listening. Y’Tin suddenly wanted to cry, but he didn’t because he was afraid it might make noise. He was wide awake. He hoped Y’Elur didn’t notice they were gone and report them. Y’Tin prayed to Ai Die, Yang Lie, and even to Y’Siu. After all, they would need as much help as they could get. Y’Tin couldn’t fall asleep and lay for hours staring into the darkness, listening for any sound that might mean they’d been discovered. He felt strangely powerful, felt he would hear a whisper even if it occurred across the village. That’s how hard he was listening.

  He must have fallen asleep because he woke to find Y’Juen sitting with his back pressed against a wall, as if the wall were all that was holding him up. Y’Juen came over and whispered, “I thought you were sick—it’s so late. There’s half a bucket of water in the front kitchen.”

  Y’Tin nodded gratefully and went to the kitchen to find the bucket. He drank only as much as he had to, even though his mouth was so dry that his tongue stuck to his lips.

  Afterward he and Y’Juen searched from room to room looking for anything of value that soldiers had missed. They found one lighter, two crossbows with four arrows, three American canteens, one American military poncho, and a couple of brightly colored woven bags. Y’Tin thought of his own colorful bag, atop Lady the last time he had seen it. He longed to be lying on her back. Once, when he was sick, he had gotten out of his sickbed in the longhouse and staggered over to Lady, climbing up her back to lie there. He fell asl
eep, and when he awoke, evening had fallen and Lady hadn’t moved. It was as if she knew he was sleeping and needed her to be still so he wouldn’t tumble off.

  After their search Y’Tin and Y’Juen sat against a wall. Neither of them spoke for hours, and they moved only when one part of their body grew sore. Then they heard popping noises, over and over, but they didn’t risk peeking out the doorways. Y’Tin stared at the wood floor and groaned softly. When the popping ended, he thought angrily of Y’Elur. He wondered whether his duplicity had paid off and the soldiers had allowed him to live. Y’Tin would not want to live if he had betrayed his own people.

  They hid in the longhouse for three days. Y’Tin’s head grew woozy from fear and lack of food. Sometimes he saw stars when he moved suddenly. And then after a while Y’Tin felt bored. How was it possible to be bored at such a time? And yet he was. He’d never been cooped inside for three days in his whole life.

  On the third night he and Y’Juen fell asleep, and Y’Tin awoke to a crackling sound and the smell of smoke. The crackling was all around them. He was immediately wide awake—the house was on fire! “Y’Juen! Wake up!” Y’Juen opened his eyes. “The house is on fire. We have to go!” Y’Tin cried. Then he said what his father had said: “Now. We have to go now.”

  They grabbed their bags and jumped off the front porch. A single soldier stood at the east end of the pathway through the village, but Y’Tin didn’t see anyone else. “Hey!” the soldier called out to them. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  Y’Tin and Y’Juen ran through the village, hearing gunshots behind them. Neither of them broke stride. They spotted another soldier running through the gate, and without speaking or signaling, both veered south, where the houses were closer together. They scrambled up into a house and didn’t move.

  The soldiers were shouting to one another, but Y’Tin couldn’t hear what they were saying. They seemed to be several houses away. Y’Tin and Y’Juen looked at each other, and then they both moved toward the side entrance of the house. They climbed down the ladder and went south, where they spotted a gap in the burning fence.

  The night was intensely bright, but a strange, red-hued bright, making the night eerie and bizarre. The crackling sounded all around them. The burning seemed random. One house would be nearly burned to the ground and another would be totally intact. Y’Tin heard the flames blowing in the wind—it sounded like the wind rippling a blanket his mother had hung on their clothesline.

  They crept along the ground, just in case there were soldiers they had missed. It seemed to take forever to reach the fence, and they knew that somewhere behind them the soldiers were searching. When they finally reached the fence, relief flooded Y’Tin’s heart. Despite the embers, Y’Tin and Y’Juen crawled through the gap. Y’Tin felt the embers burning his skin, but he didn’t stop.

  On the other side of the fence the fields were empty in the eerie glow from the fire. Y’Tin stood up and ran as fast as he could, and he knew without looking that Y’Juen was also running. They headed straight for the jungle, and when they reached it, they plunged into the trees.

  It was too dark to see. They moved slowly. Y’Tin heard the crack of a twig he must have broken as he walked forward. He froze for a moment, but it seemed there was nobody to hear the crack. He realized that if someone searched for them in the morning, there would be all sorts of broken twigs and disturbances that would make it easy to see their trail. He doubted anyone would follow them tomorrow, because two boys didn’t mean a thing in this war. But tonight—that was something else. The soldiers had nothing better to do tonight but search for a couple of boys. The important thing to do at the moment was to get some distance between the village and themselves.

  Before taking another step, however, Y’Tin peered toward his village. He couldn’t see anything through the leaves. But he didn’t need to see the village to know suddenly that everybody who’d been captured was now dead. Even Y’Elur. Even the shy girl.

  He turned around then, and he and Y’Juen moved as fast as they could as quietly as they could. But they were making enough noise to be followed if anybody desired to do so. Y’Tin had never rushed like this from anything before. He had only rushed toward something—usually the village or the elephants. It was weird, the way even in this emergency he had time to think as they thrashed through the jungle, away from their village. Or not “their” village. They had no village now. The only place for them now was here in the jungle.

  Y’Juen suddenly stopped, causing Y’Tin to fall into him.

  “What is it?” Y’Tin asked.

  “We should cover our trail, or they’ll be able to find us in the morning. I’ll do it.”

  “It’s too dark now to even see our trail!” Y’Tin said.

  Y’Juen didn’t reply at first. Then he said testily, “Who put you in charge?” Since he was older, Y’Juen had always been the leader of the two of them. But as Y’Tin’s father liked to say, different situations called for different leaders.

  “We need to put distance between ourselves and the village,” Y’Tin snapped. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had snapped at Y’Juen. Maybe he had never done so.

  This time Y’Juen didn’t answer at all. They continued quietly through the jungle until Y’Tin finally said, “Do you know what direction we’re going in?”

  “West?” Y’Juen said. “North?”

  “We could be going in a circle!”

  They decided to stop and rest for the remainder of the night. They slept under the U.S. Army poncho. Everywhere you turned, signs of the Americans popped up. That was the weird thing about them. Even here, though the Americans had abandoned the Rhade, Y’Tin and Y’Juen slept under one of their ponchos. The fact was, once the Rhade had fought with the Americans, their spirits were joined. The Rhade had trusted the Americans. And this was where it had led them.

  In the morning Y’Tin woke up second again. Y’Juen was eating coconut. He offered a piece to Y’Tin, who gobbled it up. He’d never particularly liked coconut, but now it tasted as good as a chicken. “I found elephant tracks,” Y’Juen said. “It might be Lady and the others.”

  “What? Where?”

  Y’Juen’s mouth was full, but he gestured with his hand. Y’Tin got up and walked in the direction Y’Juen had gestured toward. Sure enough, there were three distinct elephant trails, as well as one human trail. His heart lifted as he saw that a couple of the elephant prints were almost perfectly circular. Those belonged to Geng. Y’Tin had noticed the perfect circles of her tracks before. She had stepped onto a bare, muddy patch of dirt and laid down two perfect prints. Y’Tin studied the succulent plants covering much of the ground and saw many breaks and disturbances.

  “Do you think it’s them?” Y’Juen whispered.

  “Absolutely,” he said, using the word the Americans had loved. Then he switched back to speaking Rhade again. “The elephants have to stop a lot to eat, so we’ll catch up soon.” He spoke softly, for even though it was unlikely anybody was around, you couldn’t be too cautious. They made a point of not talking unless it was utterly necessary.

  They continued until thirst stopped them. They cut open a couple of bamboo stalks and drank the water from inside. The air smelled sweet, and the smell turned out to be overripe bananas. Y’Tin was famished, and mushy bananas seemed like a feast.

  Late that afternoon the trail was so fresh that Y’Tin started running forward in excitement. The trail was easy to make out now. He didn’t even glance at it anymore, just ran forward in the general direction of the tracks. About twenty minutes later Y’Tin and Y’Juen came upon the elephants feeding with Tomas. Y’Tin ran right toward Lady. When Lady spotted him, she trotted over, picked him up with her trunk, threw him to the ground, and bonked him on the head. Then her trunk swayed back and forth the way it did when she was happy. Y’Tin tried to stay calm so she wouldn’t pick him up and throw him down again. He stood still while she stroked her trunk this way and that over his face.

 
“Y’Tin, you’re safe!” Tomas was crying out. He pulled Y’Tin away from Lady and grabbed him with both arms. “You’re safe! Where are the others? Did everyone get out in time?”

  There was much to say, but Y’Tin couldn’t think. “Tomas . . .”

  When Y’Tin didn’t say more, Tomas turned to Y’Juen and slapped his shoulder. “Glad to see you.” He turned immediately back to Y’Tin and grabbed his shoulders again. “And Y’Siu?”

  All of a sudden, Y’Tin’s elation evaporated. “The soldiers killed him,” he told Tomas. “I saw his body.” He gulped. “I saw his ghost.”

  Tomas’s arms dropped. “Y’Siu? Y’Siu? Why would anyone kill Y’Siu?” He shook his head as though to shake the very idea out of his brain. After a moment, though, he asked, “Did he have a proper burial?”

  “There was a mass grave.” Y’Tin held back a sob.

  Tomas shook his head over and over again. Y’Tin felt dizzy. He motioned Lady to muk so he could climb on her back. As he lay across her, he felt as if she were replenishing his energy supply.

  “A mass grave?” Tomas said. “Are you sure? Did you see the grave?”

  “I helped dig it,” Y’Tin replied.

  “What!”

  “All the men did. They brought us to the cemetery and made us dig a hole.”

  “For everyone? Our whole village?”

  “Some of them seem to have gotten away. Lots. Maybe half,” Y’Juen answered.

  “And . . . and my family? Did you see them?”

  “None of them,” Y’Tin replied.

  Y’Tin watched Tomas soak in this detail. He seemed confused, unsure whether the news was good or bad. Then he said, “That’s good.”

  Y’Tin continued to lie atop Lady. Tomas and Y’Juen took the other elephants to a nearby river. When Y’Tin felt stronger, he slipped down Lady’s side and said, “Lady, nao.” He headed in the same direction as his friends.

  When Y’Tin and Lady reached the river, Y’Juen and Tomas were down the way, watching the elephants drink. Y’Tin wanted to be alone right now, so he didn’t go stand with them. Lady filled her trunk and sprayed it into her mouth, over and over.