For the Sake of All Living Things

by John M. Del Vecchio

  Nang whimpered. The guard pried the knotted cloth up over the back of his head. Nang grimaced in pain. He made them stand still as he pretended to let his eyes adjust. Through his squint he counted and sized up the soldiers. It surprised him to see they all wore complete Royal Cambodian uniforms and all were armed with AK-47 assault rifles. They did not look at all like the ragtag national troops he’d seen in the Northeast. Sixty thousand North Viet Namese troops in Cambodia, Nang thought, and Norodom Sihanouk had his best troops chasing little boys. He laughed inwardly and thought, The guards think exactly the same.

  The guards seemed somber, too somber for those thoughts. Nang walked grudgingly up the steep path. A faint deep moaning sound came from the mountain as if a syrup-thick wind was pushing through the trees, but there was no wind. They walked past the outer walls of the first villa, then onto a narrow road which wound inward and upward, away from the cliff, past two more villas, neither as expansive as the first. The faint low soughing continued. They followed the road as it curved back, upward, back to the highest and most magnificent villa at the edge of the highest overlook.

  Before they reached the upper villa the guards reblindfolded him. They marched him to a small block structure outside the villa walls and threw him into a cell with a dozen blindfolded, bound men. This time Nang did stumble, over a body, and crashed down hard on his face. The door banged shut. Nang whined, “ssshh!” a voice whispered, “listen to see if they go.” Nang froze. For a moment everyone was still. Then breathing began. Nang held his breath. He counted the breathing. Four, five, six. More. Then, from the whisperer, a faint exhale. Nang breathed. He righted himself and sat still. The cell smelled stale, foul. “ssst. don’t remove your blindfold,” the whisperer said. “they’ll hang you for that.”

  “I want my father,” Nang whimpered.

  “who are you?”

  “Y Bhur,” Nang answered.

  “ssshh. mountaineer? who’s your father, boy?”

  “Y Ksar,” Nang answered. “He drives a truck. I came...”

  “No talking in there!” The door screeched. Nang could feel the air first being sucked from the room then rushing back. “Grab that boy.”

  “better to die than submit.”

  “I want my father,” Nang cried in Jarai.

  “Take Mister Hout and those students to the cliff.”

  Inside the villa, Nang’s blindfold was removed. The wires at his wrists were loosened, not about the wrist but extended between them. He looked quickly about. The room was sealed, saved one unbarred, unshuttered, unglassed window. Two guards stood by the closed door. A large round yellow man who looked to Nang like Guoshen’s father stood near the window. The man bowed slightly. “They say you are called Comrade Nang,” the man said in Jarai.

  “I am Y Bhur,” Nang whimpered.

  “If you don’t cooperate you may be killed,” the man said softly. He turned and looked out the window. “Come here,” he said. Nang cowered. “Come here!” Nang approached two steps. Stopped. “I won’t hurt you,” the man said, “unless you refuse to cooperate.” Nang stepped closer to the window. Outside, heavy afternoon rain had begun. Through the rain and mist Nang sensed the wall was an extension of the cliff face. He stepped closer. “Did you know Comrade Hout well?” The interrogator motioned at an angle through the window. Nang looked. The cliff rim formed a large U with the villa on the right and the sheerest and deepest face at the curve. Above the curve four men stood blindfolded and bound. A squad of soldiers stood behind them. The interrogator stuck his hand with a forefinger extended out the window, then flicked his wrist, pointing the finger down. At the cliff a soldier with a long bamboo lance jabbed one man in the back. The man lurched forward, dropped. He screamed. Then all was silent.

  “You have committed war crimes,” the interrogator said. “You are subject to punishment as a war criminal.”

  Nang’s mind raced. At once he thought he could kill all three men and throw them from the window, confuse them with his child act, withstand any interrogation.

  “They say you are Comrade Nang,” the interrogator repeated in Khmer.

  “I am Y Bhur, son of Y Ksar,” Nang answered in broken Khmer. “I want my father. He drives a truck for Samdech Euv.”

  The interrogator strolled leisurely about Nang, stepped back to the window and flicked his wrist. Another man lurched, screamed. From below an eerie moaning gurgled up the cliff to the window.

  “Remove his shirt,” the interrogator ordered. A guard came forward, ripped Nang’s shirt from his back. Even deflated, his hard wiry body could not be mistaken for that of a child. Harshly the yellow man rasped, “Comrade Nang, you will tell me who you are, what your unit is, where you are from. What’s your mission?”

  “Honest, Uncle,” Nang pleaded in a mix of Mountaineer and Khmer words and phrases. “I’m not with any unit. I’m with my father. He’s a driver. I’m Y Bhur. Please, Uncle.”

  “Don’t give me that ‘Uncle’ dung. Your scars say you’re a soldier.” The interrogator grabbed Nang by the hair and forced his head out the window. The vertical drop was a hundred meters. The interrogator sliced his free hand horizontally through the air. At the cliff two soldiers grabbed a man as a third soldier slashed his abdomen open. In the gray of stones and rain and sky the student’s belly burst red. A scream reached the window seemingly disconnected from the torture. “I want to be your friend, Nang. You must cooperate.” Moaning now came from both below and across.

  “I am Y Bhur,” Nang answered in a firm voice. “Bok Roh killed my father, Y Ksar! I heard he’s in Bokor. I’ve come to kill him.”

  “Bok Roh!?” The interrogator backed away. First one guard, then both, began to laugh. “Bok Roh is a fairy tale.”

  “Bok Roh is a yuon agent,” Nang spat. “He killed my whole village.”

  The interrogator smacked Nang’s face with the back of his hand. “You called yourself Met Nang,” the round man said angrily. Again he grabbed Nang’s hair, jerked him to the window smashing his head against the frame. “I don’t have time for your games.” He pointed out the window and flicked his finger again and the whisperer was jabbed. He fell to his knees at the rim. The lancer jabbed him repeatedly. He squirmed, blindfolded, bound. His right leg fell over. He kicked it up, swung it back toward his unseen attacker. Nang zoomed in on the struggle. The soldier caught the kicking leg with the lance point. On contact he thrust. The whisperer, his own force kicking against the lance, spun his torso onto the edge. Slowly, he slid backwards, seemingly trying to hook his heels on the rim, then he fell away. No scream. No moaning. In the last seconds Nang shifted his eyes to the squad at the cliff. Only the lancer watched. The others had turned away.

  Nang was blindfolded again. The interrogator left. The two guards beat him with their fists, though they beat him lackadaisically for they saw him as he claimed to be, a young Mountaineer child searching for a fairy-tale character who had killed his father. Nang bore the blows without reaction, without sound. He had not been so beaten since the first Krahom school and he’d almost forgotten the pleasure of withstanding a beating, of beating the torturer with utter passivity.

  They threw him back in the block cell outside the villa. He listened as they left, then counted the breathing of his cellmates. Eight.

  “brothers, do any of you know where is bok roh?” Nang whispered in Jarai.

  No one answered. He repeated the question in Khmer. A quiet answer: “i’ve heard he’s on the border at bu ntoll.”

  Nang sat forward. He bent his knees, placed his eyes on the knees and began to rub the blindfold back and forth, up and down. The cloth was very tight. Slowly he was able to raise one corner enough so a crack of light entered. He worked the other side. The pressure hurt his eyeballs. He tilted his head back. He could see. Nang put his head down on his knees and rested. Then he forced his arms down, his buttocks up between his wrists. His back bent like a bow. He forced his wrists forward to under his knees. There he was able to loosen the wires
.

  “Bring them all,” a voice commanded.

  Bu Ntoll, Nang thought. Bu Ntoll, the border sanctuary. He slid his hands under his ass and back to position.

  The nine prisoners were led to the edge of the cliff. Nang kept his head down. He stumbled. Was lifted, prodded forward. Ceremoniously each was read a short, identical statement finding each guilty of war crimes and condemning each to death. Nang was seventh. He kept his head down. He breathed with his mouth open so he could hear and place the others, prisoners and guards.

  “Tuay Teng,” the squad leader said.

  “No!” The first man in line screamed. The sound of the lancer’s lunge. Then “Aaaa...” a fading scream. Silence.

  “Hang Houk,” The lancer’s jab. No scream. A dull concussion as meat formed to rock with force.

  “Vouch Voen.”

  “Please.” A woman’s voice. “Please,” the woman begged.

  Nang lifted his head. It was almost dark. He turned toward the woman. Below the cloth he could see the guards’ feet facing away, see the heavy vegetation and forest beyond. The lancer jabbed the woman in the spine. She shrieked.

  Instead of knocking her forward, the soldier had impaled her with his spear. “Damn,” the lancer muttered. A dirty kill. As he stepped forward, about to put his boot in her back and yank out the lance, Nang spun. He snapped his arms outward. The wire unraveled. Vouch Voen shrieked madly as the soldier struggled with the lance. Nang sprang, a bound coil released, toward the forest. Guards caught turning back toward the entangled lancer and his victim first saw only a streak. Then one spun and opened fire. Nang dove half blind into trees, raced low on all fours deeper and deeper into the thickets. He ripped at the blindfold. The squad leader shouted. Shots cracked. The remaining prisoners were hurled off the cliff without hesitation. Screams. Silence. Moans filled the canyon. Nang slithered between, over, under vines and brush. Darkness settled. He raced on. There was no sound of pursuit.’

  Bu Ntoll, he thought. I will send the next report from Bu Ntoll.

  “Madam, what would you have us do with him?”

  “Why did you insist on showing it to her?”

  “She insists on knowing everything we do. Madam?”

  Vathana stared at the remains between the barge captain and the crewman. “Perhaps,” the captain said in French, “I should have fed it to the crabs.”

  Vathana shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “It is proper to have brought him here. You notified the authorities?”

  “God!” The crewman cussed lowly, rolled his eyes to the sky.

  “No, madam. We didn’t wish to be slowed.”

  “He tried to board?”

  “There were eight. Plus those firing from the bank. The others fled when Sarath fired and killed this one.”

  Vathana bent to see better. The body was mangled. An arm was ripped off, both legs were broken and folded in horrifying positions. Flies swarmed above a ragged chest hole. Vathana straightened. “He’s so young.”

  “They all looked young, madam. They all wore these checked kramas.”

  “He’s not even as old as Samnang,” Vathana said absently. Involuntarily she grimaced, squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She shuddered, scrunched her shoulders toward her neck, pulled her shawl tight against the heavy afternoon rain.

  “Madam...”

  Vathana took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, opened her eyes. “What did Sarath fire at him to cause this?”

  “An RPG. Kot hit him too. With the machine gun. What would you have—”

  “Wrap him in this.” Vathana handed the captain her shawl. “Have Sarath and Kot take him to the pagoda.” Without the wrap Vathana’s abdomen bulged conspicuously.

  “No good,” Sarath whispered to Kot. He had retreated to the sandbag wall about the pilothouse. “The baby will be born like it.”

  “Maybe,” Kot whispered.

  “We’ll go too,” Vathana said to the barge captain. “We must pray for his spirit. And ours.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  ON NEUTRALITY:

  “...as defined by international law, specifically the Hague Convention of 1907, which states that, ‘A neutral country has the obligation not to allow its territory to be used by a belligerent. If the neutral country is unwilling or unable to prevent this, the other belligerent has the right to take appropriate counteraction.’ ”

  —Harry G. Summers, Jr.,

  Viet Nam War Almanac

  IT WAS SEVEN WEEKS before Nang laid eyes on Bok Roh. For seven weeks the energy released from escaping death propelled him. He had never felt freer, never as a Khmer boy, never as a conscript, never as a yothea of Angkar Leou. As he approached his thirteenth birthday he was free to live, free to die, free to kill. He was strong and highly trained in all the survival arts—mental as well as physical.

  Before he reached the border camp at Bu Ntoll, Nang trekked across the Southeast. At times he posed as a refugee, at times an orphan, at times a mute. He walked most of the distance. In Kampot he linked up with a Krahom guerrilla cell for several days without identifying himself or his mission. East of Takeo he discovered an NVA storage facility and shipping depot which made the warehouse areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail look paltry. At Prey Lovea he was first assisted by an official of the Cambodian administration, then blocked by one from the parallel North Viet Namese regime, then assisted by a Viet Namese, then ordered into detention by Cambodians. All along the trail he simply asked Khmer families for rice or shelter. In the gracious tradition of Cambodians he was fed, often invited in. On these occasions he found his quick smile, infectious laugh and a simple story led him to be treated like a sibling. Each night Nang listened to stories of bravado and hardship under the parallel regimes; stories of atrocities along the border; stories of skirmishes between clashing foreign armies. Almost every week he found a way to send word to Mount Aural of what he’d heard.

  At Neak Luong he worked for two days cleaning river barges. The crewmen entertained him during the evening with imagined tales of private battles with bandits. “The lady owner has armed us with machine guns,” one crewman told him. He produced an aged and worn AK-47. “She says, ‘Shoot and run.’ ” The man laughed. He rubbed his hand over the wooden stock. “ ‘Shoot and run.’ Ha! Do you think you can make this old scow run?” Aside he whispered, “The captain’s obtained rocket grenades, and launchers.”

  “The lady owner, she says it’s okay?” Nang asked in broken Khmer.

  “She’s too pregnant to think. Ha!”

  “And the Prince’s army, they say okay?”

  “Eh? Are you crazy? The less they know, the better.”

  At Phum Chup, near the huge Chup Rubber Plantation Nang stole a Haklee truck and drove it for a mile toward the border before abandoning it in the quagmire of a paddy. From the back he stole an antitank mine which he quickly buried in the roadbed a dozen meters from the sinking truck. He waited, hidden across the road. In minutes a second Chinese truck and a sedan raced toward the stolen vehicles. The truck missed the detonator and stopped. Four soldiers jumped out, cussed, slogged into the paddy. Nang froze behind his concealment. The sedan parked behind the second truck. No one emerged. The windows were closed and dark. A soldier, dripping from the paddy, walked around the front of his truck. A rear window of the sedan opened and a man called out in Chinese. Nang was unable to understand the words. He imagined the man to be a bureaucrat with the Chinese Social Affairs Department, the ChiCom CIA, and he was delighted. The motor of the sedan churned, caught. The unseen driver edged back toward the road. The soldier stepped forward. Then, as if in one motion, the entire area lit, flashed yellow-orange-bright, a fireball roiling up, out. Then the concussion. It hit Nang, knocked him flat. Laughing, chunks of shrapnel crashing down about him, Nang fled across the paddy, down a dike path, running, laughing, free, easy, exhilarated.

  For six nights he walked the road to Mimot and north toward Snuol. At Snuol Nang switched to forest trails. Where no inhabitants were supposed
to live he stumbled into the midst of the putrid, loathsome camp. He stared in from the edge of the compound. Thousands of starving listless wraiths were rooted on the half-barren, gravel earthen hump. Most were old, toothless, wordless. They squatted or lay in shelters not suitable for pigs. A few infants lay in watery puddles of excrement. In spite of the torment there was no sound. Nang recognized the tribal dress of a few of the Mountaineers. An ancient Mnong man, the ivory plugs long fallen from his stretched limp earlobes, saw Nang, rose, fell and died. Three frail women cackled, dragged the body to the wooded edge, then returned, squatted, silent.

  Nang circled the compound to where a score of Jarai elders lay in the shade of a flimsy blue plastic tarp. He emerged, hissed. No one turned. “Uncle,” he clucked. “Uncle, who are you?”

  An old woman turned. The bones of her neck jutted like horns on a lizard’s back. She stared at the boy as if he were a mirage. “Great Aunt,” Nang said in Jarai. He came forward and squatted beside her. “You are Jarai?”

  “All Jarai are dead,” the woman sighed.

  “You are Jarai,” Nang stated.

  “We used to live in the great mountains.” The woman’s voice was light, breathless. “Look how few are left. I am death.”

  “Who killed you?” Nang asked.

  “We’ve become accustomed to being dead.”

  “Who?” Nang persisted.

  “Does it matter?” The woman’s voice faded.

  “Was it Bok Roh?” Nang insisted. The woman was too weary to answer. Those around her did not even look. Nang raged, “Bok Roh the giant?”

  “We are the March of Tears,” a second woman whispered. “Here the march ends.”

  “Was it Bok Roh?” Nang demanded.

  “Yes,” the second woman answered. “Bok Roh sent us here. He killed the others. Bombs killed many.”

  “Why don’t you go to Snuol?” Nang pressed.

  “Anyone who leaves is shot,” the woman said. “Our land is empty. Our souls have been destroyed.”