“You are the one? You are the one that told them to run? Then please explain why you had over two thousand yuan on you? Why did you not just pay what you owed?”
“It was just a joke,” the boy said.
The man kicked him in the face and blood splattered the wall.
“How do you like that joke?” he asked, sneering down at the prone boy.
“What about her?” one of the men asked.
“What about her?”
“Do you still want us to put her in with the men?”
“Did I not say so?” was his answer.
She screamed as they pulled her from the room. It was quiet after the men slammed the door. Ky looked on with horror at what had happened. His face was suddenly shoved hard against the glass, busting his lip open and blood ran down the pane.
“Those are your American friends. They steal from honest working people. You have chosen to be like them. You are even worse than they are. They are Westerners, they have no shame. Now you are just like them,” he said and smashed Ky's face into the glass once again.
Ky could feel himself slipping away and suddenly everything was black.
The light was blinding when Ky finally awoke. His entire body hurt terribly. He tried to get up but pain shot through him like a hot iron. He moaned and finally was able to roll his legs out of the hard ledge that served as a bed.
He sat with his elbows on his knees and ran his fingers across his head. His head had been shaved like the others. He ran his fingers across a tender area where he had been cut by one of the kicks from his interrogators. He looked around and suddenly realized that someone else was in the room. He tried to focus his eyes but one was almost swollen shut.
“Who is here?” he asked in Chinese but he got no answer.
“Please. Who are you?” he asked again.
“It’s me,” a small little voice came back to him.
“Sandy? What are you doing here? I thought…” he stopped.
“Please. Don’t look,” she said, crying.
Ky turned his back immediately.
“Are you damaged?” he asked.
“Damaged? Do you mean was I raped? Was I beaten and humiliated? Yes, damn you. Yes,” she screamed.
Ky just lowered his head. What could he say?
“You call us barbarian and yet you treat people like this?” she said heatedly, “Barbarian Americans? What would you call someone that would do this?” she spit out.
“I am sorry, Sandy. I tried to tell you before we ran out. You know we do not treat criminals like they do where you come from,” he said.
“This wasn’t just treatment. This was torture. They beat me with a belt and then threw me in with twenty men totally naked. You call that treatment?” she screamed.
“Please Sandy. I did not do this. I have no control over what happens. Do you think they didn’t do the same to me?” he asked turning to face her.
“You were raped?” she said.
“No, but…”
“Then you know shit. Nothing at all.”
They both fell silent for a long time.
Finally Sandy said, “Why did they put me in here with you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe people at the restaurant saw us talking and then when we ran out, you grabbed my arm. Maybe they thought I was with you.”
“With me? You were with me?” she said.
“I mean as more than friends.”
“For Christ sakes,” was all she said and fell silent again.
They were not fed for hours and no one had visited the cell. Sandy needed to go to the bathroom but the only facility was a bucket in the corner.
“Are we supposed to use that?” she asked finally, pointing disgustedly at the filthy bucket.
“I am afraid so,” Ky said.
“Just great. Oh, what the hell?” she said as she got up and went and squatted over the bucket. Ky turned his back to the wall and closed his eyes. As bad as it was for him, it had to be many times worse for her, he thought. She will never be the same, he decided.
Two more hours went by before someone opened the door. He looked at Sandy for several seconds and Ky was afraid he was going to come in and rape her in front of him. He didn’t know what he would do if the guard did that. Finally the man pushed two bowls of rice into the room along with two cups of water. He looked at her one more time then slammed the door.
“Thank God,” Sandy said, getting up and attacking the bowl of rice.
Nothing had ever tasted so good. She ate every grain as if it were her last. She could not remember the last time she had been so hungry. Ky only ate part of his and gave the rest to Sandy. She took it without saying a word and ate it.
“Don’t drink all the water. We may not get more for some time,” he warned her.
“I don’t care. I need it now,” she said and let the liquid slide down her parched throat.
Ky drank half of his and placed the rest under the ledge.
“Not quite as good as our last meal,” Ky said solemnly.
Sandy broke out laughing.
Ky looked at her in astonishment, “What?”
“Nothing. That just cracks me up,” she said, laughing hysterically.
He smiled but didn’t see the humor in it. He was worried that she was going to breakdown after all that had happened to her. Instead she just lay down and went to sleep. It was cold in the room but they had no covers, only the stone slabs to sleep on. And of course, there was the bucket in the corner.
They were kept together in the cell for another three days before they were finally separated. Ky wondered what would happen to Sandy and the others now? As a citizen of China, he knew they would be especially hard on him. Maybe the American Counsel had obtained their freedom.
He was starving by the time the cell door opened but instead of food a man carrying a beat-up briefcase entered.
“You are Ky Min Kinjo. I am your legal representative. You have been charged with crimes against the People’s Republic of China. These are serious charges. I will represent you in these matters.”
“What are the charges specifically?” Ky asked.
“It does not matter. You are guilty and I will do my best to negotiate a reasonable sentence for you.”
“But if I have not been to trial, how can I be considered guilty already.”
“Do not be a fool. Do not ask stupid questions. Do you think the court has time to hear your pathetic lies and explanations? You have committed the crimes. It is irrefutable,” the man said.
He opened his briefcase and brought out a document.
“Sign here and here,” he said pointing to two places on the paper.
“I want to read it first,” Ky said.
“Just sign. There is nothing you can do about it anyway so why not simply sign?”
He scanned the page quickly. It was a full confession of crimes against the nation and having a sexual relationship with the American women.
“Wait. I never had any relationship with her other than just being friends,” he protested.
“She says you did.”
“What? No. That is not true. She wouldn’t say that.”
“Really? I have seen her confession. She says you seduced her and that you were one of the ringleaders in carrying out these crimes.”
“But that is not true. I have never had sex with Sandy,” Ky said becoming agitated.
“It does not matter. Sign.”
“I will not confess to something I did not do,” Ky said stubbornly.
“I see. In that case I will be back next week to take your confession and enter your plea,” he said, folding the paper and sticking it back into his briefcase.
“I will not confess to crimes I did not commit,” Ky repeated.
“Of course you will,” he said and the guard opened the door.
This was crazy, he thought. Some of the things were true but he did not initiate the plan and he had never touched Sandy inappropriately. He was apprehensive th
e rest of the day but nothing happened. No food or water came and he thought maybe they were going to starve the confession out of him. He would not give in, he decided.
He finally fell into a fitful sleep but was awakened by the door being banged open. Three men came in the room and began punching and beating him. He rolled up into a ball but they yanked him off the slab and down the hall to another room. They tossed him in and slammed the door.
Now what? He raised his head but a foot came crashing down on his hand. He screamed as the heel was ground into the back of his hand.
“Do you know why you are here?” the man asked but didn’t wait for an answer, “Because you are making my life difficult and I do not like people who make my life difficult. I could be home in bed but instead I am here with a pig like you.”
For the next hour the man kicked, punched and beat Ky. He passed out several times but as soon as he was revived, it started all over again.
“You will confess sooner or later. Just do it now and I can go home and you can go back to your cell.”
“No,” Ky said, blood dripping from his smashed nose and the gash above his eye.
“Who cares what you confess to? I do not care but you will sign the confession.”
He held out for almost another two hours before they began working on him with electrical shocks. They would send waves of electricity through various parts of his body until he would pass out.
“I am not tired yet, are you?” the man asked, lifting Ky’s head.
“As painful as it was on your genitals, it is even worse on the bottom of your feet. Here let me show you,” he said and applied the pads with the electrical clips to the bottoms of his feet.
“This will really hurt,” he said and laughed.
The current raced up Ky body, across his groin and down the other foot. He screamed and bucked, pleading for him to stop.
“Stop. Please. I confess. Please, I confess.”
The man let the current run a few more seconds before he switched it off.
“You will sign now?”
“Yes. Please, no more,” Ky begged.
They let him down and thrust the paper in front of him.
“Sign here and here and here,” he said.
“Three places?”
“Yes. You are also being charged with the death of the American woman you had sexual relations with.”
“What? She is dead?”
The man just shrugged.
“But I have been in my cell since they removed her. How could I have committed such a crime?”
“Sign.”
“But this is cra….”
Ky yelled and flopped around as the electricity was turned on once again. When they finally stopped, the odor of his burning flesh filled the small room. He had soiled himself as well adding to the smell.
“If you do not sign, I will turn this on and go out for a smoke. You will either sign or be dead when I return.”
“Alright. I’ll sign,” he said and scrawled his symbols on the paper.
“Very good. Now I can go home and see my children,” the man said and placed the paper in his pocket.
They took him back to his cell and shoved him in the room. His feet hurt so badly he could hardly walk. He climbed on the cold slab and fell asleep immediately.
He sat in his cell, hardly eating even though he was receiving more food than previously. Sandy was dead and he was being charged. It made no sense. She had been alive when they took her from the cell. Someone else killed her and he was going to take the blame.
Everything he had hoped to accomplish was now gone. He had no future, of that he was certain. He would be sent to prison and his family’s property would be seized as well. Poor Sandy, she had been such a lively girl and now she was dead.
A full week passed before they came to get him. He was given a set of pajamas made of rough cloth with a red stripe around the legs and arms. A pair of slippers were the only other item he was given. The legal representative came in an hour later.
“I have your confession. I have been able to have your life spared. You will receive a twenty year sentence.”
“But you know that I did not kill Sandy,” he said.
“But you confessed. Obviously you did. Are you recanting your confession?”
“I did not kill her.”
“Well then. I guess I had better reschedule your trial. I will have to let them question you further I suppose,” he said standing up abruptly.
He started for the door.
“No. Wait. It makes no difference anyway. I am ready to accept the sentence,” Ky said.
“Excellent. We will go to trial in one hour,” his representative said and left.
As he was being taken to trial he saw Sandy being taken down the hall to the guard’s quarters. She had a blank stare on her face and she walked by without even looking at him.
“Sandy,” he said but she just kept on walking. The door opened and she disappeared inside.
“That was Sandy,” he said.
“Your young friend is dead. The American girl you knew as Sandy is no longer,” his representative said.
When Ky was brought into the courtroom he was surprised to see three of the young men that had been traveling with him. Each was seated with an armed guard standing directly behind them. When Ky entered, one of the men looked over at him but the guard grabbed his head roughly and turned it back toward the front.
A row of six stern looking men sat at the front of the room on a raised platform. Each person was read the charges and asked how they pleaded.
Each said he were guilty.
“And you admit this by your own free will without coercion?” one of the judges asked.
Each answered yes. It took less than three minutes for each one. The representative would plead for an easy sentence because of their ages and because they were not Chinese citizens. Each received a two year sentence with one year suspended if they did not cause any trouble while in jail.
A representative from the American Government was present and he objected to the incarceration. The judges conferred for several minutes and then announced that they would be released in six months and immediately sent back to the United States. They were led out of the room.
“Ky Min Kinjo.”
Ky stood when they called his name.
“You have pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the Chinese people, associating with criminals against the state and the murder of an American woman. These are very serious charges. What does your client have to say?” the judge asked the representative.
“Most honorable judge, my client is but a young foolish student. He has never caused any trouble before. He fell under the influence of the Westerners and forgot his true purpose in attending the University. He comes from a humble background and was not aware of the ways of the Western world and their influence. The death of the young American girl was an accident. He did not intend to harm her. We beg the honorable court for mercy.
The judges talked amongst themselves for several minutes before saying, “It is true that Ky Min Kinjo is young and perhaps not aware of the Westerners but he is a Chinese nationalist and knows the laws of the land. It is easy to see how a farm boy could be swayed by the decadence of the Americans. Because of this we have decided to spare his life. We sentence you to twenty years of hard labor in the coal mines of the Shanxi region. You will serve your entire sentence in the mines.”
Ky’s knees almost gave out. The coal mines. It was like a death sentence only he would be killed hour by hour instead of all at once.
Early the next morning he was placed in leg irons along with nine other men. People watched as the nine of them were marched to the train station. A few spit on them or threw vegetables at them but most just jeered. Ky had never felt so alone in his life.
CHAPTER SIX
CHINA
It was a long and grueling ride, stuffed in the boxcar with only straw on the floor to lie on. Ky looked at the other
men around him. Some were obviously hardened criminals but three of the others looked like him. They were obviously not real criminals. He wondered what they had done to be sent to the mines.
He finally asked the young man lying nearest him, “Why are you here?”
“I am told I stole money. I had never been to that area in my life but it did not matter. They said someone had picked me out as the one that took the money.”
“And you signed a confession?”
“Of course. What else was I going to do?”
“I understand.”
“Why are you here?”
“I was accused of associating with Westerners and crimes against the state.”
“Did you? I mean, associate with Westerners?”
“I was at the University. We were required to take English. I just tried to get to know them so I could master the language.”
“But you did more than just talk to them, right?”
“We did some sightseeing together.”
“You took a big chance. What caused them to finally bring you to trial?”
Ky told him the story, leaving out the part about the charge of the murder of the American girl.
“And for that you got twenty years?” he said skeptically.
“Yes. I don’t exactly understand it either.”
“You must have done something more. I only received six years.”
“I can’t explain it but that is what I got.”
“You are as good as dead,” the man said and rolled over.
He was right, Ky thought. There was no way that he could survive for twenty years in the mines of the Shanxi region.
They finally arrived at the City of Jincheng where they were met by armed guards. They were quickly placed into trucks and driven out of the city. They drove for several hours and it was just starting to get dark when they rolled through a compound fenced in with barbed wire. They were brought to a big clearing with a raised platform. They lined up with the guards shoving and poking them.
“If anyone talks he will be shot,” one of the guards yelled.
Everyone looked straight ahead. They stood for the better part of an hour before a short, obese, bespectacled man ascended the stairs to the platform.
THE BEGINNING Book Two (THE EVENT) Page 4