A Million Shades of Gray

  Ama turned to the men and held himself proudly as he gestured with his hand that they were turning around.

  When they reached the fork again, they followed the tracks of the one soldier this time. His trail led deep into the jungle. It was late afternoon when they reached the end of the trail. There was no debris left, but this was where the enemy had gathered. The area was full of disturbed vegetation and dirt. Y’Tin stepped in a patch of undisturbed ground and compared it to the footprints he was examining. His fresh print slowly recovered, but some of the succulent plants he’d stepped on were permanently broken. Ama signaled the others to stop as he circled the site and slipped in and out of the abandoned camp. Y’Tin saw that his father was counting every print, but Y’Tin used the averaging method. He split the camp into quarters and counted the number of people in one quarter. It took Y’Tin three hours to count and feel sure he was close to correct. He tried not to feel the pressure, but he wished he could work faster. It was growing dark by the time he finished. His father had finished a half hour earlier, but everybody waited for Y’Tin. Finally, he turned to his father and said, “About one hundred fifty.”

  His father nodded. “That’s what I came up with. One hundred twenty-five to one hundred fifty.”

  Suddenly, and clearly, they heard talking, and the whole group—seven of them in all—melted into the forest. That is, Y’Tin knew the others melted into the forest, as he did. The only one he could see was Shepard. Then whoever had been talking fell silent. Y’Tin could just barely hear the other men gingerly walking backward. He wondered whether the Special Forces soldiers would open fire, but they didn’t. None of his group moved for a full hour. Then all hell broke loose. Shooting exploded behind Y’Tin, before him, and above him. His group was doing some of the shooting. Then Y’Bier Hlong staggered into sight. His chest gushed blood as he dropped his rifle. Y’Tin picked it up. He’d never shot a gun. He pointed it toward an enemy soldier but hesitated—he wasn’t sure where everybody was and didn’t want to accidentally hit one of the friend-lies. Then a North Vietnamese soldier was aiming at Shepard’s back, and Y’Tin fired. The bullet shot upward, and the backfire was so strong that Y’Tin fell to the ground. By the time he scrambled up, the firefight had ended. Shepard was taking Y’Bier’s pulse. Fortunately, someone else must have shot the soldier who’d been aiming at Shepard.

  Silence. Shepard hung his head, and Y’Tin knew that his father’s friend had died, shot in the chest and head. Y’Tin stared at him. He had never seen someone killed before.

  They walked until it was pitch dark, with Shepard carrying Y’Bier. After a while Shepard said one word: “Here.” The men lay on the ground for sleep. Y’Tin stared into the darkness. Soon he heard a soft, soft sound and realized it was his father crying. Y’Tin fell asleep to the sound. He woke up just once, his face clammy with dew, and he still heard the sound. Ama had worked for the Special Forces for several years, but he’d been lucky—this was the first time anyone had been killed on one of his father’s missions. Y’Tin knew it was his fault. If they hadn’t waited for him to finish counting, Y’Suai never would have been shot. Was the guilt he felt part of war? He could feel that Y’Bier’s three souls had already left the body. Y’Bier was the nicest man in the village. He always gave away all of the delicious cantaloupes that he raised every year. Y’Tin’s family grew the best tobacco, but they didn’t give it away like that. No one did, just the Hlongs.

  The next morning Shepard carried the dead man on his back all the way to the village. He gently laid Y’Bier in the graveyard just outside the fence.

  “Get a blanket, Y’Tin,” his father told him.

  Y’Tin half flew to his longhouse and scrambled up. Nobody was there—they were all no doubt working in the fields. He ran back to the cemetery to lay the blanket over Y’Bier’s body. But he saw he was too late. Somehow, Y’Bier’s wife had already heard and was weeping over the bloody body.

  Y’Tin wanted to tell her that it was all his fault, but instead, he just stared at her.

  Chapter Three

  1975

  Y’Tin scrubbed Lady’s hide as hard as he could. She lay on her side in the river, filling her trunk with water and spraying it on herself and, sometimes, on him. He suspected she sprayed him on purpose, but he couldn’t be sure. Either way, his shirt and loincloth were drenched.

  “Now I’ll be all wet for school!” he exclaimed. Then he laughed and slapped her side—what he always did when he had finished washing her. She stood up and filled her trunk with mud, which she blew onto her back. Elephants’ bodies made much more heat than human beings’ bodies, and they kept cooler by covering their backs with mud. Y’Tin had learned that years ago, when he first became obsessed with elephants.

  The other elephant keepers had already finished washing their elephants. Y’Tin always took longest because he was a perfectionist. Anyway, that’s why he thought he took longest. “Lady, nao!” he said. She started down the path to her pen. Her spongy feet fell silently on the jungle floor. Even when she stepped on a twig, the noise was muffled by her feet. Someday, after the war ended, he might go to school to study elephants. Or maybe he would start his own elephant-training school.

  Lady stopped to pull at some tree bark. Y’Tin said, “Nao!” and she lowered her trunk and continued silently down the path. He was one of the only elephant keepers he’d ever heard of who didn’t use a stick with a hook at the end to communicate with his elephant. That was one of the skills he would teach if he ever opened an elephant-training school. He had heard there were such schools in Thailand, but he’d never heard of such a thing in Vietnam. His would be the first. He had become the youngest elephant keeper ever, and he would open the first elephant school in Vietnam. Who knew what other records he might break?

  Two years ago, when he’d become the youngest elephant keeper—ever!—he had used the hook, because otherwise, Lady wouldn’t listen to him. But as they had grown familiar with each other, he used the hook less and less until he finally abandoned it altogether. He did carry it with him, just in case he needed it in some sort of emergency, but he hadn’t used it for about a year.

  Y’Tin had just broken into a jog to keep up with Lady when she stopped walking and knocked him to the ground with her trunk. He couldn’t help laughing. He got up, and she knocked him down again. It was her favorite game, but he knew she would stop if he told her to. He held her trunk a second and scratched it. When he let go, she let it sway softly one way and then another. “Muk,” he said, and she knelt. He climbed over her head and sat just past her shoulders, in front of where the mud was already caking. He rubbed her neck, pushing down her bristly hairs. She shook her head no.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She shook her head again, and he felt her mood change. Maybe she sensed the tiger that had been haunting the village. His sisters had seen the tiger yesterday. Y’Tin looked around but saw nothing except jungle. Then he heard men speaking Vietnamese instead of Rhade. “I’m telling you, the river is that way,” one said.

  Two South Vietnamese soldiers stepped onto the path right in front of Lady. Even though South Vietnam and the Dega had both fought on the American side of the war, soldiers frightened him.

  “Moi!” one said to Y’Tin. “Moi!” Moi meant “savage.” It was what the Vietnamese—both North and South—called Y’Tin’s people. But no one had ever personally called Y’Tin a moi. He felt anger rise in his chest, but he remained silent. The soldiers carried guns, and you never knew what might happen with men carrying guns. The soldiers might shoot him dead right there and not think of it ever again. That was what war did to people. His father had said so. And if his father said it, it was the truth. Y’Tin waited to see what the soldiers would do next.

  “Where’s the river?” the taller of the two men demanded.

  Y’Tin pointed behind him.

  The man seemed to be cleaning his teeth with his tongue for several seconds. Then he scratched at a tooth with a finger befo
re returning his attention to Y’Tin. “Don’t you know how to talk?” he finally said.

  “You follow the path,” Y’Tin said in Vietnamese. He bowed his head subserviently a couple of times, for he could see they were in a bad mood. They stood before him for a moment longer, and he wondered what was coming next. Then the tall one said, “Let’s go” to the other, and they left.

  Y’Tin felt Lady relax as she continued down the path. “Who are they to call me moi, eh, Lady?” He slapped the side of her neck. They emerged from the jungle near the elephant pen that Y’Tin and the other keepers had built several years ago, before Y’Tin was officially an elephant keeper. They had wanted to make sure a roof covered the elephants during sunny days. Even with mud caked on their backs, the elephants still liked to relax in the pen. Y’Tin had also built a small hutch for himself, so he could sleep near Lady every night. Originally, he had wanted to build his own longhouse. He had liked to mention to people how he was going to be the youngest handler ever, even though he’d already told everyone. In fact, one day he had said to his father, “Ama, since I’m going to be the youngest elephant keeper someday, maybe I should have my own longhouse by the elephant pen.”

  His father had replied, “If you build it, you can have it.”

  “I can’t build it on my own. I was thinking that since I’m going to be the youngest elephant keeper ever, you would help me.”

  His father had laughed. “When I was hunting at your age, nobody built me a longhouse.”

  So Y’Tin didn’t get his own longhouse. All he could build by himself was the hutch.

  Now Y’Tin looked toward his family’s land and saw his mother and father weeding in their tobacco field. Sometimes people commented that his father loved tobacco as much as Y’Tin loved elephants.

  Every day the villagers worked in their fields as if there were no war raging. The last American soldiers had left Vietnam in 1973, and after that daily life continued. Y’Tin’s father still worked in his beloved tobacco field, and Y’Tin still went to school, still took care of Lady. He fantasized that the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong would leave them alone and that his people would remain in the Central Highlands, where they had lived for hundreds—maybe thousands—of years.

  The tribes’ other two elephants, Geng and Dok, were already chained and waiting patiently until their elephant keepers finished working in the fields. Geng was the Knuls’ elephant and was handled by Tomas, and Dok belonged to the Hwings and was handled by a boy named Y’Siu.

  The chains were long enough to allow the elephants to reach the bamboo trees and tall grass in the jungle but too short to allow them to reach the fields owned by Y’Tin’s family. Y’Tin wasn’t supposed to, but in July when the sugarcane was ripe, he cut plenty of canes for Lady. It was her favorite thing. He always cut off the sweet end for Lady and gave the rest to Geng and Dok. He knew Lady was more spoiled than the others, but she was also the hardest working. Still, sometimes Tomas reprimanded Y’Tin for spoiling Lady. At sixteen Tomas was the oldest, so Y’Tin and Y’Siu always deferred to him. One day Y’Tin had suggested they chain the elephants farther out because there was a bigger bamboo stand there. Tomas had pursed his lips and said, “They’re fine where they are.” Y’Tin was a little miffed, but Tomas was the boss man.

  Besides a few minor run-ins with Tomas, the only difficult time Y’Tin had experienced as an elephant keeper was before he began training. A man from another village had wanted to breed his bull with Lady. She’d gotten pregnant and, at twenty-two months, had given birth to a male, whom Y’Tin had named Mountain. That was when he built a little house, so he could give round-the-clock attention to Lady and Mountain. But Mountain had died at six months, and Lady had been depressed for a long time. She lost so much weight that her ribs stuck out. Y’Tin lost weight as well, until his own ribs stuck out. That was something Y’Tin and Lady had gone through together, and after that they had been connected by their spirits.

  Now Lady was pregnant again by a wild bull who’d stormed the village. That was twenty-one months ago, meaning Lady might give birth at any time. For reasons not understood, nobody in the village had ever successfully raised a calf of a domesticated elephant, but Y’Tin planned to be the first.

  Now he attached Lady’s chain to her leg and gave her trunk a good scratch. “I’ll see you after school,” he told her, but her attention had already turned to a bamboo tree. It was ridiculous, but even before he left, he was already feeling lonely for her. Y’Tin was the last elephant handler back from the river, as he was every morning. While he attended school, Lady would stay chained here unless there was work for her to do hauling wood or crops.

  Y’Tin walked toward the village. The fence surrounding it was made of bamboo stalks sharpened at the tops. Years ago the Americans had wanted many villages to put up fences. The fences were to protect the village as well as to let the Vietcong know that this village did not support them. Y’Tin walked through the gate, on which hung the green, red, and white flag of his people. A drawing of an elephant decorated the flag, so naturally, Y’Tin approved of it.

  He moved quickly past the longhouses, which all looked the same: slanting thatch roofs and stilts several feet high holding up the structures. The houses were built north to south. He had heard that in America nearly every house looked different from the house next to it and houses could face different directions, depending on how the street ran. Y’Tin thought that seemed disorganized, but who was he to judge?

  As he approached his family’s longhouse, he clucked at the chicken coop and opened the door. The chickens scurried out to forage. They were a motley collection: red, black, white, brown. Once, a Special Forces soldier had watched with interest as Y’Tin clucked for the chickens in the evening. He’d asked Y’Tin how he knew which chickens were his and not another villager’s. Y’Tin tried to be polite but laughed a bit when he explained, “We know which chickens are ours, and they know us.” Sometimes the Americans were funny. He really missed them. And they had a lot of weapons to fight the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. In the Central Highlands, life had seemed safer when the Americans had been here, even though Y’Tin had heard gunfire almost every night. He still heard gunfire.

  Y’Tin climbed the ladder up to his longhouse. At 130 meters long, it was the biggest in the village. His entire clan numbered sixty, not counting the two babies who were still in their mothers’ stomachs. Y’Tin had never set foot in parts of his house. He mostly just went from the entrance to his family’s room. One of his aunties lived at the far end, in the biggest room. She was a widow and had her room all to herself. Though she was just thirty-two, she had been widowed three times, and, frankly, after that nobody was too keen on marrying her.

  Y’Tin nodded to one of his seven uncles, who sat on a mat eating rice in the entrance room. His uncle chewed and swallowed.

  “Do a good job in school today,” his uncle said. “You know how important it is to your mother.”

  “I’ll study hard,” Y’Tin said, but he knew his uncle didn’t believe him. Nobody ever believed him when he said that. Maybe he should start saying something new when people told him to do a good job in school. Maybe he should say Absolutely, the way the Americans would have.

  Y’Tin went to the family bedroom to grab his schoolbook. He looked at it with distaste. Most days he couldn’t even bear to open it up. One thing about school was that even though all the children were different, they all used the same book. Did that make sense?

  He didn’t feel he should have to attend school. As an elephant expert, he would always have work. The village would always need elephants. He begged his parents again and again to let him stay home. He would work on them for a few weeks and then not say anything for another few weeks, so that each time he complained, it would seem fresh to them. He thought he might be wearing them down, because sometimes after he begged them, he saw his parents meet eyes in a certain way, the way they did when they disagreed but didn’t want to say so in
front of Y’Tin and his sisters.

  School was really his mother’s idea, and his father always supported her when it came to raising Y’Tin, H’Juaih, and his younger sister, nicknamed Jujubee. Rhade women could be bossy. Y’Tin had heard that the women were more subservient in some of the other thirty-odd Dega tribes here in the Central Highlands. But in the Rhade tribe the women held a lot of power. His mother wanted him to go to school so that he could move to the city one day. “That way, you can have a better life,” she liked to say. He tried to explain to her that he didn’t want a better life. Except for school, his life was fine the way it was. Maybe after Lady died he would check out the city. But Lady was just twenty-one, and elephants lived to sixty or even longer. In forty years Y’Tin would be fifty-three. Then, and only then, he might want this better life his mother spoke of. But he didn’t like to think of Lady dying. Sometimes, even though her death was many years away, he cried when he thought of her dying.

  Nobody else was around except his uncle. His sisters had no doubt left for school quite a while ago, and the rest of the clan was working in the fields. Y’Tin glanced at them as he left the village. Every day was nearly the same for them. But every day was different for Y’Tin.

  He took a final glance at Lady before stepping into the jungle to head for school. Y’Tin was always late. Always. The teacher, Monsieur Thorat, once paddled him on the legs for tardiness, but the paddle barely even stung. Monsieur was too nice to paddle anyone with force. And if he did give Y’Tin a hard paddling, Y’Tin knew his father would withdraw him from school. Sometimes Y’Tin wondered whether he should try to induce a hard paddling. Then he would get to stay home. On the other hand, it could be that his mother would just send him to a different school, one farther away and without such a patient teacher. And Monsieur Thorat actually knew an awful lot of useful and interesting information, but for some reason he hardly ever talked about it. For instance, Monsieur Thorat had told the class that in Thailand, American tourists paid elephant handlers for rides on their elephants. Y’Tin wondered how much an elephant ride cost. Monsieur Thorat had passed around a Thai magazine, and in it were pictures of painted elephants on parade. Y’Tin definitely would like to see that one day. And Thailand had not been dragged into the wars of Southeast Asia. That made Thailand even more interesting. Also, Monsieur Thorat had been to America. He said that Americans called a little rain a “storm” and called a storm a “torrent.” He said Americans liked to visit other countries for “vacations.” And he talked about “smog.” He said most Americans worked inside buildings. Y’Tin wondered what that was like. He thought that it would kill him to work indoors every day. Anyway, as fascinating as Monsieur could be, he usually chose to be boring for reasons that would always be a mystery to Y’Tin.