A Million Shades of Gray

  “Ami, you’re … you’re the best mother in the village, no joke,” Y’Tin said. He took a step closer to her to get her attention.

  “Did you go to school?” she asked without looking up.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “If I find out you’re lying to me, I’ll beat you with a stick.”

  Y’Tin laughed. “You never beat me with a stick before. Anyway, like I was saying, you’re the best mother in any village anywhere.”

  “What do you want, Y’Tin?” His mother sighed. She looked at him again. “You’re up to something.” But she said it affectionately.

  “Ami, like I said, you’re the best mother in history. I appreciate that. But, see, there’s … I can study books while I sit with the elephants, but I can’t take care of the elephants while I’m at school. So, because, ah, well, because I can learn while I stay at home but I can’t take care of the elephants while I’m at school, ah, there’s no reason for me to go to school!” he finished emphatically. She didn’t reply, just returned to her cooking. He shrugged and went to his family’s room to throw down his schoolbook. He could just be losing his mind, but he really thought he was making progress with his mother.

  Once in a great while, when Y’Tin went hunting with his father, he was allowed to stay home from school. Otherwise, his mother was firm in her refusal to let him quit. He had ditched school three times, but each time she found out because H’Juaih had told on him. All three times Ami had looked like she wanted to cry, which was punishment enough to make him go to school as often as he could stand it.

  Y’Tin wandered out to the front porch to see if anything interesting was going on outside. One of the chickens was on the porch. He hadn’t even noticed when he’d climbed up. “There’s a chicken out here!” he called to his mother.

  “It’s sick,” she called back. “Leave it alone.”

  He climbed down the notches of the ladder and clucked for the chickens. They came running, and he opened up their coop so they could go inside.

  Later, at dinner, Y’Tin closed his eyes and thanked the spirits for the food and also asked for safety for his family and his tribe’s elephants.

  His family sat on mats on the floor. For reasons no one had ever explained to Y’Tin, men ate with chopsticks and women ate with their hands. Y’Tin bopped his younger sister on the head with a chopstick as his mother watched, half amused and half annoyed. “Stop that, Y’Tin,” she said mildly. His little sister’s name was H’Lir, but they all called her Jujubee for the jujube candy that Shepard’s wife used to send him from home. H’Lir had loved the candy so much that she once ate two whole boxes in one sitting.

  She opened her eyes wide at Y’Tin, then crossed them. “Ami, Jujubee is crossing her eyes again,” Y’Tin said.

  “Stop that,” his mother told her. “You’ll have crossed eyes when you’re old if you don’t stop it. Don’t tempt the spirits.”

  “The spirits won’t punish me. I’m only … I’m …”

  “Five,” Y’Tin said. “You know that.”

  “I forgot.”

  Y’Tin hit her on the head again. “That’ll clear your brain up.”

  His mother handed Ama a bowl of food, then told the others to serve themselves. Y’Tin spooned rice and potatoes into his bowl.

  His father nodded gravely at nothing in particular as he picked at his rice. “Maybe they’ll get us extra guns somehow,” he murmured, his mind elsewhere. When Y’Tin’s father said “they,” he always meant the Americans. Y’Tin knew that the Special Forces had left them weapons, many of which the tribe had buried in the jungle.

  Y’Tin was about to ask his father about that when he suddenly realized that he could smell elephant meat cooking. Ordinarily, he did not have a particularly good sense of smell, but something about cooking elephant meat made him retch. “Did somebody catch an elephant?” he asked his mother. He sniffed at the air. It didn’t smell much different from any other meat, but for Y’Tin there was something sickly about it.

  “Yes, the Nie clan killed a small wild elephant and is having a feast with some friends. We weren’t invited, of course.” People who owned elephants never ate them. Once last year when one of the clans feasted on an elephant, Y’Tin threw a silent curse on them. Several weeks later four of the kids got sick with malaria. Y’Tin felt so guilty, he resolved never to throw a curse again.

  After dinner he went moodily to his family’s room and sulked with his back against a wall. Why kill an elephant when the jungle was full of deer and the rivers were full of fish? The rest of his family had moved to the front porch, so he was alone in the room. He leaned back, trying to get the smell out of his nostrils.

  Suddenly, Jujubee came flying into the room, knocking his head against the wall. Jujubee always did things with twice the energy that was needed. She laughed energetically, she cried energetically, she pouted energetically, and she worked energetically.

  “Watch it!” he cried out. He felt the back of his head. “I think my head is broken!”

  Jujubee began to cry. “You don’t love me!” That’s what she said almost every time anyone scolded her.

  “I love you, but my head is broken.”

  She ran out of the room. “You don’t love me!”

  He could hear the sound of raised voices. He got up to see what was going on. On the porch his parents were having an argument. “I’m not leaving the village,” his mother was saying. “They can kill me if they want, but I’m not leaving. This is my home.”

  “You’ll feel differently if they come here,” his father insisted. “Don’t assume the spirits will smile on you just because you’ve never crossed them.”

  “Why would anyone kill me? I didn’t work for the Americans.”

  “But I did!” his father cried, raising his voice to a shout.

  That argument again. They’d had it several times. Y’Tin said, “Later, gator!” and climbed down the ladder. He loved the way the Americans talked, he really did.

  At the pen the elephants were nibbling on a mound of grass Tomas had cut for them. Y’Tin unchained Lady and led her to the edge of the jungle so she could eat more. She chewed on fresh grass and then suddenly reached out and pulled down a tree with her trunk. Y’Tin scrambled out of the way as the tree crashed down. Her trunk could pick up a pebble as easily as it could pull down a tree. He always thought of the trunk as being at the center of an elephant, just as the heart was the center of a human. Sometimes, when Lady was especially happy to see him, she wrapped her trunk around him and squeezed, knocking the air out of him. He should probably scold her for that, but he didn’t want her to think he didn’t love her. Tomas thought that was ridiculous reasoning, but Y’Tin didn’t care.

  Y’Tin heard his name being called and turned around. H’Juaih was running through the sugarcane field with her arms flapping through the air. He ran toward her.

  “What is it?” he said, taking hold of her arm.

  “Ama wants you.” She held on to a lock of her long hair, the way she always did when she was worried or thinking.

  “What does he want?”

  “I don’t know. He said it was important and for me to hurry. He said, ‘Why does that boy always rush off to his elephant when there are important matters to discuss?’”

  “They were arguing,” he defended himself. “Tomas! Can you keep an eye on Lady?”

  Tomas raised a few fingers in reply.

  Y’Tin and H’Juaih trotted together around the family’s field. The green shoots were tiny and vulnerable. Sometimes his parents slept outside with the crops, to catch vermin that might eat them.

  Now the crescent moon hung over the village in the still-blue sky. One of Y’Tin’s uncles believed that a daytime moon was luckier than a nighttime moon. Y’Tin had no opinion about that; he would have to study it further one day.

  H’Juaih and Y’Tin slipped through the village gate. At the closest longhouse he saw one of the families holding a small ritual, just a chicken and
one jar of rice wine. Probably someone was a little sick, so they were sacrificing a chicken. Several men were sipping from the jar with long straws. One of them stopped to say loudly, “I’ll fight the Vietcong with my bare hands if I have to.” He slurred his words, and Y’Tin knew he’d been drinking quite a bit.

  Y’Tin’s father was waiting outside their longhouse. The stilts at the front entrance were slanting, making the inside of the house slant as well. That was because his addled uncle (who had come from the Knul clan) helped construct that part of the house. He’d insisted on being in charge of building. He and Y’Tin’s youngest aunt had divorced a couple of years ago, and he had gone back to live with the Knuls. The Knuls had a reputation for being oddballs. Y’Tin had no idea why his family had allowed his auntie to marry a Knul. Anyway, the house still slanted. That was the story Ami had told him about why the house was that way. She had been lecturing him on how he was supposed to behave someday when he went to live in his wife’s house. Uncle, she’d told Y’Tin, was an example of everything Y’Tin should not be.

  There was nowhere private inside, so Ama gestured Y’Tin to follow him. They usually talked in private out by the tobacco fields or, when Ama was in a hurry, at the fence on the far south side of the village. Tonight Y’Tin followed his father to the fence. He knew his father had been thinking. Whenever he’d been thinking, it often seemed to involve Y’Tin. That’s because H’Juaih was perfect and Jujubee was still young.

  Y’Tin peeked through an opening in the fence and could see the elephants beyond the fields. Lady was dragging the tree that she’d knocked down. She always liked to play with her food. “Forget the elephants for a moment,” Ama said shortly.

  Y’Tin looked at his father with surprise. He knew his father took great pride in Y’Tin’s expertise about elephants.

  “Y’Tin, some of the men have been talking about moving into the jungle and setting up a guerilla encampment.”

  “But you’ve been talking about it since the Americans left.”

  “We used to speak of it casually, but now we speak of it seriously.”

  So many Dega tribesmen had worked closely with the American Special Forces that all might be considered guilty if caught by either the North Vietnamese or the Vietcong. Their lives were all at risk if and when the village was overrun by the enemy. Y’Tin was going to reason this out the way his father would. Some people felt that the women would be safer if the men left the villages. In fact, Y’Tin had heard that to the east, men had abandoned several villages for life in the jungle.

  Y’Tin’s father prodded him. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “You might be moving away?”

  “We will be moving away.”

  And even though Y’Tin had heard this before, his father’s tone was so ominous that Y’Tin felt a jolt of fear run down his spine. If his father said it, it was of course true. Y’Tin frowned and looked down, and at that exact moment an enormous cockroach scurried between him and his father. Maybe that was a good sign, but maybe not—he and his father were being split in two by the path of the bug.

  Y’Tin knew that in a fight between North and South, the North would win. That was the only certainty. Without the Americans, the South Vietnamese had a weaker army than the North did. Some South Vietnamese soldiers were already surrendering, but the Dega tribes would continue the war regardless of what the South Vietnamese Army did.

  In addition to collaborating with the Special Forces, many Dega had joined the South Vietnam Rangers after the U.S. withdrawal. His father had worked for three years with the Americans. But when the Americans left, he had returned to farming and hunting.

  “Is South Vietnam going to surrender soon?” Y’Tin asked.

  “Whether they’ll surrender or whether they’ll simply be overrun, I don’t know the answer to that. But whatever happens will happen soon.”

  His father was just thirty-three, but his face was crisscrossed with lines. Despite the approaching dusk, his lines looked even more severe than usual. For some reason Y’Tin looked at his father’s hands. The veins ran like welts up his hands and wrists and then up his arms.

  “How soon, Ama?” asked Y’Tin.

  “Any day. Maybe next year. Maybe tomorrow. And anytime in between.”

  “But, Ama …” To Y’Tin’s own ears, his voice came out like a whine. He tried to formulate what he wanted to say. “But, Ama, everybody has said ‘any day’ since the Special Forces left.”

  His father took Y’Tin’s shoulders in his hands. “Y’Tin, you have to face what’s happening. You’re almost a man. The North Vietnamese might put you in a reeducation camp.”

  Y’Tin’s stomach hurt. A reeducation camp was where the North Vietnamese put you to strip your identity and to teach you to be a good Communist. Y’Tin did not want to be reeducated. He already knew everything he needed to know. He turned to peek at the elephants again. Lady was looking toward the fence, as though she knew exactly where he was. He turned back to his father, who was gazing sternly at him.

  “I’m not scared.”

  “Then you’re not thinking straight,” his father snapped. “I wanted to tell you that at some point you and your friends will need to take the elephants into the jungle. Stay there.”

  “How long should I stay there?”

  “Until I get word to you.”

  “But how will you find me?”

  Y’Tin’s father did not take his eyes off of him. “I don’t know yet. I’ve never been in this situation before.”

  “But …” If Ama didn’t know, then there was nobody left to ask. “What do you mean? Do you mean … you don’t know?” Y’Tin waited for more, but Ama had stopped to think. He liked to think so much that he’d taught himself how to read just so he could learn new ideas. Y’Tin waited a moment for his father to speak again. When Ama didn’t speak, Y’Tin asked, “What about Ami? What about H’Juaih and Jujubee?”

  “Your mother must leave, and even if she does not, I have to. It’s our only chance.”

  “But she’ll need you to protect her.”

  “With a crossbow?”

  “But, Ama, the Americans said they would help us. Shepard promised. It must be that they don’t know what’s going on.” Y’Tin paused, then said excitedly, “We need to get a message to them.” His father sometimes spoke of the Americans coming back, but he hadn’t spoken of it lately.

  “Y’Tin, they said they would help us two years ago. And what have they done? The Americans aren’t coming back, and I say that with certainty.”

  Y’Tin stared into his father’s eyes. His gaze was steely. Y’Tin looked away first. Now he knew for sure: The Americans weren’t coming back. “When will you leave, Ama?”

  “We’re having a meeting about it tomorrow.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m not going back to school anymore.”

  “Your mother doesn’t expect you to. I just spoke with her. Now go on to your elephant.”

  Y’Tin turned to leave, but his father put his hand on Y’Tin’s shoulder again. “I would die for your mother. But the reality is that dying would not help her.”

  “You can kill a man with a crossbow.”

  “Killing one man means nothing when there are a hundred men. Now go on.” His eyes softened and he tousled Y’Tin’s hair. Then he strode toward the longhouse.

  Y’Tin paused at the gate and gazed at the village. It seemed so utterly peaceful. Y’Thon Nie, who was in his older sister’s class, was clucking to his family’s chickens. The sun was setting on the west side of the fence. Tomas’s mother was tending her special eggplants in their garden. Nobody knew how her eggplants grew so delicious. She wouldn’t tell anyone her secret. Y’Tin had no secrets at all, but his mother had many. For instance, she wouldn’t tell anyone if she’d loved anyone before she married Ama. And she wouldn’t tell anyone how she cooked her special buffalo stew.

  Anyway, Y’Tin could still smell elep
hant meat. That seemed like a bad omen. As he crossed through the fields, he saw Lady grow fidgety as she spotted him. She walked toward him but stopped, exactly at the point where she would have had to stop had she been chained. He hoped she didn’t try to cross the field. His parents would scold him for not chaining her … or maybe they wouldn’t. They had more important things to worry about now.

  On the way to the elephant pen Y’Tin again had the sensation that someone was watching him. He looked around and saw nothing. Then he looked anxiously at the jungle. The sensation was so strong that he paused. Still nothing. He continued to the pen. He snapped off a piece of bamboo for Lady, but she wasn’t interested. With her amazing sense of smell, she probably knew the Nies were eating elephant meat.

  He lay on his back as the first mtu appeared in the sky, sparkling shyly. The war was coming just like the mtu came, barely sparkling at first and then glowing stronger and stronger. And then as darkness came, all you could see were the mtu. He listened to the leaves in the jungle rustling with the wind. He loved the sound suddenly. He loved the wind on his face. He loved lying on the ground quietly. Tomas, Y’Siu, and Y’Tin liked to lie on the ground near the elephants because it felt risky but also comforting. The elephants could step on them—but they wouldn’t. That was elephants for you.

  The next morning Y’Tin awoke to the rising sun, and his first thought was that he hadn’t done his homework again and, as a matter of fact, couldn’t quite remember what his homework was. Then he remembered that he didn’t have to go to school today and might never have to go to school again. And all of a sudden, he actually wanted to go to school. School had been predictable, but now he wanted a predictable life.

  “Did you hear the gunfire last night?” Tomas asked. Tomas spent about half his nights sleeping near the elephants and the other half in his longhouse with his family. Y’Siu approached and sat down without even a greeting. That was his way.

  Y’Tin shook his head. Y’Tin hadn’t heard anything. The first time he had heard gunfire in the distance, he was surprised how harmless it sounded.