THE COMMUNISTS HAVE DEVELOPED a new kind of aggression in which one country sponsors internal war within another. Communist-sponsored internal war is clearly international aggression, but a form of aggression that frequently eludes the traditional definitions of international law. It means the use of native and imported guerrillas to serve the interests of Communist nations.
—From the Foreword
by Roger Hilsman to
People’s War: People’s Army
by Vo Nguyen Giap
AGAIN THEY WERE STOPPED. From Lomphat they had traveled north and northeast, back onto the plateau, across flat, barren, crumbling red ledge, then into dense double-canopy mountain forest. This time the troops were neither motley, undisciplined nor rough. Chhuon got out. Samnang sank low in his seat, torn between curiosity and fear. Yani knelt and spied through the rear window. The officer seemed gracious. Yani nudged her brother and both children poked their heads up.
Quietly the soldier accepted the papers Chhuon presented. He asked for a donation. Chhuon handed him ten fifty-riel notes. The man flipped the notes over. “You are much generous,” he said in broken Khmer. “Allow me give back you donation. No we need for hard work money. You donate rice.”
As his father pulled back the tarpaulin Samnang winced. Four laborers came. “Our kind friend has offered us two sacks of rice,” the officer said in Viet Namese. “Help him.” Two men hefted each sack.
Samnang wanted to jump out, yell, kick the soldier. He wanted his father to take the rifle. “They can’t do that,” he stammered to Yani. Then he slapped a hand against the seat. The officer started, spun, glared at him. The boy withered under his eyes.
When the small truck was again under way Samnang blurted angrily, “Damn them. Damn them all.”
“It’s not proper,” Chhuon said, controlling his own irritation, “for one to show anger. It only makes others angry.”
“But...”
“It’s difficult, but it’s something one must do.”
Samnang had heard the admonition many times. To his eleven-year-old mind he understood it to mean, not control one’s anger, but don’t get angry. He repressed his anger, denied the emotions, pouted. Since early morning they had been on highways and back roads of northeastern Cambodia, passing through two major cities and by many villages, hamlets and isolated farms. Samnang had begun to see his country as a patchwork of different peoples, like contiguous rice fields separated by dikes and canals, forests and rivers. He saw them struggling, some prospering, some withering. It confused him and this too he repressed. With all that had happened in the past few days he felt like a powder keg.
If going to Lomphat was like stepping back in time, going to Plei Srepok was a leap into time suspended, into an Iron Age tinged with technological sophistication. Cahuom Chhuon maneuvered the small truck up the last rutted incline. He watched the beautiful country of high mountains and deep valleys unfold under lightening monsoon clouds. By midafternoon the sun had broken through and was glistening in the wet canopy. Chhuon unwrapped his checked krama from his neck. He wiped his shaved head. They drove southwest into a jungled thicket, then arced west and northwest into the mouth of a tapering canyon created by mountainous fingers descending from a high peak. Four kilometers west a main branch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail intersected Highway 19 near Ba Kev.
“Yani,” Chhuon said, “this is a very different place.”
“Boy! I’ll say,” Samnang said.
Chhuon glanced at him, noticed him rocking in the seat, smiling. He’d accompanied his father to this and other Mountaineer villages numerous times. “Yani,” Chhuon said, “to speak another language is to enter a different world. Words influence thoughts. The Mountaineers not only dress differently, they think differently. Some Khmers call them phnongs, just as yuons call them mois. They are our friends. My friends. I expect them to be treated with the very highest respect.”
“I know...” Mayana began.
“Forty, fifty years ago,” Chhuon said, “many of the tribes degenerated and acquiesced to the fate forced on them by lowland majorities and colonial powers. For them life stopped. They sat in their longhouses, smoked their pipes, drank from the jars. Then came the resurgence. They’re good-hearted people. Don’t be alarmed if you don’t understand. They’ll never allow harm to come to you.”
“But Papa,” Mayana protested, “I know. You’ve told us their stories. Doesn’t Mister Y Ksar have a daughter my age? And don’t most of them speak Khmer? I bet I could talk to her even if she doesn’t.”
“You don’t know anything,” Samnang snapped nastily.
Chhuon ignored his behavior. To Mayana he said, “I bet you could. Mister Y Ksar is very old. His son Chung married into the Draam clan and lives with his wife’s family. Chung and Draam Mul have a daughter, oh, a little older than you. About Samay’s age. Maybe thirteen.”
“Y Bhur’s my age,” Samnang said. “He showed me how to fire a crossbow.”
The dense vegetation opened abruptly onto a vacant dry-rice field. Without the trees they could see the breadth of the valley, perhaps three hundred meters. Ahead, the road reentered the jungle. Above the canopy they could see the cliff which terminated the canyon and the mountain rising into broken clouds. They crossed a log bridge surfaced with woven bamboo mats. Beneath them the waters of the O Kamang Chong, the canyon stream, were dark. At first Samnang thought the stream still, then he noticed a single piece of grass moving quickly with the glimmering surface. Chhuon’s eyes darted everywhere. The emptiness caused eerie chills to rise up his back. Again the trees closed, the trail remained level, the ridges rose. Light filtered through the foliage. Chhuon felt as if he were driving directly into the mountain. Not a breath of wind stirred.
Suddenly the revving whine of small motors surrounded them. Yani snapped about. Three gray Honda 90 motorcycles, each with two warriors, appeared. Chhuon laughed. “By the way children,” he said, “remember, here men think, eh? Women work.” Chhuon laughed happily. He waved his krama out the window at the riding soldiers. “Hello,” he clucked in Jarai.
Immediately there were two heavy thunks at the bed of the truck. Mayana popped to her knees. A chestnut-colored man dressed only in loincloth and open vest flashed a gigantic filed-toothed grin at her. “Oh!” She gasped.
“Hello,” Samnang clucked out his window.
The small truck entered another clearing, now carrying four soldiers, two in the bed plus one on each front fender. Mayana tried to see everything at once. Chhuon drove across another log bridge and up to a gate in a high bamboo picket fence. The escort motorcycles raced ahead as Chhuon chatted briefly in Jarai with the gate guard. High thatched roofs could be seen over the treetops of a mango grove.
“If I believe,” Chhuon said to the children as he drove into Plei Srepok, “that one should speak Khmer in Stung Treng because it’s our country, then mustn’t I attempt to speak Jarai on Jarai land?”
Samnang ignored the question. In an excited voice he said, “I hope Y Bhur’ll let me shoot his bow again.”
The village before them consisted of eleven longhouses in four parallel tiers rising up the east hillside which had been notched like the notched logs that served as stairs into the homes themselves. The houses, sitting on four-foot-high stilt platforms, varied from fifty to as much as 120 feet long, though in other dimensions they varied little—width twenty feet, walls three feet, and immense thatched roofs like A-frames without windows beginning from below the height of the short walls and rising twelve to fifteen feet to cover the ridgepoles. Between and under the houses children played and bare-breasted women coated with sweat pounded grain, wove cloth or split wood. Samnang tried not to stare at the women, tried not to let his father see him staring. Older men in loincloths sat in the shade of small ritual verandas talking and smoking crooked pipes. Young men clad in Western-style shirts or partial military uniforms busied themselves with their motorcycles or rifles. The smell of cows mixed with the strong aroma of cinnamon.
Chhuon pulled the truck up to Y Ksar’s longhouse. Chickens scattered, runt pigs squealed. “Eh! Look! Look at that!” Before them, across from a large vegetable garden, was a structure of a type Chhuon had never seen in a mountain village. Samnang looked about furtively, hoping to see Sraang, Y Bhur’s older sister, hoping, she, like the old women, would be clad in only a black sarong skirt.
“I’ll be,” Chhuon said. Before them was a large, round, adobe-brick structure with a few small windows and a high, intricately woven, spearhead-shaped thatched roof. Beside its wide entry there was a raised platform and before that a swept courtyard with several low log tables.
Mayana slid across the seat, out the door. She stood close by her father as a horde of villagers, men and children mostly, came to greet them. Samnang slithered out his side window and immediately was lifted by the soldier who had ridden the right fender.
“Hey! Hey! Hallo! Hallo!” An old man leading the procession called out joyously in heavily accented Khmer.
“Hello, My Brother,” Chhuon clucked back in Jarai.
“Hello, Uncle.” Samnang ran to Y Ksar. “What’s that?”
“Come, come inside and I’ll tell you everything.” Y Ksar laughed gaily. “Come, we shall open a jar and get drunk.”
The common room of Y Ksar’s longhouse was hot and dark, the still air thick with humidity and smoke. To one side, on a raised hearth a large caldron sat on inverted iron cones embedded in hot embers. Chhuon paired off with Y Ksar; Samnang, accepted as an adult, paired with Y Bhur. On the floor between them was a five-gallon earthenware jar. Mayana, her eyes tearing from the smoke, squatted with Sraang, her grandmother Jaang, and other women, sisters and aunts, near the hearth. By the door, Draam Chung, Y Ksar’s eldest son (in the village Y Ksar was known as Ama Chung, “father of Chung,” as it was the tradition to call a parent after the firstborn), held a live chicken by the neck. At the back wall, on an elevated pallet which ran the length of the room, were sixteen more huge jars.
“To you, Y Chhuon, father of Samnang, my newest brother,” Y Ksar began a buoyant, poetic invocation:
You have brought us rice.
You have brought us fat breeding
pigs.
You have honored the Spirit of our
Door.
May your body be cool,
sleep deep
snore loud.
Y Ksar presented Chhuon with an elaborately woven winnowing basket heaped with glutinous rice and topped with bananas and slivers of chicken. He dipped his hands into the basket and lifted a sticky mass of food to Chhuon’s lips. From a second basket Y Bhur followed suit, offering Samnang both friendship and sustenance. Y Ksar continued with the sonorous coughing prayer:
May our young brothers
and our old brothers catch no sickness.
May you again return in peace to
your village and again to ours.
May your truck tires remain plump.
May no one stop you on the road.
Samnang took his cues from Chhuon. When his father raised his head from Y Ksar’s hands, the boy raised his from Y Bhur’s. He felt uneasy yet proud. Chhuon scooped up a large handful and held it up for Y Ksar. In Jarai he attempted:
Spirit of the Mountain watch over all
men, all things,
watch over those who live in Plei
Srepok,
I command you, watch over the high
villages and the low.
At that moment Draam Chung slit the chicken’s neck. Blood spurted, then dripped into a neckless jug. Y Ksar, finished with the exchange of food, broke the seal on the large jar before him. His rich voice chittered gaily.
Rice beer be dark and ripe and strong
as the nightstar,
May all be in unison and full of joy.
I command all here in my home
to eat your fill of chicken
to drink your fill from the jar
May your bodies be cool
Do not let me hear an angry voice
Do not kill me with your words.
As he recited the verse, Jaang stuffed the jar with lalang grass to keep the thick bran at the bottom. Then the jar was topped off with water. Y Ksar tipped the jar as he inserted a four-foot-long straw to the bottom. Properly, a few drops of beer spilled onto the floor. He incanted:
May the Spirit of the Belly of the
paddies
make the rice grow,
May the pigs get fat and have many
piglets,
Let us do as the ancestors did in
bygone days,
as the Mother of Yesterday did in
bygone days,
Let us eat chicken until we are full, Let us drink rice beer until we belch, Soul of this food and drink do not
fear us,
so we may again eat food and drink
numpai.
With those words the women and other villagers began to eat, but Draam Chung’s bellowing voice halted them:
May the magic of the elephant plant
strengthen all
May the snake slither away before
you step on him.
We are about to anoint my brother’s
feet with chicken blood and
rice alcohol.
May the tiger stay in the
forest,
May the crocodile stay on
the
shore
May our bodies be cool,
sleep deep
snore loud.
Chhuon, his body hot and sticky with smoke and mist, shivered. He felt his heart pause, then overfill and contract. A giant pulse flooded his body. He did not turn to look at Chung, but in himself said, May I not fall into the river.
With the straw tip at the bottom of the jar Y Ksar sucked up the fermented-bran numpai as the others again began to eat. It was difficult to pull the numpai up through the long straw. For young men it was considered a test of their manhood. As he swallowed, Y Ksar slipped his thumb over the mouth end of the straw to keep the wine-beer from falling back. He drank for some minutes, then thumb-covered the straw. “Measure,” he called out. Sraang came with a smaller jar and a measuring cup. She knelt before the large jar, filled the measuring cup with water from the small, then poured the water into the large, measuring and pouring until the large jar was again full.
“Ha ha.” Y Ksar laughed his spirited laugh. “Six plus a half.” Carefully he passed the straw to Chhuon, still not allowing air to drive the numpai back into the jar. Chhuon smiled, knowing he was expected to match the feat of six and a half measures. Y Ksar looked at Chhuon’s eyes and laughed and laughed. Then he began to tell stories, some in Jarai but most in Khmer. He was a lively, witty storyteller, chanting long embellished tales. Jaang and Sraang brought more food. Chung joined in the circle and invited Mayana to sit just behind him. Y Ksar told tale after tale. He joked and laughed at the jokes himself and he made everyone else, especially Mayana, laugh too.
“Uncle,” Mayana asked in her little-girl voice, “why do you live up here? How did the mountain people get here?”
Y Ksar winked at her. “According to ancient legend,” he said, “long, long ago, after forty days and forty nights of rain caused the waters to cover the earth and after the waters receded and the mountains could again be seen, Giong, great-grandson of the Spirit of Time, soared above the earth in a kite. From the kite he could see the coast and the plains and the mountains, and all the people begged him for land. To the Khmer and to the Lao, Giong granted the valley of the great river. To the Viets he gave the coastal plain. But the Mountaineers, they did not plead. They did not even listen because they were busy eating sugarcane.” Y Ksar laughed, rolled back and stomped his enormous right foot. “Ha! Niece and nephew, we mountain people never knew which land was ours so we have roamed here and there and scattered into a hundred tribes and settled by a source of clear water. And now you shall be Mountaineers with us. We shall call you Y Nang and H Yani. You are my grandchildren. My children, as your father is my brother.”
After he had eaten, Y Ksar lit his pipe. Mayana went with Sraang and other women to the village watering spot. Draam Chung returned to work on his motorcycle. Only Y Bhur, Chhuon and Samnang remained about the jar with the old man.
“Your trip was good?” Y Ksar asked Chhuon as Chhuon continued to suck on the straw. If a man could be from two different milieus simultaneously, Y Ksar was such a man. Long ago he had filed his upper teeth to nubs and painted the lowers with ebon lacquer. His hair, what was left, was pulled tight to his head and tied in a chignon, his earlobes held fat ivory plugs. His clothing was an ornate length of cloth wrapped between his legs and about his waist. Had time run back a thousand years and dropped him in the mountains of the Srepok Forest, the inhabitants would have welcomed him as a contemporary. Yet, if one could see within his mind, Y Ksar was a tenth- and nineteenth- and twentieth-century man. Very early in his life he had become the village blacksmith, forging swords and lances, bushhooks and hoes, from imported iron ingots. In 1926 his older brother had been ordered by French colonial authorities to report for militia duty. In his stead he had sent Y Ksar. For fifteen years, Y Ksar assisted in the “pacification” of the Srepok region. He learned to handle Western weapons, to dress in Western dress, to use the colonial monetary system. For fifteen years Y Ksar traveled—from Ban Me Thuot to Stung Treng, from Kontum to Phnom Penh. He learned to speak French, Khmer, Viet Namese, Bahnar and Rhade. For fifteen years he was away from his village and people. Then, in 1942, he became canton chief, the highest governmental post allowed to one of a minority race. In 1947 he was appointed a member of the district council of the French colonial government. After the devastation caused by Viet Minh and French conscription and by cholera, in the early 1950s, Y Ksar quit his post and led many villagers on an escape march to a hidden valley where they remained until 1954. Then, with the help of the Mountaineer movement, even though all major political powers ignored it, Y Ksar, his sect and the people of Plei Srepok attempted to establish an autonomous region.
“We were stopped by a North Viet Namese patrol very near here,” Chhuon said, breaking from the jar, indicating to a house girl that he wished the jar to be measured.
“Yes,” Y Ksar said. “We’re used to them now. They camp in the Cloud Forest, where the mist and drizzle never stop, where the Spirits live. The yuons force us to sell them rice, which is why we buy rice.” He laughed. “No rice, no rice beer. Ah, how well now they pay. At one time they simply took it.”
Chhuon glanced at his old friend. He was not sure how to respond. He was not sure if Y Ksar was being shrewd, knew the riels were counterfeit, but was not letting on, or if he truly did not know. He decided not to confront the old man. Instead, he imagined himself reporting to Cheam that the soldiers at the NVA roadblock had demanded ten of the twelve bags. He himself would pay for two and all would be accounted for. “Are there many soldiers in the forest?” Chhuon asked.
“Yes,” Y Ksar said. “There are many. Thousands, but not all at one time. They flow like the river. Sometimes they pool deep. Always there are puddles. I’m told they’ve a large hospital in the forest—and a sports arena. Ha! Every evening our scouts see their columns. For a time we coexisted. This changes. The Mountaineers switch allegiance.”
“Switch allegiance?!” Chhuon said.
“That’s what the village commonhouse is about.”
“The brick building?” Samnang asked, astonished.
“Ah-doh-bee,” Y Bhur pronounced the Spanish word slowly.
“But from where...”
“My Brother.” Y Ksar laughed. His old eyes were bright, his back straight. “We have a brick press from my sons in the Jarai village at Duc Co. American Special Forces gave them the press and taught them to make granaries. Our grain’s better stored in the xum, but look what we’ve done. Now when we have a large sacrifice the whole village can sit in the courtyard. Or inside.”
“From the Americans?” Chhuon asked.
“Yes. And we’ve brought our children to them. Draam Wah was very sick and the shaman said he might die even though Ama Wah sacrificed all his chickens and his pigs and two buffalo. Y Ko heard of it and directed Ama Wah to bring the boy to the Duc Co Special Forces camp. I wasn’t there but I was told the phalang medic wasn’t concerned Wah was not from his village. He treated Wah. Wah is better. They treat us like people, not like dogs as yuons and Khmers. They treat my people like you treat my people.” Phalang was Khmer for “white foreigner.”
“And the yuons?” Chhuon protested. “They must...”
“We’ve carried their supplies for ten years,” Y Ksar said. “We’ve fed them. Now we tell them, ‘no more.’ Are we beasts of burden? They steal my pigs. For them three of my sons have been guides across the border. All are dead. We were approached by a Jarai man from Duc Co. ‘The Americans want to hire you.’ The Oppressed Races Front agreed. Seventeen of my people are with CIDG [Civilian Irregular Defense Group].
“This is our land,” Y Ksar continued. “We’ve told the yuons no more will we be a part of their war. Once we saw the Communist soldiers as allies. Then we see they think this is their land. This is Mountaineer land. Giong granted it so. We don’t want Sihanouk’s soldiers; we don’t want Viet Namese. I’ve sent them all word: Stay away! Get away! Ha! The Americans pay better too.”
“You are very wise,” Chhuon said to Y Ksar. The rice beer was making his heart beat in his head. “Anyone who harms you, who harms your crops, your people or your belongings, is your enemy. It makes no difference if they’re Viet Minh, North Viet Namese, South Viet Namese, American or even Khmer.”
“Especially Khmer.” Y Ksar laughed. “Understand, the North Viet Namese threaten us, ‘Be on our side.’ Sihanouk threatens us, ‘Be on my side.’ Side? This is our land. They want us to be their slaves. At least when the French were here, we were autonomous. Now everybody’s a liberation armed force. Liberation for whom? To me they’re slave masters.”
“They’re evil.” Chhuon was drunk. “There’s nothing good in them. Not a single organ.”
Y Bhur drank three measures of numpai and passed the straw to Samnang who immediately let the straw drain and had to work to get the fluid back up.
“Here we are,” Chhuon continued. “Khmer and Jarai, part of Cambodia, but often our children go undernourished, our debt grows. The elite in Phnom Penh grow fortunes in paddies of corruption. Our sweat, our blood, are their fertilizer. North Viet Namese tax you. Viet Minh tax us.”
“Not just tax,” Y Ksar said. “Attack. And across the border South Viet Namese troops attack Jarai saying they help the enemy. American reconnaissance teams ambush us. Death to them all! A typhoon has swooped down upon the mountains. In one lifetime we have moved from separate villages that have never known outside control, never a mountain kingdom, to villages everyone from the outside wants to control. Now in FULRO we’re as the fibers which make a single tree. We must have autonomy. Freedoms we knew in isolation are gone. To be free in a forest of foreign armies, we must be strong.
“My “Brother,” Y Ksar went on, “here we want what all Khmers have. We want our schools to be the same system as the rest of the country. Not frontier schools. We want the rights of citizenship; passports if we want. We want the province officials to be Mountaineers, not Khmers. We want our defense forces to be recognized as semiautonomous. We’ll support Phnom Penh if they supply us. Let us keep foreign armies off this land. We want to be able to trade with merchants from Lomphat and Stung Treng and Pleiku because that will bring us a better life.
“Royal troops are the same as yuons. NVA attack one village, Sihanouk another. They want nothing but to slaughter us. But we will grow back ten times as strong.”
While Y Ksar gave an embellished account of the government attack to rid the basalt plateau of Mountaineers, Samnang worked to raise the rice beer. Finally he swallowed a large mouthful. He forced back the impulse to vomit and held his breath as he heard his father say, “Evil. They’ll be destroyed. They must be destroyed.” In his entire life Samnang had never heard his father say anything so blasphemous.
“Our soldiers protect us,” Y Ksar said. He too was feeling the numpai. “Americans make fools of the yuons.” The old warrior laughed loudly. “They send SOG teams. Ha! The yuons think they’re safe in Cambodia. They say, ‘International law will protect us.’ Ha! Jarai and American teams ambush the yuons. Ha! International law! This is a Mountaineer nation. Umph! What international law protects us? Not a single nation recognizes us. Upon ourselves only can we rely.”
“That’s best,” Chhuon said emotionally. “The best way for a man, a family, a village, a nation. Self-reliant. Anyone who harms you or your village is evil. How can anyone ever forget what Royal troops have done? For all eternity our blood will call for revenge. Blood for blood.”
“To forgive them,” Y Bhur piped up, “would be a sign of weakness.”
“It’s better to ignore the fact they’re human,” Chhuon said. “To act the way they have acted is to renounce their humanity.”
Samnang passed the straw to Y Ksar. Never before had he drunk alcohol. Never had he seen his father more than sip from the jar. Much later he would become very cruel to anyone caught drinking alcohol and he would never again drink himself. But he also would never forget Y Ksar’s tale of how Royal troops and yuons treated and slaughtered Mountaineers. And he would never forget his father’s words.
Late that afternoon, with the truck unloaded, Chhuon prepared to leave Plei Srepok, alone, for a trip halfway down the mountain, back toward Lomphat. From a small Rhade village sawmill he would buy a truckload of rough-sawn teak blocks which would eventually be made into either busts of Norodom Sihanouk or statuettes of Buddha.
It’s quarter to five, Chhuon thought as he checked the truck’s tires. I can be to Buon O Sieng by five-thirty, loaded by six. Then back here by six-thirty, no, quarter to seven....That’s too late. I must be there by five-fifteen, leave by five-forty. Then I can be here to pick up Kdeb and Yani by six-fifteen. We’ll leave by six-thirty. I must drive quickly if we’re to reach home before dark....The yuons will have a roadblock. Maybe they won’t keep me long. The Royal troops will have pulled back and probably be asleep. Stress is bad for children. Another roadblock and Yani’ll become ill. Y Ksar’s wise. I’ll leave them here, then drive back all the way on 19.
“Children,” Chhuon called.
“Yes Father,” they both answered.
“You must be ready when I return.”
“Yes Papa.”
“And...and...” Chhuon reached out and pulled his offspring to him. He hugged Mayana and then Samnang. He held his boy at arm’s length and said, “Take care and watch over Yani. Never forget our family legacy or the Path of the Elders. Remember our family, our village and our people.” Chhuon untied the yellow-checked krama from about his waist and pushed it into Samnang’s hands. “If anything should happen to me...remember how you want to go to school in Stung Treng. Become all you’re capable of becoming. Whatever happens—do not cry.”
Y Bhur pulled Samnang back under the longhouse. The sun had begun its descent yet cloud-filtered sunlight still streamed in from the southwest and filled the canyon. The air was heavy with the smell of cinnamon and pig shit.
“No,” Y Bhur said. At twelve years old he was only one year Samnang’s senior but he was both large for his age and the product of a culture where boys take over men’s duties earlier than in Khmer society. “That’s backwards. Let’s retie it.”
Samnang put his crossbow on the ground and unwound the long strip of cloth. Earlier he had removed his sandals and clothes and had tied the loincloth as he thought it should be tied. As he had emerged from beneath the house the cloth had begun to unwind.
“Between your thighs like...yes, that’s right.” Y Bhur tugged at the cloth in back. “Around you it goes three times.” He chuckled. He made sure it was tied properly before they emerged again to where Mayana sat with Sraang. Each girl had a quiver of arrows and a bushhook, a short-bladed scythe with a three-foot bamboo handle.
“Ha,” Y Bhur laughed good-heartedly. “You almost look Jarai—but you’re too thin.”
Samnang hefted the crossbow and smiled back. He said nothing. He felt strange and exposed in the tribal dress and he felt uncomfortable before Y Bhur’s sister, Sraang. Sraang was as tall as he. Her black hair was combed straight and it caught the southwest sun and glistened. She had adorned herself with additional bracelets and a bead necklace which lay at the top of her breasts, and Samnang wondered if she had added the ornaments for him.
Mayana remained in Khmer dress. She tugged at her brother’s arm and said, “We have to be here when Papa comes.”
“Don’t worry,” Samnang reassured her. He drew himself up to full height and puffed out his chest. “We’ll return from our expedition long before Father does.”
At that the small force set out. They crossed through Jaang’s garden and through the courtyard of the adobe commonhouse to the village watering spot which was a small natural pool at the base of the canyon-terminus cliff. There, long ago, Jarai women had pounded thick bamboo tubes into the cliff at head height. The natural hydrostatic pressure within the mountain released into the tubes. Instead of water trickling down the rocks or bubbling up from a spring below the pool, a shower flowed continuously from the bamboo.
Playfully Y Bhur led his patrol through the water, across the shallow ford and up the east slope to a small plateau. Older, sweat-shiny women bent over dry-rice stubble, their bodies and hand scythes swinging monotonously. Y Bhur gazed upon the women with an air of disdain. To him their sweat was a totally undignified condition, at least for a Jarai man. Samnang looked at the field. “One moment, Brother,” he said to Y Bhur. He walked into the field, knelt. The stubble felt sharp against his bare feet, feet not unaccustomed to going without shoes but not peasant feet used to such rough walking. He inspected several uncut rice stalks. “With more nitrogen,” he said authoritatively, “the stalks would be stronger and the grain fuller.”
“Ha,” Y Bhur laughed, and smiled in his sincere yet jocular, hillbilly manner. “Just like your father.”
They continued their climb up a narrow path to a second plateau where village buffalo and cattle were grazing. Y Bhur led, followed by Samnang, Sraang and Mayana. “When we return,” Sraang said, “we must herd the animals back to their pens.”
“Can’t they stay here?” Yani asked.
“Oh no,” Y Bhur answered for his sister. “If we leave them their smell will attract the tiger.”
“Or the yuons?!” Samnang said it softly, hesitantly, both as a statement and as a question. They continued to climb, now into the forest, along a steep trail. Y Bhur halted on a false peak. The trail ended. He looked into the forest then back down the trail. The vegetation was thick. Through breaks he could see the roofs of the longhouses below. Samnang was thirty feet back. He had stopped to give his hand to Sraang who feigned finding one steep rock difficult to negotiate in her long skirt. Yani was another twenty feet below, spunkily trying to keep up, afraid of being alone in this unknown forest yet telling herself, Afraid of nothing.
“Here we must stay close,” Y Bhur said as the column closed. “We should have a chicken to sacrifice to the Spirit of the Forest.” He spoke solemnly. “Here the Cloud Forest begins. Here the Spirits live.”
“Is it here where the yuons camp?” Samnang asked quietly.
“Yes,” Y Bhur said. “But the Cloud Forest is vast. They camp at the Canyon of the Dead Teak, which is half a day’s walk. We’ll walk the ridge and I’ll show you where to find small game. Now that you’re Jarai, you must be a good hunter.”
Again they set out. Below them the longhouses fell to shadow but on the west slope of the east ridge, light remained. Above them, the mountain peak alone was shrouded in mist. Y Bhur led them deeper and deeper into the Cloud Forest. As they walked Samnang first pretended he was hunting roebucks, then tigers. Then he imagined he was leading Sraang to a beautiful valley which was theirs. Finally, as they entered the lower mist, he saw himself as a soldier out to kill the hated yuons or the corrupt Royal troops. For all eternity, he thought, our blood will call for revenge.
“ssshh.” Y Bhur held up his hand. He stopped. Ahead there was a clearing. He crouched. Froze. His eyes did not blink, did not for an instant leave the scene before him.
Almost by instinct the other children also stuck fast in their tracks. Slowly, ever so slowly, eyes still fixed, Y Bhur backed to Samnang. Samnang said nothing, whispered nothing. Without moving his head he scanned the vegetation about the small clearing, about his own position. Sraang silently crept up behind him. Two uniformed soldiers were setting up aiming stakes before a metal tube. They made little effort to be quiet. Mayana, immobilized with fear, remained fifteen feet back. She had not, could not, see the clearing but was certain they had come upon a tiger. Her face puckered, squinched. Her eyes shut tight. Inside she whispered a prayer to the Blessed One. Then Sraang tapped her hand. Mayana’s eyes opened wide. She was about to speak but Sraang’s look strangled her as effectively as if someone had tightened a noose about her neck.
Sraang tapped lightly and pointed to the quiver of arrows Yani carried for Y Bhur. Yani blinked. The arrows and Sraang were gone. She blinked again and the Jarai girl was leading her silently back toward the village.
Quietly, ever so quietly, the boys settled back and watched as the soldiers and their porters set up a radio and a landline telephone. Y Bhur recognized the tube but he did not know its name. He counted the soldiers—only four—and the porters, who seemed to number at least eight. He counted the rounds of ammunition as best he could but he lost count at forty-five. He looked for other weapons but saw only one rifle and one pistol.
Samnang squatted just behind his friend. He did not count. At first he was afraid to notice anything, but the longer they sat the more comfortable he was watching the soldiers and the more secure he felt they could not see him. He noticed other details. The uniformed men spoke Viet Namese. The coolies, the few who spoke, spoke an unfamiliar mountain dialect. He was sure it was not a language of any of the tribes of the Srepok Forest. Perhaps, he thought, they are Lao. Perhaps...His thoughts wandered. One moment he imagined he was watching fish in a basin; the next he looked at the sky and thought, Even if we leave now, it will be dark before we reach the village. If I’m not there when Papa returns, I’ll disappoint him. I always disappoint him.
Y Bhur cocked his crossbow. He glanced at his lowland brother. Suddenly Samnang’s arms shook. His chest tightened, his legs felt leaden. Y Bhur’s right hand slipped a second arrow from Samnang’s quiver. He turned it up in his hand indicating they should fire, reload and fire again. Samnang, as if the fibers and fragments of this day had finally spun into a single strand, understood. He cocked his crossbow. Y Bhur raised his weapon, aimed. Samnang raised up the stock. The bow ends caught in branches to his sides. His arms shook. He forced the stock up. It leveled and the man with the pistol was small at the tip of the arrow. He shut his eyes, heard the cord of Y Bhur’s bow spank forward. He squeezed. He fumbled for the second arrow. Rifle shots cracked.
The village and canyon were dark with shadow but overhead the clouds were still gray. Y Ksar pulled his blanket more tightly about his neck and shoulders, sucked harder on his bent pipe. Where are the children? he thought. Chhuon will be here soon. He looked at the sky. A lone blackbird swooped down from the cliff, effortlessly glided the length of the village street, winged over, flapped and glided back to alight on the roof of Y Ksar’s longhouse. The bird cawed loudly once. Then it seemed to jump from the roof and slide through the air to the roof of the new commonhouse. Then it disappeared. Y Ksar shook his head. Everything which blooms...his thoughts began, but before they could be completed they were halted by Sraang’s and Mayana’s shouting from the cattle pasture.
The girls were breathless as they ran to the courtyard. Y Ksar, Jaang, Chung, Mul and two dozen villagers gathered about them.
“Breathe deep,” Y Ksar said. “Then your words will come.”
“There are soldiers...” Sraang gasped in Jarai.
“A tiger...” Mayana exhaled in Khmer. She did not understand Sraang’s words.
“No...in the Cloud...Forest...”
“Stop. Breathe deep,” Y Ksar repeated.
Chung put his blanket over his daughter’s shoulders. “Women should winnow rice,” he said angrily in Jarai, “not meander in the woods.”
“Y Bhur...” Sraang began again. “Y Bhur and Samnang...There are many soldiers just over the ridge. They stayed to see while we came to warn...”
“What is this of a tiger?” Y Ksar said in Khmer to Mayana.
“We’re running from a tiger,” the little girl said.
“No,” Sraang interrupted. “Not tiger. Soldiers.”
“I thought...”
“Okay,” Y Ksar said. He questioned Sraang but she knew few details.
“I’m certain they were yuon,” Sraang said.
“Perhaps,” Y Ksar said. There were now seven young men listening, watching, as Y Ksar transformed from village old man to village chief, from Iron Age Jarai to modern tactical leader. “Perhaps,” Y Ksar repeated. “Warn the children,” he said to his wife. “Y Tang, Y Tung, follow the path into the forest. Djhang, ride to Plei Pang and prepare them to reinforce us or to defend themselves. K Drai, ride to the airfield at Andaung Pech. Tell them we’re being attacked. If they aid us we’ll know the attackers are yuons. If not, perhaps the attack comes from Royal Khmer.”
Immediately the two soldiers jumped on their Hondas and sped from the village. Others ran from house to house rousing the people. Still others sounded a village-specific alarm pattern on the gongs—an eerie dirge which to the uninitiated could mean the sacrifice of a pig or the announcement of some social event but to the people of Plei Srepok meant return from the woods and fields immediately.
For a quarter of an hour men, women and children scurried—men with rifles to defensive positions along the village stockade, women to the communal center to prepare a secondary defense, and children into concealed holes beneath granaries or chicken coops. Then all was silent.
Before the first mortar rounds exploded the early evening was quiet and peaceful. Chhuon was feeling particularly good. On the trip from Plei Srepok to the sawmill at Buon O Sieng, he had made excellent time. Two FULRO troops on gray Hondas had escorted him to the edge of the Cloud Forest where he was met by an NVA roadblock. But the Viet Namese did not search him, did not even slow him but waved him on as if they knew his truck was empty and he in a hurry. He had kissed his Buddha statuette seven times and said a prayer of thanks. Then at Buon O Sieng he again had luck. The men at the mill wanted to leave quickly to check their fish traps and thus loaded the truck without the usual formalities or haggling, and by five-thirty Chhuon was again on the road to Plei Srepok. With luck, he thought, I will be at the village gate by only a few minutes past six.
Chhuon hummed a tune as the small truck struggled to raise the heavy load of fresh-cut teak up the mountain road. He hummed as he laid out in his mind consecutive images of the remainder of his journey. Certainly another roadblock. He checked the roll of counterfeit riels in his pocket. And he told himself to make it appear painful to part with the money. Then he saw the soldier inspecting the top fifty-riel note and fear flashed through him. He stopped the truck. From beneath the seat he removed an envelope and from it took a single good bill. Chhuon rehid the envelope, wrapped the good note around the wad of counterfeits, then drove on thinking, humming, seeing himself with Kdeb and Yani speeding from the high plateau, crossing the bridge to Phum Sath Din.
Chhuon reached into his shirt and grasped his statuette of Buddha. He lifted it to his lips, kissed it seven times. The higher onto the mountain he drove the lighter the cloud cover seemed, yet with the setting sun the light lessened. The vibration of the small truck seemed constant. The road seemed to stretch on forever yet not move at all. For one moment he felt as if physical movement were an illusion, as if he, everything, were standing perfectly still. He tried to make the truck go faster. He checked his watch. It was only three minutes since the last time he’d checked yet he felt he had been driving for an hour. He was still a few kilometers from the turnoff to Plei Srepok. The road dropped into a shallow valley, then rose. As he crested the second knoll a squad of soldiers blocked the road.
“Hello,” Chhuon called out. He stuck his head and left arm out the window and waved. “Hello. May I pass. I have...”
“Halt!” a soldier yelled. He raised his rifle and aimed through the windshield. Other rifle bolts snapped, pointed at him from behind log fighting positions beside the road.
From the third round, Y Ksar knew the mortar barrage would not, was not meant to, destroy the village. The first round impacted just beyond the village gate. The second, nearly a full minute later, also exploded outside the village. The third landed in the cornfields west of the road. Plei Srepok had no artillery to answer the attack. KkkaRrump! KkkaRrump! Back and forth across the canyon just beyond the bamboo stockade.
He stood before his house and listened carefully. The sky was late-evening dark. His scouts had not returned. From his messengers no word, no signal. The village warriors, with an assortment of rifles and two machine guns, had deployed along the front stockade and the treeline above the dry-rice fields on the slope of the east ridge. Nothing had been heard from Y Bhur and Samnang. More explosions jarred the fields before the gate. The mortars were firing from at least two positions, of that Y Ksar was certain. Who was firing, of that he was not sure.
Flash! KkkaRrUMP! A shout. One, two, three rounds landed on the stockade, blowing bamboo slivers, earth and blood into the mango orchard and the first line of longhouses. Then the barrage ceased. Y Ksar called for a runner. “...to each position,” he instructed the young man. “We’re no match for their arms. Tell all not to fire until they’re on top of us.” Now, he thought, the assault will begin. Now we’ll know.
For a time nothing happened. Then from the east ridge small-arms fire erupted. Several short bursts. Then several more. A pause. More firing. Then from the west ridge. Repeat burst. From the high cliff. Longer bursts. Consistent, methodical, lower and lower as the cordon tightened on all sides. In it all Y Ksar could hear the buffalo and cattle lowing, falling. He could see muzzle flashes and tracers, green light balls seemingly floating down from the blackness, stinging the periphery of the village, carefully avoiding firing into the people. Closing down. Not yet presenting a target he wanted his soldiers to engage. A village defender fired off a single round. Six weapons fired onto the muzzle flash. Two RPG, rocket-propelled grenade rounds exploded near the village well. The U-shaped cordon tightened but the enemy stayed unseen in the trees on the slopes above the village.
On the road to the village there was great clatter. The road’s sealed, Y Ksar thought. We’re trapped. He saw headlights. They’re good, he thought. They cannot be Royal troops. Let them get closer before we fight. A single jeep drove up, stopped fifty meters before the gate. Oh, for a few rockets, he thought.
Mayana and Sraang had come from their concealed hole near the well. Sraang’s left arm was badly scraped and bleeding. Before Y Ksar could tell them to go back, a powerful spotlight mounted on the jeep illuminated the village road all the way to the adobe building.
“PEOPLE OF PLEI SREPOK,” an announcement in Jarai blasted from bullhorns beyond the jeep. “WE MEAN YOU NO HARM. ALL MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN, ASSEMBLE IN THE COURTYARD BEFORE THE COMMONHOUSE. STACK ALL WEAPONS ON THE ROAD BEFORE THE LONGHOUSE OF Y KSAR! NO ONE WILL BE HURT.”
The light went out. “Stay where you are,” Chung, Y Ksar’s son, shouted. A few women jumped from their secondary fighting positions within the village and advanced to reinforce the stockade.
Again the bullhorn blasted, repeating the demand to assemble and the promise that no one would be hurt. No one moved. Y Ksar felt satisfied at their performance. The spotlight again came on. There was the clatter of tank treads in the blackness beyond the jeep. A second light crossed the first and its beam flooded the tiers of longhouses.
“WE WANT ONE MAN. ONE MAN WHO HAS COMMITTED THE MOST GRIEVOUS CRIMES AGAINST HIS OWN PEOPLE. ONE INGRATE WHO HAS INSULTED US. YOU SHALL BE THE JUDGES. TRY Y KSAR BEFORE YOUR VILLAGE COUNCIL. TRY Y KSAR WHO SENDS BOYS INTO THE FOREST TO HUNT US DOWN. GRANT HIM A FAIR TRIAL AND NO ONE WILL BE HURT. WE WILL LEAVE YOU IN PEACE.”
Again the lights went out. The night was very black: “What boys?” The shout, a woman’s voice, came from the mango grove.
“Quiet,” Chung ordered.
“What boys?” the woman called out again. It was Draam Mul, wife of Chung, mother of Y Bhur and Sraang.
Lights again. Three now. “Tell them to shoot the lights out,” Chung whispered to his father, but as he spoke a man, trussed at the elbows, shackled at the ankles, was thrust before each light.
“Y TUNG IS DEAD. HE DIED LIKE A COWARD ABANDONING HIS COMRADES, Y BHUR, Y NANG, Y TANG. WE WILL EXCHANGE THESE BOYS FOR Y KSAR.”
“Release them. Withdraw your troops, and I will come forward,” Y Ksar shouted in Viet Namese. He laughed, chuckled. Beneath his breath he cursed the yuon dogs.
Trussed before the jeep light, a white bandage wrapped about his left thigh, Y Bhur stood straight. Before one tank light Samnang cowered; before the other Y Tang’s head dropped stiffly to one side, the result of muscle spasms from being beaten.
The lights went off. There was no answer. Draam Mul began to wail. Someone began to play the gongs. The jeep light flicked on. Eight soldiers advanced behind the vehicle. Behind them the sound of two hundred soldiers moving filled the canyon. “Y KSAR, WE SHALL SEND IN A DELEGATION WITH Y NANG. TELL ALL YOUR PEOPLE TO STACK THEIR WEAPONS AND ASSEMBLE IN THE COURTYARD.”
“Uncle! Uncle!” Mayana reached for the elder. “Don’t! Don’t go.”
“It’s all right, Daughter,” the old man said in Khmer. “Everything which blooms, perishes. The rice withers. The mango falls.”
Y Ksar stepped into the center of the road, faced the brilliance of the lightbeam.
“Don’t let them in,” Chung ordered from the shadow of a pigsty. “Stay put.” One villager rose. Then another. The dignity of Y Ksar walking into the lightbeam mesmerized them. Soon many villagers were milling about at the edge of the lighted swath behind Y Ksar.
“Let the boys go.” Y Ksar smiled at captors unseen behind the light. Both tanks closed upon the village, clicked on their lights.
“TELL YOUR PEOPLE TO ASSEMBLE TO TRY YOU OR THE BOYS WILL BE SHOT! NOW!”
A few of the milling people moved toward the courtyard. “Stop!” Chung commanded.
Immediately a rifle cracked. In the light before one tank Y Tang’s head jerked. His body collapsed. Again the gongs. More women wailed. A defender sprung from his trench before the tank, threw his rifle down, ran to his brother’s body. Of all days for the crow to land on my house, Y Ksar thought.
“WE WILL KILL THESE TWO IF EVERYONE DOES NOT ASSEMBLE IMMEDIATELY. DRAAM CHUNG, DRAAM MUL, IS THAT WHAT YOU WISH FOR YOUR SON? RAM SU, ELDER OF THE EBING CLAN, WILL YOU STAND BY AS CHUNG ORDERS HIS OWN SON’S DEATH AND THE DEATH OF THE VILLAGE MUTE, Y NANG? NAY SAH, ELDER OF THE H’MAT CLAN, ARE YOU TO BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE DEATHS CAUSED BY Y KSAR? STACK ARMS. ASSEMBLE.”
The tank light went out. Where Y Tang had stood there was the sound of scuffling. Naming the village elders had great effect on their descendants. The milling crowd drifted toward the courtyard. Y Ksar could not find it in himself to order the defenders to hold the line when indeed it seemed the NVA wanted only to punish him. One by one the defenders rose. Some abandoned their weapons, others carried theirs to the road before Y Ksar’s longhouse and dropped them. On the east ridge a resister was shot. The incident was radioed to the men at the jeep and the details were broadcast into the village. From houses, holes, trees, fields, the villagers converged on the courtyard. Only Y Ksar stood his ground at the entrance to Plei Srepok.
Chhuon brought the truck forward a few more meters. Then he stopped. Beyond the blockage, stretching for several hundred meters, he saw milling groups of soldiers, jeeps, trucks, a tank. A whole army seemed to be before him. He opened the door and stood with his hands up. With a big smile he said in Viet Namese, “I go Jarai village. Get son. Get daughter. Go home.”
“No go,” the soldier answered in Khmer. “No village here.”
“My son and daughter are there,” Chhuon said in lyrical Khmer. “They’re there waiting for me to get this wood for statues of Buddha. We live...”
“No go,” the soldier said again. He did not smile. “Go back,” he said. “No village here.”
“Oh yes,” Chhuon said. He reached slowly into his pocket and pulled out the wad of riel notes. Before his face he peeled off ten bills. “Five hundred,” he said in Viet Namese. “Must go get children at Plei Srepok.”
“No go,” the soldier shot back.
Chhuon peeled off ten more bills. “One thousand,” he said nervously. He held out the whole wad in his left hand, waved his right as if to block the barrel of the soldier’s weapon. “More hidden,” he said frantically. “Much more. Rice too.”
“Go back,” the soldier ordered. “No money.”
“Plei Srepok,” Chhuon pleaded.
“Plei Srepok, chiet! Dead!” The soldier swept his hand down as if it were an airplane diving. “Boom! Boom! Phalang!”
“No. No!”
“Go back.” He dove his hand again. “More boom!” Then he raised his rifle and aimed it at Chhuon.
Chhuon dropped his hands. He felt the blood drain from his face. His breath seeped out but did not return. He shook his head, turned to the truck. His knees became rigid. He glanced at the soldier. Tears welled in his eyes. He climbed in, started the truck, turned it around. How could he go? How could he stay?
Again there was no motion. His cheeks, chin and neck were wet. He drove, lost in darkness, confusion, despair. “Yani,” he whimpered. “Kdeb,” he cried. “I’ve abandoned them! Kdeb! My Kdeb. My Kdeb.”
In the courtyard the villagers were ordered to arrange themselves not by clan but by age and gender. The first seven careless rows facing the front of the adobe edifice were comprised of the village children, boys to the right, girls to the left. Behind the girls were the mothers with infants, behind the boys, young men. In the last rows, according to the new order, stood the elders. Surrounding the assembly was an entire platoon of formally uniformed NVA soldiers, square belt buckles with stars, heavily armed. Other soldiers were going through the longhouses, flushing out the stragglers, herding them into the cluster.
To one side of the adobe the Viet Namese had stoked, fed and bellowed the fire of the village forge. A jeep had been positioned behind the villagers, its light switched to flood. The entire arena was illuminated, flat and pale. At the adobe entrance there was a small platform. To one side Y Bhur and Samnang were tied, still trussed and shackled, to stakes. A very large Mountaineer had been directing the villagers, chatting, forcing many to drink from the jars he had placed like a low fence on the platform before him. Whispers abounded. “It’s Bok Roh, the Giant.” Fear spread at the repetition of his name. He was infamous for his cruelty. Bok Roh lectured them on the evils of alcohol as he forced the elders to drink more and more. He harangued the elders for their lack of courtesy and loyalty. Between each verbal explosion he consulted with a uniformed North Viet Namese political officer and a black-clad Khmer.
At the stakes a soldier cuffed Y Bhur on the jaw. “Keep your head up,” he scolded as if disciplining a naughty child. Samnang watched. He had been playing mute ever since capture, acting out of terror the soldiers would discover he was Khmer and not Jarai. The soldier who had hit Y Bhur cocked his hand before Samnang. The frail boy trembled, bewildered, shrank back against the stake. “He’s a mute. An idiot,” Y Bhur said in Jarai. The soldier didn’t understand. The villagers did.
“Y Ksar with the Large Foot...” Bok Roh shouted. A hush fell over the assemblage. The elder village chief had not been seen since guards had grabbed him by the village gate. Sraang and Mayana, seated on the ground before Draam Mul, both were crying softly. “Silence!” Bok Roh bellowed, his immense voice echoing off the cliff, reverberating down the canyon. “Y Ksar,” the giant seethed angrily, “you are accused of collaborating with the enemies of the people. You have, in your life, served the French against your own people, and now you conspire with imperialist running dogs and bring a phalang invasion deep into the land of your people. You have aligned yourself with renegade Mountaineers. And”—Bok Roh turned toward the staked boys and laughed a guttural chilling disgusted laugh—“you have sent these ants, a boy and a mute, to fire arrows through our radios. Bad elements must be punished. Thoughts which veer from the true course of liberation for all oppressed peoples must be exorcised. Come forth. Make your plea.”
At that moment, from inside the adobe, four soldiers carried out a large wooden X-frame. To it was tied a naked, bruised old man. Immediately a murmur rose from the audience. Immediately voices of protest rose.
“Silence!” Bok Roh’s voice exploded louder than artillery. Even the NVA soldiers jumped back, glanced furtively at one another.
“Is this building”—Bok Roh, standing before Y Ksar, whipped his large arms at the adobe—“not proof of collusion with the running dogs who have invaded our land? Have you”—Bok’s angry voice spit from his hate-contorted mouth—“have you not even this very day, conducted illicit business with a lackey of Pech Lim Song? A lackey liquidated by the people.”
“No!” Samnang screamed in Khmer. He strained his small wiry body against the wires and the stake. “No! No, my father...Papa...Papa...” He dropped his head. His body wilted.
“Well...” Bok Roh smiled delightedly. He conferred with the NVA officer and the black-clad Khmer. Then, “So, Y Nang, you are not mute.”
“Stop it!” Now Chung stood. Another Jarai man leaped up, jumped forward.
Two guards fired. Five AK rounds slammed into the second man, twisted him, threw him.
“Bring him here!” Bok pointed at Chung. He conferred again with the officer. “Who is this?” Two armed guards held Chung by the hair, one held a bayonet at his back. Chung’s eyes reached his father’s. “You don’t need to tell me. I know. Our intelligence on this village is perfect...Draam Chung.” Bok Roh gestured with his head. The soldiers pushed Chung into the adobe with the tips of their bayonets while they held him back by the hair so he was forced to walk with his groin thrust forward, his back arched. From the dark adobe interior, kicks were heard.
“Y Ksar with the Large Foot,” Bok Roh mocked, “why,” he shouted in Y Ksar’s face, “are you at war with us?”
“We shall be at war with anyone who defiles our land,” Y Ksar said. His voice was soft. Gentle.
“And you and all your people will meet death,” Bok Roh hissed.
“I am accustomed to death,” Y Ksar said. He addressed the village. “We are not frightened by death of the body. We are men of dignity.”
“You are an enemy of the people. Plei Srepok must stop relying on old organizations.” Bok Roh turned to the villagers. “You must move forward within the new framework. You shall convict this man. And”—again four soldiers brought out a naked beaten man tied and splayed on a large X—“and this one. Traitors must be denounced. Their heads must be bowed. Denounce them! Or...everyone will be punished. Who is that crying? Bring her up.”
Bok Roh pointed to Sraang. Two soldiers descended upon her. They grabbed her and immediately wired her elbows together. “Silence!” The large man screamed. “Do you hear me? Silence!” He grabbed her skirt and ripped it from her. Sraang’s cries became shrieks. She tried to collapse to the ground but a soldier behind her lifted her by the wires, cutting her already scraped arm. “Silence! You don’t hear!” She continued to shriek uncontrollably. “No! You don’t want to hear.” The big man clamped the sides of her face with his large hands and twisted her head up to look at him. From behind, a soldier placed a chopstick in each ear. Then the soldier behind grabbed her, held her up by the wires and her hair, and the big man before her let her head go. “For not hearing me,” Bok Roh screamed. He extended his arms far to his sides, then slapped them toward each other, catching the chopsticks and driving them into Sraang’s brain. She fell, withered, twitching, contorting, rasping her head horribly on the ground.
A deluge of cold fear froze the assembled as totally as if they had been physically frozen in ice. From the forge a soldier emerged with a glowing steel machete. “Y Ksar, you have been convicted by your own people.” Bok Roh touched the blade ever so lightly to the old man’s lower lip. Y Ksar did not flinch, did not move. His skin blistered, burned, stuck to the red metal. “You are sentenced to death by decapitation.” Now Bok Roh stood perfectly still as smoke and odor from the blade and Y Ksar’s burning flesh rose and spread.
In the frozen scene, Sraang’s head still madly raked against the ground. Then, from the row of girls, Mayana stood and as simply as if on a stroll to pick flowers, she walked to Sraang and pulled the sticks from her ears. Sraang collapsed, still. Mayana looked blankly up into the eyes of the giant. He turned his face on her. His mouth opened in tense horror. Mayana’s childlike naïveté was destroying Bok Roh’s control. From the row of old women in back, Jaang, Y Ksar’s wife, rose feebly. From her skirt she raised a .45 caliber pistol, aimed...
“Yiii—” Bok Roh swung the machete up—“KA!”—down, cleaving the small girl in two.
Jaang’s weapon fired. Immediately she was shot. Her body crumpled as if it were not supported by a skeleton of bone but only by a spirit. Her fired round lodged in the adobe wall.
“Burn the village,” the NVA political officer said. He said it matter-of-factly, then turned and spoke to the black-clad man. To Bok Roh the officer said, “Save those boys for me. Kill the rest.”