All In (14 page)

“Shut up,” the squad commander shouted. “We know what you're up to. You're betraying your homeland and fleeing to Thailand.”

The soldier pointing the AK-47 at my head appeared to
become agitated. His finger twitched on the trigger while his eyes darted back and forth across our entire group.

“No, no, no,” my father said.

“Don't lie to me. Do you think we're stupid? Do you expect me to believe so many people decided to go out for an early morning stroll carrying all their possessions? You're trying to cross the Mekong and get to Thailand. We should just shoot you on the spot if that's the way you feel about the land that's done so much for you.”

“No, I beg of you, no. It's true we left our home in the mountains. But we did so to start new lives here in the valley, where the land is better. We could never leave our homeland. I know you're good men and you have brought us a good government. You'll make our country more stable and successful. Just as you have given our country a new beginning, we seek one as well.”

“You lie.”

“No, my lord,” my father said, bowing low, “I give you my word that I am not.”

“Then where are you headed? What town do you plan to move to?”

My father had to name a town quickly or the squad commander would know he was lying. Without hesitation, he said, “Num Chang.”

“Num Chang, eh? Why Num Chang? Do you know someone there?”

“My uncle Ying Yang lives there.”

“We don't believe you, and we don't have time to argue
with you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my father facedown on the ground.

The soldier in front of me appeared to pull his gun tighter against his shoulder as if preparing to fire.

This is it, Xao
. In that moment, I fully expected to die.

Instead of ordering his men to fire, though, the commander said, “Here's what I want you to do. My commanding officer is in Hin Haw. You're going to go there and plead your case with him. I don't have time to mess with you. He'll decide what's to be done with you.”

Hin Haw? Anywhere but Hin Haw!
News that the Pathet Lao had attacked Hin Haw is what had prompted the people of my village to flee toward the Mekong in the first place. Now we were being sent there. I couldn't believe my ears.

My father tried to talk the squad commander out of making us walk all the way to Hin Haw. “Please, please, just let my people go. It's such a long walk, and we have so many small children.”

No matter what my father said, the squad commander refused to listen. “There is no way out. You have to go or else.”

I felt the tension building. The squad commander seemed to be running out of patience. I could tell that all of the soldiers were anxious to get back in their trucks and get on to wherever it was they were going.

“Thank you, my lord,” my father said. “Yes, of course, we will do whatever you need us to do. We will go to Hin Haw as quickly as we can.”

The squad commander shouted an order to his men, who
lowered their guns. Only then did I notice I hadn't taken a breath in a very long time.

Even today, I don't know why that squad of soldiers allowed us to live. I give all the credit to God. I know without a doubt He was with us and changed the squad commander's heart. I have no other explanation for why I'm still alive.

I also credit my father. By showing such great respect for the soldiers, he defused the volatile situation. The squad commander was waiting for a reason, no matter how flimsy, to order his men to open fire. My father stayed calm and didn't give him one.

However, though we were saved for now, our hazardous journey was far from over.

The squad commander left one truck behind to escort us to Hin Haw. Soldiers rode in the back of the truck, their guns pointed in our direction. None of them appeared to be in any hurry to pull the trigger or to get anywhere fast. About four or five soldiers walked alongside us.

“Do you mind if some of our small children ride in your truck?” my father asked. “Then we can make it to Hin Haw much faster and free you from wasting time on those as insignificant as us.”

“No,” a soldier snapped. “You walk.”

The journey passed much more quickly than I'd thought possible. In a little more than half a day, we made it to Hin Haw. The same distance through the jungle would have taken several days. Even so, I preferred the latter.

With my every step toward Hin Haw, a feeling of absolute terror came over me. Everyone in our group knew all the stories of how the Communists had wiped out most of the people in that village. The pain in my feet went away. I was too worried to think about something as trivial as a few cuts.

Everyone in our group had the same feelings I did. No one talked as we walked along the road to Hin Haw. The only sounds were the shuffling of our feet on the road and the cries of little children and their mothers.

We arrived in Hin Haw at about three in the afternoon. A large dirt field spread before us. Trucks moved in and out, filling the air with red dust. As we moved closer, large groups like ours were being herded at gunpoint. Fathers, mothers, and little children were forced into the trucks. Men argued with the soldiers, trying to convince them to free their families. The soldiers didn't listen but kept prodding the people forward with their guns and throwing them on the trucks. Once the trucks were full, they drove away, kicking up even more red dirt.

“What's going on over there?” my father asked the soldier walking next to him.

“These people are being taken back home to their villages,” he replied.

Judging by the people's faces and the cries coming from the trucks, I doubted he was telling us the complete story.

The soldiers led our group to a small wooden house with a corrugated tin roof. “Wait here.”

We stopped but didn't dare sit. Standing as still as we
could, we waited for further instructions.

From my position beside my father, I looked all around. Off to the side of the wooden house, the ground was stained red with blood and littered with pieces of flesh and bones and organs. A little farther, black and blue plastic sheets covered the ground, blood seeping outward from under them. The sheets appeared to be covering bodies. Lots and lots of bodies.

No wonder these people didn't want to get in the trucks
. Had this been the squad commander's plan all along? To torture our minds with the hope of being saved, only to send us here to be shot like dogs?

I looked at my father, whose eyes were fixed on the plastic sheets and bloodstains. He glanced at my uncles. “When the commander comes out, do what I do,” he said softly.

Two hours went by as we stood in the sun, exhausted. Finally, the door of the small wooden house opened, and the commanding officer appeared.

The moment he stepped out, my father fell to his knees and began begging for the life of every person in his village. You must understand, my father is a strong, proud man. Before this day, my mind could not imagine the sight of my father on the ground pleading for anything from anyone. He was, and is, my greatest hero. Yet here he was, crying like a small child, my uncles following his lead. “Please let my people go.”

The commanding officer walked down the two steps of the wooden house and stood over my father, two soldiers on either side of him. Arrogance rolled off of him. Wearing a Pathet Lao dress uniform, he had a pistol strapped to his side. The soldiers next to him held AK-47s with bright red wooden gun stocks.

He looked at my father, sneering. “I know what you're doing. You're just trying to save yourself. Vang Pao”—he sort of spit out the name, as if he'd tasted something bitter—“already ran away to Thailand, and you want to go be with him. What's the matter with you? Do you understand Vang Pao and the Americans were using you? They didn't care about you. They cared nothing about our country. To them, you were nothing but a slimy little worm.”

“Yes, my lord.” My father's gaze never rose from the ground.

“We care about this country,” the commanding officer said. “We want to build it up, to make it a better place. Don't you understand that?”

Even though he lectured him as one would an ignorant child, my father responded with respect. “Yes, my lord, I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you. I love this country. My ancestors came here a long time ago. Why would I want to go to a place I don't know? My land is here; my children are here. Why would I want to leave?”

“Then why are you trying to get to the Mekong?”

“No, my lord. We are not on our way to the Mekong. We left our homes in the mountains to make a new life for ourselves on the plains where the land is better. We were on our way to Num Chang when your soldiers stopped us.”

“Why Num Chang? Do you know someone there?”

“Of course, my lord. My uncle Ying Yang lives there with his wife.”

I saw the commander's eyes light up when my father mentioned my uncle's wife. Her brother had been a high-ranking
officer in the Royal Lao Army before defecting to the Pathet Lao. “No, I don't believe you. And even if Ying Yang is your uncle as you say, we are not going to let you go to Num Chang. You and all your people will be sent back to your village.”

My father didn't back down. The bodies under the tarps and the horror stories of Hmong sent off to reeducation camps made him refuse to allow any of us to be placed on one of the trucks in the field of red dirt. “No, please, please don't do that. There is no life for us back in the mountains. How could you send my people back to a place where we have no hope? Please allow us to start a new life in the valley. Life was so hard in the mountains. We want to plant our rice in the open fields rather than chopping the forests year after year. The reason we came from the mountains was that we heard some people in the valley had already betrayed our country and fled across the Mekong, leaving their farms behind. We came to take over their fields.”

I could tell by the look on the commander's face that he didn't believe a word of it. Eyes narrowing, body stiffening, he said, “Don't you lie to me. How dare you speak to me in such a disrespectful way? Do you think I'm stupid? Do you think I don't know what you're trying to do here? You're trying to pull a fast one. The moment I let you go, you and your people will go straight to the Mekong. Well, you won't get the chance. You and your people will get in the trucks right now.”

Refusing to take no for an answer, my father kept pleading.

Then something miraculous happened. As though his heart had been touched by God, the commander's demeanor
changed and he said to my father, “Okay, you and your people can go to Num Chang. However, I'm going to send my men in a few days, and they'd better find you there. If they don't, I will hunt you myself. No matter where I find you, that place will be your grave.”

“Of course, my lord. You can count on us. I would consider it a great honor to have you as my guest. Our home is your home.”

“Get out of my sight.” The commander waved at my father as if he were swatting at a fly. He snorted something to his men, then spun on his heels and went back into his house.

I knew without a doubt that we shouldn't have survived this day, the one I'd feared above all others. Instead of lying dead on that red field, though, we were walking toward Num Chang, a town near the Mekong. My father had even managed to convince the commander to give us a letter of passage to make sure no other soldiers harassed us.

Though we were far from the Mekong, a sense of hope came over me. I didn't know how or when, but for the first time, I started to believe we would actually make it to Thailand and freedom. If we could survive this day, we could survive anything.

We arrived in Num Chang early in the morning after a long night's walk. For me, the worst part of the trip had been traveling through Hin Haw on our way out of town. Trucks filled with soldiers had driven past. When the soldiers had spotted us, they'd shot into the sky to intimidate us. Other trucks filled with Hmong or Lao families had zipped by on their way to God knows where. The cries in those trucks—that distinctive Hmong sound of mourning—had made me shudder, knowing that could have easily been my family.

Even without the trucks, Hin Haw had frightened me. Gutted cars had littered the streets. Bullet holes had riddled houses. Blood had stained the roads and sidewalks.

My father could see the fear in my eyes. “Don't look here or there, Xao. Keep your eyes on the road right in front of you.”

I'd done my best to follow my father's instructions. Even then, smoke had stung my nose, and the roars and cries of
passing trucks had filled my ears. From time to time, I'd had to walk around drying blood.

We reached Num Chang before sunrise and didn't have any trouble finding places to stay. Large sections of the town were completely abandoned. The houses had the same telltale signs that a battle had recently been fought here: bullet holes covered the walls, and some places were bombed out completely. Cars and trash littered the streets here, too.

Even after the sun came up, we saw few people in this fairly large town. Most had either escaped to Thailand, died at the hands of the Communists, or been sent away to reeducation camps. The few who remained stayed out of sight.

Many of the streets of Num Chang were lined with palm trees. For some reason, I cannot forget those trees. All of them had bullet holes up and down the trunks.
Why would anyone waste so many bullets shooting up palm trees?
I will never forget one in particular. Lodged there in the trunk at exactly my eye level was a bullet.
That would have hit me in the head if I'd been standing here.

My family moved into an abandoned house. It seemed the residents had left in a big hurry. Someone had spilled rice across the dirt floor of the main room and taken off without scooping it up. My mother dug every grain out of the floor, rinsed it, and cooked it for us. We searched every corner of the house for hidden food but didn't find any more. Some dishes were still there, not the good ones, but the kind nobody wanted. Even the gardens behind the abandoned houses had been picked clean. Anything of value not carried off by the
fleeing people had been pillaged by the soldiers.