All In (13 page)

Our group began breaking down. People hoarded food, and everyone became focused on themselves. Arguments sprang up. More people criticized my father and the other elders.

The trip had taken much longer than anyone had anticipated, making matters worse. Traveling only at night was no longer an option. My father knew our group couldn't survive much longer, so he took the chance of heading out, even in the daylight.

On about the eighth day, we were getting close to the river and closer to the Pathet Lao and NVA. The most direct route to the Mekong went right into the heart of the fighting. We had no choice but to take a long, winding path around a mountain.

With so many Communist soldiers in the area, my father thought it best to split our group in two in hopes that even if some of us were caught, at least the others might make it to the river and across to Thailand. Half of us went around the right side of the mountain; the other half around the left. The plan was for both groups to make it around the mountain by nightfall.

Most of the jungle paths we'd followed up till this point had been little more than animal trails. Occasionally, we'd come across a hunting trail or a small road, but those had been rare. Around this mountain, we couldn't locate any kind of trail. My father and uncles had to blaze one by hacking through the brush with machetes.

We couldn't stop. For all we knew, the Communist soldiers had an outpost high on the mountain to watch the valley below and could come at us from any direction.

No sooner had we started around the mountain than a widow ran up to my father carrying her child. The boy looked dead to me, until he made a low cry. I'd been around enough
death already to know he probably wouldn't make it. I knew this boy from back in our village. He was maybe a year younger than me.

“My child is dying,” his mother said. “He needs something warm to eat.”

The child had grown so weak that he couldn't eat solid food. In Laos, the women used to make a soup out of rice for those too sick for solid food. The widow wanted to make this for her son.

“I'm sorry, but we cannot risk building a fire to cook something warm for your son. Besides, we have to keep moving. We can't stop or we'll get caught.”

“You don't understand.” Tears ran down the mother's face. “He's going to die if we don't do something.
Please
. I love my baby. He's all I have left in the world. You cannot just let him die.”

I don't know how my father held it together. He looked at her little boy lying lifelessly in her arms. “I understand,” he said softly, “but I am sorry. We cannot risk everyone's lives to save the life of one child. If we save him but give ourselves away to the Communists, we may all die.”

The woman sobbed. “I have to save my son.”

“I'm sorry, but we have to keep moving.”

My grandmother stepped up and took the woman by the arm. She and some of the other women in our group gathered what rice we had left, crushed it, and mixed it with water. They then tried to feed it to the dying child, but he didn't respond.

To this day I can still hear the sound of that mother crying
softly. “My son is dying.

My son is dying.” I wish I could get it out of my ears.

Six hours later, we made it to the far side of the mountain. I looked at the boy in his mother's arms. I didn't think he was breathing.

My father walked to her and laid his hands on the child. “Okay, I think we can risk building a small fire but only for a moment.”

The mother hardly responded as she sat there, slowly rocking her son.

While some of the women prepared the rice soup, my grandmother gathered some roots and ground them into a powder. “Here, this will help him.” Though we didn't have doctors in Hmong villages, my grandmother and others like her knew which herbs to give as medicine.

The other half of our group soon joined us. No one had seen them as they'd passed along the far side of the mountain.

Everyone was exhausted from the long day and night of hiking through thick underbrush. “We will rest here,” my father announced, “and then leave when the sun sets. Get some rest. We will make it to the river soon.”

Not long ago, I visited the sick, dying boy. He lives in Florida with his wife and family. I nearly broke down when I saw him. It's a miracle he survived the jungle.

All we needed was one or two more miracles, and we would be safely out of Laos. Unfortunately, we'd already used up our quota.

From the time I was a very little boy, I had lived in fear of the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese soldiers, wondering when a squad of soldiers would rush into our village and kill us all. Other villages had suffered this fate.

I felt even more at risk escaping through the jungle. I didn't have a warm feeling deep inside reassuring me we would make it to the Mekong and the safety of Thailand.

My terror grew stronger with each passing day. I knew the longer it took us to get to the river, the more likely it was that we'd get caught.

During the daylight hours of about the ninth day, we had rested. Now it was getting dark. Soon we'd break camp for what I hoped would be the last time. The land had flattened out, and the jungle was much less dense.

We were close to the river. Everyone knew it, which made us all the more anxious. Having come so far, we still had a
long way to go before any of us could relax.

I overheard my father tell one of my uncles we needed to hire boats to take us across the Mekong.

The fact that they were seriously discussing it made my hopes soar.
Perhaps we can cross tonight!

“We must be careful not to be seen even on the river,” my father warned. “The boats we hire must be small enough to appear no more menacing than fishing boats out for the night.”

My father and the other leaders walked throughout our camp and asked all the families, “How much money do you have?”

A few families carried a small amount of paper money. Others had one or two silver bars, and some owned nothing of value except the traditional family necklace handed down from generation to generation. That necklace constituted some families' life savings. All of them gave up what they had to safely cross the Mekong.

We didn't have much, but after surveying the contributions everyone made, my father felt we had more than enough to hire the boats. Unfortunately, having enough money to hire someone to ferry us across the river was only one part of the equation.

Every day of our journey, I'd heard fighting in the distance. Now that we were close to the river, the sounds intensified.

“The Communist and Thai armies are shooting at one another across the river,” my father explained to me.

“Why? Are the Communists going to take over Thailand, too?”

“No, the Americans will never leave Thailand, which means it will always be safe.”

“Then why are they shooting?”

“The Communists are trying to stop people like us from crossing the river.”

I later came to understand that the Pathet Lao didn't simply want to keep everyone they could in their country. Rather, they wanted to ensure their silence. Those who escaped carried their horror stories with them. As more Hmong and other Lao made it to freedom in Thailand, more stories of abuse at the hands of the Communists surfaced. That, along with the Pathet Lao's desire for revenge against their enemies, explained why these soldiers fought so hard to force people to stay.

All of this meant we had to carefully choose where we approached the Mekong. If we picked the wrong place, we might very well walk right into a Pathet Lao camp.

Just as I'd started to feel hopeful about our escape, it dawned on me that the most dangerous part of our journey lay ahead.

Before we resumed, my father and the other men in our group huddled together and decided to get rid of all our weapons.

“We don't want the people with the boats to think we pose a threat to them,” my father said.

Two men dug a shallow pit, and the men threw in every weapon except one rifle, which my father carried.

This decision may well have saved our lives later, but at the time it made me more than a little nervous.
How will we protect ourselves if we run into some soldiers?
I wondered.

As soon as the sun set, we broke camp. With all the talk
of hiring boats to ferry us across the river, I just knew this was the night we would finally make it to Thailand. Everyone sensed it.

Our pace picked up. Instead of walking, it was as though we were running down the path. Looking back, I know we weren't, not with so many children and so much sickness in our group. Yet compared to the snail's pace we had been reduced to, even walking fast felt like sprinting.

The area was crisscrossed with roads and highways, so we had to walk in quick bursts. While hidden in brush, we walked parallel to the roads. Though I had never in my life yet seen a car, I heard vehicles driving by.

No matter how much we tried to stay out of sight, eventually we always came to a road that had to be crossed. Especially when it was wide, this was extremely dangerous. Rather than risking all 100 of us dashing across at once, my father sent us in groups of five to ten.

Each group ran as fast as their legs would go. Once across, they dove into the brush and motioned for the next. More than once, we heard cars coming when only half of the group was across. All of us sank into the bushes and waited for vehicles to pass. Then the next group ran across and the next and the next until we were all safely across.

The second time we raced across a road, I tripped. We still had a small supply of rice, which I was carrying in a bag on my back. When I fell, the rice sprayed across the roadway.

My father didn't say anything. He didn't have to. His expression said it all.

I scrambled to my feet, scooped up as much rice as I could, then ran to safety.

After hiking all night, we found ourselves about 30 miles from Vientiane. We had to cross even more roads and dodge more cars and trucks.

The eastern sky grew bright with the rising sun, but my father didn't want to stop. “We're too close to town to find a place to camp for the day. Let's keep going.”

The trail ran alongside a small road. We needed to cross it but had to look for the right place. Finally we came upon a large stand of bamboo.

“Everybody hide here,” my father said. “I'll make sure there aren't any cars, and then we'll cross.”

He and a couple of my uncles crept out of the bamboo in opposite directions. A few minutes later, they returned. “This looks like a good spot,” my father said. “The road is narrow, and we seem to be in a pretty isolated place. Let's get across as fast as we can.”

Because the road was so small and secluded, my father sent several groups across at once. The first thirty moved out of the bamboo and set foot on the pavement.

Two trucks pulled up so fast that none of us could do anything. As strange as it may sound, the sight of those trucks made me excited and terrified at the same time. The little boy in me thought they were the neatest things I'd ever seen. Never had I been near a machine so large, powerful, and mesmerizing.

And then I saw the soldiers. My excitement turned to dread.

The trucks zoomed past, and for a moment I thought perhaps they hadn't noticed the large group of Hmong people dressed in rags and carrying on their backs everything they had in the world.

My hope was dashed when the trucks skidded to a stop. A squad of soldiers jumped out of the back and ran directly toward us, waving their guns.

We stopped dead in our tracks.

The soldiers screamed, some speaking Lao, others Vietnamese. Finally we heard, “Freeze! Don't move.”

Believe me, I couldn't have moved a muscle even if I'd wanted to. My body was frozen in fear. From the moment we'd left our village, I'd lived in constant dread of this very moment. My nightmare had come true.

Before the soldiers reached us, my father stepped forward to let them know he was our leader. Falling to his knees, he bowed toward the soldiers. “Please, please, sirs, we mean you no harm.”

Two of my uncles threw themselves on the ground and joined him in pleading for our lives.

The soldiers ignored them. “Who's in there?” one yelled and pointed his gun toward the bamboo brush where the rest of our group was hiding. “Get out. Show yourselves
now
.”

One by one, people slowly walked out of the bamboo until everyone was out in the open on the road. All the while, the soldiers screamed at us.

Some of the mothers began crying as they held their children close. Many in our group spoke Hmong only and didn't understand anything the soldiers said. Those who spoke Lao
began to beg.

“Please don't hurt my child.”

“Please don't hurt us.”

Aggravated, the soldiers waved their guns, pointing them in one direction and then another. They spread out, surrounded us, and raised their guns as if they were going to open fire.

One particular soldier aimed his gun directly at my head, the tip of the barrel maybe a foot from my nose.

My father had taught me all about guns. He'd said, “You never place your finger on the trigger unless you intend to shoot.”

Dressed in rags, a bag of rice on my back, no shoes on my feet, I stood in front of that soldier and watched him place his finger directly on the trigger of his AK-47.

I wanted to cry but refused. Instead, I stood as still as I could, the gun so close I could smell the oil on the barrel. I didn't even blink; my gaze stayed glued to his finger on the trigger.

“Please,” my father repeated, “we mean you no harm.” “Then why do you carry guns?” the squad commander replied, finally acknowledging my father's presence.

“For hunting and for our safety. Our country is at war. There is much instability now. I need to protect my family. I'm breaking no laws by carrying a gun. Besides, we have so few guns among so many people. Surely that must show you we are no real threat to anyone.”