A Million Shades of Gray Read Online Free Page B

he didn’t like to think ofLady dying. Sometimes, even though her death was many years away, he cried when he thought of her dying.
    Nobody else was around except his uncle. His sisters had no doubt left for school quite a while ago, and the rest of the clan was working in the fields. Y’Tin glanced at them as he left the village. Every day was nearly the same for them. But every day was different for Y’Tin.
    He took a final glance at Lady before stepping into the jungle to head for school. Y’Tin was always late. Always. The teacher, Monsieur Thorat, once paddled him on the legs for tardiness, but the paddle barely even stung. Monsieur was too nice to paddle anyone with force. And if he did give Y’Tin a hard paddling, Y’Tin knew his father would withdraw him from school. Sometimes Y’Tin wondered whether he should try to induce a hard paddling. Then he would get to stay home. On the other hand, it could be that his mother would just send him to a different school, one farther away and without such a patient teacher. And Monsieur Thorat actually knew an awful lot of useful and interesting information, but for some reason he hardly ever talked about it. For instance, Monsieur Thorat hadtold the class that in Thailand, American tourists paid elephant handlers for rides on their elephants. Y’Tin wondered how much an elephant ride cost. Monsieur Thorat had passed around a Thai magazine, and in it were pictures of painted elephants on parade. Y’Tin definitely would like to see that one day. And Thailand had not been dragged into the wars of Southeast Asia. That made Thailand even more interesting. Also, Monsieur Thorat had been to America. He said that Americans called a little rain a “storm” and called a storm a “torrent.” He said Americans liked to visit other countries for “vacations.” And he talked about “smog.” He said most Americans worked inside buildings. Y’Tin wondered what that was like. He thought that it would kill him to work indoors every day. Anyway, as fascinating as Monsieur could be, he usually chose to be boring for reasons that would always be a mystery to Y’Tin.
    Y’Tin tossed his book in the air and caught it as he walked. He had taken this path through the jungle countless times, but about halfway there he felt an odd fear, as if someone was watching him. He looked around but saw nothing unusual. This vague fear had been coming to him moreand more often as North Vietnamese troops grew more aggressive about sending soldiers into South Vietnam. Supposedly, the Americans would take “severe retaliatory action” if the North Vietnamese broke what Monsieur Thorat called the 1973 Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, the treaty that ended American involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam. The meetings to discuss the agreement took place in Paris, and Ama always called them the Paris Peace Accords. All Y’Tin knew was that the North Vietnamese had broken the agreement and the Americans were nowhere to be seen. Y’Tin thought if they’d given the 1973 Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam a shorter name—like the Paris Peace Treaty—the North Vietnamese would have followed it more. It was just a thought.
    The school was a longhouse, which, unfortunately, had the only windows Y’Juen had ever seen. The reason this was unfortunate was that Y’Tin thought the view was more interesting than Monsieur Thorat, so it was hard to pay attention.
    When he finally reached the school, he slipped into his chair and opened his book. Monsieur Thorat ignored him. Several boys were absenttoday. Y’Tin wanted to know why but sat attentively as Monsieur Thorat discussed nouns and verbs—now,
there
was something useful for an elephant keeper. A large part of class was conducted in French because the school had originally been set up when the