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tonight.”
    He take me on one path, then another, then the path to the mango grove. Dusty path, so many feet walk down here on the way to die.
    All these days I don’t think of my aunt or my brother and sisters. Too dangerous to miss them and maybe cry or go crazy or just give up. But now I speak to them in my mind. I say good-bye; I say I will see them again someday. Because I know what this moment means.
    Already I can see the dirt pile. Tall grass, very green. Bones sticking out: leg, arm, skull, also pieces of cloth. Also I see a ditch. And a line of people—maybe fifteen, maybe twenty—all hands tie behind, kneeling. And high-ranking Khmer Rouge standing behind them.
    Then this guy, he take the ax, small ax like for chopping, and he hit one kneeling guy on the back of the head. The guy fall down, like just a pile of rag hitting the ground, very fast. Then the Khmer Rouge, he go down the line, hit each one. Terrible sound, like cracking a coconut, only it’s a human head.
    “You,” he says to me. “You put them in the ditch.”
    I don’t want to do this, but I do it. My body does what this guy says. I push the people, very heavy, lot of blood. I push them into the grave. I do it. One guy, he’s not even dead. They say to push him in anyway.
    Then the guy with the ax, he look at me. Deep in the eye. To see what I feel.
    I make my eye blank. You show you care, you die. You show fear, you die. You show nothing, maybe you live.

CHAPTER FOUR
    THE BAND, IT’S STILL NO GOOD. WE FORGET THE WORD ALL THE time, we play too slow, then too fast, then we play all different times. No beat. No beat at all, because the drum guy, he so scare, his hand shake all the time. And the new music teacher, he can’t hear it. He always look like crying in his mind. No tears on his face, but all the time sad, no life in him, only sadness.
    So I lead the kid. I try to show the drum guy how to keep the beat. Also I help the other khim player, kid name Kha—skinny kid with elephant ears that stick out on the side—I show him how to hit the string like the old music teacher teach me. “Touch it light,” I say, “like hummingbird wing.”
    I think of the old music teacher. How he gave me, in one week, his whole life. I don’t know music, only what he taught me, but maybe I can try to teach these kid a little bit and we all can live.
     
    No rice for a few days now, and many kid are dying. Already they look like skeleton, lying on the straw mat with flies crawling in the eyes, the mouth, like already they’re dead.
    Tonight, Khmer Rouge say, we get special dinner. Black stew, sour smell. We know what this is. This food for pig—banana peel, rice husk, and all rotten thing. But we eat it anyway.
     
    One song the band is learning, it’s about the bright red blood that is spill to create a new land. I tell the kid to sing this song smiling, showing all the teeth, so it shows we love Angka. I sing loud, extra loud to show the way. Kha, the kid with elephant ears, he like my shadow; he copy everything I do. But the other kid, they don’t learn so good.
    Beside, I can’t teach the music, the very hard instrument like fiddle, like xylophone; and so the song, they still not right. Big meeting in two week and still we not ready.
    Kid dying from no food, from malaria, they die slow, they moan, they cry, they ask for death to come. We don’t learn the song, we go to the mango grove. Death there is quick. Either way, it’s death.
     
    One night I see Khmer Rouge guy, the one from the mango grove, and he ask me how the band is going. I tell him it’s very good.
    He touch the small ax on his belt and his eyes go small, like lizard. “How’s the new music teacher?” he says.
    I don’t blink one eyelash. “Very good,” I say. “Excellent.”
    He let go of the ax. “You will tell me about this guy; you will tell me if he has bad character.”
    I say I will.
    That night I go to the building where the new music teacher sleep. Very dangerous