"Sure..." (Part II, to: Walking Men)

“Sure…”
((April 16, 1998) (Story Nineteen)
Part Two to: Walking Men

Sometimes we make history by who we know, and hang around with, not by who we area, and Nanh Khoa, was determined to do so. He fled to Thailand from Saigon, it was 1989, and he stayed there until the opening months of 1990. He found where Pol Pot was living, living since 1984, on a plantation villa, near Twat, under the protection of guards, and the unit 838. We all have hero, and Pol Pot was Nanh’s new hero, even though he killed 26% of the population in Cambodia, between the years of 1976 and ’79. And history would record, and did record him to be amongst the top elite of evil men that have thus far walked the earth since man was first seen upon it.
There he met Pol Pot, through his persistence, and there he became a soldier under his right hand man, or one of them, for he took orders from Son Cham, who took them indirectly through Son Seu by way of Pol Pot.
In 1989, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia, and between that period and into 1990 Pol Pot organized himself to make his comeback, his return to Cambodia, he would not accept any peace deals with anyone. Of course the legacy of the Khmer Rouge was over for the most part, the so called Red Khmer Tribe, and the massive starvation of the people thrown out of their cities, and brought into the country side to farm for the new kingdom, the 1.7 million people that died under his three year war regime, now he was back in the jungles building his forces. Although in 1996, they would desert, but not Nanh Khoa.
Nanh Khoa, had found a cause to live for (as often men do in religion, or a cult or don’t do, and hide in alcohol, or drugs), a reason that is, one to even die for if necessary, for he would have given his life up for Pol Pot, as easy as his step mother, Zuxin, gave him up to his Aunt Ly, so many years ago.
He thought a few times of his brother An, that how fragile he was, he would have never survived in today’s world, with its roads sunken without truth, coal poured over his kindness by evil doers, the grass as bristly as stout chives, he would never have survived all this, therefore he did him a favor, if God takes martyrs, he got one as a gift by him.

But what he didn’t realize was, when you played with the devil, expect to bleed a little, and perhaps a lot.
It was April, 1998, and Pol Pot had a stroke, his left side was paralyzed. Before he died he ordered the execution of Son Seu. And Pol Pot died on April 15. On April 16, Son Cham brought in a recording, it was the voice of Nanh Khoa, and he had agreed along with Son Seu, that the ongoing negations for peace within the rebel group were a good course to take. This is of course what drove the nail into Son Seu’s grave, an act according to Pol Pot, as treason.
In consequence, Son Cham asked Nanh Khoa, why he made such a statement, and basically it was a simple reply, as truthful and simple as Nanh Khoa could ever be, but to Son Cham, it was too silly to be truthful, for Nanh Khoa said the following:
“I had never really talked to Son Seu, as you well know, and this was a great thing to me, to have been in his presence, as I have been in Pol Pot’s presence, yet I had never talked to either one directly, and that day I was sitting, guarding the door, and he looked at me and he asked me if I went along with his beliefs, I never said, yes or no, I nodded my head ‘yes,’ and said ‘Sure…’ so I suppose I was trying to impress him, but believe me, that was it.”
“The Americans call this one man, a little man in a fairy tale Rumpelstilskin, do you know why?”
“No,” said Nanh Khoa.
“It is because he could, and did spin Gold out of straw; can you?” he added.
“No,” said Nanh.
“Then you need to stop lying.”

Then he started to remember his brother, An, all his pious talk, he told him time and again, and tired he became of it. How he refused to listen to his brother, and now how Son Cham refuses to listen to him. When you lie, they listen, when you tell the truth they laugh, he told himself, as Son looked at him with cobra eyes.
“You have put your foot into the grave, Nanh, what are your last words?”
Thin lipped he was, and he knew, Son was looking for a scapegoat, and he had nothing to offer him, not a ragbag or a silver coin, nothing.
“The dead are bored you know,” said Son, then he ordered three men to take him to the graveyard, lie him down face down into the mud, and bury him alive.” Said Son Cham, and he walked out of the office he was staining in like a pious king, and he told him, told Nanh one more thing on his way out, “Get busy being dead, just like your brother.”
And he was executed within the hour.