First They Killed My Father_ A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers - Loung Ung [107]
Blood splatters the woman’s clothes, body, face. She screams and swings the hammer up above her head again. Blood droplets land on my pants and face. I wipe them off. Red smudges are still on my palms. Another scream comes from the old woman, this time her hammer smashes his leg. His leg jerks but is held down by the rope. The hammer lands over and over again, on his arms, shoulders, and knees, before the younger woman moves toward him. Taking her knife, she pushes it into the prisoner’s stomach. More blood pours out, spilling over his chair. She stabs him again, this time in the chest. The Khmer Rouge body convulses and trembles, as if electricity is traveling to the legs, arms, and fingers. Gradually, he stops moving, slumping over in the chair.
Finally the women stand still. Their weapons drip with blood as they walk away. When they turn around, I see that they look like death themselves. Their hair trickles blood and sweat, their clothes drip, their faces red and rigid. Only their eyes look alive as they seethe with more rage and hate. The women are quiet as the crowd parts for them to pass through. During the execution, the crowd did not cheer but watched, silent and devoid of emotion, as if it were the slaughter of an animal for food. After the women are gone, the crowd begins to buzz.
“Did you see how rich and dark the blood was? It was the color of the Devil’s blood!”
“It is rich because he has been feasting on the food we grew while my family died from starvation!”
“His blood is dark because he isn’t human. Humans do not have black blood!”
“Why didn’t they make him die more slowly?”
One by one, people return to their homes, leaving me standing there alone, staring at the corpse. My mind plays back images of my parents’ and sister’s murders. Again my heart tears open as I stand there and wonder how they died. Quickly, I push the sadness away. The slumped over corpse reminds me of Pithy in her mother’s arms. Pithy’s head bled in much the same way. His death will not bring any of them back.
The crowd is gone, except for ten of us kids waiting to see what the adults will do with the body. Three men eventually approach the body and cut loose his legs and hands. As they loosen the rope around the chest, the corpse tumbles off the chair and lands in the dirt. One man tightly wraps the rope three times around the corpse’s chest. Holding the end of the rope, the three men drag the body away, leaving behind a trail of blood in the dusty road. I follow along with the other children. The men haul the body to a well and stop in front of it. Four feet in diameter, the round concrete wall sticks two feet out of the ground. The once white concrete is gray with mold, the short grass around it brown and shriveled.
Turning to us they yell, “What are you kids following us for? Go home! Get away from here. There is nothing to see!”
I am not convinced and stand firm with the other children. Turning their backs to us, they bend and lift the dusty corpse off the ground and drop it into the well. I hear a big splash and a thud when it lands. Each man then wipes his bloody hands on the grass, picks up a handful of dirt, and rubs his palms together to clean off the blood. Finally, they leave together. The other children and I look at each other.
The smell coming from the well is horrible. Pinching my nose and covering my mouth, I walk up to it and peer in. The smell is so putrid it makes my eyes water. It takes a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the darkness of the well, then slowly, thirty feet below, I make out the shape of human