Gladys began the conversation. “We are in Yuan Chu, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” replied the old man.
“Then where is everyone?” Gladys asked.
“Gone. The Japanese are coming, and everyone has crossed the river.”
“Why didn’t you go with them?” she asked.
“I am too old, and they have already killed my sons. I would rather use my last breath to spit on the Japanese than to run from them,” the old man snarled.
“How did everyone get across the river?” Gladys asked, changing the subject.
“Boats took them, but they’re all gone now. There are no more boats on the river. You came from the mountains, you had better go back to the mountains, otherwise you will be trapped. Then the Japanese will kill you all.”
Gladys sighed deeply. She couldn’t take the children back into the mountains. There was no food there, and they would certainly starve to death. So with more confidence than she felt, she declared, “We are going to Sian. We have walked for twelve days, and we will not stop now. We will walk to the river, and we will find a way to get across. God will help us.”
The old man spat on the ground. “You are a fool. You might escape on your own when the Japanese come, but with this army of children, you don’t have a chance.”
Gladys whistled loudly, and all the children came scurrying from the various deserted houses and inns. “Come on,” she called. “We are nearly at the river.” Gladys scooped up one of the little boys to carry him piggyback. As she walked, she wondered how they would get across the Yellow River. Had she led the children all this way for nothing? What would she do with ninety-four children if they couldn’t go back and they could not go forward?
Chapter 15
As Black as the Night
For four days, Gladys and the children sat by the riverbank. They had waded in the shallow waters of the mile-wide Yellow River, but they had not crossed it. The old man at Yuan Chu had been right, there was not a boat anywhere to ferry them across. On their first day at the river’s edge, Gladys had sent the oldest boys back to Yuan Chu to scavenge for food. The boys had found some stale cakes and a couple of pounds of half-rotten millet. Gladys had boiled it all in the kettle and ladled the soup out to the younger children. That was the last food any of them had eaten.
As they waited by the river, Gladys could feel herself slipping in and out of consciousness. Her only clear thought was that she needed to get the children to Sian. Other than that, everything became blurry and unreal to her.
The children were asking her questions. “Why can’t we walk on water like Jesus?” and “Ai-weh-deh, why can’t you part the Yellow River like Moses did?”
Gladys had no response other than to urge the tired, hungry children to sing hymns and pray. The hymn singing became the answer to their prayers.
A Nationalist Chinese soldier stood on the crest of the hill overlooking the peculiar sight of a large circle of dirty, thin children singing loudly. One of the younger children spotted him and raced up the hill, no doubt remembering the other Chinese soldiers who had shared candy with them two weeks before. Gladys looked up to see what all the excitement was about. Was that a soldier she saw? She couldn’t be sure. Two of the children ran up and pulled her to her feet. She swayed slightly and peered, and soon, the face of a soldier came into focus.
“I heard the singing,” said the soldier. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“We are refugees on our way to Sian, and we need to cross the river,” said Gladys, too tired to think about where the soldier had come from or what he might be doing there.
“How many of you are there?” he asked.
“Ninety-four,” Gladys replied, as she sat down again. Standing made her feel dizzy.
“Are you sick?” asked the soldier, when he saw she could not stand.
Gladys shook her head. “I’ll be fine when I get the children to Sian. Can you help us cross the river?”
The soldier looked slowly around at the children. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I will help you, but it will be dangerous. The Japanese are not far away. If they fly over while we are in the boat, they will shoot us all. They have no mercy.” He stopped and looked once again at the smallest children playing in the reeds. “In fact,” he went on, “they have flown over this spot every day for weeks, shooting into the reeds. This week, for the first time, they have not come here at all.”
The soldier turned abruptly towards the river and let out a series of shrill whistles. Everyone watched eagerly as slowly an open wooden boat came into view. It took three trips to ferry Gladys and all of the children across the river. Thankfully, no sign of any Japanese aircraft appeared overhead.
On the other side, Gladys gathered the children to offer a prayer of thanks. The waters may not have parted like they did for Moses, but God still had provided a way across the Yellow River.
Gladys and the children spent that night in a nearby village. As usual, when the villagers saw so many children, they did their best to help, willingly sharing their precious food supplies and their k’angs.
Finally, the next morning, Gladys and the children marched to the train station. Gladys had been told that since they were refugees, she and the children could board any southbound train free of charge and the train would take them to Sian. Along the way, refugee organizations had set up food stations. When Gladys heard this, she was too overcome with relief to speak. Instead, she put her hands over her face and sobbed. Could it be true? Was the worst really behind them?
Gladys stood at the station, staring down the tracks, praying that a train would arrive. Then in the distance she saw a puff of steam. A train was coming! Gladys had tried to tell the children about a train, but none of them had ever seen any moving machine before except for an airplane, and that had been a terrifying experience for them all. The railroad tracks began to vibrate as the train roared into view, hissing and belching clouds of white steam and dark smoke. When Gladys turned to reassure the children, they were gone, all ninety-four of them! In a split second, even the oldest children had panicked and scattered in all directions. Some of the adults on the platform were laughing loudly, but it was no laughing matter to Gladys, who had ninety-four children to find before the train left. Thankfully, the engineer was not in too much of a hurry, and he waited patiently while Gladys trekked all the way back to the village gates to find some of the smallest children hiding there.
Gladys convinced the children they were not entering the bowels of a giant dragon, and they all climbed aboard. True to what she had been told, the group was not charged to ride the train. As the train pulled out from the station, Gladys laid her head against the window and drifted off to sleep. Suddenly, she was awakened by screaming. In an instant, she was sitting bolt upright in pitch darkness. It took her a moment to realize where she was, and then she smiled. The train was going through a tunnel, and the darkness had scared the children.
After three days, the children became quite used to life aboard the train. They didn’t even blink at a tunnel, and they loved clambering off at some of the bigger cities to get a free meal. Gladys couldn’t understand, though, why she didn’t feel more refreshed as the days went on. She was getting food and rest, but it seemed to make no difference.
On the fourth day, about mid-morning, the train hissed to a stop. Everyone peered out the windows. The train stood in a rocky ravine, and there was no station nearby. Gladys felt a chill run down her spine. Something bad had happened; she knew it. And she was right. The train had stopped for one simple reason. It could go no farther. The conductor made his way through the train with the bad news. The railway bridge ahead of them had been bombed. If they wanted to get to Sian, they would have to climb over the mountain the train was winding its way around and catch a train on the railway line on the other side. Gladys sat numbly as one of the other passengers asked how long it would take to reach the other side of the mountain. She shut her eyes when she heard the reply: four or five days.
Weary, Gladys called the roll. Everyone was accounted for. Then she looked up at the steep rock face of the mountain. Could they do it? Would this nightmare journey never end? Gladys wondered whether maybe she’d done the wrong thing trying to lead the children to safety. In her attempt to save them, had she doomed them to a slow death instead of a quick one at the hands of the Japanese? As her thoughts flowed, so did the tears. She sat on a nearby rock and wept loudly. The children began to cry, too. At first, one or two of the youngest ones started, and soon everyone was crying. They made quite a racket. After several minutes, Gladys wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve.
“That’s enough,” she yelled over the noise. “A good cry never harmed anyone, but now it’s time to get going. Let’s sing.”
And sing they did; up and down mountains, along narrow tracks, and through forests they sang. It took them five days to reach Tung Kwan on the other side of the mountain. At night they slept in caves, and during the day they climbed or walked slowly, waiting for the lagging children to catch up. Gladys’s constant assurance that they would find food and hot tea waiting for them on the other side of the mountain kept them moving forward.
In Tung Kwan, Gladys received yet more bad news. There were railroad tracks, and there were trains running to Sian, but they were only coal trains. The tracks were closed to all other trains. The authorities had declared the route too dangerous for passengers because the tracks ran along the banks of the Yellow River where the Japanese were bombing. There were no exceptions to their rule.
Gladys was stunned. She couldn’t go on, and she knew it. For three weeks, she and the children had walked, climbed, and clawed their way over mountains, avoided Japanese planes, and begged food. The children were hungry, bleeding, and dehydrated. Their shoes had worn out, and many of them were coughing ominously. Gladys couldn’t go forward, and she could not go back; she could only trust God. With that trust, she instructed the children to lay out their bedrolls on the station platform and get some sleep. Then she leaned against the wall of the station and drifted off to sleep.
Gladys woke with two men shaking her. For a moment, she thought she was back on the train station platform at Chita all those years ago. Fear gripped her, but she was too tired to care. She just wanted to be alone to sleep. “Let me alone. I want to sleep. This is a public platform, isn’t it?” she said grumpily.
Within a few minutes, however, Gladys was wide awake and scrambling to her feet. She could hardly believe the good news. Evidently, one of the coal stokers on the train had seen all the sleeping children sprawled out on the platform and had inquired about them. Then he had convinced the engineer to let the children ride the coal train, right on top of the coal.
Soon the younger children were being gently passed, still sleeping, from person to person and lifted onto the tops of the coal cars. One older child was assigned to each car, and his or her job was to build a little coal wall around each sleeping child so the child wouldn’t roll off the coal car when it lurched around curves. Once Gladys was satisfied that all the children were safely aboard, she too climbed onto a pile of coal.
When the little children awoke the next morning, they shrieked with delight. Everyone, even Ai-weh-deh, was as black as the night. Coal dust had settled all over them. Gladys laughed, too. It was so good to see the children happy again, and they were very well camouflaged! As long as the Japanese didn’t bomb the train, they would make it to Sian in three days.
It was impossible to get comfortable sitting or lying on a pile of coal, but the children didn’t complain too much. It was a lot better than hiking over mountains! The three days passed quickly, and finally the train hissed to a stop. The engineer walked back and told Gladys they were in Sian. That was the good news. The bad news was that no one was allowed off the train there. The city had been overrun with refugees, and no more people were allowed to enter the city. Guards stood on the train station platforms to make sure no one climbed off a train.
