“Yes,” she replied, without hesitating. “I’m visiting my boyfriend.”
Hurriedly I started the engine. It seemed strange that she’d respond so candidly. But her voice didn’t sound like she was joking. Maybe she was being honest.…
“Who was she?”
“Yeah—who was this young woman?”
“Where did she come from?”
The other drivers chided the storyteller to finish his story.
“Be patient,” he said calmly.
From the woods came the sounds of melancholy birdsong. The driver stood up and walked toward the old condensed milk can. Squinting from the oil smoke, he bent down and blew out the blue flame of the makeshift candle. The hut suddenly plunged into darkness. He continued his story:
Don’t get too worked up about the woman just yet. Let her sit with the tires in the back of the truck for now. I have to explain something else to you first.
I have a sister who is an officer in a transportation unit located very close to the Blue Stone Bridge. If you drove one of the Mekong Delta routes four or five years ago, you probably remember the busy and productive atmosphere at the Blue Stone Bridge construction area. My sister Tinh was stationed there back then. There were hundreds of women on the construction team. One of them was named Nguyet, which means moon—a very beautiful name! Right out of high school, she volunteered for the construction teams in the Mekong Delta. Tinh treated Nguyet like a younger sister. She cared for her deeply because Nguyet was a hardworking and obedient girl. In her letters to me, my sister always mentioned Nguyet. Then in one of her letters she wrote, “I have thought seriously about this, and I’ve decided that I want to introduce you to Nguyet. She is very special, and it is difficult to find a woman like her these days.” In another letter, she was even more insistent: “When I told Nguyet that I wanted to introduce you to her, she blushed. She didn’t say anything, but if I talk about you, especially about how you ran away from home to enlist in the military, she listens closely. Try to come up here as soon as possible. I can tell that Nguyet is looking forward to meeting you.”
Back then, I was an assistant driver and often drove in the North. I made a few trips down to the Mekong Delta and visited Tinh, but I had never met Nguyet. In my letters to Tinh, I usually included a few sentences asking about Nguyet and implying that I would like to meet her. I’m sure that Nguyet saw all those letters and knew that I wanted to meet her. In the isolated woods, of course, a letter must be shared with everyone. A few years went by, and my sister moved to Hanoi to attend college. Then the war against the Americans broke out. I had already been discharged from the army, but I reenlisted. Right away, the enemy bombed and destroyed many roads in the Mekong Delta and the central highlands. I had never married, but I’d long ago forgotten Tinh’s letters and her friend Nguyet. Eventually, as the war continued, Tinh left school and returned to the Mekong to help the construction teams near the Blue Stone Bridge. Again she wrote to me, talking this time about the enemy’s constant bombing of the bridge and about the transportation units that were trying to protect the roads. These weren’t new stories to me. But the most interesting part of those letters was this: Nguyet, she said, still thought about me. She was waiting for me, Tinh said. Over the years several men had proposed to her, but she’d always said no. Tinh said that Nguyet worked in the underground tunnels, a very dangerous assignment. But they still saw each other often. Nguyet was now a grown woman, more mature and courageous, and apparently even prettier than before.
As I read Tinh’s letter, I felt moved and overwhelmed. It seemed hard to believe that after so many years living in the middle of constant bombing and destruction, a woman could still treasure in her heart the image of a man she had never even met. Deep in her heart a tiny sparkling thread had remained intact, despite the passage of time. Thinking about this made me happy, and I felt like I was indebted to Nguyet. I knew that I had to meet her, so I decided to write my sister and ask her to arrange a meeting on my day off. After completing my delivery run, I’d hide my truck in the Sang-Le woods and then make my way to Tinh’s unit. Tinh would take me to see Nguyet, and I would stay for the day as a guest of the female transportation platoon.
That’s where I was going that night I found the hitchhiker in the back of my truck. That particular night was quiet and peaceful. My truck ran smoothly on the road. As I gripped the steering wheel, I pictured myself laughing and having fun among the playful group of women. I knew that Nguyet would probably talk only a little, but that didn’t matter. The women were all friends to us drivers. They were brave, sincere, and hospitable people.
I’d driven about ten kilometers when I ran into an artillery convoy descending the hill and had to pull over and stop. Holding my flashlight, I slipped underneath the truck to check a light bulb. As I was unscrewing the bulb I heard a voice ask, “Is it an apple- or watermelon-sized bulb?”
“Who’s there?” I called out.
“It’s me.”
Ah, it was the hitchhiker. She was standing in front of the truck. The beam from the flashlight illuminated the clean pink skin of her feet, her clean rubber sandals, and the hem of the black pants around her ankles. She can’t be a construction worker, I thought. I got up and wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands.
“Hello there,” I said, coming out from
