A Bus Ride

Phan Vũ

“Honey!  Don’t wait for me next month,” Đính said to Phan, her husband. “I won’t come to see you.”
“When’ll you come?” Phan asked.
“The first day of December, my dear. I think you have enough food for two months.”
“Okay. Take care.  Please tell our children ‘I love them and I miss them’ for me, sweet-heart.”
“Yes, I will. Don’t forget taking vitamin every day.”
“No, I won’t. Bye, Đính,” he said, tenderly pressing her hands and passionately looking into her eyes as if he wanted his love to enter her soul.
She saw him leaving her, walking slowly, carrying heavily a bamboo pole on his shoulder, a bag of rice hung to one end of the pole, and a bag of food, to the other end. Her eyes followed his moving skeletal body, his dark tan face with sunken, haggard eyes, and hollow cheeks. She had sold all his Sunday best, dark mohair suits, plain white polyester shirts, black Italian leather shoes and chic French-styled ties. She had brought him some “Relief for refugees” pants and shirts he was wearing. She felt the burden of bags pounding on her shrinking heart. A bitter lump swelled and thickened in her throat while her husband’s profile was dwindling among green cassava fields. The picture of a victorious officer of the Army of the South Vietnam was nothing but a wretchedly deplorable prisoner. There was no more dignity of the human being. The fall of the South Vietnam shattered free Vietnamese’s families, husbands imprisoned in the jungle and dying from hunger, labor and torture, and children thrown into the streets and waiting for the leftover in front of cheap restaurants. Their wives started selling their belongings. Lots of wives and children were coerced to move to the new economic zones where each family was given a thatched hooch and a small piece of land to plant cassava. That was the fate of the defeated freedom fighters. 
Remembering her return trip, she ran out of the waiting house and hurried onto the road to catch the bus. She heard the driver helper shouting, “Hold on! Hold on! Uncle Tam. One more woman’s coming!” The bus, which had just started rolling a few yards, came to a stop.
Đính arrived at the back of the van, panting. The helper looked into the bus.
“Any room in this row?” He asked.
At one all the women protested, “Ten persons in this row.”
The helper searched the middle row. A large woman protested, “I’m sitting only on a half of my behind.”
He looked into the left row. At that moment, the driver yelled to the helper, “Take her up here.  She can sit with the boy.” Đính got on the bus and sat beside the door. The boy’s mother was between him and Đính. The bus took off. Although the passengers were not entirely comfortable in their seat, they felt relieved, having quit the undesirable hostile area, but reluctant to come because it was confining their beloved. These women were the South Vietnamese government officials’ or army officers’ wives. They had come the previous day and passed the night in the waiting thatched house of Bà Tô political prison. Bà Tô was a small village about 30 miles, north of Vũng Tàu, Vietnam. The jail had ten wooden houses covered with fan-palm leaves. It was built after April 30, 1975, far from the populated area, at the edge of a forest, and near a stream. The political prisoners were allowed to meet their wives and children and to receive food and rice on the first day of the month.
“Why are you so late, Đính?” a middle-aged woman asked with Huế accent. “You’ve almost missed the bus.”
“My husband has been sick, Hai,” Đính answered. “He’s as pale as a young banana leaf. I had a hard time to see him off.”
“So is my husband,” the woman confided. “He was as strong as a water buffalo. Now, he’s so thin and so bony. What a pity!”
“Prisoners are fed with nothing but cassava powder all the year round,” Đính explained.
“You know,” the woman with two dimples on her cheeks said. “Cassava is hazardous to human health.”
“Did you bring rice and meat to your husband?” A large, black blouse-clad woman asked.
“Yes. I brought him vitamins and medicine, too,” Đính answered.
These women had the same anxiety and concern about how to make money, about their husbands’ health, and their children’s food and education, Đính thought. Her savings had drained to zero following the change of currency, 500 đồngs (Vietnamese currency) for one new đồng, the maximum of exchangeable money being limited to two hundred thousand old đồngs, and the rest of the fortune becoming waste papers. Her house like theirs became almost empty of furniture and housewares. There were no jobs because factories were closed or confiscated.
Their tiredness and the monotonous sound of the bus engine made the women sleep easily. Each woman’s head bent against the next woman’s shoulder or against the bus body.  Some started to snore loudly. But Đính could not close her eyes, her mind reeling off successive pictures from the wonderful wedding days to the Black Day of April 30, 1975. The sudden shock of losing her happiness, her family warmth and welfare, and her children’s future was hurting her soul. The wound deepened and deepened. 
It was the first day of October, a sunny day. The sun was shining on dark-green rubber trees on the left-hand side of the road. Đính did not see any rubber worker collecting latex. Some rubber trees had empty coconut hard shells (coconut hard shells used to gather latex); but most of the trees lost them. The furrows carved around the trunks along which the latex used to run down to the bowls had dried off, leaving the sad cold brown scars. Fields of cassava were on the right-hand side. There were no rice paddies in this area. Some naked children, who showed their big round tummies stood in front of their empty thatched huts, scattered in the so-called new economic zone. 
The rainy season was going to end. Looking in the rear mirror, Đính saw red dust fly high and expand in all directions, making a big red moving cloud blocking her view. The bus ran smoothly at the speed of 20 miles per hour. Suddenly, Đính heard the steel clanging below her seat, and she saw a wheel run off alongside the bus, then into a ditch. She did not perceive the peril. She was surprised at what was going on before her eyes. By instinct, she uttered, “Hey!  Driver! A wheel’s rolling off into the ditch.” On quick second thoughts, she said, “Be careful.  Slow down gradually or the bus will overturn.” The driver, an experienced one, calmly slowed down the bus. As soon as it came to a stop, it bent over to the right front side, which plowed a there-foot long rut. The bus was shaking strongly as if it were bouncing on a stony pot-holed surface. Passengers, awoken from their sleep, panicked and shouted, “What’s happening, Driver? What’s the matter with you, Driver?”
“Oh, My goodness! Accident?” A large woman cried.
Đính opened the bus door, got off, and felt at ease. The driver said, “Please, all of you, ladies, get off the van. We’re going to fix it.”
The women crowded at the bus front. They were lucky and happy that they had just escaped an accident. A helper brought back the wheel from the ditch and another helper took down a spare wheel from the bus roof. He also brought out a toolbox and a hydraulic jack. The driver asked the travelers to give a push to the bus to balance it. Observing the five bolts on the disk, Đính knew why the wheel had come off: the bolt threads were worn down. One of the four tires that had a two-inch long cut, was patched from the inside with four hexagonal nuts on both sides. The van was a French-made Renault, transformed into a passenger bus. The two back doors had been taken off and replaced by an eight-millimeter steel chain. In the bus, two one-foot wide, pine-wood benches were fixed to the sides of the body. The middle bench, in wood too, was movable, in case of transportation of bulky produce. Đính looked at a cylindrical black steel tank about four feet high and one and half feet in diameter, welded vertically onto the right side of the bus back. There was a round opening at the bottom of the tank where red-hot charcoal was burning. Because gasoline was in desperately short supply, people had to use charcoal to power vehicles.
After one hour or so of repair work, the passengers got on the bus, expecting they would be home early. Then the bus drove past brick houses on asphalt streets of Bà Rịa City. The bus stopped at the bus station near Bà Rịa fish market. The women went shopping. Seafood was fresh and cheap. Đính saw rows of rusty, bullet-holed sheet metal-covered stalls beside weather-beaten brick kiosks on a large market ground. She took a look at the seafood stands. In a flat basket three hand-palm-sized crabs were tied with reed around their claws and legs, their mouth puffing water bubbles. A middle-age smiling woman advertised her ear-shaped abalones, three of them about four inches in length and others, smaller. A young woman, about 30, invited Đính to buy her round fat mackerel. Showing a six-pound mackerel in a hand scale, she said the fish was very fresh by indicating its red gills. A teenager boy had green and white mussels, displayed on his wooden stand. Đính bought three abalones and two live crabs.  She walked to the fruit section, which did not have shelter because it was the seasonal produce location. An old man wearing blue worn-out shirt and black pants had some big jackfruit lying on the ground and a basket of durians. Yellowish tangerines and grapefruits with green leaves at stems were fresh and attractively delicious. A little girl had a small basket of reddish yellow pomegranates. Đính bought one large jackfruit. She wanted to purchase more but she could not afford.
Coming back to the bus, she saw the helpers were busy covering dozens of five-gallon cans of fish sauce with a large tarp on the bus roof. Next to the tin cans, stacks of firewood bundles were tightened with coco ropes to the rail welded on the bus roof. There was a lot of firewood under the benches as well. The passengers had to step on them to sit down. They felt very uncomfortable, but they restrained their anger as they had been doing it for many years under the Communist regime. They had no choice.
The women were pleased with what they had bought because of the cheap price and the freshness. Đính heard them talk to each other.
“Kim, you’ve got a fat mackerel. How much is it?” A pretty woman asked her friend.
“Look, Tú. It’s fresh and very cheap. It costs only two đồngs and it weighs almost six pounds,” Kim replied. “I have to pay double in Saigon.”
“What else did you buy?” Tú asked.
“I bought two lobsters, five crabs, and five pounds of green mussels. How about you?”
“One jackfruit, two durians, and a 5-lb mackerel,” answered Tú, about 40, clad in a light purple blouse and faded grey slacks.
“You have well chosen that jackfruit. Look at its spines. They are very sparse: that means the pulp is soft, thick, and sweet,” Kim said.
Đính was content when the bus pulled out of the bus station and into Vũng Tàu Highway. The cool breeze coming from the sea was blowing into the bus, caressing her face. The sunlight was oblique in the West. Rice paddies were very green on both sides of the highway.  It seemed to her that farmers in the rice fields were tired and indifferent. When Đính’s bus passed, they stood up, smiling at the passengers in the bus while others were gathering their stuffs, ready to go home. It was 4:00 p.m. on Đính’s watch. Young couples in colored tops and pants, riding their Honda motorcycles, parties of two or three mopeds overtook Đính’s bus. Their wives or girl friends on the back of the bikes were waving towards her, showing their sunburned smiling faces. Their happiness was contagious. Đính shared it, sensing the outside world was still having some aspects worthy of living. In an instant she forgot her misery, thinking of her children’s brilliant future. 
Đính’s bus was about two miles from Long Thành City, famous for its orchards of durian, grapefruit, and jackfruit. A long blue bus crowded with passengers and loaded with merchandises on the roof came, passing her car with flashing headlights. A helper standing at the back of the on-coming bus made some signs to the helpers of her bus. Đính did not understand their meaning. Suddenly, Đính heard a helper hit the bus body twice and shout, “Uncle Tam, FSA ahead!”
“I’ve got it,” the driver replied. Then he slowed down the bus and made a U-turn. All the passengers protested loudly.
“What the hell’s going on, Driver?” An aggressive woman shouted.
“My God, why did you make a U-turn?” An old lady asked harshly.
“It’s getting late. I have to go home early. My kids have been left at home for two days. I don’t know what happens to them.”
The driver and the helpers kept their mouths shut.
“Why did you make a U-turn, Uncle Tam?” Đính softly asked the driver. “What does FSA stand for?”
“The FSA stands for Forest Service Agents. They stationed somewhere near Long Thành City. You know, the bus spare parts are rare and expensive these days. I buy them on the black market. The new government does not import them, so I deliver firewood or charcoal to have some extra money. If I get caught, the firewood or the charcoal will be confiscated and I have to pay its owner for it.”
“When’ll the agents go home?” Đính asked.
“I wait until about 6:00pm,” Uncle Tam said. “It’s about time they were off duty.  Besides, I pay many taxes and I have to bribe the Highway Patrol Policemen by either money or “555” cigarette packs.”
“It’s 6:05. You can take off now, Uncle Tam,” Đính reminded.
When the bus arrived at Long Thành, firewood was taken down. The women felt satisfied, but it did not last long. Boy and girl peddlers crowded around the bus, selling drink and food.
“Hot tea! 10 cents a glass!” Shouted a skinny, suntanned-faced girl, about 12. 
They were barefooted, wearing shabby black clothes and yelling all the time. Đính bought a glass of hot tea and drank it. At the passengers’ surprise, bags of charcoal were loaded up on the bus top. Coal dust flew over Đính’s and passengers’ heads, but they were too tired to complain. They used hands or towels to fan coal dust away, grumbling. They knew that the passengers’ protest had no impact on the driver and his helpers, who got used to it.
When the charcoal was well piled up on the roof and the electric light around the Long Thành City was on, the driver drove the van onto the road. Passengers sighed with relief. Đính looked through the bus windows. It was dark on both sides of the road because of the tree foliages. Afar appeared then disappeared dots of light, going up and down like dancing phosphorescent fires.
“Look like white ghosts,” Đính said to the woman beside her, pointing to the light dots.
“Maybe, they were dead soldiers’ souls trying to find way home. Some soldiers were shot dead and their bodies were buried in a hurry. Their relatives do not know where their tombs are,” the lady answered. Đính felt scared as well as painful because a surge of pain from her heart to her eyes made her tears come out and run down on her cheeks.
“Those women back there and we are lucky because your husband, mine, and theirs are still alive,” she continued. “The majority of women of our generations are widows. That god-damned war and we were defeated.”
Đính looked back to other women’s faces. She saw in the dim light their eyes traveling far away. It seemed that they had the same feeling as Đính did.
“Some old women had buried their husband before 1954 Geneva Treaty,” Đính said.
“They then buried their sons and daughters during 1973 Paris Agreement, and finally they fled Vietnam to the United States, empty-handed with their nephews and nieces after 1975. They lost everything: husbands, children, furnished houses, lands, and savings in the banks. Those cruel Communist thieves!”
Suddenly, the bus dropped into a deep dip. All the women came back to reality. It was near Long Bình, the former USAID logistics compound.
“Stop the bus!” A woman shrieked, “Fish sauce!”
“Fish sauce’s dripping!” Another yelled.
The helpers looked toward the direction of the shouts. They asked, “What’s the matter, ladies?”
The women on one side of the bus said at the same time, “Fish sauce’s dripping.”
Then they cursed the driver. They all stood up and shouted, “Driver, stop the car!”
The bus stopped. They got off and yelled to the driver, pointing to their fish-sauce-stained blouses and to the sauce running line on the car.
“Look, fish sauce on my blouse.”
“There, it’s dripping.”
“How can I wash it off my blouse?”
The driver did not reply. He knew that silence would buy forgiveness. He said to one helper, “Get up to the roof and put the broken can into this plastic bag.” He then told the other helper, “Take a can and get water from that pond.” The helper also cleaned fish sauce from the bus. The women washed their blouses and kept on cursing the driver, the helpers, and the bus.
“What a bad day! What a damned bus!”
At last, the driver begged them to get on the bus. The bus rolled onto Saigon-Biên-Hòa Highway and ran smoothly, without incident.
Đính got on a tricycle at the Saigon Eastern bus station.
“Where to, ma’am?” The cyclo man asked.
“Trần Hưng Đạo Boulevard, please.”
“O my God! Do you smell fish sauce?” He asked.
“No, I don’t,” she lied.