Night on the trail

by Tran Thi Van Trang

 

Hoa hugged the block of dynamite close to her chest. With each heartbeat, the explosives felt alarmingly warmer against her green army blouse, and she muttered a curse at her own imagination. Crawling on her knees and one hand, she scanned for a dry spot in the rock cave to plant the explosives. Once she set down the deadly weight in her arm, Hoa gave herself a mere second to blow a stray strand of hair from her face and wipe away a drop of sweat going into her eye. There was no fuse, so she tied a long rope around the explosives, as if she was wrapping a present. One final glance, and she picked up the coil of rope, slowly rolled it out as she walked back to her shelter behind a big boulder. Her teammate Mai was waiting there with a worried scowl and pale knuckles.

“Don’t do it so quickly. Just be careful. Do you want to die?” Mai nagged as she signalled another six girls behind other boulders.

“I’m alright.” Hoa’s voice was dry. Her hands had already started on striking a match to light up the rope. It burned quickly, and in a massive blast, the cave collapsed. Rocks flew from the explosion, thudding against the boulders the girls were hiding behind. Debris and dust showered them, as they crowded together to shield themselves from the impact. Within minutes, the smoke started to clear, and the girls started on their work.

The Truong Son Trail was the vein of Vietnam throughout the war. It kept the country alive, but all it ever witnessed was death. The trees were still green, but the branches were tattered, as if shredded by angry hands. The forest cicadas still sang, but their songs were so often covered by the roaring orchestras of bomb raids. The soldiers – none older than twenty-five – still went about doing their work, but no one knew if they would be working the next day.

Hoa’s squad, the “path girls”, were stationed on the trail to keep it clear. The Vietnamese troops needed it to transport supplies and weapons, and the American army hoped to doom them by cutting off the trail. On more peaceful days, Hoa’s squad spent their time cutting down trees and paving the road for army cars. But on days like this, faced with smoking craters from US bombs, they needed to blow up a cave to get more rocks to cover up the road. There were so many ways to die – they could die during the bomb raid, they could die while planting explosives, or they could die from stray rocks from the blast. But they could not die that night, because the supply platoon was coming.

The last time supplies had stopped at their base – the last time the girls had met some soldier men – was almost two months ago. That night, the supply platoon would be setting up camp before heading further south the next morning. The Americans had just bombed them barely one day before, so they were not expecting another round so soon. So, on the way back to camp, Hoa watched as her squad of brazen soldiers turned back into girlish teenagers that afternoon. As if they were not in the middle of war. As if they were not walking among broken trees in a forest wrecked by bombs. As if they were not heading towards death every few days.

*

Hoa’s squad-mates called her the “Lady”. Among a squad of girls from rural farming provinces, she was the only educated city girl. Back in Hue, her hometown, she had attended the prestigious Dong Khanh Girls’ College, the most famous girls’ school around. People often said, to find the smartest, most sophisticated, most gentle and most beautiful girls, one must go to Dong Khanh. Hoa, with her long black hair, big brown intelligent eyes and tall, slender figure fitted the image. At the age of twenty, the unforgiving trail had darkened her skin and the relentless work had turned her hands rough, but she still carried herself with a kind of grace even the Dong Khanh headmistress could not have faulted.

That afternoon, the squad was buzzing with excitement. There was gossip about a handsome soldier that was supposedly in the arriving platoon. Some girls were hoping to get letters from their boyfriends stationed elsewhere. And Mai, the one with curly short hair and haughty eyes, the boldest one of them all, was laying down plans for them all to snatch a guy that night.

After two years on the trail, Hoa no longer winced at the topic. In the midst of war, concepts like chastity or innocence burned away a little after every bomb raid. Soldiers, men or women, were just humans on the trail, desperate to live, desperate to seek comfort, desperate to procreate. Even if it were just one night. Even if it technically were not allowed. One year before, Hoa had caught a couple together. She had not seen them, but she had heard. The couple had sounded like death. The man had been breathing heavily, reminding her of one of her former comrade’s gasping dying breath. The woman’s muffled sounds made her think of another soldier’s bite on a washcloth as she had had her leg amputated. But soon after, that girl, a squad-mate of Hoa at the time had become pregnant and gone home. Last they had heard of that girl, she had been living rather peacefully with her new-born child.

The mention of her name pulled Hoa out of her thoughts.

“Lady Hoa will braid our hair. Make us pretty.” Mai slung her arm around Hoa’s shoulders. “I shall go first. The rest queue up.”

“Okay. I don’t mind.”

Hoa really did not mind. Once they reached camp, she took over hair duty for everyone. As she was combing Mai’s brown hair, her thoughts drifted again to her days at Dong Khanh. She thought of braiding her classmates’ hair in the classroom. She recalled poems she and her friends had written and passed around behind the matron. Above all, she remembered the white ao dai, the long tunic dress that had been their school uniform. There had been times when Hoa and her friends would don the ao dai and marched the streets. They would sing patriotic songs and distribute anti-US flyers. With their elegant white dresses flowing with their graceful steps, people on the streets had likened them to angels or fairies.

Hoa’s last protest with the Dong Khanh girls would have been the biggest one. For months, they had secretly made signs and hidden them in the school storerooms or at home. Hoa would have surely marched with them again had her family not discovered her plans the night before the protest. Her family had never really stopped her before, but that night her grandmother was particularly hysterical. “Bad omens! I have such dreadful feelings!” she had yelled, all while cutting up her white ao dai. She had threatened to die if Hoa had gone, and so Hoa had promised to not protest. Still, she had snuck out of the house the next day to watch her friends protest from the crowd.

Watching her friends marching, raising signs and shouting protests, she had been struck with a realisation, possibly the same omen her grandma had had. The marching girls had not looked like angels at all. They had looked like an army of ghosts, floating through the streets in a surreal air, their yells echoing and blurring as if coming from another world. No sooner had that thought found Hoa than the yells of police had startled her. In mere minutes, there had been gunshots. The crowd had roared. Some people had pounced on the police only to get shot down; the rest had scrambled away in panic. Hoa had stood at her spot as if petrified, watching the white of her classmates’ ao dai being taken over by growing stains of red.

The following month, Hoa had run away from home in the middle of the night and signed on. She had brought with her nothing but her cut up white ao dai.

“The platoon is arriving shortly. Get ready.” Her comrade’s voice woke Hoa from her memories. She shook off her thoughts, and proceeded to receive the supply platoon.

*

The platoon arrived in two cars and three trucks. Neither the cars nor the trucks had any windshields or windows, for the glass had long shattered from bomb impact. From a distance, Hoa watched the soldiers waving at her squad through the glassless frames with unconcealed delight. She wondered if that was how those young men dreamed they would look like if they came home after the war – waving, smiling, victorious, on the same cars that had once brought them into the battlefields.

The reception was a formal one according to protocol. Mai was again her restrained, serious persona, diligently registering every item – rice, rations, ammunitions, explosives. As they watched the soldiers load the supplies in storage, Mai pinched Hoa’s arm and laughed as her hand was slapped away.

“You still set on not finding a boyfriend?” Mai whispered.

“Yes. What about you? Do you have your eyes on anyone yet?” Hoa replied, checking through the corner of her eyes if anyone was listening.

“I want a tall guy. I want my kids to be tall.”

Hoa had always found her comrades quite peculiar, especially Mai. It was one thing to seek physical comfort, but these girls were looking for an actual future partner in this wretched forest. How unwise. They all knew their chances of dying here, but they still went on making plans for their future – one year, five years, ten years. Mai had always wanted children. She often complained to Hoa that other twenty-four year old girls back at her home would already be carrying around three children. It puzzled Hoa how someone who dreamed of such a normal life would choose to be on the trail, and what was even more puzzling was Mai’s answer. “I hate those invaders. I just want to chase them out. For the motherland… my duty! And I want to have kids too – I want to do both! I may probably die, yes, but I’m not dead yet… and as long as I am not dead, I want kids too.” It was an answer that made little sense and was borderline broken. It was an answer that was as greedy as it was confused. It was an answer that Hoa somehow found tragic.

Mai assigned Hoa to help the platoon with cooking duty. It was a joyful day, so the platoon’s lieutenant had already allowed cooking one cup of rice more than usual. Her squad had gone to the nearby stream and caught two fish, and on the way back they had caught a few rats. It was looking to be the most sumptuous meal in a while. As Hoa headed to the stove area, she found three soldiers from the platoon playfully whacking each other, their deep and rough laughter ringing unfamiliarly in the forest air. They stopped and straightened up as they saw her, shouting out a “Hi Miss!” before two of them dashed away.

“Cook it good, Ox!” They yelled as they were leaving.

“Fuck you! You do your own cooking duty next time!” Ox, the third soldier, yelled back at them.

Ox had the obvious look of a farmer boy. His skin was distinctly tanned; it would not be surprising if people teased him to be a gigantic piece of charcoal. He looked no more than nineteen and was of average height, but his bulky frame made him seem bigger than the other men. He had his blouse sleeves rolled up above his elbows and his pant sleeves rolled up to his knees, and he stood next to the stove in a stiff pose, giving Hoa an awkward smile.

“Hi Miss, what’s your name?” He asked gingerly.

“I’m Hoa. I can help you cook if you don’t want to.”

“No… no. I can do it. They already passed me the fish. I swear to you, my fish cooking skills are damn good. Shit, it’s so super good, you won’t forget it for life.”

“We caught some rats too. And our squad still has salted peanuts in storage.” Hoa ignored his crassness.

“Rats and peanuts! My platoon calls those forest chickens and dragon eggs! Fucking fancy dinner tonight!”

Ox must have been a rookie. For someone who supposedly had done many cooking duties, he still looked fascinated by everything in the army. As they were cooking, he sang incessant praises for the Hoang Cam stove, the army stove that was dug into a covered hole with bamboo vents dissipating the smoke to avoid detection by American planes. He talked about the army cars they came in, and how he had never seen what a car looked like when he had been home in his village. He did not seem concerned about whether Hoa was listening; the monologue was for himself, a mean to fill any silence that was uncovered between the sizzling of food. His stories went on into the early evening, as dinner started.

About forty people huddled around the stove. Each of them only got a sliver of meat, and the rest of their rice was eaten with peanuts and salt, but by all means, it was a party. Gleeful chatter spread as bowls and pots were passed around. Men and women exchanged names and stories, skilfully side-stepping but never truly denying the flirtatious tension hanging in the air. As she was accustomed to be, Hoa was the observer of it all. She sat quietly, gave quick answers and polite nods when the conversation found her, and pondered about how unusual a warm, untroubled gathering like this had become. Soon the food was cleared, and the conversation subsided into a simmer. Hoa brought the pots to the stream to wash, and Ox followed suit.

It was already dark. The light from Hoa’s lamp parted through the shadows of the trees before the darkness sewed itself back together behind them as they moved. They soon reached the stream and they squatted next to the water to scrub the pots. Perhaps bored of the sounds of cicadas buzzing and pots clanging, Ox started his musings again.

“You know, my name is not Ox. They just call me an ox because I’m big sized. My name is Minh actually.”

“It’s a nice name.” An abnormally nice name, in fact. Minh meant bright and smart, which is an unusual name farmers would give their children. People in rural villages had a superstition that giving a child a good name would cause the child to die early, for the gods would be too fond of the name and take the child away before his time. His name was one that defied superstition – that defied fear.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No I don’t.”

“Can I ask you to be my girlfriend?”

“I’m sorry, but no.” Hoa wanted to laugh. He had asked so simply and so directly, but he seemed surprised and disappointed at how simple and direct her reply was.

“Why not? I really like you – you are pretty and nice! I can cook, and I can farm really good. I promise I can provide for you.” There it was again, the planning for a future that may not exist. Hoa sighed and put down the pot she was scrubbing. It clanged unceremoniously against the other pots.

“Why look for a girlfriend in Truong Son? Isn’t it a silly thing? What if you die?”

“I won’t die.”

“How can you say that?”

“I told my mother I won’t die, so I won’t die. I just won’t.”

It was an infuriating response. He just would not die. No matter how illogical their hopes were, people like Mai or the other girls knew they could die. They had all acknowledged that chance. And Hoa – she had carried with her that cut up ao dai and the blood she should have shed with her friends that brutal afternoon on the street – she had always expected to die! And yet, there was this boy, this naïve, foolish boy who was driving through bomb raids and gun fires, and still simply rejected the idea of dying at all. It was childish, it was unreasonable. It was a kind of confident, optimistic stupidity that could stupefy all measures of rationality, and Hoa was left dumbfounded. Memories of ghostly white shadows marched through her mind, and she struggled to find words.

“It is an honour to die for the country… an honour to give up one’s life. To die with your comrades…”

“Fuck that! We will fight those Americans, and we will live! We have mothers to take care of and children to bring up. We can’t die! Dying for the country, dying with comrades… If we all die together, what country is left? What is left?”

Hoa had never considered that question. In Dong Khanh, the poems she and her friends had written had called for sacrifice for the country. At the base, every time a bomb dropped, her squad recited a pledge to give up their life for the motherland. But was death all she can give? What would be left after she died? For two years she had only seen herself as another speck of life to be swallowed by the forest on the Truong Son Trail. She was supposed to die; she was not meant to have a future any more than her classmates did. For two years she had pushed the images of her grandmother and her parents to the back of her mind, but now they appeared so clearly, making her feel choked in her chest. Minh went on with his monologue.

“I love the motherland, so I will live. I love my comrades, so I will live. We will all live. We will have more children. We will kick out those Americans, and we will build back everything they bombed, like how you path girls build back the trail! I will certainly live for that, so I definitely won’t die!”

His eloquence startled her. He stared at her, the reflection of the lamp light making his eyes gleam. His words rang in her ears more loudly than any bomb raid ever did, piercing through her mind and wiping it blank. Thoughts of the past, of guilt, of death – they detached themselves from her for the first time in years, and the world started to blur. She did not remember what she was thinking. She only vaguely recalled his stories. His sister was learning to write so she could write him, and he had learned to read them. The guava tree in his garden at home was the most fruitful and gave the biggest, sweetest fruits in the village. He was going to plant a vegetable garden when his platoon arrived at the southern base. After innumerable stories, Hoa found herself in his arms, her back against the cold damp forest floor, staring at the murky black sky. The pots they were washing lied abandoned next to the water.

The cicadas continued to sing. Hoa could hear the forest mosquitoes buzzing between their breathing. Her elbows dug into the dirt, disturbing the worms that were crawling under her. She had pictured something like this when she died on the trail – her body lying on the forest floor forever, and the worms waiting for her to become part of the soil. But Minh was with her, and he was alive, and for the first time, he made her acknowledge that one thought she had tried for two years to kill – the thought that told her she wanted to live. His sweat fell onto her skin, each drop warming her for an instant before dripping away in cool trails.

One moment, she looked into his eyes, and she saw something else – everything he had claimed to reject. Reality and rationality rushed back to her, and she saw the truth. Just as she had buried her desire to live, he had buried his acknowledgement of his mortality. All his talk about definitely surviving, he subconsciously did not believe it. His movements against her were desperate and full of fear; he was so afraid of death, he was so desperate to try to stay alive, to continue his future. And he was another man that, in the midst of passion, still sounded like death. The realisation rushed through her like a pained cry, and she was left heaving on the ground, drained from a kind of miserable disappointment.

*

The platoon was set to leave at five in the morning. The men loaded their packs onto their trucks and bade farewell to the path girls. Minh stood at the side of the truck with Hoa, scratching the back of his head as if suddenly shy.

“Do you have a picture? I want to keep it.”

“I don’t have one.” Hoa’s voice was dry.

“How about a handkerchief? I saw other men’s girlfriends gave them those.”

“I don’t have that either.”

The cars were about to leave, and the lieutenant ordered everyone to get on. Minh turned to Hoa one last time, his eyes begging her for at least something.

“Write to me, then. I’ll be at the southern base. I want to read your letter.”

“Okay.” Hoa agreed as the last man except Minh got on the cars. He smiled instantaneously, and got on the car happily like a satisfied child. As the car moved, he waved to her through the glassless windows until she was out of sight.

Hoa did not write to him for two months. In those two months, she lost two comrades. One girl had gone on a mission to deliver intel, and had been presumably captured. Another had taken a torch and ran deep into the forest to lure the American bombs away from the main trail. Besides that, to Hoa, the world went on as normal on the trail, until one morning when she found herself vomiting outside the base.

Mai told Hoa to file a report to get permission to go home. She did not ask many questions; she even acted wishful. She only joked that she would never have imagined Hoa would be the one to have a child before her. Hoa did not enjoy that joke. The thought that she would have to live terrified her more than any time she thought she was going to die on the trail. She blamed Minh, and after two months, she decided to write to him. She dug through her pack for paper and a pen, and her hands landed on the ao dai. It drew a dry sob from her, and she curled up in her corner writing a furious letter to Minh.

Two days later, before she could even send the letter, Mai came in and delivered some news. The southern base had been directly bombed. There was no known survivor.

Hoa’s squad saw her burn the unsent letter, like one would burn money to the dead. They did not know if she cried.

Hoa filed a report, and soon she was on her way home. This time, she buried the white ao dai on the trail.