Glancing at her inscrutable, distant expression, I refrained from asking anything. There would be a better moment. After dinner, we made our way to the riverbank. I followed her hunched back to a wind-tussled field of white reeds. Quietly, I helped her break reeds and toss them up from the riverbank onto a nearby high, flat mound. We worked until we had finished tying all the reeds together with three-finger-wide silk strips the color of army green. She had clearly been thinking about this moment and we sat down on the mat that was now spread out across the ground.

  I began my question. “What does it mean? I mean . . .” My gaze stopped at the wooden box she held tightly in her arms, leaving the question unfinished.

  “Well,” she lowered her voice as if whispering to herself. She sounded like she had been practicing this soliloquy before some invisible audience for years:

  I stepped down clumsily into the boat; the vegetable basket on my shoulder, still wet with dew, was heavy. The plank bottom of the boat was also wet so I slipped slightly, clamping onto someone inside to steady myself and not fall into the river.

  “Let me help you.”

  My shoulders became unburdened as I looked up and saw the man who had lifted my basket of vegetables. I could feel my face flush when our eyes met.

  “We once lived in the same village. Don’t you remember me?”

  His heavily tanned face beamed with glee. The long lashes that would make any woman envious caught the light as he opened his eyes wide. He smiled.

  “You must’ve forgotten me. My father Mộc lives at the end of the village.”

  Who in the village didn’t know Mộc? He was a carpenter who had been widowed when his only son was still a newborn. Alone, he raised his son until he reached puberty. Mộc had a younger brother, who was also a carpenter living at the bottom of the Cấm Mountain. One time when he went to the woods for logs, the younger brother was crushed by a falling tree and badly injured, so Mộc sent his son to stay with him to help out. I had heard the story from the villagers many years earlier.

  “I . . .” I started to say but froze.

  “Do you sell vegetables at Hà Market very often?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked down at my muddy toes and felt embarrassed.

  The boat floated on as a curtain of mist enveloped the river. The man still had my basket of vegetables on his head. I could feel my heart flutter, drowning out the sound of the boat paddle hitting the water.

  It was how we first met, at the wharf. Who could have known that one day we would become husband and wife? No one ever could’ve predicted that we would soon thereafter be separated.

  She went silent. With trembling hands, she fumbled with the waistband of her pants, pulled out a drawstring bag, and removed a black-and-white portrait wrapped in a plastic bag. It showed an oval-faced girl with big round eyes and a man with a square jaw and rippling hair, smiling back at the camera.

  “You and he were such a beautiful couple,” I said enthusiastically.

  “We didn’t take any pictures together. I had his photo and mine developed and attached them together because he never returned.” She smiled gaily.

  A wisp of clouds floated by. She gazed at the picture held tightly in her fingers. Her voice grew more youthful as she drifted further back in her memories.

  Mịch’s face was visibly flush as she traveled back further in time to recall her husband’s tight embrace and her virgin body on their wedding night.

  On our wedding night, I was on my period. For two nights, my husband and I could only cuddle and caress each other. Our bodies responded but we couldn’t make love. But we knew this was our chance to have kids. . . . The thought made my breasts swell and ache.

  After our unconsummated wedding night, eventually, my husband was scheduled to come back home for one night. The night before, I couldn’t sleep, mulling over what I was going to tell my husband. On the ceiling, geckos ceaselessly chirped.

  I imagined I would say, We’ll probably have to fix our roof, dear. It has leaked terribly during the recent downpours. And also the pond deck. Uneven rocks there have to be moved around. I almost slipped and fell when I went to wash the vegetables.

  I would tell my husband that a couple of months prior, my mother got a backache and had to go to the neighboring village for acupuncture. My father stepped on a bamboo thorn that was hidden in the mud and got a gash on his foot. Fortunately, there were some medicinal herbs in the garden. I plucked and washed them and pressed them on the wound. Now it was starting to heal. But I wouldn’t tell my husband that we were running out of rice and I had to borrow some from my eldest uncle.

  I didn’t go to work that day but stayed at home. I swept the yard and the floor mat, I shook the pillow over and over again, I watched the front gate anxiously. Dusk finally arrived. My heart was pounding when someone’s shadow in a soldier’s outfit fell across the entrance to the alley. I rushed toward the man but stopped mid-step.

  It was a soldier. But he was not my husband. He didn’t wait to enter the house and took out a small parcel from his rucksack, handing it to me and explaining that my husband had planned to be marching with his unit nearby and thus could stay at home with me for just one night. Orders changed at the last minute and my husband was dispatched to another unit that had to depart for battle in the South.

  After delivering the package, the soldier quickly left to join his unit across the river.

  I saw him off at the dock during a chilling downpour, amid the vast white reed field. Suddenly, I feared that white color. The soldier got into the boat while I stood on the dock, staring as his figure disappeared. It was as if I was watching my husband leave. Who knows where the South is?

  When she finished telling me the story, I asked what was inside the box.

  “Here it is.” Mịch looked at the box she was holding in her lap. Inside rested a hand-carved wooden soldier and a scribbled letter. “He wrote, in his spare time, and carved two wooden figurines. I keep the male soldier figurine; he kept the girl doll in his rucksack.”

  “Didn’t you give him any keepsakes? A handkerchief or something?” I inquired curiously.

  “No, there was nothing to give.” Mịch shook her head, smiling. “Our family was penniless. We only had a few areca nuts and a bottle of white wine for our wedding. He went to the battlefield, and I stayed at home farming, catching snails, and would one day raise our kids.”

  “You must’ve missed him terribly?”

  “Alas, the picture of him taken when he joined the army, I had to leave it at my parents’ house. I couldn’t bear to hang his picture in our home. But I’ve always carried this box with me.”

  “How long had he been gone before you received his letter? Did he write you often?”

  “It was wartime; it wasn’t like now. He had been gone for almost four years. I had been waiting forever for his letter.”

  After the Tết holiday in 1970, I went to the commune for a meeting with the farming collective. As soon as he saw me, the commune chairman exclaimed, “You have a letter from the South. Your husband’s.”

  My heart pounded like rice being processed. The letter was tinged with gunpowder. It must’ve been carried through countless eruptions of fire and smoke to reach the North, to Thanh Village, now to my trembling hands. Tears streamed down my face when I read my husband’s familiar handwriting:

  “How have you been, darling? How are our parents? How’s our brother’s family? I heard that the US bombed the North, I was sitting on pins and needles, wondering if they would strike our commune. May our family, our village, our hometown be safe, and never suffer the misery of the enemy’s bombs and bullets.

  I miss you, our parents, and our village. In my dream, I saw you coming to the South, standing by my hammock, smiling. When I woke up there was nothing but the rustling forest shrouded in gloom.

  I’m stationed in a sister province. Oh, I forgot to tell you, before going to the battlefield, I took a training course in nursing. Now I am in charge of a clinic in the liberation zone. You know, these days, my comrades and I eat only roasted corn or wild fruits gathered from the forest, saving our rations to give to patients and injured soldiers. We are starving for plain rice, yet we never have lost our will. Medication is scarce, so we have to search for herbs to use as medicinal alternatives. We clean wounds with herbal leaves, use cotton to filter coconut water as an alternative for transfusions. Medical supplies and rations are delivered from the North and from bases in the plateau. Some of the deliveries containing rice, salt, and medical supplies are covered with blood, so we have to be very frugal, saving every item. The other day, a comrade got injured in an ambush during a deployment. He was rescued by his comrades and transferred to the clinic. He had nine holes in his intestines and needed surgery. We had to put a wooden stick in his mouth so that he wouldn’t bite his tongue, and we tied his arms and legs down so that he couldn’t writhe in pain while we were operating on him. His eyes rolled back in his head. When the pain became unbearable, he passed out. The doctor injected a little anesthesia and continued operating before stitching him up.

  He was fine then. A few days later we ran out of anesthesia and had to strap the left leg of a very young communicator down to remove shrapnel from it.

  In my clinic (as in any other), we have to treat patients and do some farming to feed everyone in the area. You know, as soon as the crop is ready to harvest, the enemy sprays chemicals and all the plants are defoliated.”

  I held the letter’s scribbled text to my chest. Returning home, I burned some incense at the family altar, praying to my parents to bless my husband and shelter him from bullets. Then I told myself that when my husband returned, I’d cook him fancy meals and make him new outfits.

  That night, I turned up the oil lamp and wrote to him.

  I told him only cheerful stories that wouldn’t sadden him. I didn’t tell him that two years after he went to fight in the South, our village was bombed. After several gloomy days, the sky was sunny. I collected all the snails I had caught the previous day and sliced a basketful of vegetables to sell in Hà Market. Before it closed for the day, we heard the warning siren blare. Everyone rushed to the bunkers before the iron crows arrived.

  When the sky became serene again, I took the boat down the Rạng River with other passengers going from the market back to their villages. I was devastated by the sight of the shattered homes belonging to my parents and my brother. “Mom! Dad!” I screamed, collapsing at the ruins. A strong arm held me back. It was a young soldier from the missile-assembling unit stationed at the end of our village. He visited my parents’ house frequently. My body was trembling; I looked skyward.

  The sky was blood red. I cried uncontrollably.

  “Sister, I saw something.”

  The soldier handed me my husband’s picture—the one taken when he first joined the army. Strangely, it remained intact.

  Time was flying by.

  The rain came early that year. The Rạng overran its swollen bank. Rain poured endlessly on days we devoted to planting, but I was focused on a burning sensation in my belly. One day, I arrived home and saw my husband’s picture had fallen down. Washing off my mud-stained hands and feet, I grabbed some nails and secured it to the wall. Entering my room, I saw that the box my husband gave me, only God knows how, had dropped onto the floor. I was shocked to not be able to find the wooden soldier doll anywhere. I kept searching and ended up finding it in a mouse hole under my bed. A chill ran down my spine, giving me goosebumps and making my head spin. A vague terror took possession of me at that moment.

  The rain stopped that night. When I carried dishes to the cistern, night was falling across the treetops. From the reed field, the wind brought back the sound of a coucal. Its call was fragmented, low, and sad. If my husband had heard it, he would’ve said the coucal missed his lover. At that moment, when the sunset was fading from the Earth, my heart ached for him.

  My feet led me to the Rạng riverbank.

  A crescent moon glowed in the empty sky. The reed field was rippling in the moonlight. Each reed stretched its stem toward me.

  “Mịch . . . Mịch . . . Mịch . . .”

  Someone was calling. Was it my husband? Was he coming back? But the reeds were too thick and white for him to find his way through to me. I fumbled my way toward him.

  “Mịch . . . Mịch . . . Mịch . . .”

  My feet were frozen. Perhaps because of the rain, like on the day my husband departed. My shins grew numb. Something chilling surrounded me. In the misty, blurry curtain in front of me: my husband.

  “Mịch! Don’t!”

  My husband’s voice. It was his voice. I was going to him, to take him home. But he stopped me.

  “Don’t!”

  The misty curtain splintered. I was jolted out of the scene by the appearance of my feet in the river water. The coucal was now quiet. The wind came in frigid waves.

  I wobbled to the shore and ran to my house. That night I developed a fever.

  Years slipped by with the rice I planted. It grew verdantly and the crop always came at the end of the year.

  One afternoon, two men came to my house. One I knew was the commune cadre. The other was a stranger. They walked cautiously up the steps and quietly sat down on the splintered wood bench. I poured tea for them from a broken kettle while my mind was filled with countless questions. Finally, one of the two stood up and spoke.

  I couldn’t hear anything but the ground shaking under my feet. My fingers seemed as fragile as porcelain as I touched the cold paper he handed me. I collapsed.

  Before submerging into darkness, I pondered in agony: I would never be able to make delicious meals or sew fancy clothes for my husband.

  I couldn’t cry anymore. A wife, after losing her husband, can never rise again. Neighbors brought me porridge but I refused to eat it. My husband had told me to wait for his return. He would fight in the South for a couple of years and then he would come back. Now his bones were buried there. I needed to visit him, console him.

  Over the next three, four, five days, I grew frailer. My tears dried. I could only think, Gosh! My family is gone. If I also passed away, who would burn incense at our altars? This thought empowered me. I tried to swallow some spoonfuls of rice, waking up gradually.

  But I became ill and anguished for many years. Whenever I touched his death certificate, tears filled my eyes. It said that my husband was killed on the first day of the planting season. Did he come back and call me in the reed field that night? Did he prevent me from crossing the Rạng River?

  Every night, I held the wooden soldier figurine and stared at the ceiling, listening to the sound of coucals, which dredged up in me the feelings of that night when I went alone to the riverbank. I went to see healer after healer. I tried bitter and sweet medications, yet I could never sleep. I could focus only on the cries of coucals. A healer said my sickness was psychological. So I was the only one who could cure myself.

  Whenever I walked to the front gate I felt broken if someone passed by with a child. My skin showed goosebumps. It was a mental sickness, wasn’t it?

  I sat quietly, feeling tears fall silently down my face. Mịch looked up, the sunset reflecting in her eyes, and stared at the picture.

  A gust of wind blew past us.

  People said my husband was killed while on duty. That’s all I knew. Until later . . .

  After the country was reunified, a man who came to Thanh village asked for me. He introduced himself as a soldier who had served in my husband’s unit.

  Burning incense and lingering for a while, the man said, “Month after month, the enemy sprayed Agent Orange across the region. Our vegetables all died. We ran out of rations and medical supplies. Our unit had eight people. Two nurses were assigned to buy medication for the patients and the men had to search for rice and salt. We traveled for five days, meandering through the enemy’s checkpoints. On the sixth day, we encountered a group of South Korean soldiers from the White Horse regiment. Most of us hid in a cave beneath perilous rocks. Some others and I arrived late so we couldn’t join them inside. When the enemy found the cave where our fellow soldiers were hiding, they used a loudspeaker to call for their surrender. And they counted down. From our hiding place, we held our breath. The enemy finished counting, but the creek at its entrance remained silent. So they flung a grenade into the cave and set mines to destroy the rocks above it. After the enemy left, we couldn’t bring your husband and others out of the cave.”

  The man burst into tears.

  Mịch looked at her husband’s picture, her voice faded. “You promised to come home to me. Why did you break your word?”

  I held her wrinkled hands, crying. “Grandma, when the pain subsided, why didn’t you remarry, to have a companion as you aged?”

  Mịch wiped her eyes with her shirtsleeves. “Others told me to do that. Some people even introduced me to a widower, but I resolutely rejected the idea. My husband was gentle and handsome. Where could I find a man like him?”

  “Are you still missing him?”

  “Yes, and I will until the day I die. I was so sorry that I was never able to cook him a fancy meal or make a beautiful outfit for him. I don’t want to cry but whenever I think of him, it’s impossible not to.”

  The sky again filled with the low, agonizing sounds of crying coucals. Oh, why are they screeching now? The crescent moon hovered above our heads while the river shimmered in the dim light. A mist started slowly to overtake us.

  Mịch opened the box, gently taking out the wooden soldier and stroking its face with her withered fingers. I imagined her eyes fifty years ago—the eyes that met the love of her life.

  Straightening her stooped back, Mịch walked slowly, following the strip reeds toward the river. Winds blew like a prayer, waving the plants like slender arms. Suddenly, the mist rose over the river as the wooden soldier plunged into its heart.