The afternoon sunlight settled on the branches of the chinaberry tree.
The sun reached toward the ground, but the thick canopy caught much of it high above. Countless patches of light rested among the leaves, while others slipped through the gaps and continued their fall.
I sat on the grass with my legs stretched out, feeling the warmth of the sunlight seep through my clothes.
In front of me, on the waters of the Kiep Bac River, sunlight danced with the sand.
Summer always left the river nearly dry. Its bed exposed dark rocks, now softened by a coat of green moss.
On the opposite bank lived Aunt Ut Hue. When I was little, visiting her meant crossing a swaying suspension bridge made of ropes and wooden planks.
I remember closing my eyes every time I crossed it, feeling my way forward one cautious step at a time, my hands gripping the ropes.
As I grew older, I became braver. I could keep my eyes open, but I never found the courage to look down at the river below.
Whenever I did, it felt as though the water was standing still and the bridge itself was drifting away. The sensation left me dizzy, unsteady, like a drunk man struggling to stay upright. Once, if Uncle Thao had not been walking behind me and grabbed my arm in time, I would have fallen into the fast-moving current beneath.
That memory feels both distant and close.
Uncle Thao died during a rainy season after suffering a stroke.
The road leading from the highway to our village had been paved years earlier, but the project stopped halfway. The district officials claimed they had run out of money, though no one ever seemed to understand why. As a result, only the first seven kilometers were smooth concrete. The remaining seven kilometers were still rough red dirt road. In the dry season, vehicles bounced violently over the ruts. In the rainy season, mud swallowed the wheels whole.
Uncle Thao was thin, but he suffered from high blood pressure, Aunt Ut Hue used to say.
That rainy season, his blood pressure rose dangerously high. One day, a blood vessel in his nose burst, and blood soaked the front of his shirt. But Aunt Le could not get him to a hospital. The village roads had become a sea of mud. Motorbikes struggled through only a short distance before their wheels were coated in thick red clay. Cars could not move at all.
Uncle Thao remained at home.
On the third day, he died.
I returned for his funeral.
The bus ride from Saigon took two days and one night. At Quan Go Junction, I had to hire a motorcycle taxi for the final stretch. Through the curtain of rain, I saw the cars carrying mourners gathered helplessly at the end of the paved road. After some futile attempts to continue, they turned back, sending only one representative onward by motorcycle.
My grandmother had passed away several years before Uncle Thao.
They were the two people closest to me.
The last time I visited my grandmother was a long time ago.
Back then, I used to secretly leave money inside the rice container. One morning, while measuring rice to cook breakfast, she found the bills and looked up at me.
“You put this money here, didn’t you?”
“No, Grandma.”
She smiled gently.
“If it wasn’t you, then who?”
“It wasn’t me,” I replied mischievously. “Maybe there’s a Cinderella living in our house and you just don’t know it.”
My grandmother laughed, revealing her toothless smile.
“Not Cinderella,” she said. “That would have to be a Cinder-fella.”
~~~•••~~~
I looked out across the sunlit river and found myself smiling.
The old memory stirred something inside me—a quiet ache that was hard to explain.
“Brother Dong!”
Thuc, Uncle Thao’s son, called out from somewhere behind me.
“What are you doing sitting there?” he shouted again. “Come down to Ke Xuyen Market with me!”
“What for at this hour?”
Ke Xuyen Market was nearly ten kilometers from Do Do Village. Just thinking about the distance made me hesitate.
“To collect bottle caps!”
I suddenly remembered the game from my childhood and laughed.
“So the season of colored wrappers is over already?”
“Yes.”
The children of Do Do Village never measured time by weather or calendars. They never spoke of spring, summer, autumn, and winter the way other people did.
Instead, their year was divided into six seasons: the season of colored wrappers, the season of bottle caps, the season of coconut ribs, the season of cigarette packs, the kite season, and the pinwheel season.
The season of colored wrappers usually arrived with spring.
During Lunar New Year, the village children feasted on candied fruits, watermelon seeds, sesame cakes, and bánh in—traditional pressed cakes wrapped in brightly colored cellophane. Blue, red, orange, yellow, pale green.
After eating the cakes, the children carefully saved the wrappers. Every now and then they would hold them up to their eyes and gaze at the world through sheets of colored light, delighting in the novelty.
When I still lived in the village, I must have done it hundreds of times.
I would press a yellow wrapper against my eyes and turn my head from side to side, thrilled to discover a yellow roof, a yellow chicken, a yellow dog, a yellow cat. Even the tamarind tree standing outside Uncle Thao’s gate became yellow.
A little later I would switch to a blue wrapper and drift into a different world—a blue roof, a blue chicken, a blue dog, a blue cat, and the same tamarind tree, now entirely blue.
Back then, the child with the most wrappers was the richest child in the village.
One wrapper could be traded for fifty rubber bands.
Two wrappers could buy ten marbles—or even persuade a classmate to copy your lessons for an entire morning at school.
Spring passed quickly, and with it went the season of colored wrappers.
By April, the once-pristine sheets were no longer transparent. Time and rough little hands had wrinkled and torn them beyond use. They could no longer transform the world.
The cakes were still sold year-round at village shops, but children rarely had money to buy them. The days of lucky New Year envelopes were long gone.
And when the wrappers became as worn and worthless as old banknotes, the season of bottle caps began.
Just as falling apricot blossoms announced the end of spring, the bottle-cap season arrived with the first footsteps of summer.
In truth, the children’s seasons followed no fixed calendar.
The beginning and end of each season depended entirely on the oldest child in the group.
Sometimes the self-appointed leader grew bored of a game. Sometimes he lost all his treasures and decided to cheat. With a single announcement, he could declare a season over weeks ahead of schedule, instantly turning bottle caps, cigarette packs, or whatever currency was in fashion into worthless scraps.
When that happened, the younger children could only cry in frustration before wiping away their tears and hiding their fortunes in drawers until the following year.
“Did your mother give you permission?” I asked.
“Yes. I told her you and I were going to the market to buy a compass.”
As he spoke, Thuc climbed off his bicycle and shoved the handlebars into my hands.
“You carry me!”
The road was rough and uneven. I had to keep twisting the handlebars to avoid potholes and dirt mounds scattered across the path like a herd of sleeping piglets.
When we reached the railroad crossing that cut across the trail, a distant train whistle echoed through the air.
Thuc slapped my back excitedly.
“Stop! Stop and watch! The train’s coming!”
Smiling, I pulled the bicycle to a halt.
I remembered being even younger than Thuc.
Whenever my father took me past this crossing, he always stopped to let me watch the train.
Sitting on the back seat, I would stare toward the edge of the forest where the rails narrowed into the distance and vanished among the trees, waiting with nervous anticipation.
Soon a faint whistle would drift through the air.
Then, around the bend, a black locomotive would appear, square and powerful, belching thick black smoke from its smokestack.
Behind it came a seemingly endless chain of iron carriages.
The entire train thundered forward like a giant metal dragon, growing larger with every second.
I would lean away on the bicycle seat, both frightened and fascinated, watching the carriages rush past. Through the windows I caught glimpses of countless faces, and the train always seemed impossibly long.
Each time, I found myself wishing I could climb aboard that strange creature and see where it went.
When no train was due, my father would park the bicycle by the roadside and take me into the nearby woods to search for ripe fruit.
Clusters of white popping berries, dark purple wax apples, bright red wild fruit, and yellow dủ dẻ berries filled those afternoons of waiting.
Those fruits became inseparable from my childhood memories of the railway.
“There it is! There it is!”
Thuc’s excited shout pulled me back to the present.
He was practically standing on the bicycle’s rear footrest. The bike swayed beneath us, and I had to plant my feet firmly to steady it.
“Just sit down and watch,” I grumbled.
Thuc obeyed.
For about half a second.
Then he jumped off the bicycle altogether and ran a few steps ahead of me. Bending forward with both hands on his knees, he stared wide-eyed at the passing train.
He remained frozen in that position, turning his head as the train disappeared farther and farther toward the sunset.
“Come on, get back on!” I called, shaking the handlebars. “It’s getting late.”
~~~•••~~~
Ke Xuyen Market was already winding down by the time I arrived, but the food stalls lining both sides of the street remained lively, crowded with customers coming and going.
The moment I stopped in front of a small eatery, Thuc jumped off the bicycle.
“Wait here. I’ll go in!”
From the doorway, I watched him dart eagerly among the tables, weaving between chair legs. Every now and then he crouched down, rummaging beneath a table before popping up again somewhere else.
For a moment, I found myself staring at a younger version of me.
There was a girl about Thuc’s age collecting bottle caps too.
From time to time, the two of them fought over the same prize. At one point they stood there shouting at each other, mouths wide open. Thuc reached out and yanked her hair, causing her to let out a piercing scream.
The owner, annoyed by the commotion, marched over and chased them both out.
While the girl stood sadly outside the entrance, Thuc stormed back toward me with a dark expression.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Turtle!” he huffed. “She kept stealing my bottle caps!”
I blinked.
“Her name is Turtle?”
“We gave her that name,” he explained, still fuming. “She’s already grown up but still can’t ride a bicycle. Everywhere she goes, she walks. So we call her Turtle. Now the whole village calls her Turtle. Even Grandma calls her that.”
“She lives in our village?”
“Yes. Across the river.”
I stared at him.
“You mean she walked ten kilometers just to collect bottle caps?”
“Yes.”
I slipped my hands into the bulging pockets of Thuc’s shorts and pulled out a handful of treasure: beer caps, soda caps, orange-drink caps.
I clicked my tongue.
“You’ve already collected this many. Why fight with her over a few more?”
As I spoke, I glanced back toward the restaurant entrance.
But Turtle had already disappeared.
I probably would have forgotten about her entirely if, the next morning, while reading inside the house, I hadn’t felt the strange sensation that someone was watching me.
When I looked up, however, there was no one there.
Outside the window lay an empty yard flooded with sunlight and wind. Two magpie robins chattered in the tamarind tree near the gate. Farther away, on a grassy field at the foot of the hill, a group of children about Thuc’s age were dividing into teams for a game of tag.
Who’s watching me?
I lowered my eyes back to the book.
A few lines later, the feeling returned.
This time I looked around more carefully.
After scanning the yard, I finally noticed a pair of dark eyes peeking through a narrow gap between two bamboo panels.
The instant those eyes met mine, they vanished.
A moment later I heard hurried footsteps racing away on the other side of the wall.
I left my desk and went to the window.
The strange haircut gave her away immediately.
I had seen it the night before at Ke Xuyen Market—a lopsided crop of hair cut unevenly short, resembling a shrub that had been trimmed by an amateur gardener.
I almost called out to her.
At the last second, though, I decided not to.
She was already too far away to hear me. Besides, I didn’t want to frighten her.
At noon, I nudged Thuc.
“Hey, Thuc.”
“What is it?”
“Whose child is Turtle?”
“She’s Teacher Dien’s granddaughter.”
I knew Teacher Dien.
I had once been his student.
Among all the subjects he taught, he was most famous for handicrafts.
Whenever an anniversary ceremony was approaching at his house, the handicrafts assignment would inevitably be the same:
Carve chopsticks.
Each student had to submit ten pairs of bamboo chopsticks bundled neatly together.
Teacher Dien would happily carry the “assignments” home and place them on the family altar table, saving himself the trouble of borrowing chopsticks from neighbors or buying new ones at the market.
It became an unwritten rule.
The moment Teacher Dien assigned chopstick-carving, every student knew another family memorial feast was coming.
His family seemed to have an endless number of anniversaries—probably because he was the eldest son.
Thanks to him, the village children eventually developed chopstick-carving skills worthy of professional craftsmen.
Teacher Dien’s son was Huong, Turtle’s father.
Huong died after being swept away by the river.
According to village gossip, he had chased a group of thieves alone in the middle of the night, carrying nothing but a stick. While crossing the suspension bridge, he slipped and fell into the Kiep Bac River. The current pulled him away, and he disappeared.
A month after his death, Turtle’s mother packed her belongings and left.
Someone later claimed to have seen her in a southern town. According to the story, she had remarried and now ran a small drink stall with her new husband. The storyteller had added with a dismissive shrug that the new husband spent most of his time drunk and was probably no good.
After losing their son and being abandoned by their daughter-in-law, Teacher Dien and his wife were left to raise Turtle themselves.
Teacher Dien moved from Soi Slope to a house near Aunt Ut Hue’s place, beside Tinh Do Pagoda.
He eventually quit teaching.
Nowadays, he spent his days facing the temple’s flowering pergola, softly chanting sutras and tapping a wooden prayer drum.
Thuc had probably never studied under him, but like everyone else in the village, he still called him Teacher Dien.
“So Turtle’s basically an orphan?” I asked without thinking.
“Her mother is still alive.”
“Alive, yes. But living far away and married to someone else. That’s almost the same as not having a mother.”
“Yes.”
“Poor kid.”
“Yes.”
“Then why were you fighting her over bottle caps yesterday?”
That question was apparently too difficult.
Thuc pretended not to hear it.
Instead, he grabbed my arm and changed the subject.
“Let’s go to Hoi’s house!”
“What’s there?”
“To buy peanut candy!”
I patted my shirt pocket and sighed.
“I’ve run out of money.”
Thuc slapped his bulging pockets proudly.
“Don’t worry! I’ve got plenty!”
His money was a collection of bottle caps.
A week earlier, the village children’s money had been colored candy wrappers.
