My bus departed at one in the morning. We drivers always joked with each other about the girl left at one in the morning. We said it was the devil’s bus, ‘cause there’s always something happened to her. The week before that day, Viet “Ba Tam ” drove her through the roundabout. Straight through it. It was a bloody mess. Thirteen people died — a nice number.
We asked ourselves, Why not one? Why not fourteen? Why must it be precisely thirteen people? And to make it more strange, Viet, that motherfucker, was alive after all that mess, only lost a leg. He wasn’t exactly lucky, but I didn’t have the privilege to sympathize with him. I’ve got my own life to take care of, and an extra life of a child to feed.
So I told him, Man, I’m sorry for your lost. He said, No worries, man. I still got one leg and two arms left. Better than being dead, don’t you say? So I said, That’s true. I’m glad you’re alive. I am not, the motherfucker said. It eats at you, you see, he said, this thing that sings in your ears every day, that if you had died, maybe those thirteen people were still alive. And you would prefer that? I asked. Yeah, I guess, he said, I would much prefer that.
The thing that sings in your ear every day is what kills you. I didn’t tell him that. I guessed I experienced that constant singing voice a little too often. Far too much for a lifetime. What if things had been different? It said. But things would never be different, and the teething regret truly made me prefer to be dead. Not at the expense of others’ life, though. So I jumped on the bus and prayed to God that the long drive would be safe. Don’t you kill my passengers, God. They have a home to return to. But if You want to kill me, well, that’s another story.
About five minutes before the departure, there came these weird people. Two grown men, who were wearing casual clothes. They were no different from all the other passenger, now that I think of it. But you could smell the weirdness on them. You could feel something fishy. Maybe because they were wearing masks. But the other passengers also wore masks. I asked them, “Where’s your ticket?” The younger one showed me some wrinkle piece of papers. They looked like real tickets. So I let them in. I did against my better judgment. Maybe because my better judgment always brought me shit.
It was a long trip. We were heading to Ca Mau. The night dragged on its one leg like a comedy in bad taste. Everyone was sleeping except for the two weird men. The older, strong one was looking blankly out the windows. The younger one had earphones stuck to his ears; his head moved sluggishly to the rhythm. Must be a romantic love song. Then the young one glanced at me through the mirror. Damned, I thought, here it goes. Maybe the bus was cursed — those thirteen dead people’s fault. If there were fourteen people, perhaps this thing won’t happen. He went up to my seat, took off his mask, and flashed me a dazzling smile.
“How long ‘til we arrive at the first station?”
“Pretty long, boy.”
“How long, exactly?”
“‘bout two hours. You in a rush?”
“Me? No. I just think this is an awfully long trip.”
“Every trip is an awfully long trip when you in a rush to the destination.”
“That’s some life wisdom.”
“Us drivers always have some life wisdom in our pockets in case of emergency.”
“Like now?”
“Kinda.”
He leaned on the pole, not wanting to go back to his seat anytime soon. He looked like he was thinking hard about the life wisdom I just spat to his face. Five minutes into silence, and he was ready to fire his next question:
“How long ‘til we arrive at the final destination?”
“You mean Ca Mau Bus Stop?”
“That’s what I meant.”
“Maybe in six to seven hours.”
“That sounds like forever.”
“Yeah, so you may want to go back to your seat and sleep for a bit.”
“You don’t want me here? Am I distracting you?”
“No, but she may get jealous. You never know what a woman will do when she gets jealous.”
“You mean the bus?”
“That’s what I meant. And possibly my wife.”
“Men are also pretty bad at handling jealousy.”
“I never get jealous when someone rides her.”
“You mean your wife?”
“I meant the bus.”
He went back to silent. I think what I said was a little bit too hard for him to chew. Pretty flowers never could withstand a storm. They all died. That’s another life wisdom, but I didn’t tell him that.
“But have you ever get jealous of your wife?”
He asked me, his round eyes blinked in the act of innocent. Boy, we all know there’s no innocence in you. Certainly not in me. I don’t have the time for your shit. But I can’t tell him that. God knows the passenger’s complaints are thriving in Inferno these days.
“She’s a one-man woman.”
“But have you?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Curiosity, I guess.”
“You should go back to your seat. Bumpy road.”
But he didn’t move. A life-long weariness came over me, and I can’t help but think, A, here it is, the curse of the bus departing at one in the morning. I tried to focus on the road, but his question kept bugging me. Have you ever get jealous of your wife? I thought about her. It’s been a long time since the last time she was the main cause of my chronic headache. Don’t get me wrong; she’s a fine girl. Like a timid river – not the kind you can find everywhere in Nam, not the normal kind – she’s the river that only a lucky bastard dying of thirst in the desert can find. A rare one. She cured the bastard. She healed me. There was a time in a not-so-distant past, on a not-so-distant desert, her love quenched my thirst. But this wasn’t some good old love story.
“She’s a fine woman, that’s what I think.”
I spoke and felt the words flowing out of my tongue like some bad taste medicine. The young boy jumped unexpectedly. He was nodding off, leaning unsteadily against the pole.
“Excuse me?”
“I said she’s a fine woman.”
“The bus?”
“My wife.”
“Oh.”
“I loved her. And I think she did love me for a while.”
“Loved? Do you still love her, then?”
“Hard to say. ‘Cause she’s not here no more.”
“She’s dead?”
“No. She’s in ‘Murica.”
“So she’s gonna take you there? Isn’t that some blessed life?”
“Yeah. Some damned blessed life.”
He waited for me to go on, but it’s hard. I felt the unspoken words clammed tightly around my throat, soaking up my saliva. My mouth’s as dry as that barren desert people always talked about on TV – the Saha-something. About one and a half hour ‘til the first station.
“We were married after six months of’ dating.”
“Well, that’s quick.”
“I was afraid that I might lose her to somebody else. She’s a treasure. A river in the desert.”
“Then you must be a lucky one.”
“Yeah. I was.”
I licked my lips. Some memories from an ancient time kept flooding back like a broken dam. For a moment, I thought I was sitting at the dining table in our poor home. She was fixing dinner. I was scheduled to drive the bus departing at one in the morning. She said, “When will you be home this time?” And I said, “I don’t know, darling. If you want, I will come home as soon as the sun sets its feet on the horizon.” And she laughed. Her laugh sounded like the ring of the cathedral’s bell at five in the evening.
“You know, we were poor. Our savings couldn’t save our first child when she was still inside my wife. And that’s what broke us.”
“But maybe you can have another child?”
“You don’t understand. The unborn child haunted us. We kept thinking, What if we had more money? What if something were different? And slowly, it turned to, What if we hadn’t married? It’s like a continuous spiral leading to unfathomable darkness. I still think it’s a miracle that she didn’t go crazy. Because I nearly went there. I went home every night, blaming myself. Because I was not rich, that’s why my daughter died. That kind of mentality, it eats you alive, piece by piece.”
“Then what happened?”
“I didn’t talk to her for quite sometimes. Whenever I looked at her pale face, I felt like my heart stopped beating. I felt like my whole existence was reduced to this small fetus covered with my wife’s blood. You don’t know what that does to me. I stayed out more often. I was never home when she needed me most. And she never blamed me. I so wish she did.”
“And she left for Mr. ‘Murica.”
About forty-five minutes ‘til the first station. I started to lose focus on the road ahead, so I wiped my face, hoping to get rid of unnecessary emotion. The memories still came flooding in, and I sat there, let them wash over me in a tide of undying yearning.
“It was a rainy afternoon in October. She fixed me a meal, as delicious as ever. She looked at me, but I, a coward, I tried to look away. That’s when she said; I want to get a divorce.”
“A divorce.”
“She said it was temporary. I have a cousin who can help me to get to ‘Murica, she said, but I must be divorced. She told me that after three years of the fake married, after she got to ‘Murica safe and sound, after all the troublesome paperwork was done, she will come back. Then we can come to the dreamland together. Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Did she come back?”
“You guess. Been six years. No words.”
“That’s sad.”
“You know what I think? I think the fake married she’s in is way happier than the real married she got. ‘Cause it brought her to the dreamland. Maybe she’s rich. Maybe she’s getting two or three nails salons there. Maybe her husband has his own chauffeur, and she doesn’t need to worry about where to get money for her next meal. Maybe she has a child, a daughter stronger and healthier than our unborn one.”
“That’s sad.”
We arrived at the station. I parked my car near the gas shelf, announced in the tired loudspeaker that we were going to leave in fifteen minutes. I didn’t know what was more devastating, the memories of the love I used to have, or the empty parking lot of the station in the foggy early morning. The boy wiggled his feet and walked back to his seat. In a brief moment, I caught his hand, and before anyone can come down the doorway, I told him:
“That’s not sad. She’s living happily, and that’s all I care about. You know what’s bugging me? It’s not knowing anything. On days like this, I keep questioning myself, What if she’s living a worse life than before? What if she’s crying herself to sleep every day begging to be back to Nam? That’s what keeps me awake on the road. That’s what keeps me alive.”
“And you are still waiting for her?”
“I am. Because she’s the river in the desert. And I’m the lucky bastard. And I don’t care if she’s goin’ to bring me to ‘Murica or not, ‘cause what matters most to me is to see her living a love story in a fairy tale. I want her life to be a happy-ever-after ending. Simple as that.”
“Uncle, you know what? My ma’am often tells me that it’s a fucked up world we live in.”
“Yeah?”
“But for me, I always believe that after all, there will always be something left to love in this fucked up world.”
I laughed. He laughed. The passengers started pouring out of the bus, going blindly to the rest area like moths finding the light. And the sky above us was bluer and brighter than ever. And I thought, Yeah, maybe the curse was broken. After such a long time, I felt the urge of calling someone, just to hear them asking, When will you be back this time.
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