We walked toward the roofless market in a dark night. I could hardly walk with the leather cord of restrain clinging to my leg as the dog was running sometimes in circles.
At the lamp post’s corner, because of it, I let the dog sit down while I was fastening the cord around the post, and then I went into the market without the dog.
The sellers enticed and the buyers negotiated. After hours of bargains, she bought some watermelons, small pots of marigolds, rice papers, bundled rice cakes and pork. When we got back to the lamp post, the dog wasn’t there.
Back to home, at midnight, she put on each of her altars, a watermelon and a marigold pot, including the altar for the kitchen’s God. I assisted her with the task of lighting the incents.
While she was bowing down I took one stick of incent and put it on God’s altar, sorrowfully I prayed for the lost dog.
The Unexpected Day
He took off his army uniforms and put on a dark-colored shirt and a pair of pants then hid himself in a crowd of civil citizens. People were hurtling, jostling, some with frightened looks, some with excitements- the celebrating ones and the miserable ones. At a desolate corner, he wangled off and walked home like a bystander among other bystanders. Flashing traffic lights, ineffective curfew due to the flowing
escapers, the rushing civilians. Aggressive, strange soldiers filled up the streets. The bright sky disturbed by the roaring of the taking-off helicopters hurriedly flying away. On top of the Presidential Palace, the last helicopter was lifting up, abandoning a line of desperate evacuees waiting to be rescued.
Outside the collapsed gate, some stood still while others were turning their backs to find an open exit to flee. Under the statue of a navy soldier holding his gun in a fighting gesture, a man lying dead after having shot himself in the head. The flesh flow of crimson blood wound around his head
while a French camera man was filming the suicidal scene, ignored the watching crowd and the mourners surrounding him.
In front of the Capitol, a VC, who just pulled down the South Vietnam’s three-stripes flag, threw it angrily on the ground and let another VC tore it into small pieces so that some others could
step onto the torn pieces. On the pier, people pushed one another, and some even climbed over others’ bodies who had fallen down to be able to quickly run onto the ship’s boarding place which was more than ready to sail abroad.
Kerosene
Lucubrating in her duty, she poured some white wine into the little glass on her altar. She had been hallowed many years before the revolutionists came. Every night, all she did before heading to bed was muttering litany, her routine task.
That night, she was gauche while boiling water with her little stove fueled by kerosene worrying about the scared kerosene disappearing gradually on the market, and the price she couldn’t afford. She touched her cowlick, pulled off the hair clip and let loose her grizzly hair, recalling a hearsay she heard in the morning.
The planks of the floor quaked and creaked beneath her steps with her slowly approaching the slick divan. She pulled the patchy throw, which she’d sewn and made it by herself, in the gloaming and wrapped around her cold feet thinking hard about some place to buy the kerosene next month.
|