THAT NIGHT

THAT NIGHT
During three years in Bao Loc, in more than 800 days and nights in the cool, boring town, that was the only night I couldn’t get to sleep.
After visiting Uncle Luan, I hurried home, trying to go to bed as early as usual, but the girl’s eyes made everything diverse, making me stay awake, comforting me, giving me a such warm breeze blowing through my remaining days in Bao Loc, just for me. From an alley on right side of the military medical station, across Bao Loc church, leading to the 20th highway, I walked home pretty fast as usual.
Day by day, how much to learn, how much to understand, how many difficult math problems to be solved became more important to me than any one else. Day by day, my habit of going to bed on time to wake up on time the next morning was what no one cared but me. Walking slowly as a gentle middle- aged guy, I suddenly startled.
A lightning- like flash shone a cold corner of the sky brightening every covered place in my soul, tying my legs. I couldn’t walk any more although I had passed in front of her Agricultural class seeing the lovely light in her eyes many times for almost 3 years.
That evening, next to a girlfriend waiting for a smoked corn, Bich Van looked at me with her brighter, happier, friendlier or even a more interesting, surprising eyes. I didn’t recognize the girl next to her. Maybe, this area light blinded me. there was no one making me moved just her. The road light made everything blurry but I could recognize two of them friendly smiling, politely greeting, softly inspiring me to stop, to tell me to step closer and do something that I could not imagine. Day by day, how much I studied, how much I understood, I got through more hard mathematics than any one else.
It was cold in Dec. Despite wearing a sweater, I felt as hot as I were in a corner of a desert. I sweat as if I were suffering Malaria. .I was held captive in their two eyes and smiles. My legs were like being frozen making my steps unstable just like an animal having been shot at its heart with a sweet bullet. I felt my chest wet. The warm of blood made me alert. I fell like a prisoner facing a group of soldiers just firing me to commit my death sentence. I feel like a mendicant friar who stepped in front of his lovely house with some family members’ eyes calling. I felt like a baby child, ignoring stupidly not running to get a worthy gift from people waiting to distribute. I felt my two ears were burnt on the coat oven by the street vendor. I wished I could have collapsed. I wished I would die. I wished the earth would stop spinning and the time would stop going by. I only wished there were only her and me to make me confident enough to step in front of her to hold her hands, and as a powerful miracle, to ask her a question,
“Is it me you are looking for?” Or
“Have you heard what my heart whispers?”But dreams are just dreams. I was simply foolish. I - my mother's good child- just went on stepping. I did not even smile back. I could make her feel painful, a pain of being ignored or to say the least, insulted. I could have made her cry. There would be tears of valuable diamonds, that throughout my working life, I can not compensate.
To be continued