Chapter 2 — Potters and the Last Fire Season

Minh removed the mortar around the crack and found an old fracture line that had been filled with cement. Mr. Phuc said it appeared after the flood, but he doesn't remember who fixed it. Ha opened the maintenance book, the year page was torn.

Linh squatted next to him, watching Minh use a small chisel to gently tap along the old filling layer. Each piece of cement peeled off like dried fish scales, revealing a layer of brick inside that had turned a dull color, completely different from the original fire brick color.

“This is not refractory brick,” Minh said, holding a piece up to shine in the sunlight. "Someone temporarily filled it with regular bricks, probably because at that time there was no money to buy the right kind."

“How long will this filling last?” Linh asked.

"Perhaps it has reached its limit. Regular bricks cannot withstand the constant heat and cold cycle like refractory bricks. Every time it is fired, it expands the wrong way."

Mr. Phuc stood a few steps away, arms crossed over his chest, saying nothing. Linh glanced at her father and saw his jaw tighten, a familiar sign from childhood whenever he knew he was wrong but wasn't ready to admit it.

Linh asked why her father hid it. He replied, "It's easier to hide the furnace than to hide the debt." She opened the paper box on the table and saw the loan contract in the names of him and Uncle Tan, her deceased brother.

Old paper box, lid warped from moisture, inside a jumbled pile of yellowed invoices, handwritten receipts and a thick set of bills. Linh turned each page, feeling like she was digging through a layer of soil that had never been excavated, each sheet of paper was a layer of sediment of old decisions.

The loan was used to buy new clay, but the factory never received enough goods. Ha suspects fake invoices. Mr. Phuc did not want to sue because Tan died, leaving behind two children.

“Where do you two live now?” Linh asked, her voice softening.

“Live with their mother, in town,” Ha replied. “Sometimes visit Mr. Phuc on his death anniversary.”

Linh remained silent, imagining two children who had never known their father, leaving a debt on their uncle's shoulders. She closed the file, trying not to let her anger overwhelm the rationality necessary to solve the task at hand.

Minh checks soil samples in the warehouse. The new soil has many impurities, causing the glaze to crack and causing the furnace to burn longer. The seller delivered the cheap one, but charged a good price. He took a handful of soil, rubbed it between two fingers, then brought it to his nose to smell it.

“It smells like lime,” he said. "Good soil doesn't have this smell. Maybe they added lime powder to increase the volume."

“Mix to sell more money for the same weight,” Ha said, her voice cold. “The old kind of cheating.”

Linh wants to stop the shipment. Her father said if they stopped, they would lose their last customer. The two argued in the middle of the yard, in front of the silent workers.

“Are you planning to use bad land to keep a customer?” Linh asked, her voice higher than she wanted.

“I intend to keep the workshop open for one more day,” he replied. “You think it's easy, every day it's closed, twelve people don't get paid every day.”

That sentence made Linh pause. She looked around the yard and saw a few workers bowing their heads and pretending to be busy, but everyone was listening. She lowered her voice, even though the anger was still in her chest.

Mrs. Nam, an elderly artisan, placed a piece of clay on the table. "If the land is bad, you can still make things. But you have to know where it's bad."

She taught Linh to test the soil by hand, not with a data sheet. She told Linh to roll the soil into a small cylinder, then bend it into a horseshoe. The place that cracks first is the weak spot.

“This soil is cracked in one-third,” she said, pointing to the crack in the medium Linh clay tablet curling. “That means at least a third of the old soil must be mixed in to compensate for the plasticity.”

Minh took samples to measure, the two methods gave the same results in an important point: the soil needed to be mixed with old soil. He typed the data into his phone, compared it with the number Mrs. Nam had just said with his eyes and hands, then looked up at Linh, somewhat surprised.

“You're almost mechanically correct,” he said softly.

“Machines learn from people,” Ms. Nam replied, without looking back, “people just forget that.”

They decided to test thirty bowls without recording the guests' names. If the factory survives the fire, it still has a chance. If it breaks, they will pay the deposit. Linh personally selected thirty bowl blanks from a row of shelves, prioritizing those with the most even thickness, while Minh marked the position of each bowl in the oven to easily monitor the temperature distribution.

Linh called the old designer in the city and canceled the appointment. The customer asked her if she was sure she wanted to return to a place that was about to be sold. She didn't answer right away, just said she would contact her later, then turned off the phone and looked out into the yard where her father was stacking firewood for a test batch.

In the afternoon, Son of the group gave him a new contract. He said they would keep the profession, pay higher wages and modernize the brand. Linh asked who gets to decide the enamel color. Son said the group's creative team.

Son wore a white shirt, held a thin leather briefcase, and stood straight, different from the people who were used to wearing dirty shirts in the yard. He spoke politely, choosing his words carefully, but his eyes continuously scanned the factory yard as if valuing every centimeter of land.

“We will invest in new machines and retrain the process,” he said. “The worker still gets to keep his job, he just changes the way he works.”

“What does it mean to change the way we do things?” Linh asked.

“That means every design will go through the market research department before being produced,” Son replied, not evading. “To make sure the product sells.”

Ha refused to sign. Son left a message: "The last fire season should not be wasted."

Linh looked at that sentence on the business card and realized they were using the factory's fear to force prices. She flipped the business card to the back and saw a handwritten phone number, perhaps Son's private number, as a way to leave the door open for an informal call.

That night, Linh sat down with Ha at the register table, and the two of them added up each necessary expense for the thirty test bowls — firewood, electricity, overtime workers. The number is small but enough for them to understand, even if it's just one try, every failure has a price.

“If this batch goes bad,” Ha said, without looking up from the book, “I think dad will sign a contract with Son within a week.”

Linh did not respond. She looked out into the yard, where the string lights from the porch shone down on the stove waiting to be lit for the first time in months, and wondered if the remaining ten days were enough for her to prove something, or just enough for her to see more clearly everything that was being lost.

She stood up, went out into the yard, and stood in front of the dark oven door. Minh was still there, sitting on a stool next to the meter, recording the final numbers of the day. He didn't ask if she was okay, just pushed the remaining chair towards her, a simple gesture as if they had never been apart for eight years.

“What do you think the test batch will be like?” Linh asked, sitting down next to him.

“I don't know,” Minh answered honestly. "New soil mixed with old soil according to the ratio given by Mrs. Nam, in theory it is fine. But the furnace has old fillings, the heat distribution may not be as even as calculated."

“So I'm not sure.”

“No one is sure,” he said. “That's why they call it a test, it's not do."

Linh laughed softly, for the first time that day she felt her shoulders relax. She asked him if he remembered the time he broke her green enamel cup, when they were in middle school.

“Remember,” Minh replied, his voice a bit embarrassed even though ten years had passed. “I was going to lie and say the cat broke it, but you stood right at the door and saw everything.”

“You take the punishment for the whole group,” Linh said. “I remember because at that time I thought you were very stupid.”

“Do you still think so now?”

“Thinking a little differently now,” she replied, not looking at him, her eyes still glued to the darkness inside the oven door.

They sat quietly for a while, no one said more, only listening to the chirping of insects in the garden and the sound of the wind blowing through the corrugated iron roof. Linh thought about the thirty bowls waiting in the warehouse, about her father sleeping restlessly in the house next door, about the debt in the name of a deceased person, and about the strange feeling of sitting next to an old acquaintance as if meeting for the first time.

Minh stood up first and packed the meter into a cloth bag. “I went back to the inn in the village,” he said. “Come back early tomorrow morning, before the fire is started.”

“Aren't you staying at the factory?”

"My father didn't invite me," Minh replied, his voice not complaining, just stating a fact. “He's still shy because of the past.”

Linh wanted to ask more about that old story, but seeing that Minh had turned away, his figure disappearing behind the hibiscus hedge, she decided to leave that question for another evening. She entered the house and saw that her father's room light was still on through the crack in the door.

She knocked lightly on the door. Mr. Phuc was sitting at the table, in front of him was an old paper box, his hand flipping through each bill under the light of a small oil lamp even though the electricity in the house was still on.

“Dad isn't sleeping yet,” Linh said, not a question.

“I'm checking to see if there's anything missing.”

She sat down opposite him, silently watching him turn the pages. There were moments when she wanted to ask directly why he hid this debt from her, her, and even herself for so many years, but looking at her father's slightly shaking hands, she could only say a short sentence.

“Dad, go to bed early. Tomorrow I'll still light the fire."

Mr. Phuc nodded and closed the paper box, but Linh knew he would open it again after she left the room, like a deeply ingrained habit that could not be broken - every late night he pulled out old pages to read, as if reading them enough times would find a way to make the debt disappear.