Chapter 4 — The Bookmobile Through the Mountains

The last stop of the day is Dong Soi Village, a small hamlet located much closer town than the other three villages, where most of the residents are Kinh people who migrated to the highlands to settle down several decades ago. Unlike Seo Lu or Khuoi Tra, the road to Dong Soi has been paved with a thin layer of concrete. Although there are still dents in many parts, at least Nghi no longer has to tensely hold his breath through each turn like the previous two stages.

As soon as the car arrived at the beginning of the hamlet, the sound of a welding machine coming from a small workshop along the road signaled Nghi that he was about to arrive. That is the car repair workshop of Mr. Truong Van Nhiem, a man who raised his son alone since his wife left for the city to do business and never returned. His workshop is also the first place Nghi often visits in Dong Soi, not only because of convenience but also because his son, Truong Minh Khoi, is always the most excited person waiting for the bookmobile to arrive, even though the boy's expression is completely different from the obvious enthusiasm of the children in Seo Lu.

Nghi stopped the car on the side of the road opposite the factory, got out, and looked around. Sure enough, little boy Khoi was sitting on an old plastic chair right at the factory door, holding a notebook in his hand, his eyes glued to the science book about engines that he had borrowed two weeks ago, completely ignoring the sound of the car just stopping.

"Hello Khoi," Nghi said, causing the boy to look up in surprise.

"Miss Nghi! You're here," Khoi stood up, but then felt a bit embarrassed, quickly glancing at his father who was bending over the broken motorbike, his hands stained with oil. "I... I've almost finished reading the book about internal combustion engines, auntie. It turns out that the machine my dad fixes every day works exactly like the drawing in the book."

"Is that so? So you understand the principle and tell me about it," Nghi smiled, sitting down on the plastic chair next to him.

Khoi excitedly recounted, using clumsy but surprisingly clear words, how the piston moved up and down, how fuel was burned to create thrust. The boy spoke as he used his hands to illustrate, his eyes shining with pride. Nghi noticed that Mr. Nhiem, Khoi's father, was still busy working, but his ears seemed to be listening clearly to every word his son said, and the corner of his mouth slightly curled up in a secret smile that he probably didn't even realize.

"Did you feel embarrassed before when your friends knew that dad was a car mechanic?" Nghi asked, recalling a conversation a few months earlier, when Khoi had confided to her that there was a time when his classmates teased him because his father's hands and feet were always covered in black grease.

Khoi bowed his head slightly, was silent for a moment, then replied in a lower voice. "Before, I was really shy. But since reading the books you brought up, I've realized that it's very difficult to fix a broken machine, you have to understand a lot of things about physics and mechanics. Now I see that my dad is very good, better than the engineers in the books, because he can really do it, and there are some parts in the books that I don't understand, he can explain right away."

Nghi smiled slightly, feeling strangely warm. This is exactly what she always hopes the books she brings can do - not only open up knowledge, but also help children like Khoi look at the life around them, at their own family, with a more respectful gaze.

Mr. Nhiem finally stood up, wiped his hands on a rag hanging on the side of the workshop, and walked out to greet Nghi. "Miss Nghi is up. Lately, my son Khoi loves books even more than he loves playing games with his friends. Every night he reads with the light on until late, I have to remind him to go to bed."

"Don't yell at me too much, let me read comfortably, it's good that I'm eager to learn," Nghi replied with a smile.

"I didn't yell, I was just afraid that staying up too late would hurt his eyes," Mr. Nhiem scratched his head, looking at his son with affection even though he rarely expressed it in words. "You know, before I thought he would grow up to be a car repairer like me, even though in my heart I didn't want to, because this job is very hard, greasy all day, and doesn't earn much. But since he loved science books, he kept saying that in the future he wanted to study to be an engineer, to build new machines. I'm very happy, even though I don't know if that dream will come true or not, but at least he knows what he wants."

Nghi nodded, feeling in Mr. Nhiem's words both the hope and worries of a single father, shouldering the responsibility of raising his children alone in a land of many deprivations. She opened the trunk and pulled out a few new science books that she had purposely saved for Khoi from the most recent book donation — one about robots, one about world-changing inventions, and one about mechanical engineering for middle school students.

"I saved these books for you," Nghi said, handing the books to Khoi. The boy received them with bright eyes, clutching them tightly to his chest as if afraid someone would take them away.

After completing work at Mr. Nhiem's workshop, Nghi continued to go deeper into the neighborhood, stopping by a few other families, handing out books to children who had previously made an appointment, collecting the books he had finished reading, and carefully recording them in the loan book. Only when the afternoon sunlight faded behind the western mountains did Nghi begin to pack up and prepare to return town.

When I got home, it was already dark. Nghi and her mother's small house is located right behind the tea and used book stall that her mother, Mrs. Pham Thi Ngoc Dung, has been selling for many years right at the beginning of the district street. The warm yellow light shining from the window, the faint smell of lotus tea mixed in the air, and the familiar figure of her mother rearranging a stack of old books on the shelf made Nghi feel completely relieved after a long, tiring day.

"You're home," Mrs. Dung looked up, put down the book she was holding, stood up and poured Nghi a glass of cool water. "Did you go well today?"

"Yes, the car stalled again in the middle of the road, luckily Uncle Bon Senh passed by to fix it," Nghi said as he sat down on a familiar wooden chair, taking off his shoes covered in red dirt.

Mrs. Dung sighed softly, her eyes slightly worried. "That car is old, son. In the past, your father often complained to me that sooner or later he would have to change to another car, but then he kept procrastinating because money was tight and he didn't have enough books to buy a car."

Nghi remained silent, took a sip of water, his eyes accidentally glanced at the corner of the room, where there was a small wooden shelf that placed a few of his father's belongings - a faded cloth cap he often wore when driving, a pair of worn plastic-framed glasses, and a few old notebooks neatly arranged. She had seen that corner of the shelf hundreds of times since her father's death, but today, for some reason, her eyes lingered longer than usual.

"Mom," Nghi spoke softly, "I'm using dad's route notebook, the one I found in the desk drawer. But I see there are a few other notebooks on the shelf, I haven't looked at them yet. What are they?"

Mrs. Dung looked in the direction her daughter was pointing, her eyes flickered with excitement, then she stood up, walked to the bookshelf, and gently took down an old, dark brown hardcover book with the spine peeling off in pieces. "This book is the first book your father wrote, since the beginning of the program. Mom kept it very carefully, never showed it to anyone, including you."

Nghi took the notebook from her mother's hand, feeling like she was holding something sacred in her hand. The cover of the notebook had faded and had a few yellow stains due to time, but the handwriting inside, when she gently opened it to see the first few pages, was still clear and neat, as if the writer had put all his heart and soul into each letter.

"Read it, when you're ready," Mrs. Dung said, her voice gentle but containing something profound. "I think it's time for you to know the full story of why your father started all of this."

Nghi held the notebook in her arms, feeling like a door had just opened, leading her into a part of her father's memories that she had never touched. That night, after dinner, she sat alone in her room, under the warm yellow table lamp, slowly turning the pages of the notebook, preparing to embark on another journey - the journey to find the source of her own path.

Before entering the room, Nghi stayed behind to help her mother clean up the tea counter and rearrange the stacks of old books left by guests that had not yet been sorted. Mrs. Dung wiped the table and told more, her voice slow, as if recalling an old movie in her head. "When I first met your father, he was still a teacher at the village school in the lowlands, very poor, his salary was three or three dong, but he always saved up to buy used books at the flea market to fix the spines and re-bind the covers for his students to borrow. Mom kept teasing him that he was a fool, he didn't care about himself when he had money but worried about his finances. Yet he kept smiling and told her, 'Books are the only thing you can give to others without fear of becoming poorer, the more you give, the richer you feel.'"

Nghi stopped folding the books, looked up at her mother, a feeling of both familiarity and strangeness arose in her heart. She had never heard her father say that sentence directly, but it echoed the same spirit that he had instilled in her throughout her childhood years, only this time it was told through the voice of someone who had loved him, had witnessed him since his young days, with nothing in his hands but faith in the pages of books.

"Why did Dad move here to do this, Mom? He gave up his job as a teacher?" Nghi asked, a question she had harbored for a long time but had never had the chance to ask directly, perhaps because she was afraid of touching on something too big to talk about during a normal meal.

Mrs. Dung smiled slightly, her distant eyes as if she were looking at a very distant sky. "It's a very long story, let me tell you slowly, it won't be over in one night. But you should read that notebook first, there are many things your father wrote that are clearer than what I said."