Chapter 5 — The Bookmobile Through the Mountains

That night, Nghi sat in his room until nearly one o'clock in the morning, his father's dark brown notebook open on the table, the yellow light of the study lamp shining down on each page that had become discolored with time. This is the first notebook, the starting book, with the handwriting of a man much younger than the image Nghi still remembers of his father - the handwriting is still somewhat hasty, with a few scratches out, completely different from the calm, sure handwriting in the later notebooks.

The first page is dated sixteen years ago, with just a few lines: "Today I officially quit teaching at the village school. I bought an old truck with broken machinery but at an affordable price. I must do it. For Tuat."

Nghi read the last line over and over again. A completely unfamiliar name — "Tuat" — did not appear in any story she had ever heard about her father. She turned the page, looking for more clues, and gradually, through fragmentary notes, a story began to emerge.

Khuong Vinh Trac, Nghi's father, was born into a poor family in a midland commune, not a high mountainous area like Van Thac, but equally deprived. His family has five siblings, he is the fourth child. After finishing middle school, he had to quit school for a year to work to help his family. Only thanks to an old teacher who persistently came to his house to persuade him and even pay tuition on his behalf, was he able to return to school and later passed the entrance exam to pedagogical school.

But the person the notebook mentioned — "Tuat" — was not him, but a student of his in his first years of teaching in another mountainous commune, before he moved to Van Thac. Nghi read each line slowly, envisioning the story gradually clearly: Tuat was a smart boy, eager to learn, but his family was too poor, so he had to quit school midway to go herd buffalo and help his family. Father Nghi, then an enthusiastic young teacher, went to the house many times to convince the family to let Tuat return to class, even spending his own small salary to buy books for the boy, but in the end he could not stop Tuat's family from moving to another place to do business, completely cutting off his education.

A note, with trembling handwriting as if written during a period of strong emotion, made Nghi stop, his heart aching: "Three years later, I met Tuat again at the district market. He was already a young man, his hands and feet were calloused from working as a laborer. He recognized me, smiled, and said, 'Teacher, now I can't read any words anymore, I've forgotten everything.' He said that and laughed, as if it were a normal thing. But I went home and cried all night. I can teach, but I can't keep him in school. I can't save all my students from poverty, but at least I can bring literacy to where they live, so they don't have to leave their books just because the way to school is too far and too expensive."

Nghi sat silently, tears rolling down without even realizing it. Here it was — the true source of all her father had done, not some abstract ideal, but the concrete torment of a particular student, a particular face that he could never forget. The mobile bookmobile program was not born from a perfect plan, but from a heartbreak, from a young teacher's helplessness in the face of adversity, and from the determination not to let that adversity happen again.

She continued to turn the pages, reading about the difficult early days - her father drove his motorbike alone, packed the book box in the back, went to each copy one by one, sometimes being outright rejected because people did not believe that a stranger could be so kind and had no other purpose. There is a passage he wrote about being suspected of being a fraud by a village chief and being kicked out of the village. Having to return many times and persistently explain, he was gradually trusted. In another passage, he wrote about the burst of joy the first time a child in the village read a complete story on his own without anyone's help. He was so happy that he walked all the way home without feeling tired.

Nghi closed the notebook, hugged it to her chest, sat silently for a long time in the dark, with only the moonlight coming through the window shining a thin streak of light on the floor. She suddenly realized that, for more than a year since taking over this route, she had always carried an invisible pressure in her heart - the pressure to become a perfect version of her father, to do everything exactly the way he used to do it, afraid that even a small mistake would betray the legacy he left behind.

But now, reading these words, she realizes that her father also stumbled, was rejected, and doubted himself. He was not a perfect saint from the beginning, but an ordinary man who carried a specific pain in his heart, and chose to turn that pain into action, day by day, village by village, for sixteen long years.

The next morning, on the first anniversary of his father's second year of death - a day when the whole family always makes a small tray of rice to commemorate him - Nghi woke up earlier than usual. She stood in front of her father's altar, lit a stick of incense, looked at his portrait with a familiar gentle smile, then whispered softly, her voice choked but her eyes steadfast: "Dad, I have read all of your notebooks. I understand why you did all this. I promise, I will not give up, no matter how difficult it is."

Mrs. Dung stood behind, quietly looking at her daughter, her eyes both sad and proud. She walked over, put her hand on Nghi's shoulder, didn't say anything more, just a gentle squeeze full of understanding.

After a simple death anniversary meal with a few dishes his father liked when he was alive, Nghi went out to the yard and stood looking at the bookmobile parked under the canopy of an old almond tree in front of the house, the faded paint glistening in the morning sunlight. She came closer, placed her hand on the side of the car, feeling the rough metal under her palm, where her father had placed his hand countless times before each trip.

She took her current notebook — the one she carried with her every day — out of her pocket, opened it to the first blank page, and wrote a new line, not a note about a family or a book, but a reminder to herself: "The first anniversary of Dad's second year of death. I've read the whole story about Tuat. I understand. I'll move on, not to be like Dad, but to continue what Dad started, in my own way."

After writing, she closed the notebook, took a deep breath, feeling the fresh air of the mountain morning pouring into her chest. Something in her heart had changed since last night — it wasn't that the pressure was completely gone, but the way she viewed that pressure was different. She no longer tried to become her father's shadow, but began to find her own path, parallel to the path he had opened.

That afternoon, while cleaning up the bookcase in preparation for next week's trip, Nghi accidentally found in an old cabinet in the corner of the warehouse a hand-drawn route map from the early days by her father - not only did it have four familiar stops but also marked a few other locations, places he had planned to expand the route to but had not yet done so. One of them is a small school named Nam Cay, located deeper in the mountains, marked with a small star and a note next to it: "Need to come here soon. I heard the school has a serious shortage of books."

Nghi looked at the map, his fingers traced the faint path leading to that marker, and a new determination arose in his heart. This is part of his father's unfinished legacy, a promise he has not yet fulfilled. And now, she knows she must be the one to complete it.

She folded the map carefully, put it in a notebook next to her father's notes, then walked out into the yard, where the book cart was waiting in the noon sunlight, ready for a new journey - a journey that would bring her closer to what her father had left unfinished, and even though she didn't know it yet, closer to someone who would change her whole life.

In the afternoon, Nghi brought the map to ask his mother, wanting to know more about the Nam Cay school site that his father had marked. Mrs. Dung sat down at the table, squinted at the faded pencil strokes, trying to remember. "I vaguely remember your father mentioning this place once, about three years ago. He heard from an acquaintance that the school there lacked everything, the access road was far away and more difficult to travel than Khuoi Tra, so he kept procrastinating, planning that when the book bus was more stable and had more people to help, he would dare to open another route. Then work kept taking him away, the old route was hard enough, and in the end it didn't arrive in time."

"So does anyone know how to get there, Mom?" Nghi asked, his eyes still not leaving the map.

"You should ask the district Department of Education, maybe they have information about the satellite schools. Or you can ask Mr. Bon Senh, he travels all over this area to repair cars, he probably knows the way." Mrs. Dung stopped, looked at her daughter for a moment, then smiled slightly. "But I see you've changed since this morning, Nghi. Much more relieved."

Nghi laughed lightly and folded the map. "I think I just understood something important, mother. I will find a way to Nam Cay, as a gift to my father on this year's death anniversary, even though it's a bit late."

That evening, before going to bed, Nghi opened the notebook again, re-read the passage about Tuat, about her father's difficult early days, and this time, instead of just feeling torment, she felt something warmer - the feeling of being connected to her father through these very pages, as if he had never really left, but was just waiting for her, step by step, to complete the path he had outlined, and perhaps, open new paths. but he himself had not yet set foot there.