Matt’s first attempt at public transportation was fairly successful. He got on the right bus. He deserved points for that. After all, he was on his own, and he didn’t speak the language. Unfortunately, the bus was headed in the wrong direction. He should have known better, but he was busy basking in the triumph. It never occurred to him to cross the street in order to board the bus headed in the actual direction he wanted to go.
“Hoi An?” he asked the men doing business on the corner. “Hoi An?”
On their now well-grooved walking route between the house, the school, and the one western-like supermarket, Matt and Briony had stopped a few times to watch similar men at work, the small businessmen of Da Nang. He had called these particular guys the “pumper men,” forgetting for a moment that his creativity with terms tended to embarrass Briony, although he should have been off the hook in Vietnam. He was pretty sure no one else within earshot understood him. Not that it mattered.
Life abroad wasn’t exactly enhancing their relationship.
Considering what their boredom level must be, Matt was impressed at how quickly the “pumper men” did their jobs. All day they squatted on tiny plastic stools next to their air compressors. And they waited. One time Matt stopped to watch them. Briony had begged out of an afternoon stroll through traffic, so he had some time to spend as he pleased, although he never expected to spend forty-three minutes. When a customer finally arrived, one of the men – he had no idea how they decided turns – leapt to his feet only to squat down again beside the motorcycle that had squealed to a stop on the crowded sidewalk. The man didn’t waste a movement, and less than a minute later, he was back on his stool. Master efficiency and for a pittance.
For free, Matt discovered, the “pumper men” were willing to give directions, but they stayed on their stools for that task. With their chins, they gestured at a sign above his head.
It had a little picture of a bus on it.
Despite the reassurance provided by the international language of graphics, the wait was still a bit anxious. Luckily, it wasn’t long. After a few moments spent fidgeting under the watchful gaze of a gathering crowd, Matt stepped toward an approaching bus. His stomach did an embarrassing little somersault as he scanned the lists of unfamiliar words painted on the windows. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to find the words Hoi An or not, but he didn’t have much choice. In unison the “pumper men” jumped off their stools and hustled Matt up and through the back door of the bus. Going through the back felt a bit shady, but it wasn’t like no one noticed his entrance. Besides, he had made it onto the bus. A bus.
“Hoi An?” he asked the people crammed on the back bench.
A sullen young man dressed like a mechanic nodded at a seat near the center. From what Matt could tell, it was the only one available, and he felt pretty privileged. Several people were standing in the aisle. They blocked his access to the front of the bus and the fare box, but he decided not to worry. Different places had different customs. Unlike in the States, in Vietnam people boarded the bus through the back door, exited from the front, and paid on the way out rather than the way in. He fought the urge to pat himself on the back. This custom wasn’t that difficult to figure out.
Of course, he figured wrong.
The young man with the stone-set face pressed his hip against Matt’s shoulder and held his hand directly beneath Matt’s chin. At the same time, his left hand flicked a cigarette balanced above a thick wad of cash. Matt had never encountered a conductor on a bus. He hadn’t actually encountered a conductor on any form of transportation, unless flight attendants counted, but no problem. Forewarned and prepared – at least on one count – Matt dug the correct amount of dong out of his pocket. In theory, from what the more experienced teachers had told him, having the exact amount would prevent the usual price gouging of foreigners, but the conductor, even if he wasn’t the talkative type, never had a chance to ask for more. The bus lurched to a stop at the next sign, and the old woman and child who occupied the window seat next to Matt climbed over him. Several limp slaps on his shoulder instructed Matt to move toward the window, and as soon as he did, his seat was filled. The conductor maneuvered through the crowd to collect another round of fares.
Since they’d arrived in Da Nang a month earlier, Matt and Briony had avoided the buses. They’d barely learned to say their numbers in Vietnamese and couldn’t yet predict 100% success when venturing to the fruit market on their street. Complicated questions like, “Is this the bus to…?,” would have to wait until they could at least pronounce the name of their street, and that was bound to take a while. They still hadn’t trained their brains to see the letters phong and pronounce them phom.
In hindsight, the wrong direction turned out to be the right mistake. Not only did Matt learn where to board the bus to Hoi An – and on what side of the street – but he also learned all the other stops along the route, including the school where they taught and the supermarket. Plus he discovered the road to the airport and the location of the long-distance bus station. The station he discovered because that was the end of the line.
Most of the passengers had disembarked along the way, but a few remained, and when the bus pulled under the concrete awning, where it shuddered and sighed as it settled into silence, they hurried off. Matt watched them move toward other buses, and he envied their knowledge. All he knew was this wasn’t Hoi An. He hoped.
Up front, the driver lit a cigarette and propped a foot on the dash. The conductor had disappeared with the passengers, and Matt killed a few minutes of indecision by counting how many times the driver glanced at the rearview mirror. Neither one knew what to do with the other. The driver sighed.
“Hoi An?” Matt asked. His Vietnamese was coming along.
It worked. The man grunted and stood. With an impatient flick of his hand, he gestured Matt toward the back of the bus. But then he exited out the front.
Puzzled, Matt stretched and glanced over the back of his seat. The back door wasn’t even open. He stood, but he floundered in the aisle. Then, just as the driver poked his head in the front door and gestured at Matt again, he remembered. In the vernacular of Vietnamese gestures, the “go away” flick actually meant “come here,” or in this case, “follow me.”
So he did. And after a long lunchtime wait on an empty bus, he eventually retraced the route through Da Nang and proceeded on to the tourist oasis of Hoi An. The journey was a success.
It didn’t quite work out that way the next time.
…
“60,000?” The English guy with the Thai tattoo shook his head. Matt had asked him what the tattoo meant, but the guy couldn’t remember. Something about space for monks. He was drunk when he got it. “Tell me you didn’t pay it,” the guy said.
“Of course not.” Briony finished tying her hair into a ratty knot at the base of her neck and took her turn at Jenga.
They were sitting on the patio of a riverfront restaurant in Hoi An, and beneath the charm of paper lanterns, they had inhaled the local attempt at sandwiches and French fries while swapping the customary tales of food, toilets, and prices with a couple of backpackers on their way to China.
“That’s about three U.S. dollars,” Matt said. Nobody heard him.
“Roger,” the girl with the dirty blonde dreadlocks said. “Tell ‘em about the taxi driver in Phnom Penh.”
Roger. The guy’s name was Roger. However, he didn’t get a chance to expound on Cambodian price gouging.
“You have to start at the beginning,” Briony instructed Matt. When she turned to nudge him, her hair slipped out of its knot. It looked better down, thicker, but whenever Matt had mentioned it, she said he was being sexist. “Tell them about the backseat.”
…
As soon as the bus pulled up – on the right side of the street – Matt confidently steered Briony toward the back door.
She balked. “What are you doing?”
“Trust me,” he said, another benefit of his right-bus, wrong-direction day. For once, he got to be the expert, maybe even a hero. Or so he thought.
Because the bus was still near the beginning of its route, it was almost empty. A few passengers were scattered near the front, and some bushel-sized bags of carrots were stacked inside the back door. Nodding at the conductor, this time a middle-aged woman in a greasy orange pullover, Matt guided Briony toward the aisle, but they never made it. A barrage of Vietnamese and a hand clutching at Briony’s arm stopped them.
“Hey!” Briony yanked her arm away, but the woman’s grip was mostly a suggestion. As a result, Briony’s elbow jabbed Matt’s sternum with more force than she would have intended – even later in the day. He gulped for air.
…
“I never hit you,” Briony said. She rolled her eyes at the girl across the table, who grinned in collusion. Matt couldn’t decide if her dreadlocks had happened on purpose or not. “Boys,” Briony added with a superior chuckle.
“The new girls.” The dreadlocks quivered when the girl laughed.
Matt studied the Jenga tower. “I didn’t say you hit me.” He chose a piece, but his hand wasn’t as steady as he would have liked. He paused, his piece halfway out.
“Go on,” Briony said.
…
The woman in orange continued to fire rapid Vietnamese in their faces. Meanwhile, the door had closed behind them, and the bus had lurched forward. Again, Briony attempted to step toward the aisle.
“Sit,” the woman said in English. “Sit.” She was gesturing toward the back bench, a row of miniature seats raised a foot higher than the rest. Diesel fumes billowed through the back window as the bus revved through an intersection.
“Why?” Briony asked.
As first-time teachers, they’d been placed on a steep learning curve, both in the classroom and out, and one of the first things they’d learned in both places was that the question “why?” did not produce satisfying answers in English, at least not from beginners. So far Matt had only met one person he wouldn’t qualify as a beginner, so he figured it was a sure bet the conductor was not an advanced language learner. The way he saw it, she was a hard-working woman doing a job he didn’t fully understand. She must have had a reason.
…
“Tell me you didn’t sit there,” Roger said.
The dreadlocked girl lit a cigarette. “I know you think you’re being nice, smiling and nodding all pleasant-like at every little shopkeeper.”
Briony nodded vigorously.
“But you’re ruining it for everyone. If you pay 60,000 dong for a trip that costs 10,000, they’ll know they can get away with it. Nobody will have a chance.”
“For what?” Matt asked.
“It smelled like piss back there.”
“You sat there?” Roger shook his head.
“It wasn’t so bad.”
…
The back seat was the least of their problems. When the conductor quoted the outrageous fare, Briony erupted.
“It’s a negotiation,” Matt whispered, but she was off and running.
Soon, the entire bus was involved, and as the route to Hoi An turned out to be pretty popular that time of day, that ended up being quite a few people – and livestock. As they climbed up the stairs through the back door, the passengers deposited their goods at Matt and Briony’s feet. Had he not been coughing on diesel fumes, Matt might have felt a bit god-like, or at least landlord-like. Chickens in baskets surrounded the carrots, while plastic grocery bags stuffed with the local version of spinach were balanced on top. An old woman crammed a pile of shiny, new plastic stools into the corner, and two rusty bikes were added for good measure. The conductor made a big show of asking the passengers – at least the ones who looked like they might have 60,000 dong – for the fare, and then she slipped the change back to them a few minutes later.
“This is ridiculous,” Briony said.
“Just stay calm,” Matt said. “Smile.”
“I’ve been smiling non-stop for a month. My face hurts.” She pointed at the passengers who now overflowed into the aisles. “They’re not smiling.”
“They’re standing.” Matt glanced around. The gazes that met his were impervious, most of them uninterested, but some of them were the ghost-like masks that still unnerved him. The conductor, however, smiled and nodded when he made eye contact.
“Sixty,” she said, holding up her fingers for reference.
“Have you seen the guy on the motorcycle?” Matt asked Briony.
She rolled her eyes. “The guy? On the motorcycle?”
“The one with the face,” Matt said.
Briony laughed. It wasn’t her good laugh. “Yeah, that narrows it down.”
…
“The motorcycles here are obscene.” The girl with the dreadlocks – “Dread Girl,” Matt decided to call her – tapped her cigarette on the end of the table.
“Oh, I know,” Briony said. “You can’t even breathe in an intersection. It’s like going past a graveyard when we were kids. You’ve got to hold your breath until you get through.”
“Tell me you don’t believe that.”
Matt almost wished he hadn’t remembered Roger’s name. He decided to call him “tell-me man.” Not quite as useful as a “go-to man.”
The waiter brought another order of French fries and a round of sweating beers. The storytelling stopped long enough for them to quench their thirst. A blond family stopped to read the menu on the street. They eyed the French fries, and Matt nodded his approval for them.
“I forgot what it’s like to see so many Western faces.”
Briony agreed with “dread girl.” “Oh, I know,” she said. “There’s nobody in Da Nang.”
Once again, Matt missed the chance to comment on the motorcycle man with the haunted face, although haunted wasn’t the right word. What gave Matt goosebumps was the complete void, the stillness. Nothing animated the smooth skin and bones, the muscles. There wasn’t a flicker of life behind that man’s eyes. Not even dead life.
“How much did you end up paying?” Roger asked.
You tell me, Matt thought.
…
Eventually motion sickness took over, and Briony quieted down. The conductor made another pass at sixty, and Matt offered twenty. Although he didn’t want to pay six times the normal fare, he didn’t mind paying double. Still, he was curious about why they were relegated to the back.
“It’s weird being on the other end of racism,” he said. “What do you think Rosa would do?”
“Who?” Briony asked.
“Rosa. Parks? The black woman on the bus.”
“You can’t say black.”
The conductor had squeezed onto the back seat next to Matt and was either waiting for her 60,000 dong or listening to their conversation. Of course, maybe her presence had nothing to do with them, and she was just resting her feet. Her thigh was pressed against Matt’s, and her elbow rested on his forearm. With seven people now on the back bench, personal space was at a premium. Matt considered he might even pay 60,000 dong for it, if it were available.
He slid his arm out and tried to cross it over his body. He pretended to massage his shoulder.
“Think about it,” he said. “We’ve never been discriminated against based on the color of our skin.”
“And we’ve never gone for a walk in East L.A.” Briony shifted her hips, which left Matt with less space for his. He tilted his body and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned forward. Away from him.
“It’s so hot back here.” The scowl she shot over her shoulder took in both Matt and the conductor. “This isn’t about race. It’s about money. Greed, pure and simple.”
Matt chased Briony’s scowl with a smile and heard her scoff behind him, but his attempt at making nice was more than a reflex action. Forty minutes into the trip, they were almost out of time, and he wasn’t looking forward to a scene in Hoi An. He didn’t imagine the last ditch negotiations going in their favor.
But then the conductor nodded. Her eyes sparked, and Matt almost laughed. It was a game. Of course, it was. They were already on the bus.
“20,000,” he said. He winked.
…
“Shit,” Roger said.
“They have next to nothing.” Matt wasn’t sure why he was defending himself to a stranger he’d never see again.
Dread Girl dropped her cigarette butt into her empty beer bottle. Smoke swirled up and out. “You know she pocketed the extra.”
“So I’ll consider it a tip.”
“For what? Smiling while ripping you off?”
Roger nodded at his girlfriend. His hair wasn’t far behind hers, and Matt imagined it twisting together on the pillow some night. They’d wake up in their sweaty hostel, dreadlocked to each other.
Briony balanced her wooden tile on top of the Jenga tower. “Matt likes to be nice.”
Her tone was neutral, so Matt wasn’t sure if she was mocking or defending him.
Dread Girl smirked. “I bet you said ‘thank you’ when you got off the bus!”
She laughed at her own joke, and her boyfriend backed her up, their heads dipping together. Bobbleheads. Briony laughed too. Soon she was laughing so hard her eyes watered, and she used her wrist to stop a tear, her hand bent gracefully. It was a gesture that once charmed him.
Between them the table shook. The Jenga tower wobbled, and Matt reached to steady it, not that anyone cared about the game. A waiter appeared, and when he removed their empty plates, he almost knocked over the tower. He didn’t notice.
Matt studied his turn. There weren’t many options left. They’d all tried one tight piece at the bottom, and suddenly he wanted to be the one to remove it. The laughter ebbed, and Briony continued their tale.
“He even shook hands with this random guy,” she said. “The woman brought him back and made him sit beside Matt. Apparently the guy could speak English. He said ‘hello.’”
They laughed again, and Matt paused, his hand hovering.
“She just wanted to show there were no hard feelings,” he said.
“Making nice!” Dread Girl squealed at the chance for a follow-up joke.
“I can just imagine if I wasn’t there,” Briony said. “God knows how much you would have paid.”
“Probably the same amount I paid the first time I came.” The Jenga piece slid out, and Matt couldn’t help a triumphant little grin. He glanced up at Briony, who raised her beer in a mock salute, but her was smile was sweet, indulgent. He thought. Then he pushed it. Waving the wooden tile like a trophy, he raised his eyebrows. “And I probably would have sat in a real seat, in the front.”
“What did you pay?”
When he glanced across the table, Matt caught a look he recognized. Tell-Me Man knew he was about to be bested. And he cared. He stretched and propped an elbow on the back of his chair, but he kept a nonchalant gaze on Matt. He was waiting for the answer.
Matt shrugged like it didn’t matter, like nothing did. He tried not to smile. “The same as anybody else. 10,000. Nobody even asked for more.”
Briony’s beer banged against the table as she set it down. He didn’t see her face as he reached to steady the Jenga tower, but he heard her tone. It wasn’t the good one.
“You never told me that.”
His hand faltered. He never got a chance to place his piece on the top. The tower collapsed, and the high-pitched clink of the tumbling wooden tiles bounced off their bottles. It echoed. Matt glanced around the restaurant to check if the sound had disturbed anyone, but no one noticed.
He stared at the scattered pieces. He could pick them up. He should pick them up. But if he didn’t do it, someone else would. With a shrug he bumped his shoulder against Briony’s. He squeezed her leg.
“We should buy some souvenirs tomorrow,” he said. “You can show me how to bargain.”
Rebecca Andem earned an MFA from the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine. She has published several short stories as well as two novels, Marathon and If the Ocean Were Empty. Currently, she lives in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she teaches at a private school. For more information or to read other stories, please visit her website at www.turtleflyink.com.
