Part 6 – The Woman Who Waited for Ghosts
May 1965 – Nhàn’s home, Quảng Trị Province
The dog returned at dawn.
Mud-caked. Limping. Eyes dull. But alive.
Nhàn opened the door and dropped to her knees.
She didn’t cry. Only touched his ears, murmured, “Về rồi… mày về rồi.“
Dusty laid his head in her lap and closed his eyes.
He didn’t move for hours.
She checked for wounds. Found scratches, bruises — and a deep gouge on his flank.
Something sharp. Barbed wire, maybe. Or a trap.
She cleaned it with boiled saltwater. Dusty didn’t whimper.
As she wrapped the wound in strips from an old áo dài, she whispered,
“Mày còn sống, vậy thằng lính Mỹ thì sao?“
(You’re alive… so what about the American?)
Dusty gave no answer.
In the days that followed, Nhàn watched the forest with the silence of someone waiting for a voice she might never hear again.
No footsteps.
No letters.
No boy in boots limping through the trees.
But Dusty began to heal.
He followed her to the fields again. Sat beside her while she boiled roots. Slept at the threshold like a statue carved from loyalty.
And each night, she whispered to him, as if he were a messenger:
“Mày nói cho tao biết đi… nó còn sống không?”
(Tell me… is he still alive?)
Dusty only blinked.
One morning, a neighbor arrived with a whisper:
American planes were bombing farther north. Quân’s unit might be involved.
Nhàn nodded. Said nothing.
But that night, she sat by the fire holding a tattered photograph — a younger version of her and Quân in Huế, before war swallowed everything.
Dusty rested his head on her foot.
She looked at him.
“You’ve seen both of them now, haven’t you?”
Her voice cracked. “My son… the soldier I hid… Did they speak? Did they aim rifles? Did they walk away?”
She reached for an empty bowl and filled it with rice. Placed it by the door.
“For the living,” she whispered.
Then placed another — with nothing in it.
“For the ghosts.”
Days passed. Then weeks.
Dusty never left her side again.
He didn’t run into the forest.
He didn’t bark at strangers.
Only watched. Waited.
The wound on his side healed. But the fur never grew back. A pink line remained — a mark that seemed to glow whenever the oil lamp flickered.
Nhàn called it his “medal.”
One rainy night, she opened the chest beneath her bed.
Inside: a notebook. A fountain pen. A sheet of thin paper imported long ago from Saigon.
She wrote slowly. In French. In the same ink she once used to grade grammar exams.
A letter.
To someone who may have died. Or may have disappeared. Or may be watching the same moon in another country.
James,
*You are probably gone. Killed in the jungle, like too many others. But Dusty returned, and I believe he walked with you again.
I wanted you to know… I never told my son who you were. Only that you needed saving. And he chose to let you live.
If that was the only mercy this war ever gave me, it was enough.
Dusty stays beside me now. He watches the forest every morning, like he’s still waiting for you to come limping through the fog.
If he could speak, I think he’d say: It wasn’t your fault. None of it was.
If you are alive — stay alive. That is all I ask.*
– Nhàn
She folded the letter, placed it in a jar, and buried it beneath the mango tree behind her home.
Next to the spot where Dusty liked to sleep.
That night, Dusty dreamed.
He twitched. Kicked. Let out a low bark — once, then twice.
Nhàn watched him from her mat.
Whispered, “Đi đâu nữa vậy, hả Đất?“
(Where are you going now, Đất?)
But the dog only snored softly, chasing ghosts through tall grass.