Remember the coal smoke

At the end of the year, I remember the smell of coal smoke that stung my childhood eyes...

Clouds on the mountainside. Photo: VU CONG DIEN

I can never forget the cold, my mother carrying two baskets of coal in front of me while I carried a basket on my back and a short-handled hoe and sickle, walking quickly on the small rice field path across the fields still wet with night dew.

I tiptoed to avoid stepping on the tiny octagonal spider webs that covered the tips of the grass, covered with glistening dew, faintly smelling of young rice and early morning grass.

In the old days, people needed coal for all sorts of things: coal to keep the elderly warm, coal for the sick, and coal for blacksmithing. Each load of coal to keep the mother warm could be exchanged for a jar of rice, and coal for the sick could be exchanged for a jar and a half, but it was rare that someone asked for a load.

Sometimes when I'm cutting down a strange tree, I have to ask my mother if this wood can be burned with charcoal. To burn charcoal, you have to know many types of trees, avoid encountering the kind of lacquer tree that can eat the skin off of a mother and child, or you'll be forced to pay compensation.

Since the previous afternoon, I had been busy checking the matchbox flints, carefully threading the cotton wool soaked in oil through the wick. When the rooster crowed, my mother woke up and started cooking rice, wrapping it in the areca leaf, pressing it lengthwise and crosswise to make the rice package tight. She did not stir the rice, afraid that the cassava would mix with the rice, leaving no rice for my elderly grandparents.

My grandparents also woke up, checked to see if my mother and I had forgotten anything, and always wished us good luck. After my mother left, my grandparents sat on the doorstep and watched us until our shadows gradually faded at the end of the field.

When we arrived, we rested a bit, then my mother and I started chopping wood. At only seven or eight years old, I was so tired from chopping that my arms would fall off and I had to stop to rest. Sometimes, I was so tired that I would lie down with my arms and legs spread out on a pile of newly cut treetops, inhaling the fresh smell of firewood and the pungent smell of leaves, a pleasant and refreshing feeling.

At the age of eating and sleeping, I wished I could sleep soundly. The fire gradually caught fire, the wood crackled, the smell of fresh wood smoke was fragrant. When the wood burned to charcoal, my mother and I dug loose soil and used a basket to put out the fire. When everything was done, we brought out the rice, bowed to our aunts and uncles a few times before eating. By then, it was late afternoon.

Covered by a layer of soil and compacted, the coal smoldered evenly and then gradually went out due to lack of oxygen. While waiting for the coal to go out, my mother took the opportunity to chop wood to feel better the next day before she could prepare the coal. Preparing the coal was the hardest part because of the heat and coal dust.

Mom dipped the towel around her face in water to cool it down and block out the black dust. She used a hoe and sickle to stir the coal, and I helped her shovel the coal. The heat and the acrid smoke and dust were suffocating, and her and my mother's faces were covered with black dust...

During the difficult times, my grandparents had gone far away, and my mother suddenly left me to return to my grandparents. During Tet, I returned to my hometown, looking up at the deep green forest, and suddenly I missed the smell of coal smoke so much. There, my mother and I spent every day collecting firewood to burn coal. I missed the scene of my mother and me carrying coal home to meet the toothless smiles of my grandparents sitting at the door waiting...

The mountains are now cleared to plant acacia trees, a type of tree that absorbs water terribly and does not prevent floods or erosion. Each mountain range has many different crops, some are bare. The forests have been divided into plots and have owners, the red soil is eroded and looks so pitiful, there is no smoke but the corners of the eyes sting.

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