that same clear-eyed look. 'I know what comes next.' That's what he was saying to me. I'll never forget that." Canh would drop his head over his food and drink and stop speaking and we knew not to disturb him. That day though, Mr. Canh gave the man a skeptical turn of his head, then turned to look at the villagers again. "If it’s ordinary mud," he said, "what would I need it for? Can't you see we are surrounded by it? Mud's what we don’t need, the thing we are most tired of, always trying to get rid of. Why would we want to buy more?" The mud seller looked down. "You never know," is all he said. Canh laughed. The old man was crazy, stuck up in the mountains alone, had been talking to the forest spirits and wind gods, or the goats. Canh returned to his fresh pork and brushed away the flies. "Nothing but a crazy old man," he announced to no one in particular. That was enough. No one paid attention to the old man anymore that day, relieved no further action was required. He was only a crazy old man. The appearance of the mud seller was not the only amazing thing to happen that day. It was also the day Trung realized he was in love with Thao. He'd known of her his whole life of course, had seen her following her mother around when she could barely eat rice, had seen her grow, week after week. When Thao was still a young girl, a tree had fallen on her father and crushed his legs. Since that day, the father stayed on a mat in his house, a house as far from the market center as possible to still be considered part of the 22
village. Her father, now old and shriveled, understood the world by the evidence Thao brought to him. Thao's brother, sixteen when his father fell ill, had tended the rice fields and other duties, until he fled, years earlier, into the southern jungle to help free his country, and himself. Thao's mother died waiting for the boy, sitting in the rain and cold by the front door, waiting for a son who never returned. Her father was confused and demanding, still expecting the world to come to him. Thao spent her mornings coaxing vegetables to grow, afternoons weaving, and her evenings, in the glow of a single bare bulb, explaining the world to her ever-shrinking father. This is how Trung fell in love with her. At the end of that market day, the mountain dwellers were on the road home and the villagers were gathering their things. The hamlet was sleepy and full, even the dogs were stretched out in long lines, flipping their tails to clear their flanks of flies. Trung's stall was empty, and he sat drinking a beer, smelling the air, watching the last few people wander off. He enjoyed watching the town at that time of day, remembering people and how they moved, wondering about the lives that happened inside their heads, behind the walls of their houses. It was a trait that would serve him when he would become the village storyteller many years later. That afternoon, he saw Thao pack her fabrics, pile them in her basket and lift the bundle on top of her head. She walked past the mud seller, who sat with head down, arms circling his knees. He might have been asleep he was so still. Thao stopped and looked at him. The man
tilted his head and looked at what threw a shadow over him. "Your mud has crusted over, honorable grandfather." The man looked at her, his eyes like stones at the bottom of a stream. "It will refresh itself tomorrow," he said. Thao smiled and walked off. She turned back. "Have a good journey home, grandfather." She smiled again. Trung felt something jump then, like a little fish nibbling at the bottom of his heart. It gave him a shock, and the shock traveled in a thin line through the beating ventricles, up the vein of his neck, circling his left ear until it struck something deep in his mind. From there, a warmth spread throughout his body, and Trung almost fell backwards off his bench. He watched Thao walk away, her blue ao dai flying back behind her, just to make sure, and he nodded his head, realizing it was true. He loved her. The next market day was not as fine. A heavy bank of dark clouds lowered the sky. Trung set out the wooden benches and wiped everything with a rag but was distracted. His father kept calling at him. "You live too far up in your head," his father said. "Pay attention to your hands and feet." Just then Thao came around the bend in the road and caused Trung to trip over a bench so that he had to catch himself on the rough table. "Stupid boy," his father muttered. Trung picked himself up and continued wiping tables, watching Thao. No one expected the mud seller to return. No one wanted him to because that would require them to decide something, to make a