Since the near-attack of the five-engine Junker, the parents no longer allowed the children to travel by the main road each day. Loc, Dung, and the other children went to school by crossing the plains on Sunday night and stayed there in the school until the weekend. Parents packed their bags with rice, dry sweet potatoes or maniocs and other foodstuffs for them to eat during their five-day stay. Just a packing for some elementary students! It's not unlike a packing for troops.
There was no single direct road for the children to travel on their way from home to the school in the mountains. They had to follow a path that required them to cross a river at two different points. The first point was about one hour’s walk from the village. While a small boat was available to take them across, they couldn’t afford the fare, so they would take their clothes off, put them into their palm-leaf hat together with their notebooks and food belt, cross the river by swimming with one hand and holding the hat above the water with the other. Once on the other side, they'd quickly put their clothes on and started running to warm up from the cold water and to keep up with their schedule.
They'd walk about two more hours to reach the second crossing point, which was close to a long dam. They could have used the top walkway dam instead of swimming to cross the river at this point, but it had been blocked at both ends. The children, therefore, would have to strip, secure their possessions, and then swim across again. After crossing the river, they'd dress and walk one more hour across a forested plain before arriving at school at dawn. They were safe there in the daytime under the protection of the forest. French spies, however, were everywhere so classes would be held at night, for French bombarding would seldom take place at night. On Friday evening, they'd leave the mountain at sunset, walk about one hour across the coppice to come back to the crossing point near the dam upstream, cross the river, walk two more hours then cross back the river one more time to be home at midnight. Week after week, like a colony of ants, the children would go over and over with river crossing, plain crossing, going upstream to the mountain for school at night then river crossing, plain crossing again to get back downstream, also under the protection of the night. On the way back, they'd have their empty sausage-shaped belt straddling their right shoulder diagonally down to their left hip, reversing the way of carrying it on the first leg of their trip. Probably it could be just for fun because the belt would no longer have anything to be carried.
The biggest and most sacred part lay with their priceless experiences they went through in their young days, the mornings when they were roaming through steppes, the nights when they crossed a river, the cold days of hunger, the risky moments in the shooting range of hostile strafes coming from a remote civilization on the other side of the globe. Among their friends was the brackish river that would welcome them twice, on the high tide and on the ebb tide. When going upstream, the river took them to the south riverbank at the first rendezvous around three o'clock, and about two hours later, it took them back to the north riverbank for them to go to school. On the ebb tide, it welcomed them back near the upstream dam, took them to the south riverbank, and, about two hours later, it helped them back to the north riverbank for them to rejoin their parents. Also in that big part was their parents' limitless love, the blood and flesh of the fallen down people they loved, including the blood and flesh of their own friends. And, finally, it's the image of the nomadic raft flowing on an arid and sandy space throughout the episode of chaos and terrors. Were they undergoing a transformation journey? Transformation from a colony of ants to what? Those ants' innocent and carefree faces wouldn't fail to give the world a notion about good and bad, about angels and evils.
The memories of bomb explosions and bullet shrieks alternated with the cheerful songs of weaverbirds on summer days; the jungles turning yellow with each fall along the nomadic children's way to school, rambling around like carefree young birds; the melodious whistling of wind through sallow trees and green bamboo hedges; the sound of waves lapping the shore of the brackish river; and white clouds gracefully flying on the Long Ranges. Besides river crossings and steppe strolling, there were days of roaming on high mountains during the day before classes began at night. It was an idyllic world of small streams in rock shelters, thickets filled with wild mulberry trees, orchards of date-palms; purple myrtle flowers; and crystal-clear puddles abundant with yellow snails. Flocks of white herons flew across the sky in V formation, leisurely and gently clapping their wings, peacefully flying from the Long Ranges to the ocean, as if they carried messages of calm days somewhere ahead. With the interminable cicada summer songs in the bamboo forests, the moorhen’s summer calls, nocturnal coucal sounds, time slowed down and the life no longer hustled like a shuttle of the loom, back and forth with monotonous speed.
In March, when rice began blossoming, spreading fragrance around on serene evenings, the calls of the black cuckoo could be heard. Time also went with shattered loves of difficult times, and everlasting regrets as of indecisive rivers going upstream. But, even in stormy skies some stars glimmered to guiding these modern day nomads with hope as they traveled, helping them ignore the perils under their feet. Everything looked like natural strokes on a humanistic picture of the nomadic raft.