Six Calls from the Plastic-Covered Address Book at the Bottom of the Crate, and Who Picked Up

The book was at the bottom of the plastic crate where I keep the truck's papers, pressed flat under some old inspection slips. I turned the crate over to look for a receipt and saw the book before the receipt, because its clear plastic cover had gone the color of weak tea. A piece of the bottom corner was bitten off, and I could not say whether a mouse did it or I tore it myself. The rubber band around it had snapped halfway and stuck to the cover like glue.

Back then, whenever somebody gave me a number I wrote it down on the spot, even at the side of the road, with the book propped on the seat of my bike. No machine remembered things for me. The book rode in my trouser pocket until the plastic wore down to a different color.

I sat on the floor and opened it. My handwriting leans to the right. At first I wrote in blue ballpoint, and later in pencil, because the pen ran dry and I was too lazy to buy another. A few pages were not in my hand. People had taken the book and put their own numbers in, with two words like "Hưng, home." Plenty of names, plenty of numbers, and on every page a line or two struck through in a different pen. Some numbers were crossed out once. Some were crossed out twice, with a new number beside them, and then the new number crossed out too. On the last page there was a number crossed out so hard the paper had split in a thin line.

Hà, my daughter, stood in the doorway with a broom.

"What've you got, Dad?"

"The phone book. From before this thing."

She bent over to look, and laughed. "Dad, those numbers have all changed. You'll just get strangers. Send a message, it's faster."

I knew the numbers had changed, she didn't need to tell me. As for messages, I'm slow at them. Every letter with a mark on it I have to press twice to get it right, and one short message eats my whole lunch break. That is only a matter of my fingers.

I told her I'd try calling. One number a day, in the order they were in the book, starting from the first page. She shrugged and went on sweeping.

"If you get a stranger, Dad, remember to say sorry," she said, answering something I hadn't asked.

I drive a small truck, hauling vegetables from the farms down to the wholesale market, so my calling time is the break between two runs, with the truck parked at the curb, the engine off, the handbrake on. A hand that is on the wheel does not hold the phone, and that goes for every call.

The first number, under the name Lực, did not even ring

The next day at noon, in the lot behind the market where a banyan tree shades half the truck, I opened the book on my lap. The first number was Lực's. Back then he and I drove the same truck, and he borrowed my wrench and never returned it. To this day the wrench has not turned up.

I sat through most of my break without dialing. At one point I flipped to a later page, read a few of the names there, thought about calling an easier person instead, then flipped back to the first page because I could see I was dodging. My palms were wet, and I wiped them on my trousers. Then I read the digits out loud so I wouldn't press a wrong one, my thumb hung over the call button a little too long, and I pressed it.

Before it could ring, a recorded woman's voice came on, flat and even, saying the subscriber I had called could not be reached. I listened to the end of the sentence before hanging up, as if she were speaking just to me.

I took the pencil and wrote beside Lực's name: "could not reach," with the date. I did not cross it out. The strike-through I was saving for numbers I knew for certain belonged to someone else.

That evening Hà asked, "How did it go, Dad?"

"Your mom made the fish too salty."

"I asked about the book."

"Oh. The first number didn't connect."

"See?" she said, and put a piece of fish in my bowl.

An old woman picks up, and a grinder runs behind her

The second number was Thuận's. It rang three times and somebody answered. An old woman, older than me, said "Hello" very loudly, because a grinder was running behind her with a steady roar.

"Sorry, I'm looking for Thuận. This used to be his number."

"Which Thuận? I've had this number a long time, son."

"He used to push carts at the market gate..."

"Hold on, let me turn off the machine."

The grinder stopped, suddenly quiet, and I could hear a spoon scraping in a basin. "Say that again."

I said it again, she heard me out, then said she didn't know anyone called Thuận. He must have changed numbers, she said. Then she asked if I was calling to sell her something.

"No, I'm trying to reach an old friend."

"Good. I thought you were one of those insurance people." She switched the grinder back on, and the call just ended inside the roar.

I took the ballpoint from my shirt pocket, the one I use to write bundle counts on delivery slips, and drew one slow line through Thuận's number. The lines I used to draw were quick ones, because a wrong number gets crossed out fast. This time a woman had listened to me till the end of my sentence.

The parking attendant, sitting two trucks away, glanced over.

"Writing a love letter?"

"Phone numbers."

"Numbers go in the phone."

"Phones back then had no room."

He nodded as if that were an explanation, and went back to his hand fan.

Hưng picks up on the second ring, and I read from a scrap of paper

Before calling Hưng I wrote three sentences on a tiny scrap torn from a weighing slip. Sentence one: "Hưng, it's me, Bảy the vegetable man." Sentence two: "I found my old book." Sentence three: "Are you still at the old place?" I propped the scrap on the steering wheel against the gauge.

It rang twice. "Hello, who's this?"

I knew that voice at once, low and rough like someone who had just drunk ice water. I bent down and read. "Hưng, it's me, Bảy the vegetable man. I found my old book."

The line went quiet for a moment.

"You're reading that? You sound like the evening news."

"Yeah," I said. "I wrote it down."

Hưng laughed, a real laugh, short and then a cough. I laughed too, to cover my embarrassment. He said he had moved out to the edge of the city long ago, raised a few chickens, and a grandson came by often. I said I still hauled vegetables. He asked what water spinach was going for these days. I told him. He said "Right," and then said his chickens had caught a chill.

That was where we ran out. I could hear a fan turning at his end, and he could hear traffic at mine, and neither of us said anything.

"Well, I just called to say hi," I said.

"Yeah. Come by sometime."

"Yeah, sometime."

After I hung up I remembered that in the middle of the chicken talk he had slipped in a line that I missed while thinking of my next one: "I heard Lực moved back to the village. Don't know for sure." I opened the book and wrote in pencil beside Lực's name: "back in village, per Hưng."

I crumpled the scrap. The three sentences I had prepared worked only for the opening, and the opening got caught right away. For everything after, the vegetable prices, the chickens, I had written nothing ahead.

For the first few days my hands were damp every time I dialed, and my thumb over the call button always moved slower than I wanted. By the second week I stopped writing on paper. I kept just two things: say my name first, then ask one question about what the person is doing. When the talk runs out, say so, and don't drag it. My thumb is still slow, but less slow.

On days when the loads keep coming I only manage the first few steps: park, eat a bread roll, dial one number, say my name, ask one question, write it in the book, done. Whether they answer or not, it is nearly over before the bread roll goes cold.

A number crossed out twice, and the one who answers is his wife

Tín's number sits near the middle of the book, crossed out twice, with two new numbers squeezed beside it. The handwriting over the strike-throughs is mine. Back then he moved house after house, every move meant a new workplace, a new workplace meant a new number, and each time he passed it along through someone we both knew I copied it into the book. Back then I was still keeping up.

I called the newest one, the blue ink that was clearest of the three.

"Hello." A woman's voice.

"Hello, I'm an old friend of Tín's. I drive a truck."

"He's at work. Leave your name and he'll call you tonight."

"I'm Bảy. Bảy the vegetable man, he'll know."

"Which Bảy?" She paused. "Fine, let me write it down. He'll call you tonight. And you're calling on this number?"

"It's the number in my book."

"Right, right." Then she hung up without another word.

That night my phone rang while I was rinsing the plastic crate in the courtyard. An unknown number.

"Bảy? Good grief. Where did you get my number?"

"From my book."

"I dropped that number ages ago."

"So I called the newest one. I wrote down all three of yours."

"You wrote me down three times?"

"Crossed out twice."

He went quiet for a while, and I could hear him breathing and a television somewhere behind him. Then he said, "You still have that book," and asked right away what used trucks were going for these days, the way a man asks when he wants to change the subject. I said I didn't know much about it. He said neither did he, but he wanted to ask anyway.

The two of us talked about his rented house, the leaking roof there, all the moving back and forth. I talked about the market. He didn't ask why I had called, and I didn't say.

Hà stood in the doorway drying her hands, listening to half of it.

"Who is that, Dad?"

"Tín. I used to copy his number all the time."

"Did he ask why you called?"

"He asked about used trucks."

She tilted her head as if about to say something, then let it go and went inside to carry the crate out to dry.

That night I wrote in pencil beside his newest number, over my own old handwriting: "reached." The three old numbers I left as they were, no more strikes.

Thuý's number, called seven times, rang out every time

Thuý's number was not crossed out. Next to it were a few words that were not my handwriting, round letters leaning left: "Thuý, fish stall." She must have picked up the book herself and written it, on some day I no longer remember. Years ago she often asked me to bring ice back to her stall, and each time she tucked a tiny packet of dried fish into my hand.

I called at six in the morning, before starting the first run. It rang all the way out, then stopped. No voicemail, no recorded voice, only the ring and then nothing.

The next day I called at noon. The day after, in the afternoon. I changed hours the way I change parking spots: early morning, midday, when the market was thin. It kept ringing out, and kept going quiet.

Hà sat peeling garlic at the dining table and listened to me tell it.

"People don't answer unknown numbers, Dad."

"It isn't unknown. It was in my book."

"Do you know it's still hers?"

I didn't.

"Calling over and over bothers people," she added, without looking up.

"I've only called six times."

"Six is a lot."

Somewhere in those days my phone rang once while I was unloading vegetables, and I dropped the bundle and ran to the cab. The screen showed an unknown number, and on the other end was a recorded voice inviting me to buy an apartment. I stood by the truck door and listened to the whole thing before I hung up.

I called one more time, the seventh, after supper, sitting on the front step. It rang all the way out. I set the phone down on the cement step beside me and listened to a gecko clicking its tongue on the wall.

I wrote in pencil beside the number: "called seven times, no answer." Then I closed the book. I did not cross it out.

To this day I don't know whether that phone sits in her pocket or in somebody's drawer, or whether she saw an unknown number and let it ring. I think any of the three could be true, and I have no way to ask.

The last crossed-out number, and a child who picks up

Between Thuý's number and the last page there were a few more that would take too long to tell. One went to a motorbike repair shop, and the man who answered said the old owner had sold up and the number was now the shop's. At the next, somebody picked up, said "who's this, I'm busy," and hung up before I could give my name. And an old woman, who after hearing my name said only "oh" and left the phone there, and I listened to her breathe for a while until she hung up. I wrote each one in the book in pencil, a word or two apiece, and crossed out the ones I was sure belonged to strangers.

That left the last page, with the number crossed out so hard the paper had torn. I held it under the kitchen light and tilted the book so the light came through. The name beside it was faded and I could not read it. The number I could read, because the strike only covered it and did not erase it.

I don't remember why I crossed it out so hard. The number may have died long ago, the person may have once annoyed me, or it was a night I ran out of ballpoint ink and crossed it out with whatever was handy. The book says nothing more, and I cannot remember more.

Hà was washing dishes and turned her head. "Are you going to call that one?"

"I'll try it."

"If it's crossed out that hard, there's a reason, Dad."

"Yeah. I don't remember the reason."

She said nothing more, and the water kept running.

I dialed, one digit at a time, reading them out loud. It rang twice and somebody answered, a young voice, still unformed, like a kid who had just finished an exam and was lying under a fan.

"Hello?"

"Sorry... I've got the wrong number."

"It's okay, uncle."

That was all. I hung up and sat watching the screen go dark. The gecko from the other night had moved up to the picture frame by the door.

I took the pencil and wrote beside the number: "wrong number, young voice." Then I turned back to the first pages and counted the numbers I hadn't called yet. Plenty were left.

The next morning, before starting the engine, I took a fresh rubber band from a bundle of mustard greens, wrapped it around the book in place of the broken one, tucked the book in the glove box under a weighing slip, and went to pick up the load.