Page 107 - Thorn In The Heart

Chinh Nguyên

"A Vietminh's political cadre and the terrorist agent had
tricked Lua about the explosive that tied on his body. They
never tell Lua the explosive situation if Lua presses the button
on his chest, and what will happen after he pressed the button."

"Why?"

"Because Lua will fear to die, therefore, he will not let a
Viet-Minh terrorist agent setting the explosive on his body, and
French soldiers will not die by those explosive."

"Grandpa. I understood now...!"

"Good...!"

From that time Nguyen became a quiet kid and indifferent at
every Saturday meeting. Most of the time he split away from his
friends and plaid game alone at the front Church at the school
time. Sometime Nguyen sat alone for fishing on the bank of a
pond, walked around the Church's lake. Nguyen always thought
of what his grandfather had told him and did not believe his
friends anything. Also, he never tells the true things that he saw
and heard with anyone else in the village.

Nguyen learned the hard lesson on the meeting that night
and never forget. He learned many more things from his grandpa
about Vietnamese communist, French union militarist rules.
Also, he understands that every day the people in the village
were always afraid for dead under the pressure ion jaws of both
sides.

The French militarist's fire-base was five or six miles away
from the North-Easter of the village. Therefore at the daytime,
French militarist was ruling all over the areas. They had
domineered for Vietnamese by the differences of race. Even
they beat and killed the people in the village depending on their
habit and problem without defense and laws. They used the

107