Several hours later a nearby soup shop opened and was soon doing brisk business. The aromatic trail of bubbling broth drew us like hungry strays. The woman who poured our soup asked what on earth we were doing sitting on the corner like that, laughed at my shamefaced reply and pointed at a man eating on a mat in her back room. "My husband," she explained. He would be leaving shortly and we were welcome to travel with him. We accepted gratefully and sat down to breakfast.

When her husband's meal was done he carefully patted his lips with a napkin, put on his northern Vietnamese officer's cap and climbed into the driver's seat of a two-ton Russian army truck. We followed with considerably less enthusiasm.

He was a lieutenant from the stars on his lapels, and one of the most handsome men I had ever seen. Try as I might, I understood not a word he said, and he in turn just shook his head and smiled at my attempts at conversation. Our front hood seemed to stretch forever over a massive engine, but the truck was nearly thirty years old and had long ago lost its shocks and Grand Prix aspirations. We bumped along at eight miles per hour, stopping frequently while road crews shoveled large piles of stones out of the way to allow us passage. The landscape turned lush and wild, with handmade aqueducts gathering water from the road before snaking down the mountainside to unseen villages. Barefoot men in homespun clothes appeared, carrying long, handmade rifles and necklaces strung with leather bags of powder and bird shot.

We weren't the only hitchhikers on the windy, one-lane road. Time and again our heavy vehicle rumbled to a stop, the lieutenant climbing down to help load a group of village women and their baskets of market produce into the back. Each time he returned with an armful of tangerines from his grateful passengers, and I passed the time peeling and handing out wedges of the juicy fruit.

After three hours the language barriers began to tumble down, in six hours the misunderstandings were nothing more than a vague memory, and by dark he insisted we share dinner with five of his friends at a roadside cafe. They ordered a veritable feast --roast pork and dog and steaming cabbage, rice and soup and whisky and tea. We ate until we bulged, and then sat holding our stomachs while they took turns choosing succulent bits of meat and laying them delicately in our bowls.

They were all army lieutenants and had made the thirty-year commitment to soldierhood on the same day. They were from the city of Viet Tri, had risen in the ranks together and eventually been sent to Moscow for six years to learn mechanics and driving skills. At first they seemed quite sure that Russia was a fine place to live, but as the whisky made its rounds so did their second thoughts. "It's too cold," they said, and added, "The Russians, they never smile." They seemed to enjoy good-naturedly plying Jay with whisky until he was quite drunk, although they drank sparingly themselves, and the two drivers not at all. They spoke often and longingly of their families. Their work took them away from home for several days each week and my handsome driver in particular missed his year-old son. His wife, he told me proudly, ran a restaurant single-handedly. His boast sparked off a round of playful competition as each man held his wife's profession up for inspection. "Teacher!" one called out, and another "Doctor!". The fourth and fifth were tailors, and the last unmarried, although he apparently won the game by sending me a sideways glance and saying, "I wait for an American wife!" To my surprise, not one of them had more than two children in a land that valued family above all else, the larger the better. My driver reminded me of the billboards I had seen in almost every town, proclaiming the new government policy in favor of small families, with captions reading "Have one or two children!". Army doctrine apparently took a more active role, and soldiers were demoted one star for every child more than two.

We eventually took our leave, waddling back to the truck cradling our bellies like bowling balls and laboriously clambering over the massive wheel and into the cabin. I liked these men for the way they scrupulously washed their hands before they ate and the loving way they spoke about their wives and children. I liked the lifelong friendship they had forged among themselves and the enormous calluses on the palms of the drivers, each an officer. They seemed not at all the stereotyped soldier, nor the crafty North Vietnamese fighter, nor even the patriarchal Asian man. Things were "different now", as the bus conductor had told me, but I wasn't quite sure how. Perhaps it was the whisky, or the overindulgent meal, or the last forty miles of rugged roads in the pitch dark, but the answer didn't come to me until we were standing on the roadside, saying our good-byes. The driver climbed back into his cabin, reached down to shake our hands one last time, and said, "friends." He was right.