Familiar Things

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  Bugeye and his mother followed Baron Ashura down the slope to the end of the row of shanties. It was a decent-looking spot, a short distance from the neighbouring sector and far enough from the road where the trucks made their way up and down the hill of garbage. While the three men were off gathering materials for their new place, Bugeye and his mother put their things down and squatted next to the Baron’s shack.

  ‘I thought we were moving to the country,’ Bugeye complained.

  His mother sighed.

  ‘People live here, just like anywhere else,’ she said.

  ‘People? All I see are flies and garbage. It stinks.’

  ‘It may be garbage now, but they say it turns to gold,’ his mother said playfully.

  At first, all Bugeye could see were shadowy mounds in the dark, but he couldn’t tell what they were. The three men caused a racket as they took turns dragging a cart full of scraps to the shack. Everything had come out of the landfill: wooden beams of different lengths, crates and scraps of plastic from the fish market, plastic tarps of all shapes and colours from street food carts, black felted fabric that had been used in greenhouses, linoleum flooring in all possible patterns. All at once, the area around the shack turned into a construction site, and people poured out of neighbouring shacks to lend a hand. Under the Baron’s command, wooden beams were cut or fixed together to form pillars and planted upright, while others were angled against the pillars to form buttresses. Fish crates were pulled apart with hammers, and the boards nailed together to form walls. The insides of the walls were lined with plastic, then Styrofoam, then a tight, even layer of cardboard. To make the floor, they first spread a plastic tarp on the bare ground, then more Styrofoam, then cardboard from the pulled-apart boxes, and then the linoleum. For the roof, they covered boards with Styrofoam and sheets of cardboard, on top of which went the black felted material and linoleum, followed by a frame of four-by-twos nailed in place to make sure the roof didn’t fly off. For the final touch, they draped the food cart tent over the roof to complete the thirteen-square-metre shack. Since it was right up against the Baron’s shack, it looked much larger than the others from the front, like a single house. Baron Ashura stuck a candle on a flat piece of stone to light the room. Bugeye’s mother pulled an old shirt from their belongings and went to work scrubbing the linoleum. The floral print that slowly emerged in the flickering light of the candle looked colourful and vibrant.

  ‘Goodness, it’s like magic. All we need is a camp stove and we’ll have a kitchen, too.’

  Bugeye’s mother kept gazing around at the room in wonder. The Baron shook his head, the candlelight making his blue birthmark look all the more dramatic, and said, ‘Don’t worry about it. We got all that stuff. Now it’s time to celebrate.’

  When they returned to the bonfire, the Baron handed several bills to one of the men who had helped.

  ‘Go get some instant ramen and several bottles of soju.’

  On top of a makeshift stove fashioned from an oil drum sawed in half, something was boiling away and smelling delicious.

  ‘What’s cooking?’ the Baron asked a man who wore a hard hat perched at a stylish angle on his head.

  ‘Flower Island trough stew, what else? With extra chilli powder. It’ll hit the spot.’

  Soon enough, the younger man who had run to the store returned with a plastic bag. The Baron ripped open the ramen wrapper and shook the packet of powdered broth into the pot. He was about to add the dried noodles when Hard Hat stopped him.

  ‘Brother, noodles go in last. Gotta eat the good stuff first.’

  ‘We scored big today,’ Baron Ashura said. ‘This looks like real ham from the Co-op’s sector.’

  ‘Sure, it pays to help each other out,’ one of the men said. ‘You should go independent, too. Start your own operation.’

  ‘You got any idea how expensive the permit fee is for a private truck sector?’ Hard Hat said.

  The Baron added with a sour look on his face, ‘And we don’t have the right connections anyway.’

  ‘The district dumps have nothing good. The private sectors get the best stuff.’

  Hard Hat pulled a warped spoon out of his shirt pocket, wiped it a few times on his sleeve, and had a taste of the soup.

  ‘Damn, that’s good.’

  The Baron scooped some ham and sausage into a small scorched and dented pot, and gave it to Bugeye and his mother.

  ‘Our new family members are the guests of honour today. Eat up.’

  Bugeye’s mother took a hesitant sip of the soup and whispered to Bugeye, ‘It tastes just like army-base stew.’

  Bugeye popped a sausage in his mouth and started wolfing down the soup, his spoon clinking against his mother’s as they rushed to eat their fill. The men sliced off the tops of tiny plastic bottles of drinking yogurt that they’d scavenged from the trash, shook out the dirt or scum inside, and used them as shot glasses for the soju. As the smell of food spread, flies came swarming. The flies landed on the food the second it was fished out of the broth, and rode it during the short trip from bowl to mouth; when the mouths tried to shoo them away, the flies merely fluttered their wings. Some of the flies clung to the food as it went into the mouths, and only buzzed off when they felt the tip of a tongue.

  ‘Suckers are still feisty.’

  ‘They’re usually slower at night, but I guess the fire warmed them up.’

  ‘I thought once summer was over, they’d be gone, too. At this rate they’ll be sticking around until the Chuseok holiday.’

  ‘It’s fine, it’ll put hair on your chest. We must’ve eaten a whole pint of flies this summer.’

  Bugeye shooed them as he ate, but he still ended up choking on a fly that had drowned in the soup. The Baron gave Bugeye and his mother some of the ramen noodles the men had boiled in the remaining broth.

  ‘If you want to be a real worker,’ he told Bugeye’s mother, ‘you first have to learn how to get by on this.’

  *

  While the grown-ups poured each other shot after shot of soju, Bugeye snuck away from the fireside and returned to their new shack. His mother stayed with Baron Ashura to learn more about how things worked there. Once Bugeye had struck a match, lit a candle, and lain down on the slick linoleum, the place felt much roomier and more comfortable than where they used to live. Just then, he thought he saw someone poke the top of their head through the door and steal a peek at him, but when he looked up, the head disappeared. Bugeye sat up and waited, his eyes fixed on the door. Sure enough, before long, the impatient head poked in again.

  ‘Who are you?’ he called out.

  The half-hidden head shook with giggles but did not answer. When Bugeye scooted closer to the door, the source of the giggles burst out from behind it. It was a boy, much younger-looking than Bugeye. The boy wore a torn baseball cap cocked to one side, a sleeveless undershirt, and baggy oversized jeans that had been hacked off at the knee to fit him.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Bugeye asked.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ the boy said, and let out a funny, high-pitched giggle.

  Annoyed, Bugeye snatched the boy’s cap off. It was embroidered with small letters that spelled out Middle School Baseball, and the back of the too-large cap had been folded and sewn together to fit.

  ‘Give it back! C’mon, give it!’

  Bugeye hid the cap behind him with one hand and reached the other forward to rub his knuckles on the boy’s head, to give him a noogie, when he saw that the left half of his head was completely hairless. The scalp looked wrinkled. The boy charged into the room with his shoes on, so Bugeye threw the cap out the door and stepped outside. The boy ran to pick up the cap. He put it back on and spat on the ground.

  ‘Fucker,’ he muttered.

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry!’ Bugeye said. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘There.’ The boy stuck out
his bottom lip and used it to point at the shack next door.

  ‘You’re related to the Baron—I mean, to the crew leader?’

  The boy nodded, and then reeled off one answer after another to questions Bugeye had not asked.

  ‘He’s my dad, I don’t have a mum, it’s just the two of us, Dad doesn’t talk to me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The boy hung his head.

  ‘He says I’m too stupid.’

  The boy did seem a little slow, but Bugeye figured, if this was Baron Ashura’s son, then he’d better make a point of getting on his good side. Bugeye held up his hand and signalled to the boy to wait. He rummaged through the tin cookie box he used to store his most treasured possessions in, and pulled out his Mazinger Z action figure.

  ‘Here, you can have this. It’s the most powerful robot in the world.’

  To Bugeye, the toy was just something he kept for old time’s sake. He’d have lost face if he ever showed it to his friends back home. The plastic joints were a little loose, but the metal springs that fired the arm and leg missiles were still tightly coiled. It was one of several discarded toys his father had saved from a scrapheap one day. There was the robot, a racing car, and some wooden blocks for building toy houses; that day, Bugeye had received all of those gifts, and a banana, to boot.

  ‘Look, if you push here …’

  Bugeye pressed a button on the arm, and the fist shot out. The boy stamped his feet and giggled with joy. Bugeye picked up the plastic fist, fitted it back into the socket, and handed it to the boy.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Baldspot.’

  ‘Baldspot? What kind of a name is that?’

  Despite the unusual name, Bugeye took an instant liking to the kid. He felt reassured to know that people here went by nicknames just as they did in the hillside slums in the city.

  ‘How old are you?’

  The boy spread all ten fingers in Bugeye’s face. Bugeye was taken aback. How could they only be three years apart in age?

  Baldspot poked Bugeye in the chest and asked, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Bugeye.’

  ‘Bugeye!’ he exclaimed, letting out another high-pitched giggle. ‘Buggy-buggy-Bugeye!’

  The boy bent over with laughter until his head was practically touching the ground. Then he gestured for Bugeye to follow him, and started to scuttle away.

  ‘Hey,’ Bugeye said, hanging back. ‘Where’re you going?’

  Baldspot turned and pressed a finger to his lips.

  ‘It’s top secret,’ he whispered. ‘If Dad or the other grown-ups find out, we’ll get in trouble.’

  ‘Then you better tell me where we’re going first.’

  ‘Just follow me.’

  Bugeye followed Baldspot down the path lined with slapped-together shacks of all shapes and colours. He’d heard there were some two thousand households altogether living on the island, but he was still amazed to see how the rows of shanties not only filled the flat areas but even extended all the way up the slopes of the hill. Candlelight seeped faintly out of each diminutive plastic window. They came across a few other empty lots where adults were passing drinks around and children were running in and out of the rows like they were playing hide-and-go-seek. The two marched briskly over the hill that marked the edge of the shantytown. The wet grass was cool against their ankles. Bugeye knew what the island was called; he’d heard the name of it when he and his mother were leaving the waste-collection site back in the city. When he first heard the name ‘Flower Island’, he thought they were going to some paradise overlooking the ocean.

  Bugeye and Baldspot made their way over the hill of garbage and out of the shantytown; there, they arrived on the western outskirts of the triangular island. As soon as they crested the hill, they were looking down on the river. The river itself was swallowed up by the dark, but the passing headlights of cars racing down the highway bounced off the surface of the water and made it shimmer.

  ‘What’re you doing? Hurry up.’

  Baldspot nudged Bugeye away from where he stood, transfixed by the river. They seemed to be walking through a vegetable patch; something kept catching on Bugeye’s ankles and tripping him up. Baldspot came to an abrupt stop on a sandy hill where tall willows, silver grass, and cattails stirred in the wind. Bugeye looked around. Far off to the east was a brightly lit bridge. He remembered that the truck they arrived in had taken a left-hand turn onto Flower Island immediately after crossing that bridge. Towering over the river on a raised area at the centre of the triangular island, and higher and longer across than the hill they stood on, was a mountain of garbage. Work hours were over, so there were no trucks in sight. Baldspot squatted down and groped around in the sand: a rope appeared, and he gave it a tug.

  ‘There’s one on your side, too,’ he said.

  Bugeye reached down and found an identical rope attached to a four-by-two sticking out of the sand. When they pulled on their ropes at the same time, two posts rose up straight and tall as a canvas roof was pulled tautly into place. Baldspot picked up a plastic bag that had been stashed under the roof, pulled out a match, and lit a candle. Thick pieces of cardboard covered by a large scrap of blue-and-white-striped tarp formed a floor, and there were even low walls on either side built from cinder blocks. Dug from the side of the sandy hill and open to the river, looking just like someone had taken a bite out of a bun, was a neat little hideout.

  ‘This is our headquarters,’ Baldspot said proudly. He placed the Mazinger Z robot in a box inside the hideout. Bugeye kept patting the cinder blocks in amazement.

  ‘It’s just like a house,’ he said.

  ‘Yep!’ Baldspot copied Bugeye, and gave the wall a pat, too.

  Bugeye later learned from the other kids that the place used to be an army guard post. The boys of the landfill had carried pieces of cardboard and scraps of tarp over from the garbage and transformed it into a cozy room. They had even installed the canvas awning so they would have shade on sunny days and shelter on rainy days. The awning doubled as camouflage simply by lowering the ropes and covering the site up when it was not in use. Each time the awning rose, it was like a stage curtain sweeping open to reveal a new world. When they sat inside and looked out, the view was completely different from when they were just standing on top of the sandy hill. The shadows of silver grass and willow trees stood tall in one corner of the rectangular frame created by the cinderblock walls and canvas awning, and the broad expanse of the river flowed through the middle; on the surface of that river, moonlight glimmered, and the lights of the city glowed faintly in the distance on the far side of the water.

  ‘So, this is your headquarters,’ said Bugeye, unable to hide his amazement and envy.

  ‘I’ll get in trouble if our captain finds out,’ Baldspot mumbled. He pulled a big stack of magazines out of the drawer of a squat table in the far corner. The little guy seemed more proud than afraid to show Bugeye the magazines. Bugeye was already familiar with them, having been shown the same kind of thing by the older boys in the hillside slums. They were adult magazines from some foreign country, filled cover to cover with pictures of naked people.

  ‘Who’s your captain?’

  ‘Mole. He’s scary.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s practically a grown-up. Bigger than you. Good worker.’

  Bugeye and Baldspot sat with their legs drawn up, chins on knees, and looked out at the river for a long while. Bugeye liked the fact that Baldspot didn’t say much unless he was spoken to. But despite sounding slow, he seemed to pick up on things pretty fast. Maybe he was deeper than he looked. Being teased and picked on by other kids had a way of deepening a person. Before he’d learned to fight back, Bugeye, too, had been a quiet kid who kept to himself.

  ‘Do you like it here?’ Bugeye asked him.

 
Baldspot nodded emphatically.

  ‘Do you come here during the day, too?’

  ‘I come here whenever I want. The other boys come in the evening.’

  Bugeye hesitated for a moment before asking, ‘Hey, listen … Is your dad nice?’

  ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t talk to me.’

  ‘Thing is, me and my mum are supposed to work for your dad starting tomorrow …’

  ‘Kids aren’t supposed to work here. I think you and Mole are the only ones who can,’ Baldspot mumbled. He suddenly started to giggle, and then he blurted out, ‘My dad might stick it in your mum!’

  Bugeye socked Baldspot right on top of his baseball cap. Baldspot fell to one side and yelled like he was dying.

  ‘Don’t hit me on the head, fucker!’

  ‘You asked for it! You talked shit about my mum!’

  Baldspot rubbed his head with both hands and inched away, dragging his bum in the sand.

  ‘I don’t have a mum, and you don’t have a dad. Some woman lived with us before, but she left.’

  ‘I have a dad, you idiot. People don’t just live with other people like that.’

  ‘They do here.’ Baldspot readjusted his cap. ‘My mum spilled hot water on my head when I was little, and that’s why I’m not smart, so don’t hit me on the head!’

  ‘Okay, okay, I won’t hit you on the head. Let’s come back tomorrow.’

  They blew out the candle, pulled down the awning to conceal the hideout, and headed back the way they’d come. When they were halfway across the field, Baldspot squatted down and dug up a handful of something. He offered it to Bugeye.

  ‘Try it. It’s good.’

  Bugeye brushed the dirt off and rolled the thing around in his hands until he realised it was a peanut. They were standing in the middle of a peanut field. He cracked open the shell and felt the soft meat inside.

  ‘We’ll get in trouble if we’re caught,’ Baldspot said with his funny giggle.

  ‘Whose field is this?’

  ‘A bunch of farmers live over there, in the village across the stream. The fields belong to them.’