Familiar Things

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  ‘Who’s there?’ hissed a low, threatening voice. ‘Why, you little bastard …’

  Bugeye stepped back, holding up his arm to shield his eyes from the Baron’s flashlight. The Baron, naked except for his underwear, lunged forward to grab him, but Bugeye managed to leap out the door. The Baron followed him outside and ran the flashlight beam over Bugeye.

  ‘Well, look at that. Little shit’s got a knife!’

  ‘Who is it?’

  When Bugeye heard his mother’s voice coming from Baron Ashura’s room, he dropped the knife and bolted down the path. He ran all the way up the hill until he reached the edge of the shantytown, and there he sat, gazing down at the river below, until the sun came up. Bugeye hadn’t seen enough to know for sure what exactly the Baron and his mother were doing—maybe they’d only been hugging each other with their clothes off—but what he did know for sure was that the two of them would be sleeping under the same blanket from now on.

  It took almost half an hour of staring off into space for his anger to subside; he even stopped feeling sore at his mother. Since he’d grown up by his wits, he more or less grasped how it was that grown-ups in a place like this lived. Kids here joked and laughed about their own and each other’s parents like they were talking about perfect strangers. In any other place, that sort of talk would have led to fistfights and bloody noses, but the children of Flower Island merely snickered and tossed around some profanity. Many of the trash pickers had come there alone in search of work, and there were many mothers and fathers looking after their children on their own. There were, of course, unbroken families, but those folks mostly lived in the village across the stream, and commuted back and forth to Flower Island at dawn and dusk. The island was crammed with six thousand people living in two thousand households, the equivalent of scores of country villages put together. Naturally the adults were close with the other people in their work crews, but they also got to know pickers from neighbouring dumpsites, and spent many evenings drinking together. They fought hard, but made up harder, and men and women would get together and shack up for a few months before switching partners.

  The children lived amongst themselves in a world separate from the adults. There were fewer than a dozen kids like Bugeye and Mole who had begun to put on grown-up airs and could pass back and forth between the adult world and the child world. There, by the time you were seventeen or eighteen, you had already fully crossed over. The scariest thing for kids like Bugeye and Mole were the older boys who’d just made the journey. In any case, among the many, many people living in that shantytown, Bugeye now found himself a reluctant member of a band of four. The family ties that Bugeye and his mother had been barely maintaining since his father went missing were severed that day.

  When Bugeye saw the first line of garbage trucks start to make their way off the riverside expressway and cross the bridge onto the island, he stood and slowly made his way back down the hill. He didn’t feel up to for reporting to work, and there wasn’t much point in going back to the shack to sulk. He decided he would drop everything and play hooky instead. But he couldn’t think of anywhere to go. Back in the city that he and his mother had been banished from, there was no end to the places where you could idle away the time: even aside from the hillside alleyways, there were playgrounds and parks and marketplaces and video arcades and comic-book stores.

  Though the headquarters were not yet a place he could call his own, Bugeye decided to go there anyway and kill time until the noon shift. The last time he’d gone there, it was after dark and he was following Baldspot, so he thought it was close by and not too hard to find, but now the only thing he recognised was the river. Wasn’t there a peanut patch …? He mumbled to himself as he stood and looked around, but the peanuts must have all been harvested—all he saw was dirt. Nevertheless he could tell from the dried-up leaves and stems littering the ground that something had grown there.

  When he crossed the ridge on the other side of the field, he saw sand dunes, willow trees growing on the banks of the river, and a meadow overgrown with weeds and silver grass. Halfway up the slope, he found the low cinder-block wall that marked the hideout. He groped around in the sand for the hidden ropes and raised the awning, swept the sand from the linoleum, and sat there like he owned the place. Once inside, nothing of the outside world was visible; all he saw was the view afforded by the rectangular frame of the awning. To the left of the river, way off against the horizon, the sun was beginning to rise. The black of the river began to pale and gradually fade to white, and the glowing lights of apartment buildings far off across the river flickered on, one after the other, studding the darkness. Before long, it was bright enough to dampen the headlights of the cars driving up and down the expressway.

  ‘Hyung!’ Baldspot was standing in the centre of the frame, his cap cocked to one side. ‘I knew you’d be here.’

  Bugeye looked at Baldspot, who was all smiles, and said flatly, ‘Hyung? Since when am I your older brother?’

  ‘What did I tell you? I said my dad was going to stick it in your mum.’

  Bugeye couldn’t bring himself to get angry at Baldspot again, and just smiled weakly instead.

  ‘So that’s why you’re calling me hyung now?’

  ‘It’s better than calling you Bugeye,’ he giggled. ‘Dad told me to come get you.’

  Right about now, the adults would all be down on the hill of garbage digging mindlessly for gold. Bugeye wasn’t mad anymore, despite himself, but he made up his mind to act like he was upset for a few more days and see how things panned out. There was no point in throwing a tantrum over his mother sleeping with another man, because the fact was that this land had no number and no address, and everyone and everything there was of no use to anyone. The only way a person could hope to get out of there was through some sort of recycling plant for people. The sun had risen completely, and the sunlight bouncing off the river’s surface was like a billion tiny mirrors flashing at them. Baldspot and Bugeye sat and gazed out at the river.

  Every day around this time, Bugeye got hungry, so if something to eat turned up as he was digging through the trash, he would sniff it first and then have himself a snack, whether it was yogurt or orange juice left over in the bottom of a carton, or a piece of fruit with a bite taken out of it, or an expired pastry still sealed in plastic.

  The first shift of the day didn’t end until around nine in the morning, after which everyone usually returned to their shacks to cook breakfast. The garbage trucks that had come from downtown and the city’s commercial areas would leave for the day, and a fresh layer of fill dirt would be spread over the morning trash; the next round of trucks from apartment complexes and other residential areas would not arrive until afternoon.

  The adults used the three hours in the morning after the first shift to sort through the items they’d collected and to take care of the day’s cooking and cleaning. Some went to the shop at the bottom of the hill to buy things, and others got water from the water truck that came around twice a day. Still others went all the way down to the river to do laundry, or walked over to the village across the stream. After their late breakfast, they would be stuck at the dumpsite from around noon until sundown.

  Late in the afternoon or in the evening, when they had finished sorting through the residential trash, the trucks from factories and industrial areas would come in. Along with the first shift, this was when they made the most money. Since this left the adults with little time to look after their families, the children were always hungry. Kids with parents were at least able to eat a combined breakfast and lunch, albeit a late one, when the adults had a little more time in the mornings, but in the evenings they had to use their wits to slip in amongst the grown-ups, who were usually busy getting drunk together in the empty lots between the rows of shacks after work ended, and grab whatever they could to eat. Some children would take the edible things that the adults had collected from the tr
ash and get together in their homes or in any of the open fields on Flower Island to boil, grill, and steam their meals. Most of what they had to eat were canned foods or plastic packages of hot dogs past their expiration dates, or fish and other seafood that had been tossed out of the fish market, but neither the adults nor the children suffered much from stomach-aches or food poisoning. The runs were a problem, of course, but no one complained.

  ‘Hungry?’

  Bugeye pretended not to hear Baldspot’s question. He didn’t want to leave the hideout. Baldspot pulled out a wrinkled plastic package that crackled in his hands: inside were tightly packed rows of hot dogs. The side of the package was torn, and several of the hot dogs had already been eaten. Baldspot pulled one out and gave it a sniff; one side was covered in dirt.

  ‘Smells good!’ he said with a giggle.

  Baldspot shoved the dirty hot dog into his mouth and sucked on it a few times, and then spat out the dirt and started to eat it. Back when he lived in the city, Bugeye thought, not only would he have never put something like that in his mouth, he would have beaten up the kid who offered it to him. But when he thought about it now, the hot dogs were probably chockfull of preservatives anyway and had obviously been sitting harmlessly in the corner of someone’s fridge until they were eventually thrown out. Bugeye slipped one finger inside the plastic wrapper, pulled out a hot dog, and took a bite.

  ‘Tastes good, too,’ he said.

  Baldspot and Bugeye had five each.

  ‘There’s something I’ve been wondering about,’ Bugeye said. ‘Last time you said you’re the only one who sees the blue lights. What are they?’

  Baldspot ducked down low and looked around to see if anyone could hear them.

  ‘You’re the only one I’ve told. None of the other kids can see them.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’

  ‘I don’t know what they are. They only come out at night. They look like us.’

  ‘So, they’re ghosts?’

  ‘They’re not scary. Some are kids; some are grown-ups. There are men and women, too.’

  Baldspot’s explanation made Bugeye lose interest. He didn’t want to talk about those strange creatures anymore, so he changed the subject.

  ‘How many kids use these headquarters?’

  ‘Hmm, I think about six, including me. Only the kids who have the captain’s permission are allowed here.’

  Baldspot straightened his back with pride as he said this. Amused and annoyed at the same time, Bugeye muttered, ‘So you’re saying I shouldn’t be here yet.’

  ‘I don’t know. Mole has to allow it.’

  ‘This Mole, is he taller than me? Can he fight?’

  ‘I think you’re taller. But Mole is really strong.’

  There were so many things Bugeye was curious about that he didn’t stop there.

  ‘What do you do all day?’

  They lived right next to each other, and yet Bugeye only saw Baldspot in the late evenings. About a week after they’d moved to the island, Bugeye’s mother had started making breakfast in Baron Ashura’s kitchen, and they all ate together at the round metal-tray table. But Baldspot often didn’t show up for meals, and Bugeye had been wondering where he went off to. In fact, he was gone so often that Bugeye’s mother had begun to worry. Each time she asked the Baron where Baldspot was, the Baron either didn’t respond or else he would frown, look over at Bugeye, and say, ‘None of these little bastards here ever mind their parents.’

  ‘No one goes to school?’ Bugeye asked Baldspot.

  ‘We have a school,’ Baldspot said cheerily. ‘I go when I feel like it. But today I feel like playing with you.’

  ‘Do the other kids only go when they feel like it, too?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s a church down near the shop. That’s where we go to school.’

  ‘You’re telling me that’s where you spend all of your time?’ Bugeye asked with a sneer of disbelief.

  ‘No,’ Baldspot said meekly. ‘There’s another place. I’m the only one who goes there. Scrawny’s house.’

  ‘Scrawny? Who’s that?’

  ‘You’ll see. If you promise not to tell anyone, you can come too, hyung.’

  Bugeye was bored with sitting in the hideout, just the two of them, doing nothing, so he got up and brushed the dirt off his pants. Like last time, Baldspot rushed ahead of him and led the way up the hill. When the little guy reached the top, he glanced back at Bugeye and headed down the other side of the hill, away from the shantytown. They were headed for the north-west corner of Flower Island. The backside of the hill was covered in silver grass and clover and foxtails, broken only by the occasional heap of scrap iron or discarded building materials. Bugeye could see a handful of farmers’ huts and even a house made from cement blocks and a greenhouse made from vinyl sheeting down near the river.

  As they made their way between cabbage patches, Bugeye heard a dog start to yap loudly from inside the cement-block house, followed by a staccato chorus as more dogs joined in, barking and yapping. The door of the boxy little house opened, and a woman with her hair sticking up in all directions leaned out.

  ‘Little Uncle’s here!’ she said.

  She looked like she was about thirty. She wore a bright-blue hiking shirt and baggy pants covered in an oversize floral pattern, and her short hair had been tightly permed at one point but was since losing its curl and now bristled out like a comic book character getting electrocuted. Cradled in one arm was a scrawny dog no bigger than a fist. The little creature was barking wildly and baring its teeth. Its bark was so shrill and sharp that Bugeye worried its vocal chords might snap. As if that wasn’t enough, ten more small dogs inside the house began barking, too, each trying to outdo each other.

  ‘Come in, come in! They’ll calm down as soon as I close the door.’

  Bugeye followed Baldspot into the house and watched as Baldspot petted each of the dogs in turn. To his surprise, when Baldspot brought his hand up to the mouth of the little dog that the woman held in her arm, the little creature licked Baldspot’s palm. The house soon grew quiet.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ the woman said and then asked, ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘He’s my hyung,’ Baldspot said.

  ‘I didn’t know you had an older brother.’

  ‘He fell off a garbage truck!’ he said with a giggle.

  ‘Well now, what can’t you get from a garbage truck these days?’ the woman chuckled.

  The look on her face said she had no further questions about Bugeye’s surprise visit. Baldspot took the little dog from her and sat it on his lap. In an attempt to be courteous to their host, Bugeye reached out to pet the dog, but the little thing gave a loud yap and bit the back of his hand. It was so unexpected and painful that Bugeye yelled and jumped right out of his seat. The other dogs bristled or hid their tails and backed away from him, barking wildly.

  ‘Scrawny! Hush!’

  Baldspot gave the dog a shake. The dog wagged its tail and stuck its head in Baldspot’s lap. If that had happened away from the house, Bugeye thought to himself, he’d have given that dog a swift kick or dropped it on the ground. But, to his wonder, as soon as Scrawny stopped yapping, the other dogs quieted as well.

  ‘Scrawny’s the captain of this house,’ Baldspot said with a giggle, as he scratched the dog’s stomach.

  ‘She’s the oldest and was the first to come live with us,’ the woman explained.

  The little dog seemed to know they were talking about her, because she gazed up, weepy-eyed, at the woman. Now Bugeye understood why Baldspot had called this place Scrawny’s house. He also learned that all of the dogs were elderly, over sixty in people years, and that not one of them was in good shape. Scrawny was a purebred Chihuahua, around thirteen years old, while the other dogs were mutts of varying breeds. There were dogs with long matted hair, dogs with short hair, d
ogs with curly hair; grey dogs, black dogs, brown dogs; dogs with brindled coats, dogs with spotted coats; dogs with long legs, dogs with short legs; dogs with long snouts, dogs with stubby snouts; dogs of every shape and misshape; dogs with crippled back legs, dogs with crippled front legs; dogs with two broken legs, dogs with bow legs; dogs with one torn ear, dogs missing one eye.

  ‘Little Uncle got here just in time. I was about to feed the dogs.’

  The woman pulled a motley collection of bowls from the cupboard: the lid from a clay jar, an earthenware bowl, a dented washbasin made of nickel, a porcelain dish, a plastic saucer from underneath a flower pot. She lined up the dogs’ food bowls on the linoleum floor between the two bedrooms in the narrow space that served as both kitchen and living room. When Baldspot dragged out the bag of dog food and began scooping the food into the bowls, the dogs rushed over. Scrawny was served her own special meal of a handful of rice mixed with tuna in a stainless-steel doggy bowl. But she walked away after just a few bites. Baldspot explained why Scrawny’s meal was different.