‘Dumbarse! Now it stinks! I told you to scrape the stove out clean before you light the fire.’
‘Still smells better than where we live,’ Bugeye said.
Mole took the comment in his stride.
‘That’s why we built these headquarters,’ he said.
It made sense. If Baldspot had not shown him the hideout when he first came to the island with his mother, Bugeye might have felt so hopeless that he would’ve tried to run away at once. Baldspot gave up on stoking the fire, and backed away from the stove with a pout. He looked upset about getting hit on the head.
The boys cooked their dinner away from the swarms of flies crowding the garbage, away from the grown-ups, down by the river’s edge where the air was heady with the scent of grass and flowing water. Afterward, they lay side by side on a big scrap of canvas. Mole first, of course. The glow of the streetlights from the riverside highway and the lights of the city across the river turned the sky milky, but a few stars still managed to flicker their way through. Mole pulled out a cigarette that he’d found who-knows-where, and lit it. He took a few puffs and held it over Bugeye’s face.
‘Take a puff.’
Bugeye hesitated before taking the cigarette. Older boys had tried before to get him to smoke. He’d refused and had to put up with endless teasing about how he was still just a kid and how if he didn’t smoke he would never manage to grow any hair around his dick, and so this time he went ahead and, acting as if he knew what he was doing, took a puff and coolly exhaled. He knew that if he so much as coughed the tiniest bit, he would be dismissed as an amateur, so he blew a big, long gush of smoke into the air. Luckily, Mole was staring at the sky and didn’t notice how awkward Bugeye was at it. Bugeye took a few more puffs and raised his hand to offer it to the next person. The boy lying next to him, the one they called Toad, snatched it away.
‘It’ll be Chuseok in a few days,’ Mole muttered.
Surprised, Bugeye asked, ‘Do people celebrate holidays here, too?’
‘Yeah, some people even do the memorial service. The grown-ups’ll all go party.’
‘Where?’
‘Across the river, in the city. That place has everything.’
Mole turned to look at Bugeye and added, ‘I’m losing face by being friends with you, but whatever. This place is nothing but little kids who spend all their time at the church school. Not like I’ve got anyone better to hang out with. Just build me a roof in exchange.’
‘Yeah, sure. But hey, that means I can call you Mole instead of hyung now, right?’
‘Fucking hell, maybe I should get a new nickname.’
To his relief, Bugeye’s admission into the hideout was not the hazing that Baldspot had worried it would be.
3
As always, the sorting of garbage from the downtown and commercial areas began at dawn and ended around nine in the morning. Bulldozers levelled out the heaps of trash, then dump trucks loaded with fill dirt came in to cover the trash. The pickers on the Baron’s team gathered the items they’d scavenged into baskets and carried them over to the clearing that served as the sorting area. Up and down between the dumpsite and the sorting area they went, collecting the results of their morning’s work, separating it into different categories, weighing everything, and confirming the amounts. The crew leaders wrote down how much everyone collected each day. Then, twice a month, on purchasing day, all of the items they’d collected were sold in bulk to recycling plants, and the money was divvied up according to each person’s individual haul.
Since it was the day before the Chuseok holiday, the trash from the commercial areas had multiplied over the last few days, and far more food waste had been spilling out of the trucks that came from the apartment complexes and residential areas in the afternoon. But it was clear that the real flood of trash wouldn’t hit them until two or three days after Chuseok. Here, as in the city, this time of year was referred to as the Chuseok rush. The whole country would be on holiday for the three-day-long autumn harvest celebration, after which the landfill would be deluged with paper and plastic and cardboard of all sorts. The pickers were already worried about whether they’d get a moment’s break at all the next week.
‘Go fetch some water,’ Bugeye’s mother said as soon as they got to the hut.
Bugeye grabbed two white plastic water jugs from the kitchen of Baron Ashura’s hut, which was now their home, too, and headed down to the water truck. This time of day—when Bugeye and his mother, Baldspot and the Baron, all sat around late in the morning eating breakfast face to face—wasn’t exactly intolerable to him, but he was finding it more and more uncomfortable as time went on. The Baron had naturally become head of the family, and his mother had obediently become his woman. He was strict in his rule that the family should always eat breakfast together, so Bugeye and Baldspot ate their meals at the tiny metal tray table, their heads nearly touching.
Baldspot sometimes went to the church school and sometimes didn’t, and yet the Baron was indifferent as to whether or not the kid actually ever studied. Baldspot wasn’t allowed to work like Bugeye, digging items out of the trash heaps directly, but he did his best to help out by standing in the back and putting the items that the others had picked into baskets or carrying the baskets for them. On the days that Baldspot announced he was going to school, no one stopped him or pressured him to work instead. In fact, not even Bugeye worked all three shifts like his mum did, from dawn to afternoon and on into the night. Though he never missed the morning shift, with its delivery of trash from the downtown and commercial areas, he sometimes skipped the afternoon sorting of residential trash or the nightfall sorting of trash from factories and construction sites. On Mondays, when there was more work, the Baron would order him to help his mother, but the rest of the time Bugeye could excuse himself by saying he was going to school with Baldspot, and the Baron refrained from scolding him.
This time of the day, the little shop and the water truck were always crowded with women and children getting ready to cook. Bugeye set his water jugs at the back of a long, motley line of containers, and waited politely off to the side with the others. Past the shop and the management office were a half-moon-shaped Quonset hut that had been built recently and two khaki-coloured army tents that served as the church. Some sort of event seemed to be going on: a colourful banner had been hung, and cars and vans were parked out front, the sunlight glaring off the vehicles. Hymns blared out of a bugle-shaped loudspeaker on the roof of the Quonset hut. Bugeye got his turn at the water truck and filled both jugs. He picked one up in each hand and started to walk, but they were impossibly heavy. He staggered along a ways, stopped to catch his breath, staggered some more. He was just passing the crowded shop when he spotted Baldspot’s baseball cap.
‘Hey! Baldspot!’
Baldspot turned at the sound of Bugeye’s voice and ran over, looking glad to see him.
‘Hyung! Did you come to get water?’
‘What, you can’t tell by looking? Where’ve you been all morning? You skipped breakfast.’
‘I’m going to the church school. They’re handing out ramen noodles and rice cake.’
‘Really? Can I go, too?’
‘Any kid from here can go.’
‘Great. Help me with these water jugs, and I’ll join you.’
Baldspot and Bugeye slowly made their way along the path to the shantytown, shifting the jugs from left to right as they went. Bugeye made it home much faster with Baldspot’s help. His mother carried the jugs into their shack.
‘Look at that, I’ve got two helpers today,’ she said.
When she saw that they were about to take off again without coming inside, she asked, ‘Don’t you need to eat breakfast? Your father’ll be angry at you.’
‘Baldspot said we’ll get ramen and rice cake if we go to church today,’ Bugeye said.
His mother’s face lit up s
lightly, and she said, ‘Ramen, huh? Better get a move on then. And bring some back with you.’
Bugeye and Baldspot darted off down the narrow path, speed-walked past the front of the shop, and headed over to the church. The hymn had already been replaced by the sound of the preacher clamouring out a prayer through the loudspeaker.
‘That’s the worship service,’ Baldspot said. ‘They don’t give us stuff until that’s over.’
Baldspot knew exactly what to do. Bugeye followed him into the army tent that was used as a classroom. Bugeye had once come looking for Baldspot here, so he knew that one tent was for the kindergarteners and the other was for the grade schoolers. The kindergarten tent had a worktable, vinyl flooring, and wooden shelves filled with cheap plastic toys, and the grade-school tent had desks and chairs and even a chalkboard that could be wheeled around—all of which had been salvaged from the trash. Bugeye and Baldspot’s target was the kindergarten tent. Cardboard boxes and Styrofoam food containers were stacked inside, and a man and a woman were hanging a banner that read in large letters ‘Heaven’s Church Mission’ against the back wall. Baldspot and Bugeye decided to wait outside the tent.
When the service ended, the door to the Quonset hut opened, and people poured out. The first to emerge were the children and the volunteers who taught night school, then a grey-haired pastor in a suit and a preacher in bedraggled coveralls walking next to him, followed by a gaggle of women who looked nothing like the folks who lived in the landfill. These outside visitors, first of all, had milky-pale skin and wore makeup, and some of the women wore fancy dresses with cardigans over their shoulders or trench coats and hats, while other women wore suits. Some had brought their children. There were about thirty or so visitors in all.
‘Okay, everyone, let’s take a photo,’ a young woman with a camera called out. ‘This way, please.’
The pastor, the church elder, the head of the women’s ministry, the preacher, and everyone else lined up automatically beneath the banner without having to be told where to stand. Most of the visitors were middle-aged women, and as they lined up in two rows, the dreary interior of the army tent suddenly brightened. Even the children stood politely next to their mothers. When they were all grouped together, the air around them smelled like a flower garden.
The woman with the camera hanging from her neck called out, ‘You kids, come over here and sit in front.’
The children who’d been standing outside the tent all rushed in, but the preacher raised his arms to stop them.
‘Grade schoolers, stay where you are. Let’s have just the kindergarteners.’
The bigger kids slunk back outside, including Bugeye and Baldspot, while the kindergarteners lined up and sat at the adults’ feet, as instructed by the female volunteers. When the head of the women’s ministry jumped out of line and grabbed the youngest child—a three-year-old—and squatted down with her on her lap, the rest of the women scrambled to follow suit and pose with a small child on their laps or in their arms. From the front, the kindergarteners and the adults lined up behind them were so drastically different in both attire and appearance that it looked like a scene from a documentary about travellers in the wilds of some remote jungle.
As Bugeye stood outside and watched them take the photo, he felt a sudden jolt, like he’d been punched in the chest. One face inside the tent began to glow brighter and brighter, while everyone else’s faded into the background. The girl’s hair hung straight down past her cheeks and just brushed her shoulders, not too long and not too short, and her face was slender and fair. Her lips glistened. Her school uniform was a dark chocolate brown, and the woman next to her, who appeared to be her mother, had one arm wrapped around her. She had to be the same age as Bugeye, maybe just a year or two older. Girls like her all seemed to have the same air about them.
Just down the hill and across a pedestrian overpass from the hillside slum where Bugeye had once lived was an entirely different world. There were middle-class homes, each with their own similarly sized yards planted with flowers and trees, and as you walked further into the neighbourhood, there was a hillside, still with its original forest, which served as the area’s sole park. At the base of the hill were expensive houses surrounded by big yards, and at every corner of the well-maintained roads was a neighbourhood patrol-guard post.
Bugeye first saw the girl while crossing the pedestrian overpass. He was on his way home from the market a few bus stops away; she was probably on her way home from school. Judging by her uniform, she must’ve been in middle school. People streamed past to the left and right of him, but the moment he saw her in the distance, he felt like it was just the two of them, walking towards each other. And that was where his memory stopped. Afterwards he took to loitering around the overpass, making his way up and down, trying to judge the time. At last, another opportunity arrived for him to come face to face with her. He saw the girl get off a bus and head up the stairs, so he went up the stairs on the other side. This time, there were hardly any other pedestrians. A man dressed in a suit and tie and carrying a briefcase came towards him fast, and trailing behind was the girl, walking at her usual slow, steady pace. He studied the tiny birthmark above her cheek and the slender pin that held back her bangs. She glanced at him once, as if he were of no more interest than a street sign or the railing of the overpass, and walked on by. Bugeye couldn’t bear to watch her walk away, so he kept going until he got to the end of the overpass before turning to look. She had just reached the bottom of the stairs and had set one foot on the footpath. He started to walk towards her and then stopped. What was his old name again, he wondered, back when he, too, was an ordinary boy who went to school like the other kids? Jeong-ho? That was it. Choi Jeong-ho. He murmured his real name to himself as he slowly headed back to the hillside slum.
He didn’t see her again until much, much later. It might have been around when the seasons were changing. He remembered wearing a heavy, corduroy jacket, which meant it had to have been winter. Bugeye was hanging out by the overpass around the same time as usual when he spotted the girl again. This time, instead of crossing the bridge, he waited for her to come down the stairs, and followed her at a distance. The girl walked to a residential area near the far end of the park, past one of the guard posts, and disappeared behind an iron gate at the top of a staircase. Bugeye was standing at the bottom of a very high wall, gazing up at the top of it, when a middle-aged man dressed in a dark-blue security guard uniform ambled up to him and, with no warning, grabbed Bugeye by the scruff of his neck.
‘What’re you doing here?’
‘Nothing,’ Bugeye exclaimed.
‘Where do you live, kid?’
‘Across the bridge.’
The security guard looked Bugeye up and down. ‘Quit hanging around here,’ the guard said, ‘and get yer arse back home.’
Bugeye thought about his father then. Were these the same kind of iron gates his father had gone around stealing?
After the group photo, another photo was taken to commemorate the donation of five hundred boxes of instant ramen noodles—care packages provided by the women’s ministry from Heaven’s Church. The head of the women’s ministry and the preacher held up a box together and smiled for the camera. Many of the visitors had cameras of their own, and they took photo after photo of each other. Yet even while snapping pictures, the women kept looking around warily and covering their noses with both hands. One young woman who’d been taking photos was spraying air freshener, as if to chase the smell away. Those who lived there smelled it all the time and so had stopped noticing it, but the grown-ups said that whenever they went to the marketplace in town, other people would look around and pinch their noses as they passed. Changing their clothes made no difference.
The tent church on Flower Island tended to have a lot of these events, as there were frequent visits from churchgoers who lived in the apartment complexes and residential areas of the city
. Many came in person, but at holidays, items poured in from all directions. People from community organisations, bureaucrats from city hall, and even National Assembly members came by bearing gifts. There were events held just for the grown-ups living on Flower Island, but most of the church events were targetted at children and the trash pickers who attended church services.
At last, the visitors started handing out the food. The children stood in two lines, one for kindergarteners and the other for grade schoolers. The kindergarten line was mostly mothers and their children; kindergarteners who’d come alone were asked for their information and told the food would be delivered directly to their shacks. Bugeye and Baldspot got in the middle of the grade-school line. Bugeye didn’t notice until after they cut in that the girl and her mother were standing side by side at the head of the grade-schoolers’ line. The mother was handing out boxes of ramen, while the girl handed out the styrofoam food containers. He knew it was not the same girl he’d dared to follow all the way to her house in the woods, but it was the first time since that day that his heart had raced this fast and that he found it so impossible to stand still, just as if he were fighting the urge to pee. He wanted to get out of line and run away, but they were already well inside the tent, and his turn was almost there. He had no choice but to follow on the heels of the kid in front of him and approach the table.
The girl and her mother were giving everyone one box of ramen and one styrofoam container each. No one in line pushed or shoved. They could see for themselves from the towering stacks of boxes behind the table that there was no fear of running out before they’d had their turn. Baldspot took his rations first, and then it was Bugeye’s turn. Right before his eyes was the necklace hanging from the throat of the mother in her two-piece suit and just below that the girl’s fair face. The mother handed him a box of ramen, and the daughter handed him a styrofoam food container. The girl smiled right at him, and Bugeye felt all of the strength drain out of his legs and threaten to dump him onto the ground. Just then, the preacher, who’d been standing behind the two women, spoke up.
Familiar Things Page 6
