‘We made rice cake. At least have a taste.’
Scrawny’s mama plated up two types of sweet rice cake—steamed sirutteok and songpyeon stuffed with sweetened sesame seeds. While father and daughter ate dinner, the two boys feasted on rice cake, and even the dogs munched away happily at their own dinners. It had been a long time since Bugeye had had a taste of sirutteok with its topping of mashed sweet red beans—perhaps not since one of his birthdays long ago, when he was very young.
Baldspot asked Scrawny’s mama out of the blue, ‘Do you know where we could buy memilmuk?’
Scrawny’s mama stared speechlessly at Baldspot, her spoon in mid-air, and finally asked, ‘Buckwheat jelly? What on earth are you going to do with that?’
Since Peddler Grandpa was there, too, Bugeye gave Baldspot a sly kick under the table, but Baldspot didn’t seem to catch on. He blurted out, ‘We ran into the littlest of the Mr. Kim dokkaebi. He said his family is sick. And they’ll only get better if they eat memilmuk …’
Peddler Grandpa pretended not to have heard a word and just kept right on eating, but Scrawny’s mama set her spoon down and scooted her chair closer to Baldspot’s.
‘Sounds like you met the youngest grandchild. The Mr. Kim family lives the way we used to in the old days—three generations under one roof. It’s easy to find memilmuk in the marketplace.’
Grandpa Peddler turned and said, ‘Shall I run out and buy some now?’
The three of them stopped talking at once and looked at him.
‘It’s a holiday,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to do something nice for them, may as well be tonight.’
He chugged a glass of water and stood with a grunt. Bugeye followed him out.
‘Grandpa, would it be okay if I went with you?’
‘Sure, it should only take about twenty minutes or so to cross the river and come back.’
Baldspot and Scrawny’s mama began boiling leftover food for the big dogs in the greenhouse, while Peddler Grandpa and Bugeye got in the truck. There was a well-trodden dirt path, so, though it was a bit bumpy, they were soon passing the little shop and the office, and turning onto the big paved road that the garbage trucks used. They took the bridge that Bugeye and his mother had crossed when they first came to the island, but instead of merging onto the riverside expressway, they headed for a small two-lane highway. The road turned to softer asphalt and was even lined with trees. It was the first time in months that Bugeye had gotten away from Flower Island.
As he drove, Peddler Grandpa muttered, almost as if to himself, ‘I guess there really is such a thing as a Mr. Kim dokkaebi.’
‘They said they’ve always lived alongside us.’
Peddler Grandpa glanced over at Bugeye.
‘So that story, about dokkaebi liking buckwheat jelly, is true after all. I thought my daughter was making it all up.’
‘… So did I.’
The town appeared in the distance. Way out at the centre of the vegetable fields and rice paddies, electric lights glowed, two and three-storey buildings rose up, and a newly paved road led to a main street lined with shops and restaurants, off which branched smaller roads packed with homes. The truck made a left-hand turn off the main road into a surprisingly large parking lot, where the tiny alleyways of an outdoor marketplace appeared. Peddler Grandpa parked the truck and made his way into the warren of alleys, turning this way and that, hurrying past small shops that sold freshly pressed sesame oil, general stores that sold all manner of odds and ends, and restaurants serving gukbap, and then came to a stop in front of one shop in particular. The marketplace was closed, but every few doors a shop would be open: inside, you’d see either three or four fellow vendors clustered together, enjoying their holiday meal and drinking makkolli, or else one elderly man or woman watching television alone. The shop that Peddler Grandpa was searching for turned out to be a stall that sold pre-made side dishes. With everything from seasoned greens and cooked bean sprouts to marinated tofu, it was the sort of place that people shopping for groceries in the evenings would always made a point of stopping by. It was apparent to Bugeye that Peddler Grandpa must have searched his memory and figured that this place was likely to sell buckwheat jelly.
‘You sell muk, right?’ Peddler Grandpa called out. ‘Got any buckwheat jelly?’
The auntie who ran the shop poked her head out of the door.
‘We’re out. But who eats that on holidays anyway? Come back tomorrow.’
‘I need it tonight.’
‘What’d you do? Bet a plate of muk in a game of cards?’ She cackled at her own joke.
The last thing she would have expected to see on Chuseok was someone shopping for buckwheat jelly. She abruptly shouted across the alley to another shop.
‘Hey! You sell buckwheat starch, right?’
The male shopkeeper poked around for a bit and then held up a plastic sack. He gave it a little shake as if to ask whether that was what they were looking for. Peddler Grandpa went over and checked the label. The store had five sacks of buckwheat starch in total, and he picked each one up in turn before saying, ‘I’ll take ‘em all.’
‘All of them? What, are you opening a buckwheat jelly factory or something?’
Peddler Grandpa added a crate of makkolli, as well, making ten bottles in total. He and Bugeye divvied up the parcels, and carried them all back to the truck.
‘I forgot that you can make your own,’ Grandpa said. ‘It’s the same as making glue. You boil the starch until it thickens up. Back in the old days, that’s how we made mung bean and acorn muk.’
‘I haven’t had memilmuk in a long time.’
Peddler Grandpa nodded.
‘I bet. There are a ton of things we don’t do anymore these days.’
They headed back to Flower Island. From a distance, the island looked like one long, low hill. The moon hovered just above the crest of the hill, and to the right of the field that was visible from the dumpsite, the lights of the village on the other side of the stream glowed against the side of the hill.
‘Grandpa, have people always lived on the island?’
‘Of course, I was born there. There used to be a big village there. Everyone was paid to move across the stream instead, but then a lot of people said that place wasn’t liveable anymore either, and left.’
Bugeye missed his old neighbourhood. He redrew the alleyways of the hillside slum in his head.
‘Whoever heard of a place being unliveable?’ Peddler Grandpa went on. ‘If you don’t have money, then everywhere is unliveable. Around here, we might have to put up with a few flies, but we make money, don’t we? Once the weather cools off, the flies and mosquitos will go away, and it’ll be liveable enough.’
He headed for the bridge that would take them across the stream.
‘I’m so glad you boys have started visiting. My daughter used to go out and wander around by herself. Those jerks would call her crazy and throw rocks at her.’
Bugeye listened without comment.
‘She’s been like that since she turned twenty, ever since her mama died. Folks say it means the spirits have caught her and that we have to call in a shaman and hold a ceremony to bring her back. Her mind still comes and goes sometimes, but at least she’s better than she used to be.’
The truck headed uphill, and passed the office and the shop again.
‘I guess it’s no different from living with flies … how those, whatchamacallit—things or spirits or whatever—live with us, too. Aren’t you boys afraid?’
Bugeye shook his head.
‘No, I think it’s fun.’
How could anything be scary, compared to waking up every morning to the same unchanging stench, the dust and the flies, the monstrous dump trucks pouring out hideous-looking objects of all shapes and origins? Now, even when the tip of his rake pulled out the rotted trunk of some anim
al, he simply kicked it away and buried it beneath other items. People threw away so many things that by the time the objects lost their shape and decomposed into smaller and smaller and more complex parts, they became strange and curious objects that bore no resemblance whatsoever to whatever the machines in the factories had originally spat out. Bugeye gazed down at the moonlit grass and nearly murmured, I want to fly away.
The truck pulled up to the front of the house, and the dogs resumed their barking. This time, they weren’t warning barks so much as a chorus of welcomes. Bugeye knew this was so because of the whines and whimpers wending their way between the barks. When he and Peddler Grandpa carried the stuff they’d bought into the house, the elderly crippled dogs were the first to run over and sniff the bags. Baldspot and Scrawny’s mama took the bags from them.
‘What is all this?’ Scrawny’s mama asked.
Bugeye answered for Peddler Grandpa. ‘Buckwheat starch. He said all we have to do is boil it.’
‘Ah, great! I know what to do.’
Scrawny’s mama emptied an entire bag of the starch into the big plastic mixing bowl she used for making kimchi, added water, and stirred it together with a rice paddle. Then she took it outside and poured it into the kettle on top of the makeshift stove and brought it to a boil. In the meantime, Peddler Grandpa couldn’t wait, and went ahead and cracked open a bottle of makkolli; he poured himself a bowl and downed it at once. Scrawny’s mama poured the boiled starch back into the mixing bowl and brought it inside, where she patted it out flat and placed it on the counter.
‘It’ll harden up as soon as it cools—wait, Dad, you’re drinking already?’
‘I had to make sure it tastes okay. After all, what’s buckwheat jelly without some makkolli to go with it?’
It had taken just about an hour and a half for them to get back from the market, boil up the buckwheat starch, and let it cool. If they’d had a square pan, the muk would have come out in neat little rectangles, the way it was supposed to, but since they only had a bowl, it came out domed instead, like part of the moon had been sliced off. Nevertheless, when it was divided into blocks and sliced up on the cutting board, it was indeed a perfect batch of memilmuk. Scrawny’s mama carried the bowl of sliced-up muk on top of her head, while Bugeye and Baldspot each carried a plastic bag stuffed with bottles of makkolli. They were headed out the door when Scrawny started yipping and yapping, intent on going with them. Peddler Grandpa picked the little pup up and watched them leave.
‘Make sure you ask them to fix your head,’ he said to Scrawny’s mama.
The moon was already hanging way up at the top of the sky, and the whole world had turned silver. The moonlight was different from electric lights: it hid the ugly things, and turned the river and trees and grass and stones and everything else close and familiar. The three of them waded through the tall grass and headed for the bend in the stream. The moonlight on the grass made them feel like they’d stepped into a new world. Bent branches and short shrubs caught at their ankles, and each time the silver grass, as tall as the boys themselves, brushed their cheeks, they shivered from the chill of the night dew that clung to the blades. They saw tall trees standing in a circle, the moonlight glimmering behind the branches.
When they reached the yard in front of the shrine, they set down the bowl of muk, uncapped the bottles of makkolli, and arranged everything neatly along the wooden ledge. Scrawny’s mama picked up one of the bottles and went over to the willow tree, where she took a big mouthful and sprayed the base of the tree with the makkolli. After she’d nearly emptied the bottle doing this, her body began to twitch and she collapsed onto the ground, her shoulders rising and falling as she retched. She lay there for a long while, her arms and legs still writhing, and then just as suddenly sat right back up as if nothing had happened. Baldspot had experienced her fits several times now, and calmly held her hand, but Bugeye was startled all over again, despite having witnessed it once before. He had a vague sense that her fits did not follow any set schedule, but rather grabbed hold whenever the feeling came over her.
‘Come!’ she said, waving both hands in front of her. ‘Come and enjoy these offerings!’
She was peering into the woods as she spoke. Baldspot and Bugeye saw blue lights moving between the trees. Then, all at once, people were there, thronging the edges of the clearing, their voices a low murmur, as they kept a proper distance. Scrawny’s mama pressed her hands against the boys’ backs and urged them back towards the river. Only then did the shadowy figures approach the shrine and help themselves to the buckwheat jelly and the makkolli. A small shadow came towards the three of them. Baldspot recognised the child.
‘We brought you memilmuk,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’
Just as before, the child bowed at the waist.
‘Is your whole family here?’ Bugeye asked.
‘Yes, that’s my grandfather and my grandmother and my father and my mother and my dad’s older brother and his wife and my dad’s younger brother and his wife and my mother’s brother and my mother’s sister and my dad’s sister and my other aunt and my older cousin and my big sister, and then there’s me, the youngest.’
The child recited each family member’s title as if he were chanting some sort of spell.
‘Do you recognise me?’ Scrawny’s mama asked. ‘Mr. Kim is your father, right?’
The child laughed and said, ‘In our family, everyone is Mr. Kim. Auntie, can Granny Willow speak through you?’
‘I’m her right now.’
‘Then have some memilmuk with us.’
‘That’s okay. I had myself a nice, refreshing drink of makkolli.’
The child returned to his family, and the sounds of murmuring voices and eating and drinking continued. After a while, the child reappeared from between the trees.
‘Come on, my family would like to meet you.’
Baldspot led the way, followed by Bugeye and Scrawny’s mama. There seemed to be about twenty people in the clearing; they were assembled in front of the shrine as if they were taking a family portrait. A man dressed in faded grey coveralls and a baseball cap printed with the words ‘New Village Movement’, looking no different from any other middle-aged man from the neighbourhood, stepped forward and addressed them.
‘I’m the child’s father. We were sick with something and unable to do much, but thanks to you we got better.’
The white-bearded grandfather standing behind him nodded.
‘Look at this,’ he chuckled. ‘My arms and legs work now.’
He pinwheeled his limbs. Dressed in an old suit with cotton pants that puckered at the knees, he, too, looked just like any other grandfather you would see in the neighbourhood. A middle-aged woman in baggy, floral print pants and a clashing shirt with a kerchief tied around her head was the child’s mother. She turned to Scrawny’s mama.
‘Please look after us, Granny Willow,’ she said.
‘You’re good, reliable folk,’ Scrawny’s mama replied. ‘You must look after each other.’
‘Come visit us sometime,’ the child said to Baldspot.
‘Wait, you live around here?’ he asked in surprise.
The child laughed again.
‘Flower Island has always been our home.’
‘The food was delicious,’ the grandfather said. His voice was filled with energy. ‘Time for us to get back to work.’
With that, they were suddenly all in motion, slipping away one by one through the trees. Spots of blue light appeared briefly and then faded. Scrawny’s mama and the two boys stood stock still, speechless.
As if having just returned to his senses, Bugeye muttered flatly, ‘What the hell was that? They look just like our neighbours. Where are they going now? To pick through the trash?’
‘They said they’re farmers, silly,’ Baldspot said with a giggle, and Scrawny’s mama nodded.
>
‘Granny Willow says this island belongs to them,’ she said.
They left the forest, walked back through the silver grass, and returned to Scrawny’s house, passing piles of discarded electronics as they went.
4
As autumn deepened, the work grew harder. Homes were being heated again with coal briquettes to ward off the cold nights, and with the return of the ten-day-long kimchi-making season, not only the first-line workers but even the second-line ones were hard-pressed to find any items worth salvaging from the trash. Non-stop waves of spent coal briquettes and withered cabbage leaves buried every last bit of vinyl, plastic, aluminium, cardboard, and scrap metal. There was no exception for any of the districts: at least half of everything that came in was cabbage leaves and coal ash.
‘That’s how it goes,’ the Baron kept reminding his team. ‘Goodbye flies and mosquitos, hello coal!’
When the morning shift ended, the bulldozers that brought in fill dirt rolled over the coal briquettes, flattening the earth back down and blanketing everything in a layer of white ash. Faces that were once a shiny black from dirt and grease now turned white, as if everyone had been dredged in flour.
On the evening of the first snow, Bugeye was helping his mother to sort out and deliver the items she’d pulled from the trash. They had come down to the sorting area at the base of the dumpsite and were dividing the items up into large vinyl sacks when Peddler Grandpa came over to them from the line of parked motorcycles and trucks.
‘Anything good today?’ he asked Bugeye’s mother.
‘It’s been nothing but cabbage,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But we did get a lot of cardboard at least. You should take some cardboard and vinyl.’
The peddlers, who acted as middle-men, carrying off whatever items they could on their motorcycles or in small trucks, bought whatever they wanted regardless of whether it was purchasing day, and so whenever the trash pickers were in need of a little extra, they could usually make a few bills from them.
Familiar Things Page 9
