by Gus Lee
Bui doi, dust of life. I remembered the Amerasian orphans of Vietnam.
“Dae-wi, we are the same. I have a returning dream every night. I understood my dream.
“My job is to find parents for these babies.”
“That would be a hard job. Are you having any success?”
She shook her head. “Too many babies. I had to stop Blue Hearts from selling their bodies and having babies—so sad.”
“Go to the source,” I said.
Dark eyes flared. “Oh, yes, dae-wi, you are right! The good Chinese words. To the source. I go to the clubs and talk about Buddha. Some bad people try to hurt me.” She lifted a hand. “But they see I have the signs, the voice, of the medium.
“When I sit in the clubs and pray, some of the Blue Hearts stop. But few change inside, wanting American cash too much. I have told so many Americans that I am not a kong ch'ang, but they do not believe me. They call me Ice Queen. What does this mean?”
“A woman who is romantically cold. A rude term.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “With the mudang’s help I have started an orphanage at the base of Jungsan. I can take only a few street children. I try to feed the others. But I need fathers.”
She brushed back her hair, looking at me solemnly. “Men with the attitude of the kind farmer to his children, the way it was before foreign factories and corporations. This kindness from men is worth all the won in the world. Dae-wi, I had a dream about you. You are the answer. How, I do not know. I want you to see the mudang! She wants to see you. This is a most high honor. When I came here, the mudang said I had sin-byong, mudang possession sickness. To tear our flesh lets us hear the dead, to connect Heaven and Earth.
“It is stronger than the gut, the trance to talk to the dead.” I nodded politely.
“To have her call for you is most special! She is a magic lady. She hears cries and can descend into hell to save us. She rescued me from darkness and explained my life to me.”
The grill sizzled; patrons argued in loud voices. I felt the old drowning ghosts of the Long River's whirlpools, moaning in humid winds, trying to increase their tribe by swallowing young sailors. Ma cried to the river gods in winter storms, the moonlit, nightmare winds howling in the mast. I took a breath; she was seducing me from my job. I smiled. She smiled. “So how's Cap-tain Buford?”
She frowned in genuine incomprehension. “Who?” she asked.
“Nothing.” The mudang wanted to see me for the health of her village. Why me? I sounded like Magrip.
“Dae-wi, she can help you with your ki-bun. Evil spirits and lost souls weigh down our days. The mudang smoothes our path.”
“My ki-bun is my own business. Why does she want to see me?”
“Dae-wi, our harmony comes from her knowing all. She cannot advise when there is a hole in her knowledge. Terrible things are happening, and you are part of the future of this valley. Dae-wi, you are going to change this small village.”
Villagers confessed to the shaman, and she used the knowledge to settle disputes.
“I can't now. What can you tell me about Southside?”
She drew in breath. “0 wa. Is a very bad place, dae-wi. Is most dangerous for girls. Southside girls do not come back.”
I looked at my watch. “I'm sorry. I must go.” Overcoats on, we stepped into the street. “My room, dae-wi, is six alleys past Second Market, this side of the cana, Go and face Jungsan.” She pointed to the barely visible, fog-ridden black peak as it rose above the flat-roofed village and the valley mist. A high-cliffed peak, morning sunlight gleaming on its snow.
“Say my name and children will show you where I live. My babies. I work at the orphanage at the bottom of Jungsan Peak. But I will stay home, and wait for you.”
“Miss Moon, what if I don't come?”
“Dae-wi, the wang mansin calls for you. You will come.”
Men led horse-drawn barley and rice carts to market. She took my arm as if we were old high-school chums, pressing innocently, smiling happily. “Please, call me Song Sae.” She licked her upper lip. ” It gives me pleasure to hear a man say my name. Villagers call me by who I am, kidae, spirit helper.”
Like a tour guide, she said, “Tongducheon has fifty thousand people. With good soil but poor harmony in wind and water, what Chinese call feng shui. Here, men grow war.”
We passed fish mongers offering live clams from truck-tired carts. Stockmen moved fat water buffalo, and we followed muddied roadmen bearing ten-foot loads of winter hay on A-frames.
I was little, running after BaBa in Chapei above the Whangpu, happy to plant my feet on the great deck of dry land.
“Chi-ge,” she said. A-frames. We passed a residence bursting with people, a clothesline over the doorway, draped with brilliant red peppers. Her grip tightened. “New baby boy.” Like a Chinese red-egg, one-month party for newborn boys.
A woman pulled Song Sae inside. It was a gathering for women only. I waited impatiently. When she emerged, her eyes were wet with tears as she gazed, over her shoulder, at their happiness.
“I am sorry.” She dried her eyes. “I feel everyone's emotions. Dae-wi, Korea is hard; winters, very cruel. People work and try to live correctly. We are pessimists who laugh quickly. The winds are from God. I think you know this.”
Second Market's smells were wonderful, primitive. Overeager jar, pan and pot stallkeepers cried “Tan-ji! Nam-bi! Chu-chon-ja!” with hot, condensed breath while fishermen bragged on yellow and red squid, warming my memory. Once, I had smelled of salt water and its fish. I remembered Yangtze merchants calling “Man-TOHHHH! Do shao bao!” Red bean paste dumplings!
Urchins played with pebbles and rusted cotter pins in the margins of alleys. As firstborn, I had not played; I had worked, envying Hu-hua and Hu-chien as they romped with ropes and nets.
They yelled after us. Song Sae touched them, using their names. Some literally jumped for joy.
“They say you are ‘Chinese giant man.’ ” The small girls clustered around her, looking up at me, gingerly touching me. I tried to smile. I had to shut my eyes.
“Kwenchanayo, dae-wi—it's okay,” she whispered.
Black-hatted elders, haroboji, with unlaced tennis shoes and ankle-bound pants, sat on short stools, nodding at the village kidae. A gong-beating red-jacketed man stood in the middle of the street. He chanted in a high, operatic voice.
“Paksu—man mudang. Not as smart as women; charges too many won for a gut—dance with drums and cymbals, where he talks to the dead and tells the family what the dead say to them.”
Paksu. Advisers for Inmingun raiders. He saw me and spat.
“Dae-wi, this eel, this pig's cheek. Choggye, clam. This mandu. I make for you.” It was like kuotieh, a potsticker. The merchant offered her a bottle. Song Sae blushed and passed it to me.
“Bacchus-B, ginseng extract, dae-wi Good for… husband love his wife.” She rubbed her fingertips together, as if she had touched something hot.
Officious blue-coated security police scanned roof-tops. I followed their gaze.
“Last summer, dae-wi, Northmen here.” She imitated an explosion. “Bghooo! They exploded the police station.”
“Do you think the Northmen will invade?” “The mudang says Northmen are already here, in the valley.”
“How can I tell a Northman from a South Korean?”
“Not easy. We are brothers. They speak with a different sound. Their hands and faces are very rough. Northmen are hunters and sad poets who live in the winds. We are farmers and musicians. We live in the sun. You will see in spring, the white-flower buckwheat fields, the soft streams, the bulrushes and foxtail weeds, taller than any Korean man.” She smiled for warmer days. “I love to see mushrooms growing on the roofs of old farmhouses, the moss in rain ponds, the songs of thrushes and starlings, the flights of white egret.” She sighed.
“But Korea was always one country, since Tangun founded Korea. Until America and Russia cut us into two countries, which was so very sad.”
A hundred and thirty thousand Americans had paid the price for our thoughtlessly splitting Korea with the Soviet Union. We figured we were cutting a cake, but we had halved an interdependent society, separating northern industry from southern agriculture and dividing great clans with the DMZ, making both parts suffer and inviting poverty, terror, war and the threat of world war. “We didn't know,” I said. “We thought Korea was a little place, where dividing the country wouldn't matter.”
She nodded. “Yes, dae-wi, you are right. I hear your words. The harm did not come from the heart. You think you are American.”
“I am.”
Song Sae looked into my eyes. “You are loyal to America. But a Chinese firstborn son can only be what he already is.”
We were at the taxi stand, not far from the Casey gate.
“Goodbye, dae-wi. I will wait. Remember that the wang mansin too waits. It would be rude to be late, and you must see her today.” She touched my face with the soft palms of her broken hands, her eyes lingering on my face with an unreadable look.
As she walked through the crowd, some of the girls ran after her and villagers bowed. The boys gathered around me, staring, chattering, feeling my arms and pulling on my fingers.
A drum. The paksu was coming and the children ran to him. At the end of the street was a Korean man in his thirties, about five-nine with short military hair, wearing an old green coat. He saw me looking at him and disappeared into the crowd.
22
UNCOMMON DECEITS
The flagpole outside the SJA office was at half-mast, but the SJA office seemed upbeat in the wake of Nagol's death. The door draft hit Muldoon, the big Howdy Doody sentry. He saw my IG brass, tried to stand and fell out of his chair. I helped him up. Typing stopped and I took jeep keys from the vehicle control board.
“Put on your field jacket.” I gave him his crutches.
“Yeah—I mean, yessir!” he croaked. I held the door and he crutched out. Snow swirled. His freckles turned green: the dumb gook janitor, the guy he had tried to thump in the Vegas who had destroyed his knee, and today's IG, were all the same man.
“Aw, crap!” he squawked, grimacing, waiting for the blow.
“Specialist Muldoon, Koreans are not your servants. Never call anyone ‘slicky boy’ again. Get your own Java. Get in.”
I drove to Wizard Q. Muldoon's traumatized Adam's apple bobbed as he tried to swallow dry spit. “Who's acting deputy now?”
“Ain't got one, sir. Hard ta replace ole Count Dracula.”
“How long you been in-country?”
“Sir, I'm a Double-Digit Midget, down to ten days and a wake-up. Not like some officers, here till hell makes ice. DEROS”—Date Estimated Return Overseas—“to Bliss, Texas.” He smiled like the boy he was. He coughed painfully. “Sir, I'm short as a bug dick.”
“Why the sidearm?”
“Sir, we got bo-coo cash. SOP is sidearms. Oink, oink.”
“Remember Captain Buford, the IG who came in last week?”
“Yessir. The officer got toasted in the jeep.” I parked. “You know, you're not a fighter. You ought to give up bullying.”
He spoke quietly. “Sir, my fightin’ days are over.” “Muldoon, who arranged our Vegas welcome party?” He gulped painfully. “Count Dracula and Willoughby.” I made the note. “How you likee Java, boss-man?”
Muldoon blushed. I winked at him and helped him out.
The guard looked up, stiffened, and picked up the phone. He punched the intercom button. “Sir, visitor…. Yes, sir, it's him. With Muldoon.” He hung up and stood, smoothing his fatigue blouse.
“Coffee, sir?” He smiled unhappily. I shook my head, helped Muldoon sit, and got him a cup of Java. I removed my field jacket and sat under a poster of the television M**S*H cast; pretending to study a new magazine called People. The guard straightened his desk. Muldoon stared at his Java. I thought about the Wizard's map.
Prosecutors rely on fair courts and good hands. I was in a crooked court facing a stacked deck. I had one ace: McCrail.
And playing it would jeopardize the sergeant major and his long campaign to free old comrades. But McCrail was hard to kill, and the Wizard seemed a cheat but not a murderer. Since I did not know Nagol's prior influence on the Wizard, I could not calculate the effect of his death. I sensed an improvement.
The intercom buzzer sounded. “Send him in.” I passed the fountain. It looked very clean. Now to face an elder.
Giving this man gum would probably not help.
“Sit,” said the Wizard, the dentist to the patient. I closed the door, looking at the covered map on its back. He glanced up from his big Bible. I hoped the girl wasn't behind the desk. She was. He saw me notice her. I did not sit.
“Captain, we both have suffered losses. Thomas Nagol fell victim to the vanity of my anger.” His eyes narrowed. “I have lost a good friend. And I am sorry about Captain Buford.”
Yesterday, I had played my role. Subtlety had its uses. “Colonel, forensics indicate Buford did not die in the jeep. So TIG salutes you for not killing him, since Jimmy can wear out his welcome with some people. Usually suspects. We'll take him back and save you his ration bill. Hand him over. Please.”
The Wizard closed the heavy, gold-leaf Bible with manicured pink hands. He found dust on his desk and brushed it off.
“Captain, your friend is dead.”
“Wrong,” I intoned like an Academy formation buzzer. “You wasted a pig, a fake death cert, and a jeep in a bogus crash. No human remains. No ROK doc, no 57F cremation, no dead man in a jar, no accident. Just bacon, beach sand, and a plant urn.
“It's a no-brainer. Give me Buford. That's the offer. You know how it works. The longer you wait, the worse it gets.”
“Are you a man of God, Captain Kan?” “Irrelevant. The probative inquiry is: Are you a man of the law?”
“I obey God's commandments. I see your confusion between my sins and yours. Pray with me for your friend's soul?”
I wanted to break his desk and tell him to stop making winter flatus. “You waste time. Invite Buford and we'll pray together.”
The Wizard bowed. “‘The Lord is my shepherd,’ ” he said in a voice that could stop war, using words from an abandoned past. “‘I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters; he restoreth my soul.’ ” I stopped breathing, the orange wall shading into deep, dark green.
The words pulled like claws, drawing me by my skin toward the Equator, the tropics of the Eleventh Parallel, into the hot, wet, verdant vortex of the Dong Nai and the three rivers. I smelled incense in the Presbyterian chapel in Chapei and heard my father sing songs to the kind, forgiving, mythical Christian God in Chinese river slang full of salt talk and fish anatomy.
LeBlanc's voice filled the room. I had said the Twenty-third Psalm when I faced death—three hundred iterations with organs tight and jaws crushing molars in that moment before enemy contact when I knew the exact dimensions of my fears and made sweat like a hot grapefruit in a press. I had used the old words until the Dong Nai, when they became empty sounds in a cold jungle.
I didn't believe in it anymore, but I disliked his use of the old words. My hand was wet and I opened my fist, looking for blood. She ran to me and the slugs tore her chest. Her small, weightless head was in my palm, the large, luminous eyes looking at me with love and hope, her lips moving soundlessly, her cries screeching in my mind. Go away, baby. Don't play here. Blood came from her mouth.
“Jesus,” I said. I was in Korea. In the Wizard's den.
“These words mean something to you,” he said.
I tried to blank out my past. I coughed. “Don't con me, Colonel. That was pig matter in the jeep.”
“Son, I am sorry, but your friend is dead. This is Korea. Perhaps you have listened to Brother Foss, the village idiot with a fool's cap. Forgive the crudity, but Major Foss is a brick shy of a full load and perhaps the worst policeman since Inspector Clouseau. He couldn't d
ifferentiate the fatal jeep wreck from his own dop kit. No doubt you found a dead pig, but Foss led you to the wrong wreck. His shop prepares accident reports the way it would make sausages.” He raised a hand. “Of course, it is not his fault. It is Asia.”
His words slowed me. It was like listening to BaBa or Carlos, with the volume up, without the honesty.
“You know, sir, you're right. That's why the CID report you threw at Major Nagol was a sapper's manual.” I waited.
“Captain Kan, we are at danger's door, at the threshold of godless communism, to do His work under these pitiful conditions. Here,” He pointed at the floor. “Where the rubber meets the road.”
I nodded. “With plastic explosives under the asphalt.”
He cleared his throat. “A tragedy that a brother Christian came to die a useless death.” He smiled. “By the way, Jackson Kan, who does my housegirl remind you of?”
I paused. “She reminds me of Major Dogface Nagol. But I think everyone who kisses your rear end bears a family resemblance.”
LeBlanc grimaced. He leaned forward. “She represents your worst pain, am I correct?”
I shrugged, my heart slugging. “I don't know her. But someone I do know just left Naktong Tower. Sergeant Major Patrick Treaty McCrail, free courtesy of the White House. McCrail remembers your lawyerly advice. His case has been briefed to TIG, the Chief of Staff, the President and TJAG”—The Judge Advocate General of the Army. “Soon, it'll be in the Washington Post” The Wizard seemed unperturbed.
“And by the way, yourself, Colonel, if McCrail gets the flu, I'll take you down for attempted One-Eighteen-Murder.” No blink of an eye, no quiver, no digital fidget, not a pop of sweat. No satisfying thunk of a steel shaft piercing a soft-centered bull's-eye, the defendant sagging in moral defeat in the witness chair. Instead, my eye flinched, the girl's fingers closing around my heart in a red-speckled green rain forest. I coughed.
