Tiger's Tail

by Gus Lee

  Two hundred thousand Inmingun lay within cannon shot. Behind them were eight hundred thousand more. I felt their weight, their great hunger to come south.

  I stand at the Z and look across the great wire andIwant them to come.

  Observation helicopters ran along mountaintops. The sun was bright and cold, reflecting silver flashes from radar antennae. The mudang spoke as the winds whipped us. Song Sae shivered, smiling at her spirit mother as she spoke to the winds, as if we were all participants in a tea party where cats and playing cards might talk back and we would all dance the hokey-pokey. She pointed toward Casey, hidden between the third and fourth snow-capped ridges.

  “Mudang says she stood here and knew you were coming, months ago. To the west, white tiger direction, is evil. It is in your camp. Very dangerous. Dark gods deep into Buddhist hell.

  “She says geomantic forces will make something happen in three days, when Ox Year dies and the new year is born.

  “The horoscope is full of death.” The wind howled and my temperature was stripped. “The confluence of these forces is so terrible that it is like fire come upon the earth.”

  The mudang screamed to the wind, making my hair stand.

  “She asks the wind to change the moon. It cannot. She faces the four winds. All she sees is flames on snow.”

  The shaman stood on rocks and held my face in small, cold, rugged hands, weeping. She spoke, her emotions bombarding me, making my cold skin crawl, her eyes too dark, too intense, her passions scorching my cold mind. I tried to frown and could not.

  “She says violence has a way with you. To change your in-yon, your fate, you must ask your true question.”

  Gobbledegook. The howling wind cuffed my ear. Pine needles came like hail. Her incandescent eyes and high, palsied voice stirred deep, boyish fears of wupo, witches.

  “She says a Chinese man who comes to work white man's deals must pay. He must know the cost will be in blood.

  “You are a tiger on a lake, your stripes not making you safe, but unsafe. You must be prepared. You have injuries. More are coming. You must be strong. Not in body. In heart.”

  The mudang spoke gruffly in the wind.

  “She says twelve men come to her for medicine. Twelve is a good Chinese number, a bad number for us. We like odd numbers.

  “They have cast their kung-hap, geomantic futures, their eight characters and sixty chances. All signs cross on the lunar new year, in three days, when a bad year will be born.”

  Twelve GIs with Korean blood had cast their fates. The fates had told them to act on the lunar New Year. Chinese Hsien Nin, Vietnamese Tet, the traditional date for birthdays, for rebirth.

  “She asks, what year comes with the new moon?”

  “Tiger,” I said. The year of change, of bold steps. To Mrs. Fan, a bad year, a year for war, the year the Japanese invaded. My year, the year of my name. A year for soldiers.

  In Asian parlance, America was the Tiger. So it was my American year, unified in pledges and the alignment of stars.

  The last Tiger had been 1962, America's final blessed and innocent year, when Kennedy's hair seemed long and he was loved in Europe, when idealism outweighed money and “assassination” was almost a foreign word in the American dictionary. The Tiger Year before it was 1950, when the Inmingun had invaded South Korea and set the peninsula aflame in a war that had not yet ended.

  We returned to the warmth of the villa and sat on the sea of pillows. Jae-woo served hot tea. I held the comforting warm stone cup in both hands. “What will these men do?”

  Song Sae translated. “She does not know. They have a terrible disease such as she has never seen by any medicinal mudang. It is hungry and eats skin, hair, organs and inner ko, what you call inner spirit, chi. It is as if they have been in spiritual fire.”

  I asked her to describe the symptoms. I wrote them down. They sounded like cancer, a universal and far from exotic disease.

  “Mudang wishes to tell you a story.” My watch itched.

  “It will reveal a truth. The truth will alarm you, but you must be Confucian, not Western, in understanding it. You must use your father's judgment and your inner heart. After hearing this story, you cannot call your police.

  “You cannot cause questioning or arrests of her patients. Dae-wi, the wang mansin does not have to tell this story.

  “You have been trained by the foreign long-nosed people to value power. Your father trained you to honor your duty, to be a man of chinjol—benevolence. The wang mansin says because you do not humble yourself to God, she wonders will you bend down to her, an old and physically weak woman?”

  Song Sae's eyes burned into me. Prosecutors understand conditional disclosures. I wanted to question the twelve men; my guts told me her story was worth more. “I will.”

  Song Sae listened as the wang mansin told her story. Madame Chae's hands depicted mountains, a fierce, ter-rifying animal, a river, many men, fighting, loss, dismay, surprise. It took only a few minutes before she spread her hands. Finis.

  Song Sae arched, her chest filling with air, a trumpeter sitting on first note.

  “When Heaven broke from Earth, when Tangun, the founder of Korea, was young, a tiger came down Mount Sohak to a village divided by a stream. The tiger ate farmers who came to the water. People suffered and children cried at night.

  “The farmers on one stream bank gave the tiger food to befriend it. But food only made it stronger, bolder, hungrier.

  “The farmers on the other bank sent a hunting party which attacked the great tiger with pitchforks.” She paused. “Wounded, the tiger killed most of the hunters and destroyed that half of the village, making everyone poorer than ever before.”

  This was not the ancient proverb of brave men pulling the tiger's tail, a story of pluck and courage. It was a Pyongyang Communist fairy tale. Kim II Sung was the great paksu of Korea. I wondered if southern mudang answered to him.

  I wanted to trust her. Just like Jimmy would. No—I wanted to trust her more.

  “Dae-wi, thirteen farmers survived the tiger's attack. They tried a new plan, to torment it—to keep it from sleeping—to make it leave. They pledged like Chinese brothers, promising their lives against the big, angry cat.

  “At night, one farmer pulled the tiger's tail, awakening it. The tiger roared and ate the farmer. Now twelve remained. The next night, another pulled the tail. Each morning, the tiger was slower and more confused. Even so, it always managed to kill its tormentor.

  “By New Year, only one Tiger Tail man remained. The tired tiger had won. But the survivor had made a pledge. He had to try.

  “On New Year's morning, the tiger was gone. So were all thirteen of the Tiger Tails who had taken the pledge.”

  Song Sae bowed to Madame Chae. Both women looked at me.

  The tiger was America. The stream that divided the village was the waters of the Imjin and the wire and minefields of the DMZ. The village half that had pulled the tiger's tail was called the People's Democratic Republic of North Korea. The village half that fed the tiger was the ROK, the Republic of Korea.

  Thirteen men had pledged like brothers to pull the tiger's tail. Not to kill it, since this was impossible, but to torment and confuse it, and drive it from their home.

  “If these men are North Korean, and twelve is an unlucky number here, why are there an unlucky twelve patients?”

  She said, “Mudang does not say they are Northmen. She says the kung-hap does not change. Twelve will act in three days. One died two months ago. There were thirteen.”

  I looked at her. “Why did she tell me this story?”

  Song Sae smiled, a little sadly. “She is a storyteller.”

  Three days. I wondered at a connection between the Wizard's desperate kidnapping of an IG and this worri-some fable.

  These men might be Inmingun. Whatever they were, they planned an action seventy-two hours from now, and I had promised that they would not be questioned or arrested. Casey could not be alerted to a possible
terrorist attack. I was to use Confucius, BaBa's brains and my inner heart in an unproven spiritual recipe against the unknown and the unknowable.

  Today was Friday, 18 January. The lunar New Year was Monday, 21 January. I had committed this day to the rescue of Jimmy, leaving two days to arrest the Wizard, analyze his map, and protect Camp Casey with my hands tied behind me.

  And something compelling and irreversible had made the Wizard take Jimmy.

  Too much to accomplish, too many unknowns, not enough resources and time running like the sea into a broken hull.

  Jimmy's life now had the weight of spit in the wind.

  BaBa's voice. Hu-chin, work. One bucket at a time, fast as you can, hard as you can. You are syau, but you are firstborn and must work like a man. You have luck. Help us find the current that will take us from this place.

  See here, you must show little Hu-hau and Hu-chien what work is. Work with me. Do not give in!

  I stood and bowed to the women. “Kamsahamneeda.”

  Song Sae bowed: “Komabsumnida chonmaneyo,” she said regally. Madame Chae stared without expression. I began to leave.

  The wu spoke. I stopped as Song Sae translated.

  “She says you will remember her old-lady, wind-beaten face, marked so clearly by Chinese winds. And, you will remember her old voice.” The wu pointed at me.

  “Yes. I thought she might say that.”

  27

  SOUTHSIDE

  I scanned the line of tabang, teahouses, bordering the far side of the wide, empty street and the first of the Japanese warehouses. It seemed more seedy than foreboding.

  I was going to get Jimmy. I cast away the thought: ji hui. I looked at the men who would cover my crossing.

  Men loitered at the shops, lacking the fortitude to cross, harried by begging street orphans. Street kids pan-handled for money and got none. One worker cuffed a persistent boy.

  I knocked on the window and pointed at him: you're busted. The man spat angrily and left, his in-sam, harmony, disturbed.

  The warehouses were dingy and the snow a crystalline white, the color of Chinese mourning. It was ch'ing ming, the shining bright day of reporting to ancestors.

  I remembered asking Cara to join me. She had put on a white dress, fixed her hair, and helped my hands while I interfered with her work. Later, we strolled the western walkway of the Golden Gate Bridge, selfishly taking deep draughts of clean sea air on a day for ancestors.

  The bridge connected the City to the Marin headlands and was the bright orange border between East and West. BaBa loved this bridge, and had brought me here until his arthritis stopped him.

  “This is how I do it. I face China and the river, my back to America. It's my job to report to the old graves at Chingshan along the Yangtze River. I report on the family's health, and our memory of them.” The winds fluffed her long, dark red, sunlit hair as if it were a hap-pily broken sail.

  Silent while I made my report, she asked questions, trying to touch, to confirm, her own old-country roots.

  I looked at her, full of happy and sad. I was the first-born son, replete with excessive rights and the duty to make sons, but made highly imperfect from an encounter with unforeseen evils. Now she had come, bringing me sheer pleasure to replace nagging anxieties, de-romancing my solitude.

  “Jackson,” she said softly. “How did your brothers die?”

  I shook my head. “It's not right to talk about it.”

  She held my face and kissed my nose and my eyes, the winds from Asia whipping us, the bridge vibrating with fast Western cars. She stopped. “Can we always be in love?”

  “I will be. It may not be that important.”

  “Oh, God, yes it is. I know people who are together, but not in love.” She kissed me deeply. “I've been in love, each time thinking, this was it. I need this to last forever.” She bit my neck. “Want to know how you can keep me?”

  “No, thank you.” I laughed. “Of course. Tell me.”

  “Always talk to me. And never leave. And, naturally, never touch another woman. For the rest of your life. I know you can do it.” Her eyes teared. The wind. “I hope I can.”

  Magrip strode down the alley, pursued by orphans. He entered the leather shop. The shop proprietor, already worried about me, coughed nervously, seeing too many bad luck signs.

  “Give me the sit,” said Magrip, the old company commander. Part of his anger was not being in charge.

  “Shaman says Jimmy's in that first big building. When customers start crossing, I'll go with them. What's in there?”

  Magrip squinted. “A whorehouse. They're all whorehouses and shooting galleries. So much bong weed over there you get a contact high.” He pointed.

  “Enter through the teahouses in front.” He pointed again. “Hookers at tables. Customers pick ‘em, pay the pimp, go out the back door up iron stairs to the rooms. Pimps are the only security. There are rumors of guns.” A calm voice.

  “Jimmy,” I said, “might be on the top floor of that building.”

  He nodded and studied the top of the warehouse. “Kan, Levine called. She ran into some crap—McCrail won't leave Naktong without you. Bulls couldn't get him out of his cell. He thinks Levine works for the Wizard. Now they got her. Good move, sending a woman to a Korean pen.”

  “She's okay. I'm not going to sweat her more than I sweat you. And I worry about you all the time.”

  He smiled. “Believe that shaman? We rely on her over there?” He hitched his head toward the large, dark warehouses.

  “She knew a lot.” I told him of the men who would pull the tiger's tail, about the New Year and her condition precedent to telling me the story. He squinted at me. “Jesus, that's squirrelly.”

  I hit him on his shoulder. “I go down, you're in charge.”

  “To do what with that gaggle of Korean spooks?”

  “Magrip, if I knew that, I wouldn't be cold in Korea, waiting for Johns to give me cover to cross a street.”

  He nodded, frowning as orphans saw us in the window and stared. “Someone oughta get them gloves.”

  “The orphanage director says they need fathers.”

  “Don't hold your breath. Men are becoming crap-out artists.” Johns began to cross the street.

  “Magrip, I'll signal. Give me ten minutes. If I don't signal, get Min and send him in to find out what happened.”

  “You don't show, I'm coming after you.”

  “You'll follow orders. They snatch me, they'll be waiting for you and then we'll have dumped the mission. Point man goes down, slack man tries something else. Don't go down the same hole.”

  He nodded. “You buy it, who do I call?”

  “My parents.” I took his wrist and wrote on it Cara's phone number. “And her. I couldn't tell her I came here. The fable she got is that I went to Walter Reed for back surgery.”

  “Yeah, that's what Dirtbag Murray told Carole. For my back surgery.” He shook his head. “If anything happens to Levine, I guess I call her mom and ex-husband.”

  Ex-husband. “Yeah,” said Magrip, “the poor bastard.”

  I offered my hand. Black troops did daps and whites did high fives, which used to be black. Magrip took my wrist and pen and wrote a phone number on it. “Carole. Goddamn, I'll be pissed if I get killed.” He slapped my palm. “Make it happen.”

  I took the pen back. “Be sure to write.” I crossed and entered the tabang, the weight of the Browning a comforting ballast.

  The teahouse was a cold slab with worn tables and bundled women sitting in hobble-legged wicker chairs, the walls postered with lewd and fading Asian women expressing unimaginable thoughts to cold camera lenses, the air thick with smoke.

  Three women. They sat up, snuffing Virginia Slims in tin ashtrays. “Yobo saeo”: Hi; literally, “you listen.” They removed caps, flaunting hair before they saw I was not a customer, swearing as they fought tresses back into caps.

  A man limped through a tinkling yellow beaded curtain. Under my height, six-one, ga
unt in a bulky red fiberfill jacket, old jeans and faded, vented jungle boots. His eyes were tired in a malarial sort of way. He was American, black and no longer young after pitching his adolescence into an Asian bog. He saw that I had not picked a dance partner.

  “Igosee peeryohamneeka?” he asked.

  “I don't speak Korean. My name's Kan.”

  He backed up, tired eyes sparking, matches in the night. “You the heat? Army fuzz? Whatchu want, Jack?” he barked harshly.

  Lucky guess on the name. “I'm looking for a friend who might be in one of these hooches, dinky-dau sick and in trouble. If you have it, I'll take a Diet Pepsi.”

  He snorted. “‘Diet Pepsi’? What the hell's that? An’ you mean dien cai dau, right? What kinda dude come Southside lookin’ for frien's? Mistah, this be Hanguk country. No white boys an’ no frien's a white boys. You a big, rich damn fool, wearin’ too much scratch to be dippin’ wick in a numbah-ten BJ Alley girl. And I know what you Ornamentals think a black men. So don't crap me, Fu Manchu Jack.”

  “I'm not looking for a girl. I'm an old Squawking Duck rifleman. I need some help.” He was Army and he was Vietnam, the imprint of the bush rising from his personality, his sharp, quarrelsome irritability clouding like steam from a generator, the proliferation of Asian faces and scents prohibiting recovery.

  He kept narrowed eyes on me as he reached into his jeans and pulled out a Kool from one pocket. I lit it for him.

  He exhaled. “Hunnerd-an'-first, Screamin’ Eagles.” He laughed. ” Highlands an’ the Iron Triangle. Tunnel rats and the three rivers? Yeah, you got down with the brothers.

  “Me, I was wif the Psychedelic Cookie, Third Brigade, Tan Am, fought for Saigon during Tet.” The Ninth Infantry, with its cream-cookie insignia. “I was just a kid. Man, it sucked, big-time.

  “Got my black butt half blowed away. Was easin’ my pain in the Evac.” He shook his head. “Shee-it! The Man got me on a Mary Jane use rap and sent my butt here to Ko-rea, Republic-of. Hey, I ruck up for an Imjin gang Z patrol an’ the damn Inmingun shot me! Can you believe that shit?” He took a drag and shrugged. “Got fifty percent disability.” He smiled with his teeth. “Guess I found me a home in the Far fuckin’ East.”