by Gus Lee
At the shower, I undressed and saw Cara, her brilliant, beautiful green eyes, the wonderful fluted space on her upper lip, the flood of her impetuous hair, the curve of her neck, the taste of her, her small, subvocal sounds, her soft, husky voice in the moonlight of her room. In the shower I couldn't remember the scent of peach, but the sense of her wouldn't leave me. I imagined her in the shower with me and closed my eyes. Cara, I love you. I forced myself to say the words aloud, to make them real.
“Aiguuuu!” Someone slipped and fell with a loud crash and painful groans. A cough. “Dae-wi, what mudang say?”
“Corporal, she said Captain Buford was in Southside.”
“Dae-wi, that all she say?”
“Basically. Will they recognize me at Suwon?”
“Hope no, dae-wi. I changee. No glasses. Now I sergeant.”
“Congratulations. I hope they don't catch you”
Levine was breathing behind her sheet, on the edge of a snore. I had a sense of how much energy it took for her to function in the male-dominated Army. Like being a cat in a cageless dog kennel while raw meat was constantly tossed onto the floor.
Min peeked at the exotic Western woman. Then he said goodnight. Time to try Cara again. I reached for the phone and it rang. I picked it up. “Yes,” I said.
“Hello,” came a lovely, distant voice. “Who is this?”
Our number and location were secure. “Wrong number.”
“Jackson Kan? This is Carole Magrip. I kept after Colonel Murray until he gave me the number. You're Hu and he's Justicio. Did I say the secret password to get into the little boys’ treehouse? I also have a secret decoder ring with a lot of Frosted Flakes sugar on it.”
I chuckled. “In that case, let me get him.”
“No. First, tell me if he's been… angry.”
“Uh, no. Not exactly. He's fine. Cheerful. Like Goldie Hawn.”
A laugh. “You're a liar and I can't trust you either.” I awoke Magrip, saying it was his wife before he bit me.
“Doll, is it you?” His voice sounded young and open.
I left. When Magrip left the Q, I went back in and dialed the access codes for Cara. It was three in the morning yesterday in Mill Valley. Cara, I love you. My heart pounded.
Magrip was sitting in the snow, his head in both hands.
The phone rang: not home or not answering. My stomach turned sour. I imagined her with other men. It was an evil thought and it was then I remembered the Wizard had sent Nagol to attack McCrail's wife.
I called Carlos and asked him to put security on our families, including a Cara Milano on Morning Sun Drive in Mill Valley.
Dawn, Saturday, 19 January. Magrip and I ran at reveille and watched Levine stride away. Temperatures rose and birds sang as smoke rose from battalion mess halls all over camp.
Casey resembled a World War II Army post, only older. I considered breakfast until I thought of driving with Corporal Min and remembered the stench of Naktong.
Min drove up in a four-door GM sedan. I wasn't worried about getting McCrail out of Naktong; I worried about fitting him inside the car. “How did you sleep, Corporal?”
“Most very good, dae-wi, kamsahamneeda. And you, sir?”
“Fine.” I had been on the phone for six hours until I was patched to the CID agents guarding each of our families. Cara, I was told, was now safely in her down-town office.
The jerking motion of the sedan put me to sleep. The girl ran to me. I tried to scream.
“Dae-wi, I am sorry, you believe in Heaven?”
Screw pines, a rural village. Suwon. He had asked me about Heaven. Did I believe. I looked at the sky. “No. You?”
“Dae-wi, I think Heaven and Hell here, in life.”
I would agree; BaBa would not. “You married, Corporal?”
“Neh—good wife, two children, two girl.”
“You still want a son?”
“Of course, dae-wi. I am a man.”
“Slow down, Corporal. No hitting kiosks.”
Min awkwardly slowed. The guard saluted. No guns. I gave him the ROK Ministry of Defense telex, signed by the ROK judge advocate general. It gave us Curadess by executive order.
We entered prison administration. I signed in and was fingerprinted and photographed. We were led down a long gray hallway, footfalls echoing. At dungeonlike doors, we waited.
Levine had come here yesterday to cause a riot and be evicted. Metal-tapped shoes echoed down the hall. The overweight, pockmarked guards captain who had frisked me on our first visit. With him, two bulls. At attention, he bowed. I bowed back.
He spoke in Korean.
“This man, dae-wi” said Min, “Honcho Deputy Numbah-Two Warden So. He say Curadess no leave cell without you. Sorry. He must frisk.” Min, without glasses, squinted badly.
Assistant Deputy Warden So began at my ankles and moved up. He continued more thoroughly, touching the distinctive CIB as he had on my first visit. But no sunglasses. I breathed slowly and shallowly.
He asked questions harshly of Min, who answered. Again the captain studied me, his tongue pressing, searching his cheek.
The great door swung open and the shocking stink of Naktong overwhelmed us. Metal cups hit random rappa-diddles while the cons stared at the Chinese man in an American uniform. Inmates yelled and cried at me, over and against each other in cacophonies of discordant screams. After false efforts, the prisoners found the four-part tribal beat.
Most of the screams were Korean. Some, I think, were Turkish; a few were American. “Hey, Cap'n!” came a voice. “You came for me!” cried another. “Goddamn, you fuckin’ officer mothafucka, get me outa here!”
I walked down the stairs in the clanging rhythm, stopping where the Aussie had asked if I spoke English.
His cell was empty. “What happened to him?” I asked.
“Molla-yof” said the guard. I don't understand.
“WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?” I shouted down.
“They shot the asshole!” came the answer.
Four guards led me onto the Chinese-unlucky fourth level down. The smells were worse. In the eighteenth cell stood a mountain of a man, huge mitts clutching the gray steel rods that had set the stage for seven years of his exposure to the arts, sunsets, sunrises, sunbathing, moon gazing and star watching.
“Hey, Captain. Damn, you look good.”
“Morning, Sergeant Major. Sorry for the delay.”
He giggled. “Hell, sir, you're way early for a lawyer.”
The guards thunked him on the chest with batons. Unblinking, he backed up. They shouted. He turned his back at the rear of the tiny cell, hands locked behind his great white head.
A foul grate was his toilet, a reed mat his bed. His bean pillow was the size of a softball. Bright green cockroaches with hairy, scrabbling legs ran floor sprints. A thick-bodied brown spider dominated a ceiling corner, the web sagging with corpulent black bugs. I had disliked spiders until I learned to hate water snakes. I never had nightmares about spiders.
“Nice place.”
The guards secured the cell and frisked McCrail.
“Just got everything Airborne and now I gotta leave.” He looked at me, trying to be casual. “I am leaving. Right, sir?”
“Roger that, Sergeant Major.” He made a grimace of faith. The bulls bowed; I returned it. A guard lifted his nightstick behind McCrail's head—he was simply being prepared. We walked down the floor and up the stairs, a march of free men in life's absolute counterpart to Fat City.
McCrail walked well without leg irons, rather like a magnificent ocean liner plowing heavy seas. He sported an enormous crap-eating grin, talking to himself. “Hey,” he said amidst the din, “I can walk and talk and I'm gonna see the sun.”
“It's Korea in winter out there,” I said softly.
He blew out air. “It's okay, lad. Works for me.”
The inmates saw one of their own being escorted out. The drumming became a murderous, crushing din as cups were thrown and men barked and wai
led and threw their bodies at the bars, the roar of scraped, fading throats and imprisoned lungs, clanging steel and shaking bars, their lower-primate-like antics threatening to sweep my mind into the wash of their erupting emotions. They thought McCrail was going to be shot.
The higher we went, the more obvious became his doubts. He began panting, not from effort but from fear. “‘Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee’… Damn chink joke on a fat foreign devil's old mind. We get to the top, apesTl change their minds, you wait and see…. ‘Blessed art thou among women
The door closed behind us, sealing off the banging cups and screams, the contrasting silence causing a shudder. McCrail exhaled. I rubbed my nose. He sucked great, shuddering gusts of clean air as he looked furtively about him.
“Holy Mary Mother of God,” he said. “God's sweet air.”
The door opened again and McCrail flinched as pandemonium flooded our ears. He bared his teeth as fear took his old, glacial face. A guard emerged. The door closed. He shook.
“Shit! That made me pucker! Damned Naktong Blues. Won't miss it. No, sir. Not ever. Not till pigs fly and sing.”
They led him away. It was an hour before McCrail returned. He and his utilities had been spray-painted dull black. He bled from a skull cut. He did a model's delicate pirouette, a thick-bodied hippo turning for the crowd. “Clothes don't fit. That good chow. Bulls spray-painted me. Asked ‘em to take the utilities off, but they're stupid little monkeys. Sprayed me in the wind. How do I look, lad? Like the regiment's squared away for parade and inspection?” He put his head back and roared, scaring the guards. He popped knuckles, the sound of breaking glass. The prison staff gawked.
“Look at ‘em,” said McCrail. “Apes don't know whether to shit or go blind.”
“I vote for blind.” I introduced McCrail to Min. McCrail shook hands with a sergeant major's dignity. He smelled of paint and a dying man's outhouse. I draped my overcoat over his shoulders. “Let's get you in the wind.”
We walked down the long gray hall. A voice. Min turned around, grimacing. He stopped. So did I. “Sergeant Major, stand fast.”
“Bleeding rectal crap,” he muttered. Min, ever studious, tried to record it. The portly guards captain clicked down the hall with five guards. They were carrying body chains and military aid bandages.
The captain kept his eyes on me and spoke to Min.
“Deputy Numbah-Two Assistant Warden So want wrap your face, dae-wi. I say no can do. He say yes can do. I thinkee he do.”
I shook my head. “No man touches my face.”
The warden suspected I was the ROK nakhasan pudae major who had come to spit at Cabra Curadess's fat foreign body. Then Levine had come. Two foreigners in Naktong, and now he had someone to blame.
Warden So flashed all his teeth. He barked an order and the guards clamped irons on McCrail's neck and wrists. They tried to pull him back toward the tower. McCrail looked at me, his face reddening, his great legs planted on a slick floor, unmoving as they choked him.
“I'm sorry. Please wrap my face. Corporal, whisper to the warden that if he wraps my face, his men will see that I tricked him. How can I fix this?”
Min tried to whisper to Warden So, who rudely pushed Min away as he wound the bandage about me with shaking hands. So's eyes bulged, forehead veins swelled. It was not the first time I thought that men prone to stress should avoid prison work.
Warden So studied me. “Sssss!” The ruse confirmed. His eyes watered in the fury of his glare, teeth bared, neck muscles straining, face turning red. Naktong was Korean land, where no American officials could come. During his watch, I had busted the rule and sullied his fine and pretty prison with my illegitimate foreign presence. My heart sank for McCrail.
The pressure built up until So exploded words, spittle and globally recognizable oaths. He shook his finger, his arm, his body at me, his mouth curled, then repeated it all with Min.
I had to ride the warden's anger and see what happened. I hoped he remembered who had fooled him. It hadn't been McCrail, unless they had figured out he wasn't Curadess. Warden So screamed orders and then screamed at Min. I stood in front of McCrail.
A guard approached, baton cocked, aiming at me. He trembled in fear of the warden and in terror of me. Korean guards do not strike Chinese superiors. I took air.
“Kwenchanayo,” I said. It's okay. Hit me and we'll go. I'll take it, but if you go for my head, I'm breaking your stick, and we'll have to take it from there. Min whispering.
So shouted and the guard jerked, and drew back his arm. Min still whispered, but it was too late—the warden had lost face. I spread my feet and readied for the swing.
There was a silence that made the guard hesitate. Warden So spoke. The guard sighed and lowered his stick, sweating freely, chest heaving in sweet relief. He bowed to me and backed far away.
I was suddenly tired, but McCrail was getting out.
A red-faced Warden So bowed stiffly to Min. His face down, he snapped gutturally. The guards unshackled McCrail, bowed to him, to Min, and to the warden, and left, their heels echoing down the hallway. McCrail's face said: What the hell was that about?
I wondered too.
“We go now, dae-wi” said Corporal Min.
“Don't have to say that twice,” I breathed.
“As you were, sir,” growled McCrail. He cleared all his pipes, taking a long time, and hawked ferociously on the floor, his spit a living thing from the nightmares of children. Warden So looked at his floor, curling his lips and showing teeth.
McCrail smiled grandly. Maurice Chevalier. “Now we go.”
We stood on the snowy steps, looking out. It was freezing and he wore short-sleeved, paint-coated cotton casual prisoner's utilities with my coat draped on his shoulders. I watched him suck ia fresh air for a few minutes.
“God is great, laddie,” he said in a breaking voice. “SWEET JESUS, I'M OUT! GOD BLESS ME AND MY FOUL DAMNED MOUTH!”
He belted me and knocked me off the steps into a snowdrift.
“Christ's blood, laddie!” He jumped down, hauled me up and brushed me off. “Oh, lad, I'm sorry. With me freedom and the bleedin’ commotion o’ that arsehole Korean hoosegow, I'm besides meself. I'm sorry, I am.”
I tried to catch my breath. His brogue fell thickly, his chest swollen with the arousal of breathing free air, his personality shifting as he spun in the thick snow, looking at a world without walls. He threw snowballs at parked jeeps. He had popped his lid. He giggled like a girl, his great shoulders jitterbugging, and I laughed.
“Ahck, is that me limousine?” He howled. “An American car! Screw me blue. I'm in heaven and I'll never fit.”
He looked at the sedan as if it were a carnivore and he a morsel with a parsley sprig. “Can't be gettin’ in there, lad. You'll have to grease me like a pig.”
A deuce-and-a-half truck roared into the lot, spraying slush. The bumper said “2X DISCOM” —Second Infantry Division Support Command, the chow truck for GI inmates. The driver braked and parked. McCrail moved toward the driver.
“Son,” he announced as if on parade, “I'm Sergeant Major P. McCrail. We'll be takin’ your vehicle for your reckless drivin’ and to give me a proper seat. Here's me captain. He has authority reachin’ to Sergeant Major of the Army Jack Woolridge himself, so you'd best be behavin’ and shuttin’ your yappin’ trap. Gimme your keys.” SGMA Woolridge was the top NCO in the U.S. Army in 1966, when the driver had been about ten years old.
The driver was no fool, but he was terrified by this painted, oversized, brogue-spouting monstrosity. He saw courts-martial, angry officers, yelling sergeants, grease-pit assignments, perpetual punitive crap details, and endless paperwork. He opened his mouth to protest.
“Uh-uh-uh-uh!” admonished McCrail, waving a sausagelike finger in the driver's red face. “Shut your doggie mouth.” With a hand the size of a football, McCrail took the man's keys. I dropped the bay gate and began unloading the boxes.
Prison staff retrieved t
hem. One signed the manifest.
“Aye. Now there's a good little soldier.”
“Listen, you big crazy loony, what in hell are—”
“Specialist,” I said, “we're taking your truck. Corporal Min will drive you back to Casey. I will leave the truck in the MP yard at the Casey main gate, tomorrow by retreat, the keys under the passenger floor mat. Now say that back.”
Staring pop-eyed at McCrail, he struggled to recite his instructions. I wrote a hand receipt for his vehicle on my notepad, tore it off, showed him my ID and the receipt: “2}/2-ton truck, 1 ea. 294,941 miles,/s/CPT Jackson H.C Kan, TIG.”
The driver read the receipt four or five times, perhaps liking some parts more than others. “Sir, no way can I take this. You—”
McCrail tapped him with a right hook to the temple. The specialist flopped, arms and legs out scarecrow-style. McCrail picked him up, flipped him in the sedan and closed the door.
“Sergeant Major, what if an IG saw you do that?”
McCrail hauled himself into the cab, shaking the truck and reminding me of the birth of cetacea, a process I had never witnessed, in reverse. Min was leaving.
“Stand fast, Corporal, what'd you say to Warden So?”
He coughed. “Dae-wi, I say you numbah-one honcho mi-guk saram, ‘Mexican too-muchee big-shot. Say your father honcho chingu to Honcho President Nixon. Warden hurt you, he die.”
“Wish I had thought of that.”
I remembered the spider, the shiny green roaches with the science-fiction legs, good for crawling on inmates at night.
“Ah, it isn't such a bad place,” said McCrail. He spat. “Tangyuan, Manchuria—now that's a bad place.”
32
A FINE SENTIMENT
I drove. McCrail stared silently at Seoul. Its skyline had undergone radical change in the seven years of his imprisonment in the not-so-bad place. More Western high-rises and Han River bridges, vast developments on the south side of the river, a million more vehicles and smog-belching Myung Jin buses, all of it making me think of Cara.
