Tiger's Tail

by Gus Lee

  “I'm checking you out of here,” I said. “We're going to need doctors up on Jungsan.”

  39

  INMINGUN

  Only a ROK Army lieutenant colonel in arctic white fatigues emerged from the tree line.

  He checked our IDs and looked disfavorably at Catalina and the head-bandaged Purvis. I asked questions.

  “Aniyo, dae-wi. Have not heard from Colonel Bin. But the Tiger Tails are at Jungsan. He order me to watch road for you.” He looked down the road. “Your men not come back?”

  “No.” With the Iron Mikes not yet alerted, it was a relief to know that the Inmingun were isolated on the mountain. “Sir, you sure all twelve are there?”

  “CAE-Hi, I very good at counting.”

  “Sir, you secure the base of this mountain?”

  “Aniyo, dae-wi. Wang mansin say no can do.” He hissed. “My troops, they Korean farmers. Fear her. When you go up the mountain, I go leave away. And no gun up there.”

  “I'll be unarmed.” The Browning was in the map box.

  He nodded. I strapped on the radio.

  It was ten and the Inmingun were already at Jungsan. There would be no pretrial conference with the mudang to insure the meeting would proceed under American control. A lawyer should never enter court with an unzipped fly; this was going in without pants.

  The sun glinted on the gold spires of the temple of Soyasan. The ridges ran like waves in an angry sea.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Purvis.

  “Smoke.”

  From the valley floor, in a distant, fog-obscured corner of south Tongducheon, streamed a thin pillar of red smoke, a harmless pop of military marker smoke. Then the red disappeared in a mushroom of blacks and browns and the air moved with the vibrating crump of explosives, rolling sequentially atop each other like a summer storm: no muttering or timber-splitting cracks of artillery but the sound of two thousand pounds of demolitions, simultaneously initiated, bursting the air.

  Dark winged birds took flight below as finches erupted from bushes. The deep vibrations shook the ground and knocked snow from trees. Dry smoke billowed from the carcass of the explosions, the radiated, insulted air, agitated by the alien wind, and deep, angry crackling thundered rumbling across the valleys.

  Purvis closed his opened mouth. “What the hell was that?”

  “Someone just remodeled Southside, using the military method.”

  I was sure it was McCrail. The sergeant major had found the Wizard's plastique. No invasion of North Korea today, Mr. Wizard.

  Catalina's small shoulders shook. Born in the Korean War.

  “It's not war. Just some explosions. Let's go.”

  We continued up the path, the wind whistling through the trees of the transplanted forest, the detonations echoing. Snow blew from the winged roof of the villa.

  I touched the brass bell to the stone shrine where Song Sae had prayed. I saw we could reach the backyard by climbing over bushes on the side. No shoes on the porch. We removed ours.

  I opened the door to the thump and crash of drums, flutes and high-note cymbals. It was the music of the wu at Dongting Lake, and I knew this was the tranceinducing music of the gut, the mudang'$ invitation to the dead to confer with her.

  “Bring shoes.” We removed hats and entered the incense and drumming. Good omens. On the sea of white pillows, below lanterns and amidst smoking incense and burning candles, sat the mudang in a ceremonial red-and-yellow robe, a queen of yin.

  Along the left wall, nine adolescent girls wearing bright, multicolored, sash-waisted traditional dresses, long hair piled above heavily pancaked faces, beat red change, hourglass drums. They drummed looking upward, inviting the spirits of the valley's dead with strong music, rich color, sanctified food and the signs of ancient purity.

  Along the right wall, nine more girls played brass cymbals and flutes in the four-part underbeat. There was no thinking in this music, only transportation.

  The wang mansin was using her tools to invite harmony. Her eyes were closed. She was humming a flat tune, again and again.

  Catalina stared at the girls. I looked for Inmingun. Purvis embraced it all, staring at the wang mansin, the great physician in the Valley of War, his silent partner in community medicine.

  I took off the radio and put it down with my shoes. She saw me. I bowed. “Anyahashameeka, Halmoni.”

  “Anyahashameeka, Kan dae-wi,” she said, a throaty Janis Joplin. The music dropped. She hummed. She opened her clouded, feverish eyes as she spoke.

  I looked at Catalina, who nodded and said, “The old lady says, ‘What's happenin'?’ to the doc and says, ‘Where's Moon kidaeT to you.”

  I told her. Catalina translated. The mudang shut her eyes, raised her chin and cried painfully into the high registers, the incense twisting like a small snake. She stopped and stood, panting, tears streaking her brown face.

  She spoke with great animation. Catalina listened, her mouth open, nodding. She blinked. “Oh, wow. She like knew bad shit was going to come down on her kidae”

  “Thanks.” This wasn't going to work. The mudang dried her eyes on flowing silk sleeves. I turned to face the noise at the door as the drumming faltered for a moment.

  Levine, in soiled fatigues and muddy socks, carrying her boots and looking as if she had been down a long road without sleep. They must have found the Iron Mikes. I looked at the silent radio and made introductions.

  “This is Captain Levine, Dr. Purvis and Miss Oh.” Catalina translated. The shaman nodded. Levine looked at me and barely shook her head. No joy. They had not found the Iron Mikes.

  Levine bowed to the wang mansin and greeted her. Purvis did the same. The wang mansin answered. Levine began translating. Catalina sighed loudly. “Groovy,” she said.

  “… Song Sae's karma,” said Levine, “is to know pain from men, but not to die because of them. Women and children are asked to bear the mistakes of men. She asks us to pray for Song Sae.”

  The mudang knelt, facedown. Purvis knelt on the pillows. Levine hesitated, then also knelt and prayed with her.

  “Spot me a hundred.” Levine opened an eye and gave me two fifties. I gave them to Catalina, quietly thanked her, and told her she could go. She stared at me and then at Levine at prayer. After a while, the shaman lifted her head and spoke.

  “She asks,” said Levine, amused, “if you fear little girls.”

  I looked into the shaman's eyes. I nodded. Levine cocked an eye, trying to understand. The mudang clapped her hands. The drumming hushed and the cymbals ended, the girls’ heavy breathing making the great room humid, the sound of children coming from the back. The girls, bright with perspiration, collapsed on the pillows. The mudang stood and gestured us to follow. She motioned to Purvis to stay in the room. He looked disappointed.

  We followed her toward the back and I read one of the sayings on the wall: “Tree prefers calm, wind does not care.”

  Catalina had not moved. “Please leave now,” I said to her as I picked up the radio and my shoes.

  “Be so cool to stay close with you,” she said.

  “Not here. It's not safe. Go.” We left Purvis and Catalina surrounded by panting, fallen girls in beautiful colored robes. We passed through an immense kitchen lined with garlicrich black iron woks on great wood stoves and a narrow hallway that smelled of Chinese rosewood and ginger.

  Levine whispered, “Couldn't find them. Signs of a closein firefight, shells, shrapnel. Blood trails in the snow. Too much for just wounds. The Mikes're E-and-E-ing”—evasion and escape. “They're off my map. Magrip knows what to do and has the talk codes for the Iron Mikes. I thought you might need me.”

  “I do.” I put on my shoes, and lifted the PRC-77. “Tell the shaman I'm going outside.” Levine spoke; the mudang nodded.

  I opened the back door to hear the high, excited chatter of a crowded schoolyard. I stepped quietly onto an open porch formed by the green-tiled curved roof and thick green dragon pillars to overlook a Japanese garden th
e size of a basketball court.

  I counted the Tiger Tails, distracted by little Asian girls who darted among beautiful trees and bonsai plants.

  Asians in U.S. fatigues were in two groups. One was in the garden, sipping tea and taking pills from paper wrappers. They were huge, quiet, skin-splotched, tired and profoundly serious. I saw point man, trail man, leader, listener.

  A second group had climbed the peak to watch the smoke from the Tongducheon explosions, pointing, arguing, debating.

  Older women in blue parkas poured odorous, medici-nal ginger tea for the men in a well-practiced routine.

  I counted twelve men, then recounted. I saw the Wizard's slave-daughter, Hoon Jae-woo, as she played tag with a horde of children. Half-bare ginkgos and snow-dusted Japanese evergreens crowded white stone paths and a bouldered wall with a broken section that led to the sheer cliff.

  Along the cliff were small white gravestones.

  The children's faces were internationally half-American.

  One of the men saw me and they all stood and separated, shooing children away. Their faces showed no reaction, but their feet were athletically spaced, bodies tactically intervaled. I felt their dismay at seeing an American officer on the eve of the lunar New Year.

  Jae-woo wore an Army field jacket and mismatched lime-green, thirdhand pants. She was lovely in happiness and ran to me, her movement making me sweat. I sensed echoes of guns, wet boots humping ancient green hills.

  Levine and the wang mansin moved onto the porch. The children saw the mudang and ran to her with excited cries, swarming, touching easily, happily looking for open hands like children in a beloved family, touching Levine, chattering and wondering at her. For many of them, she was the mysterious missing half from their complex anthropology—a Caucasian woman.

  Jae-woo stood a foot away from me, hands behind her back, torso slowly twisting in the hope of my goodwill, of my finding a clan interest in her. She gazed with innocent eyes.

  The garden was a cruel charade. There was too much danger to children. I couldn't smile. She misunderstood, and dropped her eyes, her face breaking in bitter disappointment.

  One Korean—the patrol leader descending the mountain—signaled, and the others returned to their tea and herbs. He moved warily. He was barrel-chested, with a neck like the trunk of a redwood and a splotched, boulderlike head. His posture said that this was his country, his mountain, his faith—not ours. Near him stood a boy with light skin, almond eyes and brown hair, who looked up as the man coughed deeply.

  He was in his early forties, looking like an Inmingun lieutenant colonel, outwardly calm while good cells fell to occult cancers, his thick, overly muscled body racing with carcinoma, steroids and the rich, organic che chub, medicines, of the wang mansin. He spat redly.

  The soft garden air was poisoned by hard tension.

  The mudang freed herself from the gathering of children. Small shoulders hunched, she glided across her garden with us and the children in her wake. She put a hand out to Levine and pulled her close, chatting with her. Levine, head lowered, nodded.

  The man who could be a senior officer from North Korea in an American private's uniform stood warily. The shaman said, “Chang Duk-kyo.” Levine spoke to him, introducing us.

  “Sir.” A stiff voice, a stiff salute.

  I returned it. His intensity reduced the sound of girls’ voices in the garden. We stood politely, each imagining the death of the other. I recognized the wang mansin‘s genius in bringing children to this meeting.

  The wind in the pines, blowing snow from branches, the blood pounding in ears with the invitation to kill each other. There was no doubt; he was the enemy.

  I felt his scorn for an Asian who had gone to the side of the big-nosed, running-dog imperialists. A large vein in his bald skull pulsed thickly like a blue worm avoiding a hook. Absent brows exposed large, bulging, bloodshot eyes as they ran across my face, asking: Do you want to die?

  I smiled and removed my overcoat to show him my TIG brass. It meant we were not Infantry to fight them, or military police to arrest them.

  “Please,” I said, indicating a picnic table. “Bring your medicine. I would like to talk to you.”

  He nodded solemnly at my English. It made me more interesting to him. I put down the radio and sat. He nodded and joined me.

  Chang sipped tea, pressing the powdered medications into his mouth with thick, reddened hands, roughened by a lifetime of Korean winters, swallowing the concoction with obvious discomfort.

  I regarded him as the Asian elder and made no eye contact. “A beautiful day in a beautiful country. I am honored by your company,” I said. Levine translated.

  “Neh.” A gruff voice, accustomed to giving orders.

  “A day to live with in-sam and Fu'che” Korean harmony and North Korean Communist doctrinal independence. “A life full of family and clan and home country. Children. No killing.”

  His large, liquid, bloodshot eyes darted over my face, trying to see which of my two cultures was talking to him. I was being polite. My Chinese face and American voice confused him and made him anxious. To him, I was an American, a renegade Asian, an ethnic trickster. Time for Yankee directness.

  I smiled. He blinked. I winked. “You are Inmingun.”

  He inhaled through his nose, one nostril compressing. He grimly smiled, exposing stainless-steel teeth. “No,” he said. “Silly saying.” He coughed gently, then spastically.

  I made my guess. “You have northern bando speech and Soviet dentistry. You patrol with seven-meter intervals, which is Inmingun doctrine. You are a senior officer, not a PFC. Anyone can see this.”

  Levine translated. He found something of intense interest in one of his nails.

  “Sir, your men are Tiger Tails. Six years ago, your team was at Vlodvemy Fields in the Soviet Union, where you were exposed to a massive burst of ionized radiation.”

  He sat as still as the statues at West Point.

  “We know your target: the American atomic sappers.”

  He looked at the silent radio. His jaw tightened.

  “We know your plan. Our sappers are gone.”

  Levine translated. Something flickered across his dark eyes. I didn't like it; he knew something we did not.

  Calmly, he finished his meds. “Sir,” he said in the injured voice of a chronic smoker, “you wrong. We good ‘Merican sojer.”

  “You probably are,” said Levine.

  His eyes flickered between Levine's physiognomy and me. He blinked once, then shook a Camel from a pack and lit it with a one-handed snap of the matchbook. He exhaled to the side. “Ohh?” Chang hunched a massive shoulder. My gut rumbled with his private knowledge. I wondered if there was another Tiger Tail team. The thought made me dizzy. Then I had another thought.

  I needed to eyeball each of the Tiger Tails. I stood. He stood. So did Levine. I began walking among the playing children. Chang tried to remain nonchalant as he walked with me. I recounted his men. One, two, three, four, five.

  He puffed. “So, talk!” he barked. He looked at his watch.

  “Sir, your mission is over. There are no bombs for you to take.” Six, seven, eight, nine. Chang was ten.

  Chang shook his head slowly. “Mean nothings.”

  “MILPERCEN-K”—Military Personnel Center, Korea—“printed out all Korean-born Seventy-six Yankee supply clerks with maximum scores in the Combat Physical Proficiency Test.”

  Suddenly, his men began moving all over the garden. He had scrambled them and undone my count.

  I smiled. “You all have unusual body strength.”

  Levine handed me her notes. I read, “Private First Class Duk-kyo Chang, DOB 2 May 1953. Which makes you—a man in his forties—twenty. Born, Seoul. You're not in the Kyoggi-do birth registry.”

  Levine translated and he coughed horribly. A woman ran and poured him more tea. He slurped it, red-faced, spilling on his chin.

  “You talkee wrong man. Paper mistake. Happen any style, Army. Many
Chang, Korea. Many strong Korean man.”

  “Your 201 says you graduated from West Central High School, Los Angeles, California, June 1971. So did all your men, between the years 1969 and 1972. West Central burned down in the 1965 Watts riots and was never rebuilt.” I began recounting. One, two, three, four… five…

  “You makee mistake!” shouted Chang. “My school.” He blocked me, his swollen arms folded across his chest. His troops were still moving all over the garden. I moved around him, taking long steps.

  “KCIA won't agree. You cannot fight us on a holy mountain. You cannot take us hostage, because the KCIA has a no-hostage policy and they do not negotiate. But there is a way to have life and honor.”

  Chang coughed badly, sat down and crossed his legs. His combat boot pumped nervously while Levine translated and I counted. He saw her notice, and he stopped. The wind was light in the protected pocket of the garden, framed by the peak and the great villa. Thin bright sweat glistened on his brow as I counted eight, nine, ten.

  Two missing men.

  Chang looked at the unseen peak, to the north. He tapped the cigarette ash into a big, square, reddened palm. “How?”

  “You pledge your family and Fuche honor to the wang mansin. You work for her, here on the mountain. You become fathers to the children in her orphanage.

  “You work the fields, the kitchens. On your sacred honor to Korea, you promise to stay here. You teach the boys tae kwon do. How to be men. Worthy and honest, true to their word and full of Fu'che, independent spirit, free from Americans, Russians, Chinese, Japanese, Com-munists, capitalists, soldiers.”

  Levine translated. Chang peered at me, his big meaty hands flexing, the cigarette smoke wreathing his mottled, cold-pink face, trying to understand me, an inscrutable American.

  “The wang mansin will care for you and your men. Give you medicine. We think you have a year or two to live. When you die, your bodies will be transferred to your delegates at Panmunjom for burial with your families in the north.”