The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  Below raked obsidian bluffs was a steep, glassy black beach whose glint looked sharp enough to bleed your feet. In the sand, dwarfed, gnarled trees had anchored themselves, and in the blue light, you could see that the wind had curled even their needles. Upon the water, the moon revealed clumps of detritus swept in from the straits.

  The Machinist extended the outriggers, then dipped the nets, soaking them so they’d submerge during skim runs. The mates secured the lines and the blocks, then raised the nets to see if any shrimp had turned up. Out in the green nylon webbing, a few shrimp bounced toward the trap, but there was something else out there, too.

  They spilled the nets, and on the deck, amid the flipping and phosphorescing of a few dozen shrimp, were a couple of athletic shoes. They didn’t match.

  “These are American shoes,” the Machinist said.

  Jun Do read the word written on the shoe. “Nike,” he said.

  The Second Mate grabbed one.

  Jun Do could read the look in his eye. “Don’t worry,” Jun Do said. “The rowers are far from here.”

  “Read the label,” the Second Mate said. “Is it a woman’s shoe?”

  The Captain came over and examined a shoe. He smelled it, and then bent the sole to see how much water squished out. “Don’t bother,” the Captain said. “The thing’s never even been worn.” He told the Pilot to turn on the floodlights, which revealed hundreds of shoes bobbing out in the jade-gray water. Thousands, maybe.

  The Pilot scanned the waters. “I hope there’s no shipping container swirling ’round this bathtub with us,” he said, “waiting to take our bottom out.”

  The Captain turned to Jun Do. “You pick up any distress calls?”

  Jun Do said, “You know the policy on that.”

  The Second Mate asked, “What’s the policy on distress calls?”

  “I know the policy,” the Captain said. “I’m just trying to find out if there are a bunch of vessels headed our way in response to a call.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Jun Do said. “But people don’t cry on the radio anymore. They have emergency beacons now, things that automatically transmit GPS coordinates up to satellites. I can’t pick up any of that. The Pilot’s right—a shipping container probably fell off a deck and washed up here.”

  “Don’t we answer distress calls?” the Second Mate asked.

  “Not with him on board,” the Captain said and handed Jun Do a shoe. “Okay, gentlemen, let’s get those nets back in the water. It’s going to be a long night.”

  Jun Do found a general broadcast station, loud and clear out of Vladivostok, and played it through a speaker on deck. It was Strauss. They started skimming the black water, and there was little time to marvel at the American shoes that began to pile atop the hatches.

  While the crew seined for shoes above, Jun Do donned his headphones. There were lots of squawks and barks out there, and that would make someone, somewhere, happy. He’d missed the Chinese confessions just after sundown, which was for the best, as the voices always sounded hopelessly sad, and therefore guilty, to him. He did catch the Okinawan families making appeals to fathers listening on their ships, but it was hard to feel too bad for kids who had mothers and siblings. Plus the “adopt us” good cheer was enough to make a person sick. When the Russian families broadcast nothing but good cheer for their inmate fathers, it was to give the men strength. But trying to plead a parent into returning? Who would fall for that? Who would want to be around such a desperate, pathetic kid?

  Jun Do fell asleep at his station, a rarity. He woke to the voice of the girl who rowed in the dark. She’d been rowing in the nude, she said, and under a sky that was “black and frilled, like a carnation stemmed in ink.” She’d had a vision that humans would one day return to the oceans, growing flippers and blowholes, that humanity would become one again in the oceans, and there’d be no intolerance or war. Poor girl, take a day off, he thought, and decided not to give the Second Mate that update.

  In the morning, the Junma was headed south again, the seine net full and swinging wildly with its lightweight purse of shoes. There were hundreds of shoes across the deck, the First and Second Mates stringing them together by general design. These garlands hung from all the cleats to dry in the sun. It was clear they’d found only a few matches. Still, even without sleep, they seemed to be in high spirits.

  The First Mate found a pair, blue and white, and stowed them under his bunk. The Pilot was marveling over a size fifteen, over what manner of human would take that size, and the Machinist had created a tall pile of shoes he intended for his wife to try. The silvers and reds, the flashy accents and reflective strips, the whitest of whites, they were pure gold, these shoes: they equaled food, gifts, bribes, and favors. The feeling of them on, as though you weren’t wearing anything on your feet. The shoes made the crew’s socks look positively lousy, and their legs looked mottled and sun-worn amid such undiluted color. The Second Mate sifted through every shoe until he found a pair of what he called his “America shoes.” They were both women’s shoes. One was red and white, the other blue. He threw his own shoes overboard, then he traversed the deck with a different Nike on each foot.

  Ahead, a large cloud bank had formed to the east, with a vortex of seabirds working the leading edge of it. It was an upwelling, with cold water from deep in the trench rising to the surface and condensing the air. This was the deep water that sperm whales hunted and six-gill sharks called home. Surfacing in that upwell would be black jellyfish, squid, and deepwater shrimp, white and blind. Those shrimp, it was said, with their large, occluded eyes, were taken still wriggling and peppered with caviar by the Dear Leader himself.

  The Captain grabbed his binoculars and surveyed the site. Then he rang the bell, and the mates sprang up in their new shoes.

  “Come on, lads,” the Captain said, “we’ll be heroes of the revolution.”

  The Captain took to rigging the nets himself, while Jun Do helped the Machinist fashion a live well from two rain barrels and a ballast pump. But entering the upwell proved trickier than they’d thought. What seemed like a mist at first became a cloud bank several kilometers deep. The waves came at odd angles, so it was hard to keep your balance, and fast-moving islets of fog raced along the wavecaps, making quick-flashing forests and meadows of visibility.

  The first take was successful. The shrimp were clear in the water, white when the net was raised, then clear again when they were pitching with the slosh of the live well, their long antennas unfurling and retracting. When the Captain ordered the nets out again, the birds had vanished, and the Pilot began motoring through the fog to find them.

  It wasn’t possible from the water to sense which bearing they took, but the mates groomed the nets, and leaned with the waves. There was a sudden thrashing upon the surface. “The tuna have found them,” the Captain called, and the First Mate sent the nets again into the water. The Pilot cranked the wheel and began a “circle in” while the drag of the nets nearly keeled her over. Two waves converged, double-troughing the Junma, sending loose shoes tumbling into the water, yet the catch held fast, and when the Machinist winched the haul into the air, there was a great flashing in the trap, as if they’d gone trolling for chandeliers. Then the shrimp in the tank, as if by some means of secret communication, began to phosphoresce in sympathy.

  Everyone was needed at the live well to land the catch, which might swing in any direction once over the deck. The Machinist was operating the winch, but at the last moment the Captain shouted for him to hold fast, the net oscillating wildly. At the gunwale the Captain stared into the fog. Everyone else paused as well, staring at what they weren’t sure, unsettled by such stillness amid the bucking of the ship and the gyration of the catch. The Captain signaled the Pilot to sound the horn, and they all attended the gloom for a response.

  “Go below,” the Captain told Jun Do, “and tell me what you hear.”

  But it was too late. A moment later, the fog flashing clear, the steady b
ow of an American frigate was visible. The Junma pitched for all it was worth, but there was barely any motion from the American ship, whose rail was lined with men holding binoculars. Then, an inflatable boarding craft was upon them, and the Americans were throwing lines. Here were the men who wore size fifteen shoes.

  For the first few minutes, the Americans were all business, following a procedure that involved the crisp leveling and lifting of their black rifles. They made their way through the pilothouse and galley into the quarters below. From the deck, you could hear them move through the ship, shouting “clear-clear-clear” the whole way.

  With them was a South Korean Navy officer who stayed up top while the Americans secured the ship. The ROK officer was crisp in his white uniform, and his name was Pak. His helmet was white with black and light-blue bands, rimmed in polished silver. He demanded a manifest and registration of ship’s origin and the Captain’s license, none of which they had. Where was their flag, Pak wanted to know, and why hadn’t they answered when hailed?

  The shrimp swung in the net. The Captain told the First Mate to dump it in the live well.

  “No,” Pak said. He pointed at Jun Do. “That one will do it.”

  Jun Do looked to the Captain. The Captain nodded. Jun Do went to the net and tried to steady it against the motion of the ship. Though he’d seen it done many times, he’d never actually dumped a haul. He found the release for the trap. He tried to time the swing of the net over the live well, thinking the catch would burst out, but when he pulled the cord, the shrimp came out in a stream that poured into the barrel, and swinging away dumped all along the deck, the gutterboards, and, finally, his boots.

  “You didn’t look like a fisherman,” Pak said. “Look at your skin, look at your hands. Take off your shirt,” he demanded.

  “I give the orders around here,” the Captain said.

  “Take off your shirt, you spy, or I’ll have the Americans take it off for you.”

  It only took a couple of buttons for Pak to see that Jun Do’s chest was without a tattoo.

  “I’m not married,” Jun Do said.

  “You’re not married,” Pak repeated.

  “He said he’s not married,” the Captain said.

  “The North Koreans would never let you out on the water if you weren’t married. Who would there be to throw in prison if you defected?”

  “Look,” the Pilot said. “We’re fishermen and we’re headed back to port. That’s the whole story.”

  Pak turned to the Second Mate. “What’s his name?” he asked, indicating Jun Do.

  The Second Mate didn’t say anything. He looked at the Captain.

  “Don’t look at him,” Pak said, and stepped closer. “What’s his position?”

  “His position?”

  “On the ship,” Pak said. “Okay, what’s your position?”

  “Second mate.”

  “Okay, Second Mate,” Pak said. He pointed at Jun Do. “This nameless guy here. What’s his position?”

  The Second Mate said, “The third mate.”

  Pak started laughing. “Oh, yes, the third mate. That’s great, that’s a good one. I’m going to write a spy novel and call it The Third Mate. You lousy spies, you make me sick. These are free nations you’re spying on, democracies you’re trying to undermine.”

  Some of the Americans came up top. They had black smudges on their faces and shoulders from squeezing through tight, half-burned passages. Security sweep over, their rifles were on their backs, and they were relaxed and joking. It was surprising how young they were, this huge battleship in the hands of kids. Only now did they seem to notice all the shoes. One sailor picked up a shoe. “Damn,” he said. “These are the new Air Jordans—you can’t even get these in Okinawa.”

  “That’s evidence,” Pak said. “These guys are all spies, and pirates and bandits, and we’re going to arrest them all.”

  The sailor with the shoe looked at the fishermen with admiration. He said, “Smokey, smokey?” and offered them all a cigarette. Only Jun Do took him up on it, a Marlboro, very rich. His lighter was emblazoned with a smiling cruise missile whose wing was a flexed biceps. “My man,” the sailor said. “North Koreans gettin’ all bandity.”

  Two other sailors were shaking their heads at the condition of the ship, especially the way the bolts for the lifelines had rusted out. “Spies?” one of them asked. “They don’t even have radar. They’re using a fucking compass. There are no charts in the chart room. They’re dead reckoning this bitch around.”

  “You don’t know how devious these North Koreas are,” Pak countered. “Their whole society is based on deception. You wait, we’ll tear this boat apart, and you’ll know I’m right.” He bent down and opened the hatch to the forward hold. Inside were thousands of small mackerel, mouths open from being frozen alive.

  Jun Do understood suddenly that they’d laugh at his equipment if they found it, that they’d tear it out and drag it into the bright lights and laugh at how he had it all rigged. And then he’d never hear an erotic tale from Dr. Rendezvous again, he wouldn’t know if the Russian prisoners got paroled, it would be an eternal mystery if his rowers made it home, and he had had enough of eternal mysteries.

  A sailor came out of the pilot house wearing the DPRK flag as a cape.

  “Motherfucker,” another sailor accosted him. “How the fuck did you end up with that? You are the sorriest sailor in the Navy, and I will be taking that from you.”

  Another sailor came up from below. His name tag read, “Lieutenant Jervis,” and he had a clipboard. “Do you have any life vests?” he asked the crew.

  Jervis tried to mime a vest, but the crew of the Junma shook their heads no. Jervis checked a box on his list. “How about a flare gun?” he asked and mimed shooting in the air.

  “Never,” the Captain said. “No guns on my ship.”

  Jervis turned to Pak. “Are you a translator or what?” he asked.

  “I’m an intelligence officer,” he answered.

  “Would you just fucking translate for once?”

  “Didn’t you hear me, they’re spies!”

  “Spies?” Jervis asked. “Their ship is half-burned. They don’t even have a shitter on this thing. Just ask them if they’ve got a fire extinguisher.”

  Jun Do’s eyes lit up.

  “Look,” Pak said, “that one completely understood you. They probably all speak English.”

  Jervis mimed a fire extinguisher, sound effects and all.

  The Machinist clasped his hands as if in prayer.

  Even though he had a radio, Jervis yelled up to the ship, “We need a fire extinguisher.”

  There was some discussion up there. Then came the response: “Is there a fire?”

  “Jesus,” Jervis yelled. “Just send one down.”

  Pak said, “They’ll just sell it on the black market. They’re bandits, a whole nation of them.”

  When Jun Do saw a red fire extinguisher descend from that battleship on a rope, he suddenly understood that the Americans were going to let them go. He’d barely spoken English before, it had never been part of his training, but he sounded out, “Life raft.”

  Jervis looked at him. “You don’t have a life raft?”

  Jun Do shook his head no.

  “And send down an inflatable,” Jervis yelled up to the ship.

  Pak was at the edge of losing it. He took his helmet off and ran his fingers along the surface of his flattop. “Isn’t it obvious why they’re not allowed to have a raft?”

  “I got to hand it to you,” Jervis said to Pak. “I think you’re right about that one understanding English.”

  In the pilothouse, some sailors were screwing around with the radio. You could hear them in there transmitting messages. One picked up the handset and said, “This is a person-to-person message to Kim Jong Il from Tom John-son. We have intercepted your primping boat, but can’t locate your hairspray, jumpsuit, or elevator shoes, over.”

  The Captain had been expectin
g a lifeboat, so when down the rope came a yellow bundle no bigger than a twenty-kilogram rice sack, he was confused. Jervis showed him the red deployment handle and mimed with large arms how it would expand.

  All the Americans had little cameras, and when one started taking pictures, the rest of them did, too, of the piles of Nikes, of the brown sink where the crew shaved, of the turtle shell drying in the sun, of the notch the Machinist cut in the rail so he could crap into the sea. One sailor got ahold of the Captain’s calendar of the actress Sun Moon, depicting movie stills from her latest films. They were laughing about how North Korean pinup girls wore full-length dresses, but the Captain was having none of it: he went over and snatched it back. Then one of the sailors came out of the pilothouse with the ship’s framed portrait of Kim Jong Il. He’d managed to pry it off the wall, and he was holding it up.

  “Get a load of this,” he said. “It’s the man himself.”

  The crew of the Junma stood graven.

  Pak was instantly in motion. “No, no, no,” he said. “This is very serious. You must put that back.”

  The sailor wasn’t giving up the portrait. “You said they were spies, right? Finders fucking keepers, right, Lieutenant?”

  Lieutenant Jervis tried to defuse things. “Let the boys have a couple tokens,” he said.

  “But this is nothing to joke about,” Pak said. “People go to prison over this. In North Korea, this could mean death.”

  Another sailor came out of the pilothouse, and he’d gotten loose the portrait of Kim Il Sung. “I got his brother,” he announced.

  Pak held out his hands. “Wait,” he said. “You don’t understand. You could be sending these men to their graves. They need to be detained and questioned, not condemned.”

  “Look what I got,” another sailor said. He came out of the pilothouse wearing the Captain’s hat, and in two short steps, the Second Mate had drawn his sharking knife and put it to the sailor’s throat.