by Junghyo Ahn
By the time Ollye and Yonghi dressed hastily and came outside, Fist Nose, shivering in the cold, was about to go back to get his field jacket when Mike, who was going after Kijun, found someone lying in the snow. He urgently beckoned the two women over.
“Your son Mansik!” Mike shouted. “Your son is here! He’s hurt bad!”
Then he rushed across the rice paddies to grab Jun. Ollye, startled to hear her son’s name, ran to him. Mansik was groaning painfully, and screaming briefly, jerkily.
“Mansik!” Ollye shrieked. “Mansik! What are you doing here? What happened? Mansik! Mansik! Who did this to you?” Embracing her son in a confused panic, she saw his right hand was mangled and bloody. “You’re bleeding, Mansik. You’re bleeding! What happened? What happened to your hand?”
Mansik kept groaning and weeping. Ollye lifted his hand and examined it by the moonlight. Mansik screamed again. He had only three fingers left. She felt his fingers one by one to make sure. There was no doubt; the index and the middle fingers were completely gone.
“What happened to your hand, Mansik? Where are your fingers? What happened?”
Fist Nose came out of the Club again and hurried over to take a look at the boy.
“Zippo!” Ollye asked him urgently. “Zippo! Give Zippo me! I wanna see hand my son.”
Fist Nose fished the lighter out of his pocket. Either because her hands were trembling too much or because they were slippery with blood, she had to try five or six times until the lighter finally worked. She looked around for Mansik’s lost fingers, holding the lighter over her head, but there were nothing but bloodstains in the snow. Fist Nose also searched around with his flashlight. He found a broken pistol on the ground nearby. He showed the crude handmade weapon to Ollye and she saw the pipe, bent from the explosion.
Mike came back dragging Kijun by the collar. When he saw Mansik’s mother, the boy burst out with incoherent apologies and babbling excuses. “Honest, Mansik’s mother, I was not watching alone. Chandol was with me, I swear, and it’s Chandol who suggested coming here in the first place. I just came because he told me to come with him. And I never watched the real thing. I wouldn’t have come to watch if Chandol hadn’t told me to.”
“What are you talking about?” Ollye said, puzzled. “What did you watch, anyway?”
Fist Nose examined the pistol and put it in his pocket. He checked Mansik’s bloody hand and called Yonghi to tell her something very fast.
“It was all Chandol’s idea,” Jun went on. “I just followed him here, not knowing what he had in mind.”
“Fist Nose says to take Mansik immediately to Cucumber Island and show his hand to the medic at the camp. Mansik needs emergency treatment, he says,” Yonghi told Ollye.
Fist Nose slung Mansik over his shoulder and hurried down the bank to the frozen river.
“What did you watch?” Ollye asked suspiciously.
“You must go with the sarging, Sis. Hurry! You can talk to that fat boy later. Mansik is bleeding seriously. Come on. I said, hurry!”
“All right, Jun, you go home and wait for me. I want to talk to you when I come back.”
“I swear, Mansik’s mother, I haven’t done anything wrong! I haven’t watched anything.”
“Hurry, Sis! The sargings are waiting!”
• • •
They went straight to Camp Omaha. Fist Nose and Mike explained to the MP guarding the main gate, showing him Mansik’s bleeding hand. The MP called someone on the telephone and had a long discussion. Then he said something to Mike, shaking his head. Yonghi explained to Ollye that the two sergeants were trying to get emergency treatment for Mansik at the camp clinic but the MP would not let them pass.
“I think we should go to the town, Sis. The MP says no Korean civilian is permitted to enter the camp because of reports that some Communist guerrillas have infiltrated town.”
Mike said, “I’m sorry,” and disappeared into the camp, but Fist Nose, carrying Mansik on his back, went to Chunchon with the two women. Mansik’s hand was wrapped completely in towels and clothes but blood still flowed from it, soaking the soldier’s chest. Mansik did not groan any longer, but he wept on and off.
“Tell me what happened, Mansik,” Ollye asked again as they crossed the bridge to the town. “Why was your hand injured? What did Kijun and Chandol come to watch? Did you have some trouble with them?”
Ollye kept asking the same questions over and over again but Mansik would not give any answers.
The doctor Yonghi took them to was none other than the gloating bespectacled man who specialized in curing the shameful diseases of the Texas Town girls. The fat doctor came out to meet them, frightened by the loud noise as the bengko soldier pounded the door fiercely with the stock of his rifle. When he saw the boy’s hand, the doctor was infuriated; his sleep had been disturbed for nothing. “I don’t handle this kind of patient,” he said impatiently to Yonghi. “You know perfectly well what I handle, don’t you!”
“But no other doctor is available,” Yonghi said. “You’re the only one who hasn’t fled south yet.”
“I am leaving here first thing in the morning,” he said. “So, why don’t you go to a horse doctor?”
Reluctantly, the doctor started dressing Mansik’s hand, apparently intimidated by the ferocious frown of the armed bengko. The bloody stubs of the torn fingers looked more gruesome in the bright electric light. Terrified at the sight of his own destroyed hand, Mansik started to cry louder. Ollye’s heart burned with rage.
“Tell me, Mansik, who did this to you? Why did this happen to your fingers?”
Shocked by the gory sight of his ruined hand, Mansik finally began to talk in snatches between sobs, “I wanted to kill that son of a bitch Chandol and I shot him. I shot him with the pistol because I wanted to kill him.”
“Go on, tell me.”
“I think the pistol was jammed. There was an explosion. The whole thing blew up in my hand.”
“You mean the pistol burst in your hand? How come?”
“I don’t know. It just happened.”
“Why did you want to shoot and kill Chandol, anyway? What did he do wrong?” Ollye asked. “Kijun said he had come to the Club with Chandol to watch something. What is he talking about? Mansik, don’t faint! Pull yourself together and tell me everything!”
Ollye kept quiet while the V.D. doctor was adjusting the sling for Mansik. She kept quiet while they were crossing the frozen river, Fist Nose carrying the boy on his back. Back at the Chestnut House, she kept quiet for a long time after the Yankee had returned to Camp Omaha, brooding and watching her son who tossed in his bed and groaned intermittently in his troubled sleep. Then she said to Yonghi in a very calm and collected voice, “Please stay here with Mansik tonight and look after him if he wakes up in pain. I have to go to see someone.”
“You want to talk to that fat boy the bengkos caught at the Club?” Yonghi said.
“No,” Ollye said. “I want to talk to the other boy.”
“Why don’t you see him in the morning? You already know the whole story now.”
“I can’t wait till morning.”
When Ollye came outside, she saw the windows of the rice mill glowing with lamplight. She vaguely guessed that Kangho’s family were still awake. She passed two more huts with glowing windows on her way to Chandol’s house.
Ollye took a deep breath to compose herself at the gate and called out, “Chandol!”
There was no answer. When she called twice more, Chandol’s mother asked, “Who is it?”
“It’s me. Mansik’s mother.”
Somebody else, Chandol’s father, grumbled in an annoyed voice, “What is that woman doing out there?”
“You get back to sleep, dear. I’ll go out and see what’s up this time.”
It took a very long time for Chandol’s mother to get dressed. Finally the door opened. She came out to the gate in her thick shabby sweater. She said, “Glad to see you.”
This was a rather
awkward greeting on the occasion of this strange, unexpected reunion of the two women, but neither minded such trivial deviations from decorum.
“Well, I guess. …,” Ollye mumbled.
“I heard some noise and gunshots coming from—your shop over there,” Chandol’s mother went on. “Some of us went to the snake hunter’s house to find out what was going on, but nobody was there when we got there. Was there anything up?”
“Nothing serious,” said Ollye, peering into the house over Chandol’s mother’s shoulder. “By the way, is your boy in?”
“Of course he is. He’s asleep in his room. Why?”
“I just wanted to make sure,” said Ollye. “Was he home when you heard the shots?”
“Why do you ask me these questions?” Chandol’s mother said, offended.
“Because I have a good reason to. And I want you to wake him up. I have to talk to your boy.”
“Why do you want to see him at this hour?”
“Just let me talk to him. I want to ask him some questions.”
“Can’t you come back again in the morning?”
“No. I can’t wait.”
“I see,” Chandol’s mother said, hesitating. “Wait here.” She went over to her son’s room. She opened the door and fumbled in the darkness. “Chandol. Wake up, Chandol. Wake up.” She shook the boy.
“Uh? Who is this?” Chandol said in an extremely sleepy voice. “What’s up, Mom?”
“Wake up and come out to the gate. Mansik’s mother came to see you.”
“Who came to see me?”
“Mansik’s mother.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Get dressed and come out.”
“Okay, Mother.”
Chandol also took an unbelievably long time to get dressed and come out to the gate with his mother. “What do you want?” he said in a displeased tone, looking up at her belligerently.
“I have something to ask you,” Ollye said and then added, glancing at the boy’s mother, “privately.”
Chandol looked back at his mother, hoping she would stay, but she did not notice the faint plea for help in his eyes.
“Whatever business you have with my son, don’t take too much time. Young boys need their sleep.”
Chandol’s mother went back to her room and Ollye took the boy to the alder tree grove by the road a little distance away from the house.
“Why did you fight with Mansik tonight?” she asked.
The boy glanced up at Ollye and said casually, “Fight with Mansik? What are you talking about?”
Ollye was dumbfounded by the boy’s outright denial. She was speechless for a moment, wondering how to handle this boy.
“Mansik said he had fought with you.”
“He did? That’s very strange. I didn’t fight with anyone. In fact, I never left my house after dinner. I wonder why he said that. Why would I have fought him?”
“You really didn’t fight with Mansik?” said Ollye, wondering if there was any chance that this boy might be telling the truth. No, she thought, not a chance. “Mansik is badly hurt.” Then she added, “His hand was injured when he shot you. He lost two fingers.”
“But I haven’t even talked to Mansik for three months, ever since that night when bengkos came to your house and, you know. …”
Now Ollye was appalled, a cold chill streaking through her spine; she was convinced that Chandol was deliberately lying with a well-planned scheme in mind. She suspected the boy was shrewdly leading this conversation. There was absolutely no reason for Mansik to lie to her. But this boy was so brazen that Ollye was intimidated.
While she was disconcerted, Chandol said matter-of-factly: “Well, if his hand got really busted, as you told me, Mansik might have fought with somebody. But not with me. Why don’t you go ask him again?”
“This is impossible,” she said, shaking her head. “I just can’t believe that you’re doing this. How can a boy like you be so wicked? It seems lying is easier for you than eating rice.”
“This is not fair. You drag me out of bed in the middle of the night and accuse me of being the biggest liar in the world,” the boy said impatiently. “You don’t have any right to accuse me. It’s Mansik who is telling a lie, if anybody is. Ask my mother, if you don’t believe me. Ask her if she saw me leaving my room at any time tonight. How could I fight Mansik while I was asleep in my room?”
“Why on earth do you think Mansik would lie?”
“How do I know? Maybe he fought some other boy and got hurt but decided to tell everybody that he was fighting me.”
“Why? Why should he he?”
“Don’t you see? He must have felt ashamed when he was beaten by someone who is considered one of the weaker boys in the village. That’s the reason he named me. I’m always the scapegoat because I’m the strongest boy around. Nobody laughs if a boy says he was beaten by me in a fight. Kids kind of respect a boy who has enough guts to challenge me even if I beat him up. It’s an honor rather than a shame for them to be beaten by me, see?”
“Stop it. I’ve had enough. I find you’re perfect in inventing lies, perfect down to the tiniest details. Maybe what we need now is—”
“If you don’t believe me, that’s still okay with me. I told you the truth.”
“/know what is the real truth. I know what you two—you and Jun—were doing at… over there. Mansik told me everything. He also told me why he shot you. He even told me that he once had permitted you to come and watch the room.”
“Watch the room?” Chandol asked innocently. “Watch what room? I don’t want to hear any more. I’m going back to sleep.”
“No, Chandol boy, you’re not going home until I’m finished. I won’t let you go home until you tell me the whole truth.”
“You won’t let me go? Who do you think you are, anyway, to stop me? I can go any time I want to.”
“Come here,” Ollye said, gripping Chandol’s arm.
“Take your hands off me, you dirty slut,” the boy said viciously. “I don’t like to have a whore touch me.”
Stunned, she let his arm go. The boy turned to go home. Then she clutched his arm again.
“All right, you said it,” she screeched. “Sure, I am a dirty whore. And what are you? What kind of a boy crawls to a whore’s room in the dark of night to peep in?”
“You let me go,” the boy growled, trying to wrench his arm free of her angry grip.
“Come! I want to show everybody what a horrible little monster you are.”
“I’m not going anywhere with a whore!”
“Oh, yes, you will,” she said, pulling him with both her hands.
“Where the hell are you taking me?”
“We will go to Jun’s house. That boy certainly has something to tell the villagers about you.”
“Let me go!”
They struggled, pulling and twisting and tugging.
“We will see who really is the dirty one,” she said. “It’s no use for you to try to play innocent. Kijun will tell us everything and we will hear what he has got to say about you in the presence of the whole village.”
“You won’t get anything out of Toad,” Chandol spat hysterically. “You’re a stupid fool if you expect him to tell you what you want to hear.”
Ollye was struck by a suspicion that it would not help her a bit if she took Chandol to Jun. The two boys must have got together, she thought, and conspired against her while she was in town with Mansik. Chandol turned silent, realizing his tongue had slipped, but something irrevocable was already in progress. Now neither of them could turn back.
“You will come with me, anyway,” she said resolutely, pulling him forward. “You will come with me and tell the village what has been going on.”
The boy resisted. “Let me go, I said!” Chandol wrested his arm out of her grip but she deftly clutched his left wrist and collar at the same moment. He writhed, jerking his head this way and that, but she clung to him desperately.
“Come!�
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“I’ll kick you if you don’t let me go.”
“Go on,” she rasped. “Kick, if you want to.”
Chandol tried to butt her nose, shaking his head violently in all directions. Holding him from behind, she knew he was too wild for her to hang onto for long. But she kept on grappling, with him, thinking of the two missing fingers on Mansik’s hand, thinking of all the shame she had suffered while this little monster had been peeping at her through the window night after night, thinking she would rather die than let him go unpunished.
“Let me go!”
“Not until you tell the villagers what you have done,” she said, dragging the boy out to the open road.
Chandol kept trying to butt her in the face. Her lower lip began to bleed. When she realized she was losing her strength and could no longer hold him down, she started to scream at the top of her voice so that everybody in the village could hear her.
“Listen, villagers! Wake up!”
The boy stopped fighting, astonished by her unexpected shriek. “What the hell are you doing?” he said. “Quiet. You’re going to wake up the whole village.”
“That is the idea,” she said. “Wake up, villagers!”
“You’re going to raise hell, you crazy bitch.”
“Sure. You just watch. I’m going to show the whole world what kind of a bitch I am and what an ugly monster you are. Come on out! Come on out, everybody of Kumsan!”
The boy, frightened, looked around the houses where windows glowed as people turned on their lamps.
“Come on out and take a look at me! A whore is calling you! A crazy bitch is calling you all! I’ve got something here to show you. Come on out! Come on out!”
The first one who appeared outside was Chandol’s mother, immediately followed by her husband. One after another the rest of the villagers trickled out of the huts and hovels.
“Come over here, villagers, over here! I have a cute little animal here with me to show you! Come, come this way.”
Chandol’s parents, surprised to see their child drooping guiltily from Ollye’s hand like a chicken thief, rushed to Ollye to find out what was going on before any one else got there.
“What is this fuss all about?” Chandol’s mother asked. “What are you doing to my son, Mansik’s mother?”
