by Martin Limon
We had to ask directions a couple of times, but gradually we made our way to the boy’s dormitory on the other side of campus. The boys in the waiting room looked at us suspiciously, but soon shouts were ringing up the big cement hallways for Li Hei-sok. He looked thin and frightened, and there were still scratches on his neck from where a policeman must have collared him. We walked with him into the game room, getting as far away as possible from a pair of students slamming a small white globe at one another in a vicious round of Ping-Pong.
Ernie backed him into a corner.
“You pushed him,” he said. “You pushed Whitcomb, he fell, and then the armored vehicle ran over him. And we’re here to take you in.”
He looked at me, confused. I translated what Ernie had said into Korean.
“No,” he said. “It didn’t happen that way. I didn’t do it. You don’t understand.”
He fell back against the wall, clutched his stomach, and looked about him for support. The Ping-Pong ball careened back and forth.
Some of the other young men noticed Hei-sok’s frantic face and wandered over. Just curiosity so far, but I wondered if the hot emotions of the morning would carry over into the dismal afternoon. My fever was coming back.
When I heard the slam, I almost jumped out of my suit.
The word propriety flashed through my mind, and I remembered my Korean language teacher slamming his pointer down on the desk, explaining the cardinal rules of Confucian propriety. I cursed myself for not seeing it earlier.
It was a baseball bat, coming down flush on the Ping-Pong table. The little guy with glasses in the photograph, the one Myong-hui’s friend had said was named Pak Un-sil, stood before us. His breath came hard, and he wore a white bandana tied around his forehead. Indecipherable Chinese characters were slashed in red ink across the bandana. He spit as he screamed, but I could pick up most of what he was saying.
“Don’t touch him, you fornicating foreign dogs! You’ve ruined enough here in our country. Whitcomb deserved what happened to him. I pushed him, and I’d push him again!”
He slammed the baseball bat back down on the Ping-Pong table for effect. It was certainly getting that. I was dizzy and feverish, only from the flu shot, I hoped.
“Whitcomb was trying to get Myong-hui, even though he knew that she was Hei-sok’s girlfriend. He bought her a flower and presented it to her right in front of all of us. He didn’t care who was embarrassed. He didn’t care about his own face, and he didn’t care about any of us. He just wanted her. To use her and then throw her away, like he threw away our national flower. I would not let him insult Koreans like that.”
Ernie backed away from the cowering Li Hei-sok, and we both took a couple of steps from each other so if Pak Un-sil went for one of us, the other would be able to get him from behind. I saw Ernie glance at a chair he could grab if the kid lunged. I was ready to turn over the Ping-Pong table.
A crowd gathered, at a respectful distance. Nobody wanted to get too near a loony with a baseball bat.
The young man slammed his bat onto the top of the Ping-Pong table again. It rattled. He slammed the bat again, and the table gave up and caved in. Splinters flew everywhere. Ernie lifted the chair, like a lion tamer, and charged. The kid swung and almost knocked the chair out of Ernie’s hands. I pounced on the kid’s back, grabbing for his arms, and then Ernie gripped the bat. The three of us waltzed around the room a couple of times, sweating and cursing, until Ernie ripped the bat from the young man’s hands.
He was still cursing, frothing at the mouth, and he tried to bite me. I let go and then the other kids were around us, everyone pushing and shouting, and the stocky kid broke away and darted upstairs.
Ernie and I wrestled ourselves free and ran after him.
I heard his footsteps pounding up past the second floor landing and on up to the third floor. Wood rattled, and when we arrived at the top I saw his sneakers disappearing through a trapdoor in the ceiling. Ernie went first. He pushed the door up carefully, ready to drop back quickly if the kid had found another bat. The coast was clear, and when he was up, I scrambled up after him.
On the roof of the big dorm, eternity loomed above us, domed by a vast gray sky. No sign of the kid. Ernie pointed toward the stone spire. He was climbing up, over gargoyles, like a crazed Korean Quasimodo. We ran over and started shouting at him to come down. Wasting our breath.
“I’m not going up there,” Ernie said. “No way.”
More students came up on the roof and stood around gawking. They cupped their hands around their mouths and shouted. The kid kept climbing.
When he reached the top of the spire, he straddled the pinnacle and stood straight up, his arms outstretched. He looked fragile up there, against the gray Asian sky.
A wave of nausea ran through me. Whether it was from the flu shot or from the heights or from the desperate young man wavering above me, I couldn’t be sure. I have never been sure.
More students gathered down below in front of the dormitory, and I heard their distant cries.
I decided I had to try, and I walked toward the spire. I found a handhold, braced myself, and looked up.
The young man’s arms were outstretched, and his eyes closed for a moment as if he were praying. Then his knees flexed and he pushed himself forward, and for a few brief seconds he was flying.
I can still hear the crunch. And then the screams.
The line-of-duty investigation determined that since Corporal Ralph Whitcomb had died as a result of unauthorized activities, his parents were ineligible to draw his serviceman’s group life insurance. Eighth Army put out a special bulletin reminding everyone to stay away from political rallies of any sort—especially student demonstrations.
Whitcomb was, however, authorized a headstone by the Veteran’s Administration.
It took two days’ worth of brandy to rid myself of the flu.
SEOUL STORY
The early morning Seoul traffic swept us along like a rushing river of metal. Ernie managed to pull over, and we climbed out of the jeep. The boy was still there.
“Looks like he fell from a ten-story building,” Ernie said.
This would have been plausible except that there was nothing around but a shrub-filled lot and a long sidewalk leading to the intersection between the district of Itaewon and the 8th United States Army headquarters on Yongsan Compound.
Bare feet stuck out of ragged cuffs, and the boy’s pullover sweater was as soiled and greasy as his skin. A crusty, transparent film oozed out of his tightly shut eyes, and blood bubbled and caked on his puffy, cracked lips.
Ernie knelt down and felt for a pulse.
“He’s alive,” he said.
We tossed him in the back of the jeep. He weighed nothing. Ernie revved up the engine, let out the clutch, and bulled his way into the traffic.
“Now that we got him,” he said, “what the hell are we going to do with him?”
“Feed him,” I said. “Get him cleaned up. And then find out how he ended up face down on the pavement of Seoul.”
I have a room on the compound, but in the early morning you’ll most often find me walking back from Itaewon, the nightclub district the Korean government has set aside for GIs. It’s a long walk, but usually I’m too numb to feel it. Rats scurry out of the way, stacks of drained OB beer bottles sway in the cold wind, and zombie-like Americans head for the warmth and comfort of military barracks. Normally I shower, shave, slip into the suit and tie required of all CID agents, and stumble over to the 8th Army snack bar for a cup of coffee and a copy of the daily Stars & Stripes. But today, on the way in, I almost stepped on something: a boy lying face down on the pavement.
Korea may not have a whole lot of excess wealth, but you don’t often see beggars. Most of the panhandlers are kids, and they’re healthy and full of spunk, put up to it by some Fagin lurking in the alleyways.
So to see a boy like this, passed out, drenched in grime, his dirty cheek scrunched up against the cold cement—i
t wasn’t an everyday occurrence.
I’d heard about people in New York who just walk around someone in trouble. In East LA, where I’m from, we aren’t exactly known for our neighborliness either. But I always figured that if I ran into a helpless waif I would stop, see if I could help.
Except I was on the last empty stretch of sidewalk that led to the compound, and there were no other pedestrians, and if I stopped to help the boy what would I do for him? Back in Itaewon you can catch a cab without too much problem, but no driver ventures out on this long empty stretch unless he already has a fare, and you can bet he’s not going to stop for some six-foot-four American with a filthy urchin draped over his shoulder. If I carried him to the compound, I’d get hassled at the gate. All guests have to be signed in and their Korean National ID card numbers entered on the MPs sign-in roster.
All these complications flashed through my mind in the few seconds it took to stride toward the body lying on the cold cement.
As I said, I had always thought of myself as the exception—the guy who would leap out of the crowd to assist. But when I tried to imagine myself trudging down a road on a bustling Seoul morning with a lifeless mendicant draped over my shoulder, I just stepped over him, lengthened my stride, and plowed ahead toward the compound.
By the time I changed clothes and met Ernie at the snack bar, regret had overcome me. I described the situation. He gulped the last of his coffee, stood up, and said, “Let’s go.” I followed him out to the jeep. When we reached the long empty stretch of sidewalk, the boy was still there.
I was relieved. A chance for redemption.
We took him back to the barracks, and under the pulsing warm water in the shower room, he came to. He was frightened at first but then realized that he was no longer cold and he was getting a bath, so he accepted the soap from my hands and in short order had himself pretty well cleaned up. After he dried off, Ernie gave him some of his underwear, which was very baggy on the boy but at least was clean and helped him resemble a human being more than he had all morning. Back in the room he wolfed down a can of beans and made quick work of the soda Ernie bought him out of the vending machine.
After a brief chat in Korean I told him to lie down and rest and we’d be back to see him after work. Mr. Yim, the houseboy, wasn’t too keen on the idea of having this stranger lurking about his wing of the barracks, but the boy went to sleep immediately. Anyway, he didn’t have any clothes, since we had thrown his rags away—after I had determined that he was indeed as poor as he seemed.
On the way back to the CID detachment headquarters I was filled with that warm glow a good deed can give you, but I was puzzled about what the boy had told me. About his aunt, the one who had been murdered.
We were late for work, and the first sergeant didn’t particularly want to hear that we were helping a boy passed out on the sidewalk.
“You guys have a job to do,” he said. “There are agencies to take care of orphans. I want you to contact one of them and have him turned over today, but first you have some black market arrests you owe me.”
We hadn’t busted as many people as we should have in the last couple of weeks, and the provost marshal had been embarrassed when he’d briefed the commanding general.
“Who has their finger in the dike, colonel?” the CG asked. “Or are we allowing the whole country to be flooded with scotch whiskey and American cigarettes?”
Actually, it wasn’t the damage the black marketing did to the Korean economy that bothered him, it was the Korean wives of GIs shopping in the commissary and getting in his wife’s way. That was what bothered him. That and the hell he caught when he went home.
The first sergeant told us he wanted three arrests, minimum, before the close of business. No sweat. We had two of them before noon. Then we took the rest of the day off.
No sense spoiling him.
The St. Francis orphanage was an austere little cluster of shoebox-like buildings. It reminded me of boot camp except it was filled with smiling faces bursting with happiness. Father Art was a burly man with thick forearms, a pug nose, and a bald spot shaped like a heart atop his head.
“This must be the little fellow you called about,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” The boy was dressed in the smallest set of gym clothes we could find in the PX. “We brought him here as soon as we could get off work.”
Father Art knelt and spoke in rapid Korean. Soon the boy was nodding to Father Art and had taken his hand. They spoke for almost ten minutes, and at times I thought the boy was going to cry. I could follow most of the conversation but a little of it was beyond me. Father Art’s mastery of the Korean language, to me, seemed as good as any Korean’s.
Father Art stood up and looked at us. “Did you follow any of that?”
“A little.”
“He say that his aunt was murdered, after he’d only been living with her for about two weeks. Prior to that he had lived with his father, a tenant farmer out in the country near Anyang. When his father died, he inherited his life’s savings: two hundred thousand won and a gold watch, an heirloom from his grandfather. He wrapped it all up and tied it around his waist and then took the train to Seoul to find his aunt.”
“What happened to the boy’s mother?”
“She died in childbirth, having him. The boy’s name is Yun Chil-bok. His aunt’s name is Ahn Chong-ai.”
“And he says she was murdered?”
“Yes. She owned a pochang ma-cha, a vending cart, in downtown Seoul. In Myongdong. Do you know the area?”
Ernie and I looked at each other. “Yeah. We know it.”
It was the biggest nightclub district in Seoul. GIs mostly stayed down in their own little set-aside, Itaewon, near the 8th Army headquarters, but some of the more adventurous amongst us prowled the streets of Myongdong from time to time.
I knelt down and asked the boy to tell me where his aunt set up her pochang ma-cha each night. He said it was always in the same place, in Myongdong near the Oriental Brewery Draft Beer Hall. Myongdong is a big district. I asked him to narrow it down a little more, but the best he could do was to tell us that it was about a five-minute walk from the Cosmos department store.
The boy said that he had helped his aunt in preparing the food, serving the customers, and replacing the perforated charcoal briquette that fired the little stove. At night they slept under the draped cart, on wooden boards, or when it got particularly cold and his aunt could afford it, they stayed in the common room of a yoinsuk, a Korean inn.
“Did you have any friends or relatives in the area?”
“No relatives, but everyone who came into her pochang ma-cha was her friend.”
“How old was your aunt?”
“Very old. Maybe thirty.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
“Maybe. One man used to come around and bother her all the time. She would be very upset after he left. I’m not sure why.”
“What was his name?”
“Cruncher Chong.”
“Cruncher?”
“Yes.”
“Why did they call him that?”
“Because he was always chewing on something.”
“What happened to your aunt?”
“One morning I woke up, and there was only the board beneath me. The cart was gone, and so was my aunt.”
“Somebody had rolled the cart away while you slept?”
The boy hung his head. “Yes.”
“And your aunt was gone?”
“Yes. I checked with everyone in the neighborhood, but no one had seen her leave and no one knew where she had gone. I waited there five days. Finally I was just too hungry, and I wandered off.”
“How long did you roam around Seoul until we found you?”
“I’m not sure. Two or three weeks.”
“What makes you so sure that your aunt was murdered?”
“She wouldn’t have given up her cart without a fight, and I knew she wouldn’t have allowed us to be separate
d, for any reason, unless she was dead.”
“What happened to your two hundred thousand won?”
“She has it. I gave it to her when I arrived, as my father had told me to.”
“And the gold watch?”
“Yes. And the gold watch too.”
We thanked Father Art and left a package of goodies from the PX that we hoped the kids could use: soap, powdered milk, cookies. Then we said goodbye to Yun Chil-bok. I told him to listen to Father Art and we’d return to visit him this weekend. He thrust his shoulders back and looked me straight in the eye.
“You are policemen,” he said. “Will you find out who killed my aunt?”
“We will talk to the Korean police about it,” I said.
“But I don’t know them. I only know you.”
Ernie shuffled his feet. He often surprised me with how much Korean he could understand.
“We’ll look into it for you,” I said.
“I will be waiting.”
As we climbed into Ernie’s jeep, I looked back at the boy. Father Art held his hand, but Yun Chil-bok stared straight at us, as if he were trying to evaluate our trustworthiness.
He didn’t seem grateful for what we had done. But maybe he felt that at the age of eight years he had a right to be picked up off the pavement and fed and taken care of.
I agreed with him.
Lieutenant Pei, liaison officer for the Korean National Police at the 8th Army provost marshal’s office, didn’t hold out much hope.
“I spoke to the captain of the Myongdong Police Station. He said that the woman who ran the pochang ma-cha in the area you describe has indeed disappeared, and her cart along with her. But there’s no reason to believe that she was murdered. If she had an unwanted nephew on her hands, maybe she decided that just packing up and leaving would be the best of all concerned. After all, he did end up in an orphanage.”
“But the boy says she was murdered.”
“We have no reports of any killings in the Myongdong area in many months. The captain was insistent on that.”
We thanked him and walked out of his office. Ernie surprised me by bringing up the subject first.