by Adam Johnson
On the screen, the man nears the girl. He reaches around her and places his hands firmly atop hers, pinning them. Behind his large frame, she disappears, her little-girl self is gone, and I activate. It happens so fast that a shudder races through me and I feel my body jerk. The man’s body hitches as he begins, and then she’s gone, there’s nothing of her left.
“Whoa,” Dodger says when he sees my face. “Looks like we have a new fan. Bert, burn an extra copy of this, Dark Meadow here’s an admirer.”
Bert turns and gives me a sour look. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a long time.
“You can’t even see the girl,” he says. “This is the part I’m editing out.”
“What works is what works,” Dodger says. “You said you didn’t like videos, but this does it for you, yes? Help us out, and I’ll give her to you. Give our servers a sweep, and she is yours.”
For the first time, I notice that the table in the video is stainless steel. And just as it dawns on me that I, too, am at a stainless-steel table, a girl walks into the room, right past me. She’s carrying a bowl of cereal in both hands. The cereal’s the kind with rainbow marshmallows and the bowl is filled to the brim, milk threatening to spill, so she’s moving slowly, eyes glued to the rim. I see that her hair is wet, that she’s wearing a bathrobe, and this is her, this is the girl on the screen, and I understand that when Dodger offered her to me, he was not talking about a video file.
My arms rise as if in self-defense, and I stand so fast that the director’s chair is knocked to the ground. The girl turns to look at me, milk sloshing onto her hands. We lock eyes for a moment, and then I am running. I drop the thumb drive and run. I bump Bert’s table, his monitors threatening to tip, and I almost take down a tower of servers as I race for my van.
At home, I drag my computer out front, and on the cement driveway, I start swinging a hammer. With the claw, I split the aluminum casing. I carve out the GPU and the optical drive and the RAM cards. I scrape all the circuitry off the motherboard. I pull the drives from their bays, and I think, I am a bad guy, I am a broken guy. I start to bang on the drives, actuator arms flying off, spindles cracking. “I am bad,” I mutter to myself. “I am broken.” I pound and I pound until there is nothing left but crumbs of plastic and aluminum meal. Of the hard drives themselves, the alloy discs knurl under the waffled face of the hammer into raw nuggets. Rhonza walks by. She casts a quick glance, but if she formulates an opinion, she keeps it to herself.
Hammer in hand, I rise and turn to look at my house. What kind of person lives here? I know there are those who are born. But what of those who are made? Do they also have a choice? Can they still choose?
—
I drive all day. I drive to the marina and park in its blindingly bright lot. I make my way along the floating docks, and things are familiar—ice being shoveled into plastic coolers, a charter captain hosing down saltwater tackle. But when I reach the slip where a sailboat named Ketchfire perpetually resides in my mind, I find nothing. There is only a rainbow sheen of spilled diesel on the water. Were there other boys? Was I the only one? My mind won’t let me picture the Skipper except in snapshots: white-soled shoes, tanned forearms, grey stubble.
Just off La Cienega was a pizza joint Skipper used to take us to, and when I drive there, it is still open. In fact, it is still filled with boys—soccer teams, Little League, a brigade of boys in matching black karate uniforms. I drink diet root beer from a red plastic cup and stare at their faces. I study them as they hold pizza slices and tromp around in their cleats, and I don’t care if people eyeball me. This is where, after our troop was formed and we sailed the Ketchfire for the first time, Skipper brought us for pizza and gave us our nicknames. Other boys got names like Nav and Crusher and Sparks and Cutter. Then he looked at me. He must have seen something in me. There must have been something about me. He said, “And you are Dark Meadow.”
I head up Topanga Canyon, passing the Charlie Manson ranch and the lodge where Jim Morrison wrote “Roadhouse Blues.” I suppose I should share the fact that there was another sound in the bottom of the boat. The Skipper had a camera, the old disposable kind. It used real film, and to advance the roll, he had to turn a plastic wheel three times—scritch, scritch, scritch. There would be a whine as the flash charged. He framed his pictures carefully, taking his time, and you never knew when that bright light would blind you.
I park at the Santa Ynez trailhead and walk up, above the dog park with its barrels of eco-bagged dog shit, above the footpaths where multicolored condom wrappers flutter in the thornbushes. Up here, tawny grass surrounds a giant coastal oak. According to the newspaper, this is where it happened. There is a stiff breeze. Looking west: a panorama of ocean. I study the ancient tree, with its burdened trunk and gnarled branches, and I wonder which limb Skipper Stevenson threw his rope over.
—
It is dark when I arrive home. The Tiger and the Cub are on my porch.
When I approach, the Tiger says, “There was someone outside our window again.”
“We heard him,” the Cub adds.
“Seriously,” the Tiger says. “He was super-creepy.”
“Was there really someone out there?” I ask.
They both go quiet.
“I don’t want to go home,” the Cub says, and the Tiger nods in agreement.
“Come on,” I tell them, and open the door. Inside, I turn on all the lights and, in the kitchen, retrieve three milks.
The girls run around, inspecting everything. They race to my bedroom, where they discover only boxes of computer parts.
They come back, disappointed. “Where’s your bed?” they ask. “Where do you sleep?”
I hand out milks and point at the foldout couch right in front of them.
The Cub, feeling kinship, says, “You sleep in the living room, too.”
The Tiger asks, “Where’s your dinner table?”
“I eat my sandwiches at the counter,” I tell them.
“Don’t you own a chair?” the Cub asks.
“It’s on the porch,” I answer. “You were just sitting in it.”
“Where’s the TV?” the Cub asks.
“Just drink your milk and go to bed, you two.”
They are amped and squirmy, but they obey; slipping under the covers, they try to lie still.
The Tiger focuses on the Bermuda sloop.
She says, “I never really looked at this painting when it was on our wall.”
I glance at the sailor, rigging in his hands. He has started his journey, the all-important one. He has decided his direction and charted a course. All he had to do was choose.
“Let’s try to get some sleep, you two.”
On the porch, I begin an article about Mars rovers, but I can’t focus. Officer Hernandez keeps texting me, and so does Dodger. I don’t often think back to the Sea Scout days, but the boy I used to be, he is everywhere tonight, his trusting face, his quiet hopefulness. Also in my head is the girl with her hands on the stainless-steel table. And Dodger’s thumb drive, I keep hearing the satisfying click it would make sliding into my computer’s USB port. My mind begins filling the lost drive with a thousand images. Already I miss my computer, its calm and order, how things would stop spinning if I could just boot it up. On the driveway, the crumbs of its carcass sparkle when a car passes.
When I figure the girls are asleep, I head inside.
They are awake.
“Turn the lights off,” the Cub says. “I can’t sleep with the lights on.”
“Let’s try them on a little longer,” I say.
I sit on the side of the bed, where I unlace my shoes and loosen my collar. Then I lie beside them—me atop the covers, them below.
The three of us stare at the ceiling.
The Cub asks, “Are you the son of Missus Roses?”
“She’s just the lady I bought the house from.”
“I want a nickname,” the Cub says.
“Trust me,” I tell her. “You
don’t.”
Though the Tiger is between us, the energy of the Cub radiates to me. I feel her. Her unaverted gaze. The inquisitive lift to her brow. The dark hollow at the cuff of her pajama sleeve.
“Have you ever done anything bad?” I ask the girls.
The Cub stares into space. She says a slow “Yeah,” like she’s visualizing a graveyard of her bad ten-year-old decisions and the wasteland of their consequences.
“Everyone’s done something bad,” the Tiger says. “What about you?”
“I’ve done some bad things,” I tell her. “But I’ve never hurt anyone. Not directly, not me doing the actual hurting.”
“Did someone do something bad to you?” she asks. “Is that why you brought it up?”
“A long time ago, yes. Something bad happened to me.”
The Tiger turns toward me, our faces not far apart. “Like what?” she asks.
“I suppose there are pictures of it,” I say.
“Pictures?” she asks. “What do they look like?”
I shake my head. “They’re out there somewhere,” I tell the Tiger. “But I haven’t seen them. That’s because I don’t look at pictures of boys.”
Narrowing her eyes, she tries to understand this.
She is the older one, so I tell her the truth.
“I look at pictures of girls.”
The Tiger considers this. She says, “Some of the girls on the cheer squad, they trade pictures of boys on their phones. That’s all they care about.”
She begins to tell me all about it—her friends, their crushes, the perils of a forwarded pic.
“Will someone please turn out the lights?” the Cub pleads.
The Tiger begins to sing to the Cub. It’s a song about a girl who goes alone into darkened woods. “ ‘My girl, my girl,’ ” the Tiger sings, “ ‘don’t lie to me.’ ”
The Cub sings, “ ‘Tell me, where did you sleep last night?’ ”
Together, they sing, “ ‘In the pines, in the pines, where the sun don’t ever shine.’ ”
“That’s a pretty strange lullaby,” I tell them.
They ignore me and finish the chorus together, “ ‘I would shiver the whole night through.’ ”
The Tiger then throws me a look. “Tell that to Kurt Cobain,” she says.
I stand awkwardly, because of my erection, and walk to the light switch.
I regard the girls a moment, their outlines under the covers, their small mouths as the Tiger leads the Cub through the final lyrics about going to where the cold wind blows. Perhaps I was too hasty with regard to the Tiger. Maybe I judged her too early. There is something about her. She does, in her own way, activate.
I turn out the lights.
Outside, I step across the yard into my rosebushes. Here, I lick my hand. I lick up and down, coating my palm and fingers. I position myself behind some Blue Skies and Bourbons, so I’m less visible from the street, and begin masturbating. It’s not about pleasure but about security and stimulation control and self-management. I’m doing it for the girls. They need me to look out for them, I understand that now. I can be a force of good in their lives. I’m the one who heard the signal. I’m the one who knows the code. What Officer Hernandez doesn’t get is that once something bad happens, it happens every minute of your life, and it can’t be undone, not by a rescue or a raid or a rope or a hundred and forty thousand dollars. The time to act isn’t after, it’s before, it’s now. And there is nothing beautiful about a pearl of semen tumbling toward a rose in the moonlight. It’s just a duty. While the innocents sleep, it’s just a thing that must be done.
Every Friday, DJ met Sun-ho for lunch. The guy had been DJ’s right-hand man in North Korea, and DJ owed him more than any man could pay. Since fast food was the only thing in Seoul that Sun-ho actually seemed to like, lunches were all DJ had to say thanks. Or maybe he was saying sorry. DJ didn’t know what to call his debt to Sun-ho, though it was more than a super-size double-meal deal could articulate. Still, in the four months since they’d defected, they’d been to Bonchon Chicken and Kyochon Chicken and Gimbap Cheonguk and half a dozen others. Today, they were to meet in Insadong for bulgogi burgers at a chain called Lotteria.
DJ set out from the male dormitory where he lived in the Gwanak District. The dorm was far from fancy, but it reminded him of home in all the right ways—unlocked doors, polished cement floors, a curfew and that feeling of being alone and together at the same time. Plus, he wasn’t the only one with troubles. On the other bunks slept men who were battling alcohol, men who’d lost everything in the economic collapse and even a few unlucky bastards who’d been sent to Iraq to fight alongside the Americans. DJ understood that in South Korea, Americans were considered friends. He’d never really believed they were the enemy. After all, hadn’t Americans invented scratch-off lottery tickets, crystal meth, hundred-dollar bills and, most important, the catalytic converter?
It was a cold February. Bundled in his heavy coat and scarf, DJ took the Blue line into central Seoul, then followed the Orange line north to Anguk Station. As soon as he exited the train, he heard echoing through the halls the unmistakable sound of an accordion playing “No Motherland Without You.” People rushed in all directions in that unnervingly chaotic way Southerners moved. No one seemed to notice or recognize a North Korean song, let alone the great musical tribute to Kim Jong-il.
The surprising thing was that DJ had a pretty good hunch who was playing it. When he and Sun-ho finally made it to South Korea, they’d spent a couple months in a government transition facility called Hanawon. There he met a woman who was famous for defecting with her accordion. People said it had nearly drowned her while she was crossing the rushing autumn waters of the Tumen River. Her name was Mina, and she hadn’t wanted to defect, she said, but her husband had disappeared, and she’d gone looking for him.
DJ started walking toward the melancholy sounds. The chords were triumphant and lonesome, a mix he hadn’t heard since leaving home. Yet halfway to the Samil-daero exit, he realized the music was getting fainter, that he was heading the wrong way. The song stopped; he’d lost her. But the melody, the haunting way Mina had played it, stuck in his head. Aboveground, he wandered the neighborhoods, suddenly nostalgic for the North. The barren, snow-dusted mountains surrounding Seoul reminded him of the icy bluffs ringing Chongjin. The crooked tile roofs and bent aerial antennas of Bukchon Hanok Village felt familiar. Passing a church, he heard a huge congregation inside praising Yesu-Nim before falling quiet in prayer. Though he couldn’t see the worshippers, DJ paused on the sidewalk, and here came a sound that was pure North Korea: the nearly silent shush of a thousand heads bowing in unison.
Soon his attention returned to Seoul’s bewildering nature. Here were women in plastic surgery masks and little dogs wearing dresses. Passing a fitness center, DJ stared at rows of men running on treadmills. What force was driving them? What were they running from? Next came a cat café and a parlor where teenage girls danced with machines. At an empty shopping plaza, he watched an escalator endlessly cycle, the steps appearing, rising and disappearing as it carried no one up to nowhere.
In this state of mind, DJ arrived at Lotteria. Inside, he took a seat in a yellow booth. Through the glass, he observed the startling street life: a young woman with tattoos on her neck, a college boy wearing eyeliner, a fully grown and able-bodied man of military age sitting on the curb, doing nothing. The only normal thing DJ could see was Sun-ho, making his way slowly down the street. He had a bad hip and a sleepy leg that he dragged around. In the North, he was only as big as a thirteen-year-old. Here, he was the size of a child, though the intensity of his large, wide-set eyes kept anyone from mistaking him for one.
When Sun-ho entered, he offered DJ a subtle nod, and though he was no longer under DJ’s command, he went right away to get their food, cutting to the front of the ordering line. Once there, he turned to examine the patrons he’d just skipped over. They looked down to their phones, pretending n
othing had happened. Sun-ho studied them a moment, then shook his head. He had no patience for South Koreans, with their all-powerful sense of order and compliance. It was one thing to surrender to the rule of a murderous dictator, but what unseen forces did these Southerners obey?
“Ready to receive your order,” a Lotteria worker said.
Sun-ho located his cigarettes and placed one in his mouth.
“Smoking is not permitted,” the worker said. “Corporate policy.”
Sun-ho pointed at the sign depicting all the food. He pointed at the bulgogi burger set, then held up two fingers.
“Would you like those burgers Shanghai-spicy?” the worker asked Sun-ho.
Sun-ho nodded and produced some government-issued meal coupons.
The worker shook his head. “We don’t honor those,” he said.
Sun-ho patted his pockets until he located his matches. “Do you believe in the divine spark?” he asked the worker.
Here was where Sun-ho’s gruff Northern accent registered on the worker. The people in line also paused—the man in the golf sweater, a group of teens in school uniform.
“I don’t understand,” the worker said.
Sun-ho stared into the man’s eyes. “Do you believe in the all-consuming flame of the Lord?” he asked. “Do you believe that only fire can burn away your sin?”
It was true that Sun-ho was not a large man, but make no mistake: he had served seven years of naval duty aboard a ten-man submarine; he’d run afoul of the Bowibu and made it through a winter in Camp 25. The man had walked the Arduous March in North Hamgyong Province through the worst of the famine. Sun-ho had survived the Purge of Chongjin.
The restaurant worker accepted the coupons and served the food in takeaway bags.
Sun-ho joined DJ in the booth, where he removed his dental plates and began unwrapping his burger.
“Where did you get that crazy talk?” DJ asked him. “You had me nervous.”
“This is a discovery I made,” Sun-ho said. “Christian talk, when said in a non-Christian way, scares these Southerners to death.”