by Gus Lee
Every day I held her beautiful eyes. Time and outward duties began to fade as pieces of a puzzle assembled of their own accord. I owed, lived, thought only of her, my table of Confucian accountabilities of gahng, lun, ganjin, guan shi relational duties whisked away by her magic, with only hints of my ponderous and ancient past remembered.
I jerked as the girl's blood ran down my chin. I rubbed it away. Magrip moaned. I was in Korea.
I asked the girl to let me sleep and closed my eyes. She came to me instantly, running, arms open, black hair streaming in a warm wind. Help me, Ba, and I knew she had never left me.
I had learned this on the Japan Air Lines flight to Tokyo.
While I was in Mill Valley in Cara's peach-scented bedroom, the long-tressed girl of my nightmare had vacationed at the River Styx. Now she was back, tanned, rested and ready to die a thousand deaths in my mouth, leaving spores of sour ruin everywhere. I closed my eyes.
“Wake up,” said Levine, shaking me. “Bad dream.”
I sat up. Levine was in the pond scum sweatshirt. She was saying that her grandpa was a confectioner's son and grandma a lawyer's daughter. They had come alone as small children to Ellis Island from Munich, a year after Hitler took power, never to see their families again.
Levine's mother was an Arthur Murray dance instructor who married her best student. Wanting sons, they had five girls who, between them, performed fifty years of ballet and tap. Levine, the firstborn, had supplemented plies with track.
Mr. Levine was a diligent, loyal, rather comical man who hated music, loved fabulously corny jokes and worked on the Cracker Jack assembly line, giving his daughters a yen for sweets. Once, he had survived a Niagara Falls barrel dive to win a bet.
Levine had loved men until she discovered the distance between them and Dad, an empirical undertaking with a fairly large n.“Bored to sleep yet?” she asked.
“After that story, I'll probably never sleep again.”
“You already weren't sleeping. Your girl must be some character. You always have nightmares about her?”
I wiped my face. “Not about her.” I jumped off the bunk. Levine sat in a metal chair, legs extended.
“She have a brain?”
“Fearsomely endowed.”
She nodded. “So. What's her thing that gets you.” I thought for a while. “She's fond of me.” “Well, that's honest. Her worst?” “She likes men too much.”
Magrip snorted. Levine thought. “Sounds like a woman who'd inspire a purely physical relationship.”
I nodded. “That's a lot of it. She's a very good woman. I wonder if her goodness is the driver in the relationship. You know, if she'd be that good to anyone, and not just me.”
“This what guys think about. Thurberisms?”
“I don't know. It's what I think when I can't sleep.”
“Which is, like, always.”
“Levine, give up sleep and you get more done.”
“Give up sleep and you get nothing done. If you were capable of thinking, what would you look for in a woman?”
“What do you look for in a man?”
“Pshaw. I don't. They don't have it.”
“I know I'm going to regret this. What's ‘it’?”
“Intelligence, humor, moral principles, loyalty. Caring, compassion, understanding, sensitivity, generosity, thoughtfulness. Kindness. Tenderness. Mercy. Faith. Insight.”
I nodded. “Doesn't sound like a man.”
She looked at me. Lacking insight, I couldn't read the expression. But she looked like a woman who wouldn't shrink from rolling over Niagara Falls in a barrel.
11
DR. DEATH
Wednesday, January 16
Levine roused Magrip. He catapulted out of the bunk, knees bent, arms out, eyes searching wildly. “What the fuck?”
“You're at Casey. It's three. You got the watch.”
I got up. “I'm going to work out in the CG's gym.”
“Is that safe?” asked Levine. Frowning: “Don't do it. In fact, I insist you don't. It's so unsmart, it's moronic.”
It didn't matter. The girl was back and I was going. The night was black and impenetrable. I stood, listening. Nothing. I stretched, my lungs adjusting, my blood scurrying for cover in the shock of acute windchill. I quietly jogged and wind-sprinted under a flat, ebony, starless sky to HQ. The Inmingun were to my front. I hoped the Wizard's agents were asleep.
I had lifted weights at the Academy, but had begun the sport as a boy, helping the Wushan ku-li trackers pull our junk upriver at Three Gorges. My muscles ached for activity.
Thick winter ground fog rose from the floor of the camp. Hints of the yellow halogen lights of the HQ shed structure.
The sentry was a young private who looked like a Malibu surfer. He had a riot gun on his desk. I coughed; he jumped. I gave him ID and the Richelieu letter.
He read it slowly, then nodded. “Good to go, sir. You're in.”
It was 0320, two hours before dawn, and the bombshelter tunnel rang with the clang of heavy iron. The tunnel descended and turned to a flight of stairs. I went down, stretching.
“Go, Dr. Death!” came a high voice. Then a chorus. “Ironman! Do it! Do it, Doc! Strong!” “Push!” “Go, ‘Shroom!”
Two men spotted a third on the bench. He was cheating, arching off the bench with ten 45-pound plates. With the bar, he was benching four-ninety-five. Men in sweats and tank tops paused with weights to urge the lifter to bang the bar.
Six steroidal professional-looking weight lifters with old, wide, sweat-blackened weight belts, finger-cropped gloves, yellow headbands and wartime Mohawks. They had the look of years of popping sinews in Uncle Sam's funky, smelly, unventilated, steam-piped weight rooms.
Something else. They weren't acquaintances; they were a squad and knew each other down to individual body odor.
A noise behind me. My stomach fell with a sound from the land of the dead: a Remington 870 boonie-point-man pump gun racking a round into its chamber, ready to take my head off. There were seven of them.
Weights and bars dropped from one corner of the room to another, making the floor shake and my good ear whine.
Six men moved fast, creating spaces, and there was a small, simultaneous click of selectors coming off safety, and two had 9mm Uzis pointing at me while a third Uzi-bearer sprinted up the stairs I had descended. With Shotgun Man downstairs, topside was uncovered.
I saw a camo tarp covering lumpy gear on the far wall.
It was six to one with a seventh upstairs, one dumb Chinese immigrant facing several methods of quick death.
The Randall knife in my boot was lonely. Behind me, on the stairs, a Hispanic in sweats and tennis shoes looked like the San Francisco Public Library with shoulders. He held the gun muzzle at my head, and would cap me for a twitch or a bad thought.
“Move.” I stepped forward as he cautiously circled me, the muzzle steady, his intent as lethal as the Uzi men's. He knew I was American and didn't care.
“My fault, Death,” said the Shotgun Man. “Went to the latrine to bleed my lizard and that slick rookie sentry passed him. I figure this asshole knew my routine, cuz I was gone thirty seconds.”
A massive man, black and painstakingly muscled, pointed a heavy, tree-trunk arm. “Who are you, man?”
I smiled. “I'm Albert Schweitzer. Can I work out here?”
“I know the dude.” The bruiser from the Vegas honky-tonk brawl, the black man with the mustache and the shoulders and the red CG dot on his ID card, the man with no name who said he hadn't been there. “Dude's an officer. Karate man. Check?”
“Nice to see you. Captain Kan, IG. Maybe your friend can move the muzzle from my ear. Doesn't take loud noises well.”
“No, sir,” said the gunner. “Not til Doc Death says so.”
The bench presser moved. He was a behemoth, a spectacularly built Samoan, six-four, two-sixty, slightly balding, with tired eyes that drooped at the corners, a square face, and the demeanor and knowing m
usculature of an old Silesian coal miner.
“Captain Christopher Sapolu,” he said in a voice that came from the cavern of a mighty chest with a soft island beat. His great arms were swollen from the insult of muscle-bombing reps with enormous weights, the veins like the flooded rivers of inner China. “Jackson Kan.”
“Jackson Kan, wassamattayou, pake? You can't be work out here. Is kapu, off limits.” Fast island pidgin. Pake—Chinese. “Now, brah, I gonna pat you down.” Uzis moved to allow the frisk.
“I don't think so. Who are you?”
“Hey, fool. Gonna do it, total out. Dead or alive.”
“In that case, I'd be honored.”
He took knife, ID and papers. He read them. “Clear,” he said.
Shotgun Man lifted the pump gun and ran up the stairs, shouting, “Canizales on trail!” An Uzi man moved to the door, replacing the pump gunner, moving smoothly, a massive iceberg on roller skates. The third Uzi man came down the stairs.
“Barton,” said Sapolu to the man from the Vegas, “you flash DTOC”—Division Tactical Operations Center— “we got a unknown in our AO”—area of operation. “I want the story on this Chinese man five minutes ago.” He held out my papers. “Run top speed limit, man.”
Barton took my papers and ID and sprinted up the stairs, shouting, “Barton on trail!”
All I had wanted to do was bang some iron. Instead, I had caused a sensitive tactical unit to sound an infiltrator alert.
“Cool,” said Sapolu, feeling the knife's edge.
“Thank you. That mean I can work out?”
“You mostly mental, Captain,” said Sapolu. “Dis our business. We the Army weight-lifting team, dig?” His eyeballs bulged. ” We tight. I push Samoan matai— family system—on dese boys. Tha's why you think we funny. But you pake, you unnerstan'. I die for my boys.”
The weight-lifting team wouldn't be in Korea, toting Uzis. Sapolu wanted me to believe, but if they were who he said, I was the Armenian Easter Bunny. I looked at him askance.
“Hey. What you think don't matta. Now you go topside.” Three men moved as one. I wasn't sure what would happen next.
“I think you're making a mistake.”
“Uh-uh,” said Sapolu. “No think, brah. No ask, neez know nothin'. I see you big man on campus, plenty akamai. Down here, you bug crap. Now peel out.” He moved his head. I went up. He followed.
We waited in the hall. Barton returned from the HQ com center and whispered a while to Dr. Death. Death whispered to me.
“Okay, cool, brah, you give generals hard-ons. You a kahuna used to own the road. Captain, we classified. You sneeze funny, I shackle and gag your IG ass forever. Believe me, man, I got authority to disappear people who stick nose in our locker.
“You hear ‘bout GIs get Vietnam black-ball VD, no go home? Man, you fuck with us, you get ROK black-ball VD profile, finest kind, go like permanent forever-time, Pigum-do Island, Yellow Sea.”
His unit was worth a lot of protection, shrouded by a covering myth of incurable genital rots.
“Listen to me now, pake. You got no business with us. You tripped on us cuz I slacked. My fault, man, not yours. But Kan, you give word you stay off our road. You never come back. You tell no one what you see. I serious as a heart attack.” His eyes worked into mine, hot, motivated, prosecutor-style.
“Sapolu, we lost an IG somewhere in Casey. That's why I'm here. You disappear one of our guys?”
He shook his head. “Man, sorry about that, but negative. Now is your call. What you gonna do, brah? Be smart today, or stupid?”
“I always vote for smart.” Sometimes, I get stupid anyway.
He returned my papers and knife.
“One question. What do you know of the Wizard?”
Sapolu pursed his lips, then relented. “He our lawyer. Do us out of trouble.” He looked at Barton. “You know. Like when poho, fool, trip on Doctor's orders, bust my law, and go poke squid on some illegal pussy in the Ville.”
Barton came stiffly to attention, eyes a thousand meters away. “Ah got no excuses. Ah was a bad troop and Ah let you down but Ah paid mah price and learned my lesson good and there ain't no call to be poundin’ my black ass big-time in front of this IG. Sir.”
“I was happy,” I said, “that Mr. Barton was there last night.”
“Yeah, yeah. Aloha, Captain Kan. You know too much. No more stinking questions. Peel out, man.” I nodded and left, then stopped.
Barton and Sapolu separated from each other, taking slow and steady breaths, ready.
“You guys know of a good gym around here?”
12
WIZARD Q
Dawn. We stood in the wind as the companies of the Second Infantry ran three reveille miles in the dark. No spirited singing of Jodies, chants to keep step, just the steady trudge of thirty thousand boots pounding sludge, the wheeze of lungs passing ice. Men constantly slipped and fell.
Korea, where the conditioning could kill you if the enemy didn't. My Presidio vacation was over; I was back in the Army. I did push-ups, sit-ups, wu-shu kicks, blocks and punches. The men below were tired from patrols and booze, sullen and hung over in the frozen tundra. I went down to run with them. Magrip came with me.
Magrip and I passed running companies at a seven-minute-mile pace. Levine passed us in a long wind sprint. We tried, but there was no way we were going to stay with her. When we saw the Q, we slowed to a fast walk. She could not be seen.
“Good runner,” I gasped, leaning over, hands on knees.
“No shit, Sherlock,” huffed Magrip, exhaling clouds. “And she's still a woman.” He took deep breaths. “You're such an idiot—you were gonna send me back. When is she outa here?”
“She's not. Murray sent her for some covert skill.”
“Yeah. Real covert. Kan, she's trouble and she's gonna get us killed worrying about her.” He spat. “I can see good grades aren't everything. You're using a Kotex to think.”
“I like that about you, Magrip. When you talk, it's poetry.”
A ring of mountains surrounded us. I had inspired the troops and collected the Wizard's garbage. Time to do his quarters.
Thirty minutes later, I entered Wizard Q as an invisible janitor with a broom and utility can. No windows, a low ceiling, double doors leading to the main area, walls earth-tone browns and orange, like current decor in the States. Central heating. An armed sergeant named Smith faced me behind a table. I got his coffee. Wizard Q not only housed the SJA; it served as a functioning office.
“Good, slopehead,” he said loudly, so I could understand.
I went through the doors. A marbled girl poured water from her skirt in a fountain. A conference room and two offices in basic white, a somber Christ on a wall.
Colonel Frederick LeBlanc was in the center office, reading a large gold-leafed Bible while Chopin played from a Matsui sound system. His desk was fastidiously clean, his reading focused, the music peaceful, as if this were the garden chapel behind Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill instead of a shack in Tongducheon, Kyonggi-do Province, looking over the fence at Stalinist North Korea. He saw me without having seen a person.
I swept away. LeBlanc looked as good as Major Nagol looked bad, as if LeBlanc's sins had been visited on his deputy.
Alcoholics Anonymous documents sat on the table like chess pieces. A door led to a garden of stunted pines. Something protruded. I stepped out and cleared snow.
SGM PATRICK TREATY MCCRAIL U.S. ARMY BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE 1927–1966 [Buried in Arlington]
The lettering had baked off in seven Korean summers.
I went back in. Stairs led to an austere bedroom and private bathroom equipped with modish brown sinks. No sign of Jimmy; the Wizard was dumb enough to kidnap and assault IGs, but not dumb enough to store a hostage in his own Q. A Mossberg shotgun in a rack over the bed. Downstairs, I entered his office, sweeping.
The colonel was composed and compact. In the warmth of his Q, he wore short-sleeved, ribbonless summer khakis, a bold fash
ion statement in Manchu climes. His once wide-screen handsomeness had been compromised by a fine burst of broken blood vessels lacing nose and cheeks. In Army parlance, he had seen the elephant without losing his nuts in the admission price. He drank from a green porcelain soup bowl. It smelled like beef broth.
Above him was a map of Korea, the pink DMZ the highlight. I swept; behind his heavy door was another map, covered by both an acetate tactical overlay transparency and a roll-down Korean silk decorative sash. I wanted to see the map.
I went behind his desk for the waste can and jerked, my heart swelling, engorging my throat without taking a beat.
On the floor was the girl I had killed, her long hair below her shoulders, the pretty face clean and healthy; a cold sweat filled my eyes, armpits, my feet and hands. She looked at me without recognition. I was sputtering screams and crabbing hands and I shut my eyes, a child before the night monster, chest collapsing in the agonized implosion of a sick heart. Jesus. I was hallucinating in full daylight, in front of the enemy.
I opened my eyes: a Korean girl, kneeling on the floor. She looked at LeBlanc as she watched me through the corners of startled eyes, shivering, as if she had felt all my fear.
Hands shaking, I emptied the garbage can. God, she looked like the girl! My heart slugged, its chambers, its tissues afire, wet cold sweat all over me.
The colonel snapped his fingers. The girl jerked and stood, removed the bowl, replaced it with a platter of rice, vegetables and beef, and bowed, backing away, her face down, and knelt. She looked about fourteen and wore a red silk robe, old, brown corduroys and white socks, waiting with the tea.
The intercom rang. The colonel hit the speaker. “Yes.”
“Sir, Major Nagol's here. With CID agents Haley and Holt.” Criminal Investigation Division: Army detectives.
A pause. “Smith, send them in.” His voice did not hark back to the peaks and valleys of youth; with four simple words, it offered calm harbor to those in human conflict. His voice was grandfatherly, congenial and kind, projecting in the middle registers, given to the quiet reading of soothing stories to small children clutching stuffed animals, blankets pulled to their chins.