Tiger's Tail

by Gus Lee

  “I'm the IG on your case. Carlos Murray wants your nuts in a small evidence pouch. If I get Buford and everyone else gets home free, I'll defy TIG to protect you.” I saw Carlos's fine anger for so many disobediences in the field. I didn't care.

  No more deaths.

  “You're lucky today. It's a good offer. Going once.” “I'm lucky?” He laughed. “Well, aren't you the ever admirable number one son, representing all the fools in town.”

  “Who I am doesn't matter. What matters is what you do.” I leaned on his desk. “Colonel, your fly's open. It's Buford or a murder charge. Hangmen are ready. The knot's in the noose.”

  His eyes burned. “You punk. Am I under arrest?”

  I smiled. “Sir, we're just two boys talking.”

  The Wizard rubbed his nose. He didn't like being in a group of which I was a member. “McCrail died in 1966. If you have met someone of his description, it is not he. My Patrick was a Catholic boor pig, a fat, unschooled slob of a man who could no more string two thoughts together than see the queen for tea.” He inhaled. “To Patrick, ‘uh’ was an Irish soliloquy ”

  I tried to look convinced. This man offended everyone.

  I thought of the map and had an unbidden image of Jimmy coming through the door. “Jackson, how are ya?” I'd bear-hug him and I could forgive all, from the Wizard to myself, and winter would end.

  I moved closer to the map, seeing the edges of the clear acetate overlay covered by the decorative silk banner. The overlay would show some of the Wizard's inner workings.

  “Cap—” said LeBlanc, anxious about my proximity to the map. I pretended not to have seen it. I peered at him.

  “Sir, where do you stow an IG in Korea?”

  He exhaled. “Sit, Captain Kan. Let us focus on you. God calls you to place your injuries in the past. It's what draws you to me.”

  The girl moved, rustling silk, changing the beat of my heart.

  “Colonel, give me Buford and I'll sing ‘Day by Day, Dear Lord’ in the key of your choice.” I smiled.

  He smiled, doing it better. “I know of your resoluteness. It is your Chinese blood that drives you. A DSC and Silver Star, an MSM every year. Given our current taste in coloreds, you're a future general officer. Your very difference from Americans makes you earnest.” He smiled. “You're such hard little workers.”

  No one thought I was an American. “Yes, it's genetic.”

  He pursed his lips, wondering at my sincerity. “Of course it is. I admire both your notoriety and your ambition.” He checked a cuticle. “I know of the Dong Nai River ambush. I subpoenaed your Letterman psychiatric file.” He steepled hands. ” You could see Doc Benton for ten years, and you would still need chloral hydrate to sleep in the darkness of night.

  “Captain. Confess to me,” He looked at me. “I'll help you carry it. This is no light offer.” The wind gusted.

  He knew my deepest pains and greatest fears, expressed to a quiet man in Letterman's west wing, overlooking the Bay and the bridge. The small, poorly managed sailboats undulated as I sought clinical help for a hopeless event. I had taken Doc Benton into the Dong Nai and I was still lost with night sweats. LeBlanc knew my weakness as if I had told him.

  I chose my words carefully. “That pisses me off.”

  “Your confidences are safe with me.” He was sweating. He snapped his fingers. The girl stood and came to him stiffly. My mind superimposed the dead girl onto her face and blood seeped from the corner of her mouth and soaked her sleeve. I closed my eyes, my world red, humid, riveted with error and blood.

  I opened my eyes. The girl looked at me. A small, oval face, overlarge eyes, a wide mouth and the tight, beaten aspect of a serf. Her thick hair made her seem older. Blood soaked the sleeve of her pink sweater; I tried to blink away the image.

  “Hoon Jae-woo, thirteen, orphaned, brought to Jungsan for healing.” He smiled. “I adopted her. She thinks I'm a paksu, a wizard. Whenever anger is directed at me, she punishes herself.

  “Captain, you came here uninvited, filling my house with your noise, your dislike for me. Look at what you have wrought.” He pulled up her sleeve and I blanched as I saw the bright bleeding, open tears on her flesh, blood running thinly. Her face remained passive.

  I frowned and the girl dug her nails into open flesh.

  I sat down and lowered my face, blanking it. I was panting, bright hatred drilling holes in me wherever it wished. The Wizard had found a girl with sin-byong and turned her self-flagellation into a weapon, eerily, pain-fully, tailor-made for my weaknesses.

  I saw the evil-eyed man slash his wife at the Wuhan docks. It was autumn on the Changjiang, summer markets thrived and we sold fish in barter. The woman fell onto our junk and BaBa stopped the husband, but it was too late; she was dead.

  “You,” screamed my father, shielding us, his three tiger sons, our mouths open, “are the tears of Jesu Christ! You have money and power and you cut the skin of the weak!”

  I expected BaBa to kill him. But Master Wong took the rich man's knife, pulled the man's hand out, and cut it off at the wrist.

  Now I took a breath. I forced a smile. I forced a chuckle, then a laugh. The girl smiled as I looked at LeBlanc, laughing uproariously. “You're the sickest sonofabitch I ever met!” I slapped my thighs, laughing louder. “Know what? I'm going to lock you upforeverl”

  She backed away happily to kneel. I laughed with relief.

  His eyes narrowed. “Captain, I am a lawyer. I disapprove of threats and I condemn killing. I am sorry you do not.”

  He swallowed. “What is the military truth of Korea?” There are mountains. Then, more mountains. “Korea,” he said, “is an unarmed society, without the blessings of the Second Amendment. No armed citizenry, as are we. The Korean has no gun and the Inmingun is on the border.”

  He stood and looked out his window. He opened his door so the hidden map was further concealed against the wall.

  “Seventeen thousand U.S. infantrymen cannot stop a million yellow savages armed with Russian and Chinese automatic weapons.”

  Hands behind his back. “The invasion scenario: The Reds breach the DMZ in force under rolling barrages, cross the Imjin, crush Casey on D One, occupy Seoul on D Plus Four. In 1950, it took them four days. Now it will take them five.

  “ROKs blow the Han bridges, pinning a million Inmingun in Seoul. The Reds burn the city, savaging ten million civilians, with great harm to the women and no regard for the children, while their engineers throw pontoon bridges over the Han.

  “Do you agree?” His fist was militant. I nodded. I did.

  “Captain, what if South Korean civilians could be armed? Here, in Tongducheon, in Seoul, Taegu, Kwangju, Inch'on, Pusan. Then, when the NKPA arrived, there would be a cleansing war.

  “A modern crusade for a grail of American freedom. I tell you this.” He took a breath. “I go to the Imjin. I stand at the Z and look across the great wire and I want them to come.”

  The words echoed in the room. His fingers fidgeted. “Civilians,” I said, “would be slaughtered by Red armor.”

  “Details. I'm working with ROK legislators to allow citizens to be freedom fighters against a Red horde invasion. Captain, you take that message to your Pentagon handlers.”

  I looked at his own self-belief. “Sir, TIG worried that long service on the border had impaired your judg ment. It's worse than they feared. You've become a lobbyist.”

  He snorted. “Imagine the expression on the face of a Korean when someone hands him a firearm to defend his nation.”

  Streets, homes and schoolyards could become automatic weapon shooting galleries. “Gratitude?” I asked.

  “Absolutely! Heathen slaying heathen, pagan killing pagan, useless trees burned in holy fire.”

  The chant of the Inquisition. Death to Jews, Gypsies, Muslims, unbelievers, the slow and the halt. The tragic misinterpretation. The bloodied so-called followers of the Prince of Peace would inherit all the good parking places.

  “Death to
non-Christians?”

  “Those who do not accept Jesus Christ are dead already.”

  “Aha.” Why wait for technical details. Kill them all now.

  “I have trouble imagining Christ carrying an assault rifle. Wasn't He the one who advocated for those who were different?”

  “Your minority background limits your knowledge. Not your fault.” He held up his hands. “I do not advocate killing. Only patriotism. Captain, God gave us the Korean people as a buffer, a shield for America, letting them go in harm's way.”

  “We did it when we divided their country.”

  The once-kind eyes piqued. “Oh, please. Do not feed me revisionist history. The small are sacrificed for the great. The Canaanite was fodder for the tribes of Israel; Indians, Africans, and Mexicans are our groundskeepers. Our pickers.”

  I had gotten him to talk without the gum, but it was all propaganda, with bigoted cant and nightmarish child torture.

  He shook his head. “Vietnam is about to fall like rotten fruit. Kim II Sung is desperate to reunify the peninsula. He must strike now, while America is heartsick over Vietnam, before our wounds can heal and our own citi-zens recover the resolve to fight.”

  I remembered his map. “What should we do about it?”

  “Cross the border. Put Kim II Sung out of his misery.”

  I growled, “I thought you didn't approve of killing.”

  The girl stood, eyes stretched by fear, drawn by my tone. She looked at my face and reached for her wounded forearm.

  “Aniyo,” no, I said softly. She glanced at LeBlanc in fear, then looked at me. I picked up a chair and moved it to her. She sat, trembling; I stood close. Her hand reached tentatively and I took it, her small fingers closing around mine.

  The Wizard saw my face; no inscrutability—I couldn't pretend to be romanced. The small social chat was over. “Captain Kan, I do not endorse illegality.”

  “Only larceny, fraud, graft and uncommon deceits.”

  His brows came down. “Innuendo, libel, slander. And rude.”

  “Where's Jimmy Buford?”

  He coughed. “Do I sense a failure in my evangelism?”

  “Deeper than that.” I needed to get the girl out and study the map, to imprison this man and prepare against bogus appeals.

  He cleared his throat. “How badly do you want Buford?”

  “More than I value my career. More than I value yours. Today, I can be had; make me an offer.” My heart lifted with his larcenous question.

  “Focus on the real issues.” He pointed. “We're on the same side. I wear the white hat. You should be routing out spies and agents provocateur. North Koreans are everywhere and you are wasting your time and taxpayer money on me.”

  “Sir, the IG's on you. You're big, bright, and blue on TIG's radar screens. We're talking real world. Head-quarters, U.S. Army is about to stick a UCMJ baseball bat up your back. For Buford, HI do all I can for you. But do it now. And pull that Korean dandy off my trail.”

  LeBlanc blinked. The comment had surprised him. “I don't know what you're talking about.” He glanced at the girl.

  “Colonel, she leaves with me, one way or another.”

  LeBlanc picked up a number-one wood. I gently pulled the girl from the chair and put her behind me. He set himself and did a smooth practice swing.

  “Captain, kind of you to visit.” He took another swing. The girl found my hand and squeezed it with both of hers, palms wet. I squeezed back. The imposition of a pale blood mask on her young face was familiarly bearable. I felt her true pulse, sensed vibrant emotions, and I was as happy as I had been all week. My face was still, showing no triumph to watching, jealous gods.

  “Feeling a little dumb, Captain? A little useless here on the cutting edge of Communist invasion and Satan's slope-head whores, offering their bodies to good American white men?” He set himself.

  “Isn't it ironic that we send an Oriental to West Point, and when he arrives here, fully trained, when he could deal communism a death blow, he's as useful as teats on a bull.”

  He swung, smooth and true.

  “You cannot help it. The Oriental personality is passive, unable to make good decisions. Take the girl. She intrigued me—the pagan's infantile mind—but she was becoming a burden. And frankly, she smells like Korean dirt; her roots will not wash. I tried to teach her, but she's a peasant to the wool.

  “And now you enter my world, a West Point graduate doing a fool's dance, offering the persuasions of clowns in the theater of the absurd. Mister, you don't believe in God, and you're trying to raise dead pigs from jeep wrecks.”

  He smiled warmly. “Tell me, Captain, just between the two of us. Who can help you now?” He laughed, mimicking precisely the artificial sound I had made when I vowed to lock him away.

  23

  HWAN YONGSA

  Doc Purvis had pulled graveyard and had been asleep for two hours. As a proponent of sleep deprivation, I knocked hard.

  He slept in scrubs and looked like a honeymoon bed-sheet. I apologized. “It's okay, I was asleep, anyway.”

  The room was cool, his roommates out. He padded back toward his bunk. “How you sleeping?” he mumbled.

  “Not my skill. This is Hoon Jae-woo. Miss Hoon, this is Dr. Purvis.”

  She bowed. He bowed, saw his boxer shorts and got a robe. “She's the Wizard's adopted daughter,” I said. “Self-inflicted scratches, left forearm. Maybe elsewhere.”

  Purvis opened a cabinet and produced antiseptics, antibiotics, gauze and bandages. He yawned. “I heard of her. How'd you get her away from the Wizard?”

  “I'm a lawyer.”

  “You're a comic.” He washed up and seated her, checked her nails, cleaned the wounds and dressed them. She accepted his work. He asked her questions in Korean. She answered, looking at me.

  “Doc. tell me everything you know about the mudang”

  “Mudang's the shaman witch doctor. She's also the wang mansin, a top, hereditary mudang. Back in the world, abused girls booze and marry batterers to keep the cycle going. Here, some abused Korean females have violent psychotic episodes called sin-byong, possession illness. They dance and hit bricks. Tear their flesh. A hundred thousand of them.” He yawned. “Honored savants, crazy with prophecy and insight.

  “Mudang has a pharmacy that'd put Rexall out of business. Koreans are into ginseng, garlic and roots, antler horns, snake soup and eye of newt.” He pulled back the sheets, covered himself and settled in. “Can't blame ‘em. Pharmacological basis to their work. Three thousand years older than ours. Proof is, Koreans are a hell of a lot healthier than us. Half the division's sick, while the Ville is like a health spa.”

  “Doc, Foss thinks our missing officer might be in the Ville. Would the mudang know anything about that?”

  “Yeah. She picks up vibes, bummers.” Yawn. “Tuned in…”

  I envied my effect on others. He had fallen asleep. But he had given me a couple of reasons to see a voodoo woman whom I would otherwise avoid like the plague. I didn't like wu.

  I needed to look more Korean and wanted the girl to have gloves. We stopped and I paid 2,400 won, five bucks. Some of the gawkers questioned Jae-woo.

  “Aboji,” she said, pointing at me. Father.

  Kids followed, trying to look into my bag. Jae-woo put her small gloved hand in mine. I had seen adult Korean friends of both genders walking hand in hand, but not a father with his daughter. It seemed right. I squeezed her hand and she trembled.

  At Second Market I bought dried fish and yakimandu, potstickers. She pointed at clams, which she ate ferociously. She had probably been living on American rolfburgers.

  We turned east, staying on the same side of the canal. A gaggle of dirty, raggedy Eurasian street orphans gathered in our trail. Children of the dust life. They screamed at each other and at me, as if my eclectic character con-tained an answer to their half-world fates. They cried “Chung guk ko-een! Chung guk dtwae nom!”—Chinese giant, bogeyman.

  Gravel, slus
h, animal waste and wheel ruts defined the narrow alleys. I could stretch my arms and touch both walls.

  Shoppers carrying winter melons and pale cabbages stopped to stare. We reached the sixth alley and turned to face Jungsan, the black mountain. When the children saw the direction of my gaze, they fell silent. Some touched my clothes, feeling American gloves, chattering to me in Korean. A few sucked red, soiled thumbs while staring goggle-eyed.

  “Mei-guk,” said one boy, pointing to himself. American.

  “Chung-guk saram, mi-guk saramieyo,” I said— Chinese man, American man—pointing to myself. They shouted. I was like them. Except I had two loyal parents, an old clan with many ancestors and a long river full of fat fish.

  “Aboji ” said Jae-woo, squeezing my hand.

  “Song Sae Moon. Chebal” Please. Jae-woo stared; I was calling on the kidae. The oldest boy took my glove in a small, bare, cracked hand, pulling me like a big dog, Jae-woo in trail. Down a crooked, stained alley, past junk and corrugated metal shanties into a small, snow-covered courtyard that smelled of seared vegetables, rice and an overly popular outhouse. A woman with a heavily wrapped baby bundled onto her chest ran water from a new brass spigot into a pot. The baby smiled, crinkling her face.

  The boy pointed at a shack with robin's-egg-blue roof boards, rosy side slates, a frozen, electric-green hummingbird feeder and a brilliant gold television antenna. I heard a television and knocked on the rosy door. It opened.

  “Buddha blesses me,” said Song Sae, smiling and bowing low, her head to the side, her arms in a Chinese dancer's delicate pose, fingers steepled in front of her chest. “Hwan yongsa—you are most welcome,” she said musically. “Come in, dae-wi” The children fell quiet. She wore the same snug turtleneck, thick ebony hair over her shoulders, catching the light.

  “Song Sae, this is Hoon Jae-woo. She may have sin-byong”

  The girl's flowing black hair blew in the cold wind. Song Sae put her hands out and the girl took them, entering the hooch. They spoke quickly, the girl bobbing her head in huge affirmations, almost prancing, communicating in ways beyond the power of men. Song Sae wept. The girl bowed to her, and then to me, weeping happily.