The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  The Machinist said, “You need to look out for those big American legs.”

  “Rowers have strong backs,” the First Mate said. “I bet she could tear a mackerel in half.”

  “Tear me in half, please,” the Second Mate said. “Wait till she finds out I’m a hero. I could be an ambassador, we could make some peace.”

  The Captain said, “And wait till she finds out you like women’s shoes.”

  “I bet she wears men’s shoes,” the Pilot said.

  “Cold on the outside and warm on the inside,” the Second Mate said. “That’s the only way.”

  Jun Do turned to him. “You want to shut up about it already?”

  The novelty of radio surveillance suddenly wore off. The radio played on, but the crewmen worked in silence, nothing but the winches, the flapping of ventral fins, and the sound of knives. The First Mate was rolling a shark to cut its anal fin when a flap opened, and from it was ejected, viscous and yolk-covered, a satchel of shark pups, most of them still breathing from sacs. These the Captain kicked in the water, and then called for a break. Rather than sink, they lay flat on the surface, floating with the ship, their half-formed eyes bulging this way and that.

  The men smoked Konsol cigarettes, and up on the hatches felt the wind on their faces. They never stared toward North Korea in moments like these—always it was east, toward Japan, or even farther out into the limitless Pacific.

  Despite the tension, a feeling came over Jun Do that he sometimes got as a boy after working in the orphanage’s fields or whatever factory they’d been taken to that day. The feeling came when, with his group of boys, he’d been working hard, and though there was still heavy lifting to be done, the end was near, and soon there would be a group dinner of millet and cabbage and maybe melon-skin soup. Then sleep, communal, a hundred boys bunked four tiers deep, all their common exhaustion articulated as a singularity. It was nothing short of belonging, a feeling that wasn’t particularly profound or intense, it was just the best he tended to get. He’d spent most of his life since trying to be alone, but there were moments aboard the Junma where he felt a part, and that came with a satisfaction that wasn’t located inside, but among.

  The scanners were rolling through the frequencies, playing short selections of each, and it was the Second Mate who first cocked his head at the tenor of something he’d heard before. “It’s them,” he said. “It’s the ghost Americans.” He slipped off his boots and began to climb barefoot up the pilothouse. “They’re down there again,” he said. “But this time we’ve got them.”

  The Captain shut down the winch motor so they could hear better. “What are they saying?” he asked.

  Jun Do ran to the receiver and isolated the broadcast, fine-tuning it even though the reception was strong. “Queen to knight four,” Jun Do said. “It’s the Americans. There’s one with a Russian accent, another one sounds Japanese.” All of the Americans were laughing, clear as a bell over the speaker. Jun Do translated. “Look out, Commander,” he said. “Dmitri always goes for the rook.”

  The Captain went to the rail and stared into the water. He squinted and shook his head. “But that’s the trench,” he said. “Nothing can go that deep.”

  The First Mate joined him. “You heard them. They’re playing chess down there.”

  Jun Do craned his neck to the Second Mate, who had shinnied up the pole and was working on unhooking the directional. “Careful of the cable,” he called, then checked his watch: almost two minutes in. Then he thought he heard some Korean interference over the broadcast, some voice talking about experiments or something. Jun Do raced to narrow the reception and squelch out the other transmission, but he couldn’t get rid of it. If it wasn’t interference … he tried to keep his mind from thinking that a Korean was down there, too.

  “What are the Americans saying?” the Captain asked.

  Jun Do stopped to translate, “The stupid pawns keep floating away.”

  The Captain looked back into the water. “What are they doing down there?”

  Then the Second Mate got the directional off the pole, and the crew went silent as he aimed it into the deeps. Quietly, they waited as he slowly swept the antenna across the water, hoping to pinpoint the source of the transmission, but they heard nothing.

  “Something’s wrong,” Jun Do told him. “It must have come unplugged.”

  Then Jun Do saw a hand pointing into the sky. It was the Captain’s, and it was aimed at a point of light racing through the stars. “Up there, son,” the Captain said, and as the Second Mate lifted the directional and lined it up with the arc of light, there was a squeal of feedback and suddenly it sounded like the American, the Russian, and the Japanese voices were right there on the ship with them.

  Jun Do said, “The Russian just said, That’s checkmate, and the American is saying, Bullshit, the pieces floated away, that’s grounds for a new game, and now the Russian is telling the American, Come on, give up the board. We might have time for a rematch of Moscow versus Seoul before the next orbit.”

  They watched the Second Mate track the point of light to the horizon, and when the light went around the curve of the earth, the broadcast vanished. The crew kept staring at the Second Mate, and the Second Mate kept staring at the sky. Finally, he looked down at them. “They’re in space together,” he said. “They’re supposed to be our enemies, but they’re up there laughing and screwing around.” He lowered the directional and looked at Jun Do. “You were wrong,” he said. “You were wrong—they are doing it for peace and fucking brotherhood.”

  Jun Do woke in the dark. He rose on his arms to sit on his bunk, silent, listening—for what? The frost of his breath was something he could feel occupying the space before him. There was just enough light to see water sheen on the floor as it shifted with the movement of the ship. Fish oil that seeped through the bulkhead seams, normally a black gloss down the rivets, was stiff and milk-colored with the cold. Of the shadows in his small room, Jun Do had the impression that one of them was a person, perfectly still, hardly breathing. For a while, he held his breath, too.

  Near dawn, Jun Do woke again. He heard a faint hissing sound. He turned in his sleep toward the hull, so that he could imagine through the steel the open water at its darkest just before sunrise. He put his forehead to the metal, listening, and through his skin, he felt the thump of something nudging the side of the ship.

  Up top, the wind clipped cold across the deck. It made Jun Do squint. The pilothouse was empty. Then Jun Do saw a mass off the stern, something sprawling and gray-yellow in the waves. He stared at it a moment before it made sense, before he understood it was the life raft from the Russian jetliner. Where it was tethered to the ship, several tins of food were stacked. Jun Do kneeled and held the rope in disbelief.

  The Second Mate popped his head from the raft to grab the last tins.

  “Aak,” he said at the sight of Jun Do. He took a deep breath, composed himself. “Hand me those tins,” he said.

  Jun Do passed them down. “I saw a man defect once,” he told the Second Mate. “And I saw what happened to him after he was brought back.”

  “You want in, you’re in,” the Second Mate said. “No one will find us. The current is southerly here. No one’s going to bring us back.”

  “What about your wife?”

  “She’s made up her mind, and nothing’s going to change it,” he said. “Now hand me the rope.”

  “What about the Captain, the rest of us?”

  The Second Mate reached up and untied the rope himself. He pushed off. Floating free, he said, “We’re the ones at the bottom of the ocean. You helped me see that.”

  In the morning, the light was flat and bright and when the crew went on deck to do their laundry, they found the Second Mate gone. They stood next to the empty locker, trying to scan the horizon, but the light off the wavecaps was like looking into a thousand mirrors. The Captain had the Machinist inventory the cabin, but in the end little was missing but the raft. As t
o the Second Mate’s course, the Pilot shrugged and pointed east, toward the sun. So they stood there, looking and not looking at what had come to pass.

  “His poor wife,” the Machinist said.

  “They’ll send her to a camp for sure,” the First Mate said.

  “They could send us all away,” the Machinist said. “Our wives, our kids.”

  “Look,” Jun Do said. “We’ll say he fell overboard. A rogue wave came and washed him away.”

  The Captain had been silent until now. “On our first trip with a life raft?”

  “We’ll say the wave washed the raft overboard.” Jun Do pointed at the nets and buoys. “We’ll throw that stuff over, too.”

  The Captain pulled off his hat and his shirt, and these he tossed aside and he didn’t look where they landed. He sat down in the middle of the deck and put his head in his hands. It was only then that real fear seemed to inhabit the men. “I can’t live like that again,” he said. “I haven’t got another four years to give.”

  The Pilot said, “It wasn’t a rogue wave, but the wake from a South Korean container vessel. They nearly swamped us.”

  The First Mate said, “Let’s run her aground near Wonsan and swim for it. Then, you know, the Second Mate just didn’t make it. We’ll make for a beach filled with retirees, and there will be plenty of witnesses.”

  “There are no retirees,” the Captain said. “It’s just what they tell you to keep you going.”

  Jun Do said, “We could go looking for him.”

  “Suit yourself,” the Captain said.

  Jun Do shielded his eyes and looked again upon the waves. “Do you think he can survive out there? Do you think he can make it?”

  The First Mate joined him. “His poor fucking wife.”

  “Without either the raft or the man, we’re screwed,” the Captain said. “With both gone, they’ll never believe us.” There were fish scales on the deck, dry and flashing in the light. The Captain ran a couple around with a finger. “If the Junma goes down, and we go down with her,” he said, “the mates’ wives get pensions, the Machinist’s wife gets a pension, the Pilot’s wife gets a pension. They all live.”

  “They live with replacement husbands,” the First Mate said. “What about my kids and some stranger raising them?”

  “They live,” the Captain said. “They stay out of the camps.”

  “The Americans were mad,” Jun Do said. “They came back and they took him.”

  “What’s that?” the Captain asked. He shielded his eyes and looked up at Jun Do.

  “They wanted revenge,” he said. “And they came back to get the guy that had outfought them. They boarded us again, and they kidnapped the Second Mate.”

  The Captain lay back on the deck in a strange position. He looked as if he’d fallen from the rigging and was in that moment where you don’t move, where you’re only trying to assess if anything’s broken. He said, “If Pyongyang really thinks a citizen has been kidnapped by the Americans, they’ll never let up. They’ll ride it forever, and eventually the truth will come to light. Plus, there’s no proof the Americans came back—the only thing that saved us last time was those idiots fooling with the radio.”

  From his pocket, Jun Do produced the card that Jervis had left him, embossed with the seal of the U.S. Navy. He gave it to the Captain. “Maybe the Americans wanted Pyongyang to know exactly who had come and kicked some ass. In fact, it was the exact same guys—we all got a good look at them. We could tell almost the same story.”

  The Machinist said, “We were longlining when the Americans came aboard. They caught us by surprise. They grabbed the Second Mate and mocked him for a while, and then they threw him to the sharks.”

  “Yeah,” the First Mate said. “We threw the raft down to him, but the sharks tore it up with their teeth.”

  “Yeah,” the Pilot said. “The Americans just stood there with their guns, laughing while our comrade died.”

  The Captain studied the card. He reached for a hand, and they helped him up. There was that wild light in his eyes. “And then one of us,” he said, “without regard for his own safety, jumped into the shark-filled sea to save the Second Mate. This crewman suffered ferocious bite wounds, but he didn’t care because he only thought about saving the Second Mate, a hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. But it was too late—half eaten, the Second Mate slipped below the waves. His last words were of praise for the Dear Leader, and it was only in the nick of time that we pulled the other crew member, bleeding and half dead, back aboard the Junma.”

  Things suddenly got quiet.

  The Captain told the Machinist to start the winch. “We’ll need a fresh shark,” he said.

  The Captain came to Jun Do and cupped the back of his neck, pulling him close in a tender way until they were almost forehead to forehead. No one had ever done that to Jun Do before, and it felt like there was no one else in the world. The Captain said, “It’s not just because you’re the one who put all the stupid ideas in the Second Mate’s head. Or that you’re the one with the actress tattooed on your chest instead of a real woman, at home depending on you. It’s not because you’re the one who’s had military training in pain. It’s because no one ever taught you about family and sacrifice and doing whatever it takes to protect your own.”

  The Captain’s eyes were open and calm and so close to Jun Do’s that it felt they were communicating in some pure, wordless way. The hand on the back of his neck was solid, and Jun Do found himself nodding.

  The Captain said, “You never had anyone to guide you, but I’m here, and I’m telling you this is the right thing to do. These people are your family, and I know you’d do anything for them. All that’s left is the proof.”

  The shark had been hanging on the line all night and was stupid with death. When it came out of the water, its eyes were white, and on deck, it opened and closed its mouth less as if trying to take in oxygen than as if trying to expel whatever was slowly killing it.

  The Captain told the Pilot to get a firm grip on Jun Do’s arm, but no, Jun Do said, he would hold it out himself. The Mate and Machinist hefted the shark, which was not quite two meters, tip to tail.

  Jun Do took a deep breath and turned to the Captain. “Sharks and guns and revenge,” he said. “I know I thought it up, but this isn’t a story that anyone could really believe.”

  “You’re right,” the Captain said. “But it’s a story they can use.”

  After they radioed for help, a shore patrol boat escorted them to Kinjye, where many people had gathered at the fish-hauling ramp. There were a couple of representatives from the Ministry of Information and a pair of reporters from Rodong Sinmun and there were some local security guys you’d never meet unless you drank. Steam poured from the new cannery, which meant they were in a sterilization cycle, so the workers sat on downturned buckets, waiting for a glimpse of the man who had fought the sharks. Even the urchins and cripple kids had come to eye the scene warily through the glass of the live tanks, making their faces look large and distorted as schools of aji swam by.

  A doctor approached Jun Do with a unit of blood. The doctor searched for a vein in the wounded arm, but Jun Do stopped him. “If you put the blood in this arm, won’t it all leak out?”

  “Look, I only treat heroes,” the doctor said. “So I know my way around blood. And where it’s leaking from is exactly where it should go.” Then he ran the line into a vein behind the knuckle, taping it off and handing the bag to Jun Do to hold high with his good arm. The doctor unwrapped the bloody T-shirt, and there was no denying the wound. The shark’s teeth, like flakes of milk-glass, had gone all the way, and when the troughs of flesh were irrigated, visible at the base of each of them was the white slick of arm bone.

  To the reporter and minister, Jun Do gave a brief summary of his encounter with American aggression. They didn’t ask many questions. It was corroboration they seemed interested in. Suddenly, before him was the older man with the flattop and busted han
ds who had taken away the Second Mate. He wore the same gray suit and up close Jun Do could see his eyelids were very heavy, making it look as if he was resting his eyes while he spoke.

  “I’ll need to confirm the details of your story,” he said, and flashed a silver badge that bore the name of no agency. There was only an image of a thick block wall, floating above the ground.

  Jun Do was led down a path, his good arm holding the blood bag, the other in a sling. Ahead was the Captain, who was speaking with the wife of the Second Mate. They stood next to a pile of bricks, and she was not weeping. She eyed the old man and then Jun Do, then she turned to the Captain, who put an arm around her to console her. Jun Do looked back to the commotion at the dock, his mates gesturing large as they recounted the story, but they suddenly seemed very far away.

  The old man took him to the abandoned cannery. All that was left of the high-ceilinged factory were the giant steam chambers, the lonely gas manifolds, and the rusty tracks embedded in the cement floor. Shafts of light came down through holes in the roof, and here was a folding table and two chairs.

  On the table was a thermos. The old man sat and slowly unscrewed its raspy lid with hands that worked as if through heavy mittens. Again he seemed to rest his eyes by closing them, but he was just old.

  “So are you an inspector or something?” Jun Do asked.

  “What is the answer to that?” the old man mused. “I was very reckless in the war. And after we won, I was still ready for anything.” He leaned forward into the light, and Jun Do could see there were many scars in his short gray hair. “I would have called myself an inspector back then.”

  Jun Do decided to play it safe. “It was great men like you who won the war and drove out the imperial aggressors.”

  The old man poured tea into the lid of the thermos, but he did not drink it—he just held the steaming cup in both hands, slowly turning it. “It’s a sad story, this young fisherman friend of yours. The funny thing is that he really was a hero. I confirmed the story myself. He really did fight off armed Americans with only a fishing knife. Crazy stuff like that gains you respect but loses friends. I know all about it. Perhaps that’s what happened between the crew and the young mate.”