The Orphan Master's Son

by Adam Johnson

  At the bottom of the stairs, their three hosts were waiting. Standing in the center was the Senator, who was perhaps older than Dr. Song, yet tall and tan in blue pants and an embroidered shirt. Jun Do could see a molded medical device filling the Senator’s ear. If Dr. Song was sixty, the Senator must have had a decade on him.

  Tommy was the Senator’s friend, a black man, much the same age, though leaner, with hair that had gone white and a face more deeply creased. And then there was Wanda. She was young, thick-bodied, and had a yellow ponytail sticking out the back of a ball cap that read “Blackwater.” She wore a red cowgirl shirt with silver snaps.

  “Minister,” the Senator said.

  “Senator,” the Minister said, and there were general greetings all around.

  “Come,” the Senator said. “We’ve got a little side trip planned.”

  The Senator directed the Minister toward an old American car. When the Minister moved to open the driver’s-side door, the Senator gently directed him to the other side.

  Tommy indicated a white convertible whose chrome lettering proclaimed “Mustang.”

  “I must travel with them,” Dr. Song said.

  “They’re in a Thunderbird,” Wanda said. “It only seats two.”

  “But they don’t speak the same language,” Dr. Song said.

  Tommy said, “Half a Texas don’t speak the same language.”

  The Mustang, top down, followed the Thunderbird out onto a county road. Jun Do rode in the backseat with Dr. Song. Tommy drove.

  Wanda lifted her head into the wind, moving her face back and forth, enjoying it. Far ahead and far behind, Jun Do could make out the black of security vehicles. The side of the road glimmered with broken glass. Why would a country be strewn with razor-sharp glass? To Jun Do, it seemed like some tragedy had taken place every step of the way. And where were all the people? A barbed-wire fence paced them, making it feel as if they were in a normal control-permit zone. But rather than concrete poles with insulators for the electricity, the posts were made from gnarled, bleached branches that looked like broken limbs or old bones, as if something had died to build every five meters of that fence.

  “This is quite a special car,” Dr. Song said.

  “It’s the Senator’s,” Tommy said. “We’ve been friends since our Army days.” Tommy’s arm was hanging outside the car in the wind. He slapped the metal twice. “I had known war in Vietnam,” he said. “And I had known Jesus, but it wasn’t till I borrowed this Mustang, with rolled-and-tucked backseats, that I knew Mary McParsons and took my first breath as a man.”

  Wanda laughed.

  Dr. Song shifted uncomfortably on the leather.

  Jun Do could see on the face of Dr. Song the great insult that had been done him to be informed he was sitting where Tommy had once had intercourse.

  “Oh,” Tommy went on, “I cringe when I think of the guy I used to be. Thank God I ain’t still him. I married that woman, by the way. I did that right, rest her soul.”

  Dr. Song observed a political sign bearing the image of the Senator and an American flag. “There is an election coming, no?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Tommy said. “The Senator’s got a primary in August.”

  “We are lucky, Jun Do,” Dr. Song said, “to witness American democracy in action.”

  Jun Do tried to think of how Comrade Buc would respond. “Most exciting,” Jun Do said.

  Dr. Song asked, “Will the Senator retain his representative position?”

  “It’s pretty much a sure thing,” Tommy said.

  “A sure thing?” Dr. Song asked. “That doesn’t sound very democratic.”

  Jun Do said, “That’s not how we were taught democracy works.”

  “Tell me,” Dr. Song said to Tommy. “What will be the voter turnout?”

  Tommy looked at them in the rearview mirror. “Of registered voters? For a primary, that would be about forty percent.”

  “Forty percent?” Dr. Song exclaimed. “Voter turnout in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is ninety-nine percent—the most democratic nation in the world! Still, the United States needn’t feel shame. Your country can still be a beacon for countries with lower turnouts, like Burundi, Paraguay, and Chechnya.”

  “Ninety-nine-percent turnout?” Tommy marveled. “With democracy like that, I’m sure you’ll soon be over a hundred.”

  Wanda laughed, but then she looked back, caught Jun Do’s eye, and offered him a smile that was sly-eyed, seeming to include him in the humor.

  Tommy looked at them in the rearview mirror. “You don’t actually believe that ‘most democratic nation’ business, do you? You know the truth about where you’re from, right?”

  Wanda said, “Don’t ask them questions like that. The wrong answer could get them in trouble back home.”

  Tommy said, “Tell me you at least know the South won the war. Please know that much.”

  “But you’re wrong, my dear Thomas,” Dr. Song said. “I believe it was the Confederacy that lost the war. It was the North that prevailed.”

  Wanda smiled at Tommy. “He got you on that one,” she said.

  Tommy laughed. “He sure did.”

  They pulled off the road at a cowboy emporium. The parking lot was empty save for the Thunderbird and a black car parked to the side. Inside, several salespersons were waiting to outfit the visitors in Western attire. Dr. Song translated to the Minister that cowboy boots were gifts from the Senator and he could have any pair he wished. The Minister was fascinated by the exotic boots and tried on pairs made from lizard, ostrich, and shark. Finally he decided on snake, and the staff began seeking out pairs in his size.

  Dr. Song conferred briefly with the Minister, then announced, “The Minister must make a defecate.”

  The Americans clearly wished to laugh, but didn’t dare.

  The Minister was gone a long time. Jun Do found a pair of black boots that spoke to him, but in the end he set them aside. He then went through many pairs of women’s boots before he found some he thought would fit the Second Mate’s wife. They were yellow and stiff, with fancy stitching around the toe.

  Dr. Song was offered smaller and smaller sizes, until finally a pair of simple black boots fit him in a boy’s size. To help save face, Jun Do turned to Dr. Song. “Is it true,” he said loudly, “that you take the exact shoe size as the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il?”

  Everyone watched as Dr. Song took a pleasant stroll in his boots, dress shoes in his hands. He stopped before a mannequin in cowboy clothes. “Observe, Jun Do,” he said. “Instead of their most beautiful women, the Americans employ artificial people to display the clothes.”

  “Most ingenious,” Jun Do said.

  “Perhaps,” Wanda said, “our most beautiful women are otherwise engaged.”

  Dr. Song bowed at the truth of this. “Of course,” he said. “How shortsighted of me.”

  On the wall, mounted behind a piece of glass, was an ax. “Look,” Dr. Song said. “The Americans are always prepared for a sudden outbreak of violence.”

  The Senator glanced at his watch, and Jun Do could tell he’d had enough of this game.

  The Minister returned and was handed a pair of boots. Each scale of the snakeskin seemed to catch the light. Clearly pleased, the Minister took a few steps in them like a gunslinger.

  “Have you seen this movie High Noon?” Dr. Song asked them. “It is the Minister’s favorite.”

  And suddenly the Senator was smiling again.

  Dr. Song spoke to the Minister. “They fit perfectly, no?” he asked.

  The Minister looked sadly down at his new boots. He shook his head.

  The Senator snapped his fingers. “Let’s get some more boots over here,” he told the sales clerks.

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Song said. He sat to remove his own boots. “But the Minister believes it would be an insult to the Dear Leader to receive the gift of new boots when the Dear Leader himself received none.”

  Jun Do returned
the boots he’d chosen for the Second Mate’s wife. It was a fantasy idea, anyway, he knew. The Minister, too, sat to pull off his boots.

  “This can be easily fixed,” the Senator said. “Of course we can send a pair of boots to Mr. Kim. We know he takes the same size as Dr. Song here. We’ll just get an extra pair.”

  Dr. Song laced his dress shoes back on.

  “The only insult,” Dr. Song said, “would be for a humble diplomat such as myself to wear shoes fit for the most revered leader of the greatest nation on earth.”

  Wanda’s eyes passed back and forth upon this scene. Her gaze landed on Jun Do, and he knew it was him that she was puzzling over.

  They left without boots.

  The ranch had been prepared to give the Koreans a taste of Texas life. They crossed a cattle grate to enter the property, then switched to pickup trucks. Again the Senator traveled with the Minister, while the rest of the group followed in a four-door work truck. They took a road of sand and shale, and they passed through wind-bent bushes and gnarled trees that looked burned and split, with even their tall branches twisted to the ground. There was a field of spiked plants, their shark claws aglow. Each was alone in the way it groped from the rocky earth, looking to Jun Do like gestures from those buried underneath.

  During the ride to the ranch, the Americans seemed to ignore the Koreans, making comments about cattle that Jun Do could find no sign of, and then slipping into a shorthand of their own that Jun Do could make no sense of.

  “Blackwater,” Tommy said to Wanda. “They your new outfit?”

  They were heading toward a stand of trees from which blew white, vinalon-like fibers.

  “Blackwater?”

  “That’s what your hat says.”

  “It’s just a free hat,” she said. “Right now I think I’m working for a civilian subsidiary of a government contractor to the military. No use trying to keep it straight. I’ve got three Homeland passes, and I’ve never set foot in the place.”

  “Headed back to Baghdad?” he asked.

  She looked across the Texas hardpan. “Friday,” she said.

  The sun was direct when they climbed down from the big truck. Jun Do’s dress shoes filled with sand. A table had been set up with a barrel cooler of lemonade, and three gift baskets, each wrapped in cellophane. The baskets contained a cowboy hat, a pint of bourbon, a carton of American Spirit cigarettes, some beef jerky, a water bottle, sunscreen, a red kerchief, and a pair of calfskin gloves.

  “My wife’s doing,” the Senator said.

  The Senator invited them to retrieve the hats and gloves from their gift baskets. A motorized saw and weed cutter had been set out, and the Koreans donned safety goggles to cut brush. Dr. Song’s eyes, through the plastic, were seething with indignity.

  Tommy pull-started the weed cutter and handed it to the Minister, who seemed to take a strange pleasure in moving the blade back and forth through the dead brambles.

  When it was Dr. Song’s turn, he said, “It seems I, too, have the pleasure.” He positioned his goggles, then raced the engine through brush and stubble before stalling the blade in the sand.

  “I fear I have little aptitude for groundskeeping,” Dr. Song said to the Senator. “But, as the Great Leader Kim Il Sung prescribes, Ask not what the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea can do for you; ask what you can do for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

  The Senator sucked air through his teeth.

  Tommy said, “Isn’t he also the great leader who regretted that his citizens had but one life to give for their country?”

  “Okay,” the Senator said. “Let’s try our hand at fishing.”

  Poles had been laid out at a stock pond fed by well pumps. The sun was relentless, and in his dark suit, Dr. Song looked unsteady. The Senator took two folding chairs from the bed of his truck, and he and Dr. Song sat in the shade of a tree. Though he fanned himself with the hat as the Senator did, Dr. Song did not loosen his tie.

  Tommy spoke low and respectfully to the Minister. Jun Do translated.

  “Cast beyond the trunk of that fallen tree,” Tommy suggested. “Jiggle the tip of the pole to make your lure dance as you reel in.”

  Wanda approached Jun Do with two glasses of lemonade.

  “I have once been fishing with cables of electricity,” the Minister said. “Very effective.”

  It was the first time the Minister had spoken all day. Jun Do could think of no way to soften this statement. Finally, he translated it to Tommy as, “The Minister believes victory is at hand.”

  Jun Do took the lemonade from Wanda, who had an eyebrow raised in suspicion. It let Jun Do know that she was no clear-complexioned stewardess offering drinks to powerful men.

  It took the Minister a few casts to get the knack of it, Tommy pantomiming advice.

  “Here,” she said to Jun Do. “Here’s my contribution to your gift basket.” She handed him a tiny LED flashlight. “They give ’em away at the trade shows,” she said. “I use them all the time.”

  “You work in the dark?” he asked.

  “Bunkers,” she said. “That’s my specialty. I analyze fortified bunkers. I’m Wanda, by the way. I didn’t get to introduce myself.”

  “Pak Jun Do,” he said, taking her hand. “How do you know the Senator?”

  “He visited Baghdad, and I gave him a tour of Saddam’s Saladin Complex. A very impressive structure. High-speed rail tunnels, triple-filtered air, nuke resistant. Once you see someone’s bunker, you know everything about him. You get news of the war?”

  “Constantly,” Jun Do told her. He clicked the light on and cupped his hand over the beam to measure its brightness. “The Americans use lights in tunnel combat?”

  “How could you not use lights?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t your army have goggles that see in the dark?”

  “Honestly,” she said, “I don’t think Americans have done that kind of fighting since Vietnam. My uncle was one of them, a tunnel rat. These days, if there was a situation underground, they’d send a bot.”

  “A bot?”

  “You know, a robot, remote controlled,” she said. “They’ve got some beauties.”

  The Minister’s pole bent as a fish ran with the lure. The Minister kicked his shoes off and stepped ankle-deep into the water. It put up a tremendous struggle, the pole moving this way and that, and Jun Do thought there must be a more placid variety of fish to stock a pond with. The Minister’s shirt was soaked with sweat when he finally reeled the fish close. Tommy landed it, a fat, white thing. Tommy removed the hook, and then held it high, for everyone to see, a finger in its gaping mouth to demonstrate the jaws. Then Tommy released the fish back into the pond.

  “My fish!” the Minister shouted. He took a step forward in anger.

  “Minister,” Dr. Song called and rushed over. He placed his hands on the Minister’s shoulders, which were rising and falling. “Minister,” Dr. Song said more softly.

  “Why don’t we move right along to target practice,” the Senator suggested.

  They walked a short pace through the desert. Dr. Song had a difficult time taking the uneven terrain in his dress shoes, though he would accept no help.

  The Minister spoke, and Jun Do translated: “The Minister has heard that Texas is home to a most poisonous snake. He desires to shoot one, so that he might see if it is more powerful than our country’s dreaded rock mamushi.”

  “In the middle of the day,” the Senator said, “rattlesnakes are down in their holes, where it’s cool. In the morning, that’s when they’re out and about.”

  Jun Do relayed this to the Minister, who said, “Tell the American Senator to have his black helper pour water down the snake’s hole, and I will shoot the specimen when it emerges.”

  Hearing the answer, the Senator smiled, shook his head. “The problem is the rattlesnake’s protected.”

  Jun Do translated, yet the Minister was confused. “Protected from what?” he wanted to know.

&n
bsp; Jun Do asked the Senator, “From what is the snake protected?”

  “From the people,” the Senator said. “The law protects them.”

  This was found most humorous by the Minister, that a vicious, man-killing snake would be protected from its victims.

  They came to a shooting bench with several Wild West revolvers lined up. Various cans had been placed at a distance as a shooting gallery. The .45 caliber revolvers were heavy and worn and, the Senator assured them, had all revoked the lives of men. His great-grandfather had been a sheriff in this county, and these pistols had been taken as evidence in murder cases.

  Dr. Song declined to shoot. “I do not trust my hands,” he said, and sat in the shade.

  The Senator said that his shooting days were behind him, too.

  Tommy began loading the weapons. “We got plenty of pistols,” he told Wanda. “You going to give us a demonstration?”

  She was refastening her ponytail. “Who, me?” she asked. “I don’t think so. The Senator would be mad if I embarrassed our guests.”

  The Minister, however, was in his element. He set about wielding the pistols as if he’d spent his days smoking and conversing and firing at things propped in the distance by his servants, rather than parked at a curb reading the daily Rodong Sinmun, waiting for his boss Dr. Song to finish with his meetings.

  “Korea,” Dr. Song said, “is a land of mountains. Gunshots bring swift responses from the canyon walls. Here, the bang goes off into the distance, never to return.”

  Jun Do agreed. It was a truly lonesome thing to have such a commotion be swallowed by the landscape, to have the sound of fire make no echo.

  The Minister was surprisingly accurate, and soon he was feigning quick draws and attempting trick shots as Tommy reloaded for him. They all watched the Minister go through boxes of ammo, firing with two hands, a cigarette in his lips, the cans popping and leaping. Today, he was the minister, people drove him around, he pulled the trigger.

  The Minister turned to them. He addressed them in English. “The Good,” he said, blowing smoke from the barrel, “the Bad, and the Ugly.”

  The ranch house was single-level and half hidden by trees, deceptively sprawling. A nearby corral contained picnic tables and a “chuckwagon” grill, where several people were lined up for lunch. The cicadas were active, and Jun Do could smell the cooking coals. A midday breeze stirred, heading for anvil clouds too distant to promise rain. Free-roaming dogs leaped in and out of the corral’s fencing. At one point the dogs noticed something moving in a distant bush. They stood at attention, bristling. Walking past, the Senator said, “Hunt,” and at the command, the dogs raced off to flush a group of small birds that ran quickly through the brush.