by Junghyo Ahn
Except for some young boys, however, very few male villagers joined this column of human ants making trips to the granary. Men were hesitant to go to town for two reasons. First, the farmers feared that they might encounter the Communist soldiers, who, it was rumored, recruited every man in sight under sixty to join the People’s Army to fight against the pursuing World Army. The Communists executed anyone resisting the conscription order on the spot. The other reason they were reluctant to go was that a proud man would not do certain things, such as begging or stealing, even if he starved to death. They knew the rice was abandoned on the street, but they did not want anybody to see them taking Communist rice. They stayed home and pretended that they did not notice their wives going to town.
Women did not care about pride or dignity, because only men were supposed to possess these qualities. Women could not afford to starve to death on account of anything as absurd as honor.
When Ollye, Chandol’s mother and the two boys reached Chunchon Railroad Station, the townspeople were swarming around the National Grange storehouse like bees collecting around peeled persimmons spread on a mattress to dry. More than half the rice was already gone. Mansik glanced at the column of people streaming back and forth along the road. Most of them were heading back to the town. The whole column looked like one big golden centipede moving away from the granary, only moving legs visible under the straw sacks, hemp bags or large vessels being carried on heads or backs. Some families were loading sacks on the small carts they had brought, and some women, for whom a rice sack was too heavy, charged into the turbulent granary with kitchen knives in their hands, stabbed open the bulging stomach of a straw sack, and let the white rice pour out of the opening into their baskets or bags. Inside the granary it was as noisy as a night pond alive with mating frogs in summer. Young and old women scooped and stuffed the rice into their pails and buckets, bamboo and wicker baskets, their legs sunk in grain up to their shins.
“What are you waiting for? Fill your bag quickly!” shouted Chandol’s mother, looking back at the two boys, who stood in a daze amidst the pandemonium. With her open palm she began to scrape the rice into the bag she was holding.
“This is really something,” said Chandol, scooping up the rice with his gourd dipper. “Look at these people. Just like maggots thriving in a rotting corpse.”
Mansik knelt down on the grains, that slipped under him like sand, clamped the opening of his bag between his teeth and pulled in the rice with both hands.
“Seems they’re taking everything in sight,” said Mansik, tilting his head to point at a thin woman in her fifties, who had just hurried out of the stationmaster’s office, hugging a tall grandfather clock in her arms. The townsfolk were looting not only the granary but the neighboring railroad station building as well. Chandol saw two middle-aged women dragging a plank desk out of a station warehouse, followed by an old man carrying a sawdust stove on his shoulders. The boys even spotted a young woman stealing cabbages from a patch behind the granary.
“The whole town is crazy,” Chandol whispered to Mansik, knotting the top of his bag. “I heard some women over there a minute ago say the Reds left a lot of confiscated goods behind. At the buildings they’ve abandoned there are more valuable things than a lousy sack of rice. And then the women left …”
All of a sudden, everybody started to run away, the women clustering on top of the rice pile sliding down backwards in panic, the whole mountain of grain crumbling with them like a sand castle washed away by a big breaking wave. The women fled desperately, screaming, some of them abandoning their bags or baskets. Mansik and Chandol and their mothers, puzzled, stood there, not knowing why everybody else was running away so frantically. Then somebody shouted “Air raid!” and they finally understood. Although the two boys and their mothers had not noticed it, the townspeople had experienced enough bombing to instantly recognize, even amid all the other noise, the faint purr of the bombers coming over the mountains. “Air raid!” women shouted, fleeing breathlessly. Some tripped and tumbled down, their baskets bouncing and rolling and spinning on the sidewalk, and a little lost child wept by a telegraph pole, her nose bleeding. Hemp bags and wooden receptacles were abandoned on the street, spilt grain lay on the pavement like the bleached remains of cow dung. A woman, carrying her baby on her back, threw herself into a roadside turnip patch, several women blindly ran into the open field, and several others rushed back into the granary to hide behind the rubble of the demolished wall. The old man threw the heavy sawdust stove away and ran for his life.
The two boys and their mothers dug into the rice piles because they did not know what else to do. Now Mansik heard the airplanes at last. Snoring slowly and monotonously, a formation of twelve breezed in over Saddle Mountain from the direction of Hongchon. These planes were very big and each had four propellers. A dozen women lying exposed on the road, too frightened to run any more, wept and shrieked louder and louder as the planes came nearer and nearer. Her mother finally found the little lost girl with the nosebleed and both of them, hand in hand, jumped into the cabbage patch to seek shelter. Everybody hiding or fleeing or screaming in the fields or on the road or behind the collapsed granary wall waited for the bombing to begin.
The airplanes reached the sky over the town but did not drop any bombs; they kept on flying and slowly vanished over the northern mountains in the direction of Hwachon.
Mansik craned his neck out of the rice to peek around like a cautious turtle. He was breathing heavily, bathed in sweat. The women who had been hiding behind the demolished wall looked at one another and asked in surprise and disbelief:
“Why didn’t they bomb us?”
“What’s happening now?”
“They passed the town, I guess, because they know the People’s Army is no longer around.”
“That must be the reason.”
The townsfolk who had scattered quickly gathered again at the granary and continued to fill their bags and sacks much faster than before. The old man returned to claim his sawdust stove.
“These planes looked very strange,” Mansik said to Chandol. “They are different from those we saw the other day.”
“Haven’t you seen those planes before?” asked a town boy who had just started to fill his pail beside them.
“No. I’ve never seen such big planes before,” said Mansik.
“They are called B-29s,” the town boy stated, importantly. “A B-29 has four propellers. The plane with one propeller is called Mustang. And you’ve seen the strafers that have something like sweet potatoes attached to their wing tips, haven’t you? Those are Spanglers.”
Their conversation was interrupted by Ollye, who asked Mansik to lift her hemp bag and place it on top of her head. “Let’s go home before other planes show up, Mansik. I want to get out of this place as quickly as possible,” Ollye insisted. “Whether they bomb us or not, I just hate that piercing sound. You’d better hurry too, Chandol’s mother.”
The four of them waddled out of the granary, carrying their rice, and hurried along the alley which was littered with debris, burnt shreds of clothes and broken cement slabs from previous bombings. Then they skidded down the steep path to the Soyang River. Ollye kept urging them to hurry, hurry.
When, breathlessly, they crossed the shingle and reached the ferry, three Hyonam women were loading their rice and barley onto the boat. The wall-eyed boatman watched them offhandedly, standing aside and puffing at his long bamboo pipe. When all seven were aboard with their booty the old man pushed off with a long pole. They heard two or three automatic weapons burp intermittently in the direction of Kongji Creek.
“What is that? What is that?” Chandol’s mother gasped in a frightened voice. “What was that noise?”
“The main force of the People’s Army in Chunchon and on Phoenix Hill has fled to Hwachon, but another unit is retreating from Wonju. Maybe some of them are fighting over there,” the boatman explained calmly.
The passengers in the boat kept sile
nt. The boat was loaded so heavily that the water almost reached the place where Mansik was sitting. The seat of his pants was getting wet. When Mansik tried to move forward to the bow, Chandol grabbed him by the elbow and signaled with his eyes for Mansik to come closer so that he could tell him something privately. Mansik leaned toward him.
“When we get back home,” Chandol whispered so that their mothers would not hear him, “you go and tell the boys to come to the sand under the bridge right after lunch hour.”
35
“What for?”
“You know what for.”
Of course Mansik knew. Chandol was planning to come back to town with the other boys for some sort of adventure. “But I won’t have time to find all the boys and pass the word,” Mansik said. “Maybe I won’t even have time to come to the bridge at all.”
“Why not?”
“I have to go to Charcoal village on Old Hwang’s errand today.”
“It won’t take more than two hours for you to make the trip to Charcoal, if you really walk fast,” said Chandol. “I will tell Toad to pass the word to other boys.”
Bong watched the four boys strip themselves by the sand dune near where the village stream joined the river. They could not use the boat because the boatman would tell their parents. Squatting on the white clean sand, he looked at the river and the boys in turn, and then down at the clothes strewn before him, crestfallen. He had been ordered by Chandol to stay behind and watch them. If Bong had been as good a swimmer as the others, Chandol might have allowed him to join the expedition; they did not really need anybody to look after clothes that they could easily hide in a bush or bury in the sand.
Bong threw a pebble into the river. He was sad because he was going to miss the big adventure. To go to watch a real battle fought by grownups was something far greater than going to a hill to pick acorns and chestnuts or to a waterfall to swim. It was an adventure even greater than the expedition to search for the General’s Cave, or the Autumn War the Kumsan boys fought every year against the Castle village boys. Bong wanted to watch the grownups’ war.
Peeling his pants from his fat legs with a grunt, Kijun glanced over at the unhappy little boy. “Keep a good watch over the clothes,” he said. “You know we’ll punish you if you lose any of them.”
Bong nodded dejectedly. The boys would not only watch the war and the real soldiers, but they would steal clocks and shoes and toys and marbles and everything from the empty houses and shops in town, too. Chandol said the whole town was open for anybody to loot. And Bong was the only boy at Kumsan who would miss all that fun.
“Let’s go,” Chandol said to the naked boys and started to wade into the river.
Bong watched them splash into the water, chattering and giggling. Chandol was in the lead, as always. Bong liked Chandol very much. Sometimes Chandol gave him a punch or two, but Bong did not mind that very much. Chandol’s punches were punishment for some wrong Bong had done, while Toad would punch him when nobody was around for no reason at all. And Chandol knew more about the town and grownups and animals than anybody else did. Even if they were lost in the woods and Toad and the other boys were frightened to tears, Bong was never afraid as long as Chandol was with them, because he was sure that his captain would somehow find the way to the village before dark.
Chandol swam out, kicking like a frog. Mansik followed next, his head bobbing up and down. Kangho and Kijun swam side by side behind them.
With a quiet sigh Bong lay down on the sand and looked up at the mild sky.
The four boys, stark naked, trudged across the sandy shore, somewhat tired after the swim. Then they followed a desolate path through the tall reeds along the riverbank. Two parallel ruts made by cartwheels stretched out along both sides of the dirt road crossing the islet; this trail was frequented by cows and by carts carrying West County vegetables and grain to the Central Market in town. Yellow dust puffed up at their feet as the boys plodded on along the track littered with dry cow dung. Rustling softly, the reeds waved as the hot breeze hit them.
“Do you think it’ll really be all right for us to go to town naked like this?” Kijun asked Chandol again.
“I told you not to worry about it, didn’t I!” Chandol snapped impatiently. “Nobody will see us because all the people are hiding in their homes. There’s nobody on the streets but the fighting soldiers. We will find a safe place near the market to hide and watch the war.”
They trudged on toward the Soyang ferry. The sun blazed in the silent sky.
“Mansik,” said Kangho, walking with his toes curled inward because the scorched dust was too hot for his bare soles, “I’ve got a sort of queer feeling.”
“About what?”
“That we may not see any fighting in town. It’s so quiet. I don’t hear any shooting.”
“Maybe they are using guns that don’t make much noise.”
“And we haven’t seen any airplanes this afternoon,” Kangho persisted.
“Hush!” said Mansik, suddenly halting.
Kangho also stopped. “What is it?” he asked. “You look scared.”
Chandol looked back at the two boys and asked, “What’s the matter with you two?”
“I don’t know what it is,” Kangho said, “but something is wrong with Mansik.”
“Hush, boys, and listen,” Mansik said in a choking voice, waving his hand.
“Listen to what?” Chandol asked, frowning.
“Just listen. Can’t you hear that sound?”
“What sound?” said Kijun, flustered.
“That sound.”
The boys listened attentively, standing in the hot sun on the deserted trail, transfixed. Their tanned shoulders reflected the sunshine. It was dead silent except for the distant peaceful murmur of the flowing water.
“I can’t hear anything but the river,” said Kijun.
“I can hear it!” said Kangho, shock and fear in his voice. “I can hear it. It’s a very peculiar sound. Like a great big monster growling somewhere.”
“What do you think it is?” Mansik asked Kangho.
“Now I can hear it too!” said Chandol. “I think something is rolling around. Or it’s dry thunder rumbling underground.” Or the silver stallion galloping through the cavern, he thought.
“I’m afraid,” said Kijun, recoiling from the other boys as though the mysterious sound came from them. He was more afraid because he could not hear what everybody else did.
“To me it sounds like a big grindstone rotating at a rice mill,” Mansik said.
“I know what it is,” Kangho said, his expression still tense but more confident. “It’s a tank.”
“What’s a tank?” asked Mansik.
“A steel wagon with lots of wheels and a cannon,” said Chandol. He always knew something about everything.
“What should we do, Chandol?” asked Kangho.
“It’s coming closer!” Kijun said.
“Let’s hide,” Mansik suggested.
“Hide!” Chandol said. “Quick!”
The naked boys dashed into the reeds. They did not dare to come out for several minutes even when they could not hear the crunching sound any longer.
Their shins were scratched by the grass as they plodded on toward the Soyang River. The boys could hear the occasional crack of rifle shots amid the rustling sound of the weeds. The sounds of rifles and machine guns and tanks grew more and more frequent and louder by the time the boys reached an abandoned dugout on the thistle-covered wasteland where a Hyonam farmer used to grow strawberries. They turned left around the dugout and headed for the ferry upstream.
Finally they saw the tanks. Majestically decorated with twigs and broad leaves, six steel giants and countless trucks rolled along the road between the railway station and the river toward the Soyang Bridge. It was obvious that no tanks had yet crossed the river to Cucumber Island, but the sound was so loud now that the boys felt they were only a few yards away.
“So, there they are,” said Chandol,
pausing among the sticky thistles. “Tanks and soldiers and everything.”
“But we can’t see much from here,” said Mansik, shadowing his eyes with his hand. “It’s too far.”
The boys hurried through the weeds, concealing themselves behind clumps and sand dunes from the soldiers on the trucks. As the sounds of war grew louder, they grew more excited. Then they heard people shout at one another nearby.
“Did you hear that, Chandol?” said Kangho, halting again. “Don’t you think we’d better hide again?”
At Chandol’s signal, they threw themselves into the reeds. They listened cautiously for a while. Chandol motioned them to follow him. They crawled through the reeds closer to the ferry. They stopped again. Holding their breath, the boys silently pushed aside the reeds and peeked out.
A hundred soldiers in green uniforms and green helmets carrying knapsacks on their backs swarmed down the sloping path from the bank to the ferry.
“These are not Red soldiers,” Kijun whispered. “Their clothes are not yellow.”
“They’re either the National Army or the World Army then,” said Kangho.
The soldiers gathered around a very tall man, who stepped out to the water’s edge and pointed at Cucumber Island, giving an order to his men. As they sat or lay down to rest, the tall man climbed back up the path and disappeared into an alley near the National Grange storehouse. Several minutes later, twenty more soldiers appeared in the alley, carrying three round rubber boats on their shoulders.
“Look at that, Mansik,” Kangho said. “They brought boats with them.”