Silver Stallion

by Junghyo Ahn

  Nanhi fell asleep soon. Mansik lay down with his clothes still on to warm himself on the heated floor. He gazed at the ceiling. The scarlet patterns of the ceiling paper loomed faintly against the lamplight. The hazy patterns seemed to blur slowly and shake almost invisibly, the blurred patterns rippled and moved like flowing water. Mansik tried to put himself to sleep by imagining a small boat drifting down an endless river. The boat bobbed and drifted down and down the meandering river and through the lush hills and the sky was so blue and mild that the sun dazzled his eyes and the boat kept drifting down and down the river towards the V-shaped valley wedged between the ridges of Three Peak Mountain and the boat drifted into the silky afternoon mist and the boat vanished … down … down …. He was suddenly awakened by Aunt Imugi’s shrill laughter, and he thought he heard her say, “You know how big their cocks are, don’t you? Drooping like a horse’s instrument!”

  Mansik looked around to see that he was lying next to Nanhi, who was breathing peacefully in her sleep. He must have dozed off. He collected himself and listened to locate the source of Aunt Imugi’s laughter. It was silent outside. He could not even hear music from the radio. He decided that he had heard the laughter in his dreams, too. He was wide awake now. He went out to the yard and stood for a while in the silence, feeling the chilly air against his knees and shins. He trudged over to the walnut stump and squatted on it.

  The Imugi House glowed with a red light. The river and the field around the house were dark but it was almost as bright as day at Cucumber Island from the shanty town and the army camp’s electric lights. Mansik tried to visualize what his mother might be doing with the bengkos at this moment. Sitting side by side with the bengko customers around the rickety plank table, drinking in the thick fog of cigarette smoke, jabbering strange words like “can do” and “no can do” and “hubba-hubba,” laughing, drinking some more. …

  Mansik wanted to run away. He wanted to run away from the Chestnut House, Aunt Imugi, Kumsan village, Cucumber Island and everything around him. He wanted to find the endless cave in General’s Hill, jump on the silver stallion and gallop through the dark tunnel for days and nights to reach some place where nobody would recognize him as a U.N. lady’s son. He wanted to steal a boat and drift down the river toward some unknown land.

  Then Mansik noticed something move near the abandoned water mill up the stream. Someone was coming down the rice paddy dike alongside the stream. The prowler was too distant for Mansik to identify, but it was obvious that he did not want to be seen; he scuttled from one shadow to another, trying to conceal himself behind trees or stacks of threshed straw. Mansik was alerted. He recalled the night when the bengkos came to the Chestnut House to rape his mother. His heart beat fast. But this person was not a Yankee, he was coming from the wrong direction.

  Mansik pressed himself against the chestnut tree and waited for the dark figure to come closer. He had to wait for quite a long time until the prowler reached the spot by the stream where Mansik went every morning to wash his face. Finally he could see that the dark figure was a boy. It was Kijun. Mansik was annoyed that he had been fooled by Jun of all people. But why was Toad prowling around in the dark at this hour of the night?

  Kijun halted by the log bridge and looked around cautiously. Soon another boy emerged from the willow beside the bridge. Mansik could not see the second boy clearly because the long, drooping branches blocked his view, but his gestures were Chandol’s. The two boys discussed something and began to move toward the Imugi House.

  Mansik wondered what they were doing, heading for the river at this hour. He wondered if they were on their way to the dump on Cucumber Island. But they would not dare to swim across the river at this time of the year. Kijun was not much of a swimmer, and in the early winter cold his heart would stop pumping in the middle of the river and … Mansik concluded that they must be planning to take the boat moored in front of the Imugi House to cross the river.

  He gripped the bark of the tree with trembling fingers. He vividly remembered the miserable afternoon when he had gone to the islet to join the boys at the dump. He would never forget what Toad had chanted while he was trudging across the sand toward the ferry, crestfallen:

  Mansik mommy U.N. lady,

  Mansik mommy Yankee whore,

  Mansik mommy U.N. lady …

  Mansik had no intention of letting them steal the boat. He hurried down to the road and ran along the stream in the same direction as the two boys. Finally he had a chance to get revenge, to get even with them for the way they had treated him.

  When he reached the Imugi House, Mansik noticed something very strange, and very wrong. Everything seemed to be quite normal when it was not supposed to be. Inside the house they played music on the radio as usual; the two women laughed and chattered with the bengkos as usual; and the boat was there by the river, untouched. He looked around but the two boys were nowhere to be seen.

  Walking on tiptoe, he circled the house twice but could not find any trace of the two boys. He checked the rice paddies, the river bank and the trees near the house. The boys were nowhere to be found.

  “Is he gone?” asked Kijun, raising his head a little. He was lying on his stomach in the ditch.

  Chandol peered toward the Chestnut House. “He’s crossing the bridge,” he said. “It’s safe now.”

  “Boy, it was close,” Kijun said. “He almost caught us.”

  “I wonder how he found out about us.”

  Kijun stood up, dusting his hands. “Maybe he’s known for some time that we come here every night,” he said.

  “Do you really think so?” Chandol watched Mansik trudge up the footpath toward the Chestnut House.

  “Well … I don’t know.”

  Chandol answered his own question, “No, I don’t think so. If he had been lying in ambush for us, he would have chosen a location closer to the Imugi House. Maybe Mansik happened to be outside tonight and spotted us coming here. We should be extra careful from now on. If Mansik finds out what we’re doing, we won’t be able to come to the Imugi House any more.”

  “If we can’t come to the Imugi House, there won’t be any more watching for us,” said Kijun. “We can’t go to Texas Town. The river is too cold at night.”

  “We’ve got to come up with something,” Chandol said. “Let’s go home.”

  “Aren’t we going to watch them tonight?”

  “No. Not tonight. It’s dangerous. Mansik might come back.”

  “Oh.”

  “There’re lots of other nights.”

  FOUR

  It had been delayed too long to be called “The Autumn War,” but the Castle village boys sent the youngest of them to Kumsan anyway to deliver the declaration of war. The challenge was most humiliating to the enemy when it was made by a little kid.

  Chandol immediately summoned his gang. Only two of them, Kijun and Bong, went to the abandoned water mill located at the northern edge of Kumsan. When the boys first moved in, it had looked as devastated as a butchered ox; old Crow-Tit, the owner, had taken away the rigs and mortars and everything else he needed to open a new mill in North County. To make their headquarters snug, the boys brought their personal things to furnish it. It was decorated now with wooden swords and other weapons, an old crushed pot in which they made soup with the fish they caught, a clean tin bucket, sticks of different sizes and other playthings for games, straw mats and wooden crates to be used as seats, mud bombs and stone missiles and other war materials. The Kumsan boys were proud of the fact that they were the only ones who had a regular war headquarters in West County. Chandol even marked the creaking door in big white letters with chalk: Head Quarters.

  At this headquarters the three boys waited, but Kangho did not show up.

  “Maybe he’s not coming,” said Chandol, sitting astride the wooden apple crate, drawing meaningless lines on the dirt floor with his sword.

  “Who’s not coming?” asked Kijun inattentively, sitting side-by-side with Bong on a roll
ed straw mat, whittling an oak branch into a Y-shaped handle for a slingshot. But he knew whom Chandol was talking about and said promptly, “Oh. You mean Kangho. He isn’t too crazy about playing with us these days, you know.”

  There was no disappointment in his voice; he seemed to be relieved that Kangho was not coming. He would automatically become the second in command then. He did not care if Kumsan lost the war to the Castle boys as long as he was honored by the post of second captain. Jun had been sure that Kangho would not come since Bong had reported that morning that Kangho had not responded when the little boy had gone to the rice mill to notify him of the captain’s summons.

  Kangho had begun gradually to estrange himself from the boys when they stopped playing with Mansik. Since Kangho had been a very close friend of Mansik’s both at home and at school, it was only natural that Kangho would stand by Mansik when the other boys reached an unspoken agreement to exclude him. When Chandol drove Mansik away from the dump on Cucumber Island, Kangho almost punched Chandol but checked himself; Kangho knew he was no match for Chandol in a fistfight. But he did not have to check himself when he heard Toad chant, “Mansik mommy U.N. lady, Mansik mommy Yankee whore.…” Kangho punched him in the face and Toad bled a lot from both nostrils. When the Imugi House opened on this side of the river, Kangho had strongly objected to going there to watch Mansik’s mother playing with bengkos at night; Chandol and Toad went since they could not go to Texas Town. Kangho eventually stopped playing with them and made new friends, the Eagle Rock boys of Hyonam village.

  “I guess you’ll have to go to fetch Kangho,” Chandol said to Kijun.

  “Me? No.”

  “What do you mean, “no"?”

  “I don’t want to talk to him. I hate him.”

  “This is not the time for me to argue with you. The war has been proclaimed, and we three have no chance of winning by ourselves against the seven boys of Castle village.”

  “I still don’t want to talk to Kangho,” Jun insisted. “Why don’t you send Bong to fetch him?”

  “Kangho won’t come if I send Bong. He’s got pride, you know. He won’t come to fight for us unless you—or I myself—go and coax him with an apology.”

  “I won’t go,” Kijun said. “I don’t want to play with Kangho. I’d prefer to lose the war to Castle village. You saw how he made me bleed at Cucumber Island, didn’t you? If you really need him, you’d better go and talk to him yourself.”

  Chandol sprang to his feet and barked, “Do you mean it?”

  Kijun winced. “Well, you know … I really didn’t mean it, but I can’t help hating him.”

  “I don’t give a damn if you hate him or not. If we don’t want to lose the dump to the Castle village boys, we have to win this war. And we need Kangho and Mansik if we want to win the fight.”

  “Mansik?” Bong asked, his eyes suddenly sparkling. “Are you going to call Mansik too, captain?”

  “Mansik?” Kijun said. “What on earth are you going to call him for? You know what will happen to us if anybody finds out that we’re playing with a whore’s son.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Chandol said in a friendlier voice, sitting on the crate again. “I have worked out the whole plan down to the last detail.”

  “I don’t know what this plan of yours is like but I assure you that I will never go to fetch Mansik.” Then Kijun made a concession. “I could go to fetch Kangho, though, if you really want me to.”

  “Good. If you get Kangho, he will get Mansik for us,” Chandol said, grinning at Jun. “And once we have Mansik with us, all our problems will disappear like snow thawing in spring.”

  “But you can’t be too sure that five of us will beat the Castle village boys even if we have Kangho and Mansik on our side,” Kijun said skeptically. “Don’t you remember what happened last year? They almost took the water mill when they attacked us with their peach medicine bombs.”

  “When I told you we won’t have any problems any more, I didn’t exactly have the Autumn War on my mind,” Chandol said to Kijun with a wily smile.

  “Oh,” Kijun said. “I see.”

  “And we will win the war, too,” Chandol said, glancing at Bong, who was puzzled by the double talk the older boys were exchanging. “We have new secret weapons of our own this year.”

  The white sun was pleasantly warm on the cold morning when Mansik heard the ox low in the Paulownia House stable. His mother was still asleep in her room and Nanhi was playing with her yo-yo. Sitting on the edge of the stoop, Mansik watched two farmers wash their hoes and shovels at the stream.

  Then he heard it once again. This was the third time. A small stone hit the fence near the rabbit cage. There was no doubt that someone was throwing stones deliberately to signal him. Rising to his feet, he cautiously looked around. He went to the gate and looked outside. He could see nobody except the farmers at the stream. The stones must be coming from the hill behind the house.

  When he went around the corner to the back of the house, Mansik saw Kangho hiding among the young alder trees. Kangho beckoned him.

  “What are you doing here?” Mansik said.

  “I brought a message for you,” Kangho said in a whisper. “Is your mother home?”

  “She’s asleep in her room. Why?”

  “It’s all right if she’s asleep. I don’t want anybody to know that I am here.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to come with me to the water mill, to our headquarters.”

  “Is that the message you brought me?”

  “Yes. Chandol is waiting for you.”

  “Chandol? Why does he want to see me all of a sudden?”

  “He has something to discuss with you.”

  “Is inviting me to headquarters by any chance all your own idea? I don’t want to be fooled like last time. I hated you for what happened to me at the dump that day.”

  “I know. I am sorry. But it’s different this time. Chandol really wants to see you.”

  Mansik thought for a moment, watching the two farmers cross the log bridge. “Why does he want to see me?” he said.

  “Well, the Castle village boys declared the Autumn War against us,” Kangho said. “And we badly need you.”

  Kangho must be telling the truth, he thought, tempted by the invitation in spite of himself. “Did Chandol himself say that he needs me?”

  Kangho nodded. “Yes. He did. And I believe he meant it,” he said, and then added, “You see, I haven’t played with them myself for a while.” He did not elaborate. Nor did he tell Mansik that he had not agreed to help in the war until Chandol and Toad had sworn by their ancestors not to peek, ever again, at Mansik’s mother playing with the bengkos at night. “I had an argument with Chandol and did not want to play with the Kumsan boys any more. So I made friends with the Eagle Rock kids and played with them until Toad came to the rice mill to see me and delivered Chandol’s message asking me to join them in the war. At first I didn’t want to go but I changed my mind when Chandol told me he was going to call you as well. When I met him at headquarters, Chandol seemed to be seriously worried. He has established a good war plan and made some new weapons but still he needs as many soldiers as he can get. He said he wanted you and asked me to pass the message because he thought you might not like talking to him or Toad. They’re waiting for you at the headquarters.”

  As Mansik followed Kangho into the water mill, the three boys waiting for him were illuminated by a pale shaft of sunlight which came in through a hole in the ceiling. Chandol, who had been sitting on a wooden crate, sprang to his feet.

  “Hello, Mansik,” Chandol said, placing a wooden sword in a cardboard sheath at his waist. “I’m glad you came. I was worried that you might not.” He pointed at the crate next to his seat. “Sit down,” he said.

  The invitation to sit on this wooden crate meant instant reinstatement of Mansik as the second in command. Mansik did not take the seat; he was wary of Chandol.

  “I a
m glad to be back, too,” Mansik said.

  Mansik and the boys said hello like strangers who were introduced to one another for the first time. Toad, trying to be inconspicuous, stole furtive glances at Chandol’s and Mansik’s expressions. He avoided Mansik’s eyes. Kangho assumed a neutral attitude. Bong, sitting on a rolled straw mat on the dirt floor, could not take his curious but frightened eyes off Mansik. The little boy, not understanding exactly what was happening around him, feared something unexpected might trigger a fistnght among the older boys.

  For a while they exchanged incoherent conversation interrupted by awkward pauses. Mansik took the offered seat but he wanted to speak as little as possible until he was sure of Chandol’s true feelings. Chandol seemed too eager to talk to Mansik to have any secret evil intentions. Mansik decided that it was not wise for him to give the impression that he was not interested in playing with the boys again.

  Mansik finally said, “I’ve been wondering about something. The night before last, I saw you and Toad going—” He faltered because he could not think of a suitable name for Dragon Lady Club, and then added vaguely, “Over there. I went after you but I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

  Alarmed, Chandol turned and glanced at Kijun.

  Kangho stared from one to the other and said, “Where did you go?”

  “Well, you know,” Chandol said evasively, stalling. “We went to the duck farm in Kamwa village to steal some eggs, but I’ll tell you all about it later. Now that we’re all here, we’d better go over our plans to defeat the Castle village boys. Don’t you want to know what weapons we’ve secured so far, Mansik? The Castle boys gave us a hard time last year with their peach medicine bombs, but it’ll be a whole different story this year.”

  Chandol was not bluffing. He proudly showed Mansik their secret armory. They had dug a new hole, resembling the foxholes soldiers had dug on the hillside during their battle, and used it to hide important weapons. The trap door of the hole was concealed by an empty manger. Mansik was stunned at the sight of the weapons Chandol showed him, one by one—a heavy chain soaked dark in grease, a bayonet, a metal box for storing machine-gun cartridges, steel clips that looked like miniature tricycles, a Communist rifle with a missing stock, used howitzer shells, a small dark green can containing DDT powder, cute little plastic spoons from C-rations, and one wooden box full of live ammunition.