by Martin Limon
I stuck my flashlight in my pocket, marched to the base of the tower, and started to climb. Resolutely, I stared at the silver moon. Praying to it. Making it my own personal goddess. Trying not to look down. Maybe it was my imagination but the higher I climbed, the more fiercely the wind howled.
3
I remember the day I hit five feet.
I was eleven years old and proud after I measured myself because I was taller than most of the kids in my elementary school. I was proud because now I had a chance to protect myself. And protect the kids who I lived with while being shuffled around to various foster homes.
Some kids were more vulnerable than others. When they were shoved or spanked or shouted at, they took it to heart. They identified with the criticism and little by little the life in their eyes began to fade, and that’s when they began to die. I remember Fausto. He was a cute kid always ready to smile, but the foster father who was raising us wouldn’t stop badgering helpless little Fausto. This foster father saw the entire world as conspiring to keep him down and he not only resented the food and space that Fausto took up, he also resented Fausto’s cheerful attitude. So from the day Fausto arrived in our home, the guy started in on him. Day by day, I saw the life dying in Fausto’s eyes. I tried to stop it and as a reward for my efforts, I was slapped myself. But I was older than Fausto. And three years had passed since I’d hit five feet. I was fourteen now, and five foot ten. The football coach measured me in the high school gym and I was surprised that I’d sprouted up so much. There was something about the magic number. Five-ten. I felt like an adult. Like a man.
One day I arrived home from school and my foster father was already slapping Fausto—enraged because he’d been caught stealing a slice of bread from the cupboard. But it wasn’t stealing. Fausto was hungry because he’d been forced to skip breakfast and then lunch. It was the foster father who was stealing, from the money provided to him by the County of Los Angeles. He slapped Fausto one more time.
I dropped my books, strode into the kitchen, and slammed a straight left into my foster father’s nose. Blood flowed and from the way he squealed you would’ve thought I was the worst killer since Attila the Hun. And, of course, he refused to fight back. Instead, his wife called the social workers and two days later I was escorted from the home.
Fausto stayed. I remember the look in his eye as I left. Later, Dante taught me the words for it: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
In the next three years I grew six more inches—to six foot four—and at the age of seventeen nobody wanted me around. I cramped too many people’s style. After a brief stint in an orphanage, I dropped out of high school and joined the army. An army that included obstacle courses.
I was halfway up the 2nd Division tower. Perspiration poured from my forehead. My arms were straight out, clinging to the flat, smooth surface of the middle platform. These towers were designed by diabolical minds. No protrusions, no handholds, not so much as the head of a bolt sticking out of the smooth wooden surface. Still, you had to hold on somehow, by the pressure of your limbs on flat surfaces and the occasional grip of an edge. The trick was to shinny up from one smooth platform to the next.
Finally, I stood at the top of the tower.
Below sat the jeep. It was too dark to see if Ernie was still in it. Farther to the west stretched the dark Quonset huts and sporadic firelights of Camp Casey. At the far edge of the compound the twenty-foot-tall MP stood as we’d left him. Silent. Staring mindlessly toward the main gate. Beyond the gate, across the MSR, Tongduchon blazed. Blinking lights, flashing neon, rotating yin and yang symbols promising an endless nirvana of entertainment. Even from this distance I could hear taxi horns and the low murmur of rock music and the occasional shout from a drunken GI. Then, in counterpoint, the startled shriek of a Korean business girl.
A cold wind from the north picked up and chilled the perspiration that swathed my body. I hugged myself, staring down at the obstacle course below. The square platform I stood on was about fifteen feet across. If I stood with my back to one edge and ran full tilt to the other I could probably leap about twenty-five or thirty feet out. Just far enough to reach an obstacle on either side of me. One was a row of elevated logs, the other a sandbagged tunnel. No cement. And yet there’d been cement in Private Druwood’s head wound. I’d touched it myself, felt the dried cement crumble in my hand.
I pulled out my flashlight, knelt down, and studied the platform. Smooth as a baby’s complexion. Designed that way and kept that way by the constant rubbing of GIs in fatigues lying up here, face down, hugging the platform. Resting. Grateful to have made it safely to the top but wondering how in the hell they were going to survive the climb back down.
I clicked off the flashlight and stood. But I wasn’t seeing Camp Casey or Tongduchon or feeling the cold Manchurian wind. I was seeing the pale face of Private Marvin Z. Druwood. His corpse. And then his eyes popped open, staring at me, but although I’d never met the man I knew those eyes didn’t belong to Druwood. I’d seen them before. But where? The wind whipped up and slashed cold fingers across my face. And then I knew. Fausto. The little kid I’d left alone. The little kid I’d abandoned to his fate. Those were his eyes in that corpse.
A shot blasted and something tiny and evil whizzed past me, not ten feet away. I dropped to the platform and flattened myself. Unmoving. Hoping that by stillness I would become just a shadow and not a target. I waited ten minutes. Nothing more happened.
Quickly, I climbed down the tower.
When I reached the jeep there was just enough moonlight for me to see that Ernie was dozing. I shook him awake.
“Did you hear that shot?”
“What shot?” he asked.
“When I was on top of the tower, someone took a potshot at me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Ernie started the jeep. “How much did you drink out in the ville, Sueño?”
“Not much.”
Ernie snorted. “I’m going to have to get you into rehab.”
I didn’t answer. I was wondering who had shot at me and where the shot had come from and why they’d shot at me. From the sound of the bullet as it whizzed past, the shooter must’ve been a few hundred yards away. Rifle, almost certainly. He could’ve been firing from the shrubbery surrounding the obstacle course, or from a vehicle back on the main road, or even from one of the guard posts on the hills surrounding Camp Casey’s perimeter. If he was trying to kill me, why hadn’t he fired again? Once he’d gotten the range, the second shot would’ve been more accurate.
Our reception here at Division, so far, had been miserable. First, the atmosphere of hostility at the PMO. Then an avalanche of entrenching tools. And now this. Had the same person been behind both incidents? And if so, what was he trying to tell us?
Ernie admitted that he’d actually heard the shot but hadn’t thought anything of it. Just a late-night combat-training exercise, he presumed. Maybe he was right. Maybe that’s what it was. A bullet gone astray.
But also, maybe not.
The next morning, using the address Brandy had provided, Ernie and I located Jill Matthewson’s hooch in a back alley on the west side of East Bean River. Children ran through narrow lanes and street vendors pushed rickety wooden carts, chanting out the nature of their wares. The area teemed with life, primarily because the economy of TDC was booming. Not only was there a steady flow of U.S. dollars from the local GI village, but also agriculture in the surrounding valleys was more productive than ever. President Pak Chung-hee’s Sei Maul Undong, the New Village Movement, was paying off. Government investment in small family farms had improved life throughout the country. Straw-thatched roofs were disappearing, being replaced by weather-resistant tile. TV antennae were springing up. After two decades of drudgery following the devastation of the Korean War, life was improving in Frozen Chosun. Slowly.
The woman who owned the property was surprised to see two GIs duck through her front gate an
d enter her courtyard. She’d been squatting in front of a tub of laundry but as we approached she stood, holding her lower back. At first, she was startled when I spoke Korean to her. A lot of Koreans are. They don’t expect it from a GI. My Korean is far from perfect but I can communicate and, as long as they keep it simple, I can read and write the language. The U.S. Army makes it easy to learn. Free classes are offered on base and a free textbook is provided, along with a personable young Korean woman to do the teaching. However, on a compound of five thousand GIs only two other guys showed up regularly. Still, I enjoyed studying. Deciphering a sentence was like solving a puzzle, and I’ve always loved puzzles.
Once I told the woman what we were there for, she didn’t hesitate. She led us along the raised porch surrounding the courtyard and pulled open one of the oil-papered doors. This, she told me, was the hooch that Jill Matthewson had lived in. Other GIs had been here before, along with the Korean National Police, examining the place and questioning her renters.
It was a tiny single room. Like most of the hooches in Korea, its dimensions were only about twelve feet by twelve feet. It did, however, have an overhead fluorescent light, a vinyl-covered ondol floor— heated by charcoal gas running through ducts in the stone foundation—and a beat up wooden armoire. There were five hooches in the horseshoe-shaped compound. Two of them empty: Jill’s and the one next door. I asked what had become of Jill’s personal effects.
The landlady told me that all Jill had kept here were civilian clothes. That jibed with the MP report and what Ernie and I had observed in the barracks. In order to be ready for emergency deployment, all 2nd Infantry Division GIs were required to keep their uniforms and combat gear in the barracks, even if they maintained an unauthorized hooch out in the village. Other than civilian clothing, the woman told us, Jill had kept only toiletries and a few books and magazines here. About three weeks ago, without saying anything, Jill had packed up her few belongings and left. As the landlady told the Korean police, she had no idea where Jill had gone. She’d left without warning. Was she friendly with anyone here or in the neighborhood? No. After learning how to change the charcoal that heated her hooch and how to pump water from the well and where the byonso was located, she’d kept to herself. By mimicking the other renters, Jill Matthewson had learned to remove her shoes before stepping up on the wooden porch and then she’d mastered the most tedious Korean housekeeping chore of all: using a moist rag to keep the warm vinyl floor of her hooch scrubbed and free of soil.
“She very clean,” the landlady told us, “for an American.”
On the way back to the bar district, Ernie and I stopped at the real estate office Brandy had tipped us to. Having already been questioned by the Korean police, the Korean agent was very cooperative, providing all the particulars about Jill’s rental. Then I put the question I’d really come to ask: Why did Jill Matthewson’s landlady have two vacancies?
The real estate agent seemed surprised and thumbed through his records. Jill’s hooch had remained unoccupied because the Korean police told the owner not to rent it out until they gave her permission. They had already examined it, finding nothing, but it was still, theoretically, a crime scene. Until the case was closed they didn’t want anyone moving in. The other hooch had also been recently vacated.
The real estate agent handed me a five-by-seven card and I studied the hangul script. Kim Yong-ai had been the tenant of the hooch next to Jill’s. A woman’s name. I jotted it down, along with her Korean national identification number. She’d moved out three weeks ago, the same day Jill Matthewson disappeared.
Why hadn’t the landlady told us that?
The real estate agent had no idea.
I asked about Kim Yong-ai’s occupation.
Entertainer, he said.
What type of entertainer?
Apparently, there was no Korean word for it. Instead, he mimicked dancing and removing articles of apparel.
“Stripper,” Ernie said in English.
The real estate agent nodded his head vigorously.
At our request, the Korean National Police arrested Jill Matthewson’s landlady.
At the Tongduchon Police Station, she was more voluble. Yes, Kim Yong-ai was a stripper and, yes, she worked the GI bar district of Tongduchon. Yes, she had become good friends with Jill Matthewson and, during the day when they were both off duty, they talked for hours. The MP and the stripper. Both worked the night shift and they’d become fast friends. When Jill Matthewson left, she’d left with Kim Yong-ai.
Why hadn’t the landlady told us this? Jill and Miss Kim made her promise not to say anything. They knew the MPs would try to follow them and, she believed, there might be someone else following Kim Yong-ai also.
Who? She didn’t know. But she had the impression that Kim Yong-ai owed a lot of money. Paying her rent had been a struggle for the young stripper and sometimes she’d been so broke that she’d gone hungry. So hungry that the landlady had fed her from time to time.
Where had the two women gone? This was the question that the KNPs, with no regard for the landlady’s civil liberties, pounded home hour after hour. Finally, we realized that the landlady was telling the truth. She really didn’t know.
The stripper, Kim Yong-ai, and the military policewoman, Jill Matthewson, had disappeared together and they purposely had not told anyone where they were going.
Why? That was the question.
* * *
“At least she’s alive,” Ernie said.
It was early evening now; the sun had just gone down. We sat at the bar in a joint called the Silver Dragon Club, drinking cold draft OB, Oriental Brewery lager. It had taken a few hours to elicit the cooperation of the KNPs, and then a few more hours for them to conduct the interrogation. They’d taken their time. Watching the landlady cry hadn’t been easy, but sometimes a cop has to frighten people to pry information out of them. The Korean cops are experts at it.
“Maybe,” I said.
“What do you mean ‘maybe.’ Of course she’s all right. Jill Matthewson was healthy and strong when she packed up and left TDC, and she had a Korean friend by her side to help watch out for her.”
“A friend who owed money. And if this Miss Kim Yong-ai was so frightened that she had to disappear, who do you think she owed money to?”
“Kampei,” Ernie said. Gangsters.
“Exactly. So maybe Jill Matthewson isn’t so safe after all.”
A business girl wearing hot pants and a halter top came up and threw her arms around Ernie’s neck. Then the rock band started and more GIs flooded into the club. They’d just gotten off duty. I knew the routine. After work they hot-footed it over to the mess hall, wolfed down chow and then, after a quick shower, threw on their blue jeans and their sneakers and their nylon jackets. Finally, assuming their pass hadn’t been pulled, they flooded toward the main gate and out into the ville. Freedom.
The jackets they wore were made of black or dark blue nylon with a layer of cheap cotton for insulation. They were easily available at the stalls throughout Tongduchon and it seemed virtually mandatory for every GI to own one. On the back, the jackets were hand embroidered with one of three things: a flame-breathing dragon, a map of Korea, or a scantily clad Asian siren. Sometimes they crammed all three onto one jacket. Usually there was a motto beneath. Maybe the designation of their unit, like the “502nd Military Intelligence Battalion.” Or the dates of their tour, “June 1972–July 1973.” Or some stupid saying like, “When I die I know I’m going to heaven because I’ve already served my time in hell.”
To blend in, Ernie and I wore similar jackets. His featured a naked Asian woman being embraced by a fire-breathing dragon. The dates beneath touted his two tours in Vietnam. My jacket featured a map of Korea and the start and end dates of my first tour here. When we’d had them made, Ernie asked me why I didn’t buy something with a little more flare. I’m not sure why I didn’t. A time and a place seemed good enough to me.
OB draft is what the Silver
Dragon served; it came from a venerable brewery in Korea that had supposedly been established by Germans just after the turn of the century. The business girl hanging off Ernie’s neck was named Ok-hi. She was tall and buxom and besides the hot pants and halter top wore black leather boots that enveloped her thick calves all the way to the knee. She had a girlfriend and a few minutes later I was introduced to Ji-yon, who called herself Jeannie. Jeannie was slender, willowy compared to full-figured Ok-hi, and her personality was polite and reserved. She told me she was from the southern province of Cholla-namdo. Ernie and I continued to drink the draft Oriental Brewery lager and we bought the girls drinks. They seemed fascinated by us. We were from Seoul, not “Cheap Charlies” like the Division GIs. Ernie winked and said, “Wait until they get to know me better.”
Even amidst the mad swirl of women and booze and rock and roll, I continued to think about the case. I wanted to explain to Ernie that I thought the death of Private Druwood hadn’t happened the way Colonel Alcott and Mr. Bufford said. And I wanted to speculate with him about the various reasons that Jill Matthewson might’ve decided to go AWOL. If we could figure out her motive, maybe that would help us break a lead. But Ernie was too busy with Ok-hi. Instead, I asked Jeannie who booked entertainment in Tongduchon. She was helpful and when the band took a break, Jeannie introduced me to their leader, a young Korean man with straight black hair hanging over his ears. He was surprised that I could speak Korean and after a little hesitation, he gave me the name and address of his booking agent.
Ernie and I put away about a six pack each. Ok-hi suggested that the four of us adjourn to a chop house and have something to eat. Drinking on an empty stomach, the Koreans believe, is bad for the health. Ernie and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so we readily agreed. The girls asked us what type of food we wanted. Neither Ernie nor I could tolerate the Miguk-style chicken houses or hamburger joints that infested the bar district. The chow in those joints was routinely horrible and sometimes caused dysentery. We told them we wanted Korean food. The girls left and returned wearing warm coats and the four of us paraded onto the main drag of Tongduchon.