The Wandering Ghost (george sueno and ernie bascom)

by Martin Limon

  Crossed pistols.

  The unit emerging out of the narrow alley-the men stumbling into one another, packed like sardines, and now redeploying on the wide expanse of the MSR-was none other than Headquarters Company of the 2nd Infantry Division Military Police.

  “They’ve been hunting us,” Ernie said.

  I didn’t want to believe it. “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “They’re doing their morning exercise.”

  But even as I spoke, I realized Ernie was right. They had to be hunting us. Why else would they squeeze through the ville, run down dangerous railroad tracks, and then turn up an alley too narrow to hold them?

  The MP company emerged from the gap in the dark red wall, all wearing bright green caps pulled down low over their ears, looking like a giant reptile slithering out of a cave. And then, without anyone barking orders, they re-formed into four columns behind the guide-on. The sergeant was shouting out the cadence now and the unit started its relentless trot, heading down the MSR toward the main gate. Heading directly toward us.

  “Just keep walking,” Ernie said. “We’re not going to run.”

  He shoved his fists into the pockets of his jacket, hunched his shoulders, and continued to march resolutely down the sidewalk. We had more than a quarter of a mile to go. The arch of the main gate of Camp Casey loomed in front of us. Above us, the glassy-eyed MP statue stared impassively at our dilemma. We’d never make it. The MP formation was already bearing down on us. The sergeant leading the formation had spotted us and he was shouting a new song:

  “On your right!”

  “On your right!” the MPs repeated.

  “On your right!”

  As if to get our attention.

  “Sick call!”

  There’s nothing lower than a GI who shirks his duty by riding the sick list.

  “Sick call!” the MPs repeated. And repeated again. “Sick call! Sick call!”

  The sound was thunderous and getting louder. Still, neither Ernie nor I looked back. Here it comes, I thought.

  Feet trod on cold cement. Big feet. Dozens of them, breaking away from the formation, cantering toward us.

  4

  B efore I dropped out of high school to join the army, I played some football. Being as big as I am made me an anomaly among the Chicanos of Lincoln High School in East L.A. The coach wasn’t sure what to do with me so, of course, he put me on the line. Right tackle, but then he moved me to guard. Although I was too tall to play guard-in the usual way these things are looked at-the coach saw that I could pull off the line quickly. As soon as the ball was snapped, I moved to my right or my left, behind my other teammates on the line who were lunging forward. My job was to hit some defender, when he was least expecting it, and knock open a hole for the ball carrier to plunge through. That was the theory.

  The fact of the matter was that our coach wasn’t the greatest tactician who ever paced the edge of the gridiron, and most of the other guys on the team-almost all Chicanos like me-were barely big enough to support their shoulder pads. We lost every game. Except for the one brawl we had with Roosevelt High-but that’s another story.

  Still, our coach was right about one thing. I could move off the line quickly, without tipping the defenders as to which way I was going to move. It was a skill that I reverted to when I heard those MP footsteps closing on us.

  I swiveled and crouched and launched myself at them, body parallel to the ground, in a flying block that I hoped would throw them off stride. It did. My shoulder hit one guy in the stomach, my rump hit another in the knees, and the third guy got whacked on the shins by my flying feet. All three went down. I rolled atop them, hoping to cause as much damage as possible and, as soon as I was able, popped back to my feet. Then I slugged another guy coming in, and another. It worked for a few seconds, but finally I was enveloped by a sea of sweaty gray. I crouched, winging punches to my right and my left. Fists rained down on my back. I covered my head as best as I could, bulled forward and would’ve fallen flat on my face but there were so many bodies around me that I was held upright. Punch after punch landed on the back of my head and my spine and flailed against my aching ribs.

  Someone shouted. “Back in formation, dammit! Form your ranks. What is this? A freaking mob?”

  The sergeant leading the formation, the same voice who’d been calling out the cadence. God bless him. The men around me started to back off but one or two of them winged in another chingaso, a sneak punch.

  When the MPs moved away, I turned unsteadily on my feet and saw the face of my benefactor: Sergeant First Class Otis, the desk sergeant who’d first greeted me and Ernie when we arrived at Division PMO. He was dressed in the same gray sweats and green pull-down cap as his troops. I felt like embracing him for saving me but instead he shoved me back.

  “I should’ve let them kill you,” he said. Then he shoved me again, his fist in my chest. Hard. “That’s for Weatherwax.”

  A blast filled the air.

  Ernie. He had fired his. 45 into the air, above the MP formation. Some of the men fell to the ground, a few of them crouched. Most held their ground. He stood behind me, jacket ripped off his right shoulder, face bruised, but holding the. 45 steady, smoke pouring from its barrel, aimed right between the eyes of Sergeant Otis.

  “Move ’em out, Sarge,” Ernie growled. “Smartly.”

  Otis glared at him for a moment, as if trying to decide if he should cross the five yards between them and slap the automatic pistol out of Ernie’s hand. But he decided against it. Instead, he turned back to the grumbling formation, started shouting at them to fall into ranks and, within seconds, the Headquarters Company of the 2nd Infantry Division Military Police was trotting down the road. Silent now. No one calling cadence. The pounding of their feet faded into the distance. Ernie reholstered the. 45.

  “You look like shit,” he said.

  “Thanks. So do you.”

  Ernie fingered some of the new bruises on his face. “Touchy, aren’t they?”

  “Apparently.”

  I straightened myself out as best I could and ran my fingers through my hair and Ernie and I marched to the main gate. This time, when we entered the guard shack, the lone MP didn’t give us any shit. Maybe it was the look in our eyes.

  At the transient billets, Ernie and I washed up and changed into coats and ties. It was the duty day now and we wanted to look sharp so as not to give the 2nd Division honchos anything extra to criticize us for. On the way back to the main gate we stopped at the Indianhead Snack Bar, dragged a couple of trays through the chow line, and took a table next to the window near the entrance. Ernie shoveled pulverized scrambled eggs into his trap. I sipped coffee. Gingerly. Between bruised lips.

  “We should go to the dispensary,” I said.

  “Screw that,” Ernie replied. “So Spec Six Wehry can laugh at us?”

  “Not everybody in Division is against us, Ernie.”

  “They could’ve fooled me.”

  Ernie was right. So far we hadn’t made many allies. Everywhere we turned people were worried that we’d embarrass the Division. Cause them grief. And were outraged if we so much as laid a finger on one of their comrades. Where did this loyalty come from? Was it a healthy thing in a combat unit? Or was there something deeper? Something everybody was afraid of? I reminded myself to fight off paranoia. An occupational hazard for a cop.

  And I reminded myself that we had, in fact, found three allies. Brandy, the “soul sister” bartender at the Black Cat Club, and Ok-hi and Jeannie, the business girls who’d helped me cadge a lead from the band leader at the Silver Dragon. All of them were Korean women. That didn’t bother me. I liked Korean women.

  “How’s your paperwork coming?” Ernie asked.

  “What paperwork?”

  Ernie smirked. “Your marriage paperwork.”

  He was referring to the fact that for an American GI to marry a Korean woman, a whole series of certifications and permissions must be requested, both from the U.S. military and
from the Korean government. He was also referring to the fact that a few weeks ago I’d submitted such paperwork.

  “Pulled it,” I said.

  “I thought you and Miss Ryu were doing well together.”

  Miss Ryu had been my Korean language teacher. She was a graduate student at Ewha University and almost exactly my age. Her job on the U.S. Army compound was helping to finance her master’s degree. At first, I’d been her best student. Then we’d started seeing one another at coffee shops and afterwards taking long strolls through parks and museums and ancient palaces. Our interests were similar, our personalities in tune. And, although she wore thick-lensed glasses and most GIs thought she looked bookish, to me she was beautiful.

  “We were doing well,” I said.

  Ernie leaned back in his chair. “Okay,” he said, “you can tell Uncle Ernie. What went wrong?”

  I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I stared at two GIs jostling one another for the right to drop a quarter into the snack bar’s jukebox. Finally, one of them relented and clanging rock music emerged from the speakers.

  Once our marriage paperwork was submitted, Miss Ryu knew she had to tell her parents about our romance. But she also knew that the thought of her marrying someone other than a Korean- and worse yet an American GI-would be a crippling blow to them. The loss of face amongst their family and friends and her father’s colleagues at work would be enormous. It’s not racism exactly. Ethnocentrism describes it better. Koreans have lived together as one tribe on this narrow Asian peninsula for so long that the thought of a well-brought-up woman marrying a long-nosed foreigner is difficult to bear. We’re just too different. Culturally, physically, psychologically. She thought about it and thought about it. Finally, Miss Ryu lacked the courage to speak of such a thing to her parents. She told me to pull the paperwork.

  “My father’s sick,” she explained. “His heart.” She tapped herself on the chest. “And I’m their only daughter.”

  Her parent’s only daughter, lost to a foreigner. What would their ancestors think?

  I took the news with what I hoped was stoicism. And I tried to reassure her that I understood. Actually, I supposed I did. Her parents were everything to her. If I had parents, I’d probably feel the same way. Still, that didn’t mean that her decision didn’t hurt. Since then, I hadn’t been to class and we hadn’t met socially. The temporary assignment to the 2nd Division area had, in fact, come as a relief. A chance to be by myself. A chance to think.

  “All that?” Ernie said, responding to my silence.

  “Yeah.” I sipped on my coffee. “All that.”

  I didn’t feel guilty about having spent the night with Jeannie. Miss Ryu and I were no longer an item. I was a free man. Free as a pigeon flying over the DMZ. With GIs taking potshots from below.

  The man who booked the entertainment in the Tongduchon area worked days only. It was already half past nine in the morning but in the cold winter air, the morning fog that blanketed the alleys of Tongduchon had not yet burned off. We turned down one narrow walkway and then another until finally I found it: 21 bonji, 36 ho. The sign above the door said KIMCHEE ENTERTAINMENT in English. KUKCHEI UMAK, in Korean: International Music. That’s not unusual for Korean companies. They’ll have one name that sounds good in English and another that sounds good in Korean. The two don’t necessarily have to match.

  The door was open and we walked in.

  His name was Pak Tong-i. He was a wrinkled Korean man who wore a French beret atop his round head and as we spoke, he continued to puff on a Turtle Boat brand cigarette through an ivory holder. Yes, he knew all about Kim Yong-ai.

  “One of my best strippers,” he said. The English was accented but understandable. “GI love her too much. You know, big geegee.” He cupped his hands in front of his chest.

  “So who did she owe money to?” Ernie asked.

  “Stripper always owe money,” he said. “That’s why they get into business. Maybe their mom owe money, maybe their daddy owe money, maybe they have younger brother who want to go to school. Very expensive, how you say, hakbi?”

  “Tuition,” I told him.

  While Pak Tong-i shook his head, thinking about the high cost of tuition, I asked another question.

  “So when Kim Yong-ai ran away, somebody must’ve been very angry that she ran away without paying what she owed.”

  Pak’s eyes widened. “Nobody angry.”

  “Why not?”

  “When she run away, she don’t owe money.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ernie said. “I thought you just told us that she owed a lot of money.”

  “She did. But before she left, same day, she pay all.”

  Now it was our turn to be stupefied.

  “She come in here,” Pak continued, “that morning. With big American woman. They have big pile of GI money. They pay all.”

  “How much?”

  “Miguk money?” Pak asked himself. American money? He puffed on his cigarette while he thought about it. Finally he said, “Peik man won. Maybe two thousand dollar.”

  Ernie whistled.

  I showed Pak the photograph of Jill Matthewson.

  “That her,” he said. “She make great stripper.”

  “Where did this Miss Kim find the money to pay you off?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I no ask.”

  “Did they tell you they were leaving Tongduchon?”

  “Yes. Miss Kim say she no workey for me no more.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  “I don’t know,” Pak answered. “I no ask.”

  We pressured him for a while but finally gave up. If he knew where they’d gone, he wasn’t talking.

  Later that morning, I reviewed Corporal Jill Matthewson’s bank records. Eighth Army can do these things. The banks that do business on base camps in Korea are chartered under military regulation and sign away most of their stateside rights. Anyway, that’s the way it was explained to me. True or not, the Office of the Judge Advocate General says it’s legal. But of course JAG says it’s legal mainly because the 8th Army commander says it’s legal. I perused the records carefully. No major withdrawals before she disappeared. Mainly because there was nothing to withdraw. Her balance was less than ten dollars. Most of Jill Matthewson’s military paycheck had been forwarded by allotment to her mother in Terre Haute, Indiana. The rest was what you’d expect for a young woman to spend on herself, for clothes and other personal items. About a hundred dollars a month. Jill had only been in country a little over five months. In that amount of time, she certainly hadn’t saved two thousand clams by being thrifty.

  Theoretically, Jill could’ve raised the two thousand dollars to pay off Kim Yong-ai’s debts from black-marketing. U.S.-manufactured goods are shipped by the boatful from the States to the military PXs in Korea-all at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. No customs duties are paid so the goods are cheap. For example, a GI can buy a portable tape recorder in the PX for say, forty bucks and turn around and sell it out in the ville for 40,000 won, the equivalent of eighty dollars. In other words, double his money. Of course, black-marketing is strictly illegal and GIs are prosecuted for it all the time. Still, it’s widespread, the temptation being too much for ordinary mortals. But Jill Matthewson’s ration control record was clean. She’d purchased very little out of the PX, only what she needed for what the army likes to call “personal health and welfare.”

  So where had the two thousand dollars come from?

  Certainly, Miss Kim, a poor Korean stripper, couldn’t come up with that much money. “Peik man won,” Mr. Pak had told us. Literally, “One hundred ten thousand won.” By our way of counting, a million won. By today’s exchange rate, equivalent to roughly two thousand dollars U.S. Taaksan tone, in the GI parlance. A lot of dough. How in the world had either Corporal Jill Matthewson or the stripper Kim Yong-ai come up with it? I set the question aside for now. Instead, I concentrated on the other tip that the owner of Kimchee Entertainment had provided.


  “Corporal Jill very famous in Tongduchon,” he told us.

  “Famous? Why?”

  “She help Chon family.” I stared at him blankly. “You arra.” You know. “Chon family daughter run over by GI truck.”

  Then I understood. The case had made news even down in Seoul. Two GIs, driving a two-and-a-half-ton truck near Camp Casey, had struck a young Korean girl. The accident happened early in the morning while she was on her way to middle school. The girl, they say, bounced twenty yards and, according to the eyewitness reports, died just minutes after impact. There had been demonstrations calling for the GIs to be punished, but a 2nd Division court-martial determined that the death was accidental. The two GIs were transferred back to the States. More demonstrations ensued. 8th Army’s attitude was that the Koreans were being ungrateful. After all, we are here defending their country and accidents do happen.

  The price of freedom you might call it.

  According to the booking agent, Pak Tong-i, Corporal Jill Matthew-son had been the first MP on the scene. She’d provided first aid- futile, as it turned out-and later she’d done everything she could to help the family of the deceased girl. As far as the citizens of Tongdu-chon were concerned, Jill was the only American who had tried to do the right thing. The rest of the American reaction-trying the GIs in a secret tribunal on Camp Casey, not calling all relevant witnesses, and finally acquitting the GIs and sending them back to the States-had been totally unacceptable. Demonstrations outside the main gate of Camp Casey were the result. And if it hadn’t been for the brutal intervention of the Korean National Police, those demonstrations might’ve turned into anti-American riots.

  The missing woman’s connection to the Chon matter was news to us. Why hadn’t the 2nd Division mentioned Jill Matthewson’s involvement in this case in their report of her disappearance? Did they consider it to be irrelevant? Maybe it was. Still, I needed to know for sure. It just seemed like a heck of a big thing to leave out.