by Martin Limon
“You can’t get up there.” She saw my puzzlement and then added, “Not alone. You’d need someone to guide you.”
“Why?”
“The woods are too thick, there are too many obstructions, and there is no direct pathway. You’d have to know the way. And if you got lost, the tiger would take you.”
“Tiger? There are no more tigers in Korea.”
“Huh, that’s what they say.”
I considered this. This woman seemed to believe Siberian tigers still stalked these mountains, but according to the books I’d read, no tiger had been spotted in South Korea since the late 1950s. Still, there was no point arguing with her.
“Do you know someone who could guide us up there?”
“There’s only one person.” She paused for a moment and then said, “Huk Sanyang-gun.”
I didn’t have my Korean-English dictionary with me, but I believed huk sanyang-gun meant “the black hunter.”
“He hunts tigers?”
She looked at me as if I were a child. “The tigers protect what he hunts.”
“So what does he hunt?”
“The most prized possession in these mountains.”
And then I knew what she meant. “Insam,” I said.
She nodded.
Wild ginseng, sometimes called royal ginseng, was prized far above the value of the cultivated ginseng grown in the lowlands. One gnarled old red root could make a man rich. Ten thousand US dollars in Hong Kong was a low price for the prized medicinal herb, and I’d read that in private sales particularly venerable roots had gone for even more. In Asia, ginseng was considered to be a magical tonic, able to make the old man young again and the young man wise. Ernie believed it, which was why he was always chewing ginseng gum, although I hadn’t noticed him wising up any. The difference between a stick of ginseng gum made from the mass-produced version of the herb and a slice of the flesh of an authentic royal ginseng root was the difference between a copper penny and a Spanish gold doubloon.
“How can I get in touch with this Hunter Huk?” I asked.
“You can’t get in touch with him,” she told me. “If you’re pure of heart and you pray for him, he gets in touch with you.”
The old farmhouse was located right where the woman told me it would be. The afternoon was getting late and the shadows were long. We wandered around the ruin, searching for anything of interest but finding nothing. Ernie didn’t say anything, but I knew what he was thinking: Why the hell had I brought them out here? I was starting to question the wisdom of it too, but I reminded myself we had to keep searching for some sign of the man with the iron sickle, the fancy woman from Mia-ri, and the mental patient known as Miss Sim Kok-sa. It had all started here for them, and I believed they’d return. Up here, in these isolated communities, certainly someone would spot them if they showed up.
“Over here,” Captain Prevault said. She stood atop a small man-made earthen hill. “Is this a burial mound?” she asked.
“I think so.” It was covered in weeds, not well-tended lawns like the vast burial mound areas that surround the city of Seoul. I climbed the mound and she pointed to a rotted wooden board lying on the ground. It was slashed with black ink.
“Can you read it?”
I knelt and swiped off part of the dirt. Chinese characters, two rows. Names, I thought. I pulled out my notepad and copied them down. The first character I could read: “Kim,” the most common family name in Korea. The next two characters would be the given names, probably of the husband since he would normally be listed first. The second row of characters probably represented the woman’s name. She had only two characters, the first a word I couldn’t decipher but was probably her family name, and then only one character for her given name. It made sense. In Korea, wives don’t give up their names when they marry. Below the names were Chinese numbers and the character for “year.”
“Two people,” I told Captain Prevault. “Probably the two people buried in this mound. The husband’s family name was Kim. The year was 1951.”
“Over twenty years ago,” she said. Then she paused and added, “It’s them.”
It was dark now and the road was narrow and there was no sign of light anywhere in the universe except for the headlights of the jeep.
“That darkness up ahead,” Ernie said, “is Mount Daeam.”
“That’s where Echo Company is,” I said. “Somewhere on that mountain.”
“And you believe our unholy little trio should make a pilgrimage up there.”
“Not a pilgrimage,” I said. “The man with the iron sickle wants us to go there.”
“So we’re going. You see any place to stop and get a chili dog around here?”
Captain Prevault said, “We should’ve brought tents and sleeping bags.”
“And a diesel heater,” Ernie added.
“Okay,” I said, “I didn’t think this through. But we were sort of in a hurry to get out of Yongsan Compound.” Ernie snorted. I continued. “Most of the places I’ve traveled in Korea have always had some sort of civilization. I didn’t expect these mountains to be so full of nothing.”
“No bathhouse,” Ernie said, “no yoguan, no chop house, no mokkolli house, no nothing!”
“All right, Ernie,” Captain Prevault said. “He gets the point.” Then she added, “Why don’t you pull into that Howard Johnson’s up ahead.”
Ernie did a double take and she startled giggling. Then I was laughing and so was Ernie, and then we were all gliding through the night in our little jeep in the middle of the Taebaek Mountains, happy for once, not complaining about being hungry or tired or cold. Happy to be alive—unlike the couple in that cold earthen burial mound—and able to laugh and complain about the hand we’d been dealt.
By morning we were grumpy again.
We’d slept all night in the jeep. Ernie had found a place to pull over and even though he would’ve liked to have kept the engine running so we could keep the heater on, he’d turned it off to conserve fuel. We’d bundled ourselves up as best we could in every piece of field gear we’d brought and managed to get a little sleep—not much, because of the biting cold. Captain Prevault fared best. She curled up in the back seat on top of the mostly empty duffel bags and slept like a housecat on a fluffy couch.
I awoke first and stepped outside the jeep and stretched myself. Then I walked to the edge of the clearing beside the road. A creek gurgled at the bottom of an incline. I walked downhill, squatted next to the water, and washed my face. I found an isolated area downstream above the water line and did my business, digging a hole and covering it up like the Army field manual tells us. Soon Ernie and Captain Prevault were up and following my pattern. I’d brought a toothbrush and a razor blade but figured I’d wait for hot water before trying to scrape the stubble off my chin. Once we’d all performed our morning toilette, we climbed back in the jeep and Ernie drove off. I studied the map.
“The closest village,” I said, “to the last known position of Echo Company is up ahead about three or four klicks.”
“What’s it called?”
“I’m not sure if this is a name or just a description.”
“What is it?”
“I-kori.”
“Which means?”
“Two roads.”
“They didn’t put a lot of thought into that name.”
And when we reached the village, we realized why no one had.
“There’s nothing here,” Ernie said.
Captain Prevault leaned forward, her hands on my seat. “That looks like a cattle pen,” she said.
“Or a pig pen,” I corrected. I doubted there was a lot of high-end livestock up there.
“And chicken coops,” she said.
“Yeah,” Ernie replied, “but they’re all empty.”
“Let’s talk to that guy, up there.”
I pointed. Ernie slowed the jeep next to an old man pulling a cart along the side of the road.
“Anyonghaseiyo,” I said.
The man grinned and nodded but didn’t stop walking. Ernie kept pace with him.
“Yogi-ei I-kori iei-yo?” Is this Two Roads?
He nodded.
“No one lives here?”
He shook his head.
“During the war,” I said, “I understand there was an American army unit nearby.” His face remained impassive. Then I said, “Do you know where I can find Hunter Huk?”
The old man stopped his cart. Ernie slammed on the brakes and backed up a few feet. As I waited for the old man to speak, I noticed his cart was full of edible plants, probably pulled from the edge of the stream that ran parallel to the road.
“Hunter Huk?” he repeated. His voice was reedy and tattered, as if he’d used it for far too many years.
“Yes,” I said. “Hunter Huk.”
The old man shook his head. “Who told you of him?”
“A woman down the road.” I pointed back from where we’d come. “She told me he was the only one who could lead us to the cliff where the American military unit had once set up their equipment.”
The old man nodded. “That’s true enough.” We waited for what seemed like a long time. “I wouldn’t advise you to look for him.”
“Why not?”
“You can only find him in the mountains, and it’s cold up there.”
I nodded.
“And once he finds you, he always exacts a price.”
“What kind of price?”
The old man shook his head once again. “Too high of a price. Go back to Seoul. Leave these mountains alone.”
“We are determined to climb Daeam Mountain.” I pointed toward the cliff the monks had originally told us about. “How do I get up there?”
“By helicopter,” he said. His face was straight; it wasn’t a joke.
“If I walk, how would I get up there?”
“You are in I-kori,” he said. “The road you are on now is the first road. The second road is the one you just passed. It leads into the mountains.”
“Have you been there before?”
“Never.”
“Why not?”
The man shook his head once again and grabbed the handle of his cart. “Go back to Seoul,” he said and started walking away.
We tried the road. Ernie drove along its unpaved surface. It was bumpy and uneven, but the US Army jeep was designed for just this type of terrain. Each of the four tires had its own independent suspension so the tire on the left could be in a ditch and the tire on the right could be elevated over a bump. They weren’t connected by an inflexible axle. This made moving forward possible and Ernie was a good driver, but we knew the main danger when driving a jeep over rough terrain was its inherent instability. GIs were constantly driving jeeps too fast and taking corners too sharply and thereby turning their jeeps over. Ernie wouldn’t do that, I hoped, but the road was becoming progressively more treacherous. And steeper. And then we were winding in and out of stands of pines, and the road wriggled up Daeam Mountain like a cold-weather serpent. Periodically I spotted the cliff that was our destination.
We must’ve reached an elevation of at least a thousand feet when we finally hit a dead end. Ernie climbed out of the jeep and surveyed the obstacle. It was a wall of earth and rock.
“This looks man-made,” he said.
Even though it was covered with vegetation, I agreed with him. It appeared the rock cliff behind had been blown up with explosives for the express purpose of causing this avalanche. “They wanted to block the road,” I said.
“Did a good job of it, too.”
I glanced upward. If I backed up about twenty yards, I could just make out the eastern edge of the cliff that had once been the home of Echo Company. Using my Army-issue compass I took a reading on the direction.
“Can we make it up there before dark?” Ernie asked.
“I think so,” I replied. “If we hustle.”
I started to tell Captain Prevault to wait there for us when she cut me off and said, “No way. You’re not leaving me here. I’m going with you.”
And so the three of us packed up our gear, climbed carefully over the rock wall, and started humping our way up the last couple of miles between us and the old home of the Lost Echo. Halfway up, I tossed a newspaper-wrapped package to Captain Prevault. She opened it, looked inside, and said, “You’ve been holding out on us.”
Ernie glanced at the package and said, “Kimpap. You bought it from the old woman at the farmhouse?”
“I figured we’d need a little extra on the road.”
We stopped in a clearing to rest for a while and wolfed down one tube each of the glutinous rice wrapped in paper-thin seaweed, saving the rest for dinner. I drank deeply from the water in my canteen, and then we stared back up the trail.
The view from the cliff was breathtaking. It was apparent why Echo Company had picked this spot to set up their signal equipment. Far to the left, fading out of sight in the thick mist, was the eastern coast of Korea, and if I calculated the azimuth on my map correctly, there would’ve been a straight line of sight to the US Navy vessels anchored off the coast of Sokcho. To the right, the valley stretched away far to the north, probably to units operating on the enemy side of the 38th Parallel. The valley below looked like a panorama set up by giants. Tiny little people moved between tiny little houses, and smoke rose from chimneys like wavering threads of black silk.
“The top of the world,” Captain Prevault said.
“That’s what it seems like.”
We still had maybe an hour of daylight, and I didn’t want to waste it. Systematically, we searched every square foot of the scalloped shelf of the cliff, a natural formation that was about the size of a regulation baseball diamond. We paid particular attention to the back wall because there was an overhang there that would’ve protected the Americans from rain, snow and, with any luck, incoming enemy artillery.
We found a number of items: old K-ration tins, a P-38 handheld can opener, a moldy brass belt buckle, a couple of rounds of M-1 rifle ammunition, and a brown combat boot that was so worn it had a hole in the sole and rips in the leather near the ankle.
“So a US Army unit was here,” Ernie said. “So what? It proves nothing.”
No, it didn’t. But I was still convinced the man with the iron sickle wanted to bring us here for a reason. What it was, I still couldn’t be sure.
“It’s too dark to go back now,” Ernie said. The sun was almost down.
“So we spend the night here,” I said.
“But tomorrow,” Ernie said, glaring at me, “we return to the jeep and get the hell back to civilization.”
He was tired of being cold and hungry, and I knew Captain Prevault was, too. So far, we had nothing to show for our little excursion, which would be hard to explain back at 8th Army headquarters.
With Captain Prevault’s help, we gathered firewood and Ernie dug a pit beneath the rock overhang. Using my old Boy Scout skills. I managed to start a fire, and soon it was a roaring affair. Ernie stacked up enough firewood to keep it burning all night. Captain Prevault cut some vegetation and, using one of the duffel bags as a cover, made herself a tidy little bed. Ernie and I did the same but our constructs were somewhat less neat. Then we sat down around the fire and Captain Prevault handed out the last few rolls of kimpap. It tasted delicious. I washed it down with plenty of fresh spring water from my canteen because with all this hiking and all this work, I’d become more dehydrated than I knew.
We told a few listless stories, avoiding ghost stories, and this time, I believe I was the first one asleep.
The moon was high when I awoke, my bladder full. I arose from my lumpy duffel bag bed and tossed a couple of thick branches on the fire, which crackled with appreciation. I made my way to the far edge of the cliff, stepped behind a quivering poplar tree, and started to do my business. I was trying not to splash too loudly into the mud when I noticed movement off to my left. The edge of the cliff there didn’t end in a rock wall but
continued through low vegetation back to the forest that stretched away up the mountain. I didn’t have my .45. The shoulder holster was cumbersome and difficult to sleep with so I’d taken it off and placed it on the ground next to me, but when I’d risen to take a leak, still half asleep, I’d forgotten to bring it with me.
Whatever was moving out there in the bush, I told myself, couldn’t have been a Siberian tiger, or it would’ve been much more stealthy. Then I saw a flash of white moving away from me, from tree to tree, and when it stepped into a moonbeam, I saw it clearly.
Miss Sim Ok-sa, wearing her white hospital gown, glanced back at me fearfully, stumbling through the brush. No time to go back and alert Ernie or Captain Prevault. Within seconds she’d have disappeared into the immensity of the forest. I also didn’t want to yell for help because that would only frighten her more. All these calculations were made with the speed of thought and before I knew it, I had tucked myself back into my pants and was shoving my way through the forest, moving quickly in the wake of the little mental patient.
She was surprisingly fast. But the rustling she made and the branches whipping behind her kept me on her trail. I became more reckless, running at almost full tilt, trying to make sure I didn’t stumble over any gnarled old roots or stub my toe on low-lying rocks. Luckily, I’d been sleeping in my full fatigue uniform along with field jacket and my laced-up combat boots, but already I wished I’d brought my winter cap and my hooded parka to fight the mountain chill.
I followed her through the thick forest until suddenly I found myself in a moonlit meadow. Grass stretched before me, ankle high, forming an oval about the size of two roller skating rinks. I stood at the edge, scanning the glowing night, expecting to see Miss Sim running through the field with her white gown billowing behind her. Instead, I saw nothing. She was gone.
I couldn’t believe it. I knew she had emerged right where I was standing. I searched the brush around me, finding nothing, until finally I retraced my steps about ten yards back into the forest. No sign of her.
Maybe I’d just imagined it. Maybe it hadn’t been Miss Sim at all. Maybe I’d been so overwrought at the idea of bringing Ernie and Captain Prevault all the way out here for no good reason that I’d started to imagine reasons. I shook my head and put that aside. I’d seen her. I knew I’d seen her.