He put his whole hand over my face like a football player palms a football. The only thing between my skin and his hand was the blanket. Rushing, which for me meant he was afraid that I was no longer breathing, he grabbed the top of the blanket material with both hands and began cutting it open from the top down. When the material fell off on either side of my face, I had my eyes opened in a dead man’s stare. But it was pitch-black dark. He pushed his face close to mine and I head-butted him hard. He fell over to my right.
Swiftly I pulled my arms and hands out from the blanket. I sat up and felt around for the flashlight. I switched it on and grabbed the knife from the floor. He was out cold. I traced a line down the center of my body with the knifepoint. The blanket fell off to the left and the right, leaving only the ropes around my ankles. I cut them off and got up.
Standing, I flashed the light quickly across his face. It was covered with black paint except for his eyes. I found some gloves on him. I put them on. I grabbed a patch of his hair with my left hand, pulled and held his head forward, then punched him in the face with a heavy right to make sure he was knocked out cold. I rolled him over onto the blanket, wrapped and tied him with the pieces of rope.
My mind switched. Why wasn’t anyone coming? If they weren’t coming in, they must’ve expected him to bring me out. I moved the beam of light over the truck floor area slowly, searching for anything else I could use. I saw a plastic crate in the corner and an object on the floor. I took one step closer. It was a pair of goggles.
I dragged his body to the crate that he must have been sitting on and propped him up in sitting position on the crate, his body weight leaning against the wall.
When I picked the goggles up and held them to my eyes, he was a blob of blue light, a target. I switched the flashlight off. He showed up even brighter blue through the goggles. They had some type of night vision capability. They were like a second set of eyes in the black of the night. When I looked away from him and at my own hands, the gloves I was wearing showed up blue. I looked down at my black Nike sweat suit, and it appeared to be covered with blue dust. I took the goggles off. I switched the flashlight back on and looked at him, the gloves, and my sweats with only the flashlight on. There was no blue. Everything was uniformly black. I put the goggles back on.
I took off my sneakers and all my clothes, even my pissy boxers, which were also showing up blue. That’s when I heard someone approaching the truck from outside. I went and stood on the opposite side from the propped-up blue man. The truck door was lifted from the bottom. As the number two man stood looking at the number one blue man in the left corner, I kicked him in the back of his neck and he fell forward. I leaped on him and wrestled him down and took his gun. A shot was fired from a distance, and when I looked up, the blue man was covered with fluorescent pink-purple fluid, a paint. Now man one and two were both down.
With the goggles on, I could see into a wooded area. The entire forest appeared through the goggles as a very pale green. When I looked down, however, man number two’s shirt showed up fluorescent yellow. So now I knew. I was their target. I was supposed to light up blue. The blanket they had wrapped me in must have been treated with the blue chemical. That’s why both me and man number one, who had been guarding me, had both been blue. The attackers were marked with yellow on the chest and over both kneecaps. Shots that are fired and hit explode pink. I got it. I was not supposed to have access to any goggles, or even to know the rules of the war. The enemy would light up yellow to prevent themselves from shooting one another. Aim only at the blue guy. But I was changing the game. I wasn’t blue or yellow. I’m black and my bare skin wouldn’t light up on their goggles. I took off man number two’s boots and put ’em on. They were two sizes too big for me. I tightened the laces. I crawled beneath the truck, using the strength of my right arm to pull myself. My left hand was over my jewels. I waited.
It was twenty-eight minutes before I peeped or heard anyone coming. He came to check out blue man number one, who they thought was me. Number three was a yellow shirt. I let him approach slowly, in case he was not alone. Then I saw a man six feet behind him, another yellow shirt. I took aim and fired four shots. Both men splattered pink and went down. I hadn’t moved anything but my trigger finger.
I crawled out the driver’s side of the truck and duckwalked to the driver’s door. I looked around but saw no one. I opened the door and removed the keys. I crawled to a nearby tree, buried the keys below a big rock. I looked at the position of the truck and the location of the rock. I constructed a grid in my mind and marked it in my memory in case I needed to get the keys back. But for now, I knew I couldn’t drive a truck. Since I can’t, no one will, I thought to myself. At least not with this set of keys.
I wouldn’t give them the chance to abandon me in an unknown forest. If I could eventually overpower one of them, I could force him to drive me out of here at the threat of losing his life.
As I crept through the wilderness, my eyes established a rhythm—down, up, left, right, side to side, down, up, left, right, side to side. I spotted a yellow target sitting in a tree. I stopped, took aim, caught him. He pinked and dropped. Someone returned fire in my direction, must’ve heard my shot. He missed. I wasn’t wearing a marker. Instead, his pink splattered on a bush. I dropped down and lay there as more shots were fired into my area. Five men down, how many more are there? I asked myself.
I crawled fifty feet before squatting behind a wide-trunked tree. I saw a dirt trail leading up to a cabin. Then five yellow targets were scattered like stars in the sky, except they were on earth. I drew a pattern in my mind, measuring their distances. I leaped out running, letting off rapid fire in the pattern I had just locked into my mind. Some shots were fired by them. Four yellow men went pink, one remained, and my gun was now out of ammo. I scanned the forest as far as I could see, in every direction. I couldn’t spot no more yellow shirts. Maybe the missing yellow-shirt man had taken cover inside the cabin or maybe like me, he had also removed his clothes. I approached carefully, using the trees and the bushes as shields. I traveled on a curve to come up behind the cabin.
There behind the trash squatted the yellow shirt. I crept up as close as I could without exposing myself. At the clearing, I threw the gun like a spear. When it landed, he looked in the wrong direction. I ran up on him. Quickly he spun around and let off one shot. He missed. I grabbed his weapon, hit him with the butt, and shot him when he hit the ground.
I looked in the window like he seemed to have been trying to do. There was a woman wearing a see-through nightgown and slippers, moving around in her bedroom. Then she left her bedroom and went into another room where I could not see in.
I looked at man down number ten. I took off his shirt and pants, turned his pants inside out, then put them on. I wore the pants unbuttoned and unzipped and the shirt untucked, of course. I took his gun and moved around the perimeter of the cabin, checking for yellow shirts outdoors and in the windows. There was no more yellow in view. She was alone. I knocked.
“Annyonghaseyo, konbanwa,” I said, first Korean, then Japanese. But I could see now she was European. She laughed.
“You made it, come in,” she said casually, as though I were her invited dinner guest. “You must be hungry.” Hers was the first voice I’d heard in the past two hours.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“You came to my cabin, knocked on my door, and now you’re asking me who am I?” she said, smiling.
“Where are we?” I asked her.
“Anywhere and nowhere both at the same time,” she replied strangely. “But the worst part is over and you won,” she added.
“Won?” I questioned.
“Since you’re here, it means you captured our truck and eliminated ten of our best recruits. The general will be here in the morning. He told me if you made it here to treat you nice, serve you, and make sure you get a good rest because you have a big match tomorrow.”
“Match?”
“Yep�
�� was all she said.
I moved around the cabin, pulling open the closets, checking beneath and below the furniture. She had walked off into the kitchen, ignoring me while checking on some food she had cooking. In her bedroom I pulled some clothes out of her closet. I walked back into the kitchen still holding the weapon.
“Get dressed.” I tossed the clothes at her.
She caught the pants and bent down to pick up the shirt. “Why? It’s bedtime. After I serve you some dinner, I’m going to sleep and I suggest that you do the same.”
I pointed the weapon at her. “Get dressed.” She saw my seriousness and began putting herself into the pants right in my face. I turned away. She tried to hit me with the soup ladle. I intercepted it midair, pulled it away from her, and said, “Get dressed.”
When she was dressed, I tied her to her chair using bedsheets.
“Where’s the phone?” I asked her.
“No phone calls. The general said no phone calls.”
“Who’s the general?” I asked her.
“He’s going to be angry that you treated me bad.”
I didn’t respond. I walked toward the door.
“It’s safer in here,” she said casually. “There are cliffs, sharp cliffs, sudden and steep falls and deep waters out there, and you don’t know where you are. If he wanted to kill you, he could’ve killed you already. Untie me, let’s just eat and relax and rest.” She said.
I turned and walked to the kitchen instead. I pulled a plate and a bowl from a cabinet. I set the food on the table in front of the tied woman.
“It’s you who’s hungry. I’ll feed you.” I put some soup in the spoon and brought the spoon to her lips. She opened them and I pushed the spoon in gently. She swallowed. “Umm, so good,” she said. Now she seemed more satisfied and easygoing. She thought I was nice now, I could tell. Actually, I was just checking to see if her food was poisoned. If her face would turn blue and if she would begin vomiting and pass out.
When I first saw her, I had thought to myself, she’s a decoy, a setup. She’s meant to seduce me with her nightgown and poison me with her soups. I didn’t find this nineteen- or twenty-years-young, blond-headed woman attractive at all. She talked too much, seemed sleazy and easy. She had to be. What was she doing nearly naked out here in the wilderness with all these men?
An hour later she was knocked out. I didn’t know if she was asleep because there was poison or medication in her food, or because she was ready to rest, her “bedtime,” as she had said.
I ran water from her faucet. After a minute and a half, I began drinking it. I was thirsty. But I would not eat. She had a bowl of fruit, but I didn’t trust it. I had spun an apple around in my hand, inspecting it for needle holes. After a while I put it down, said to myself, I’ll pass.
I built an obstacle course using her three remaining wooden chairs, and bakery string from some goods she had on her counter for dessert. I opened and emptied her soup cans and bean cans. I rinsed them out. I opened her six-pack and emptied them out. I made alarms out of the cans and bottles. There were alarms for all the windows, and I also strung a few up behind the door. I shook a large box of cornflakes all over the cabin floor.
I slept in the center of the floor underneath the bed with man down number ten’s gun. I had the bed blocked off by the two wooden chairs. The third chair was beneath the doorknob, securing the front door from being entered. I had a short pile of raw potatoes lying on my right side, and a short pile of red apples on my left.
If there was a match for me to fight in the morning, then I needed the rest. Her clock read 11:11 p.m. I closed my eyes. I slept.
* * *
I heard the chair pressing up against the knob. Someone was trying to enter. My sleepy eyes opened. It was morning. I pulled close to the edge of the floor at the bottom of the bed, holding the weapon. The clock read 7:07. I saw a head at the window. Then it moved away as quickly as it had appeared. Suddenly the front door got kicked in and I rolled out the potatoes as I fired on two men in fatigues. The impact pushed them back and the pink spread across their chests as they slipped and fell on the hard potato bombs.
No one moved, not me or them. Less than a minute later, I heard a vehicle roll up.
A woman stuck her head in the door and gasped. “Holy shit!” she said. I heard her calling over a handheld radio or walkie-talkie. “Sergeant, two down. We need backup.” She entered looking around cautiously.
“This place is a mess. Irene!” She ran into the cabin and began untying the still-asleep woman, whose head fell to the side. She ran to the sink and began throwing water on “Irene,” as I watched from beneath the bed. Irene came through.
Chapter 7
THE MATCH AND THE DEAL
Wearing a new black dogi that was delivered to me wrapped in plastic and perfectly folded, a perfect fit, I was facing my opponent. He was young, Japanese, maybe my age, maybe eighteen. I was confused, and still had not seen the man they called “the general.” Yet I was surrounded by young-faced observers, about twenty on each side of me, eighty in total, representing many different races.
As the battle began, it was as though none of the observers were there. I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t hear them. I could only see my opponent.
He bowed, his first mistake. I kicked him back upright, had no time for courtesies. It angered him, his second mistake: anger is a weakness to a warrior. I struck him. He was in awe of my disrespect and audacity. It was his third mistake, unaware of the element of surprise. I struck him with the left, he blocked. I kneed him with my right. He buckled. Doubt, his fourth mistake. He doubted my ability. I flipped him. Now he was flat on the floor with my foot on his chest, victory.
A new opponent appeared. He looked like a white American. I welcomed this match, made his face represent all that I had to battle against back in the US.
A quick learner, he didn’t bow. He ran up in a flying kick. I remained calm and ready, caught his foot, and used it to twist his body midair. He fell facedown, dragged back two steps, and began standing. He wasn’t quick enough. I kicked him in his face before he could get up. He hit the floor again, seemed humiliated. I approached. He tried to trip me up in my steps. I kicked his leg at the joint where the knee and calf connect and broke it. They carried him off reddened. His face was locked in the scream position, but no sound came out.
I waited. They took too long. I began running around the inside perimeter of the fighting space. I chose my target, ran past him, and then stopped. He didn’t know I chose him. He wasn’t my designated opponent. I did a flying kick backward and kicked him in his face. He fell onto the crowd. Surprised, they pushed him off at first. Then they tried to help him up. He stood up. “Take me to your general” was all I said to him. I had chosen him because he was standing while everyone else was seated. In my mind, that meant that he was higher-ranked. At least that was my guess. Now he wanted to fight me back, no problem.
I knew they had all observed that my legs and feet were dangerous weapons. I switched my style, went octopus and became two hands and fists moving so rapidly it felt like I had eight arms. Now I held his head in a hand lock. One swift movement left, right, backward, or forward and he would be dead.
“Stop, you haven’t killed anyone yet. I’ll take you to the general.” It was Irene. “Let’s go, follow me,” she said.
As we left, one set of hands began clapping. I cut them a disrespectful look to finalize the most disrespectful matches I had ever fought. Then many others began clapping. It didn’t ease my feeling. I had been disrespected. Now I’m disrespectful. Did they think this was a show?
* * *
Irene drove an uncovered convertible Jeep. I rode in the back. We moved swiftly beyond trees. In the clearing the beautiful Busan sky was revealed. I could hear the water below and the water rushing down the rocks.
The general sat beside a desk lined with six hand grenades. They were each within his long-armed reach. He was a man as black as me and about four in
ches taller. He had an M16 leaning against the wall in the corner behind him. There were several mounted weapons as well.
“Have a seat,” he said to me. “Thank you, Irene,” he said, dismissing her.
Another woman entered immediately after Irene exited. She was carrying bottled water and hot tea.
“Put it down next to him,” the general said. She was a blonde wearing a tight short dress and heels. I watched his eyes and could see that was his taste.
“It’s okay, have something to drink,” he said calmly.
“No, thank you. What’s this all about?” I asked him.
He reached for one of his grenades but moved beyond it and picked something else up instead. He laid it in his lap.
“Listen, and don’t move,” he said.
He picked up the phone beside him. It was a business phone with a bunch of buttons. He pressed another button. Speakerphone—I could hear the buzzing sound coming through. The volume was up. Swiftly, I looked over my left shoulder and then my right. There were two speakers mounted in both corners of the wall behind me, projecting the sound of the ringing phone.
Someone picked up the call. A male voice answered. “Mushi, Mushi,” so I knew he was Japanese. Then the general began speaking smooth and comfortable Japanese to the voice on the other end. When the general stopped talking, the voice on the other end said, “Chotto matte.” We both sat waiting patiently.
“Ohayou gozaimasu, Daddy,” the soft voice said. Then I knew.
It was Chiasa and the general was her father. I felt suddenly like a man who had all of the wind kicked out of him. The general gestured for me to remain silent. He picked up the object that he had placed in his lap and stood it up on his desk facing me. It was a picture of Chiasa, pretty as a puma, seated joyfully on her park bench.
Midnight and the Meaning of Love Page 55