Nightmare Range (49 page)

What I’d questioned Rothenberg about this morning concerned his friendship with Miss Kang. How they’d both sat up nights in the hooch waiting for Miss O. But Miss O would stay out after curfew and then not come home at four in the morning and often Rothenberg had to go to work before he knew what had happened to her. But sometimes she’d be back early with some story about how she stayed at a friend’s house and how they were having so much fun talking and playing flower cards that the time had slipped by and she hadn’t realized that midnight had come and gone and she’d been trapped at her friend’s house until after curfew lifted at four in the morning.

“You knew it was all lies, didn’t you?” I asked.

Rothenberg allowed his head to sag. “I guess I did.”

“But Miss Kang knew for sure.”

“Yeah,” Rothenberg said. “Miss O had a lot of boyfriends. I realize that now.”

Private Everett P. Rothenberg went on to tell me that sometimes Miss O made both him and Miss Kang leave the hooch completely.

“She’d tell us that family was coming over for the weekend.
And she didn’t want them to know that a GI like me was staying in her hooch. So Miss Kang helped out, she took me to her father’s home near Yoju. It was about a thirty-minute bus ride. When we arrived at her father’s home they were real friendly to me. I’d take off my shoes and enter the house and bow three times to her father like Miss Kang taught me. You know, on your knees and everything.”

“You took gifts?”

“Right. Miss Kang made me buy fruit. She said it’s against Korean custom to go ‘empty hands.’ ”

“And you prayed to her ancestors?”

“Some old photographs of a man and a woman.”

“And you went to their graves?”

“How’d you know? To the grave mounds on the side of the hill. We took rice cakes out there and offered them to the spirits. When the spirits didn’t eat them, me and Miss Kang did.” He laughed. “She always told me that food offered to the spirits has no taste. Why? Because the spirits take the flavor out of it and all you’re left with is the dough.”

“Is that true?”

“It was for me. But I never liked rice cakes to begin with.”

I stared at Rothenberg a long time. Finally, he fidgeted.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “If you think there was something between me and Miss Kang, you’re wrong. Sung-hee is my girl. Miss O. I was faithful to her.”

“You were,” I said softly.

His head drooped. “Right,” he said. “I was.”

Miss Kang wasn’t in her hooch.

“She go pray,” the landlady told us.

“At the shrine at the top of the hill,” I said, pointing toward the Namhan River.

Her eyes widened. “How you know?”

I shrugged. Ernie and I thanked her, walked back through the village and started up the narrow trail that led out of Paldang-ni,
over the hills, and eventually to the banks of the Namhan River. On the way, we passed the bronze bell. It still hadn’t been moved and sat amongst a pile of rotted lumber.

At the top of the hill, we found her. She squatted on the stone platform of the shrine, just below where the bell would’ve been. Ernie walked up to her quickly, shoved her upright, pressed her against one of the wooden support beams, and frisked her. He tossed out a wallet, keys, some loose change and, finally, an Army-issue bayonet.

Miss Kang squatted back down, covering her face with her hands. Narrow shoulders heaved. She was crying.

Ernie backed away, rolling his eyes, exasperated.

After she shed a few more tears, maybe she’d open up to us. I was about to whisper to Ernie to be patient when, behind me, a pebble clattered against stone. Ernie was too busy staring at the quivering form of Miss Kang to notice. As I turned, something dark exploded out of the night.

Ernie shouted.

For a moment, I was gone. Darkness, bright lights, and then more bright lights. I felt myself reeling backward and then I hit something hard and I willed my mind to clear. The darkness gave way to blurred vision. Ernie slapped me on the cheek.

“Sueño, can you stand?”

I stood up.

“Come on. He hit you with some sort of club and when I lunged at him I tripped on this stupid stone platform. He and Kang took off.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Shin.”

I followed Ernie’s pointing finger. Fuzzy vision slowly focused. The early morning haze had lifted and more sunlight filtered through bushes and low trees. In the distance, two figures sprinted down the pathway, heading back toward Paldang-ni.

“Come on!” I shouted.

“My sentiments exactly,” Ernie said. “But watch out. She took the bayonet.”

And then we were after them.

A crowd had gathered in the central square of Paldang-ni. It was like a small park, surrounded on either side by produce vendors, fishmongers, and butcher shops. No lawn but a few carefully tended rose bushes were ringed by small rocks. Under the shade of an ancient oak tree, old men—wearing traditional white pantaloons and blue silk vests and knitted horsehair hats—squatted on their heels, smoking tobacco from long-stemmed pipes. Groups of them gathered around wooden boards playing
changki
, Korean chess.

Halabojis
, they were called. Grandfathers.

One of the
halaboji
’s horsehair hat had fallen into the dust. So had his long-stemmed pipe. Shin held him, his back pressed firmly against the trunk of the old oak. Miss Kang stood next to him, the sharp tip of her bayonet pressed against the loose flesh of the grandfather’s neck.

“Get back!” she screamed at me in English. “We’ll kill him.”

I stood with my arms to my side. Ernie paced a few cautious steps away to my left. I knew what he was thinking. Could he pull his .45 and take a clear shot at Kang’s head before she could slice the old man’s throat? But at that distance, over ten yards, it would be risky.

“Put the knife down,” I told Miss Kang.

“Go away!” she shouted. “My brother and I will leave Paldang-ni. We’ll never come back.”

A crowd of local citizens had started to gather. Their mouths were open, shocked at what they were seeing. Elders were revered in Korea, never abused like this. Mumbled curses erupted from the crowd.

“The KNPs are on the way,” I said. “Put the knife down.”

Of course I had no idea if the KNPs had been alerted but they would be soon. Ernie was inching farther to the left, attempting
to evade Kang’s direct line of sight. I had to stall for time, before Ernie chanced a shot or Miss Kang decided that one less grandfather wouldn’t be missed one way or the other.

“You had good reason for what you did,” I told Miss Kang.

Her eyes widened. Perspiration flowed down her wrinkled forehead, forming a puddle beneath her eyes. “Yes,” she said, surprised. “That’s what I told my brother. I had good reason. Miss O made me do it.”

People were shutting down produce stands now, running to the back of the crowd to stand on tiptoes to see what was going on.

Miss Kang kept talking. “She was using him.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Miss O. She was using Everett.”

She meant Private Rothenberg. “How so?” I asked.

“She tricked him. Took his money. Never slept with him. Only had fun, changing from one boyfriend to another. Making me leave my own room. Never paying her share of the rent. So I took Everett. I was nice to him. He met my family. He prayed at our grave mounds. He liked me.”

Using her free hand, the one without the bayonet, Miss Kang wiped flowing perspiration from her eyes and stared directly at me. “He liked me. I know he did.”

“But you talked to Miss O one night. Atop the hill at the shrine with the bronze bell. You argued.”

“No!” Miss Kang shook her head vehemently. “We didn’t argue. I told Miss O about everything she did wrong. She didn’t argue. She agreed. She
knew
she was doing wrong. But after I told her everything and told her she should leave Everett alone, she laughed at me.”

Miss Kang stood incredulous, lost in her own story. Lost in the memory of the unbridled temerity of the arrogant Miss O Sung-hee. “She said that she would take Everett’s money and use him for as long as she wanted to and there was nothing I could do about it.”

Shin looked about frantically, knowing that as the crowd grew his chance of escape grew less. He shouted at his sister to shut up. Her head snapped back toward him.

Ernie by now had the position he wanted, on the extreme left of Shin’s peripheral vision. He reached inside his jacket and unhooked the leather shoulder holster of his .45. Miss Kang’s head was bobbing around while the old man leaned his skull backward, trying to avoid the sharp tip of the bayonet that pointed into his neck. Tears rolled down the
halaboji
’s face.

Maybe it was the sight of these tears that enraged the crowd most. Whatever it was, suddenly a barrage of garlic cloves was heaved out of the crowd. They smacked the trunk of the oak tree, barely missing Shin and the old man. Enraged, Miss Kang shouted back at them to stop. The crowd roared. This time it was a head of Napa cabbage that exploded at Kang’s feet. She hopped. Ernie pulled his .45, held it with both hands in front of him. Still no shot. I took a couple of steps forward. Miss Kang swung the tip of the bayonet my way.

That was the signal for the crowd to unleash their rage. Amidst shouts of anger, more produce flew at Shin and the grandfather and Miss Kang. Garlic, persimmons, fat pears, even a few dead mackerel.

Then the enraged citizens of Paldang-ni surged forward. Ernie raised the barrel of his .45 toward the sky, holding his fire. I tried to run at Miss Kang but a woman bumped me and, to avoid falling on her, I slowed. The entire mob pushed forward, some of them brandishing sticks, some hoes, some with nothing more than their bare fists.

For a second, Miss Kang held her ground; eyes wide with fright, bayonet pointed forward. But then, like a swimmer being drowned by a tidal wave, the crowd enveloped her. Shin screamed and let go of the old man and tried to run. He didn’t get far.

Fifty people surrounded the old oak tree. Kicking, screeching, pummeling.

Ernie fired a shot into the air. No one seemed to notice. Rounding a corner at the edge of the square, a phalanx of KNPs ran across pounded earth. Wielding riot batons, swinging freely, they forced the crowd to disperse.

Only Miss Kang and Mr. Shin lay in the dust. Shin was hurt. Leg broken, compound fracture, maybe an arm. I knelt next to Miss Kang Mi-ryul. Her nose was bashed in, the one she’d pointed to only yesterday. Also bashed in was her forehead and the side of her skull. Using my forefinger and thumb, I pinched the flesh above her carotid artery. The skin was still warm but the flow of blood, the force of life-giving fluid, had stopped.

Back at 8th Army I typed up my report. Private First Class Everett P. Rothenberg had already been released by the Korean National Police. Mr. Shin, the pool player, had been taken to a hospital and was recovering nicely, although he was facing hard time for the Korean legal equivalents of aggravated assault and aiding and abetting a murderess.

Miss O Sung-hee was scheduled to be buried by her family in a grave mound back in Kwangju. Miss Kang Mi-ryul, on the other hand, would be cremated. That’s all her family could afford.

What they did with her ashes, I never knew.