Fair Treatment
Ki-jo asked the staff of the yard office to clear the room, then sat down to wait for Wang-chul.
A look around the office showed him a calendar laid out three months at a time, the days the bricks were due marked plainly across it. These people were living with their eyes on nothing but the road ahead. The thought came to him unbidden, and it was only natural. No one living through 1955 wanted to look back. Cross the memories of a war steeped in terrible suffering, and there was the chaos that followed liberation; pass through the brief, overflowing joy of that liberation and climb further back, and there was the Japanese colonial period, which no one even wished to remember.
For some, the past may have been more dearly missed than the present. Ground down by the agony that came after the Korean War, there were even those who said the Japanese era had been better. But people who talked that way said it only because the present hurt too much to bear. Were they actually to call those colonial years to mind, they would find little in them worth calling good.
In another fifteen years or so, better days would come. Out of a time when everyone was poor, and poverty without hope was simply the way of things, the hope would at last begin to stir that they, too, might live well.
He was turning that over when the office door opened and Wang-chul came back in.
"You called for me, Boss?"
"Have a seat. It's been hard going, hasn't it, Wang-chul?"
"Hard going? Not for me. I'm a man whose joy is driving—I'm never in a better mood than when I've got my hands on the wheel. Heh heh."
Ki-jo smiled at the sight of him. Wang-chul had finished the five hauls in the contract. In truth there had been only three, but a long run of two days was counted as two, so the agreement had already come to its end. Wang-chul would know that as well. With the Busan haul still ahead of them, Ki-jo had to ask whether he meant to renew or to quit.
Honestly, he wanted to keep the man. Wang-chul was a little too fond of other people's business, and peculiar in his way, but he took pleasure in the work itself. Ki-jo liked that kind of man. So long as the work was done well, a few small flaws did not trouble him.
Seated across the table, he asked, "Are you willing to go on working at Cheongsan?"
"Well... if you'll treat me as I deserve, Boss, then I'm willing to stay."
As he deserved. Ki-jo nodded.
From the start he had taken that offer—try me for five runs and see—as a way for the man to prove his ability in full and then claim a wage to match it. Wang-chul himself would also have needed time to see whether the company suited him. But Ki-jo did not ask about pay first. He was not a man to stint on money when he put someone capable to work, and there was something else he wanted to know.
"Was there anything that bothered you over these five days?"
"Bothered me? Of all the companies I've worked for, Cheongsan has been the best. The place runs tight and orderly, and the people are good. Best of all was you, Boss. Ha ha."
"Ha ha. Thank you. Then I can take it there's no particular problem with your working here?"
"None, sir. Like I said, so long as the treatment is good, then as for me..."
Wang-chul was already drawing twice the pay of the other drivers.
"Tell me what you'd like to be paid."
The moment the talk turned to money, Wang-chul scratched his head.
"It's all right. Speak freely."
Ki-jo was ready for it.
"Could you see your way to giving me twice what I'm getting now?"
"Then you're asking for four times in all. I can do that."
Wang-chul's eyes went wide.
Ki-jo knew. Afraid the figure would be bargained down, Wang-chul had deliberately named a steep one, meaning to haggle. Knowing that, Ki-jo accepted it as it stood. The man was already doing the work of four or more.
Thanks to him, they could go anywhere in the country. He could choose the fastest road, or a slower one if it was the better way. And beyond that guide's work, he was skilled at pacing a haul. He knew the whole country, so the moment he heard a destination the time and the distance were already reckoned: how far to push the speed and eat up the miles, and from where to ease off and go with care. He knew how to set the tempo of a run. When the tempo of work was right, the people doing it tired less. Hauling, for all it looked simple, was a job that needed its own control of breath. Rush it, and there would be an accident; take it too easy, and the goods would miss their deadline. Cheongsan Transport already had hardware enough. Wang-chul was the software it needed in order to run.
"You're really going to pay me four times?"
"If that's too little, say so now. I'll give you whatever you want."
"Ah—no. Name it any higher, and even a gentleman like you might lose his temper, Boss. Ha ha."
Ki-jo laughed with him, then asked, "Will you set a term this time as well?"
"Yes. I'd like a contract for five years."
"Five years?"
This, even Ki-jo had not expected. It was true in any age, but in the 1950s, if a workplace paid well, everyone hoped to stay for life. To cut a contract off at five years was a surprise.
Is he planning to raise his price when we renew in five years?
Wang-chul was a professional, right enough—yet here he was, meaning to parcel the contract out by the year the way a ballplayer would, and Ki-jo wanted the reason.
"If it should turn out you don't need me anymore, wouldn't that put you in a difficult spot, Boss?"
Wang-chul supplied it himself.
"And why would it?"
"Give it five years, and the drivers at Cheongsan Transport will have learned all my methods. There'll be sixty of them, a hundred. By then you'll think my pay is far too high, and it'll be awkward for you to say you want it cut. Ha ha."
So the chatterbox had this thoughtful side to him after all.
"Then in five years, will you be asking me to lower your pay yourself?"
"No. By then I'll have to show you an ability only I can offer. I'll work so that you can keep on paying me four times over."
"Ha ha. All right."
Ki-jo asked whether he wanted the agreement oral or in writing.
At that, Wang-chul said, "Boss, before we finish the contract, may I ask one favor?"
"Go ahead."
"I have my reasons... I'd like five years' wages all at once."
"Fine. We'll do it that way."
Ki-jo granted it without a moment's pause.
This time Wang-chul did not start as he had a moment before. He was looking at Ki-jo, rather, with eyes that could not quite believe him.
"Four times the monthly wage of Cheongsan Transport's present drivers—five years of it, paid in a single sum. I'll put it in writing for you."
Ki-jo set the terms down on the paper in front of him, pressed his seal into the ink paste, and stamped it firm.
"Write your name here. If you haven't a seal, a thumbprint will do."
Wang-chul took the contract and read it over, several times, for a long while. Faced with a paper that held a sum so large, even he went quiet. Out of that long silence a sound escaped him that might have been a sigh or a gasp of wonder.
"Ha..."
Then he inked the thumb of his right hand and pressed the print down hard.
Ki-jo slipped the contract carefully into an envelope and handed it over.
Envelope in hand, Wang-chul asked, "Oughtn't you to make another copy, Boss, and keep it yourself?"
"I'll keep it as a verbal agreement, in my heart."
"Even so... what if I burn this and run off?"
Ki-jo's feeling was simple enough: when you set a man to do great work, how could you trust him with it if you could not trust him even this far? Still, since the man had said it, he felt he ought to answer something.
"If you run before the five years are up, Manager Jang and Manager Shim will be out hunting you down."
"Ah... then there's no running, is there. You're a frightening man, Boss."
He had meant it two ways. There was the frightening grandeur of a generosity that handed over a fortune without so much as a blink, and there was the plain fact that Manager Jang and Manager Shim were genuinely frightening men.
"Boss, do you really trust me?"
"Of course. Of all the people I've met, Wang-chul, you're the best."
At that plain sentence, Wang-chul pinched his nose hard between two fingers. The feeling had come over him late, and his nose stung with it. No one had ever trusted him without asking a single question.
To win recognition as the finest driver there was, he had boasted of himself often and pushed into other people's affairs, trying to keep his presence felt. If he did not, no one acknowledged him, and so he had held to the habit even knowing it wore people out. But President Lee Ki-jo was not merely telling him, in words, that he was the best. He was showing his faith first, by pouring out money and trust.
For Wang-chul—with no schooling, no family name, and no looks to put forward—it was something he had never once known.
"Ah, right, this is..."
He wanted to give the feeling words, but they would not come.
To ease the swell of it, Ki-jo spoke.
"The house you live in now—is it your own?"
"Ah, yes. It's small, but I'm content with it."
"No need to move to a larger one?"
"No, Boss. What good is a big house to a fellow living on his own? You don't have to give me a house the way you did for Manager Jang or Manager Shim."
"And your parents?"
"My older brother looks after them. He's a capable man, so I've no need to worry. He supports the whole family."
"I see... I'm glad to hear it."
Ki-jo nodded. He had already guessed why Wang-chul wanted so large a sum in a single payment, and the answers drew that guess nearer to certainty. After Daegu, in Gunsan too, the man had slept somewhere other than the lodgings and come back at dawn. He had returned in good form and with a clear head, and so Ki-jo had thought him, in his own way, to be living a steady life. He did not seem to be making the rounds of the pleasure quarters, drinking, and taking his pleasure for a night. Which left only one thing.
Ki-jo had no liking for a life of that sort, but the world was wide, and people came in every kind. Everyone had their circumstances, and there were those who made a complicated home for themselves. He hoped Wang-chul would find his way through it well.
"Boss, all that's left now is the Busan haul, isn't it?"
His feelings gathered again before Ki-jo quite noticed, Wang-chul put the question to him.
"I expect so."
"Then I'm a regular man of Cheongsan now, aren't I? Would it be all right if I took a deeper hand in the company's work?"
"Of course. I ought to give you an official title. May I call you Manager Ko Wang-chul? Strictly speaking, Manager Jang and Manager Shim are not managers of Cheongsan Transport."
"Then I become a manager too? Thank you, Boss!"
"You're the official manager of Cheongsan Transport, so you're free to raise your voice even in front of the other managers."
"Thank you. As it happens, I did have a complaint or two about the way the trucks are run. Trust me with it, and I'll improve on your methods and make the hauling better still."
"Good. Shall we step outside together, then? The staff ought to hear that Manager Ko is officially one of the Cheongsan family now."
"Just a moment, Boss. There's something I need to tell you before we go out."
"Go on."
Wang-chul straightened in his seat, cleared his throat once, and spoke.
"There's a serious problem at Cheongsan Transport. You have to take what I'm about to say seriously, Boss."
"What serious problem is that?"
Wang-chul wore the face of a man who had made up his mind. Ki-jo wondered what it was he had steeled himself to say.
