The Cattle Market (2)
Jang Ma-ryang took Ki-jo to a cheap drinking house near the cattle-market yard, called for a great bowl of cloudy rice wine, and asked,
"Ever handled flower cards?"
In his previous life Lee Ki-jo had played a little Go-Stop, nothing more serious than the online tables on Hangame, so he nodded. Ma-ryang nodded back.
"Drink a little."
"Drink? Why all of a sudden?"
"You've got to reek of liquor. Otherwise this won't work."
Ki-jo trusted him. They drank together, passing the bowl back and forth with aged kimchi for a side dish, and as the pleasant haze of the wine came over him and his mood lifted, he asked,
"What did you do back home?"
"Whatever came to hand. This and that. Hamgyong's hard, barren country. You don't eat if you don't."
He had the look of a man who might have killed, but Ki-jo didn't press him.
"Last time, you said you had a wife and child in the North..."
"Alive or dead, I couldn't tell you."
Ma-ryang let out a short sigh, lifted the bowl, and drained the cloudy rice wine in one long pull. The great bowl, full a moment before, was empty.
A few more rounds went the circle. When Ki-jo's eyes began to loosen and glaze, Ma-ryang set his broad hand flat over the bowl.
"Enough. Best you stop."
"Just one more."
"I'm stepping outside a minute. Sober up some while I'm gone."
Ki-jo did as he was told, chewing sour kimchi and waiting. Before long Ma-ryang was back. He pointed at the clouded window of the drinking house.
"You see the gamblers bunched up over there?"
Ki-jo peered through the milky glass, his eyes refusing to hold a focus. A dozen men stood in a ring, staring down at the ground. He nodded.
"Go play a hand."
"Come now... I'm no good at it. You play, Mr. Jang."
"I don't gamble either. I'll watch."
"So all I have to do is play the cards?"
"Don't go in thinking you'll win their money. It's a nest of cheats."
Ki-jo jerked his chin toward the window.
"You're telling me to sit down among swindlers and lose every bit of the money we brought to buy cattle?"
"Near enough."
"Heh..."
Ki-jo laughed, hollow. Even so, he decided to trust Ma-ryang for the time being and follow his plan.
He left the drinking house alone, watched the game until the liquor had ebbed a little, and when one man stood up cleaned out, he pushed his way into the circle.
"I'll sit in for a hand."
He dropped into the empty place. The man raking his winnings together looked him over.
"Well, look at this. A suit's come all the way down to the cattle yard. What is it—here to buy a calf to raise out back?"
The man was trying to take the starch out of him. Ki-jo answered in kind.
"No. I'm buying a cow to slaughter and eat. My wife's farts haven't had a bit of strength in them lately. Figured I'd feed her till they come out mooing."
The onlookers laughed.
"Sounds pretty sure of himself. Liquor's talking. Come on in and lose."
"Tongue on him long as a cow's tail. Come high summer he could swat flies with it."
Ki-jo didn't give an inch.
The cards went around, and little by little he began to win. The man who had shaken himself free of the seat came back and stood behind him to watch.
"Be careful. Those fellows are real professionals. Easy. Play it easy. Win a modest bit and stand up..."
He whispered it at Ki-jo's back, urging him on.
Ki-jo was enjoying the cards, liquor thick on his breath, when Jang Ma-ryang came and took a place across from him. Ma-ryang studied the players and the watchers with care. A talkative foulmouth. An old man in a horsehair hat with a long pipe clenched in his teeth. A man with a scar gouged into his face. And Lee Ki-jo.
All of them, Ki-jo excepted, Ma-ryang judged to be one crew. Even so, the game was running in Ki-jo's favor. The man who had picked a fight the moment he sat down was the first to lose his money. He shot to his feet.
"Goddamn it. A suit butts in and every bit of my luck walks out. Don't you go anywhere. You wait. I'll be back with money."
"Travel safe. Give a cow's udder a squeeze on the way and rub a little ox-luck onto yourself."
Ki-jo needled him, and at the slick joke even Jang Ma-ryang let out a snort of laughter. His eyes, though, were not laughing at all. In his head he was counting the men he would have to watch.
A farmer with an honest face, his skin blackened by the sun, filled the loudmouth's empty seat. The game started up again.
Ma-ryang watched the way Ki-jo was losing, a little at a time. Like a drizzle soaking a man through, the money slipped away evenly, never gathering in any one pocket. He counted the sun-blackened farmer as one of the crew as well.
The losses quickened. Soon everything Ki-jo had won was gone, and half the stake he had brought was gone with it. Their eyes met.
Ma-ryang gave him a look that said to keep playing, and the slightest nod. All the while he watched the old man in the short-brimmed horsehair hat, the long pipe still in his teeth. The old man said nothing. He only gambled, silent.
Old man doesn't tire, does he. At that age the knees ache so bad you can't even sit for long...
Ma-ryang moved before Ki-jo could lose it all. He circled around behind him and stood beside the man posted at his back. If anyone in this game had the job of grabbing the money and running the moment the table blew into a free-for-all, it was that man. He looked quick, light on his feet. Ma-ryang raised his left arm and drove his elbow into the man's face.
There was a flat, meaty crack, and the man who had been watching from behind Ki-jo went straight over backward. He might as well have been out cold. His eyes had rolled up, and a neat little stream of blood ran from his nose.
"What the— You!"
The man with the deep scar turned on Ma-ryang. The onlookers stared too, dumbfounded that he had just dropped a man where he stood.
"Didn't that bastard's hand just slide into my pocket? I laid out a pickpocket. Pay it no mind and get on with what you were doing."
The scarred man looked sour.
"Let's play cards in peace. Scare people like this, and who's going to sit down to a game in a marketplace..."
Ma-ryang didn't answer. He watched the cards as if nothing had happened.
A few more hands went around, and Ki-jo's money was running out. Most of it was flowing into the pocket of the farmer who had come in last.
"Must be my lucky day. Ha ha."
The farmer kept his face in order and spoke as if it were nothing.
A little later the loudmouth who had called Ki-jo a suit came back in. Sure enough, he tapped the farmer in his seat with the toe of his foot.
"Hey. Won enough, get up. That seat was mine."
"Look at that. He really came back. Welcome, welcome. You, mister—on your feet."
The scarred man took the loudmouth's side.
That was when Ma-ryang stepped in. He seized the loudmouth by the scruff and hauled him out of the circle.
"Wh—what? Who are you?"
Instead of answering, Ma-ryang raised his fist and brought it straight down on the crown of the man's head. That one collapsed as well, eyes rolled white, folding in on himself. Once again the spectators and the gamblers turned looks of shock on Ma-ryang.
"What is the matter with you? What is it this time!"
The scarred man snapped, irritated.
"This fellow says he wants to keep playing. Even I ought to take his side, shouldn't I?"
"What?"
Ma-ryang kept fouling the sharps while he read the faces around them. Behind the old man in the horsehair hat, two young toughs had eyes that were unusually hard.
"We keep playing."
The old man tossed the words out, offhand. At that, the men standing behind him let the force go out of their eyes. Ma-ryang didn't miss the small change.
"Let's not do this. We'll raise the pot. With that bandit-looking fellow standing there, I'm too uneasy to play. What do you say we put the stakes up ten times, play it hot, and be done?"
"Let's..."
The old man in the hat, the eldest among them, settled an air over the circle in which everyone seemed to feel they ought to agree.
"Anyone who doesn't like it can leave. You, the man in the suit—you still playing?"
"Let's."
Ki-jo said.
The flower cards turned on a khaki U.S. Army blanket spread over a wooden crate.
Ma-ryang figured he had seen enough. A rigged game, when all was said. In the end Lee Ki-jo was going to lose every coin. Time, soon, to deal with the swindlers.
The one playing at farmer, right in front of him—he would stomp the man's waist and drop him. The scarred one had a jumpy temper and would go for a knife, so a kick to the face would settle him. That would leave the two young men behind the old fellow with the pipe in his teeth.
He had never lost a fight one against one, not since he was a boy. No—since the first hair grew on his head, he had no memory of losing a fight at all.
So the question was the moment. When to flip the board. He was still measuring it when Ki-jo suddenly snatched something off the dirt and shouted.
"Wait. Are these gentlemen running a crooked game? What's this doing under the old man's foot?"
The onlookers murmured, staring at the card in Ki-jo's hand.
"Isn't that the eight-bright?"
"Count the cards. Old man's hands shake. He might've dropped it."
Ki-jo snatched the cards from the flustered old man's hand and spread them on the blanket.
"Look at this. He's holding seven! He hid an extra one. I knew the game was running strange. You're all in it together!"
The scarred man smiled, perfectly calm.
"Ah, looks like I dealt him one too many by mistake. Let's deal again. What's there to get so worked up about? We haven't played the hand yet. I'll deal them over."
The scarred man, who had been dealing, threw his own cards onto the blanket, took the hand from the farmer, and mixed them into the pile.
In that instant Ma-ryang's voice boomed.
"Who said you could mix those? You cheating sons of bitches!"
He stomped the farmer's waist on his way through and, in the same motion, kicked the scarred man in the face and dropped him. The farmer rolled, clutching his crushed back. The scarred man lay foaming at the mouth.
Ma-ryang stamped the wooden crate that had served as a table into splinters, then met the two young men who came at him from behind the old man—one he dropped with a single punch, the other he took down body to body before driving his heel into the pit of the man's stomach.
It happened so fast that the onlookers and Ki-jo alike could only stare, blank.
Ma-ryang knocked the horsehair hat off the old man's head, seized his topknot, and shook him.
"You're the boss of these little bastards?"
He didn't wait for an answer. He lifted the arm that held the topknot and dangled the old man in the air.
"Speak straight. Unless you want that neck snapped on the road to the Yellow Springs..."
Not one of the spectators so much as opened his mouth. Ma-ryang handled the old man like some evil spirit.