The Calf
Ki-jo had come out into the yard and stood with his son, looking over the cattle in the shed. Let his thoughts so much as touch what had happened four days ago, and a smile rose of its own accord, the smile of a man who has dreamed of a dragon. He glanced down at the boy in his arms.
"Yeongsu. Of all the cattle in the shed, which one do you think is the prettiest?"
"That one, Father."
Yeongsu's small finger pointed at a calf — the scrawny little creature whose price Ki-jo had been the first to ask at the market.
"Why that one?"
"I think he's going to get really big someday."
"Do you?"
Ki-jo rubbed his cheek against his son's and felt a happiness rise until his chest was full. Coming back to 1953... it really was the right choice. He carried the boy into the shed and let him touch the calf he had chosen. The moment Yeongsu reached out, the calf licked his hand. The child drew back, a little afraid, then gave his hand over and smiled. Looking into those gentle eyes, Ki-jo felt the same quiet wonder.
"A cow's eyes are truly beautiful, aren't they?"
"Yes, Father."
Sunrye sat on the wooden porch, watching father and son disappear into the shed. The tenderness of their backs brought tears to her eyes. Until three days ago she had waited for her husband through a dread so sharp she could hardly breathe. He had said he was only going to look at cattle, and when a second day passed, and then a third, and still he did not come, the whole village had gone into an uproar.
"The village head left three days ago for the cattle market — with that Jang Ma-ryang?"
Kim Seogwang, Yeongbae's father, heard it late and nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Why are you only telling me this now... Yeongsu's mother..."
"Yeongsu's father took the village fund with him, too..."
Saying it undid her. Sunrye broke into tears at last, and the color drained from Kim Seogwang's face. He hurried to gather the men and told them how things stood.
"Something terrible may have happened. All of you, bring whatever you've got — sickles, hoes, clubs."
Once they understood, the men went to a one for anything in the house that might serve as a weapon and set out after Seogwang. The able-bodied of Eundae-ri were preparing for the worst.
On the way to Junae-ri in Yangju, where the cattle market stood, Kim Seogwang turned to Shim Hansu, who could hunt better than any of them.
"Brother. If Ma-ryang has done the village head harm, you can catch that bastard somehow, can't you?"
"Harm the village head, and is he even a man? He'd be lower than the beasts I hunt."
The mere thought of it set Shim Hansu burning. He clenched the hunting bow in his hand and ground his teeth.
Some thirty men were about to cross the Hantan River when keen-eyed Hansu threw out a hand toward the distance.
"There! Look over there!"
Far off, two men were coming with cattle. To tenant farmers who had never in their lives owned a cow, even three head looked like a herd.
"Th-that... isn't that Ma-ryang?"
"No — look beside him. The one in the suit. That's the village head!"
"Suits! The both of them!"
"What? They both came back wearing suits?"
No one waited to be told. The men broke into a run across the Hantan bridge and rushed to Lee Ki-jo.
"Aigoo, Village Head. You're not hurt anywhere, are you?"
"Village Head, where have you been all this time..."
They saw to Lee Ki-jo before anything else. He stared, lost, at the villagers who had come all the way to the Hantan to meet him, sickles and hoes in hand.
"Where were you all headed? You didn't come out to meet me, did you?"
"Th-that's..."
Kim Seogwang scratched the back of his head and let the rest die.
Ma-ryang snorted once, as if he had the whole story already, and held the ox's lead out to him.
"Take him. I'm gonna smoke."
Seogwang took the rope and ran a careful hand over the great, solid head of the yellow ox. Ma-ryang was wearing a new suit tailored in Myeongdong. Well over six feet tall, with shoulders broad enough to fill a doorway, he looked like another man once the suit and overcoat were on him. His hair had been cut short as well; nothing of the old shaggy length showed beneath the fedora. He drew a pack from his inner pocket, snapped a Zippo to a fine cigarette, and for a moment he might have been one of the toughs who had Myeongdong in their pocket.
Ma-ryang drifted toward the bridge rail to smoke, and Kim Seogwang took the chance to whisper.
"Village Head... why is that Ma-ryang all dressed up in a suit?"
"It's a long story. I'll tell you in time."
The people, briefly stolen away by Lee Ki-jo and Ma-ryang, soon lost themselves in the cattle the two had brought.
"Village Head, however did you come to buy so many?"
"It's all thanks to Big Jang."
The eyes of the Eundae-ri men turned toward Ma-ryang, smoking at one end of the bridge and looking out over the Hantan River.
"Later, each of you should offer him a word of thanks."
"Yes, Village Head."
When the men drove the cattle in through the mouth of the village, Sunrye and the other women came running to meet husbands, fathers, and sons. They had worried as if their men had been marched off to war.
"Cattle have come into the village today. Let's hold a feast."
At Ki-jo's word the women set briskly to work — boiling a stew, frying jeon, those savory pancakes, and grilling the freshwater fish already caught. While they did, the men threw up a cattle shed in no time across Ki-jo's wide front yard, and the children poured out of the village in a noisy rush to fetch liquor. Ki-jo watched with quiet pleasure as the men gathered around Ma-ryang one by one, pressing drinks on him and drawing him into talk.
The feast ended, and Ki-jo went early to bed. On their bedding Sunrye had his left arm clasped tight and would not let it go.
"You worried a great deal, didn't you?"
"Where did you go, all that time..."
"Before I bought the cattle, I went to Seoul."
"Seoul?"
Ki-jo smiled, and the three days came back to him.
Ma-ryang, having beaten the gang of swindlers down with his bare hands, had not been satisfied with sweeping the money off the gambling mat. He found rope, bound the seven cheats fast, strung them in a line, and hung a wooden placard around the neck of the man at the front. Across it, in red letters, ran a single sentence.
He paraded them through every corner of Yangju to shame them, and around sunset dragged them up Mount Bulgok, where the bandit Im Kkeokjeong had once gone to ground.
"The money you've hidden, and the opium. Hand them over. Otherwise you'll be buried on this mountain. Suit yourselves."
"What are you talking about... We already gave you the money. There's nothing hidden. And opium, of all things..."
At first not one of the gang would admit that Ma-ryang was right. But he cut a thick pine limb, and once the beating started, two hours was enough. The ringleader — the man who had worn a horsehair gat and played at being old — confessed.
"I'll give you everything. Please, stop hitting me."
The gat came off, and when Ma-ryang seized the beard and ripped it away, the man's true age showed. He was nowhere near so old. The money and the opium he had hidden lay buried in the ground beside the lodging where the gang had stayed.
Ki-jo and Ma-ryang sat on the porch of the lonely abandoned house the swindlers had used and, by moonlight, sorted through the money and the opium.
"With this we could buy several head of cattle and still have some left..."
Ki-jo brushed the dirt from a bundle of bills that had come out of the earth.
"The real money's this."
Ma-ryang pointed at a cloth bundle packed full of opium, then yawned, long and wide. He was human too. Even Ma-ryang, after two hours of beating seven men with everything he had, was bound to yawn.
"Opium? What do you mean to do with it?"
"Take it to Seoul. Sell it..."
"Don't. Let's bury it again. Touch a thing like this the wrong way and we're finished."
"I know how to move it. Tomorrow morning, come see Seoul with me. That'll do."
"Come now... you..."
Ki-jo knew it was dangerous. Even so, hearing there was more money in it than they had already taken off the swindlers, a quiet greed stirred in him.
"But Village Head. How'd you find that hwatu card?"
"Ah. The eight-kwang?"
Ma-ryang nodded.
"When you kicked up a fuss beside the hwatu mat, one card fell to the floor. Everyone was so startled by you they never noticed. I wondered what to do with it, then just set my foot on it. Thought it might come in handy later..."
"Ah... so that's what you did."
Ma-ryang was frankly amazed at the quickness of it. Ki-jo only felt a little abashed. All he had done was quietly copy Tazza, a film he had watched more than a dozen times in the life before this one. While Ma-ryang was thrashing the men around him, he had thought he ought to give the man a pretext for overturning the game, and at the end he had played, just a little, at being Goni, the cardsharp of that story.
"Village Head's got a real good head."
"Me? I hardly did a thing... But how did you know they were swindlers, Mr. Jang?"
"Fellas at the hwatu had eyes all red. Opium-eater's eyes, I figured. Wasn't sure they were cheats."
"What? You planned the whole thing without being sure?"
"Half and half, I put it. But I reckoned it'd be fine even if they weren't cheats."
"Why?"
"Gamblers and opium eaters — where's money like that gonna go? They lose it all, and the house falls with them. So I thought, money with no owner on it... better we spend it buying cattle."
"Ha. You're something else yourself, Mr. Jang. Truly."
The two of them laughed until it seemed the thatched roof might lift clean off. And early the next morning they gathered up the money and the opium and set out for Seoul.