The Power of Fate II
Yeoncheon had drawn together people carrying every kind of past.
The folk of Eundae-ri whom Ki-jo had led there, and the displaced people Jang Ma-ryang had brought with him, were of decent quality at least—more like handpicked pioneers than the usual run of those who had crossed the line. Among the ones who came over the 38th parallel were debtors who had fled under crushing debts, and creditors who had chased them only to put down roots themselves. Worst of all were the criminals who, after making trouble somewhere, had sought out a quiet corner and gone to ground.
They lived in dugout shacks hidden along the hillsides, farming nothing and working not at all, spending their days scheming over how a man might live easy. To the likes of them, a couple strolling the Hantan River in the middle of a courtship was easy prey. Block the path, flash a knife, put a scare into them—the man would lose his nerve and try to buy his way clear, and if that failed, a few blows were enough to shake the money loose.
Mr. Mulbak's youngest daughter and her American lover had been marked by men of just that sort, and were walking blind into a danger they could not see.
"Hyung. We knock that Yankee bastard flat and take the woman ourselves."
Jeong Bong-pal whispered it from the dark beneath the bridge.
"Lay a hand on the wrong local and we'll have a mess we can't clean up afterward..."
Choi Seong-han was a shade more cautious.
"I know that girl. She's a Sampar-ttaraji's daughter. Not one of the old locals—her family's just drifted in. Nothing'll come of it."
"That so?"
"Look at her, putting out for a Yank. We have our fun, scare her a little, and let her go, and she'll wipe her mouth and keep quiet. Hyung."
"Hm... Been a while. Maybe we ought to loosen up."
The two criminals were itching in their skins.
"You take the Yank, hyung. I'll see to it the woman doesn't run."
"Pushing the hard part off on me, are you?"
"What's hard about it? Pick up a rock out of the river and smash the back of his head."
"If it's that easy, you do it."
"All right. I'll hit him. You just draw the Yank's eyes."
"Fine."
Working out the rough lines of their approach, the two of them began to build a plan.
At that same hour Soon-young was on her way home, having carried a pot of spicy fish stew out to her husband at the worksite in Cheongsan-ri. As she crossed Cheongsan Bridge, a scuffle under the span caught her eye.
Huh? That's Hee-ja and her American sweetheart...
She watched Hee-ja's lover seize a Korean man by the collar and shake him.
That man won't do. Comes to somebody else's country and starts throwing his weight around?
At last Hee-ja's lover threw a punch and dropped him.
"Well—look at that rotten bastard."
The sight of him thrashing a man of Yeoncheon set her boiling. He put one Korean down, then caught the short fellow who rushed him with a rock and slammed him to the ground. In that instant Soon-young decided the locals had to be helped, and she took off at a run for her husband.
Back at the site she found him, caught hold of him, and gasped for breath.
"What's the matter?"
"Down there—under the bridge—an American—he's beating the local men—"
She forced the words out against the breath climbing in her chest.
"They had it coming, so they got hit. I heard you. Go."
Busy running the site, Ma-ryang paid her no mind.
Is that it?
Hearing him say so, it almost seemed he might be right. She stood a moment, hauling her breath back into order, and then spoke.
"But I ran all the way here and my legs are gone. Take me home on the bicycle."
"Can't you see I'm busy?"
"Then pay me back for the spicy fish stew I carried out here."
She demanded it as if she had every right.
Bongok, watching from beside them, put a word in to Ma-ryang.
"Foreman, go quick and come back. That's no way to treat a wife who's like a daughter."
Lee Bongok took Yang Soon-young's side. They were women together.
Ma-ryang's brow creased in a faint frown. He went and brought the professor's bicycle.
"Get on."
Soon-young locked her arms tight around his side and smiled, happy.
"Thank you, Bongok. Next time I'll bring another pot of that good stew."
"However do you get a stew to taste like that? You'll have to let me in on a little of it."
"It's easy. Come by our house. I'll teach you."
Soon-young winked and pressed her chilled face into the warmth of Ma-ryang's broad back.
"Hold on tight. I'll make it quick."
Ma-ryang drove hard on the pedals. The bicycle was crossing Cheongsan Bridge when a woman's scream drifted faintly up to them.
"Was that you just now?"
"Wasn't me."
He stopped the bicycle and waited, quiet, to place the sound. When the woman's cry came again, ragged with fury, he got off.
"Stay right here. Don't move."
He ran to the end of the bridge and climbed down toward the noise beneath it. Soon-young followed, pushing the bicycle the way he had gone.
A path led from the end of the bridge down to the river, and once she had taken it she could see plainly what her husband was doing. Ma-ryang caught the short man and hurled him a long way off, then ripped the tall one away from Hee-ja and drove his fists into the man's face. Freed of the thug, Hee-ja ran to her lover where he lay bleeding and stroked his face, sobbing.
At the sight of that, Ma-ryang hefted Hee-ja's lover onto his back and came running toward Soon-young.
"Give me the bicycle."
He set the man on the rear seat—blood pouring from his belly—caught hold of him with one hand, gripped the handlebars with the other, and ran.
Word reached Ki-jo that the American who had taken a knife had been carried to the Cheongsan Brick Factory, and he hurried to Cheongsan. Stepping into the tent, he found a white man lying with bandages wrapped around his head and his waist.
"Hello, Village Head..."
Hee-ja dipped her head when she saw him.
"Ah. Yes. It's been a while."
Ki-jo returned the greeting and looked around. Beside the army cot where the man lay, a cowboy hat sat soaked with blood.
Hold on. Where have I seen that hat?
Searching his memory, he drew out his notebook and checked the roster of American soldiers.
Roberts Stillman. Private. Portrait shop.
Marks: large portrait. Cowboy hat.
A private's pay couldn't come close to a large portrait. If he's had a large one done, he must be the son of a house with some money...
Even in the 1950s, the United States Army still filled its ranks by conscription. The soldiers who came to Korea, poor or rich, were men come to serve out their duty. A wealthy man with real influence would sooner keep his son from being sent overseas and have him finish his service at home—but now and then there was a family that did not flinch at sending a son onto a battlefield.
Ki-jo heard the whole of it from Soon-young and nodded.
"So my sister-in-law saved this man."
"My husband did all of it. Brother-in-law."
"Good work, Ma-ryang. You're not hurt anywhere?"
He had thought it the most useless worry in the world, but there was a bandage wrapped around Ma-ryang's right hand after all.
"Ma-ryang got his hand cut on the knife too. They say the little one swung a blade at him."
"Don't make a fuss. Over a scratch..."
Ma-ryang hid the hand behind his back as if it were nothing.
Ki-jo studied the man lying there and asked,
"Oughtn't we get this man to a hospital?"
"He won't die. The knife caught on the leather jacket. Went in shallow."
"And his head?"
"I looked at the skull myself. One good sleep and he'll wake up fine."
Ki-jo figured Ma-ryang knew how to read a wound. The man was sparing with his words, but it was plain enough he had lived hard in China.
"Are you truly sure we don't have to move him to a hospital?"
Hee-ja asked it, worry all over her face.
"Hee-ja, you haven't seen my husband's body, have you? Knife scars, all over him. He's been cut so many times that if he says it's all right, it's all right. Just trust him."
Soon-young spoke with pride of the wounds carved into her husband's flesh.
"Don't talk nonsense."
Ma-ryang took her wrist, lightly, and Soon-young went quiet.
A little later, Roberts Stillman woke. He groaned and opened his eyes, and Hee-ja caught his hand.
"Bob, are you all right?"
She called Roberts Stillman by his pet name, Bob. With the English he had begun learning in his sixties, Ki-jo could follow what passed between the two lovers. Ma-ryang had saved them, she was saying, and the wound was not deep, so he would be all right. Roberts asked her to tell the people who had helped him that he would be certain to repay them.
Hee-ja passed his words on, just as she had heard them, to Jang Ma-ryang and his wife.
"It's nothing. He wasn't hurt bad. Tell him that's luck enough."
Ma-ryang said it while scratching his head with his bandaged hand. Roberts looked at him out of those blue eyes and inclined his head, just slightly.
"We'll have to send someone to the American unit and ask them to bring a car."
At Ki-jo's word, Bongok sent one of the factory hands off to Dongducheon.
Hee-ja caught Ma-ryang's hand.
"Uncle Ma-ryang, thank you. They say Roberts's family is terribly rich. If he offers to help you later, you have to accept it. You must..."
"I heard you. Don't say any more."
Ma-ryang reckoned that a Yankee, however rich he was said to be, would press a few coins into their hands and be done with it. In China, too, he had saved rich men and been paid a handful of silver, or granted some small convenience for a little while. But no one there—not Ma-ryang, not any of them—knew that even among the rich there were ranks. Nor did they know how strong a fortune belonged to Yang Soon-young, Ki-jo's sister-in-law and Ma-ryang's own wife.
Soon-young's fortune was bound, above all, to the sea, and it worked through ships. In the eleventh life Ki-jo had lived, Soon-young's second husband had owned a vessel of his own, and by hauling military supplies from Japan to Vietnam he had made a tremendous fortune. In Ki-jo's twelfth life, the Jang Ma-ryang she met had no ship at all—but Soon-young's fate had begun to move regardless, untroubled by a detail like that.
Not even Soon-young herself could see it. Her great fortune was strong enough, and true enough, to cross the sea, pass beyond Japan, and reach all the way to America.