Hidden Piece
It was mid-March, the season when the ice that had sealed the river all winter finally melted and the frost locked in the ground began to loosen. Spring was changing the plains of Eundae-ri. American heavy equipment had moved in and was turning the farmland inside out, and just as Kijo had designed it, broad farm roads were taking shape while the paddies were divided into neat squares, tidy as a checkerboard.
The man who succeeded Kim Seogwang as deputy village chief of Eundae-ri was Little Jang — Jang Seokgu.
When Kijo said he meant to set Jang Seokgu up in Kim Seogwang's place, Kim Seogwang had fought it hard.
"Boss, that Jang Seokgu won't do. The man's nothing but grievances. He only behaves because Ma-ryang and I keep him sat on. Hand him a post and the whole place goes to hell."
Kijo pushed it through anyway. He set great store by the drive in Jang Seokgu, and by his knack for breaking through whatever stood in the way. The man was rough in his speech, true enough — but to lead hardheaded farmers, a flaw like that could sometimes turn into a virtue.
And so Jang Seokgu had the villagers gathered in the community hall, explaining what was happening to their fields.
"From here on, machines are going to help with the farming. If we don't widen the farm roads, they say trucks and machines won't be able to get into the paddies."
"Trucks and machines?"
The villagers muttered among themselves. None of them could easily picture a world twenty or thirty years off.
"Trucks and machines, my foot... Right now this village hasn't even got but one ox."
"Ah, come on. If the chief says so, then that's how it is. He told us it's a design for the future."
"If the chief says so, I suppose it is... but lay the farm roads out that wide and the paddies shrink. I'm only saying it because it's a shame to lose land we could plant to rice..."
"Just trust the chief and follow along. And don't go thinking with that sorry head of yours."
Venom was Jang Seokgu's gift. The moment he snapped, the man who had complained clamped his mouth shut.
Jang Seokgu had been a complainer by nature himself, but once Kijo set the deputy chief's cap on his head, the complaints thinned and only the venom grew.
"Still, Deputy Chief. The soil looks weak. Without any manure, I don't know that a crop will take..."
When someone else raised the doubt, Jang Seokgu scolded him too.
"Didn't the chief say we can get by for now on the fertilizer that came from Japan? Why are you so full of complaints!"
"It's not a complaint. I'm asking how you farm with no manure. That fertilizer of yours is pale as watered milk — doesn't look like there's a bit of strength in it..."
"Hey! You sitting on a pile of shit at your house? Let's have it plain — is there even any dung in Eundae-ri right now to make manure out of!"
"There isn't..."
"Then ain't the sensible thing to gather the makings this year and use them next? For now, let's burn the brush we've piled up and make some ash fertilizer."
When Jang Seokgu had finished, another villager raised a hand.
"Deputy Chief! What are those strange sacks in Warehouse Number Two?"
The strange sacks were MSG.
"I told you not to touch those! The chief said he's selling them off in Seoul. Don't you lay a finger on them!"
In his own rough fashion, Jang Seokgu put what charisma he had to work, settling the farmers' grumbling and keeping them in line.
Just then a KATUSA — a Korean soldier attached to the American unit — stepped into the noisy hall.
"The reservoir's nearly finished. You ought to come and see."
"Okay. Let's go."
Jang Seokgu led the villagers out toward the reservoir the Americans had built.
While the people of Eundae-ri looked over the reservoir the Americans had made, Kijo had stopped in at the 7th Division to inspect the construction and was on his way back to the village.
The division, like Eundae-ri itself, was being laid out in orderly plots, and the excavation was in full swing. Cement roads were going down from the main gate into every corner of the base, and water and sewer lines were being buried beneath them. Barracks were rising one after another, and the place was beginning, at last, to look like a proper camp.
Even as he gazed up at the great water tower standing over the base, Kijo's mind was on nothing but oil.
If only the fuel tanks at the Cheongsan plant could fill with oil the way that tower fills with water...
Driving the truck toward Yeoncheon, he felt the soft spring wind pushing in through the window. It was the perfect hour to find the last treasure hidden in the ground of Yeoncheon.
When Kijo's blue truck drew near the Eundae-ri reservoir, the villagers knew it at once.
"There — the chief's coming! The blue truck!"
Kijo climbed down, and people came forward to greet him.
"Chief, you've come?"
"You've all been working hard."
"Hardly. The Americans are doing all of it."
Their faces were bright.
"Deputy Chief. Is the work going well?"
"Going very well, Chief!"
The snap of spirit in Jang Seokgu's answer drew a smile from Kijo. He looked out over the reservoir, brimful, the water lapping at its banks. With the June transplanting ahead of them, the work of drawing the Hantan River up from beneath the cliffs was nearly finished. Seeing that the impounding was all but done, he nodded.
Jang Seokgu, stuck close at his side, spoke up.
"Those American pumps are something fierce. They suck the river right up. Turn one of those on a house and I bet it'd knock the place down. Haha."
Kijo smiled and nodded, then walked over to the Americans running the pumps. The villagers watched him from a little distance.
When he finished speaking with them, the Americans suddenly shut every pump down. Then they began loading the pumps onto the trucks.
Huh? The reservoir isn't even full yet...
The villagers could not understand why the Americans were pulling the pumps out all at once.
Did the chief tell them to...?
They were dying to know why. Jang Seokgu, who could never leave a question alone, went up to Kijo as he came back from the Americans.
"Chief, we've still got a ways to go before that reservoir is full..."
"We'll get some rain this spring. Better than letting it overflow."
"What? How do you know that..."
"There are ways of knowing."
Kijo answered as if it were nothing, then called out to the able-bodied men of Eundae-ri.
"Everyone, onto the trucks. We're making a trip to Baegui-ri."
"Baegui-ri?"
Curious as they were, Little Jang and some fifteen of the young men climbed aboard the American trucks. The two trucks ran the unpaved road for about thirty minutes and reached Baegui-ri, where Yeoncheon met Pocheon.
The name took its sense from the old character for ant; read that way, Baegui-ri meant the Village of the White Ant. Once the place had belonged to Cheongsong Township, in the old Yangju County. A mountain there was shaped like an ant, and so the village had also been called Ant's Waist, and Uiyori.
Arriving, Kijo studied the lay of the land with care.
So that's Gaemisan. Of an ant's head, thorax, and abdomen, that stretch is the thorax. Right below it — that's the place.
He had the trucks stop where his guess had led him, then asked the Americans to unload the pumps and set the intake hoses into the nearby Yeongpyeong Stream. Pointing toward the flank of Gaemisan, he spoke to the men of Eundae-ri.
"We have to spray water on that slope and cut the soil away."
"Spray water on the mountain?"
Jang Seokgu asked.
"Yes. The pressure is strong, so don't fire it straight into the ground. Let a heavy flow run over it, and shave the surface away little by little."
No one understood the order. Heads tilted. They had hauled the very pumps that had been filling the reservoir all the way to Baegui-ri, only to be told to spray a mountain. What on earth was he talking about?
Jang Seokgu edged in close and asked in a low voice.
"Chief, what exactly are we doing out here?"
"We're inducing weathering."
"Weathering?"
"Yes. What wind and rain would take a few hundred years to carve out of the ground, we're going to finish in a few hours."
At the fine, learned word, Seokgu nodded. He did not know precisely what it meant, but it sounded like work with some depth to it.
"If you're cutting the soil from the slope and something shows itself, stop at once. Then come and tell me."
"Yes, sir."
Jang Seokgu turned to the men and shouted.
"You heard the chief? Let's do it the way he said!"
Under the deputy chief's command, the young men set to work as Kijo had ordered. Powerful jets burst from the four pumps and slammed into the mountainside, a roaring sheet of water that struck and tore.
The Americans watched the absurd performance the Koreans were putting on and traded jokes.
"What are the Koreans doing?"
"Looks like they mean to carve that mountain down today. With our pumps?"
"One minute they're filling a reservoir, the next they want to go spray a mountain. I think he's a little crazy."
The GIs loafed around the trucks in the warm sun, snickering.
An hour or so passed, and the work of shooting water across the slope and peeling the surface back began to tell. Where some four meters of soil had vanished, something appeared.
"Huh? What's that?"
From the rim of the pit, Jang Seokgu stared down at the black shape emerging from the earth.
"That... looks like a hunk of iron..."
"What is it, hyung?"
Yun Manho, Jang Seokgu's right hand, came up and stuck his face in close. Peering at what showed faintly through the soil, he started.
"Hyung, this looks like a dorakku — a truck."
"Yamma! What's a truck doing coming out of the ground!"
"However I look at it, it's a truck. Shaped just like an American one..."
To test Yun Manho's claim, Jang Seokgu climbed down the slope the water had cut. His boot came down, and metal rang under it.
Huh? Up close, that looks like olive drab.
"Hyung! Clear some of that dirt. There's something white down by your foot."
Yun Manho shouted from the top of the pit.
Jang Seokgu scraped away the soil beneath his feet, and a circle painted in white appeared, a star filling the inside of it.
"Wome! That's it — that's it! That's the white star the Americans paint on their armored cars and tanks!"
"But why's an American truck buried in a mountainside..."
Jang Seokgu could hardly believe his eyes. Coming back to himself, he looked up out of the pit and shouted.
"Tell them to shut the pumps off! And go fetch the chief!"
At his word, Yun Manho sprinted for Kijo. Hearing the news, Kijo came running with him and looked at what had surfaced from the soil.
"Deputy Chief! Clear the dirt beside you, too!"
At the order, Jang Seokgu brushed away the soil next to him.
"Aigoo! What is this!"
A fuel drum came up out of the ground he had opened.
The Americans, seeing that the Koreans at their strange work seemed to have found something, drew closer out of curiosity. A Black soldier, looking at the truck and the drum half-buried in the earth, shouted.
"Damn! That's our supply!"
Kijo nodded and spoke to the Americans.
"Contact your unit and call in an ordnance disposal team."
The Black soldier ran at once to the truck that carried the radio.
The disposal team that raced over from the 7th Division began searching the ground around the pit Kijo's men had opened. They found three large aerial bombs and removed the fuses. They did not blow the bombs where they lay, and the reason was everything else still buried in the earth.
Before long the division engineers arrived as well and dug out all the soil nearby. After several hours of work, the whole of what had been buried stood revealed, and the Americans were too stunned to close their mouths.
How is any of this here...
Before sunset, a helicopter flew in to Baegui-ri. It circled over the ground the American engineers had worked, studying it from the air, and only then set down. Major General Martin, the division commander, stepped out.
Having heard the reports from the ordnance team and the engineers, he turned to Kijo, who stood nearby.
"Did you know this was buried here? Did you dig it up because you knew?"
"Yes. I knew."
Martin could not hide his astonishment.
He knew about this?
Kijo kept astonishing him.