The Coal Stockyard
The coal stockyard in Juan, Incheon.
Ki-jo hung a sign over the main gate.
Then he raised several tents, and the feast began.
He had brought a hundred hands from the Cheongsan factory and from Eundae-ri to boil soup, fry jeon — savory pancakes — and grill meat. A pig's head was set on the offering table, and they held a gosa, the old rite for luck in a new venture.
"I beseech the gods of heaven and earth. Let our Cheongsan Brick prosper."
Ki-jo knelt before the pig's head and prayed that the business would flourish. The rite sat awkwardly on him, but in the fifties a gosa was simply what one did, and he pushed through the awkwardness and saw it done.
He bowed to the head, tucked a bill into its mouth, and had just begun sprinkling makgeolli, the milky rice wine, around the yard when the neighbors started drifting in, one and two at a time. A whole pig was roasting over charcoal, and the smell of meat had gone out in every direction. Ki-jo did not stint the people who followed their noses to his gate. He gave them rice, meat, and drink without holding back.
Those who had come only to see what sort of feast it was, once he fed them, hurried off to fetch others. In no time the coal yard was as loud as a neighborhood festival.
"Sir, I think the meat we brought is about to run out."
Sung Dae-ik came looking for him to say it. Two pigs, it seemed, would not be enough, and Ki-jo told him to find another.
"Dae-ik, buy makgeolli too. Buy the whole crock."
"Yes, sir!"
Dae-ik took the driver, and the truck, and went to market.
Under the tents Ki-jo went from villager to villager, greeting each one and introducing himself.
"Lee Ki-jo, president of Cheongsan Brick. I hope you'll look kindly on us from here on."
In the midst of it an old woman rose, caught his hand in both of hers, and said,
"You're so young, and so handsome — how is it your heart is this kind besides... I haven't tasted meat in I don't know how long. Thank you. Truly..."
"Not at all. Please, Grandmother, eat your fill."
He closed both hands around her thin, dry one, then called Hyeok's mother, who was passing, and dropped his voice.
"Hyeok's mother, set some jeon aside for that grandmother, so she can take it when she goes."
"Yes, Village Head."
Hyeok's mother, who had sold gukbap in front of Jeongok Station, had shut her stall and come to Incheon to work. She hurried off toward the food tent at a quick little trot to fetch the pancakes.
Watching nearly a hundred villagers eat, with real appetite, the feast he had laid, Ki-jo felt a swell of pride and an ache under it. Most of those who had come to a feast on an ordinary weekday were the old, the children, and the women. A man showed himself now and then, but the odds were he was ailing, or had failed to find work. Every one of them wore a bad color, or a face that had mislaid its confidence.
Incheon in those days held more outsiders than people born there. With no work to be had right after the war, they had heard the harbor was full of jobs and come up from Chungcheong and Jeolla looking. They were in the same straits he himself had known before he came back, when he had gone to Busan as a refugee and hunted for work. He remembered that life in the body: always cold, always hungry, and if some part of you sickened badly, no money for a doctor, so that you lay there wondering whether this was how you died.
With that weight in his chest he went out to the main gate for a cigarette, and saw a band of men coming from far off.
So. They've come at last.
He watched them and lit the cigarette. Soon they were close enough to make out faces. Lee Seong-sun, who had sold him the yard, was walking at the head of the pack. The moment Seong-sun saw him, he shouted with a swagger.
"Hey! You! You! There you are! Don't you move! You swindling bastard!"
He came on in long strides. Behind him followed a big-framed man with a vicious look — every inch, at a glance, the enforcer of a gambling den. And behind those two came a hundred men with clubs. When Seong-sun pointed Ki-jo out, they all turned their glare on him as one.
Ki-jo had expected exactly this. He himself had first put out the word that a fortune in coal lay buried under the yard. Any child could have told you that Lee Seong-sun, hearing that after he had sold the land, would not sit quiet.
When the roughnecks packed in through the main gate, the villagers enjoying the feast started in alarm. They set their food down and watched with worried eyes to see what was happening.
Seong-sun came up to seize Ki-jo by the collar — and flinched. Ma-ryang was already planted behind Ki-jo, eyes glaring. His nerve a little broken, Seong-sun looked to the gambling-house tough he had brought along. The man gave a slight nod. Seong-sun took heart from it and bellowed.
"You swindling bastard. Hand over the coal buried in that ground. You bought the land off me — did you buy the coal too? Either lay out another five million hwan for the coal, or give the land up!"
A laugh almost escaped Ki-jo at the brazenness of it.
"What are you saying? This land is mine. Give it up? If I fail to pay you the three million hwan by the end of August, then we can talk."
He answered calmly.
"Will you look at this. A face like a courtesan's fancy man, and the brat talks back to his elders? So a civil word won't do, is that it?"
Seong-sun flicked a look at the enforcer beside him, and the man tightened his grip on the club.
That was when a booming voice broke out behind Ki-jo and Ma-ryang.
Kim Doo-han and his men, who had been drinking in an inner tent, came walking out at an easy pace. At the sight, a groan escaped the gambling-house tough.
"Lord above..."
He loosened the hand on the club and whispered to Seong-sun, looking cornered.
"Boss. That man's Kim Doo-han..."
"Kim Doo-han? What's Kim Doo-han doing in Incheon..."
Seong-sun was dumbfounded.
"This is getting too big for me. I'm off."
"Hey, Stone Fist. You serious? What about the thousand hwan I gave you?"
"Come by the house tomorrow with your hide in one piece. I'll hand it back just as I got it. Pocket the price of a sack of rice and you'll still be paying the hospital more."
Stone Fist spun on his heel and shouted to the punks who had followed him.
"Boys. I think we came to the wrong address. Don't look back. We're going."
He vanished from the ranks with a dozen neighborhood toughs in tow.
The dream of the punks who had come up to Incheon from the countryside was to sharpen themselves and break into Seoul. Some of them had been there and seen Kim Doo-han with their own eyes, the celebrated name of the capital's world of fists. They did not have it in them to raise a riot in front of him.
Watching them go, Kim Doo-han let out a great rolling laugh.
"Now that's a letdown. I heard Incheon had plenty of fists worth the name. All rumor, was it?"
He was turning away as if it were nothing when someone called out.
"Hey — Kim Doo-han! You ought to look at my face before you go, don't you think?"
Every eye went to the man who had spoken. Seong-sun, looking at the fellow reckless enough to say it, broke into a wide grin.
"Aigo. That's our Hammer! Hammer didn't run!"
The man called Hammer came sauntering forward. Short sports-cut hair, small of stature, a body packed solid — a strongman's build in which neck and head seemed all of a piece. No weapon in his hand.
"I came all the way from Jeolla to Incheon just to see Kim Doo-han's face the once. Be a shame to leave without it."
Confidence filled his face. Ki-jo could feel the hunger in him, the desire to take Kim Doo-han bare-handed and win. The challenge was absurd, but Kim Doo-han could not let a provocation like that pass. He shrugged off his jacket, tossed it to a subordinate, rolled his sleeves, and strolled out at his ease.
"You want to see my face? Then I'd better show it to you."
The distance between Kim Doo-han and the man called Hammer closed. It was a match even Ki-jo had not foreseen. He had thought that bringing Kim Doo-han's crew would end the thing quietly, and instead it was running off in a strange direction. From the man's build and the way he set himself, Ki-jo guessed he would close and try a headbutt. Hammer's brow was a map of stitches and scars.
Sure enough, Hammer suddenly launched himself at Kim Doo-han, meaning to shorten the distance and use his specialty. Then came a flat, meaty crack, and the body charging in spun once and dropped in a heap. Beside the fallen man stood Ma-ryang, letting his leg down. He had caught Hammer in the temple with a side kick, clean, as he ran at Kim Doo-han. The motion had been so fast that all anyone saw was Hammer going down and Ma-ryang drawing the leg back.
A moment of silence. They had watched it with their eyes open and still could not understand what had happened.
Then Kim Doo-han's laughter rolled across the yard.
"Brother Ma-ryang, what's this! The election hasn't even been held, and you've started guarding me already? Ha ha ha!"
He hooked an arm around Ma-ryang's shoulder and led him back into the tent where the drinking was.
Right. What Ma-ryang was meant to do from here was guard Kim Doo-han...
Even in a moment that sudden, Ma-ryang had simply done his job, and Ki-jo could only think him extraordinary. The old story — that he had guarded Chiang Kai-shek — landed on the skin all at once. A thrill rose through him, a beat late.
Lee Seong-sun, on the other hand, had brought a hundred men only to lose his crack troops and watch the champion he trusted drop without a fight. He stood blank, the soul gone out of him.
The men who had followed him for a pittance were edging around to leave when the villagers in the yard came running.
"Yah! You rotten boy! What do you think you're doing here? Huh? Where did you learn filth like this, playing the gangster?"
The women who had been eating at the feast smacked the backs of younger brothers, husbands, and sons, and scolded the life out of them. They were all, it turned out, from the same neighborhood.
Ki-jo did not let the moment pass.
"Since you've come to the feast anyway, have a drink before you go. It's all right. Just come in and eat."
When he warmly invited the young men who had come to make a scene, the neighborhood women bowed their heads in thanks.
"Aigu... we're sorry, sir. He isn't that bad a boy. They said there'd be a day's wage, so he just followed along."
One woman even caught her younger brother by the ear, dragged him over, and sat him down by force in front of the feast table.
The old woman who had taken Ki-jo's hand and thanked him came up again, this time holding her grandson's.
"Sir, I'm sorry. It's my fault. I raised my grandson wrong..."
When she wept, the grandson dropped to his knees on the spot and begged forgiveness.
"It's all right, Grandmother. Grandson, up you get. It's nothing."
Ki-jo stood the boy up and took him into the tent with his grandmother. He had them give the boy a hot bowl of gukbap, rice sunk in broth, and sat beside him to watch him eat. Eighteen, perhaps. Too little food had left him skin and bone. When the bowl was half gone, Ki-jo asked,
"Looking for work?"
"Yes..."
The grandson set his spoon down and answered with his head bowed low.
"Come here tomorrow. I'll put you on as a watchman for the yard."
"You... really?"
The boy looked up at him as if he could not believe it.
"Aigo... you rascal. Thank the president. Thank you, truly, sir... The boy is weak, and he couldn't find work... However am I to repay a kindness like this..."
"No need for thanks, Grandmother. If he eats well, his body will come back soon enough."
Ki-jo patted the boy's back and stood. Then he walked over to Lee Seong-sun, still standing dazed in front of the main gate. The life was still gone from his face.
"You ought to come inside as well, sir."
"What...?"
Only then did Seong-sun come back to himself and look at Ki-jo with unfocused eyes.
"Have a drink inside before you go. Let's settle whatever grudge there is, and be done with it."
"Yes... yes, let's..."
Ki-jo looked at him with something like pity — a man who had already been promised the great sum of three million hwan at the end of August, and still could not master his greed, and had thrashed like this. But he would be digging coal in Juan for years to come, and he wanted even one fewer person nursing a grudge against him.
When he brought Seong-sun into the tent where Kim Doo-han and Ma-ryang were, Hammer, who had been laid out on the ground, was awake and receiving Kim Doo-han's cup in both hands.
"Well now! If it isn't the man who used to own the land! You come over here and sit too!"
Broad-minded as ever, Kim Doo-han had Seong-sun take the place beside him.
Ki-jo felt a relief, as if the Cheongsan coal yard had settled safely into Juan. He had won the villagers' hearts, and he had calmed Lee Seong-sun, who had come to do him harm. Now he had only to move Juan's coal to the Cheongsan factory. Then twenty-five trucks would begin hauling Cheongsan brick to Seoul.
He took, in both hands, the cup Seong-sun poured for him, and thought of what came next. Yesterday the Big Five had invited him to a gathering. Before he went to war with them, ought he not know his enemy first?
He had decided to accept.