Nightmare Range (33 page)

I tapped Ernie on the elbow. “Come on, pal. Let’s get out of here.”

He let the girl go but continued to stare at her as we walked out the door.

There was nothing to do but search the clubs one at a time. When we saw business girls on the street, I stopped them and asked about Ortfield and showed them the photograph, but they all shook their long glistening black hair and said they hadn’t seen him.

It was less than an hour before the midnight curfew. We took a break and ordered some onion rings at a stand outside the Lucky 7 Club. The GIs were out in force now, swirling from one joint to another in drunken abandon. We ordered two cold ones to wash down the greasy batter.

“We’re screwed,” Ernie said.

“Maybe he’ll show up on his own.”

“Maybe. And maybe he’ll go AWOL, and you and I will both lose another stripe.”

I shrugged. I’d lost them before. “That’s not what worries me.”

Ernie set down his brown bottle of Oriental Beer. “Then what does?”

“Mr. Choi.”

“Who?”

“The dead girl’s dad. He doesn’t believe justice was done in our military court.”

“He’s right about that.”

“I’m afraid he might administer justice on his own.”

Ernie kept chomping on the onion rings. I heard footsteps behind me. I turned. It was the girl from the Sloe-eyed Lady Club, Ok-hee. Ortfield’s old flame.

“I see him,” she said.

“Where?”

“
Chogi,
” she said, pointing. Over there. “You come quick. Big trouble.”

We set down our food and ran.

She led us down an alley that wound away from the lights of the bar district. We swerved past a dark movie house with an enormous billboard above the entrance painted with the faces of giant Korean actresses. A flight of broad cement steps led down to the main road.

At the bottom, next to a boxlike black sedan, stood two men. One of them was Ortfield. The other was a Korean taller than Ortfield, trying to force him into the car. Ortfield flailed wildly. That mad resistance of a drunk.

There were no crowds nearby. The buses had stopped, and most people had sense enough to find shelter before midnight when everyone had to be off the street. Only a few taxis, their yellow plastic lights bobbing above the flat roofs, sped by.

Ernie sized up the situation immediately and bounded down the steps, taking them two at a time. He yelled. “Hey! What are you doing there?”

The Korean man, still with a fierce grip on Ortfield’s arm, turned and glanced up the steps. I recognized him. The lawyer. The same man who had confronted us at the home of Choi Un-suk’s parents.

I started down after Ernie, taking the steps more cautiously. They were narrow and slick, and I didn’t want to fall and bust something.

As Ernie approached, the lawyer seemed to evaluate his situation. He looked at Ernie, he looked at the squirming Ortfield, and he looked at the small back door of the black sedan. With a sigh of resignation, he let Ortfield go, opened the front door of the car, and climbed in.

Ernie hit the bottom of the stairs running. “Halt! You’re under arrest.”

We had no jurisdiction over Korean civilians, even ones caught red-handed trying to kidnap a drunken GI, but technicalities like the law never slow Ernie down.

The car pulled away. As oncoming headlights flashed through the cab, I saw that the lawyer sat in the front next to a driver. Neither one of them looked back.

Ernie grabbed Ortfield. “Who were those guys?”

Ortfield just babbled. He was so drunk—or stoned—that saliva dripped from his mouth.

When I reached the bottom of the steps, I watched the red taillights fade into the distance. What had they wanted? Why hadn’t they killed him when they had the chance?

All the way back to the compound Ernie cuffed Ortfield on the head. Back at the barracks, I took the first shift. Ernie took the second. One of us was awake all night. Watching.

The next afternoon was a clear winter day with a sky so blue that it must’ve drifted over from the vast plains of Manchuria.

Ernie drove. Quiet. Pissed off that we had to babysit and upset that Ortfield was getting better treatment than most GIs. A civilian flight out of Kimpo International Airport. A chauffeured jeep instead of a cattle car loaded with smelly soldiers and duffel bags.

In the morning the movers had arrived and—without incident—boxed up what little baggage Ortfield had to be shipped: a stereo set, souvenirs of Korea, extra uniforms. After chow we loaded up the jeep and started out for the airport.

Ortfield was still hung over. Morose. Unapologetic for having run off by himself last night. Just one more romp through Itaewon, that’s all he’d been after. He admitted to popping a few pills and drinking a bottle or two of Oscar, rotgut Korean sparkling burgundy. After that he remembered nothing. Not even the incident with the lawyer. All he remembered, he claimed, was the steady rap of Ernie’s knuckles on his head as we marched him back to the compound. He rubbed his greasy skull resentfully.

The little jeep wound through the bustling life of Seoul, crossed the bridge over the crystal blue ribbon of the River Han,
and sped past open rice paddies until we reached Kimpo International Airport.

In the parking lot Ernie padlocked the jeep. We watched as Ortfield shouldered his duffel bag and suitcase into the busy terminal.

I started to breathe a sigh of relief. The ordeal was almost over. At the check-in stand I handed the ticket and the military orders to a pretty Korean woman in a tight-fitting blue uniform. She checked and stamped everything quickly, asking for Ortfield’s military identification. And then she handed everything back to us and we were on our way.

A flight of steps led upstairs to the departure gates, but just before we got there, a frail man stepped out of the restroom. He stood in front of us, blocking our way, and I realized who he was. Mr. Choi, the father of the dead girl, Choi Un-suk.

He didn’t seem angry and he didn’t have any weapons in his hand, he just stood in front of us, moving slightly every time we tried to step around him. I positioned myself between him and Ortfield.

“Ernie, take Ortfield up the steps. I’ll deal with Mr. Choi.”

I turned back to him ready to speak, but he ignored me, his eyes following Ortifeld and Ernie as they approached the stairway.

Another man appeared from behind a newsstand. With a start I recognized him. The lawyer.

Ernie saw him too, and bristled. The lawyer stepped forward. Ernie stuck his fist out to stop him but like a cobra striking a mouse, he grabbed Ernie’s forearm and started to twist. Ernie was no novice. He went with the turn instead of resisting, and soon they were grappling with one another, banging up against the rattling newsstand.

Ortfield sized up the situation, re-hoisted his duffel bag, and started trotting up the stairs.

Good, I thought. Get to the flight. That’s the main thing.

I hurried forward to help Ernie, but the lawyer had already
backed off, his hands held up, palms open, making it clear he didn’t want a fight.

Ernie’s fists were clenched and his face red, and his nose pointed forward as if he were going to jab it into the lawyer’s heart.

Mr. Choi started slowly up the stairs, his interest elsewhere. Ortfield was already out of sight.

That’s when it hit me.

With the back of my hand, I slapped Ernie on the arm. “Come on!”

“What?”

“Ortfield. He’s alone. These two guys were just trying to get us away from him.”

Awareness came into Ernie’s eyes. We’d been had. We ran toward the stairs and pushed through the steady flow of travelers descending from the upper deck.

The walkway opened into a long concourse that led to the various gates. No Ortfield. We ran to the end of the hall and turned but instead of another long passageway we were halted by a brick wall of people.

Everyone was agitated, trying to look forward over the heads in front of them. I saw braided black pigtails and white blouses and long blue skirts. Schoolgirls. Many of them. There were also men in white caps and slacks and blue sports coats and, toward the front, elderly women in long dresses. Everyone wore a white sash from shoulder to hip. The sign of mourning.

“Crap,” Ernie said. We both knew what we were in for. A demonstration. One of the few acceptable ways in Korea to vent emotion in public. Once they get rolling, anything can happen.

We pushed through the crowd. In front was an open area and a platform, and a woman stood atop it trying to switch on a megaphone. It buzzed and crackled to life.

She was tall and thin and wore a long blue skirt and a blue vest and her black hair was pulled tightly back from her austere face. I recognized her. The aunt of Choi Un-suk we had seen
when we delivered the money. She turned away from us, toward a small commotion in the crowd.

“
Wei nomu bali ka
?” she said. Why are you leaving so quickly? Everyone cheered.

Over the sea of heads I spotted Ortfield. Two men had grabbed his duffel bag and his suitcase, and he was struggling with them, trying to yank them out of their grasp. Between him and the woman on the platform was a huge shrine. A blown-up photograph of Choi Un-suk draped in black and bedecked in front with dozens of bouquets. Behind the flowers stood the family, her mother, her aunts, her uncles.

Ernie didn’t like Ortfield, not at all, but he’s a territorial kind of guy. Ortfield was our prisoner, and Ernie didn’t want people messing with him or delaying him in boarding his plane. Before I could say anything, he shot forward like a Doberman freed from a leash.

He crashed into the two men holding Ortfield’s bags and knocked them back into the arms of onlookers. A great roar went up from the crowd. Ernie tossed the bags to Ortfield and started shoving him forward, toward the boarding gate twenty yards away.

The woman with the megaphone shrieked.

I’m not sure what she said. Something about the life of a Korean woman. But whatever it was, it was enough. The crowd surged forward, me with it, and Ernie and Ortfield were enveloped by a sea of bodies.

Ortfield cursed and threw a punch, and Ernie jostled with three schoolgirls, and then they were down and there was more screaming and in the distance I heard the whistle of a policeman but I knew they wouldn’t be able to make it through the melee.

So far, I had been left mostly alone, with nothing more happening to me than hands pushing on my back as everyone shoved forward to see what was happening. Shuffling sideways through the surging crowd, I made my way toward the platform.
The woman atop it was still screaming through the small megaphone. Now I could understand her.

“
Chukkijima
!” Don’t kill them.

It didn’t seem that anyone was listening.

I climbed up on the platform. She looked up at me, ready to swat me with the bullhorn. I bowed slightly.

“I want to speak to the people,” I said.

She hesitated.

“Please,” I said “I know why you are here. I know what needs to be done.”

She gazed into my eyes. Maybe it was desperation she saw there. Maybe it was the fact that she knew she’d already lost control of the crowd. Reluctantly she handed me the megaphone.

Ernie had wrapped both arms around the duffel bag, like Ish-mael clinging to Queequeg’s coffin, and twisted and pushed his way through the crowd. Ortfield tried to fight, but half-a-dozen men had hold of him, one of them with a firm grip on his hair, yanking his head back. If someone had a knife, they could’ve sliced his neck clean.

Schoolgirls stepped out of the crowd, screaming curses at Ortfield. Some of them spit. Some of them threw weak punches.

In the distance a small group of policemen struggled forward at the edge of the crowd, blowing their whistles, making little headway. No one made a path for them.

I spoke into the megaphone, keeping my voice as calm as I could. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?”

I used English. I wanted them to know that an American was speaking. Many heads looked up. I continued speaking soothing words. A murmur ran through the crowd and soon they started to quiet, like a sea calming after a storm. Finally, the only people struggling were Ernie and Ortfield.

I pulled the megaphone away from my mouth and hissed toward Ernie. “Don’t let him move forward, Ernie. Hold him where he is.”

All eyes were on me. Patient. Expectant. A class waiting for a schoolteacher to begin a presentation. Even the police were quiet. I knew what I had to do. I should’ve done it a long time ago. I pointed to Ortfield. This time I spoke Korean.

“Our young soldier is distraught. He has brought great shame upon himself and his family. They will wonder why he was sent home from the army so early and why none of his officers have anything good to say about him.”

I looked at him, shaking my head, a pitying expression.

“But he has little education. See how he acts when you have been so kind to wait for him here. To give him a chance to do the right thing.”

I covered the mouthpiece of the megaphone with my hand.

“Ernie! Take him in front of the shrine.”