Praying with the enemy, p.17
Praying with the Enemy, page 17
“Well, didn’t the Christians fight the Japanese? I heard about that.”
“No,” Pak said. “The Japanese used the church to keep the people under control. So do the Americans. What better way to force people to do your bidding than to convince all of them to assemble in churches, then tell them how they must behave. The masses follow it.”
“It does seem like a good way to control people,” Jae Pil said. The words felt like poison. Pak was just wrong. The church had almost always been part of the resistance, and it was never widespread enough for the Japanese to use it to control the people. But now was not the time to set Pak right. The last thing Jae Pil wanted to do was draw suspicion to himself.
“Yes,” Pak said.
“So, before the Communists came, back when the Japanese ruled, did you or your family believe in anything?”
“Buddhist,” Pak said. “So silly. It did nothing for us.”
“Nothing,” Jae Pil said. The comment was more to himself than to Pak. Nothing. “Did you ever try to talk with the Christians or pray to their God?”
Pak shook his head. “Once,” he said. “They tried to get us to come to their church. My dad took us one time. I said their prayers. Again, nothing.”
“Nothing,” Jae Pil said again. In that moment, the silence of the forest spoke to him, as loud as if it were a voice. An exclamation from a universe bent on destroying every creature in its midst without compassion or mercy or justice or love playing even a minor role.
Pak stood and stretched, raising his arms high into the sky.
“Do you think any refugees are still crossing the border?” Jae Pil asked.
“I don’t see how,” Pak said. “The Americans will kill anyone they see crossing.”
Jae Pil nodded, thinking of his family. Where were they? Had they even made it to the border? He had now traversed the peninsula multiple times, stopping in villages and encampments at every turn. He had yet to see any trace of them. He considered asking Pak if he had any knowledge about what happened to refugees trying to flee south, but he thought better of it. The man held only hatred for anyone not loyal to the regime, so bringing up refugees would only result in some long-winded rant about what should happen to those who had not caught the vision of the greatness of the Workers Party.
“Do you think the peace talks will work?” Pak asked.
“I don’t know,” Jae Pil said. “What if they do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Jae Pil said. “Two countries? Will our land become two countries? What will happen to all the families? What about families who have members on both sides?”
“I’m sure we will be able to cross the border,” Pak said. “But I hope the peace talks don’t work. We have the superior army. We cannot let our people in the South suffer under the Americans. I think we should keep fighting until they are forced out of our land. Then, and only then, can our people thrive.”
“There isn’t another way?”
“The world has tried all of the other ways. Only an ideology that puts the people first, all people, the commoners, can succeed. Everything else must be stamped out.”
A long silence passed between them. A breeze had picked up, cooling the sweat that had formed along Jae Pil’s brow. Something in his stomach sunk. It wasn’t just the prospect of one view crushing all dissenters. But the silence; so much silence, everywhere.
CHAPTER 27
Ward’s mind was full of the horrors awaiting him. The Chinese doctors had so butchered his feet that the only solution he could imagine that would enable him to walk normally again, if he ever did make it home, would be for the doctors to rebreak his ankles and set them properly.
He felt it, all of it. The snapping of the bones, the weeks of not being able to walk again.
The stink of casts being ripped from his legs.
The only other solution, it occurred to him, would be for them to create some sort of built-in heel to his shoes, one that would allow his raised heels to rest on something so he could walk about on his toes, the way ladies did in their high heels. He would need a huge pair of special shoes to pull that off.
And there they were. The galoshes. Brought to him by a fool, who lacked the sense to distinguish between boots and rubber boot coverings. They were gigantic. Worthlessness objectified. Yet, could it be? Could they be big enough to hold a false heel?
Ward sprung from his bed and snatched up the galoshes. He scanned the room; the other soldiers were all asleep, snoring and breathing with the cadence of the night. What time was it? How close to dawn? Outside, the only sounds came from a directionless wind. He was alone.
The right galosh slipped over his foot like a bucket; he’d have plenty of room to work with. He grabbed a handful of straw from his bed, wrapped it in one of the many rags lying on the floor, and stuffed it into the galosh over the heel.
He slid his foot back inside. It fit perfectly, the top of his foot stopping snugly against the top of the galosh. He skulked about the room, gathering up other rags. He wrapped them around his ankle and the lower part of his calf. Within minutes, the galosh was secure and it seemed to provide him the ankle support he needed. He fastened the left foot the same way, then grabbed his walking sticks.
He crawled to the door and peeked outside. Nothing. He slipped off the porch and then rose. For a moment he wobbled, but the makeshift shoes allowed him to stand up straight. He put his weight on his feet and held onto the sticks like ski poles. Then, for the first time in eight weeks, he took a step.
• • •
For the next few days, Ward prepared. He lay motionless during the day, stretching his ankles. He knew that if anyone figured out he was mobile, they would place a full-time guard on him or, more likely, hand him over to Kang. He gathered what supplies he could from the medics or his fellow patients: a handful of rock salt, a few scraps of soap, the top of a tin can he could use as a knife, and a small can of meat one of the medics had given him. He also still had his Mae West, his vest, and his leather jacket.
At night, he snuck from the hut and walked up and down the path behind it. His going wasn’t fast, but it was far better than crawling. He could cover ten yards in minutes. He moved at a slow hobble, but, suddenly, he was free, at least in his heart and mind. One more day, and he would be ready.
• • •
Jae Pil watched with only mild interest as the convoy pulled into the camp. The commander of the convoy stepped from the cab of the lead truck. He looked as bored as Jae Pil felt. As was his way, Pak gave the man a hearty salute. Jae Pil offered a passable one. After all, the man was a sergeant, not Kim Il Sung himself. A cigarette hung from his lips, and his cap looked as if it had been dragged in the mud behind the truck for days on end. He didn’t even bother saluting back to Jae Pil or Pak. “Is your truck operational?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Jae Pil said.
“Any mechanical problems?”
“No, sir,” Jae Pil said. Though he wished there had been.
“Good.” The sergeant pointed to the rear of his own vehicle. “This truck is filled with medical supplies. Your orders are to transfer these supplies to your truck, then transport them to the field hospitals in Dong-A-Li and Na-Han-Li. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!” Pak said with enthusiasm, practically skipping to the back of the sergeant’s truck.
The sergeant looked at Jae Pil and merely raised one eyebrow. “I was not finished,” he said in a calm tone. “Once you deliver the supplies, you will pick up the men at those camps and move them to Pyonyang, away from the front. Understood?”
Jae Pil nodded.
• • •
Ward found he was too excited to sleep or even focus on a thought for more than a few seconds. It was morning. That night, he would make his escape. It had been raining for hours, the kind of long, steady downpour that penetrated the earth and turned every inch of soil into thick mud. None of that bothered him.
But the sound that materialized out of the morning stillness did: the lashing gears and growing engines of approaching trucks. He lay on his side and listened as they moved into the village. By his estimates, there were at least three. They ground through the mud. Russian—he could tell from the hissing airbrakes.
Someone appeared at the door and conveyed a brief message in Chinese. The other patients stirred all around Ward. Those who could jumped to their feet and began collecting their belongings.
“What’s happening?” Ward called.
Of the six other men in the room, most ignored him. One looked his way—a friendly soldier whose arm was in a sling. “Evacuate hospital,” he said. “We all go to camp in rear.”
This was it. They might not hand him over to Kang immediately, but they were taking him to the North, deep into the North, where evacuation would be impossible. Perhaps all the way across the Yalu River and into China. He would never be found again. His heart shuddered with adrenaline. He couldn’t move; his breathing turned shallow. Blood rushed into his face, and he felt a flush of heat followed by a jolt of dizziness. His escape would be over before it had even begun.
What could he do? Should he just run now, in the middle of the daylight? That would be suicide. He scanned the room. The Chinese were already shuffling out.
The head medic walked into the room.
Ward flopped onto his back, an idea budding in his head. He snagged his blanket and wrapped it around himself as if he were freezing.
The medic walked to him. “Up,” he said. “Evacuating village.”
Ward whispered with a raw voice. “My throat,” he said, pointing to his neck. The summer heat had already made his forehead clammy. “It hurts.” The medic’s eyes widened. He felt Ward’s forehead, then muttered something Ward couldn’t understand. He flew from the room, seeming almost in a panic.
Ward watched the door. Under the blanket, in the summer heat, he baked, but he kept up the ruse that he had a temperature and was cold. His only hope was that they wouldn’t want him to travel sick with the other soldiers and pass whatever was wrong with him onto them.
The soldier reappeared. In his hands, he held a cup of water and a spoon of white crystalline powder. “You drink,” he said. “You take.”
Ward made a show of struggling to rise enough to take the medicine, which he swallowed. Who knew what it was, but the logistics problem was simple: the risk of the powder versus the risk of leaving on the truck.
“You will drive out tonight,” the man said.
Time passed slowly. The sleepy village had morphed into a swarm—soldiers bustled everywhere with the same anticipation Ward recalled feeling before a major holiday. What could he do? Even with all the excitement, he couldn’t disappear into the nearby cornfields. Someone would most certainly see him.
Twice Kang stepped to the door and looked at Ward but said nothing.
Finally, as dusk fell over the area, Ward heard the trucks fire up. He waited. Outside his hut, he heard Kang and another man sniping back and forth at each other in an intense conversation. It quickly morphed into an argument. When it finished, one of them stood in the doorway.
It was Kang.
He closed the distance between the door and Ward in two steps, then loomed over so closely that Ward needed to rotate onto his back to see the man’s face. “There is not enough room in the trucks,” Kang said. “One more will return in the morning to pick up remaining men. Then you will go north.”
Ward wasn’t certain, but he seemed to detect, there in the failing light, a hint of a smile on Kang’s curled lips. The man was finally going to get his prey.
“OK,” Ward whispered, acting neither concerned nor excited.
“We will move you to another hut with other patients. Take your things.”
Against all instincts, Ward slowly rose and gathered up his blanket. For a fraught instant, he wasn’t sure what to do. If he were forced to stay in a hut with all the other stragglers, escaping in the night would be nearly impossible. But what else was he going to do? He couldn’t disobey Kang.
A few seconds later, the head medic appeared at the door again. “No, no, no,” he said to Ward. “You stay here.”
Kang fired back something in a burst of short words.
The two men argued for a moment, then the medic, who seemed to have won the exchange, pointed to Ward. “You stay here. No get other patients sick.”
Kang spun away with a quick exhalation through his nose.
Ward lay back down. And, suddenly, he found himself alone in a hut with no guard. He could simply walk out into the night. Not now, he thought, not quite yet. But soon. After the medic made his final check, he would slip into the darkness.
CHAPTER 28
Barbara Millar was going crazy. She paced in front of her parents so much that her father had quipped, “You’re going to wear a hole in the carpet.”
In her hands, she had twisted a napkin from the dinner table so much that it now resembled a rope. She handed it to her mother. “Sorry.” Outside, in the back, her multitude of siblings played with Adrian.
“What can we do?” her mother asked.
“I don’t know,” Barbara said. “I just . . . I just have to find a way to get my mind off this. All day long, it’s all I think about. I go to Mass, I take care of Adrian, I help around here, I decorate the apartment, but . . . I can’t breathe. I can’t stop thinking about him.”
“I know,” her mother said. “It’s hard.” Her parents sat on the couch, watching her through their glasses. All her life, her father had been a model of rugged, practical, can-do toughness, but the look on his face now was simply one of concern.
“What if I gave you some more work?” he asked.
“No,” Barbara said. “There’s just too much around here to remind me of him.” She pointed through the walls to the other house next door. “I mean, we lived right there for heaven’s sake.” She continued to pace. “I just . . . I don’t know what to do. I have to get my mind off this, but, then . . .”
“What?” her mom said.
“Nothing,” Barbara said. She couldn’t say what she was thinking out loud. It would be too much.
“Tell us,” her mom said. “It will help. I promise.”
“I can’t sleep, I can’t breathe—I want to find a way to take my mind off it, but, then I feel guilty. Ward doesn’t get to have a break. Wherever he is, he doesn’t get to stop thinking about what he’s going through. So why should I? I just feel like I’m being a bad wife if I stop thinking about him. And I don’t want to stop thinking about him. I know he’s alive, and I want him to know I’m always there with him.”
Neither of her parents spoke.
“I don’t want him to ever think I lost faith in him. Is that crazy?” Barbara asked.
“No,” her mother said. “It’s the sanest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Barbara stopped pacing and finally took a seat across from her parents. All three sat in silence for a time, a rare occurrence in their house and so unusual that Barbara noticed it. “It’s quiet,” she said.
“Won’t last,” her father said with a chuckle. Then he added, “Perhaps there is another way you can think about this.”
Barbara perked up to show she was listening.
“Have you considered what Ward would want you to do?” he asked.
Barbara hadn’t really thought of that. Her mind felt dense, numb. “No,” she said. She sat a few more minutes in silence and intense concentration and finally said, “I guess he’d want me to be strong. He’d want me to take care of Adrian and myself.”
“Well,” her mother chimed in. “You can’t do that if you’re not taking care of your mind. So maybe doing something to help with that is exactly what you should be doing. You can still pray for him and you can still get your apartment ready. But maybe you need more to occupy your thoughts.”
She nodded. “I set up the radio last night.” It was the first piece of furniture they had ever purchased together: a chartreuse cabinet, radio inlayed, turntable on top, drawers and cabinets inside to hold all sorts of things. Finally, an idea alighted on the wave of her thoughts like a flower petal on the surface of a choppy lake. “Maybe a different job,” she said. “Away from here . . . No offense, Dad.”
“None taken,” her father said. “I think that’s a swell idea. You go get a job, and when Ward gets back, you’ll have that extra money to buy something other than a radio.”
• • •
And suddenly he was free. Ward Millar, Captain, United States Air Force, Acting Squadron Operations Officer, who at one time soared over the skies at nearly the speed of sound, was able to move of his own accord, to cover great distances. Sort of.
He hobbled into the night, away. Clinging to his poles, he hobbled and kept on hobbling.
He maneuvered through a cornfield directly behind his hut. A swirling evening breeze rustled the corn, providing him some audible cover. Along the way, he took stock of the supplies he’d been able to collect: his G-suit, which he’d worn since day one; his flight suit over that; a blue scarf one of the other prisoners had given him; his deflated Mae West; his many-pocketed vest; the tin lid he was planning to use as a knife; a tin of meat; the rock salt; several small green apples the medics had given him a few days earlier; a small piece of soap; the rags and galoshes that allowed him to walk; his sticks; the two hundred won the trader back in Ho’s village had given him for his pen and shirt; and all around him, corn, corn, corn.
It would have to be enough.
He scanned the corn for ripe ears he might be able to pick, but all were too young. He stayed in the cover of the cornfield until he reached the end of the village, then moved to a dirt road. His original logic still prevailed: the last place they would look was to the north. And roads seemed the safest option for travel. It was not his first instinct, but over time, he had come to realize that the Communists used these roads only rarely at night. The supply routes near the front were constantly busy and trafficked, but back in this area, the trucks traveled mostly during the day. Ward also had another concern: the hills and fields off to the side were simply too treacherous given the condition of his legs. The chances were too great that he would twist his ankle or break his leg. He couldn’t risk it.
