The Orphan Master's Son (24 page)

The ranch house was single-level and half hidden by trees, deceptively sprawling. A nearby corral contained picnic tables and a “chuckwagon” grill, where several people were lined up for lunch. The cicadas were active, and Jun Do could smell the cooking coals. A midday breeze stirred, heading for anvil clouds too distant to promise rain. Free-roaming dogs leaped in and out of the corral's fencing. At one point the dogs noticed something moving in a distant bush. They stood at attention, bristling. Walking past, the Senator said, “Hunt,” and at the command, the dogs raced off to flush a group of small birds that ran quickly through the brush.

When the dogs returned, the Senator gave them treats from his pocket, and Jun Do understood that in communism, you'd threaten a dog into compliance, while in capitalism, obedience is obtained through bribes.

The food line favored no rank or privilege—standing together were the Senator, the ranch hands, the house servants, the security agents in their black suits, the wives of Texas officials. While the Minister took a seat at a picnic table and was brought his food by the Senator's wife, Dr. Song and Jun Do lined up with plates made from paper. The young man next to Jun Do and Dr. Song introduced himself as a PhD candidate from the university. He was writing a dissertation on the North Korean nuclear program. He leaned in close and said, quietly, “You know the South won the war, right?”

They were served beef ribs, corn grilled in the husk, marinated tomatoes, and a scoop of macaroni. Dr. Song and Jun Do made their way to where the Minister ate with the Senator and his wife. Dogs followed them.

Dr. Song sat with them. “Please, join us,” he said to Jun Do. “There is plenty of room, no?”

“I'm sorry,” Jun Do told them. “I'm sure you have important matters to discuss.”

He sat alone at a wooden picnic table that had been vandalized with people's initials. The meat was both sweet and spicy, the tomatoes tangy, but the corn and noodles were made most foul by butter and cheese, substances he knew only from dialogs they'd heard recited over tapes in his language school.
I would like to buy some cheese. Please pass the butter
.

A large bird circled above. He didn't know its variety.

Wanda joined him. She was licking a white plastic spoon.

“Jesus,” she said. “Don't miss out on the pecan pie.”

He had just finished eating a rib and his hands were covered with sauce.

She nodded to the end of the table, where a dog sat patiently, staring. Its eyes were cloudy blue, and its coat was marbled gray and brindle. How could a dog, obviously well fed, capture the exact look of an orphan boy, relegated to the end of the line?

“Go ahead,” Wanda said. “Why not?”

He threw the bone, which was snapped from the air.

“That's a Catahoula dog,” she said. “A gift from the governor of Louisiana for helping out after the hurricane.”

Jun Do lifted another rib. He couldn't stop eating them, even when it felt as if the meat was backing up in his throat.

“Who are all these people?” he asked.

Wanda looked around. “A couple think-tankers, some NGO folk, various lookey-loos. The North Koreans don't visit every day, you know.”

“What about you?” he asked. “Are you a think-tanker or a lookey-loo?”

“I'm the shadowy intelligence figure,” she said.

Jun Do stared at her.

She smiled. “Come on, do I look shadowy?” she asked. “I'm an open-source gal. I'm all about sharing. You can ask me anything you want.”

Tommy crossed the corral holding a cup of iced tea, coming from wherever he'd stored the poles and pistols. Jun Do watched Tommy line up and get served, offering a bow of the head when he was handed his plate.

Jun Do said to Wanda, “You're looking at me like maybe I never saw a black person before.”

Wanda shrugged. “It's possible.”

“I met the U.S. Navy before,” Jun Do said. “Lots of those guys are black. And my English teacher was from Angola. The only black man in the DPRK. He said it wasn't so lonely as long as he gave us all African accents.”

Wanda said, “I heard a story that in the '70s an American soldier crossed the DMZ, a boy from North Carolina who was drunk or something. The North Koreans made him a language teacher, but had to stop after he taught all the agents to talk like crackers.”

Jun Do didn't know what she meant by “cracker.” “I never heard that story,” he said. “And I'm not an agent, if that's what you're suggesting.”

Wanda watched him dig into another rib. “I'm surprised you didn't take me up on my offer to answer any question,” she said. “I'd have bet you'd ask me if I spoke Korean.”

“Do you?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “But I can tell when someone's muddling a translation. That's why I figure you're here as something other than a lowly interpreter.”

Dr. Song and the Minister stood at their picnic table. Dr. Song announced, “The Minister wishes to present gifts to the Senator and his wife. For the Senator,
The Selected Works of Kim Jong Il.
” Here, Dr. Song produced the bound, eleven-volume set.

A Mexican woman walked by with a tray full of food. “EBay,” she said to Wanda.

“Oh, Pilar,” Wanda called after her. “You're bad.”

The Senator accepted the gift with a smile. “Are they signed?” he asked.

Dr. Song's face showed a flash of uncertainty. He conferred with the Minister. Jun Do couldn't hear them, but their words were flashing back and forth. Then Dr. Song smiled. “The Dear Leader Kim Jong Il would be happy to inscribe the books in person should the Senator visit as our guest in Pyongyang.”

In return, the Senator gave the Minister an iPod loaded with country music.

Dr. Song then began to speak publicly of the beauty and graciousness of the Senator's wife, while the Minister prepared to offer her the cooler.

The smell of that meat returned to Jun Do's nose. He set the rib aside and looked away.

“What?” Wanda asked him. “What's in that cooler?”

This seemed like a turning point somehow, that Dr. Song's ruses up till now were all in fun, but the tiger ploy was of a different sort—one sniff and the Americans would know that the meat was foul, that some ugly game was being played, and everything would be different.

“I need to know,” Jun Do asked her. “Were you serious?”

“Of course,” she said. “Serious about what?”

He took her hand. With a pen, he wrote across her palm the name of the Second Mate.

“I need to know if he made it,” Jun Do said. “Did he get out?”

Using her phone, Wanda took a picture of her hand. She typed a message using both her thumbs and then pressed
Send
. “Let's find out,” she said.

Dr. Song finished his tribute to the loveliness of the Senator's wife, and the Minister handed her the cooler. “From the citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,” he said. “Fresh tiger meat, taken recently from a majestic beast culled from the peaks of Mount Paektu. You can't imagine how white was his fur. The Minister desires that we all feast of it tonight, yes?”

The Minister nodded with pride.

Dr. Song adopted a wily smile. “And remember,” he said to the Senator's wife, “when you eat of the tiger, you become like the tiger.”

People stopped eating to witness the Senator's wife's reaction to this, but she said nothing. The clouds were thicker now, and the air smelled of rain that probably wouldn't arrive. The Senator removed the cooler from the table. “Let me see if I can take charge of that,” he said with a businesslike smile. “Tiger sounds like a man's business.”

The Senator's wife turned her attention to a dog at her side; she cupped its ears with both hands and spoke sweetly to it.

The gift ceremony seemed to have slipped from Dr. Song's hands. He was at a loss as to what had gone wrong. He came over to Jun Do. “How are you holding up, son?” he asked. “It's the arm, it's hurting quite badly, I can tell, yes?”

Jun Do rotated his shoulder a couple of times. “Yes, but I'll be okay, Dr. Song. I'll manage.”

Dr. Song looked frantic. “No, no need, son. I knew this time would come. There's no bravery lost in seeking medical attention.” He looked to Wanda. “You wouldn't have a knife or some scissors we could use?”

Wanda looked to Jun Do. “Is your arm hurt?” she asked. When he nodded, Wanda called the Senator's wife over, and for the first time, Jun Do took true notice of her—a lean woman with shoulder-length white hair and pale, pearled eyes. “I think our friend here is hurt,” Wanda told her.

To the Senator's wife, Dr. Song asked, “Is it possible to get some alcohol and a knife? It's no emergency. We simply have some stitches to remove.”

“Are you a doctor doctor?” the Senator's wife asked.

“No,” Dr. Song said.

She turned to Jun Do. “Where are you hurt?” she asked him. “I used to practice medicine.”

“It's nothing,” Dr. Song said. “We probably should have removed the stitches before we left.”

She turned to Dr. Song, glaring. Her lack of patience for him blazed until he looked away. She brought out a pair of glasses and placed them on the end of her nose. “Show me,” she said to Jun Do. He removed his suit coat, and then his shirt. He offered his arm for the Senator's wife to examine. She lifted her head to employ the lenses. The eyelets of the sutures were red and inflamed. When she pressed her thumb, they wept.

“Yes,” she said. “These must come out. Come, I have a good light in the kitchen.”

Soon the Senator's wife and Wanda had him shirtless, sitting on the kitchen counter. The kitchen was bright yellow, the walls papered with blue checked print and sunflowers. Pinned to the refrigerator by magnets were many snapshots of children, but also groups of young people, arms thrown around each other. One photo depicted the Senator in an orange astronaut's suit, space helmet tucked under his arm.

The Senator's wife scrubbed her hands under steaming sink water. Wanda did, too, in case she was needed. The woman Wanda called Pilar came into the kitchen carrying the cooler of tiger meat. She said something in Spanish when she saw Jun Do shirtless, and she said something else in Spanish when she saw his wound.

The Senator's wife scrubbed well past her elbows. Without looking from her work, she said, “Jun Do, this is Pilar, our family's special helper.”

“I'm the maid,” Pilar said. “John Doe? Isn't that the name you give a missing person?”

“It's Pak Jun Do,” Jun Do said, then he pronounced it slowly.
“Jhun Doh.”

Pilar looked at the cooler, studying the way someone had attempted to scrape away the Red Cross insignia. “My nephew Manny drives a truck that moves organs and eyes and things between hospitals,” she said, “He uses a cooler just like this.”

The Senator's wife popped on latex gloves. “Actually,” she said, “I don't think a John Doe is a missing person. I think it's when you have the person, just not his identity.”

Wanda blew into her latex gloves. “A John Doe has an exact identity,” she said, and considered the patient. “It's just yet to be discovered.”

The Senator's wife poured hydrogen peroxide up and down his arm, massaging it into the wounds. “This will loosen the sutures,” she said.

For a moment, there was only the hiss of his arm foaming white. It didn't hurt, exactly—it felt like ants, maybe, swarming in and out of him.

Wanda said, “Are you all right being treated by a female doctor?”

Jun Do nodded. “Most of the doctors in Korea are women,” he said. “Though I've never seen one.”

“A woman doctor?” Wanda asked.

“Or any doctor?” the Senator's wife asked.

“Any doctor,” he said.

“Not even in the military, for a physical?” the Senator's wife asked.

“I guess I've never been sick,” he said.

“Who patched you up?”

“A friend,” Jun Do said.

“A friend?”

“A guy I work with.”

While the wound foamed, the Senator's wife lifted his arms, spread them wide, then brought them forward, her eyes following invisible lines on his body. He watched as she noted the burns on the undersides of his arms—candle marks from his pain training. She touched the ridges of the scars with her fingertips. “A bad place to get burned,” she said. “The skin is quite sensitive here.” She ran her hand across his chest to the collarbone. “This knitting,” she said. “That's a fresh break to the clavicle.” She brought his hands up, as though she were going to kiss a ring—instead, she studied the alignment of his finger bones. “Do you want me to look you over? Do you have any complaints?”

He wasn't as muscular as when he'd been in the military, but his physique was strong, and he could feel the women looking at him.