I Am the Clay (19 page)

The boy said he would go with the girl to gather wood.

He went over to her later that morning. Bare-handed, they gathered branches and heaped them in two piles and carried them on their backs to the girl’s shanty and left them near the firepit. Shy and fearful, the girl murmured a word of thanks and disappeared into the shanty.

The boy returned exhausted, his stiffened hands cut and bleeding. He slipped beneath the quilts and lay very still, shivering. His thighs and back quivered and there was a dull pain in his chest in the area of the wound. The woman sat near a wall humming to herself. Leaning against a wheel of the cart, the old man snored softly, an empty bowl on his lap. Tired old people, the woman kind, the old man crude; ugly faces, not like the faces of Father and Mother. The boy held himself very tight and would not cry. Old and ugly and kind and crude and separating him from the orphans that roamed the plain.

They ate the last of the rice that night and in the morning the food trucks did not come. At noon the black cloud appeared again over the plain.

“If I had become a hunter I would know where to
find meat,” the old man muttered. “Don’t tell me there is no meat on this plain.”

He went to the nearby shanty and received a small portion of rice for his promise that the boy would again help the girl gather wood.

“This stink will kill me,” he said later to the woman.

She did not hear him but hummed quietly to herself as she added wood to the fire. If there were meat I would offer it to the ghosts and they would stop sending the wind and the snow and the smell. But he is not a hunter and we have no meat.

Raising her arms, she made vertical and horizontal motions in the air and then sat very still, gazing into the climbing fire.

The trucks returned the next morning and after the old man and the woman left for the food the boy searched through the shanty and on the cart in the box containing the spirit of the old man’s father he found the nearly full bottle. He went to the girl and asked her to keep an eye on the shanty and headed cautiously toward the American compound.

The group of boys his age and their leader were in the shanty near the compound. They would not let him inside. He stood in front of the entrance with the leader and handed him the bottle. They spoke briefly. The leader disappeared inside and after some minutes returned.

The boy walked quickly back and saw the black cloud begin its ascent.

Inside the shanty the old man sat in a rage on the quilts, muttering to himself, and when the boy entered turned to him abruptly as if to ask him something
but seemed to change his mind and remained silent. Later he went over to the next-door shanty and after a while returned with another bottle and sat again on the quilts with the bowl on his lap.

The boy went with the girl to gather wood. When he showed her the gloves her eyes widened and when he slipped them on her hands she began to cry. Old thick gray wool. His were of animal skin, brown musty fur-lined. He looked at the tears in her eyes and thought: From some hot secret pool inside. Liquid fire. She let herself laugh a few times as they gathered wood and carried it back. Brief fleeting laughter. As if she feared the anger of the ghosts of the plain.

When the old man saw the gloves on the boy’s hands he felt a burning fury. His vision blurred and his heart beat tumultuously. This is how he thanks me for saving his life. This thief, this deceitful child, this son of scholars and landowners. Death to him!

He kept throwing fierce glances at the boy, who sat by the fire next to the woman. The boy had given her his gloves to wear for a while.

Later the boy brought the gloves to the old man.

He slipped them over his aching hands, feeling with a shiver their smooth furry warmth. The rage he felt began to yield to reluctant and envious admiration. This is certainly a clever boy. Good magic and very clever. Helpful to have in my house such a clever boy.

Some days later the boy woke in the early morning and knew a stranger was in the shanty. There had
been a change in the air, a sudden flurry of cold, and he had sensed it inside the quilts, sleeping beside the woman. Who was at the fire in front? The old man. Probably asleep. Or maybe he was in back, tending to his needs.

Raising his head from the floor pad, the boy saw with a shock the girl silhouetted against the drawn-back quilt at the entrance.

She stood very still as the wind blew around her into the shanty. The boy could only dimly make out her features but he saw that she was not wearing her gloves.

The old man slid behind her and came inside, lowering the quilt and shutting out the wind.

She stood there, silent, rigid, her eyes wide and her mouth tight.

The woman woke and sat up. After a moment she went over to the girl, speaking to her softly. She reached out and put an arm on the girl’s shoulder and the girl cringed.

The old man and the boy went past the girl and walked in the snow to the nearby shanty. Inside, the woman sat on the floor, moaning softly and holding the baby. On a blanket on the floor lay the body of the man.

The girl appeared in the entrance.

The old man and the boy stood looking at the body. He seemed already part of the earth on which he lay.

“Help me,” said the girl.

The old man stared down at the body and ran his tongue over his dry lips.

“Help me,” the girl repeated.

“Put on your gloves,” the boy said to her.

The old man wrapped the blanket around the body. When he covered the man’s face the woman broke into a wail and the girl sobbed and the baby began to cry.

They lifted the blanket-wrapped body, the old man at the shoulders and the boy and the girl at the legs. Its weight seemed to the old man surprisingly light, as if its most substantial element had been the spirit that had made the body its brief home.

The woman’s wail rose and the baby was still crying when they took the body from the shanty.

Outside stood the old woman, watching them with despairing eyes. Others glanced at them and looked away. They carried the body past the firepit and started with it across the plain.

Through the gray air a north wind blew minute crystals of frozen snow like darts against their faces. A brief climb across one of the mounds with the wind in their mouths and eyes left them breathless and they put the body down and rested. The girl’s raven hair blew about her face and eyes and she was crying and the boy saw the tears on her cheeks. The old man stamped his feet and blew on his hands and the boy offered him his gloves, which he took, and they lifted the body and went on.

The old man thought: And who will carry me when I lie stretched out like that on the earth? The woman and the boy? Or strangers? See how the boy labors. Skinny but strong. And cunning and resourceful. Such a boy may be of help to me and the woman.

And the boy, feeling his hands growing numb, thought: What will she do now, she and her mother and the infant? What happens to them when they lose
a father? Who helps them? Spirit of Grandfather, protect me. Protect the girl. Where are we going? Does the old man know where to take us? We have gone past the Americans. Girls there talking to the soldiers, laughing. How could she do that, open her clothes that way to the Americans? So many gangs of boys roaming around. Will it snow again? There are others walking too, carrying their dead. And all going to the same place. Where? She is still crying. Tears on her cheeks. Wet. From the hot secret pool deep inside her? Dumb Choo Kun. Rest again. The old man is very tired. Is he sick? I’ll go out later alone and gather the wood for us. If
he
dies. If the woman and I have to carry
him.
Where are we? Here is where the plain leads out to the pine forest and the mountains. What is that there?
What is that?

A large length of charred earth lay before him, black against the snow. Heaps of scorched twisted shapes darkened grotesquely the frozen ground. Carried by the wind were traces of the stench brought by the dirty cloud. People filed past the blackened earth and averted their gaze. It took the boy a long moment to realize what he was seeing and then his knees buckled and he fell and the girl fell almost on top of him. The old man, unable to hold the body, let it slip to the ground. The girl was crying silently and trembling. The old man helped the boy and the girl to their feet and they picked up the body and went on to a stretch of frozen earth where two Korean soldiers with face masks were silently directing the placing of the dead.

They put the man on the ground alongside another man. The old man removed the blanket and began to
drape it over the shoulders of the girl, but she drew away and he folded it and gave it to her instead. One of the soldiers shouted at them to move on. The boy made horizontal and vertical motions with his arm over the man. The soldier shouted at them again. As they walked back across the plain the wind died and the sky began to clear.

Later the trucks came and the old man and the woman went for their food. At noon the black cloud rose and curled across the sky. The boy saw the girl and her mother standing at the entrance to their shanty, staring up at the cloud. He wanted to talk to the girl but did not know what to say.

The next day the boy walked over to the girl’s shanty to help her gather wood and found it empty and everything gone. It seemed so tiny, a dwelling for dwarfs. Why had they left? Why had the girl said nothing to him? Not a word, nothing. The old man shrugged and turned away when the boy told him and sipped from his bowl; the woman shook her head and bent lower over the soup she was preparing.

Soon there was another family in the shanty, sullen people from the coast, not given to talk.

The boy roamed the plain, seeking the girl. One day he thought he saw her with others of her chronological age but when he came near it was only a girl with gloves like hers. Where could they have gone? On through the forest toward the mountains? Along the road back to the war? Or had it all been a kind of dream? The girl, the man, the woman, the infant. The way the cave seemed a dream to him now and the mountain pool and the little dog. And his village and Mother and Father and and Grandfather and his sisters
and brothers and and Badooki and fat Choo Kun and his idea about tears and and and …

The old man’s bottles were not a dream. He seemed possessed of an endless supply.

Some weeks later the Americans suddenly moved out. They packed their gear, loaded their vehicles, took down the wire fence, and left behind a large rectangular empty space. Their jeeps and trucks rolled across the plain and joined the other vehicles heading north along the main road.

For a few days the area where the compound had stood remained empty and then some shanties appeared on it and in a week it was as though the Americans had never been there.

The food trucks came sporadically. But nearly every morning a jeep drove across the plain carrying American or Korean soldiers with odd-looking tanks which they strapped on their backs and soon the black cloud would appear.

Then Korean military police turned up and ordered the area of the compound cleared. The old man and the woman were waiting in line at the food trucks on the morning bulldozers cleared away abandoned shanties and scraped the ground smooth and clean. A day later a new battalion of Americans arrived.

As the boy continued wandering back and forth across the plain in search of the girl he again saw young women waiting at the entrance to the compound and orphans running about in packs and at times he wondered if he and the old man and the
woman would end their lives there. Why had they been given back their lives if all they were to have was the life on this plain?

The days were now longer, the winds gentler, the ground softer. The snow had begun to melt. The dead were buried in the earth and the jeep no longer came and the cloud and stink were gone.

One morning a wave of sound rolled across the plain, a rippling motion, a stirring, and men and women came rushing back from the food trucks. The boy, squatting by the fire, heard the noise of a thousand murmurous voices and rose in alarm, and then he listened to the words and felt the sudden thunderous beating of his heart.