walk. Muddy lanes, dirt roads, cobblestoned pathways, tree-lined avenues, streets with shops pressed up against one another-occasionally you’d even spot wooden carts pulled by oxen, a man leading the snorting beast, a woman and small children huddled together on wooden planks. Not all human movement had been turned over to the internal combustion engine. Even the Blue Train seemed more human to me than driving on an eight-lane freeway.
Every day of my youth in the Los Angeles Basin, my lungs had been involuntarily filled with smog. Now, on a remote volcano on the edge of Asia, it looked as if I were finally going to meet the fate of so many of my compatriots. I was finally going to become a statistic in a head-on collision.
“The asshole didn’t stop at the bypass!” Ernie shouted.
Mr. Won had both feet pressed on the brake pedal, but it wasn’t doing much good. The momentum of the cab was now carrying us downhill at about fifty miles per hour. Around the sharp curves, he was barely maintaining control, drifting toward the left edge of the lane, and the G.I. driver of the truck below seemed to have no idea that he was only a few seconds from impact.
I reached forward across Mr. Won and once again sounded the horn. Beyond a boulder, the truck loomed into view. We went screaming around a curve.
I crouched behind the front seat, covering my head. As I did so, Mr. Won screamed. He veered to the extreme left, trying to avoid a head-on with the truck. The wheels spun on gravel and the cab started tipping to the left. Out of the side window, I glanced down into the abyss. The wheels still had traction and we were moving forward-but two or three more inches to the left and we’d plummet to our deaths. I glanced forward just in time to see the quarter-ton truck barreling toward us. Ernie cursed, grabbed the steering wheel, and shoved it hard to the right. Won let go of the wheel and covered his eyes. Green iron grating flashed in front of me and then something slammed into the rear of the cab. We spun, three, four, five times; and finally, with a jarring thump, came to a shuddering halt in the ditch on the right side of the road.
I sat up. Dust rose around us in an enveloping cloud.
“You all right?” I asked.
“All right,” Ernie replied. He reached for Mr. Won.
“How about you, Baba Louie?”
Won uncovered his eyes, looked around, and started to moan. Ernie and I both climbed out of the cab and pulled him out of the driver’s-side door. We laid him on the edge of the road, searching as we did so for wounds. He didn’t have any.
“He’s just shaken up,” Ernie said.
“He deserves it,” I replied, “for having such lousy brakes.”
On the road above us, the quarter-ton truck continued to churn its way up Mount Halla, oblivious, apparently, to our plight below.
The back of the cab was smashed in.
“You think it’ll still run?” I asked Ernie.
“Won’t know until we try. Give me a shove.”
He climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and thrust the shift into a low gear. On three, he stepped on the gas and I stood behind the cab, pushing it forward. After rocking it three times, the back wheels caught and it climbed out of the ditch. Deftly, Ernie turned the cab around. I helped Mr. Won to his feet, led him to the cab, opened the door, and allowed him to lie down on the back seat. I sat up front with Ernie.
Using the lowest gear possible, bumping against earthen berms when possible, Ernie churned slowly down Mount Halla.
“Shopping?” Ernie asked, incredulous.
“Yeah,” I replied. “We have to go shopping.”
The cannon fired at the Mount Halla Training Facility and the retreat bugle sounded. Up and down the main drag of Nokko-ri, lights were beginning to switch on. In front of the Sea Dragon Nightclub, a red and gold serpent sparkled to life, a lewd tongue flicking out flames.
“It’s time for a wet,” Ernie said. “We’ve done enough work for today. Nearly got ourselves killed, and now you want to go shopping?”
“On the black market.”
“I don’t care what freaking market it is, I’m gonna get a cold one.”
“Where?”
Ernie pointed across the street from the Sea Dragon to the Volcano Bar.
“Okay. I’ll meet you there in a half hour or so.”
Ernie shrugged, thrust his hands in his pockets, and stalked off across the street. He gets like this sometimes, pissed that he doesn’t have an eight-to-five job-especially when happy hour hits.
The woman who ran the Nokko-ri Yoguan told me where to go. Down the street behind a fruit stand in the open-air Nokko-ri Market, everything was on display: web gear, ponchos, rubber overshoes, steel pots, ammo pouches, metal space heaters, canvas tent halves with poles. About the only type of military equipment you couldn’t buy there was weaponry.
I rummaged through the parkas and the heavy overcoats and the gloves and the fur-flapped headgear and the insignia and the badges until I found what I wanted. One set for Ernie. One set for me.
Ernie was drunk.
It wasn’t like him to get blasted so early, but the reason was clear. Next to his frothing brown bottle of OB beer sat a thick glass tumbler, half full of a clear brown liquid. I watched him raise it to his lips, where it was-once again-emptied.
“Yoboseiyo,” Ernie called to the young man behind the bar. “Yogi,” he said, pointing to the empty glass. Dutifully, the young man grabbed a quart of booze from behind the bar, scurried over, and refilled Ernie’s glass. The bottle was labeled Christian Brothers Brandy. What was actually in the bottle was another story; once the import tax is paid and a bottle is revenue-stamped, it is refilled and reused-sometimes for years.
I sat on the bar stool next to Ernie and ordered a beer. He swiveled his head slowly and stared at me.
“You finish your shopping?”
“Yeah,” I said, taking the proffered beer and slapping some money on the bar.
“Find any bargains?” he asked.
I didn’t bother to answer. Ernie was in a surly mood, and I thought I knew why. This was the first time in a while that we’d been away from Marnie Orville and the Country Western All Stars. Maybe he was thinking about her. Maybe he was thinking of her close proximity to her ex, Freddy Ray Embry. Whatever Ernie was thinking, I knew better than to ask. Instead, I surveyed the club.
There was a rock band tuning up, hipless young men with straight hair just covering their ears. Business girls filtered in, chattering about their hairdos and their clothes and occasionally mentioning the American unit that was scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Ernie and I were an anomaly here. Most of the tables were filled with young Korean couples who thought it daring to enter G.I. nightclubs. After the band tortured a couple of numbers, Ernie and I wandered across the street to the Sea Dragon Nightclub. It was quieter there, and darker. Round cocktail tables were lit dimly by lamps covered with red shades. On stage, velvet curtains were drawn shut. Business girls sat alone or in pairs. The bar was empty. We filled it. As if on cue, somebody started up a sound system; some American vocal group singing about the sea.
Instead of a young man behind the bar, a tall Korean woman was wearing a white tuxedo shirt with cummerbund, bow tie, and high collar. Almond eyes shaded in purple stared at us quizzically. Somehow, in the opulence of this joint, beer didn’t seem appropriate. I ordered bourbon on the rocks. Ernie had the same. Within an hour, the joint was packed with young Korean people, well dressed and trendy. Too trendy. I felt as out of place as a tarantula in a kimchee jar. Once again, we were about to leave when a familiar face appeared in the seat next to us.
Warnocki.
He was still wearing his fatigues, and his green beret was still cocked to the side of his round head. He smiled. Without asking, the slender barkeep brought him a beer. With narrow fingers she poured it for him into a glass, white foam bubbling up to the edge. Warnocki laid money down, thanked her, and delicately took a sip. When he set the glass down, he turned to me and said, “You almost bought it on the mountain.”
“You heard about that?”
