I studied the primitive dam. A string of dirty light-bulbs, hung on poles, reached from side to side. The dam itself contained an enormous amount of dirt and seemed fairly new. Across the flattened top was a wood-slatted roadway. What worried me were the fortified wire gates at either end, protected by armed guards and multiple gun emplacements.
“How are we going to cross that?” I asked.
“Walk,” Moon Chaser told me. When I looked at him skeptically, he said, “Well, at least I’ll walk. You’ll ride. Come on.”
We waited until the middle of the night. The guards on either side of the dam had changed once and now these soldiers were listless and crouched near their weapons, doing their best to keep warm in the frigid night air. Many of the lights strung across the river had been turned off. Only half a dozen bulbs illuminated the entire expanse. No floodlights. No well-lit guard shacks.
Moon Chaser slid back the side panel of the wooden cart he’d borrowed. It was a coffin-like box, large enough to hold a full-grown hog. “Get in,” he said.
“I’ll never fit,” I replied, studying the small opening.
“You’ll fit,” he replied. “It’s the only way across.”
We’d spent the earlier part of the evening making our way to the village of Five Pines on the edge of the road that led to the dam. If there had ever been five pines in the village, they’d long since been chopped down for firewood. Now it was a barren spot with half a dozen shacks that provided the most basic types of amenities to the workmen and guards who manned the dam. All this activity was kept hidden, of course, since normal commerce was not allowed in North Korea. Supposedly, the grain and vegetable rations provided by the Great Leader were enough for hardworking men to survive on. In reality, everyone wanted more.
The elderly man whom Moon Chaser talked to was called Beggar Ryu. He dealt primarily in bowls of thin turnip soup fortified with dumplings made of rice-flour dough and laced with pig’s blood; hearty fare for the workingmen who carried, by hand, the earth from the hills to the river valley below. The old geezer also sold cigarettes on the side and soju in clear bottles with a picture of the beaming face of the Great Leader on the label.
It was the soju and cigarettes that Moon Chaser was counting on to get us to the far side of the dam.
I had to curl up so tightly inside the cart that my knees were pressing up against my cheeks. The splintered wood reeked of dried pig’s blood. Moon Chaser shoved my feet farther inside the cart and then slammed the door shut. What I was worried about most in here was cramps. If my muscles tightened and started to knot on me, there’d be no way to get out and stretch-or to run, if it came to that. I willed myself to relax, thinking of faraway places, like the day when I was in middle school and I lived in the home of Mrs. Aaronson. She packed me and half a dozen other foster kids into her old Plymouth and drove us over to Redondo Beach where we could swim and frolic in the waves. I’d suffered a sunburn that day, but I didn’t mind. As a kid who’d known only the harsh summer streets of East L.A., a day at Redondo Beach had been a day in heaven.
The cart rolled into the night. There were no springs on it, so at each rock and pothole I was jarred so roughly that my molars knocked together.
It was a good half-mile to the first checkpoint. As Moon Chaser pushed the cart, he started to sing some ancient Korean song that was indecipherable to me. It seemed to make him happy though. As he marched, his voice rose and gradually became more lusty. The soju bottles packed above me rattled.
Finally, someone shouted, “Shikuro!” Shut up.
The cart rolled to a halt.
“Don’t we have enough trouble,” the voice said, “without having to listen to your shrieking, old man?”
It was the voice of a young man, one of the guards at the first checkpoint. In my mind, I saw Moon Chaser smiling and bowing, his omnipresent A-frame still strapped to his back.
“You don’t appreciate fine culture,” Moon Chaser replied. “My voice was trained in the People’s Music Institute in Pyongyang, overseen by the Great Leader himself!”
“ Bah. Shut up, old man. Do you expect anyone to believe your drivel?”
“Ah, but the truth is hard to swallow. Maybe this would better meet with your approval?”
Moon Chaser slid the door of the cart halfway open. Yellow light flooded in, blinding me. His hand reached in and pulled out a bottle of soju and the door quickly slammed shut, returning me to darkness.
“Only two won,” he said. “The perfect way to warm this long evening.”
“Two won?” The young man was incredulous. “Beggar Ryu charges us half that.”
“Ah, but Beggar Ryu doesn’t buy from the finest distillery in the capital city itself.”
“Nonsense. His soju has a picture of the Great Leader on it, just like this one.”
“Counterfeit!” Moon Chaser said with assurance. “Any thief can print a label.”
They haggled like this back and forth for what seemed a long time. The young man on guard duty and the three or four voices I occasionally heard behind him weren’t going anywhere and had nothing better to do than haggle with an itinerant merchant. Finally, after enduring an elaborate string of insults, Moon Chaser came to the point.
“I have a sick mother in the village of Oh-mok,” he told the guard. “If she dies before I get there, I would never forgive myself, but if I walk north to Unification Road, it will take me two days.” He offered the guard a bottle of soju and two packs of cigarettes if they’d let him venture across the dam. “I’ll save a full day from my journey,” he told them.
The men conferred amongst themselves and finally a price of two bottles of soju and three packs of cigarettes was decided upon. “But watch out for those thieves at guard post number three,” Moon Chaser was told. All the guards laughed. “They’ll steal your last bottle of soju.”
Moon Chaser pushed the cart across the bridge.
Still curled up into a tiny knot, I sweated inside the cart. The wood was old and splintery but solid, probably an inch thick. Because I willed myself not to think about cramps, cramps were, of course, all I could think about. I felt the big muscle in the back of my right thigh start to tighten. Desperately, I willed it to relax. It did. By now, although it was desperately cold outside, sweat was pouring off my forehead and puddling in my armpits, flowing down my ribcage. Moon Chaser had pushed me a long way, clattering along the wood-slat road, but still we hadn’t reached the end of the dam. The men at the final guard post must have been watching him approach. Did they notice the cart sitting low on the wheels? Thinking about that terrified me enough that, for a moment, I stopped thinking about the quivering muscles in my legs.
Finally, the cart rolled to a halt.
“Comrades,” Moon Chaser said. “The men at the first guard post hold you in high esteem. They say you are men of discernment who appreciate the finest gifts from our Great Leader.”
This time, I didn’t hear any laughter.
Moon Chaser slid back the door, reached in, and grabbed two liter bottles of soju.
As he talked, the muscles in the back of my right leg tightened like a clutch of snakes. I tried to straighten my bent leg, but it had nowhere to go. My foot pressed hard against the wood, my mouth open in a silent scream. I waited for the muscles to loosen, for the pain to stop, but it just got worse.
A gruff voice snarled at Moon Chaser. “No one’s allowed on the bridge, least of all a blood-sucking capitalist. Why did those bastards at guard post number one let you cross?”
Although I couldn’t see him, I imagined Moon Chaser smiling and bowing and I heard his apologetic voice. He explained at length about his sick mother in the village of Oh-mok and how if he didn’t cut across the river here, he might not reach her before she breathed her last. He explained how she’d been a long and faithful follower of the Great Leader.
“She fought with him against the Japanese imperialists,” he said finally.
Apparently, this explanation had some effect on the snarling man. He said, “What about the Great War of Liberation? Did she fight the Yankees?”
“Oh, yes,” Moon Chaser said. “She hates the Yankee dogs. Killed three of them with her kitchen chopping knife.”
I couldn’t control my leg now. The spasm was so strong that I had no choice but to try and straighten it. My foot thumped against the wall, pushing with all its might, and if this cart hadn’t been fastened by interlocking bolts, I believe I would’ve kicked it apart.
Moon Chaser seemed to be aware that something was wrong inside the cart. He opened and banged the door
