this village must hold. Of young girls sold into indentured servitude, forced into prostitution. Of GIs during the Korean War, and in the years after, rolling their vehicles down muddy roads, pulling up along the banks of the river, paying for sex with a bar of soap or a pack of cigarettes. The girls from the impoverished countryside being brought in younger and younger, being used, worn out, and tossed aside to make room for more. Whole seas of young women ruined, lost, ravaged by disease. And GIs, their biological lust never sated, experiencing all this, experiencing the unbridled satisfaction of all their desires and then returning home to Dubuque, Iowa or Little Rock, Arkansas, or Pasadena, California, trying to forget what they’d seen. Putting it out of their minds. Getting on with their lives. But never, by no stretch of the imagination, being the same again.
“Sueno!”
It was Ernie’s voice. Angry.
“You just going to stand there all night or are we going to get some work done?”
“Work,” I said. “Right.”
I stepped gingerly down the steep stone steps.
Ok-hi looked at me quizzically, unable to figure me out. Then she shrugged her shoulders, turned, and resumed tip-toeing sideways down the narrow steps. Wading through moonlight.
I’d seen hookers in L.A. Some just high school girls, working to pay for their drug habit. But how did their drug habit start? When they fell in with gang members and pimps. Gang members and pimps who brought the curious young girls along until they were hooked, under their power, and then, and only then, would they put them out on the street.
Even when I was still in junior high school I saw this and marveled at how young girls could fall for it. One of my classmates, Vivian Matatoros, started hanging out with gang members. Everything about her changed. The glasses she wore disappeared, the brown hair pulled back into a pony tail became a frizzed-out mess, and she slid down from the classes that held the top students to the lowest rung of academic hell. So I seldom saw her or had a chance to talk with her or laugh with her. I spotted her only occasionally in the hallways, swaggering with girlfriends who chomped on as much gum and wore as much makeup as their jaw capacity and facial measurements would allow.
One morning, in the passageway behind the girl’s gym, I cornered her. I stood in front of her so she couldn’t ignore me and she couldn’t walk past me. When she realized that she was trapped, she gazed up at me, ready to fight.
“What’s happened to you, Vivian?” I asked.
“Get away from me.”
I wouldn’t let her go. I forced her to talk.
“I was bored,” she told me finally. “No one was paying attention to me.”
I knew the feeling. I told her I often felt the same way. I offered to talk to her, to meet her after school. She looked at me with contempt.
“Where were you when I needed you?” she asked.
I had no answer.
She shoved past me roughly and marched away. Soon she dropped out of school. Weeks later some of the guys told me that she was working a corner off Whittier Boulevard. They wanted me to go look-and laugh and shout names at her-but I couldn’t do it. I remembered the Vivian who used to help me with my algebra. The girl who’d shared a sandwich with me when I had no lunch. That Vivian was the only Vivian I wanted to remember. The only Vivian I could bear to remember.
A huge slab of polished marble stood at the front of the shrine, flanked by the snarling stone heitei. By flickering candlelight I read as much as I could. Some of the hangul script and the Chinese characters were too complicated for me but I managed to understand the gist of the story.
His name was Yu Byol-seing and he wasn’t a king, as Ok-hi had assumed, but merely a general. As a young man he started his career as a common soldier but by his intelligence and daring rose through the ranks rapidly. The Koreans were desperately trying to hold off the invading Mongol hordes and the carnage was such that there were plenty of promotion opportunities. Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan had already conquered most of northern China. He expected that conquering Korea would be like pulling ripe fruit off a plum tree. Instead, much to the Mongols’ surprise, they met fierce resistance.
By the time the Mongols had crossed the Yalu River into Korea and conquered the north, there was only one small army left, led by General Yu. This battered force was all that stood between them and Kaesong, the ancient capital city. The Mongol cavalry, of course, was the best in the world. After all the defeats the Koreans had suffered, General Yu had no cavalry left, only foot soldiers. For foot soldiers to face Mongol horsemen on flat land was suicide. Yet making a stand in rocky mountain retreats might slow them down but would do no good in the long run. The Mongols had shown that they were perfectly willing to ride past Korean soldiers holed up on rocky ridges, and continue south to rape and pillage. General Yu had no choice. He had to face the Mongol army.
He chose the environs of East Bean River for his stand. Many small streams intersected in this open valley. None of the rivers were broad enough to totally stop a cavalry advance, horses could wade across them and climb the muddy banks, but the damp geography slowed them down. And the narrow rivers ran in jagged patterns, slicing the valley like a complex jigsaw puzzle. General Yu took advantage of this terrain. First, he arrayed his army in full view of the advancing Mongols. When their cavalry flanked him and charged, he let loose with his archers and pulled his foot soldiers back, retreating across a muddy stream. On the far bank the men turned and made their stand, emplacing iron pikes and holding their ground as the mounted Mongols struggled up and out of the mud. Before the horsemen could find any room to maneuver, the Koreans attacked. The battle was fierce and General Yu moved his soldiers around the chessboard of the East Bean valley with consummate skill, befuddling the Mongol cavalry at every turn. The Mongol losses grew and the Koreans became bolder but Kublai Kahn and his generals hadn’t conquered the world by being timid. With lightning speed, a horseman raced to the rear requesting reinforcements. By the next morning, they arrived. Over ten thousand strong, according to the stone slab, all of them arrayed on the hills surrounding Tongduchon. Wounded but still willing to fight, the Koreans were defiant. By now, the Mongols had a better idea of how to maneuver in the tricky terrain of East Bean River. They placed various units of cavalry in different sectors so they wouldn’t have to cross rivers so often. By the end of the second day, General Yu and his entire force were destroyed. According to the stone tablet, not one soldier surrendered.
The Korean king in Seoul retreated to Kanghua Island and sued the Mongols for peace. They gave it to him, but in return for maintaining his life and his throne, he turned Chosun, the Land of the Morning Calm, over to Kublai Khan.
When I was finished reading, I glanced around at the little village that surrounded the shrine. From glory to degradation and some day, I hoped, back to glory.
Ernie trudged up the steps of the shrine, Ok-hi by his side.
“While you been reading, Ok-hi and I were out asking questions. Everybody in that chophouse over there saw it.” He pointed at a noodle shop with a wooden sign that said, TONGDU NEING-MYON. East Bean Cold Noodles.
“They all saw it? What do you mean?”
“I mean they all heard the thud and when they ran outside they found a dead body. A GI with his skull crushed in.”
“Where?”
“Right there.”
Ernie pointed to the heitei nearest the three-story building. I walked over, shining my small flashlight on the snarling beast. His left ear was shattered. I touched the wound. Tiny bits of gravel broke off on my finger, the same type of gravel I’d plucked from Private Druwood’s skull.
Across from the shrine, the woodwork of a three-story building creaked in the gentle breeze. It was an old and venerable construction, almost like a Victorian mansion except there was no intricate gingerbread trim. A lone electric bulb burned inside a window on the third floor. The sign on the lower level said TONGDU SSAL-GUANG. East Bean Rice Storage.
At the top of the roof, moonbeams glinted off a ledge. From there it would be an easy leap to the stone heitei. Skulls would meet. Bone would crunch. Blood would flow, but only for a moment. Then the man’s heart would stop and the flowing blood would cease and people would rush out of East Bean Cold Noodles and the KNPs would be called and the 2nd Division Military Police would be notified and someone would come out with a jeep or
