live through this but neither would we.
At the second floor, the smoke had already coagulated into a thick wall. That’s usually what kills people. The poisonous fumes from plastics and asbestos and rubberized wiring and all the other exotic building materials that are used in modern high-rises. But this old building was made of the same materials that had been used in Asia since time immemorial: wood, iron, brick, and mortar. And now that we were below the floor that held the fancy electronics, we were faced with smoke that came only from those simple materials- and from the gasoline and the hemp sacks full of grain.
Still, the black cloud would choke us to death if we gave it half a chance. I hesitated. Maybe we should flee to the end of the second-floor corridor and take our chances jumping out the far window. Ernie understood my hesitancy but he had none. He plowed forward, into the smoke.
I went with him, the body of the Turkey Lady bouncing behind us, Ok-hi following.
We reached the ground floor beneath a cloud-covering of smoke. Sacks of barley stacked on pallets roared red with flame. The wooden flooring burned in erratic circles, indicating the places where the kampei had splashed gasoline. We moved toward the front door but the smoke was thickening now. Ernie stumbled. I wanted to help him up but my eyes and my nose and my throat screamed for me to keep moving, to flee. I had no idea what Ok-hi was doing. In seconds I’d pass out. I let go of the Turkey Lady’s foot. Ernie was crawling forward now but I left him and ran blindly toward where I hoped I’d find the exit. I wasn’t running so much as stumbling, head forward, trying to keep my feet beneath me so I wouldn’t fall. And I didn’t fall because I plowed headfirst into a wall.
For a second, I blacked out. When I came to I found myself face-down on the floor and this was good because there was less smoke and more oxygen down here. I slithered to my left, praying as I tried to find the door. I did.
I shoved at it. It rattled and held.
Locked.
Holding my breath, I rose to my knees and twisted the handle. It was hot but I held on anyway. I twisted and twisted again. No dice. It wouldn’t budge.
I knew what I had to do. I had to stand up and kick the door open. But knowing and doing are two different things. What I really wanted to do was to lie down and enjoy the last of the breathable air, but if I did that I’d be finished. What about Ernie? What about Ok-hi? What about the Turkey Lady? They were far from my calculations now.
I stood somehow, backed up a step, and with every molecule of strength I possessed, I flung myself at the door. It shuddered, held, and then sprang free.
I fell facedown onto the wooden platform outside, then crawled toward the far edge of the loading dock, still unable to breath. Billowing black smoke followed me outside like a dragon emerging from its den. I continued to crawl until gravity took over and I crashed to the ground below. I lay still for a few seconds. Breathing. Grateful. Enjoying the unbelievable bracing, clear air that filled my lungs.
Ernie! He was still back there.
I rose unsteadily to my feet and through the smoke saw something black moving toward me. I reached out, grabbed a handful of shirt and pulled. The dark thing fell, crashing into me, and we both tumbled onto the ground.
Ernie. I shoved him off me. His face was covered with soot and he gasped for air like a beached fish. But he was alive. I left him there and climbed back onto the platform. Holding my breath, keeping my eyes turned away from the smoke, I reached the doorway once again and crawled through, groping blindly with my hands.
Nothing. Ok-hi hadn’t made it this far.
I was running out of breath and about to turn back when my fingers slid across a slick surface. Hard. Leathery. The heel of a boot. Ok-hi. But I required air. No choice. I scurried back through the door and lowered my head over the edge of the loading platform to allow myself a few quick gulps of oxygen.
Ernie came to. He started to rise.
“Take a deep breath,” I croaked. “Come on.”
I took a deep breath myself, turned, and crawled back into the burning warehouse. This time I found Ok-hi’s boot easily. I pulled myself up her body and realized that she lay atop the Turkey Lady. Grabbing handfuls of material, I tugged them both toward the door. Ernie bumped into me, groped past, and soon he was helping me to drag the two women across the threshold. We slid them along the platform and, with a heave, shoved them off the edge of the loading dock to the ground. We flopped down after them and lay there for a while regaining our strength. Then we started pulling them away from the burning building.
I realized that people were shouting and running every which way. They’d organized a bucket brigade and men were running past us, splashing water ineffectually on the growing flames. A few women started to minister to Ernie and me but we directed them to Ok-hi and the Turkey Lady.
We backed off toward the edge of a hill, about thirty yards away from the warehouse and watched the flames.
They grew higher.
The women cleaned Ok-hi’s face with a washcloth and a pan of water. When she was recovered she thanked them and joined us on the side of the hill. On the far side of the warehouse, in front of the shrine to General Yu Byol-seing, jeeploads of Korean National Police had arrived. Someone spoke to them and pointed to the Turkey Lady. She was sitting up now. A KNP marched toward her.
Ernie and I didn’t have to talk about it. We had too much to do tonight; we didn’t have time to make a lengthy report to the TDC cops. Instead, Ok-hi and Ernie and I slipped away into the darkness.
The midnight to four a.m. curfew had been imposed on the entire country of South Korea when the Korean War ended in June 1953, over twenty years ago. The reason, ostensibly, was to deny the cover of darkness to North Korean communist infiltrators. Since l953 there’d been hundreds, maybe thousands, of North Korean incursions into South Korea and the midnight to four curfew hadn’t seemed to slow them down. What the curfew did do was provide a sense of order for the people who live in South Korea. More than one GI told me that he felt the midnight curfew saved his health and his sanity. Otherwise, like a lot of GIs, he’d have ended up partying all night and been unable to roll out of the rack in time to make his “oh-dark-thirty” physical fitness formation. For the general populace, the midnight curfew meant that everybody knew when to close up shop. They didn’t have to worry about their competitor next door stealing late-night business. The government itself, maybe unwittingly, was promoting a variation on the old Ben Franklin dictum: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes an entire country healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
Still, the curfew was a pain in the butt if you were caught away from home after midnight, because then you were forced to stay put wherever you happened to be. No one was allowed on the street from midnight to four and this was enforced by the white clad “curfew police” and by the South Korean armed forces. If you were sneaking around dark alleys and you ignored an order to halt, you risked being shot. This had happened more than once to otherwise innocent civilians, although the newspapers didn’t make a fuss about it. They weren’t allowed to.
Like a couple of wary moles, Ernie and I worked our way through the narrow back alleys of Tongduchon. Only the three-quarter moon lighted our way.
“What’s the time?” I asked.
Ernie checked his radium dial watch. “Twelve-oh-seven.”
After leaving the Turkey Farm we’d returned to the Silver Dragon Nightclub. Ok-hi took us upstairs to her hooch and with Jeannie’s help brought pans of hot water and towels. As the ladies administered bandages and antiseptic ointment to our cuts and bruises, I thought about the timing of what had happened. How much of a coincidence was it that the kampei had arrived only a few minutes after we’d entered the Turkey Farm? Had they known Ernie and I were on the roof? I doubted it. There was no indication that they’d paid any attention to us at all. If they’d wanted to kill us, they had us cornered and couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity. My guess was that they weren’t after us. But why burn down a money-making operation like that warehouse in the Turkey Farm? And why now?
Those were questions I decided to file away for the moment. Tonight, we were after information that I hoped would lead to Jill Matthewson.
Ernie and I changed into the outfits we’d stashed earlier that evening: sneakers, blue jeans, dark shirts, and knit watch caps. Then we pulled on our army-issue leather gloves, bid good-bye to the ladies, and slipped out the back door of the Silver Dragon.
