Silver Stallion (6 page)

“Why are their eyes so blue?” Kangho asked, surprised. “Did blue paint get in their eyes?”

“Maybe they ate too many vegetables and the green color got to their eyes,” Chandol guessed.

“Look at their noses,” Mansik exclaimed quietly. “They're real
bengkos,
aren't they? Such huge noses. Must be pretty heavy to carry around.”

Kangho felt his own flat nose tentatively, chuckling softly. “Don't the high bridges bother them when they wash their faces?”

The liberators turned into the trail stretching westward through the reeds. The boys were now about one hundred yards away from the marching World Army and Mansik heard a soldier with hooked nose in the leading group say something to his friend in a queer language. The soldier trudging beside him answered in the same peculiar language and both of them laughed a subdued, tired laugh.

“Did you hear what they said, Chandol?” Mansik asked in a whisper. “They speak very odd words.”

“What kind of a language is that?”

“I don't know. How can they talk to each other with those funny words?” Mansik worried.

“They're coming too close!” Kijun panicked once more. “They'll find us for sure. Let's run away before it's too late.”

Mansik and Kangho also looked apprehensive this time. Chandol squinted at the other boys to read their expressions before making a decision. Mansik looked away evasively. Kangho kept quiet, unsure of himself. Chandol licked one corner of his lips and then the other, reflecting, grinned uncertainly, stopped grinning, and licked the corners of his lips again.

“Well?” Kijun urged. “What are we going to do?”

Chandol stared at Kijun for a moment. “You just stay put,” he said at last. “It will be more dangerous for us to run than to stay still. They'll spot us more easily if we move.”

“Looks like they're heading for our village,” Mansik said after a short silence. “I wonder why.”

“There're no Reds in West County,” Kangho said. “Everybody knows that.”

“Maybe the liberators want to make war against our village,” Mansik said.

“I don't believe they will do anything like that,” Chandol said.

The naked boys hiding in the reeds watched the foreign soldiers march on toward their village.

THREE

“T
he U. N. soldiers are coming! The U. N. soldiers are coming!” The stocky boatman ran to the village, shouting and waving his long arms, “The U.N. soldiers are coming! The U.N. soldiers are coming!”

“Where?” the miller shouted back at the boatman across the log bridge. “Where are the
bengkos?”

Yom told him the foreign soldiers, about five hundred of them, were assembling on the shore of Cucumber Island to cross the river by rubber boats. The boatman ran on to the Paulownia House to report this news to Rich Hwang.

The old man was not sure how he should behave toward these visitors, the foreign soldiers. Old Hwang knew he should not be too rash and openly express delight at the coming of the foreign troops; the Communists might somehow defeat the World Army and come back to punish and execute everybody who cooperated with their enemy. Besides, the old man did not have the vaguest idea what kind of people
bengkos
were. He was totally unprepared to encounter them.

“So, five hundred of them are coming,” the old man murmured, still brooding.

“Yes, Father,” Young Hwang said, stealing an inquisitive glance at his father.

“How are the villagers?”

“They seem to be worried because some Communists are still in the area and a big battle might break out. Besides, they're suspicious of the liberators.”

“Why?”

“Because the
bengkos
are total strangers and you never know what to expect from total strangers.”

A short pause ensued.

“Will they come across the river soon, Father?” asked Sokku, hoping his father would give him some definite instructions. “I think they're preparing for some sort of an attack.”

“Do you think the liberators might mistake some of the villagers for Communists and kill them?”

“We can go out with national flags and welcome them so that they will know we are not their enemy.”

“That is a reasonable idea,” Old Hwang said. “We may need banners, and streamers, too. Come.”

When they entered his room, Old Hwang took out the stationery and a roll of rice paper. He spread a sheet of paper on the floor and told Sokku to grind the ink block on the watered slate to make black brush ink. He held the paper flat with jade weights and opened his brush casing.

“Sokku, do you think they can read Chinese letters?” asked the old man.

“I don't think they can, Father,” said Young Hwang. “Occidentals have different languages from ours.”

“What languages do they speak?”

“They must speak many languages. The World Army is made up of soldiers from sixteen different nations.”

“If they can communicate with one another in so many languages, they may understand Chinese, too,” the old man said, dipping his brush in the fresh ink. “Do you know what Chinese ideographs represent the foreign words ‘U' and ‘N'?”

Young Hwang explained that “U.N.” was an abbreviation for “the United Nations.” When the old man finished writing “Welcome United Nations Forces” in Chinese calligraphy on the paper, Sokku cut out a rib from a bamboo rake and glued the top side of the paper to the bamboo rib, which he fixed with a hemp string to a long pole. The father and the son came out of the Paulownia House, carrying the streamerlike paper banner.

“You must go to the rice mill and tell Kangho's father to organize a welcoming delegation,” Old Hwang told his son. “They must join me at the ferry to meet the U. N. soldiers. I'm going to the river now to wait for the liberators to arrive.”

The delegation assembled by the boatman's cabin at the ferry. However, nobody approached the
bengko
soldiers or spontaneously cheered them when they arrived. The villagers were too appalled and embarrassed by the grotesque appearance of the foreigners. The delegates stood by the boatman's cabin, silently watching the soldiers, who, on their part, showed no interest in the Korean spectators. The tall
bengkos
in loose green uniforms had strange bright colors in their hair and eyes and some of them, especially those with charcoal-black skin, looked horrible, like beasts, when they grinned. The soldiers waited, scattered around the ferry and along the dikes of the riverside rice paddies, filling the water jugs they carried on their hips, scraping mud crusts from their enormous boots, smoking the cigarettes contained in packs with a big red circle or the picture of a quaint humped animal on them.

“Should we go down there and offer some welcoming remarks, Father?” asked Sokku, awkwardly holding the paper banner.

Old Hwang frowned. He was offended because none of the young soldiers had come up to the cabin to give formal greetings to the aged village chief, who had troubled himself to come out this far to welcome them. It was an obligation on the part of the visitor to seek his host upon arrival and ask for his forbearance for the trouble the guest might cause during his stay. The host was then obliged to express his warm welcome and offer hospitality. The old man, however, understood that the soldiers might have some reason for ignoring protocol. He was not annoyed enough by their bad manners to abandon his own manners.

Old Hwang decided to go down to the
bengko
soldiers to say something, but he was not sure what he was supposed to say, and to whom.

Followed by his son, Kangho's father and the boatman, Old Hwang started to go down the bank, but halted halfway down the sandy shore, for he realized that there was no way for him to identify the commander of the soldiers. Sokku gazed at his father, equally lost. The miller and the boatman were helpless.

The frustrated old man looked around the soldiers, not knowing what to do, until he found a
bengko
with incredibly long legs, who was smoking his cigarette, sitting alone on his combat gear and leaning against an aspen tree. He chose to speak to this man because he thought it would be easier to get the attention of a man who was alone. The old man and his party approached the
bengko,
who indifferently glanced up at the four Koreans. Old Hwang stopped and frowned again, for this was the first time that he had ever come across a younger man who was rude enough not to stand up in an elder's presence.

In order to show the good intentions of his party, Old Hwang pointed at the paper banner his son was carrying behind him. Puzzled, the soldier stared at the banner and then at the four villagers, one by one. The old man tried to smile but could not, for he suddenly found himself not liking these soldiers very much. The soldier waited, curiously gazing at the old man. Hwang remained standing stiffly, making no further attempt to express himself. The young soldier fumbled in his pockets, and fished out a flat rectangular slab wrapped in shiny brown and silver paper from his breast pocket and gave it to Old Hwang.

The bewildered old man took the slab, bowing, because he did not know what else to do. He studied it this way and that curiously, for he had never seen anything like it before. The soldier noticed his perplexity and gestured for the old man to unwrap it.

“Why don't you open it, Father?” Young Hwang said. “It looks like something important. The envelope is beautifully decorated.”

The old man unwrapped the packet, but he had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to do with the brown slab inside. The soldier gestured for him to put it in his mouth. Finally Old Hwang understood that the soldier had given him something to eat.

The old man's face flushed in shame and anger. He threw the chocolate to the sand and turned back. The soldier gazed blankly at the infuriated old man.

“Come, Sokku,” said the old man. “Such impudence.”

The Western soldiers streamed along the road, their uniforms white with sand and dust, their armpits dark with sweat. They marched on straight to General's Hill without bothering to check the houses at Kumsan or other neighboring villages. There was no one outside the silent huts and hovels to welcome the liberators, for the villagers had been strictly instructed by Old Hwang to stay in their homes until the
bengkos
left the county. Old Hwang felt relieved when the soldiers who had treated him like a beggar at the ferry passed through the village without any mishap.

At dusk the sound of flying bullets came from beyond General's Hill. The combat raged violently, cannon shells fell. The battle noise sounded so near to the villagers hiding in their shelters that it seemed the fighting was going on right outside their houses. Near midnight it dwindled and stopped at about two o'clock. The villagers heard no more gunshots the rest of the night, but they could not fall asleep until dawn.

Early next morning, refugees from Castle village began to arrive to seek shelter in the homes of their relatives or acquaintances in Kumsan and Hyonam. The farmers were extremely worried about the harvest because their rice paddies and vegetable patches had been destroyed, trampled by tanks and trucks and countless boots.

Rifles and cannons resounded louder the second night, and on the third morning, the Kumsan villagers could see the foreign soldiers digging into new positions far down the northern ridge of General's Hill. Worrying that the U.N. troops might retreat to the village, Old Hwang sent his son to observe.

Both on the slopes and at the base of the hills, hundreds of Yankee soldiers were working, carrying things, unloading ammunition cases from the trucks and piling them among the tents, everybody working everywhere. But contrary to Sokku's anticipation of a major battle, uneasy quiet returned to West County. The villagers squatting in their shelters heard only occasional rifle shots. By daybreak total silence fell. In the morning, the glad news traveled fast among the county villages that all the Communists had fled to Hwachon in the dark of night. In the afternoon, the Castle villagers started to return home.

Not a single rifle shot came from the hills on the fourth day. But the foreign soldiers did not show any sign of leaving the county. At dusk threads of smoke curled up from the ridge. The soldiers were building cooking fires.

Peace was returning.

“Mansik. Wake up, Mansik,” Ollye said in a choked whisper, fretfully shaking her son. “Wake up. Wake up.”

She gasped in a raspy voice, frightened by something, but Mansik was still too sleepy to notice; he had fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep after swimming all afternoon with his friends at the river. He had been swimming in the sun again, laughing with the naked boys, and collecting rainbow-colored pebbles on a sandy shore, when she interrupted his dream, and he resented it.

“What is it, Mother?” Mansik muttered, sitting up reluctantly.

“Hush,” she said in a quivering voice. “Listen.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Listen to what?” he said, befuddled.

“That. Fluffy.”

Mansik listened. The paper of the door looked pale blue in the moonlight. It must be far past midnight, he thought, and he heard the dog whimper. The dog did not bark, perhaps because someone was trying to choke it. Mansik suddenly became alert. Fluffy kept whining outside in the yard.

“What's wrong with the dog, Mother?” he whispered.

“It's been whining for some time like that.”

“Why?”

“Somebody is outside. A visitor.”

“At this hour?”

“Maybe a prowler.”

“A thief?”

That could not be, Mansik thought. For generations there had been no thieves in West County. Ollye and Mansik cautiously crept to the door and listened, not moving, not even breathing. The dog kept whining, sidling from one corner to another and then back, as if it was being chased by a malicious, slow-moving beast.

“Fluffy is terrified, Mother. Has he seen a ghost?”

“I woke up a minute ago, heard a nervous bark, and then footsteps. Fluffy barked a few times at first and then began to whine like that.”

Suddenly the dog's noise was cut short.

“Fluffy is quiet. Do you want me to go out and take a look?”

“No. Stay in the room. If there's somebody outside. …”