Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

The Second Mate kept asking about the naked rower.

“I bet her nipples are like icicles,” he said. “And her thighs must be white with goose pimples.”

“We won’t hear from her until dawn,” Jun Do said. “No use talking about it till then.”

The Machinist said, “You need to look out for those big American legs.”

“Rowers have strong backs,” the First Mate said. “I bet she could tear a mackerel in half.”

“Tear me in half, please,” the Second Mate said. “Wait till she finds out I’m a hero. I could be an ambassador, we could make some peace.”

The Captain said, “And wait till she finds out you like women’s shoes.”

“I bet she wears men’s shoes,” the Pilot said.

“Cold on the outside and warm on the inside,” the Second Mate said. “That’s the only way.”

Jun Do turned to him. “You want to shut up about it already?”

The novelty of radio surveillance suddenly wore off. The radio played on, but the crewmen worked in silence, nothing but the winches, the flapping of ventral fins, and the sound of knives. The First Mate was rolling a shark to cut its anal fin when a flap opened, and from it was ejected, viscous and yolk-covered, a satchel of shark pups, most of them still breathing from sacs. These the Captain kicked in the water, and then called for a break. Rather than sink, they lay flat on the surface, floating with the ship, their half-formed eyes bulging this way and that.

The men smoked Konsol cigarettes, and up on the hatches felt the wind on their faces. They never stared toward North Korea in moments like these—always it was east, toward Japan, or even farther out into the limitless Pacific.

Despite the tension, a feeling came over Jun Do that he sometimes got as a boy after working in the orphanage’s fields or whatever factory they’d been taken to that day. The feeling came when, with his group of boys, he’d been working hard, and though there was still heavy lifting to be done, the end was near, and soon there would be a group dinner of millet and cabbage and maybe melon-skin soup. Then sleep, communal, a hundred boys bunked four tiers deep, all their common exhaustion articulated as a singularity. It was nothing short of belonging, a feeling that wasn’t particularly profound or intense, it was just the best he tended to get. He’d spent most of his life since trying to be alone, but there were moments aboard the Junma where he felt a part , and that came with a satisfaction that wasn’t located inside, but among.

The scanners were rolling through the frequencies, playing short selections of each, and it was the Second Mate who first cocked his head at the tenor of something he’d heard before. “It’s them,” he said. “It’s the ghost Americans.” He slipped off his boots and began to climb barefoot up the pilothouse. “They’re down there again,” he said. “But this time we’ve got them.”

The Captain shut down the winch motor so they could hear better. “What are they saying?” he asked.

Jun Do ran to the receiver and isolated the broadcast, fine-tuning it even though the reception was strong. “Queen to knight four,” Jun Do said. “It’s the Americans. There’s one with a Russian accent, another one sounds Japanese.” All of the Americans were laughing, clear as a bell over the speaker. Jun Do translated. “Look out, Commander,” he said. “Dmitri always goes for the rook.”

The Captain went to the rail and stared into the water. He squinted and shook his head. “But that’s the trench,” he said. “Nothing can go that deep.”

The First Mate joined him. “You heard them. They’re playing chess down there.”

Jun Do craned his neck to the Second Mate, who had shinnied up the pole and was working on unhooking the directional. “Careful of the cable,” he called, then checked his watch: almost two minutes in. Then he thought he heard some Korean interference over the broadcast, some voice talking about experiments or something. Jun Do raced to narrow the reception and squelch out the other transmission, but he couldn’t get rid of it. If it wasn’t interference … he tried to keep his mind from thinking that a Korean was down there, too.

“What are the Americans saying?” the Captain asked.

Jun Do stopped to translate, “The stupid pawns keep floating away.”

The Captain looked back into the water. “What are they doing down there?”

Then the Second Mate got the directional off the pole, and the crew went silent as he aimed it into the deeps. Quietly, they waited as he slowly swept the antenna across the water, hoping to pinpoint the source of the transmission, but they heard nothing.

“Something’s wrong,” Jun Do told him. “It must have come unplugged.”

Then Jun Do saw a hand pointing into the sky. It was the Captain’s, and it was aimed at a point of light racing through the stars. “Up there, son,” the Captain said, and as the Second Mate lifted the directional and lined it up with the arc of light, there was a squeal of feedback and suddenly it sounded like the American, the Russian, and the Japanese voices were right there on the ship with them.

Jun Do said, “The Russian just said, That’s checkmate , and the American is saying, Bullshit , the pieces floated away , that’s grounds for a new game , and now the Russian is telling the American, Come on , give up the board. We might have time for a rematch of Moscow versus Seoul before the next orbit. ”

They watched the Second Mate track the point of light to the horizon, and when the light went around the curve of the earth, the broadcast vanished. The crew kept staring at the Second Mate, and the Second Mate kept staring at the sky. Finally, he looked down at them. “They’re in space together,” he said. “They’re supposed to be our enemies, but they’re up there laughing and screwing around.” He lowered the directional and looked at Jun Do. “You were wrong,” he said. “You were wrong—they are doing it for peace and fucking brotherhood.”

Jun Do woke in the dark. He rose on his arms to sit on his bunk, silent, listening—for what? The frost of his breath was something he could feel occupying the space before him. There was just enough light to see water sheen on the floor as it shifted with the movement of the ship. Fish oil that seeped through the bulkhead seams, normally a black gloss down the rivets, was stiff and milk-colored with the cold. Of the shadows in his small room, Jun Do had the impression that one of them was a person, perfectly still, hardly breathing. For a while, he held his breath, too.

Near dawn, Jun Do woke again. He heard a faint hissing sound. He turned in his sleep toward the hull, so that he could imagine through the steel the open water at its darkest just before sunrise. He put his forehead to the metal, listening, and through his skin, he felt the thump of something nudging the side of the ship.

Up top, the wind clipped cold across the deck. It made Jun Do squint. The pilothouse was empty. Then Jun Do saw a mass off the stern, something sprawling and gray-yellow in the waves. He stared at it a moment before it made sense, before he understood it was the life raft from the Russian jetliner. Where it was tethered to the ship, several tins of food were stacked. Jun Do kneeled and held the rope in disbelief.

The Second Mate popped his head from the raft to grab the last tins.

“Aak,” he said at the sight of Jun Do. He took a deep breath, composed himself. “Hand me those tins,” he said.

Jun Do passed them down. “I saw a man defect once,” he told the Second Mate. “And I saw what happened to him after he was brought back.”