Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

Jun Do tried to stay in the glow, but he was having trouble focusing. He kept wondering when the next punch was coming.

“If you ask me,” the old man said, “heroes are unstable and unpredictable. They get the job done, but damned if they’re not difficult to work with. Trust me, I know,” he said, and pointed to a long scar down his arm. “In my division, all the new guys are college types.”

When the glint returned to the old man’s eyes, he grabbed the back of Jun Do’s neck to brace himself. Then came a series of dull blows to Jun Do’s stomach. “Who threw him in the water?” he asked and delivered one to the sternum. “What were his last words?” One, two, three, they came. “Why don’t you know what the Captain was doing?” The fists pushed the air from his lungs. “Why didn’t you radio for help?” Then the old man answered all his own questions: “Because the Americans never came. Because you got tired of that crazy punk and you killed him and threw him overboard. You’re all going to the camps, you know that, it’s already been decided. So you might as well just tell me.”

The old man broke off. He paced for a moment, one hand inside the other, eyes shut with what seemed like relief. Then Jun Do heard Kimsan’s voice, as if he were very close, right in the room. You are the flame , Kimsan said. The old man keeps touching the hot flame of you with only his hands . Kimsan would tell him to also hit with his elbows and forearms and feet and knees, but only his hands touch your flame , and look how it burns him .

“I can’t say I was thinking,” Jun Do said. “But when I jumped, the saltwater on my new tattoo made me panic. The sharks would baby bite, muzzling you before they went for meat, and the Americans were laughing with all their white teeth and those two things became one in my head.”

The old man came back in frustration. “No,” he said. “These are all lies.” Then he went to work again. As the blows came, he told Jun Do everything that was wrong with the story, how they were jealous of the mate’s new hero status, how Jun Do couldn’t remember people’s clothes, how … the flame is tiny. It would take all day to burn the whole surface of your body. You must stay in the glow. You must never go into the darkness , for there you are alone , and people don’t come back . Kimsan said this was the most difficult lesson for Jun Do, because that’s what he’d done as a boy, gone into the darkness. That was the lesson his parents had taught him, whoever they were. If you go into the darkness, if you turn off like that, you could do anything—you could clean tanks at the Pangu paint factory until your head throbbed and you coughed pink mist and the sky above turned yellow. You could good-naturedly smile when other kids got adopted by smelters and meat factories, and when you were crouched in the darkness, you could say “Lucky you” and “So long” when men with Chinese accents came.

It was difficult to tell how long the old man had been working on him. All his sentences ran together to make one sentence that didn’t make sense. Jun Do was there, in the water, he could see the Second Mate. “I was trying to grab the Second Mate,” Jun Do said, “but his body would pop and jag and shift, and I knew what they were doing to him, I knew what was happening below the surface. In my hands he didn’t weigh anything, it was like trying to rescue a seat cushion, that’s all that was left of him, but still I couldn’t do it.”

When Jun Do had cordoned off the pounding in his eyes, and the hot blood in his nose, when he’d stopped the split in his lips and the sting in his ears from coming inside, when he’d blocked his arms and torso and shoulders from feeling, when that was all blocked off, there was only the inside of him, and what he discovered was a little boy in there who was stupidly smiling, who had no idea what was happening to the man outside. And suddenly the story was true, it had been beaten into him, and he began crying because the Second Mate had died and there was nothing he could do about it. He could suddenly see him in the dark water, the whole scene lit by the red glow of a single flare.

“My friend,” Jun Do said, the tears streaming down his face, “I couldn’t save him. He was alone and the water was dark. I couldn’t even save a piece of him. I looked in his eyes, and he didn’t know where he was. He was calling for help, saying, I think I need a rescue , his voice calm and eerie, and then my leg was going over the side and I was in the water.”

The old man paused. He stood there with his hands held high, like a surgeon. They were covered with spit and mucus and blood.

Jun Do kept going. “ It’s dark , I don’t know where I am , he said. I’m here , I told him, listen to the sound of my voice . He asked, Are you out there? I put my hand on his face, which was cold and white. I can’t be where I think I am , he said. A ship is out there—I can’t see its lights . That was the last thing he said.”

“ I can’t see its lights? Why would he say that?” When Jun Do said nothing, the old man asked, “But you did try to rescue him, didn’t you? Isn’t that when you got bit? And the Americans, you said their guns were on you, right?”

The blood bag in Jun Do’s hand weighed a thousand kilos, and it was all he could do to keep it aloft. When he managed to focus his eye he saw that the bag was empty. He looked at the old man. “What?” he asked.

“Earlier you said his last words were All praise Kim Jong Il , Dear Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea? You admit that’s a lie.”

The candle had gone out. The flame, the glow, the darkness—they were all suddenly gone and now there was nothing. Kimsan never talked about what to do after the pain.

“Don’t you see? It’s all a lie,” Jun Do said. “Why didn’t I radio for help? Why didn’t I get the crew to mount a real rescue? If the whole crew worked together, we could’ve saved him. I should have begged the crew, I should have gotten on my knees. But I didn’t do anything. I just got wet. The only thing I felt was the sting of my tattoo.”

The old man took the other chair. He poured fresh tea, and this time he drank it. “No one else got wet,” he said. “You don’t see anyone else with a shark bite.” He looked around the building as if wondering for the first time what kind of place this was. “I’m going to retire soon,” he said. “Soon all the old-timers will be gone. I don’t know what’s going to happen to this country.”

“What will become of her?” Jun Do asked.

“The Second Mate’s wife? Don’t worry, we’ll find someone good. We’ll find someone worthy of his memory.”

From his pack, the old man shook out a cigarette and with some struggle, lit it. The brand was Chollima, the kind they smoked in Pyongyang. “Looks like your ship is a regular hero factory,” he said.

Jun Do kept trying to drop the blood bag, but his hand wouldn’t let go. A person could learn to turn an arm off, so you didn’t feel anything that happened to it, but how did you turn it back on?

“I’m certifying you,” the old man said. “Your story checks out.”

Jun Do turned to him. “What story are you talking about?”

“What story?” the old man asked. “You’re a hero now.”

The old man offered Jun Do a cigarette, but Jun Do couldn’t take it.

“But the facts,” Jun Do said. “They don’t add up. Where are the answers?”

“There’s no such thing as facts. In my world, all the answers you need to know come from here.” He pointed at himself, and Jun Do couldn’t tell if the old man indicated his heart, his gut, or his balls.