Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

Winding the stairwell to the roof, they pushed through the metal door into darkness and stars. The adult dogs were free and skittish, their eyes locating them. In the center of the roof, there was a screened-in shed to keep insects off the sides of dog—rubbed with coarse salt and crushed green peppercorns—hanging to cure in the ocean air.

“It’s beautiful up here,” he said.

“Sometimes I come up here to think,” she said. They looked far out onto the water. “What’s it like out there?” she asked.

“When you’re out of sight of shore,” he said, “you could be anybody, from anywhere. It’s like you have no past. Out there, everything is spontaneous, every lick of water that kicks up, every bird that drops in from nowhere. Over the airwaves, people say things you’d never imagine. Here, nothing is spontaneous.”

“I can’t wait to hear that radio,” she said. “Can you get the pop stations from Seoul?”

“It’s not that kind of radio,” he said and jammed the antenna through the mesh of the puppy warren, the little dogs scurrying in terror.

“I don’t get it.”

Jun Do tossed the cable off the overhang, where they could retrieve it from the window below. “This radio doesn’t receive broadcasts,” he said. “It transmits them.”

“What’s the point of that?”

“We have a message to send.”

Inside the apartment, his fingers worked quickly to hook up the antenna cable and a small microphone. “I had a dream,” he told her. “I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I dreamed your husband had a radio, that he was on a raft, heading into shimmering water, bright like a thousand mirrors.”

“Okay,” she said.

Jun Do turned the radio on and they both stared at the sodium-yellow glow of its power meter. He set it to 63 megahertz, then squeezed the breaker bar: “Third Mate to Second Mate, Third Mate to Second Mate, over.” Jun Do repeated this, knowing that, just as he couldn’t hear, the Second Mate couldn’t respond. Finally, he said, “My friend, I know you’re out there and you mustn’t despair.” Jun Do could’ve explained how to unbraid a single strand of copper from the battery leads, then connect the strand to both poles so it would heat up enough to light a cigarette. Jun Do could have told the Second Mate how to make a compass from the magnet in the radio’s windings, or how surrounding the capacitors is a foil he could flash as a signal mirror.

But the survival skills the Second Mate needed concerned enduring solitude and tolerating the unknown, topics about which Jun Do had some practice. “Sleep during the day,” Jun Do told him. “At night your thoughts will come clear. We have looked at the stars together—chart them each night. If they are in the right places, you’re doing fine. Use your imagination only on the future, never on the present or the past. Do not try to picture people’s faces—you will despair if they don’t come clear. If you are visited by people from far away, don’t think of them as ghosts. Treat them as family, ask them questions, be a good host.

“You will need a purpose,” he told the Second Mate. “The Captain’s purpose was to get us home safe. Your purpose will be to stay strong so that you can rescue the girl who rows in the dark. She is in trouble and needs help. You’re the only one out there who can help her. Scan the horizons at night, look for lights and flares. You must save her for me.

“I’m sorry that I let you down. It was my job to look out for you. I was supposed to save you, and I failed. You were the real hero. When the Americans came, you saved us all, and when you needed us, we weren’t there for you. Somehow, one day, I’ll make things right.”

Jun Do stopped broadcasting, and the needle on the meter went flat.

The Second Mate’s wife just looked at him. “That must have been one sad dream. Because that was the saddest message one person ever sent another.” When Jun Do nodded, she said, “Who was the girl who rows in the dark?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She was just in the dream.”

He handed the microphone to her.

“I think you should say something to him,” he said.

She didn’t take it. “This is about your dream, not mine. What would I say?” she asked. “What would I tell him?”

“What would you have told him if you knew you’d never see him again?” he asked. “Or you don’t have to say anything. He told me how much he loved your singing.”

Jun Do went to his knees, turned, and rolled onto the pallet. On his back, he took several large breaths. When he tried to pull the shirt off, he found he couldn’t.

“Don’t listen,” she told him.

He put his fingers in his ears, the same inside feeling as wearing headphones, and watched her lips move. She spoke only for a little bit, her eyes pointed toward the windows, and when he realized she was singing, he opened his ears and welcomed the sound, a children’s lullaby:

The cat’s in the cradle , the baby’s in the tree .

The birds up above all click their beaks .

Papa’s in the tunnel , preparing for the storm ,

Here comes mama , her hands are worn .

She holds out her apron for the baby to see .

The baby full of trust lets go the tree .

Her voice was simple and pure. Everyone knew their lullabies, but how did he know his? Had someone ever sung them to him, from before he could remember?

When she was done, she turned off the radio. The lights would go off soon, so she lit a candle. She came to his side, and there was something new in her eyes. “I needed that,” she said. “I didn’t know I needed that.” She took a deep breath. “I feel like something’s been lifted.”

“That was beautiful,” he said. “I recognized that lullaby.”

“Of course you did,” she said. “Everyone knows it.” She put her hand on the box. “I’ve been carrying this around, and not once have you asked what it is.”

“So show me,” he said.

“Close your eyes,” she told him.

He did. First came the unzipping of her canning-line jumpsuit, and then he heard the whole process, the opening of the box, the shuffle of stiff satin, the shush as she stepped into it and drew it up her legs, and then the whisper as it spun on her body, the shimmy of a final position, and then her arms, almost without sound, entering the sleeves.

“You can open your eyes now,” she told him, but he did not want to.

Eyes closed, he could see her skin in long flashes, in the comfortable manner of someone unobserved. She was trusting him, completely, and he wished for anything but to have that end.

She kneeled beside him again, and when he did open his eyes, he saw she was in a shimmering yellow dress.

“This is the kind they wear in the West,” she said.

“You’re beautiful,” he told her.

“Let’s get that shirt off.”

She slid a leg over his waist, the hem of her dress enveloping his midsection. Straddling him, she pulled his arms till he was sitting up, then taking hold of his shirt, she let the gravity of his return peel it off.

“I can see those earrings from here,” he said.

“Maybe I don’t need to cut my hair, then.”

He looked up at her. The yellow of her dress shined in the black of her hair.

She asked him, “How come you never married?”

“Bad songbun .”

“Oh,” she said. “Were your parents denounced?”

“No,” he answered. “People think I’m an orphan.”

“That will do it,” she said, then hesitated. “Sorry, that sounded bad, the way I said that.”

What was there to say? Jun Do shrugged at her.

She said, “You said my husband’s purpose was to save the girl who rowed in your dreams.”