Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

The Americans clearly wished to laugh, but didn’t dare.

The Minister was gone a long time. Jun Do found a pair of black boots that spoke to him, but in the end he set them aside. He then went through many pairs of women’s boots before he found some he thought would fit the Second Mate’s wife. They were yellow and stiff, with fancy stitching around the toe.

Dr. Song was offered smaller and smaller sizes, until finally a pair of simple black boots fit him in a boy’s size. To help save face, Jun Do turned to Dr. Song. “Is it true,” he said loudly, “that you take the exact shoe size as the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il?”

Everyone watched as Dr. Song took a pleasant stroll in his boots, dress shoes in his hands. He stopped before a mannequin in cowboy clothes. “Observe, Jun Do,” he said. “Instead of their most beautiful women, the Americans employ artificial people to display the clothes.”

“Most ingenious,” Jun Do said.

“Perhaps,” Wanda said, “our most beautiful women are otherwise engaged.”

Dr. Song bowed at the truth of this. “Of course,” he said. “How shortsighted of me.”

On the wall, mounted behind a piece of glass, was an ax. “Look,” Dr. Song said. “The Americans are always prepared for a sudden outbreak of violence.”

The Senator glanced at his watch, and Jun Do could tell he’d had enough of this game.

The Minister returned and was handed a pair of boots. Each scale of the snakeskin seemed to catch the light. Clearly pleased, the Minister took a few steps in them like a gunslinger.

“Have you seen this movie High Noon ?” Dr. Song asked them. “It is the Minister’s favorite.”

And suddenly the Senator was smiling again.

Dr. Song spoke to the Minister. “They fit perfectly, no?” he asked.

The Minister looked sadly down at his new boots. He shook his head.

The Senator snapped his fingers. “Let’s get some more boots over here,” he told the sales clerks.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Song said. He sat to remove his own boots. “But the Minister believes it would be an insult to the Dear Leader to receive the gift of new boots when the Dear Leader himself received none.”

Jun Do returned the boots he’d chosen for the Second Mate’s wife. It was a fantasy idea, anyway, he knew. The Minister, too, sat to pull off his boots.

“This can be easily fixed,” the Senator said. “Of course we can send a pair of boots to Mr. Kim. We know he takes the same size as Dr. Song here. We’ll just get an extra pair.”

Dr. Song laced his dress shoes back on.

“The only insult,” Dr. Song said, “would be for a humble diplomat such as myself to wear shoes fit for the most revered leader of the greatest nation on earth.”

Wanda’s eyes passed back and forth upon this scene. Her gaze landed on Jun Do, and he knew it was him that she was puzzling over.

They left without boots.

The ranch had been prepared to give the Koreans a taste of Texas life. They crossed a cattle grate to enter the property, then switched to pickup trucks. Again the Senator traveled with the Minister, while the rest of the group followed in a four-door work truck. They took a road of sand and shale, and they passed through wind-bent bushes and gnarled trees that looked burned and split, with even their tall branches twisted to the ground. There was a field of spiked plants, their shark claws aglow. Each was alone in the way it groped from the rocky earth, looking to Jun Do like gestures from those buried underneath.

During the ride to the ranch, the Americans seemed to ignore the Koreans, making comments about cattle that Jun Do could find no sign of, and then slipping into a shorthand of their own that Jun Do could make no sense of.

“Blackwater,” Tommy said to Wanda. “They your new outfit?”

They were heading toward a stand of trees from which blew white, vinalon-like fibers.

“Blackwater?”

“That’s what your hat says.”

“It’s just a free hat,” she said. “Right now I think I’m working for a civilian subsidiary of a government contractor to the military. No use trying to keep it straight. I’ve got three Homeland passes, and I’ve never set foot in the place.”

“Headed back to Baghdad?” he asked.

She looked across the Texas hardpan. “Friday,” she said.

The sun was direct when they climbed down from the big truck. Jun Do’s dress shoes filled with sand. A table had been set up with a barrel cooler of lemonade, and three gift baskets, each wrapped in cellophane. The baskets contained a cowboy hat, a pint of bourbon, a carton of American Spirit cigarettes, some beef jerky, a water bottle, sunscreen, a red kerchief, and a pair of calfskin gloves.

“My wife’s doing,” the Senator said.

The Senator invited them to retrieve the hats and gloves from their gift baskets. A motorized saw and weed cutter had been set out, and the Koreans donned safety goggles to cut brush. Dr. Song’s eyes, through the plastic, were seething with indignity.

Tommy pull-started the weed cutter and handed it to the Minister, who seemed to take a strange pleasure in moving the blade back and forth through the dead brambles.

When it was Dr. Song’s turn, he said, “It seems I, too, have the pleasure.” He positioned his goggles, then raced the engine through brush and stubble before stalling the blade in the sand.

“I fear I have little aptitude for groundskeeping,” Dr. Song said to the Senator. “But, as the Great Leader Kim Il Sung prescribes, Ask not what the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea can do for you; ask what you can do for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. ”

The Senator sucked air through his teeth.

Tommy said, “Isn’t he also the great leader who regretted that his citizens had but one life to give for their country?”

“Okay,” the Senator said. “Let’s try our hand at fishing.”

Poles had been laid out at a stock pond fed by well pumps. The sun was relentless, and in his dark suit, Dr. Song looked unsteady. The Senator took two folding chairs from the bed of his truck, and he and Dr. Song sat in the shade of a tree. Though he fanned himself with the hat as the Senator did, Dr. Song did not loosen his tie.

Tommy spoke low and respectfully to the Minister. Jun Do translated.

“Cast beyond the trunk of that fallen tree,” Tommy suggested. “Jiggle the tip of the pole to make your lure dance as you reel in.”

Wanda approached Jun Do with two glasses of lemonade.

“I have once been fishing with cables of electricity,” the Minister said. “Very effective.”

It was the first time the Minister had spoken all day. Jun Do could think of no way to soften this statement. Finally, he translated it to Tommy as, “The Minister believes victory is at hand.”

Jun Do took the lemonade from Wanda, who had an eyebrow raised in suspicion. It let Jun Do know that she was no clear-complexioned stewardess offering drinks to powerful men.

It took the Minister a few casts to get the knack of it, Tommy pantomiming advice.

“Here,” she said to Jun Do. “Here’s my contribution to your gift basket.” She handed him a tiny LED flashlight. “They give ’em away at the trade shows,” she said. “I use them all the time.”

“You work in the dark?” he asked.

“Bunkers,” she said. “That’s my specialty. I analyze fortified bunkers. I’m Wanda, by the way. I didn’t get to introduce myself.”

“Pak Jun Do,” he said, taking her hand. “How do you know the Senator?”

“He visited Baghdad, and I gave him a tour of Saddam’s Saladin Complex. A very impressive structure. High-speed rail tunnels, triple-filtered air, nuke resistant. Once you see someone’s bunker, you know everything about him. You get news of the war?”