Adam Johnson - The Orphan Master's Son

“Wait a minute,” the Senator said. “How do you know this sailor’s name?”

“Because he gave me his card,” Jun Do said. “He wanted us to know who had settled the score.” Jun Do passed the business card to Wanda, who read the name “Lieutenant Harlan Jervis.”

Tommy stepped forward and took the card. “The Fortitude , Fifth Fleet,” he said to the Senator. “That must be one of Woody McParkland’s boats.”

The Senator said, “Woody wouldn’t tolerate any bad apples in his outfit.”

The Senator’s wife lifted her hand. “What happened next?” she asked.

Jun Do said, “Then he was thrown to the sharks, and I jumped in to save him.”

Tommy said, “But where did all the sharks come from?”

“The Junma is a fishing boat,” Jun Do explained. “Sharks were always following us.”

“So there was just a swirl of sharks?” Tommy asked.

“Did the boy know what was happening to him?” the Senator asked.

Tommy asked, “Did Lieutenant Jervis say anything?”

“Well, there weren’t many sharks at first,” Jun Do said.

The Senator asked, “Did this Jervis fellow throw the boy in himself, with his own hands?”

“Or did he order one of his sailors to do it?” Tommy asked.

The Minister placed his hands flat on the table. “Story,” he declared in English, “true.”

“No,” the Senator’s wife said.

Jun Do turned to her, her old-lady eyes pale and cloudy.

“No,” she said. “I understand that during wartime, no side has a monopoly on the unspeakable. And I am not naive enough to think that the engines of the righteous aren’t powered by the fuel of injustice. But these are our finest boys, under our best command, flying the colors of this nation. So, no sir, you are wrong. No sailor of ours ever did such an act. I know this. I know this for a fact.”

She rose from the table.

Jun Do rose, too.

“I apologize for disturbing you,” he said. “I shouldn’t have told the story. But you must believe that I have looked into the eyes of sharks, seen them stupid with death. When you’re near them, an arm’s length away, their eyes flick white. They’ll turn sideways and lift their heads when they want a better look before they bite you. I didn’t feel the teeth in my flesh, but it was icy and electric when they hit bone. The blood, I could smell it in the water. I know the feeling of seeing a boy right in front of you, and he is about to be gone. You suddenly understand you’ll never see him again. I’ve heard the last gibberish a person says. When a person slips into the water, right in front of you, the disbelief of it, that never leaves you. And the artifacts people leave behind, a shaving brush, a pair of shoes, how dumb they seem—you can handle them in your fingers, stare at them all you want, they don’t mean anything without the person.” Jun Do was shaking, now. “I’ve held the widow, his widow , with these arms as she sang nursery rhymes to him, wherever he was.”

Later, Jun Do was in his room. He was looking up all the Korean names in Texas, the hundreds of Kims and Lees, and he was almost to Paks and Parks when the dog on his bed suddenly stood.

Wanda was at the door—she knocked lightly twice, then opened.

“I drive a Volvo,” she said from the threshold. “It’s a hand-me-down from my dad. When I was a kid, he worked security at the port. He always had a maritime scanner going, so he could know if a captain was in trouble. I have one, too, and I turn it on when I can’t sleep.”

Jun Do just stared at her. The dog lay down again.

“I found out some things about you,” Wanda said. “Like who you really are.” She shrugged. “I thought it only fair to share a few things about me.”

“Whatever your file says about me,” Jun Do told her, “it’s wrong. I don’t hurt people anymore. That’s the last thing I want to do.” How did she have a file on him anyway, he wondered, when Pyongyang couldn’t even get his info right.

“I put your wife Sun Moon into the computer, and you popped right up, Commander Ga.” She studied him for a reaction, and when he gave none, she said, “Minister of Prison Mines, holder of the Golden Belt in taekwondo, champion against Kimura in Japan, father of two, winner of the Crimson Star for unnamed acts of heroism, and so on. There were no current photos, so I hope you don’t mind me uploading the pictures I took.”

Jun Do closed the phone book.

“You’ve made a mistake,” he said. “And you must never call me that in front of the others.”

“Commander Ga,” Wanda said, like she was savoring the name. She held up her phone. “There’s an app that predicts the orbit of the Space Station,” she said. “It will be passing over Texas in eight minutes.”

He followed her outside, to the edge of the desert. The Milky Way reeled above them, the smell of creosote and dry granite sweeping down from the mountains. When a coyote called, the dog moved between them, its tail twitching with excitement, the three of them waiting for another coyote to respond.

“Tommy,” Jun Do said. “He’s the one who speaks Korean, right?”

“Yes,” Wanda said. “The Navy stationed him there for ten years.”

They cupped their hands and stared at the sky, scanning for the arc of the satellite.

“I don’t understand any of this,” Wanda said. “What’s the Minister of Prison Mines doing here in Texas? Who’s the other man claiming to be a minister?”

“None of this is his fault. He just does what he’s told. You’ve got to understand—where he’s from, if they say you’re an orphan, then you’re an orphan. If they tell you to go down a hole, well, you’re suddenly a guy who goes down holes. If they tell you to hurt people, then it begins.”

“Hurt people?”

“I mean if they tell him to go to Texas to tell a story, suddenly he’s nobody but that.”

“I believe you,” she said. “I’m trying to understand.”

Wanda was the first to spot the International Space Station, diamond bright and racing across the sky. Jun Do tracked it, as amazed as when the Captain first indicated it above the sea.

“You’re not looking to defect, are you?” she asked. “If you were looking to defect, that would cause a lot of problems, trust me. It could be done, mind you. I’m not saying it’s impossible.”

“Dr. Song, the Minister,” Jun Do said. “You know what would happen to them. I could never do that to them.”

“Of course,” she said.

Far in the distance, too many kilometers away to gauge, a lightning storm clung to the horizon. Still, its flashes were enough to silhouette closer mountain ranges and give hints of others even farther yet. The strobe of one bolt gave them a glimpse of a dark owl, caught mid-flight, as it silently hunted through the tall, needley trees.

Wanda turned to him. “Do you feel free?” she asked. She cocked her head. “Do you know what free feels like?”

How to explain his country to her, he wondered. How to explain that leaving its confines to sail upon the Sea of Japan—that was being free. Or that as a boy, sneaking from the smelter floor for an hour to run with other boys in the slag heaps, even though there were guards everywhere, because there were guards everywhere—that was the purest freedom. How to make someone understand that the scorch-water they made from the rice burned to the bottom of the pot tasted better than any Texas lemonade?

“Are there labor camps here?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Mandatory marriages, forced-criticism sessions, loudspeakers?”

She shook her head.

“Then I’m not sure I could ever feel free here,” he said.