The Orphan Master's Son_ A Novel - Adam Johnson [78]
The Senator said, “But how’d you get hurt, son?”
“They came back,” Jun Do said.
“Why would they come back?” Tommy asked. “They’d already cleared your vessel.”
“What were you doing on a fishing vessel in the first place?” the Senator asked.
“Clearly,” Dr. Song said with some force, “the Americans were ashamed that a single North Korean, armed only with a knife, made cowardly an entire armed American unit.”
Jun Do took a drink of water. “All I know,” he said, “is that it was first light, the sun to the starboard. The American ship came out of the brightness, and suddenly we were boarded. The Second Mate was on deck with the Pilot and the Captain. It was laundry day, so they were boiling seawater. There was screaming. I went up top with the Machinist and the First Mate. The man from before, Lieutenant Jervis, had the Second Mate at the rail. They were shouting at him about the knife.”
“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.