“Jill good people,” Brandy said.
Ever since then, Brandy couldn’t do enough for her.
I asked Brandy if she knew what had happened to Jill Matthewson.
“I don’t know. I go to KNPs, tell them everything I know, but they say they no can find.”
“You went to the Korean National Police?” Ernie asked.
“Yes.”
“They didn’t come to you?”
She shook her head negatively and her hoop earrings jingled.
“And no GIs came and asked you about Jill Matthewson?”
She shook her head again.
Apparently, the 2nd Division investigation hadn’t been as thorough as we’d been led to believe.
Then we asked more about Jill, trying to encourage Brandy to open up. Between bouts of pouring drinks, she did. She said that after the night of the fight, Jill stopped in a few times, off duty, just to talk. She ordered orange Fanta, a soft drink, and when GIs approached and tried to talk to her, she told them she was here to talk to Brandy. When Jill told Brandy that the female barracks on Camp Casey were too noisy and filled with drunken GIs chasing women at all hours of the night, Brandy suggested Jill rent her own hooch.
“She afraid at first,” Brandy told us. “You know, not used to Korea. But I fix up.”
Brandy referred Jill Matthewson to a bokdok-bang, a local real estate office, and within a week, Jill had picked out a hooch on the other side of town. In my open notebook, using hangul script, I jotted down the address as Brandy recited it to me.
After that, Jill hadn’t stopped in the Black Cat Club often, only once or twice a month to bring gifts from the PX. American-made hand lotion for Brandy and chocolate for the business girls.
We asked about a boyfriend. Again, Brandy said that, as far as she knew, Jill didn’t have one. We asked her why not.
“She waiting,” Brandy said. “She no like stinko GI.”
“Stinko” as in drunk.
Once again, I asked the big question. “Where is Jill Matthewson now, Brandy?”
She shook her head sadly. She didn’t know. But she promised if she heard anything, she’d come and find us. She also promised that she’d use her contacts, and ask around town. But she wasn’t optimistic. If Jill Matthewson was still in Tongduchon, Brandy said, she’d know it.
Maybe we’d had a few too many drinks. Maybe I just couldn’t get over the coincidence of Private Marvin Z. Druwood, a military policeman, dying an accidental death-supposedly-only a few days after a fellow MP, Corporal Jill Matthewson, disappeared. Nothing in the Division serious incident report indicated that there’d been any connection between the two of them. Yet Ernie and I had discovered their connection on the first day.
From the ville, Ernie and I walked back to Camp Casey. A huge arch straddled the main gate. Lit up by a row of bare bulbs, it said: 2ND INFANTRY DIVISION, SECOND TO NONE! Above
the guard shack, a smaller sign, written in both English and hangul, said: INFOR-MATION ON NORTH KOREAN INTRUDERS WELCOMED AT THIS GATE.
A stern-faced MP examined our identification carefully. Too carefully. The MPs all knew who we were and what we were here for. Finally, he snorted, tossed the identification back, and waved us through. After a half mile of walking, Ernie and I had just about reached the room we’d been issued at transient billeting. That’s when I suggested we continue on to the obstacle course.
“Are you nuts?” Ernie asked. “The obstacle course in the middle of the night?”
“We’ll drive,” I said.
Ernie’s jeep was parked near the transient billets. He protested for a while, but I told him we might need it for the investigation. He didn’t see how but finally he relented. We jumped in the jeep.
Many of the main buildings of Camp Casey-like the Provost Marshal’s Office and the PX and the Indianhead Snack Bar-were clustered near the front gate. But “the flagpole,” the line of wooden buildings that composes the Division headquarters complex, was three-quarters of a mile in. We drove beyond the main parade ground that stretched dark and empty in the moonlight and beyond the three flagpoles that during the day held the flags of the United Nations, the United States, and the Republic of Korea. Another mile on, we reached the turnoff for the firing ranges and the physical training grounds. Camp Casey is huge. And this in a country that, although lush with fertile river valleys, is also hilly and mountainous. As a result, farmland is precious. Every parcel is measured by the pyong, a unit of measure not much larger than two meters square.
A wooden sign announced the obstacle course: 2ND INFANTRY DIVISION CONFIDENCE COURSE. The military loves euphemisms. Ernie parked the jeep in a gravel parking area. Then he crossed his arms.
“I’ll wait here.”
“Okay.”
He was morose and drunk and pissed off at having to sit out here in the cold night air; there was no point in arguing with him. I pulled out my pocket flashlight and started traipsing through sand. A log stretched across the “confidence course” starting line. Beyond that a well-trodden pathway led through quivering elms. I glanced back at Ernie. He still sat there alone, comfy in the jeep. I shivered in the cold. The snow from this morning clung in small scattered clumps on bushes and grass. The lights of Camp Casey proper flickered far off in the distance. On the hills surrounding us, moonlight illuminated ten-foot-high wooden posts linked by thick strands of barbed wire. The perimeter was patrolled by Korean security guards armed with Korean War vintage M-1 rifles. At the moment I couldn’t see any of them. Would they notice my little flashlight? Probably. Would I be reported? Who knew? I started walking the course.
First there were wooden balance beams to run on and sandbag-lined moats to leap across and wooden walls to climb over. I walked around them. I passed long tubes to crawl through and metal poles to swing from and rubber tires to bounce against. Again I circled the obstacles. I was heading for the tower. The spot where, according to Division PMO, Private Marvin Z. Druwood had voluntarily leapt to his death.
Finally, I reached the tower and looked up. It was about as high as a three-story building. Made of wood. Four long beams on the corners, square wooden platforms placed about ten feet apart until the top one. Like an air-filled layer cake. No ladders. No handholds. Just smooth, slippery wood.
To me, the tower had always been the most frightening part of any obstacle course. Standing here in the moonlight, staring up at the sleek structure, I discovered nothing to disabuse me of that opinion. And just last night, Private Druwood had climbed this tower, stood on the top-who knows for how long-and then leaped off, head first, to his death.
I stuck my flashlight in my pocket, marched to the base of the tower, and started to climb. Resolutely, I stared at the silver moon. Praying to it. Making it my own personal goddess. Trying not to look down. Maybe it was my imagination but the higher I climbed, the more fiercely the wind howled.
3
I remember the day I hit five feet.
I was eleven years old and proud after I measured myself because I was taller than most of the kids in my elementary school. I was proud because now I had a chance to protect myself. And protect the kids who I lived with while being shuffled around to various foster homes.
Some kids were more vulnerable than others. When they were shoved or spanked or shouted at, they took it to heart. They identified with the criticism and little by little the life in their eyes began to fade, and that’s when they began to die. I remember Fausto. He was a cute kid always ready to smile, but the foster father who was raising us wouldn’t stop badgering helpless little Fausto. This foster father saw the entire world as conspiring to keep him down and he not only resented the food and space that Fausto took up, he also resented Fausto’s cheerful attitude. So from the day Fausto arrived in our home, the guy started in on him. Day by day, I saw the life dying in Fausto’s eyes. I tried to stop it and as a reward for my efforts, I was slapped myself. But I was older than Fausto. And three years had passed since I’d hit five feet. I was fourteen now, and five foot ten. The football coach measured me in the high school gym and I was surprised that I’d sprouted up so much. There was something about the magic number. Five-ten. I felt like an adult. Like a man.