Hidden Moon

3

Boswell was still moody and said he wanted to stay in his room, but I told him about the body in the river and he perked up a little. We drove for about two hours off the main highway, along dirt roads past fields that had been newly ploughed, between rows of acacia trees that didn’t yet have the leaves of the trees in the city but showed new branches that were limber in the breeze. We crossed a bridge without side rails that went over a riverbed with only a trickle of water. Amidst a pile of rocks in the center was an old steam shovel, its bucket resting on the cab of a dump truck that had no tires. “What was that?” asked the Scotsman. “Wait, I want to take a picture of it.”

“No need,” I said. “It’s just some construction equipment.”

“No, really, it’s perfect. I want to get a picture. Stop the car, back up.”

“Impossible, can’t go backwards on a bridge without side rails. It’s against traffic regulations. Anyway, you can’t take pictures of construction equipment.”

“Inspector, there isn’t anyone around here worrying about traffic rules, and who is going to know I took the picture except you?”

I accelerated and hit the bump at the end of the bridge hard enough to cause the Scotsman to bounce against the car’s roof.

“Hey, watch out.”

“Nearly there, just past those trees.”

When we got to the end of the road, there was a black car parked, one uniformed Ministry of People’s Security officer standing in the road, hands behind his back, looking up into the nearby hills. The driver and a second man were squatting in the middle of the road, in the shade of the car, smoking, not talking, not looking at anything in particular. When Boswell and I pulled over and walked up to them, none of them said anything. Boswell looked at me, sort of questioning, and cleared his throat. I shook my head and pointed up the path. I didn’t recognize the MPS officer, and he didn’t indicate he knew who I was, or cared.

Boswell walked ahead of me for about fifteen minutes up a steep slope, slippery with pine needles. At a place where the trail widened, we passed two more MPS officers slouched against a tree. We didn’t stop to chat. The path became steeper, and Boswell was starting to breathe hard when we came to a fast stream. We crossed on a line of boulders that barely served as a bridge. The far bank was more thickly wooded, and the path disappeared.

“Good and lost, what else could go wrong? So typical of this place, I have to laugh.” Boswell was swearing under his breath, thinking I couldn’t hear him. “A path leading nowhere, then dissolving into nothing, what a fucking country.” He swatted a bug on the back of his neck. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t need to be mucking about in these hills. There’s nothing for me to see.”

“No, we’re not lost. The path is around here somewhere.” It had to be. Paths didn’t just give out like that. Maybe in Scotland, but not in these hills. I took a few steps off to one side. “Here! You see?” I started up the narrow track and in a minute or so emerged into a clearing with a small, oddly shaped temple. Next to it was a ramshackle watchman’s hut. An old man shuffled from around the back, a thin brown dog at his heels. The dog trembled and wagged its tail until the old man muttered something and the dog dropped to the ground. It was quiet all of a sudden. Not a sound. Even the deep voice of the water rushing over the rocks disappeared.

“Nice dog.” I smiled and raised my hand to scratch the dog’s head. As soon as I did, the dog cowered and crawled behind the old man. “I’m not going to hit him, just give him a pat.”

“Dog doesn’t know that, now does it? People come by here, do all sorts of things to the dog. Never hurt nobody, young pup like this, but people don’t care.” The old man gave me a sly smile. “He likes the sound of money in the shrine box, though, makes him sit up and bark.”

“I’ll bet it does.” I walked over and stuffed a few small bills into the slit in the box sitting on the raised wooden platform. The dog sat up and barked twice. “Must have good hearing; those bills don’t make a lot of noise.”

“Dogs can hear a lot more than most people. Good judges of character, too.” Boswell emerged from the trees. The old man turned slowly in his direction. “Welcome, friend. The dog likes you.”

Boswell whistled, and the dog walked over. “Pretty thin, but good, alert eyes,” he said. “Might learn some commands, if you give him a chance. Not a lot of sheep around here, I take it. But any dog likes to work for his keep.”

The old man cocked his head, unsure whether he was hearing Korean or not. Then he nodded. “Scraps mostly. Dog here eats what I eat.” He pulled the waist of his trousers to show he didn’t eat much. “No harm in being thin, for either of us. As for work”-he laughed-“the dog and I have an agreement. As little as possible, and then rarely.”

“Good location for a shrine. You must be from around here.” I wanted to move the conversation beyond dogs, which I had the feeling Boswell would happily spend the rest of the day discussing.

“Nope.” Then a long silence from the old man. As we stood there, the sound of the stream returned, along with the drone of a bee moving in and out of the blossoms of a cherry tree that grew beside the shrine.

Boswell looked up at the sky. I nodded at the old man. “You’re not from around here?”

“I am.”

“Ah. Then, by ‘nope’ you mean a bad location for a shrine.”

“Very bad. Not far enough from the water, not set right with its back to the mountain. Nothing very good about it. But here it sits. You’d think someone would have changed its alignment, falls down often enough so it would be easy to do. But no, every time, it’s put back together just the way it was.” The old man shook his head. “Last time it was rebuilt was maybe sixty or seventy years ago.” After a moment, he shrugged and sighed. “That’s how things get to be like they are.”

“Yes,” I said. The old man sounded like Yang. It made me uneasy. Something else was making me uneasy, too, though I couldn’t figure out what. Boswell had moved over and was pretending to watch the bee, but I could tell he wanted to follow the conversation, if it ever got anywhere. “You pretty much see everyone who goes up this trail, I’d assume.” Sometimes a new tack helps with these old fellows.

“Hard to miss them, unless you’re blind,” he said.

I looked at the man’s eyes. “You’re blind, aren’t you?”

“It depends,” he said, “on your definition.”

“We’re going up the trail.” I started to point in the direction we were heading but it seemed foolish. “Did a patrol pass this way?”

“They did.”

“You know where they went?”

“I do. It will take you five, maybe ten minutes to get there.”

I nodded at Boswell, who fell in behind me. “We’ll be back.”

“Yes, you will, unless you plan to swim down. Only one path. I’ll be here whenever you get tired of looking around. Right here,” said the old man, “same as always.”