Nightmare Range

THE GRAY ASIAN SKY

Puffed bruises spotted the young faces, and their black hair stuck out in disarray. The girls were still angry. The boys just frightened.

In the States a police station full of student demonstrators would have been a madhouse of noise and activity. Here there was an eerie silence. Two of the Korean policemen chatted quietly while another dialed the telephone.

Order. That’s what you can count on in a police state. Law if you’re lucky.

Ernie and I waded through the crowd to the desk sergeant. He stared up at us, mouth slightly open. I spoke to him in Korean.

“We’re here to see the body.”

“Of the American?” he said.

“Who else?” Ernie whispered in English.

I nodded.

“Just a moment,” the policeman said. He got up and strutted into the back room.

The glaring eyes of the students sitting around us were like forty pairs of laser beams burning into my body. America. That’s what they saw in Ernie and me. The country that had allowed thinly veiled dictatorships to rule on this peninsula since we liberated them from the Japanese at the end of World War II. Ernie and I were almost as disliked in our own military bureaucracy; a couple of flakes, they called us. Here we represented the power and influence of the mightiest country the world has ever seen.

You can’t win.

The policeman reappeared and waved for us to follow. Forty sets of eyes swiveled as we walked out the back door.

A couple of policemen and a white-clad ambulance driver stopped their mumbling as we walked into the room. Batons, riot control shields, padded vests, and gas masks hung from pegs lining the walls. Lumpy linen draped a stretcher on the floor.

The desk sergeant stepped forward and ripped back the sheet.

His chest has been crushed, and his face was so purple and distorted that even if he were my brother I wouldn’t have been able to recognize him. I kept my face straight. The desk sergeant watched us, a greedy gleam in his eye.

“Did he have any identification?” I said.

The desk sergeant pulled the sheet back over the corpse, then walked over to a metal cabinet and retrieved a plastic sack filled with keys, some US coins, and a wallet. We went back to the front desk where he had us sign a receipt for the personal effects.

The GI’s name was Ralph Whitcomb. He had a weapons card that showed he was assigned to Headquarters Company, 8th United States Army. The photo on his green military ID was more revealing than the anguished distortion we had just seen. I showed it to Ernie.

“Seen him around,” he said.

His wallet contained four thousand won, twenty-three dollars in wrinkled Military Payment Certificates, and seventy-five cents in change. The desk sergeant accounted for everything on the receipt. I signed it, fitting my long horizontal signature into the little vertical box on the form. He gave me a copy.

“Did any of these students know him, or see what happened?”

“No. Not that they’ve told us yet.”

I handed him my card, inked by the 8th US Army printing plant in Bupyong.

“If they tell you anything, will you call us?”

He clenched his fist. “They will tell us something.”

We walked out of the Sodaemun Police Station, glad to be away from the little room so filled with hatred.

Ernie and I had been the only two agents at the 8th Army CID Detachment headquarters when the report came in.

“I want you guys to get over to Chungang University,” the first sergeant said. “Fast. There’s been an American hurt, maybe killed, in one of their demonstrations.”

Ernie was still rubbing his sore arm. The reason we had stopped in the administration office, instead of staying out in the field and pretending to search for some black market arrests, was that it was autumn and time for our annual mandatory flu shots. The army has a thing about flu shots. Every year. And they check to make sure each unit attains one hundred percent compliance. We were bringing our freshly stamped shot records back to Reilly, the NCO in charge of the CID Detachment’s administrative section. A new vaccine has to be developed every year to ward off whatever brand of flu might have mutated into existence in the last twelve months, and the army’s a great place to test it. If it kills a few GIs, you make a few adjustments and try again.

Mine felt as if it were going to kill me. I get sick every year after the flu shot. I’m not sure if it’s from the vaccine or from the forced penetration.

“Get his name and service number,” the first sergeant said. “And if he’s hurt, make sure they hold him until one of our ambulances arrives. I’ll wait until you call because I don’t want to send a US Army ambulance into that part of town with all those students milling around.”

“What about us?”

“You’re expendable. Get going.”

We studied the big map of Seoul on the wall of the admin office until Ernie was sure of the directions. Then we hopped in his jeep and made it over to the Sodaemun, Great West Gate, Police Station.

The one thing we had going for us on this foray into enemy territory was that our jeep was unmarked. There are a lot of jeeps operating in this country, all part of the generous US government military aid. And as Criminal Investigation Division agents we were required to wear coats and ties rather than our uniforms.

Of course, with our short hair the bad guys still spotted us for what we were. Might as well hang a neon sign around our necks.

The narrow lane in front of the big stone archway that led into Chungang University still glistened with the water from the fire hoses. The sky was overcast and spotted with dark patches of rolling gray. I breathed deeply of the damp air and inhaled the scent of flowers mingled with the diesel fumes of the just departed military vehicles.

Ernie found a spot in a back alley for the jeep and padlocked the steering wheel to the chain welded to the floor.

“What do you expect to find here?” Ernie asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe a witness.”

“And maybe a lot of angry shopkeepers. The Korean National Police aren’t going to like it; it’s their jurisdiction.”

“Yeah, but it’s our GI.”

Ernie parked the jeep, and we walked down the roadway. The street was lined with shops, the type you’d expect in front of a college: a florist, a few stationery stores, bookstores with titles in English, French, and German, a couple of dress boutiques, and a whole bunch of teahouses. Not the type of teahouses that serve crumpets in mid-afternoon but the type that serve espresso and apple wine and sponsor poetry readings and political rallies.

A few remaining blossoms on a large treelike shrub still splashed the lane with purple. Mukung-hua, the Korean national flower, prized more for its sturdiness and beauty than for its rarity. Ahead, beyond the archway, a vast lawn unfolded around stately old trees. The campus of Chungang University.

It was an exciting neighborhood, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with the desire to have parents who could afford to send me to school. Hell, it would be nice to have parents even if they couldn’t afford to send me to school.

I shook it off.

There were a few riot police in padded vests and huge caged helmets still hanging around. Mopping up.

Actually, it was incorrect to call them riot police. They are a branch of the armed services, and most of the so-called riot “police” are actually conscripts. The children of rice farmers who are drafted and sent to a few weeks of basic training, then deployed to college campuses to knock the heads of their peers who happen to come from wealthier families and can afford to attend university. Class warfare, controlled by the state.

When they saw two Americans approaching, an officer in a fatigue uniform was summoned. Ernie and I both flashed our identification.

“Where was the American killed?”

The officer gestured with his hands toward one of the tea shops. “This way.”

The shop was located at a curve where the narrow road crooked like an elbow toward the university gate. A portly Korean woman, her hair done in a little round permanent and her body wrapped in a long white apron, rustled out of the shop. Her face was wrinkled in worry. I spoke to her in Korean.

“Did you see what happened, Aunt?”

“You mean the American?”

“Yes.”

“I saw him. After he was hurt. It was horrible. One of their big war vehicles rolled right over him. Both sets of tires, they say, the front and the back. Blood was everywhere.” She pointed toward the gutter. “They’ve washed it with their fire hoses, but it was everywhere.”

Tears sprang into her eyes, and she shook her head. A gray-haired man, probably her husband, hustled out of the shop and pulled her back in. Other merchants came out into the street when they saw the two Americans with the Korean officer. They gathered around us, and I didn’t have to ask any more questions, just strained to understand what they were saying.

“They ran over him and killed him. They ran over anything in their path.”

“I saw it, I saw it all. They don’t care what they do to these young people. They don’t care.”

“It’s their fault, the army’s fault. No one would have gotten hurt if they hadn’t attacked.”

I found an opening in the hubbub and shouted my question.

“Did anyone see the American fall?”

There was a silence and then mumbling as they looked around at one another. A trim man with jet black hair and a full-length blue apron stepped forward. I figured him to be about forty.

“I am the florist,” he said. “I saw the American fall. He was with a small group of Korean students, two girls, two boys. I remember them because the American stopped in my shop to buy one of the girls a flower for her hair. When the armored vehicles charged up the lane, spewing water, I ran out of the shop. The American and the girl were right here, along the sidewalk at the curve. One of the vehicles took the curve too sharply and went up over it, and as the students jumped out of the way, I saw the American fall forward, very abruptly, as if he’d been pushed. He landed face first in the gutter. When the armored vehicle dropped back to the road, it landed right on top of him. Everyone was running my way and another vehicle was closing in, so I had to run back into my shop.”

“Did you see who pushed the American?”

“No. I couldn’t. I was too far away, and there were too many people.”

A siren wailed and then got louder as it turned down the lane toward us from the main road a block away. The merchants began to disperse, and when the young officer saw that it was a police car he said goodbye to us and trotted back to his unit. Another police vehicle followed, and khaki-clad men jumped out and began to cordon off the neighborhood with white tape. One of the policemen came toward us.

“May I be of assistance?” he said.

Ernie answered. “We were just leaving.”

We walked up the road to the florist’s shop and went inside. The proprietor braced himself against the counter.

“What type of flower did the American buy?”

“A chrysanthemum.” He went to a vase full of them and caressed the petals. “A foreign flower. But very beautiful. And very expensive this time of year.”

I thanked him and went back to the jeep. Then we drove back to the police station and found a parking space across the street where we could see in through the big front windows. Ernie waited in the jeep while I went in. I spoke to the desk sergeant.

“Did you get any information from the students about the American’s death?”

He nodded. “It appears to have been accidental. From a taxi cab trying to clear the area too quickly. We’re looking for him now. When we find him, we’ll let you know.”

Back outside, I told Ernie what he had said. He snorted. “They don’t want to admit that one of their army vehicles killed an American. It’s an international incident. All hell could break loose.”

“I’d hate to be the cab driver they accuse of hit and run.”

“He’ll be somebody on their shit list.”

I found a pay phone and called the first sergeant.

“Who’s the dead American?”

“A GI.” I gave him the name, service number, and unit.

“What the hell was he doing out there during a demonstration?”

“What else? Trying to make it with one of the coeds.”

I held the phone away from my ear while the first sergeant expressed his opinions. Colorfully. “The meat wagon’s on its way. Make sure they pick up the body and all his personal effects.”

“Sure. It might take awhile. You know how the Koreans are with paperwork.”

“You and Bascom stay away from those demonstrators, you understand me, Sueño? And get back here as soon as the body’s been transferred to our custody.”

“You got it, Top.”

He hung up without even asking how Corporal Ralph Whitcomb had died.

We watched a parade of well-dressed, middle-aged Korean men and women walk into the Sodaemun Police Station. They stood at the front desk, did a lot of bowing, filled out some paperwork, and then, one by one, they were ushered into back rooms.

“Payoff time,” Ernie said.

When they emerged, their young wards were delivered to them and they left the station. Usually the guardian was scowling and the student stared at the ground.

The girl with the chrysanthemum in her hair didn’t have to wait too long. A dapper young Korean man who seemed more like a lawyer than a parent escorted her outside. Clinging to her arm was another college-age girl with short hair and a plain round face. Tagging along behind them were two boys, one of them thin and good-looking with short curly hair, the other slightly stout, wearing glasses. Studious looking.

“That dude liberated a whole pack of them,” Ernie sad. “Must have cost him a bundle.”

“Our young lady of the chrysanthemum has money and plenty of friends.”

“The two go together,” Ernie said.

The three other students said goodbye, and the lawyer and the flower girl climbed into a chauffeured Rekord Royale sedan. He sat in front. She sat in back. I copied the license number on my little notepad, and when they pulled away from the curb, Ernie followed, two car lengths behind in the rushing Seoul traffic.

They turned left at the ancient edifice of the West Gate and traveled northeast toward the heart of Seoul. After about a mile and a half of weaving through traffic, they took a left up a road that wound through a residential area and stopped at a big house on a hill overlooking the downtown business district. Stone walls and iron gates.

“This gal is rich,” Ernie said. “Why does she want to overthrow the system?”

“She’ll change her mind later.”

Autumn is the usual time for demonstrations. School starts up again, and all the students are excited about being reunited with their friends and confident about getting the good grades this year that they didn’t work hard enough for last year. And normally-if the government feels up to it-elections are held in the fall. The opposition parties had been growing stronger the last few years. One of their leaders received international recognition after he fled the country rather than allowing himself to be jailed for the offense of having more popular support than the president. Therefore, the ruling party had taken a wise step. They were going to allow elections, but a certain percentage of the seats in the legislature were going to be reserved exclusively for the ruling party. For some reason the students took umbrage at this and had taken to the streets.

When demonstrations are imminent, there’s usually a reminder in the 8th Army Bulletin about political rallies being off-limits to military personnel. In fact, the only political activity GIs are allowed to participate in is the absentee ballot-if you remember to fill out the postcard and mail it to your home state. Other than that, forget it. And Corporal Ralph Whitcomb had made the foolish mistake of getting himself killed in the midst of an unauthorized activity.

The army doesn’t mind you getting killed charging a machine gun nest-as a matter of fact they sort of like it-but don’t meet the grim reaper at a political rally. That’s frowned upon.

Whitcomb wasn’t worried about it any more. And the only thing that bothered me was not where he died, but how he died. Someone had pushed him into the path of that charging armored vehicle, and I was going to find out who, even if nobody else really wanted to know.

Ernie drifted to a stop and parked out of sight. I jumped out of the jeep and peeked around the corner. The lawyer climbed out of the Rekord Royale, unlocked a metal grating in the stone wall, and rolled it up using a hand crank on the side. Then he got back into the car and they pulled into the narrow garage. The metal grating ground down and clanked shut.

I walked over to the front gate and copied the family’s name and address from the engraved marble plaque embedded in the stone wall: Shin, 201-26 bonji, 34 ho, Hyonjo-dong, Seoul, Republic of Korea.

I walked back to the jeep.

“I’m going to try to talk to her,” I said. “If I’m not back in thirty minutes, send in the Eighty-Second Airborne.”

“If you’re not back in thirty minutes, I’ll be gone.”

I returned to the front gate and rang the bell. An old woman shuffled out of the house and crossed the garden. When she saw my face, she started calling for someone named Lawyer Hong. He appeared at the door, speaking English.

“Can I help you?”

“I want to speak to Miss Shin. About what happened at the demonstration.” I showed him my identification.

“Just a moment.” He closed the gate in my face and walked quickly back into the house. After a few minutes, he reappeared. “Miss Shin will be unable to talk to anyone for a few days.”

“But it’s about the man who was killed …”

The door slammed in my face again.

As I walked away, I saw a baggy-faced old man glowering at me from a second-story window. I hated to drop a dime on little Miss Shin like that. American boyfriends aren’t exactly good news to the ears of Korean parents. But it could have been worse. She could have been the one under those tires this afternoon.

I ducked back in the jeep and plopped into the passenger seat.

“No luck?”

“None.”

“Where to?”

“Let’s go find out a little bit more about the unfortunate Corporal Ralph Whitcomb.”

The Charge of Quarters at Headquarters Company, 8th Army, was unsure if he should let us into Whitcomb’s room.

“We showed you our identification,” Ernie said. “What more do you want?”

“You need a warrant or something, don’t you?”

“This is government property.” Ernie waved his arms, taking in the entire three-story building. “People inspect it inside and out all the time. Who needs a warrant?”

The little guy brushed his brown hair back and reached for the ring of keys on his hip. “I guess you’re right. The first sergeant came through this morning tearing down FTA signs, and last week the dogs came through sniffing for dope.”

“If anybody wants privacy,” Ernie said, “they better rent a hooch out in the village.”

We walked down the hallway and the CQ opened Whitcomb’s door. The cement block walls of the rectangular room had been painted a pale yellow. Bunks sat in three of the corners with big double-door wall lockers strategically placed to give each soldier a modicum of privacy. A row of shoes, starting with a highly spit-shined pair of combat boots, sat under each tightly made bunk. A bikinied Korean beauty beckoned from the OB Beer calendar on an otherwise naked wall.

There was no question about which bunk was Whitcomb’s. The wall behind was plastered with photographs, many showing him robust and alive. He had been about five foot ten and seemed to be always smiling. A shock of blond hair waved over a pair of army-issue horn-rimmed glasses. There were photos of him posing in front of pagodas and shrines and ancient ruins, all places that I’d heard about but never had the gumption to visit.

In some of the photos Whitcomb was accompanied by young Korean women. In those, the backdrop was usually what appeared to be college campuses.

“This guy didn’t waste his time or money on the girls out in the village,” Ernie said.

“No. Looks like he went after the good ones.”

Ernie checked some of the photos more closely. “Nice,” he said. “But these good ones can be more dangerous.”

“You’re talking about getting trapped into marriage.”

“That, too,” he said.

There were more photos in an album and a packet of new photographs in a cloudy transparent wrapper.

Miss Shin, without her chrysanthemum, stood next to Whitcomb on the campus of what looked like Chungang University. The plain, round-faced girl and the two young men we had seen at the police station were also smiling broadly at the lens. I turned it over. Their first names were penciled in, from left to right. Miss Shin’s first name was Myong-hui.

I stuck the photograph in my pocket.

“Time to visit a few dormitories,” I said.

“You’re just hoping we’ll run into a panty raid.”

“They have those here?”

“They have them everywhere,” Ernie said.

We didn’t bother with the administrative offices, just asked a young woman, strolling through the campus, where we could find the women’s dormitories. She pointed, surprised to see two big Caucasian men on campus. She wasn’t carrying any books. Classes had been cancelled for the day.

When we arrived at the row of dormitory buildings, we started asking young women if they knew the whereabouts of Shin Myong-hui or her friend. I showed them the photograph. Ernie kept picking out the best looking girls to question until we found one who was willing to answer. She also pointed, this time to a two-story brick building, and we trudged up cement steps until a middle-aged Korean woman barred our way. I spoke to her in Korean, showed her the photograph, and she ushered us toward a waiting room with a sitting area, a couple of card tables, and a pot of hot water on a charcoal-burning space heater.

Ernie wandered over to the game room next door and fumbled with the foosball machine.

The girl from the picture was short and her complexion was about the color of a cup of coffee lightened by an ounce of cream. She wore a plain beige skirt and blouse, kept wringing her hands in front of her flat belly, and bobbed her glasses beneath her crinkled brow. I asked her to sit down. The middle-aged woman made sure I caught her long hard look and then turned and marched out of the room.

The young woman pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket and started worrying it.

“We’re here about the American who was killed today,” I said.

Ernie padded into the room, pulled over a straight-backed chair, and sat down facing both of us.

I continued. “You’re a good friend of Miss Shin Myong-hui?”

“Yes.”

“The American, Ralph, he bought her a chrysanthemum today.”

The crinkles on her forehead softened for a moment, and she almost smiled.

“It was very nice,” she said.

“Were they lovers?”

“No. Not yet. But I think they would have been.”

She looked back down at the floor, and the handkerchief waggled.

“Tell me about them.”

Her sentences rolled out in precisely pronounced English, and I could see her editing her grammar as she went along.

“I was with Myong-hui when she met Ralph. He was taking photographs, here on campus, and he asked us to take a snapshot of him next to the fountain. Then he asked us, one by one, to pose with him. Later we went to a teahouse and talked, and before he went back to the compound, he had exchanged phone number with Myong-hui.

“At the time she didn’t think she’d ever hear from him again. Mainly she was curious-about Americans. He was the first she’d ever met. And the first I’d ever met. He seemed nice. I warned her about Hei-sok, her boyfriend, but she wouldn’t listen. She was always so open about everything. When he found out, he was upset, but he did his best to hide it. He tried to act …” She searched for a word. “… sophisticated about the whole thing. But I know he was very hurt and very angry. We met Ralph again about a week later, and he took us to see an American movie.”

“On Eighth Army compound?”

“Yes. In Yongsan. And after the movie we went to your snack bar and ate some ice cream. It was very delicious.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. When Hei-sok heard that we had gone to an American compound, he was furious, but he was smart enough not to scold Myong-hui. He knew that she would be sure to do whatever he told her not to do. Today was the fourth time we had seen Ralph, and the second time the four of us had gone together.”

“Who was the fourth person?”

“Pak Un-sil. Hei-sok’s friend. He is a very good student and wants to start a Department of Confucian Studies here at the university.”

“Confucian studies?”

“Yes. He is very upset that the old proprieties are not being observed.”

Ernie lifted his eyebrows. I changed the subject before he became too fidgety.

“Wasn’t Myong-hui concerned that her parents would become upset when she received a phone call from an American?”

“Ralph called Myong-hui at the dormitory.”

“I thought she lived in Hyonjo-dong with her parents.”

“No. She doesn’t like it there. She forced them to pay for a room in the dormitory here. She didn’t go home very often. Only when she was in trouble.”

“What kinds of trouble did she get into?”

“Well, her grades aren’t very good. And she’s had a lot of boyfriends.” Her voice trailed off. “But today is the biggest trouble yet.”

I asked it softly. “Why?”

She looked up and her eyes widened. “Because now everyone will know she had a date with an American.”

I nodded. Made sense to me. Ernie opened a new package of gum but didn’t offer her any.

“When did Ralph call her?”

“Two days ago. He said he was off today, Friday, and he wanted to meet us and go to one of the teahouses near here. Our teahouses at Chungang University are very famous. Many young people come here for the music and the artwork.”

“If there was going to be a demonstration, why did you meet him here?’

“We didn’t know there was going to be a demonstration. We found out about that later, but we didn’t think it would be so big. And we didn’t think that the army would come.”

“Why did Hei-sok and his friend come along?”

“I think he wanted to keep an eye on his rival.”

“How did Myong-hui feel about that?”

“She didn’t mind. I think she liked the idea of men competing for her.”

I pulled the photograph out of my pocket. “Is this Hei-sok?”

“Yes.”

“And this is his friend, Pak Un-sil?”

“Yes. They go everywhere together.”

“Is Pak Un-sil your boyfriend?”

“Oh, no.” She dropped her handkerchief and turned a bright red. I waited for her to bend over and pick up the handkerchief.

“It must have been awkward,” I said. “Ralph here to see Myong-hui and yet all five of you together?”

“Yes. It was awkward.” She sat up a little straighter, her normal color gradually returning. “The only reason I stayed was to support Myong-hui against Hei-sok. But it turned out that Hei-sok’s friend was the one who kept making mean remarks. About Americans. Ralph couldn’t understand, of course.”

“What sort of remarks?”

“About your impoliteness.” She looked at me and almost smiled. “Things like that. Myong-hui didn’t like it at all.”

“What happened after you met Ralph?”

“First we went to a teahouse. We all had coffee, except for Myong-hui. She had cola. Hei-sok tried to act as if he were very rich and insisted on paying for everything. After about an hour the demonstration was starting and some students were making speeches over loudspeakers, so we went outside to see what was happening. Everything was fine until the army moved in. It was funny at first, their taking it so seriously. It was only a few speeches, about politics. I really didn’t pay much attention. That’s when Ralph stopped in the shop and bought the flower for Myong-hui.”

“What did Hei-sok think?”

“He was angry, but he didn’t say anything. Myong-hui loved the flower. Instead of spending so much money in the teahouse, Hei-sok should have done something like that. Since his money was all gone, all he did was pluck a withered old blossom for her hair. I think that’s what gave Ralph the idea, but she threw the blossom away when Ralph gave her the more beautiful flower he bought in the shop.”

“Was the blossom a mukung-hua?”

“Yes. You know about our national flower?”

She seemed impressed, which is why I said it. I had paid close attention during my Korean language classes. Might as well get some credit.

“What about Hei-sok’s friend?” I said. “How did he react?”

“I didn’t see because that’s when everyone started yelling when they noticed the riot police moving in behind us. We couldn’t get out. It was strange, really. They kept telling us to leave the area, but there was no way out. I wasn’t too worried then, there were so many of us, and everyone had been peaceful. But of course the speakers had said so many impolite things about our president. I think that must have made the soldiers angry.”

“What did you do when the armored vehicles moved forward?”

“We tried to move out of the way. Students climbed over fences and ran down alleys. The vehicle moved very slowly. I’m sure the driver didn’t intend to run over anyone.”

“Did you see Ralph go down?”

“No. There was too much confusion.”

“Where was Hei-sok?”

“I don’t know. Myong-hui and I were holding on to one another, trying to get out of the way. We didn’t see what happened to Ralph. It was only later that we heard about it.”

“Does Hei-sok live on campus?”

“Yes. In the first men’s dormitory.”

I put my hand in the right pocket of my coat, Ernie’s cue to take over the interrogation.

“Young lady,” he said, “do you love Myong-hui?”

She seemed to be surprised that Ernie could speak. “She is my best friend.”

“And you’d want to protect her, wouldn’t you, from ruining her life by becoming involved with a foreigner?”

“I think it would be best to marry a Korean,” she said, and then her mouth fell open. “You think that I …”

“Where were you when Whitcomb went down?”

“I told you. We were trying to get away. It was an accident. He must have fallen.”

“This Hei-sok, does he study tae kwon do?”

“No. He is very frail. He could not have done anything like that.”

And then she dropped her head into her lap and she was crying.

My face felt feverish by now, the flu shot was getting to me, but I took a breath of the garden-scented air and the dizziness subsided.

We had to ask directions a couple of times, but gradually we made our way to the boy’s dormitory on the other side of campus. The boys in the waiting room looked at us suspiciously, but soon shouts were ringing up the big cement hallways for Li Hei-sok. He looked thin and frightened, and there were still scratches on his neck from where a policeman must have collared him. We walked with him into the game room, getting as far away as possible from a pair of students slamming a small white globe at one another in a vicious round of Ping-Pong.

Ernie backed him into a corner.

“You pushed him,” he said. “You pushed Whitcomb, he fell, and then the armored vehicle ran over him. And we’re here to take you in.”

He looked at me, confused. I translated what Ernie had said into Korean.

“No,” he said. “It didn’t happen that way. I didn’t do it. You don’t understand.”

He fell back against the wall, clutched his stomach, and looked about him for support. The Ping-Pong ball careened back and forth.

Some of the other young men noticed Hei-sok’s frantic face and wandered over. Just curiosity so far, but I wondered if the hot emotions of the morning would carry over into the dismal afternoon. My fever was coming back.

When I heard the slam, I almost jumped out of my suit.

The word propriety flashed through my mind, and I remembered my Korean language teacher slamming his pointer down on the desk, explaining the cardinal rules of Confucian propriety. I cursed myself for not seeing it earlier.

It was a baseball bat, coming down flush on the Ping-Pong table. The little guy with glasses in the photograph, the one Myong-hui’s friend had said was named Pak Un-sil, stood before us. His breath came hard, and he wore a white bandana tied around his forehead. Indecipherable Chinese characters were slashed in red ink across the bandana. He spit as he screamed, but I could pick up most of what he was saying.

“Don’t touch him, you fornicating foreign dogs! You’ve ruined enough here in our country. Whitcomb deserved what happened to him. I pushed him, and I’d push him again!”

He slammed the baseball bat back down on the Ping-Pong table for effect. It was certainly getting that. I was dizzy and feverish, only from the flu shot, I hoped.

“Whitcomb was trying to get Myong-hui, even though he knew that she was Hei-sok’s girlfriend. He bought her a flower and presented it to her right in front of all of us. He didn’t care who was embarrassed. He didn’t care about his own face, and he didn’t care about any of us. He just wanted her. To use her and then throw her away, like he threw away our national flower. I would not let him insult Koreans like that.”

Ernie backed away from the cowering Li Hei-sok, and we both took a couple of steps from each other so if Pak Un-sil went for one of us, the other would be able to get him from behind. I saw Ernie glance at a chair he could grab if the kid lunged. I was ready to turn over the Ping-Pong table.

A crowd gathered, at a respectful distance. Nobody wanted to get too near a loony with a baseball bat.

The young man slammed his bat onto the top of the Ping-Pong table again. It rattled. He slammed the bat again, and the table gave up and caved in. Splinters flew everywhere. Ernie lifted the chair, like a lion tamer, and charged. The kid swung and almost knocked the chair out of Ernie’s hands. I pounced on the kid’s back, grabbing for his arms, and then Ernie gripped the bat. The three of us waltzed around the room a couple of times, sweating and cursing, until Ernie ripped the bat from the young man’s hands.

He was still cursing, frothing at the mouth, and he tried to bite me. I let go and then the other kids were around us, everyone pushing and shouting, and the stocky kid broke away and darted upstairs.

Ernie and I wrestled ourselves free and ran after him.

I heard his footsteps pounding up past the second floor landing and on up to the third floor. Wood rattled, and when we arrived at the top I saw his sneakers disappearing through a trapdoor in the ceiling. Ernie went first. He pushed the door up carefully, ready to drop back quickly if the kid had found another bat. The coast was clear, and when he was up, I scrambled up after him.

On the roof of the big dorm, eternity loomed above us, domed by a vast gray sky. No sign of the kid. Ernie pointed toward the stone spire. He was climbing up, over gargoyles, like a crazed Korean Quasimodo. We ran over and started shouting at him to come down. Wasting our breath.

“I’m not going up there,” Ernie said. “No way.”

More students came up on the roof and stood around gawking. They cupped their hands around their mouths and shouted. The kid kept climbing.

When he reached the top of the spire, he straddled the pinnacle and stood straight up, his arms outstretched. He looked fragile up there, against the gray Asian sky.

A wave of nausea ran through me. Whether it was from the flu shot or from the heights or from the desperate young man wavering above me, I couldn’t be sure. I have never been sure.

More students gathered down below in front of the dormitory, and I heard their distant cries.

I decided I had to try, and I walked toward the spire. I found a handhold, braced myself, and looked up.

The young man’s arms were outstretched, and his eyes closed for a moment as if he were praying. Then his knees flexed and he pushed himself forward, and for a few brief seconds he was flying.

I can still hear the crunch. And then the screams.

The line-of-duty investigation determined that since Corporal Ralph Whitcomb had died as a result of unauthorized activities, his parents were ineligible to draw his serviceman’s group life insurance. Eighth Army put out a special bulletin reminding everyone to stay away from political rallies of any sort-especially student demonstrations.

Whitcomb was, however, authorized a headstone by the Veteran’s Administration.

It took two days’ worth of brandy to rid myself of the flu.