The Wandering Ghost

4

B efore I dropped out of high school to join the army, I played some football. Being as big as I am made me an anomaly among the Chicanos of Lincoln High School in East L.A. The coach wasn’t sure what to do with me so, of course, he put me on the line. Right tackle, but then he moved me to guard. Although I was too tall to play guard-in the usual way these things are looked at-the coach saw that I could pull off the line quickly. As soon as the ball was snapped, I moved to my right or my left, behind my other teammates on the line who were lunging forward. My job was to hit some defender, when he was least expecting it, and knock open a hole for the ball carrier to plunge through. That was the theory.

The fact of the matter was that our coach wasn’t the greatest tactician who ever paced the edge of the gridiron, and most of the other guys on the team-almost all Chicanos like me-were barely big enough to support their shoulder pads. We lost every game. Except for the one brawl we had with Roosevelt High-but that’s another story.

Still, our coach was right about one thing. I could move off the line quickly, without tipping the defenders as to which way I was going to move. It was a skill that I reverted to when I heard those MP footsteps closing on us.

I swiveled and crouched and launched myself at them, body parallel to the ground, in a flying block that I hoped would throw them off stride. It did. My shoulder hit one guy in the stomach, my rump hit another in the knees, and the third guy got whacked on the shins by my flying feet. All three went down. I rolled atop them, hoping to cause as much damage as possible and, as soon as I was able, popped back to my feet. Then I slugged another guy coming in, and another. It worked for a few seconds, but finally I was enveloped by a sea of sweaty gray. I crouched, winging punches to my right and my left. Fists rained down on my back. I covered my head as best as I could, bulled forward and would’ve fallen flat on my face but there were so many bodies around me that I was held upright. Punch after punch landed on the back of my head and my spine and flailed against my aching ribs.

Someone shouted. “Back in formation, dammit! Form your ranks. What is this? A freaking mob?”

The sergeant leading the formation, the same voice who’d been calling out the cadence. God bless him. The men around me started to back off but one or two of them winged in another chingaso, a sneak punch.

When the MPs moved away, I turned unsteadily on my feet and saw the face of my benefactor: Sergeant First Class Otis, the desk sergeant who’d first greeted me and Ernie when we arrived at Division PMO. He was dressed in the same gray sweats and green pull-down cap as his troops. I felt like embracing him for saving me but instead he shoved me back.

“I should’ve let them kill you,” he said. Then he shoved me again, his fist in my chest. Hard. “That’s for Weatherwax.”

A blast filled the air.

Ernie. He had fired his. 45 into the air, above the MP formation. Some of the men fell to the ground, a few of them crouched. Most held their ground. He stood behind me, jacket ripped off his right shoulder, face bruised, but holding the. 45 steady, smoke pouring from its barrel, aimed right between the eyes of Sergeant Otis.

“Move ’em out, Sarge,” Ernie growled. “Smartly.”

Otis glared at him for a moment, as if trying to decide if he should cross the five yards between them and slap the automatic pistol out of Ernie’s hand. But he decided against it. Instead, he turned back to the grumbling formation, started shouting at them to fall into ranks and, within seconds, the Headquarters Company of the 2nd Infantry Division Military Police was trotting down the road. Silent now. No one calling cadence. The pounding of their feet faded into the distance. Ernie reholstered the. 45.

“You look like shit,” he said.

“Thanks. So do you.”

Ernie fingered some of the new bruises on his face. “Touchy, aren’t they?”

“Apparently.”

I straightened myself out as best I could and ran my fingers through my hair and Ernie and I marched to the main gate. This time, when we entered the guard shack, the lone MP didn’t give us any shit. Maybe it was the look in our eyes.

At the transient billets, Ernie and I washed up and changed into coats and ties. It was the duty day now and we wanted to look sharp so as not to give the 2nd Division honchos anything extra to criticize us for. On the way back to the main gate we stopped at the Indianhead Snack Bar, dragged a couple of trays through the chow line, and took a table next to the window near the entrance. Ernie shoveled pulverized scrambled eggs into his trap. I sipped coffee. Gingerly. Between bruised lips.

“We should go to the dispensary,” I said.

“Screw that,” Ernie replied. “So Spec Six Wehry can laugh at us?”

“Not everybody in Division is against us, Ernie.”

“They could’ve fooled me.”

Ernie was right. So far we hadn’t made many allies. Everywhere we turned people were worried that we’d embarrass the Division. Cause them grief. And were outraged if we so much as laid a finger on one of their comrades. Where did this loyalty come from? Was it a healthy thing in a combat unit? Or was there something deeper? Something everybody was afraid of? I reminded myself to fight off paranoia. An occupational hazard for a cop.

And I reminded myself that we had, in fact, found three allies. Brandy, the “soul sister” bartender at the Black Cat Club, and Ok-hi and Jeannie, the business girls who’d helped me cadge a lead from the band leader at the Silver Dragon. All of them were Korean women. That didn’t bother me. I liked Korean women.

“How’s your paperwork coming?” Ernie asked.

“What paperwork?”

Ernie smirked. “Your marriage paperwork.”

He was referring to the fact that for an American GI to marry a Korean woman, a whole series of certifications and permissions must be requested, both from the U.S. military and from the Korean government. He was also referring to the fact that a few weeks ago I’d submitted such paperwork.

“Pulled it,” I said.

“I thought you and Miss Ryu were doing well together.”

Miss Ryu had been my Korean language teacher. She was a graduate student at Ewha University and almost exactly my age. Her job on the U.S. Army compound was helping to finance her master’s degree. At first, I’d been her best student. Then we’d started seeing one another at coffee shops and afterwards taking long strolls through parks and museums and ancient palaces. Our interests were similar, our personalities in tune. And, although she wore thick-lensed glasses and most GIs thought she looked bookish, to me she was beautiful.

“We were doing well,” I said.

Ernie leaned back in his chair. “Okay,” he said, “you can tell Uncle Ernie. What went wrong?”

I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I stared at two GIs jostling one another for the right to drop a quarter into the snack bar’s jukebox. Finally, one of them relented and clanging rock music emerged from the speakers.

Once our marriage paperwork was submitted, Miss Ryu knew she had to tell her parents about our romance. But she also knew that the thought of her marrying someone other than a Korean- and worse yet an American GI-would be a crippling blow to them. The loss of face amongst their family and friends and her father’s colleagues at work would be enormous. It’s not racism exactly. Ethnocentrism describes it better. Koreans have lived together as one tribe on this narrow Asian peninsula for so long that the thought of a well-brought-up woman marrying a long-nosed foreigner is difficult to bear. We’re just too different. Culturally, physically, psychologically. She thought about it and thought about it. Finally, Miss Ryu lacked the courage to speak of such a thing to her parents. She told me to pull the paperwork.

“My father’s sick,” she explained. “His heart.” She tapped herself on the chest. “And I’m their only daughter.”

Her parent’s only daughter, lost to a foreigner. What would their ancestors think?

I took the news with what I hoped was stoicism. And I tried to reassure her that I understood. Actually, I supposed I did. Her parents were everything to her. If I had parents, I’d probably feel the same way. Still, that didn’t mean that her decision didn’t hurt. Since then, I hadn’t been to class and we hadn’t met socially. The temporary assignment to the 2nd Division area had, in fact, come as a relief. A chance to be by myself. A chance to think.

“All that?” Ernie said, responding to my silence.

“Yeah.” I sipped on my coffee. “All that.”

I didn’t feel guilty about having spent the night with Jeannie. Miss Ryu and I were no longer an item. I was a free man. Free as a pigeon flying over the DMZ. With GIs taking potshots from below.

The man who booked the entertainment in the Tongduchon area worked days only. It was already half past nine in the morning but in the cold winter air, the morning fog that blanketed the alleys of Tongduchon had not yet burned off. We turned down one narrow walkway and then another until finally I found it: 21 bonji, 36 ho. The sign above the door said KIMCHEE ENTERTAINMENT in English. KUKCHEI UMAK, in Korean: International Music. That’s not unusual for Korean companies. They’ll have one name that sounds good in English and another that sounds good in Korean. The two don’t necessarily have to match.

The door was open and we walked in.

His name was Pak Tong-i. He was a wrinkled Korean man who wore a French beret atop his round head and as we spoke, he continued to puff on a Turtle Boat brand cigarette through an ivory holder. Yes, he knew all about Kim Yong-ai.

“One of my best strippers,” he said. The English was accented but understandable. “GI love her too much. You know, big geegee.” He cupped his hands in front of his chest.

“So who did she owe money to?” Ernie asked.

“Stripper always owe money,” he said. “That’s why they get into business. Maybe their mom owe money, maybe their daddy owe money, maybe they have younger brother who want to go to school. Very expensive, how you say, hakbi?”

“Tuition,” I told him.

While Pak Tong-i shook his head, thinking about the high cost of tuition, I asked another question.

“So when Kim Yong-ai ran away, somebody must’ve been very angry that she ran away without paying what she owed.”

Pak’s eyes widened. “Nobody angry.”

“Why not?”

“When she run away, she don’t owe money.”

“Wait a minute,” Ernie said. “I thought you just told us that she owed a lot of money.”

“She did. But before she left, same day, she pay all.”

Now it was our turn to be stupefied.

“She come in here,” Pak continued, “that morning. With big American woman. They have big pile of GI money. They pay all.”

“How much?”

“Miguk money?” Pak asked himself. American money? He puffed on his cigarette while he thought about it. Finally he said, “Peik man won. Maybe two thousand dollar.”

Ernie whistled.

I showed Pak the photograph of Jill Matthewson.

“That her,” he said. “She make great stripper.”

“Where did this Miss Kim find the money to pay you off?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I no ask.”

“Did they tell you they were leaving Tongduchon?”

“Yes. Miss Kim say she no workey for me no more.”

“Where’d they go?”

“I don’t know,” Pak answered. “I no ask.”

We pressured him for a while but finally gave up. If he knew where they’d gone, he wasn’t talking.

Later that morning, I reviewed Corporal Jill Matthewson’s bank records. Eighth Army can do these things. The banks that do business on base camps in Korea are chartered under military regulation and sign away most of their stateside rights. Anyway, that’s the way it was explained to me. True or not, the Office of the Judge Advocate General says it’s legal. But of course JAG says it’s legal mainly because the 8th Army commander says it’s legal. I perused the records carefully. No major withdrawals before she disappeared. Mainly because there was nothing to withdraw. Her balance was less than ten dollars. Most of Jill Matthewson’s military paycheck had been forwarded by allotment to her mother in Terre Haute, Indiana. The rest was what you’d expect for a young woman to spend on herself, for clothes and other personal items. About a hundred dollars a month. Jill had only been in country a little over five months. In that amount of time, she certainly hadn’t saved two thousand clams by being thrifty.

Theoretically, Jill could’ve raised the two thousand dollars to pay off Kim Yong-ai’s debts from black-marketing. U.S.-manufactured goods are shipped by the boatful from the States to the military PXs in Korea-all at U.S. taxpayers’ expense. No customs duties are paid so the goods are cheap. For example, a GI can buy a portable tape recorder in the PX for say, forty bucks and turn around and sell it out in the ville for 40,000 won, the equivalent of eighty dollars. In other words, double his money. Of course, black-marketing is strictly illegal and GIs are prosecuted for it all the time. Still, it’s widespread, the temptation being too much for ordinary mortals. But Jill Matthewson’s ration control record was clean. She’d purchased very little out of the PX, only what she needed for what the army likes to call “personal health and welfare.”

So where had the two thousand dollars come from?

Certainly, Miss Kim, a poor Korean stripper, couldn’t come up with that much money. “Peik man won,” Mr. Pak had told us. Literally, “One hundred ten thousand won.” By our way of counting, a million won. By today’s exchange rate, equivalent to roughly two thousand dollars U.S. Taaksan tone, in the GI parlance. A lot of dough. How in the world had either Corporal Jill Matthewson or the stripper Kim Yong-ai come up with it? I set the question aside for now. Instead, I concentrated on the other tip that the owner of Kimchee Entertainment had provided.

“Corporal Jill very famous in Tongduchon,” he told us.

“Famous? Why?”

“She help Chon family.” I stared at him blankly. “You arra.” You know. “Chon family daughter run over by GI truck.”

Then I understood. The case had made news even down in Seoul. Two GIs, driving a two-and-a-half-ton truck near Camp Casey, had struck a young Korean girl. The accident happened early in the morning while she was on her way to middle school. The girl, they say, bounced twenty yards and, according to the eyewitness reports, died just minutes after impact. There had been demonstrations calling for the GIs to be punished, but a 2nd Division court-martial determined that the death was accidental. The two GIs were transferred back to the States. More demonstrations ensued. 8th Army’s attitude was that the Koreans were being ungrateful. After all, we are here defending their country and accidents do happen.

The price of freedom you might call it.

According to the booking agent, Pak Tong-i, Corporal Jill Matthew-son had been the first MP on the scene. She’d provided first aid- futile, as it turned out-and later she’d done everything she could to help the family of the deceased girl. As far as the citizens of Tongdu-chon were concerned, Jill was the only American who had tried to do the right thing. The rest of the American reaction-trying the GIs in a secret tribunal on Camp Casey, not calling all relevant witnesses, and finally acquitting the GIs and sending them back to the States-had been totally unacceptable. Demonstrations outside the main gate of Camp Casey were the result. And if it hadn’t been for the brutal intervention of the Korean National Police, those demonstrations might’ve turned into anti-American riots.

The missing woman’s connection to the Chon matter was news to us. Why hadn’t the 2nd Division mentioned Jill Matthewson’s involvement in this case in their report of her disappearance? Did they consider it to be irrelevant? Maybe it was. Still, I needed to know for sure. It just seemed like a heck of a big thing to leave out.

After checking Jill’s account at the bank, Ernie and I drove over to the Division motor pool.

“Anyong-hashi-motor-pool,” Ernie said as we drove in.

Anyonghashimnka is the Korean formal greeting, like “hello.” Literally, it means “Are you at peace?” with an honorific verb ending added on to sweeten it a bit. GI slang has morphed this long greeting into something more pronounceable: Anyong-hashi-motor-pool. Don’t ask me why. It makes no sense. But it sounds funny.

A red placard above a side door to a Quonset hut read: TRAFFIC SAFETY OFFICE, SECOND INFANTRY DIVISION, SECOND TO NONE!

Ernie parked the jeep and we walked in. It was a tiny office with a diesel space heater, a gray desk, and a few beat-up old metal file cabinets. Nobody home. Ernie and I walked back outside and as we did so, a small man with a bright red mustache hustled up to us.

“Had an accident?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Ernie replied. “You the Safety NCO?”

“That’s me.” He thrust a thumb into his chest. “Oscar L. Bernewright. What can I do for you?”

He was a short man, oddly proportioned, almost like a dwarf. He wore grease-stained fatigues and the insignia of a sergeant first class pinned to his collar at a slightly twisted angle. Green eyes shone brightly over his red mustache and he gazed at us intently from beneath his fur-lined cap.

“Chon Un-suk,” I said.

His wrinkled features fell. “The dead girl,” he said. His voice came out raspy.

“Yes.”

His green eyes moistened and for a minute I thought he was going to cry. Then he recovered and studied our civilian attire and our grim demeanor. “You’re those CID agents I been hearing about. From Eighth Army.”

Our fame had spread.

“That’s us,” I said.

“I been waiting for you,” Sergeant Bernewright said.

Ernie and I glanced at one another. Waiting for us?

“Come on.” Bernewright waved with his left hand. “We’ll talk. Not in my office, it’s too small. There’s a fresh pot of coffee brewing in the toolshed.”

We followed him across a vast expanse of blacktop. Engines roared. Two-and-a-half ton trucks swirled in slow circles like skaters on a field of ice. Sergeant Bernewright hustled rapidly across the lot on his short legs.

“If he’s been waiting for us,” Ernie told me, “maybe we should go in guns blazing.”

“This isn’t an ambush,” I replied. “Relax.”

The inside of the toolshed reeked of oil, diesel fumes, and coffee. After serving ourselves a hot cup of joe and finding seats on wooden benches, Sergeant Bernewright described the accident involving the now famous middle-school girl, Chon Un-suk.

“Two GIs in a deuce-and-a-half driving through Tongduchon early in the morning. Poor driving conditions. Fog. Narrow road. No sidewalk. Middle-school kids lining the muddy edge of the road waiting for their bus.”

“Were the GIs speeding?” Ernie asked.

“Of course they were speeding,” Bernewright answered. “They’re GIs, aren’t they? Nothing more than teenagers. The guy in the passenger seat has a little more rank than the other one, but do you think he’s going to ask his buddy to slow down? No way. They’re having fun. The speed limit there is thirty klicks, about twenty miles per hour. After measuring the skid and the other evidence at the scene, I figure those two bozos were doing at least forty. Maybe more.”

“Why weren’t they pulled over?”

Bernewright winced. “Korean traffic patrols never stop GIs,” he explained. “Not up here at Division anyway. That would be interfering with military operations. Not a chance. Not when the president of the country is a former general and the whole damn government is run as if it were a military operation. Which it is. Or might as well be. And on our side, we don’t have enough MPs to patrol the roads anywhere but on Camp Casey itself. So young American GI drivers are given a huge vehicle, a tank full of diesel, and they’re set loose on an unsuspecting Korean populace.”

“Sounds like you get a lot of this.”

“Over a hundred accidents a year. That’s the ones that are reported. Ten percent of them result in injury or death.”

“Chon Un-suk was standing in front of the other students.” I remembered this from Korean newspaper reports. “She was the safety monitor.”

“Right. She had a whistle, white gloves, a sash across her chest that said ‘safety first’ in Korean. The works. They tell me that she was blowing her whistle and holding up her hand, palm out, ordering the deuce-and-a-half to slow down when it slid sideways in the mud and smacked her head-on at full speed.”

Ernie grimaced.

“A mess,” Bernewright continued. “Little girls screaming, parents frantically running through the crowd searching for their children, an enraged pack of Korean men kicking the crap out of the GI who’d been driving the truck and his passenger. And then Jill Matthewson and her partner pull up in their MP jeep, siren blaring.

“Her partner jumps out waving his billy club. Jill approaches the accident victim, Chon Un-suk, trying to force the crowd back to let the girl have a chance to breathe. So far, no one’s attending to the girl so Jill kneels down and does what she can. Clears the air passage, checks for bleeding, loosens the girl’s clothing and elevates her feet. Then she takes off her own fatigue blouse and wraps the girl to keep her warm, hopefully delay the onset of shock. Meanwhile, a Korean ambulance arrives but at the same time the girl’s father erupts on the scene. He shoves Jill out of the way, sees his daughter on the ground and then, realizing she’s still breathing-barely-he lifts her up and starts to carry her home. The Korean paramedics stand by and do nothing. Jill’s shocked. She’s sure the girl’s suffering from internal bleeding, and she knows enough about first aid to know that in order to save her life the girl has to be taken to an emergency room immediately, if not sooner.

“When nobody acts, she does. Jill grabs the father and holds him, screaming and pointing to the ambulance. The father won’t hear of it. Why, no one knows.”

I did. Or at least I thought I did. I explained it to Sergeant Bernewright. And to Ernie. In Korean tradition, it is believed that if someone dies away from home their spirit, when it rises and leaves the body, will become disoriented. It will become lost and then, being away from home, away from the shrine set up by its family, the spirit will become a wandering ghost. Without the proper ceremonies, without offerings of incense and food, without the prayers of the people who loved the spirit in life, it will never be able to make the transition from wandering ghost to revered ancestor. So Chon Un-suk’s father’s reaction was rational from his point of view. He didn’t want his daughter to be hauled away by strangers to die alone in some emergency room. He wanted to take care of her. He wanted to make sure she died at home, not on the street where she’d be lost and would wander alone for eternity-with no one to burn incense at her shrine, no one to pray at her gravesite, and no one to make offerings of food and drink to ease her sojourn through the underworld.

A hungry ghost, the Koreans call such a creature. A spirit whom no one remembers. A spirit who can’t find its way home.

Ernie stirred more sugar into his coffee. “When did this shit start?” he asked.

“What?” I asked. “Wandering ghosts?”

“Yeah.”

“In ancient times.”

“How come I never heard of it?”

“How many Koreans have you been around that died away from home?”

He thought about this. I knew the answer. None.

“Besides,” I said, “ensuring that a loved one dies at home is not a modern custom. Most Koreans trust Western medicine nowadays and most of them die in hospitals. Alone.”

“Progress,” Bernewright said.

“When Jill couldn’t stop the father,” I asked, “what did she do?”

“She wrestled with the old man,” Bernewright told us. “He wrestled back. And then a horrible thing happened. Chon Un-suk fell to the ground. ‘With a big thud,’ Jill told me. Everyone was shocked and for a moment-Jill said it seemed like hours-there was a deathly silence. Then, like one person, the Korean crowd inhaled and when they exhaled it was in a solid rush and they fell upon Jill like a pack of demons.”

“So the father took Chon Un-suk home?” Ernie asked.

“Yes. The best we can tell, she was dead before she arrived.”

“So maybe her ghost is still wandering.”

“Maybe,” Bernewright said. “Luckily, three MP jeeps arrived about the same time Jill went down. They waded into the crowd, busting heads, and pulled her to safety. She kept screaming for them to leave her alone, and one buck sergeant told me that she cracked him a good one in the chops.”

“Bold,” Ernie said.

“Yeah,” Bernewright agreed. “But he was just trying to help. When Jill pushed through the crowd searching for Chon Un-suk, the Korean mob attacked her again. The MPs pulled her out once more and this time they handcuffed her, threw her in the back seat of a jeep, and drove her to the dispensary on Camp Casey.”

“She was hurt badly?” I asked.

“Not exactly. But she was hysterical, she wanted to go back, save the girl. One of the medics told me they had to strap her down on the gurney and shoot her up with a sedative. Even then, it took ten minutes to calm her down.”

Ernie’s eyes were glassy by this time; he’d stopped stirring his coffee. The faraway look in his eye told me that, for once, Ernie Bascom had found a woman he could respect.

Later, at the Indianhead Snack Bar, I placed a call to Seoul. Sergeant Riley, the CID Detachment Admin NCO, was anxious to talk to me.

“What kind of hell are you two raising up there?” he asked. “The Division honchos have been messaging Eighth Army asking us to recall you because you’re looking into all sorts of things that have nothing to do with the disappearance of Jill Matthewson.”

“What things?”

“They didn’t specify. But they also said you’ve been running the ville, drinking all your travel pay, and punching out MPs.”

“He was tailing us,” I told Riley.

“Who?”

“An off-duty MP.”

“What did you expect? You’re in Division.”

I was getting tired of people telling me that, as if I hadn’t figured it out for myself.

“Are we withdrawn?” I asked.

“Not yet. But the Eighth Army provost marshal is taking it under advisement.”

I asked Riley to use his influence at the 8th Army Data Processing Center and pull a few ration control records for me. I heard paper rustling and ballpoint pen being popped.

“Shoot,” Riley said.

I gave him three names.

“You must be kidding,” Riley said.

“No kidding involved,” I replied. “Get me the information, Riley. I need it.”

Before he could protest further, I hung up.

The Chon family home sat on a hill gazing down on the western edge of Tonguduchon. Brick and cement apartment buildings, none over three stories tall, were interspersed between ancient-looking wooden huts that must’ve once been part of a traditional farming village. At the edge of the line of homes, fallow rice paddies stretched toward a two-lane highway that ran west from Camp Casey. About twenty miles farther on, across a range of hills, the road reached the city of Munsan in the Western Corridor.

Flagstone steps led up to the Chon residence. As I gazed at the cool, mist-shrouded morning, it was easy to see that this homestead, with its commanding view of the valley, had once been the ancestral home of the local yangban family, the educated Confucian elite who had ruled Korea during the Yi Dynasty.

How long had the Yi Dynasty lasted? From the fourteenth century right up to modern times, when the Japanese Imperial Army annexed Korea as a colony in 1910.

Carved wooden poles on either side of the pathway represented Chonha Daejangkun, the General of the Upper World, and Jiha Yojangkun, the Goddess of the Underworld. The walls of the Chon compound were made of lumber slats faded to a deep amber. The buildings behind were topped with tile roofs upturned at the edges. Clay beasts perched along the ridges, protecting the family from evil spirits.

Ancient shamanistic traditions still exist in Korea. Everywhere.

The big wooden entrance gate stood wide open. From within floated the muffled snicker of girlish laughter. Ernie and I stepped through the gate. The courtyard was well kept. Gravel raked, naked rose bushes knotted with strips of white cloth, tiny cement pagodas flanking blue ponds shimmering with golden koi.

An open area in the center of the courtyard held a shrine: A stone foundation with wooden stanchions supporting a tile roof that was a replica of the tile roof that covered the entire home. Bolted into the stanchions was a framed photograph, bordered with black silk, of a young Korean girl. Her face was unsmiling. She stared straight ahead, almost as if she were cross-eyed, trying to focus. Her jet black hair was pulled back and braided into two plaits and she wore the immaculately pressed white blouse of a middle-school student. Directly in front of the photograph was another stone stand, this one holding an ornate bronze urn. From the urn, three sticks of incense smoldered. Pungent puffs of smoke rose past the photograph, wafting their way to the gray-skied heavens above.

Two teenage girls, wearing the white blouses and long black skirts of middle-school students, knelt in front of the shrine. Nervously, they kept trying to light additional sticks of incense but as one of the girls fumbled with the match, the other berated her for her clumsiness. They both worked hard at stifling their giggles.

Ernie and I stopped and stared at the photograph for a moment. Quietly. Waiting for the two girls to finish their homage. They did. They stood and bowed. When they saw us, their eyes widened in surprise. Both smooth faces flushed red, the girls snatched up their school bags, nodded to us as they passed and, holding hands, they hustled out the main gate and down the pathway heading back toward Tongduchon.

“Cute kids,” Ernie said. “Must’ve been friends of the dead girl.”

“Maybe,” I answered. “Or just schoolmates. Koreans are very reverential of the dead. There’s an old saying my language teacher taught us.”

“Here we go.”

I pressed on. “‘A man needs three wives,’ the Koreans say. ‘A Chinese wife for his kitchen, a Japanese wife for his bed, and a Korean wife to tend his grave.’ ”

Ernie stared at me, amused. “I like the Japanese part.”

“You would. Come on.”

We walked across the courtyard to the front of the Chon residence.

The home featured a traditional elevated wood-slat floor, varnished and sparkling with cleanliness. Ernie and I slipped off our shoes and, in our stocking feet, stepped up onto the slick surface. I knocked on the edge of the oil-papered door. We waited. No answer. I knocked again and then again. Finally, I shouted, “Yoboseiyo!”

When there was still no answer, I looked at Ernie. He shrugged and I leaned forward and slid back the sliding, latticework door. Together, we entered the Chon family living quarters.

The ondol floor was covered with padded vinyl instead of a rug. Against the wall, mother-of-pearl tables, varnished chairs, cabinets. Artwork everywhere. Traditional Yi Dynasty paintings, both framed and embedded into standing silk screens.

“Yoboseiyo,” I said again. Still no answer.

Something was burning.

We followed the smell down a long a hallway: jasmine. More latticework sliding doors lined either side. Finally, we entered a wood-floored hall. Candles flickered, more incense burned, and a bronze Buddha held his left hand upright, thumb to forefinger, pinkie sticking straight out. Indicating, by this simple sign, that the universe is one.

A middle-aged Korean woman sat cross-legged on the floor. Her black hair hung down in greasy strings and she wore loose pantaloons and a blouse made of sackcloth, the traditional Korean garb of mourning. In front of her sat a short-legged serving table bearing a photograph of Chon Un-suk, the same picture as outside but smaller. A pair of chopsticks, a spoon, and a metal bowl of rice gruel had been carefully placed in front of the photograph, as if in offering. Breakfast for a spirit. In the guttering candlelight I could see that the woman’s skin was cracked and tight. Her features looked similar to the girl in the photograph. Chon Un-suk’s mother, without a doubt. Calmly, she stared at us, a look of perplexity on her face.

I knelt on the floor. So did Ernie.

“Anyonghashimnika,” I said. The formal greeting. Are you at peace?

She stared at me a long time. Confused. Finally she said, “Nugu?” Who?

“Nanun Mipalkun,” I said. I’m from 8th Army. Then I launched into my standard explanation of being an investigator, giving my name and Ernie’s name and then briefly flashing my badge.

The woman seemed totally uninterested.

I told her I was sorry about her daughter’s untimely death.

“Sorry?” she said in English. “You sorry?”

“Yes,” I replied.

She turned her head and barked a sardonic laugh. “You Americans kill her, then you sorry?”

She barked the laugh again.

Ernie started to say something but I waved him off.

“Jill Matthewson,” I said. “The woman MP at the accident. She tried to help. She tried to save your daughter.”

Madame Chon gazed into the darkness of the incense-filled hall. Before answering, she grabbed the bowl of rice gruel, pushing it forward slightly, mumbling something indecipherable as if speaking to a presence sitting across the table from her. Satisfied, she turned her attention back to me.

“Yes,” she said. “Jill try. She no understand. She no understand we want to bring Un-suk-i back home. We want Un-suk-i die here. So she no lose.” She gazed at me with a quizzical expression, realizing that her English was faltering. “How you say?”

“So Un-suk-i wouldn’t get lost.”

“Yes. That right. So she no get lost.”

Ernie coughed, shuffling uncomfortably, not used to kneeling on a hard wooden floor.

“Is that why you’re continuing these ceremonies?” I asked. “Because Un-suk-i is lost?”

“Yes. If Jill not stop my husband, he bring Un-suk-i back here, we perform… how you say?”

She placed her palms together and bowed rapidly.

“You’d perform ceremonies,” I said.

“Yes. Ceremony for people pretty soon going to die. And then Un-suk-i’s spirit happy. Un-suk-i spirit know she at home. Know mama and daddy take care of her. No have to wander around, looking for food, looking for smell.”

She cupped her right hand and waved it toward her nose, indicating the smoke from the incense.

“Un-suk-i no have to wander,” she continued, “all over place looking for someone to pray for her. She come home, mom and dad help her, and she go to heaven.”

Madame Chon pointed toward the roof and then dropped her hand and bowed her head. She sat silent for a long time. Then, softly, she spoke.

“I know. Jill feel bad. That’s why she go demo.”

Demo. The Korean word for a political demonstration.

Ernie sat up straight. Electrified.

I leaned forward and spoke English as clearly as I could. “You mean, ajjima, that Jill Matthewson went to the demonstrations that happened after Un-suk-i died?”

She looked up at me and her eyes widened slightly. “You don’t know?”

“No. Nobody told me.”

“Jill feel bad. She come here, bow to me, bow to Un-suk-i’s daddy, she say she sorry many times. She no understand Korean custom. But now GI get… how you say?”

She pounded her fist into her palm as if banging a gavel.

“Court-martial,” I said.

“Yes. GI get court-martial. Jill angry, she no can speak at court-martial. Jill angry because GI drive truck too fast but GI no get punishment. Just go back to States. Jill very angry. She go demo. Many Korean people there, only one American. Jill. How you say her last name?”

“Matthewson.”

“Yes. Jill Matthewson.”

I allowed the silence to stretch and then I asked the question I’d come to ask.

“Madame Chon, where is Jill Matthewson now?”

“Where? I don’t know. Many times I look, I no find.”

“You searched for Jill Matthewson?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

Un-suk’s mother, Madame Chon, stared at me as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Because I want her to help find Un-suk-i. Show Un-suk-i how to get home.”

Ernie and I glanced at one another.

“You mean,” I said, “pray to Un-suk and help guide her spirit home to you?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you think Jill Matthewson can do that?”

Again, she stared at me and then Ernie as if we were both a little dense.

“Mudang say.”

Mudang. A Korean sorceress. A female shaman.

Madame Chon continued. “Mudang say Jill last person Un-suk-i saw, then Jill can find Un-suk-i. Bring her home. Mudang dance, sing, drink mokkolli.” Rice beer. “Help Jill find Un-suk-i. No problem. Mudang show Jill how to do.”

It took me a moment to puzzle out exactly what she was saying. Then it became clear. The sorceress would teach Corporal Jill Matthewson how to travel to the land of the dead, commune there with spirits, find Chon Un-suk, and convince the wandering ghost of Chon Un-suk to return with her to the home of her parents.

“Sort of like TDY,” Ernie whispered. The military acronym for traveling on temporary duty away from your home compound.

Excited now by the idea, Madame Chon brushed her hair back and scooted across the lacquered wooden floor until she sat cross-legged directly in front of me. Then she reached out and grabbed both my hands in her cold grip.

“You find Jill,” she said. “You find, bring back here.”

She wouldn’t let go of my hands until I promised to bring Jill Matthewson back for an interview with the mudang. Then Madame Chon slid across the floor to her left, grabbed Ernie’s hands, and made him promise the same thing.

After we’d both promised, she told me what she could about the demonstrations held outside the Camp Casey main gate. About how many people had participated. About the anger directed at the 2nd Infantry Division. And, more gruesomely, what the Korean National Police had done to break up the demonstration. And what they’d done to the demonstrators they’d managed to catch. It wasn’t a pretty picture. But Madame Chon recited it all as if she were revealing her family recipe for winter kimchee.

So far, Ernie and I’d managed to gather more information about Corporal Jill Matthewson than the 2nd ID had during their entire investigation. Why? Maybe they’d been sloppy. Or maybe they hadn’t actually wanted to gather information on her disappearance. Maybe. But my theory was that they were unable-or unwilling-to gather information from Koreans. There’s an arrogance that infects Americans in Korea and it often transcends their common sense. They begin to believe that only people who speak English can be trusted, that any American who believes otherwise is simply naive. Why exactly they believe this is beyond me, but they do. Also, it’s laziness. They conduct their investigations amongst Americans, usually on compound, and that’s it.

I didn’t have much time to figure out why 2nd ID had conducted such a miserable investigation. Something more pressing was occupying my mind: finding Jill Matthewson. And learning what, if anything, the death of Private Marvin Z. Druwood had to do with Jill’s disappearance. What I could be sure of was that someone working for the Division PMO, or the Division provost marshal himself, had lied. I’d seen the evidence with my own eyes. Druwood’s corpse revealed that he’d cracked his skull on cement, but there was no cement near the obstacle course tower.

And now I had another burden. Not only was it my duty to find Jill Matthewson-and report back to her mother in Terre Haute, Indiana-but I also had to worry about the spirit of Chon Un-suk wandering through eternity as a hungry ghost.

I didn’t believe in hungry ghosts; Ernie didn’t believe in hungry ghosts. But Chon Un-suk’s mother did believe in hungry ghosts. And I’d promised to find Jill Matthewson so she could convince a hungry ghost to stop its wandering.

An odd promise, I’ll admit. But like any promise I’d ever made, I was determined to keep it.