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Authors: Martin Limon
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initials of the person who signed them out. It took me a while and it was mainly a dodge to make casual conversation while I pumped Hurchek for information. Mostly I got an earful about Chaplain Sturdivant.
He wasn’t married, didn’t go out much, and the only hobby he had, as far as Hurchek knew, was schmoozing with the general staff and raking marriage applicants over the coals.
On the way out, I heard a woman crying. The door to the chaplain’s office was open. Sturdivant, behind his desk, glared at a nervous young GI in soiled fatigues and a young Korean woman. The young woman was bowed as far forward as possible in her chair, her face in her hands, trying to hide her shame.
After work, I changed clothes and went straight to Ginger. She hadn’t seen Kimiko and didn’t have any new information about Pak Ok-suk. What she did have was the phone number of Miss Lim from Honolulu. Ginger called for me.
Maybe it was the chase that morning or the thumbing through all the names of the young Korean women getting ready to marry GIs, but for some reason I was particularly excited. Miss Lim and I met and only had a couple of drinks and went right to the yoguan. This time she washed me and I washed her and everything seemed permissible on the second date.
Outside, the hooting and honking subsided and the city shut down for midnight curfew. She told me about her husband, finally, and her life in the States, and about the person she had been before she got involved with Americans.
“I was a good student, one of the best, and when I decided to marry an American all my girlfriends shook their heads. ‘You are too good to marry an American,’ they said. ‘We thought you would marry a high-class man. A Korean man.’”
She sat up in bed and lit a cigarette. I made her sit by the open window.
“My mother was ashamed at first but then she thought about our future. Two women, alone in Korea, my father dead for three years. Our money was almost gone. I couldn’t go to the university and, if I didn’t go to the university, I would not be able to find a good Korean husband. So I married an American. So we could get to the States.”
I covered myself with the shaggy comforter.
“What’s his name?”
“My husband?”
“Yeah.”
“Parkington. Enoch Parkington. He sells houses in Cincinnati. After I got my green card, I worked for a little while, saved up some money, and flew to Hawaii.”
“Has he divorced you?”
“No. Not yet.”
“If he does, you’ll lose your visa and have to move back to Korea.”
She shrugged her slender shoulders and exhaled a huge puff of smoke. Moonlight glistened across her black hair.
“No sweat. If he divorces me, I will pay some guy in Hawaii to marry me, so I can keep my green card.”
She stubbed out the cigarette and walked into the small tilecovered bathroom. When she returned, we resumed.
6
R iley is one of those drunks who is superefficient during the day. His fatigues are neatly pressed, his hair spiffily greased back into an old fifties-style pompadour, and he never stops moving, pivoting his head around, the pencil behind his ear constantly threatening to fly off. Maybe he thinks he’s fooling people. Or maybe the concentration he puts into churning out all those neatly paper-clipped stacks of official correspondence helps him keep his mind off the rancid juices that are rotting his gut.
Back in the barracks he keeps a couple of bottles of Old Overwart in his locker, the cheapest stuff they sell in the Class VI store. He hits the vending machine in the hall for cans of Coke and usually by seven or eight in the evening he’s completely blotto. He has a girlfriend who shows up in the barracks from time to time, and he’s been known to stay up until as late as four o’clock in the morning, chasing her around the showers, trying to lather her down. I don’t know if he ever catches her.
Occasionally Ernie and I take him out, usually on the weekends,and try to get him
He wasn’t married, didn’t go out much, and the only hobby he had, as far as Hurchek knew, was schmoozing with the general staff and raking marriage applicants over the coals.
On the way out, I heard a woman crying. The door to the chaplain’s office was open. Sturdivant, behind his desk, glared at a nervous young GI in soiled fatigues and a young Korean woman. The young woman was bowed as far forward as possible in her chair, her face in her hands, trying to hide her shame.
After work, I changed clothes and went straight to Ginger. She hadn’t seen Kimiko and didn’t have any new information about Pak Ok-suk. What she did have was the phone number of Miss Lim from Honolulu. Ginger called for me.
Maybe it was the chase that morning or the thumbing through all the names of the young Korean women getting ready to marry GIs, but for some reason I was particularly excited. Miss Lim and I met and only had a couple of drinks and went right to the yoguan. This time she washed me and I washed her and everything seemed permissible on the second date.
Outside, the hooting and honking subsided and the city shut down for midnight curfew. She told me about her husband, finally, and her life in the States, and about the person she had been before she got involved with Americans.
“I was a good student, one of the best, and when I decided to marry an American all my girlfriends shook their heads. ‘You are too good to marry an American,’ they said. ‘We thought you would marry a high-class man. A Korean man.’”
She sat up in bed and lit a cigarette. I made her sit by the open window.
“My mother was ashamed at first but then she thought about our future. Two women, alone in Korea, my father dead for three years. Our money was almost gone. I couldn’t go to the university and, if I didn’t go to the university, I would not be able to find a good Korean husband. So I married an American. So we could get to the States.”
I covered myself with the shaggy comforter.
“What’s his name?”
“My husband?”
“Yeah.”
“Parkington. Enoch Parkington. He sells houses in Cincinnati. After I got my green card, I worked for a little while, saved up some money, and flew to Hawaii.”
“Has he divorced you?”
“No. Not yet.”
“If he does, you’ll lose your visa and have to move back to Korea.”
She shrugged her slender shoulders and exhaled a huge puff of smoke. Moonlight glistened across her black hair.
“No sweat. If he divorces me, I will pay some guy in Hawaii to marry me, so I can keep my green card.”
She stubbed out the cigarette and walked into the small tilecovered bathroom. When she returned, we resumed.
6
R iley is one of those drunks who is superefficient during the day. His fatigues are neatly pressed, his hair spiffily greased back into an old fifties-style pompadour, and he never stops moving, pivoting his head around, the pencil behind his ear constantly threatening to fly off. Maybe he thinks he’s fooling people. Or maybe the concentration he puts into churning out all those neatly paper-clipped stacks of official correspondence helps him keep his mind off the rancid juices that are rotting his gut.
Back in the barracks he keeps a couple of bottles of Old Overwart in his locker, the cheapest stuff they sell in the Class VI store. He hits the vending machine in the hall for cans of Coke and usually by seven or eight in the evening he’s completely blotto. He has a girlfriend who shows up in the barracks from time to time, and he’s been known to stay up until as late as four o’clock in the morning, chasing her around the showers, trying to lather her down. I don’t know if he ever catches her.
Occasionally Ernie and I take him out, usually on the weekends,and try to get him
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