It wasn’t until dinner that Jun Do got a good look at Dr. Song. Jun Do tried to guess how the talks had gone by the way Dr. Song poured margaritas for the ladies and nodded in approval at the spiciness of the salsa. The table was round and seated eight, with Pilar swooping in to add and remove dishes. She named everything on the lazy Susan at the center of the table, including flautas, mole, rellenos, and fix-it-yourself tacos: there was a tortilla warmer and dishes of cilantro, onion, diced tomatoes, shredded cabbage, Mexican cream, black beans, and tiger.
When Dr. Song tasted his tiger, a look of pure glee crossed his face. “Tell me this isn’t the best tiger you’ve had,” he said. “Tell me American tiger can measure up. Is the Korean tiger not fresher, more vital?”
Pilar brought another platter of meat. “Bueno,” she said. “Too bad there is no Mexican tiger.”
“You’ve outdone yourself, Pilar,” the Senator’s wife said. “Your best Tex-Mex yet.”
Dr. Song eyed them both with suspicion.
The Minister held up his taco. In English, he said, “Yes.”
Tommy ate his taco and nodded in approval. “The best meat I ever had,” he said, “was with me and some buddies on leave. We raved and raved about the dinner, eating until we were stuffed. We spoke so highly they brought out the chef, who said he would make us some to go, that it was no problem because he had another dog out back.”
“Oh, Tommy,” the Senator’s wife said.
“I was with a tribal militia once,” Wanda said. “They prepared a feast of fetal pigs, boiled in goat’s milk. That’s the most tender meat ever.”
“Enough,” the Senator’s wife said. “Another topic, please.”
The Senator said, “Anything but politics.”
“There is something I must know,” Jun Do said. “When I was upon the waters, in the Sea of Japan, we followed the broadcasts of two American girls. I never knew what became of them.”
“The rowers,” Wanda said.
“What an awful story,” the Senator’s wife said. “Such a waste.”
The Senator turned to Tommy. “They found the boat, right?”
“They found the boat but no girls,” Tommy said. “Wanda, you get any backchannel on what really went down?”
Wanda was leaning over her plate to eat, a stream of taco juice running down her hand. “I hear the boat was partly burned,” she said with her mouth full. “They found the blood of one girl but nothing of the other. A murder-suicide, perhaps.”
“It was the girl who rowed in the dark,” Jun Do said. “She used a flare gun.”
The table went silent.
“She rowed with her eyes closed,” Jun Do said. “That was her problem. That’s how she got off course.”
Tommy asked, “Why would you ask what happened to those girls if you already knew?”
“I didn’t know what happened,” Jun Do said. “I only knew how.”
“Tell us what happened to you,” the Senator’s wife asked Jun Do. “You said you’ve spent some time on the water. How did you come by such a wound?”
“It is too soon,” Dr. Song cautioned them. “The wound is still fresh. This story is as difficult to hear as it is for my friend to tell.” He turned to Jun Do. “Another time, yes.”
“It’s okay,” Jun Do said, “I can tell it,” and he proceeded to recount their encounter with the Americans in great detail, how the Junma was boarded, the way the soldiers moved with their rifles and how they became blackened with soot. He explained the shoes that he had found, and how they littered the decks, and Jun Do described how the soldiers smoked and sorted through the shoes after the boat was declared clear, how they began stealing souvenirs, including the most sacred portraits of the Dear and Great Leaders, and how a knife was then drawn and the Americans were forced to retreat. He mentioned the fire extinguisher. He told them how officers on the American ship drank coffee and watched. He described the cruise missile that flexed its biceps on a sailor’s lighter.
The Senator said, “But how’d you get hurt, son?”
“They came back,” Jun Do said.
“Why would they come back?” Tommy asked. “They’d already cleared your vessel.”
“What were you doing on a fishing vessel in the first place?” the Senator asked.
“Clearly,” Dr. Song said with some force, “the Americans were ashamed that a single North Korean, armed only with a knife, made cowardly an entire armed American unit.”
Jun Do took a drink of water. “All I know,” he said, “is that it was first light, the sun to the starboard. The American ship came out of the brightness, and suddenly we were boarded. The Second Mate was on deck with the Pilot and the Captain. It was laundry day, so they were boiling seawater. There was screaming. I went up top with the Machinist and the First Mate. The man from before, Lieutenant Jervis, had the Second Mate at the rail. They were shouting at him about the knife.”
“Wait a minute,” the Senator said. “How do you know this sailor’s name?”
“Because he gave me his card,” Jun Do said. “He wanted us to know who had settled the score.” Jun Do passed the business card to Wanda, who read the name “Lieutenant Harlan Jervis.”
Tommy stepped forward and took the card. “The Fortitude, Fifth Fleet,” he said to the Senator. “That must be one of Woody McParkland’s boats.”
The Senator said, “Woody wouldn’t tolerate any bad apples in his outfit.”
The Senator’s wife lifted her hand. “What happened next?” she asked.
Jun Do said, “Then he was thrown to the sharks, and I jumped in to save him.”
Tommy said, “But where did all the sharks come from?”
“The Junma is a fishing boat,” Jun Do explained. “Sharks were always following us.”
“So there was just a swirl of sharks?” Tommy asked.
“Did the boy know what was happening to him?” the Senator asked.
Tommy asked, “Did Lieutenant Jervis say anything?”
“Well, there weren’t many sharks at first,” Jun Do said.
The Senator asked, “Did this Jervis fellow throw the boy in himself, with his own hands?”
“Or did he order one of his sailors to do it?” Tommy asked.
The Minister placed his hands flat on the table. “Story,” he declared in English, “true.”
“No,” the Senator’s wife said.
Jun Do turned to her, her old-lady eyes pale and cloudy.
“No,” she said. “I understand that during wartime, no side has a monopoly on the unspeakable. And I am not naive enough to think that the engines of the righteous aren’t powered by the fuel of injustice. But these are our finest boys, under our best command, flying the colors of this nation. So, no sir, you are wrong. No sailor of ours ever did such an act. I know this. I know this for a fact.”
She rose from the table.
Jun Do rose, too.
“I apologize for disturbing you,” he said. “I shouldn’t have told the story. But you must believe that I have looked into the eyes of sharks, seen them stupid with death. When you’re near them, an arm’s length away, their eyes flick white. They’ll turn sideways and lift their heads when they want a better look before they bite you. I didn’t feel the teeth in my flesh, but it was icy and electric when they hit bone. The blood, I could smell it in the water. I know the feeling of seeing a boy right in front of you, and he is about to be gone. You suddenly understand you’ll never see him again. I’ve heard the last gibberish a person says. When a person slips into the water, right in front of you, the disbelief of it, that never leaves you. And the artifacts people leave behind, a shaving brush, a pair of shoes, how dumb they seem—you can handle them in your fingers, stare at them all you want, they don’t mean anything without the person.” Jun Do was shaking, now. “I’ve held the widow, his widow, with these arms as she sang nursery rhymes to him, wherever he was.”
Later, Jun Do was in his room. He was looking up all the Korean names in Texas, the hundreds of Kims and Lees, and he was almost to Paks and Parks when the dog on his bed suddenly stood.
Wanda was at the door—she knocked lightly twice, then opened.
“I drive a Volvo,” she said from the threshold. “It’s a hand-me-down from my dad. When I was a kid, he worked security at the port. He always had a maritime scanner going, so he could know if a captain was in trouble. I have one, too, and I turn it on when I can’t sleep.”
Jun Do just stared at her. The dog lay down again.
“I found out some things about you,” Wanda said. “Like who you really are.” She shrugged. “I thought it only fair to share a few things about me.”
“Whatever your file says about me,” Jun Do told her, “it’s wrong. I don’t hurt people anymore. That’s the last thing I want to do.” How did she have a file on him anyway, he wondered, when Pyongyang couldn’t even get his info right.
“I put your wife Sun Moon into the computer, and you popped right up, Commander Ga.” She studied him for a reaction, and when he gave none, she said, “Minister of Prison Mines, holder of the Golden Belt in taekwondo, champion against Kimura in Japan, father of two, winner of the Crimson Star for unnamed acts of heroism, and so on. There were no current photos, so I hope you don’t mind me uploading the pictures I took.”
Jun Do closed the phone book.
“You’ve made a mistake,” he said. “And you must never call me that in front of the others.”
“Commander Ga,” Wanda said, like she was savoring the name. She held up her phone. “There’s an app that predicts the orbit of the Space Station,” she said. “It will be passing over Texas in eight minutes.”
He followed her outside, to the edge of the desert. The Milky Way reeled above them, the smell of creosote and dry granite sweeping down from the mountains. When a coyote called, the dog moved between them, its tail twitching with excitement, the three of them waiting for another coyote to respond.
“Tommy,” Jun Do said. “He’s the one who speaks Korean, right?”
“Yes,” Wanda said. “The Navy stationed him there for ten years.”
They cupped their hands and stared at the sky, scanning for the arc of the satellite.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Wanda said. “What’s the Minister of Prison Mines doing here in Texas? Who’s the other man claiming to be a minister?”
“None of this is his fault. He just does what he’s told. You’ve got to understand—where he’s from, if they say you’re an orphan, then you’re an orphan. If they tell you to go down a hole, well, you’re suddenly a guy who goes down holes. If they tell you to hurt people, then it begins.”
“Hurt people?”
“I mean if they tell him to go to Texas to tell a story, suddenly he’s nobody but that.”
“I believe you,” she said. “I’m trying to understand.”
Wanda was the first to spot the International Space Station, diamond bright and racing across the sky. Jun Do tracked it, as amazed as when the Captain first indicated it above the sea.
“You’re not looking to defect, are you?” she asked. “If you were looking to defect, that would cause a lot of problems, trust me. It could be done, mind you. I’m not saying it’s impossible.”
“Dr. Song, the Minister,” Jun Do said. “You know what would happen to them. I could never do that to them.”
“Of course,” she said.
Far in the distance, too many kilometers away to gauge, a lightning storm clung to the horizon. Still, its flashes were enough to silhouette closer mountain ranges and give hints of others even farther yet. The strobe of one bolt gave them a glimpse of a dark owl, caught mid-flight, as it silently hunted through the tall, needley trees.
Wanda turned to him. “Do you feel free?” she asked. She cocked her head. “Do you know what free feels like?”
How to explain his country to her, he wondered. How to explain that leaving its confines to sail upon the Sea of Japan—that was being free. Or that as a boy, sneaking from the smelter floor for an hour to run with other boys in the slag heaps, even though there were guards everywhere, because there were guards everywhere—that was the purest freedom. How to make someone understand that the scorch-water they made from the rice burned to the bottom of the pot tasted better than any Texas lemonade?
“Are there labor camps here?” he asked.
“No,” she said.
“Mandatory marriages, forced-criticism sessions, loudspeakers?”
She shook her head.
“Then I’m not sure I could ever feel free here,” he said.
“What am I supposed to do with that?” Wanda asked. She seemed almost mad at him. “That doesn’t help me understand anything.”
“When you’re in my country,” he said, “everything makes simple, clear sense. It’s the most straightforward place on earth.”
She looked out toward the desert.
Jun Do said, “Your father was a tunnel rat, yes?”
“It was my uncle,” she said.
“Okay, your uncle. Most people walking around—they don’t think about being alive. But when your uncle was about to enter an enemy tunnel, I bet he was thinking about nothing but that. And when he made it out, he probably felt more alive than we’ll ever feel, the most alive in the world, and that until the next tunnel, nothing could touch him, he was invincible. You ask him if he felt more alive here or over there.”
“I know what you’re saying and all,” Wanda said. “When I was a kid, he was always telling hair-raisers about the tunnels, like it was no big deal. But when he visits Dad’s now, and you get up in the middle of the night for a glass of water, there he is, wide awake in the kitchen, just standing there, staring into the sink. That’s not invincible. That’s not wishing you were back in Vietnam where you felt alive. That’s wishing you’d never even seen the place. Think about what that does to your freedom metaphor.”
Jun Do gave a look of sad recognition. “I know this dream your uncle has,” he said. “The one that woke him and made him walk to the kitchen.”
“Trust me,” she said. “You don’t know my uncle.”
Jun Do nodded. “Fair enough,” he said.
She stared at him, almost vexed again.
“Okay,” she said. “Go on and tell it.”
“I’m just trying to help you understand him.”
“Tell it,” she said.
“When a tunnel would collapse,” Jun Do said.
“In the prison mines?”
“That’s right,” he said. “When a tunnel would collapse, in a mine, we’d have to go dig men out. Their eyeballs would be flat and caked. And their mouths—they were always wide open and filled with dirt. That’s what you couldn’t stand to look at, a throat packed like that, the tongue grubbed and brown. It was our greatest fear, ending up with everyone standing around in a circle, staring at the panic of your last moment. So your uncle, when you find him at the sink late at night, it means he’s had the dream where you breathe the dirt. In the dream, everything’s dark. You’re holding your breath, holding it, and when you can’t hold it anymore, when you’re about to breathe the dirt—that’s when you wake, gasping. I have to wash my face after that dream. For a while I do nothing but breathe, but it seems like I’ll never get my air back.”
Wanda studied him a moment.
She said, “I’m going to give you something, okay?”
She handed him a small camera that fit in his palm. He’d seen one like it in Japan.
“Take my picture,” she said. “Just point it and press the button.”
He held the camera up in the dark. There was a little screen upon which he could barely see her outline. Then there was a flash.
Wanda reached in her pocket, and removed a bright red cell phone. When she held it up, the picture he’d taken of her was on its screen. “These were made for Iraq,” she said. “I give them to locals, people who are friendly. When they think I need to see something, they take a picture of it. The picture goes to a satellite, then only to me. The camera has no memory, so it doesn’t store the pictures. No one could ever find out what you took a picture of or where it went.”
“What do you want me to take a picture of?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Anything. It’s up to you. If there’s ever something you’d like to show me, that would help me understand your country, just push this button.”
He looked around, as if trying to decide what in this dark world he would photograph.
“Don’t be scared of it,” she said and leaned in close to him. “Reach out and take our picture,” she told him.
He could feel her shouldering into him, her arm around his back.
He took the picture, then looked at it on the screen.
“Was I supposed to smile?” he asked, handing it to her.
She looked at the picture. “How intimate,” she said, and laughed. “You could loosen up a bit, yeah. A smile wouldn’t hurt.”
“ ‘Intimate,’ ” he said. “I don’t know this word.”
“You know, close,” she said. “When two people share everything, when there are no secrets between them.”
He looked at the picture. “Intimate,” he said.