None of the students moved, each stood straight and still.
Concealing food was one of the camp’s worst crimes. They were taught that from the time they could speak along with the fact that anyone who violated that rule deserved harsh punishment. The will to steal was just another fault they’d inherited from the treasonous blood of their parents. Worthlessness only bred more worthlessness.
Teacher reached for his wooden pointer, the one he used during lessons. His right arm whipped through the air, the thin line of wood crashing into the side of Sun Hi’s head.
The girl collapsed to the floor.
“Get up,” Teacher yelled.
Sun Hi slowly righted herself, dazed from the blow. Another came. Then another. Not a sound slipped from her mouth, the face twisted with fear and failure. She started to collapse again, but Teacher held her upright by the hair and continued the attack, every blow aimed to the head.
Lumps emerged on the scalp.
Blood began to leak from her nose.
Sun Hi’s shoulder tilted, an elbow dug into her side, the frail body listed sideways, then her eyes went glassy and she pitched forward. But Teacher kept pummeling, gritting his teeth in a weird grin, his eyes an even mixture of hate and contempt. Finally, he released his grip and allowed the girl’s body to topple to the floor.
He stared down at his student, breathing hard. Then he stepped to the open door and tossed the five kernels of rotten corn out into the wind. He cleared his throat of disgust and said to the class, “No one is to touch those.”
Sun Hi lay bleeding, not moving, the face swelled in sorrow.
There she stayed for the rest of the day, while they learned their lessons.
Disappointment always made Hana think of Sun Hi. Her friend had been dead fourteen years. And that was what she had been. A friend. Of that she was now certain.
No one in the class ever spoke of Sun Hi again. It was as if she’d never existed. No one questioned the punishment, either. All realized that it had been necessary. Sadness and regret were two emotions she’d learned only after leaving the camp. Behind the fences survival was all that mattered. No prisoner ever judged another for anything. Nor did they ever judge the guards or Teacher.
But that day changed her.
Though she was only nine, she resolved that no one would strike her with a wooden pointer until her head burst open. And never would she spit on a friend again. If those refusals meant she died, then that was what would happen. Suicide, of course, always remained an option. Many followed that path, especially Outsiders. But any surviving relatives were severely punished for that defiance, which made that route all the more tempting. The thought of her mother being disciplined pleased her. But killing yourself inside the camp was a problem. Some tossed themselves down the mine shafts. Others chose poison. The quickest way was to rush the fences and wait for the guards to shoot. But the worse that could happen was for an attempt to fail. Then only more hard labor, hunger, beatings, and torture came.
On the day Sun Hi died Hana had known nothing of what lay beyond the camp. But she decided then to find out. How? She did not know. But she would find a way. Her mother’s crimes were not hers. Sun Hi stole five kernels of corn because she was starving. Teacher was wrong. The guards were wrong. That day, while only nine, she stopped being a child.
“You are so smart,” Sun Hi would tell her.
“And you so obedient.”
“That’s what my name means. Obedience and joy. My mother gave it to me.”
“Do you like your mother?” she asked.
“Of course. It is the sins of my father that placed us here.”
She’d never forgotten Sun Hi, with her perpetual runny nose and wet-mouthed grin. Hana’s mother had named her at birth Hyun Ok. Which meant “clever.” But she hated anything and everything associated with her mother so she never spoke that name. The guards and Teacher called her bitch, as they did every other female. She liked the label Sun Hi had given her when they were allowed time to play in the forest or swim in the river, before five kernels of corn changed both of their lives.
Hana Sung.
It meant “first victory” and she’d never quite understood why Sun Hi thought of her that way. But she liked the name, so she kept it, never speaking it around her mother.
Twice in her life she’d made a choice. The day her friend died and the day her father found her. Both had generated irrevocable decisions. And both were special because she made them.
The time was approaching for a third.
Which she, too, would decide.
FORTY
WASHINGTON, DC
Stephanie kept reading The Patriot Threat, the text actually quite interesting, the reasoning thorough, its conjecture clearly delineated from facts. Howell dealt with the rebuttals against the 16th Amendment as skillfully as any lawyer. His arguments seemed a careful merger of legend, history, speculation, and hypothesis. Enough that she wanted to know more. Especially about Andrew Mellon, who seemed at the heart of it all. She recalled the sections read earlier at the courthouse about Mellon and Philander Knox. They were close friends, so much that Knox in 1920 convinced Warren Harding to appoint Mellon as his secretary of Treasury. She found one of the portions that had been flagged by the Treasury secretary and the words that had intrigued both her and Harriett Engle.
Some say that, before his death, Knox passed a great secret on to Mellon.
The next few pages expanded on this bold assertion, sections that had not been flagged by Joe Levy for them to read.