The taunting sound of a stream is ahead. You stop at the dirty bank and gaze at the dirty water. It's so pretty. So fresh. Probably infected. I'm not going in.
You lean over and tighten your boots. The water sparkles, fresh melted snow from the mountains that surround us. Maybe a month before, it would have been liquid heaven, but spring brings yellow dust and yellow dust brings poison.
The entire peninsula is coated, a sickly yellow pallor over all of Korea. Girl on his back, Dad steps in the water and runs across; Nurse and Ace follow him. You walk halfway across, water splashing past your knee and flowing into your boot. You look back. I'm walking up and down the bank. You frown. “This again?” “Lookit all this. You know, we should collect some, wait a day, let it settle?” We watch the water happily bubble over rocks in its way. I wait the silence out a few seconds, then asks again, “You know what I'm saying?” “No... We've not the time, not with Reds behind us.” A sound, a human voice, calls out from upstream. Our gazes meet. Grab a gun. I run across the river, pull out the bag of bullets and distribute them with trembling fingers, two to each person. You gesture for us to follow, in a tight line. A serpent bristling with dirty metal spines, we snake our way through the dead dusty brush along the river's edge. You feel far too exposed, suddenly wishing we were back on the other, forested side. A large rock outcropping not yet worn away by the river shields us from whatever is on the other side.
I nod to Dad, and together we leap up – grab the rock, push! – and drop to the ground on the other side as quickly as possible. Nothing happens. Nurse and Ace land behind us, you stay on the other side with the girl, wondering who shouted.
Dad runs forward, auto in hands, myself right behind him. Suddenly he bristles. I place my finger in the trigger and aim where his head looks He turns, shouting, “Ani! Ssoji ma!” I frown, confused, and tense the finger for the shot. Nurse howls at me, “Don't shoot! He says don't shoot!”
I glance behind me. She's running past me, her pistol lowered.
“Jean, be careful!” She dashes blindly forward.
I hear a scream, not a voice I know. I push past Dad and emerge into a large burnt clearing, the river running through it. Nurse stands with her gun to a head of black hair, shouting at it in Korean. I shout for you to come on while Dad starts yelling at Nurse. You toss the girl over your shoulders and struggle up the bluff. Once atop, you survey the situation. Ace is yelling at me, I'm yelling at Dad, Dad is yelling at Nurse, and Nurse is yelling a woman cowering beside the river, garments scattered around her.
Nurse yells something incoherent at me while Dad tries to pull her away. Ace runs past me, his gun trained at them. The woman stands up and pushes Nurse off of her.
You get the feeling she would be riddled with bullet holes if it weren't for the scarcity of bullets to make them with.
I lower my firearm and watch her as she and Nurse and Dad all start arguing again. I glance to you. Translate, would you? Um. “it seems like she's got something that they want. And it's... she doesn't want them to touch it. Oh!” You jog closer to the lady and look back to me. “She's got clean water!” I lower the child and run forward. How? Jean! Choi! Shut it! They shut it, but the lady continues to protest, giving me the stink eye from between a rough-woven hood and a silk handkerchief. I quiver with adrenaline and thirst. “Ask her how she cleaned it.” I ask her. She points to a deep clothing-filled trench dug about a meter and a half from the river's edge.
“The water must go through the dirt. It's clean if you keep the dust out.” I look at you. “She says the water goes through the dirt, that if you keep the dust out it's cleaned.” I hand you my gun and get down on my knees and reach a hand into the trench. There's about an inch, maybe, of water in which the clothing is soaking. I fill my palm with liquid and bring it to my mouth.
The laundry lady slaps my hand and the water spills. She's barking at me in disappointment. “She says it's nasty. That these clothes are nasty and they contaminated it.” I glare at her. “Ask her where the rest of the water is.” You talk to her. “There's no more,” she states, rather nonchalantly. “But,” you translate, “she says she knows where some is.” She continues, pointing. “That there's a village, that way, which stores – which lets water sit until it is clean and then they scoop it into old clay pots.” She makes a circle with her arms, still talking in matter-of-fact tone.
“Um, that big. In pots that big.”
From my still-kneeling position, I look down the trench. “That looks pretty clean to me.” I unfold my far-too-dry water bag from my belt and blow into it to inflate the crumpled plastic bag-within-a-bag. I move to fill it. "Ah!” She grabs it and tosses it aside, talking with amusement. “Don't dirty the well. It's shallow enough without pigs rooting in it." Dad ribs her with the muzzle of a carbine. She pushes it away from her.
“What's she say?” Jean stops her foot and squeals, indignant. “She called us pigs!” Laundry Lady gestures as if shooing me away. I yell abuse at her. You don't bother translating it, my tone conveys my meaning obviously enough.
From nowhere, a voice cuts through mine. We all wheel around to view the source of the English.
A blond-haired, tan-skinned man stands uphill, dressed in poor hanbok and with an all-too-scraggly beard that pokes out from underneath his bandana, not that mine's any better. He watches us, we watch him. He doesn't look armed, not that you can see.
Eventually, he turns around. Come, he asks us.
We follow him.