Finally, the cart rolled to a halt.
“Comrades,” Moon Chaser said. “The men at the first guard post hold you in high esteem. They say you are men of discernment who appreciate the finest gifts from our Great Leader.”
This time, I didn’t hear any laughter.
Moon Chaser slid back the door, reached in, and grabbed two liter bottles of soju.
As he talked, the muscles in the back of my right leg tightened like a clutch of snakes. I tried to straighten my bent leg, but it had nowhere to go. My foot pressed hard against the wood, my mouth open in a silent scream. I waited for the muscles to loosen, for the pain to stop, but it just got worse.
A gruff voice snarled at Moon Chaser. “No one’s allowed on the bridge, least of all a blood-sucking capitalist. Why did those bastards at guard post number one let you cross?”
Although I couldn’t see him, I imagined Moon Chaser smiling and bowing and I heard his apologetic voice. He explained at length about his sick mother in the village of Oh-mok and how if he didn’t cut across the river here, he might not reach her before she breathed her last. He explained how she’d been a long and faithful follower of the Great Leader.
“She fought with him against the Japanese imperialists,” he said finally.
Apparently, this explanation had some effect on the snarling man. He said, “What about the Great War of Liberation? Did she fight the Yankees?”
“Oh, yes,” Moon Chaser said. “She hates the Yankee dogs. Killed three of them with her kitchen chopping knife.”
I couldn’t control my leg now. The spasm was so strong that I had no choice but to try and straighten it. My foot thumped against the wall, pushing with all its might, and if this cart hadn’t been fastened by interlocking bolts, I believe I would’ve kicked it apart.
Moon Chaser seemed to be aware that something was wrong inside the cart. He opened and banged the door loudly and it sounded as if bottles were being tossed and then caught in rough hands. Feet shuffled and I heard the guards cursing and Moon Chaser telling them that his price was only two won per bottle.
“You would charge us?” the snarling man said. “We who protect you from the bloodthirsty imperialists to the south?” There was incredulity in his voice. “You would come here in the middle of the night and ask us for money? For something as worthless as this cheap soju?”
Self-righteously, Moon Chaser defended the quality of his soju. The banter went back and forth for what was probably only a minute or two, but flush in the agony of muscle spasms, it seemed like years. In the last few days, my back and arms and chest and legs had been driven beyond their capacity. Exhausted and dehydrated, the quivering tissues screamed for relief. Finally, Moon Chaser reluctantly agreed to allow the soldiers to keep the soju free of charge-in honor, he said, of his ill mother.
With a note of triumph in his voice, the snarling soldier assured Moon Chaser that his service to the defenders of the country would bring good luck to his ailing mother. We were rolling.
I tried. God knows I tried. But every joint in my body was knotting in sympathetic response to my thigh muscles, which were now clumps of pain. I screamed, clasping my hand over my mouth as I did so in a vain effort to muffle the noise. Moon Chaser must’ve heard me because he shoved the cart forward faster, trotting now, but it was too late. I lost control.
Without even realizing what I was doing, I slid open the door of the cart and my right leg kicked out of its own volition, straightening until my foot dangled in the cold air. Moon Chaser cursed. The cart was rolling faster than ever.
Behind us, someone shouted. Moon Chaser was now pushing the cart forward at a flat-out run and it was clear that the angle of decline had increased. We were heading downhill.
A shot rang out.
Moon Chaser gave the cart one final nudge and then I felt the thud of his weight on it. We were rolling now, picking up speed. Another shot was fired.
The blacktop and gravel and rocks by the side of the road whizzed by at a tremendous speed. The cart was nothing more than a heavy square box with two bicycle wheels supporting it. There was no steering mechanism and no brakes. At this speed, we were sure to veer off the side of the road, but somehow we didn’t. I felt little jerks, first to our left and then to our right. Something was steering the cart.
Moon Chaser was lying flat atop the cart now, his A-frame still strapped to his back, but he must’ve been using his staff to jab forward at the ground and give us not only a little breaking action but also some steering control. It wasn’t much. Just enough to keep the rolling cart from careening off the edge of the road, into what I imagined to be an abyss below.
The gunfire had stopped. Still, we kept rolling faster down the ever-steepening hill. We were out of range of the men who guarded the dam now, but still in mortal danger of becoming a statistic by dying in your typical soju pig-cart crack-up.
Moon Chaser jabbed his staff hard to the left. The entire cart lifted, threatening to tip over, but still Moon Chaser kept jabbing his staff. We veered to the right but left the dirt road, one of the wheels kicking up dust and gravel on the side. After attempting to steer for a few more seconds, he suddenly gave up altogether. I felt his body shift above me as if he were curling himself into a ball, and then he screamed.
We flew off the edge of the road.
Moon Chaser slapped me alert.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Speak Korean,” he said.
I asked the same question in Korean.
“Never mind.” He pulled me roughly to my feet. “Come on. Those guards at the dam can’t leave their posts, but their officer of the guard has a radio. They’ll call this in.”
One of the legs of Moon Chaser’s A-frame had been broken. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yes. Quickly now. Up the hill.”
We climbed. And we kept moving throughout the night. I surveyed my body as we moved. A few bruises and a world of soreness, but other than that I was healthy enough. Exhausted, hungry, and the back of my leg still throbbed from the cramps, but I was still in one piece. The thick walls of the soju cart had protected me from suffering any permanent damage.
It must’ve been maddening for the people hunting us to learn that we’d managed to cross the Imjin River, after all the precautions they’d taken. Still, they’d regroup quickly.
Moon Chaser shouted back to me as we hopped across rocky ridges. “No stopping now. All speed. If we can make it to the Eastern Star Commune before they do, and get into the Kwangju Mountain Range proper, we’ll be safe.”
“How far?” I asked, my tongue already lolling out of my head.
“Don’t ask,” Moon Chaser shouted. “Just move!”
At dawn, we gazed down on a flat plain that stretched about four miles to a mountain range rising jaggedly into the sky.
“The Kwangju Mountains,” Moon Chaser said. “There, the one capped with snow and mist, that’s Mount O-song.”
Just by examining the terrain, I could see how the Manchurian Battalion, with an independent leadership and the protection of a massive mountain range, could maintain its position as a formidable independent power, even in the midst of one of the world’s most repressive Communist dictatorships. And I could understand why Commissar Oh had chosen to send the entire armored might of the Red Star Brigade up against them. By holding the dominant geographic position, the Manchurian Battalion would be difficult to dislodge.