“You come down!” Woo-jin barked, “now!”
Winston scooted on his ass down the concrete, unable to leave the water behind, and brought the entire bundle along with him, with his rifle resting on his lap. As he made it to the ground, the bright morning sunlight briefly blinded him. Woo-jin took the opportunity to strip the rifle from Winston’s lap and tossed the gun behind him.
“Hey now, that’s an antique,” Winston complained.
“Quiet. What you do out here?”
“I was thirsty,” Winston replied, nodding to the jugs of water.
“Where you stay?”
“Close.”
“There more of you?”
Winston wasn’t sure how he wanted to answer the question, “jes’ me and my wife.”
“You kill that man?”
Woo-jin motioned with his head toward the trash pile. Winston nodded.
“Why?” Woo-jin pressed.
“Let’s just say that I love my wife.”
Woo-jin pictured the photos of Winston, May, Mayor Wellbeloved, and the others sealed into Medusa’s stump, as well as Seul-ki’s, as he interrogated Winston. Woo-jin smiled.
“She have funny hair.”
“Don’t say that to her face, my man. But, yeah, she do have funny hair.”
“Your house there. I see you, your wife. In tree…”
“Trunk.”
“Ah, trunk. Tree trunk.”
“Yes, that’s our house,” Winston affirmed.
Woo-jin lowered his gun and motioned to Winston as if asking permission to sit.
“Go on. I won’t hurt you,” Winston said, “you got the gun.”
Woo-jin sat on the concrete, leaving five feet between him and Winston.
“You like Gone with the Wind?” Woo-jin asked.
“It was our first date.”
Winston smiled and pictured May in his own head.
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” Woo-jin said.
“You, sir, are no gentleman.”
“And you are no lady.”
“You should be kissed by someone who knows how.”
They both giggled.
“That’s funny,” Winston remarked, “how something fictional can be so real. Or bring such different people together.”
“Or how something so real can be so fiction.”
Woo-jin waved his arms as if they both occupied an immense film set.
“I never thought of it that way, but you got a point.”
“My mother, she like that movie very very much, but my country…”
“Yeah, we know all know about your country.”
“I love my country, but sometime I am ashame.”
“Me too. Woo-jin, right?”
Woo-jin nodded and dug into his shirt. He pulled out two two-packs of Twinkies and displayed them to Winston as if they were bars of gold.
“You like, Winston?”
“Very much.”
Woo-jin handed Winston a package.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I steal them from Major Chaek. I no like the Major. He a prick.”
“Sounds like he’s a major prick…”
They laughed.
“I no want get caught, so I fake…” Woo-jin searched for the correct English word and said, “ttong,” and motioned to his ass.
“Oh, you hadda take a shit? That’s why your buddy left so fast.”
Woo-jin nodded and made a wet raspberry sound with his mouth. Winston laughed almost too loud, but caught himself.
“Well, thank you for this.”
Woo-jin tore open his package of Twinkies and devoured them. Winston tore open his package and ate one, keeping the other for May. She wasn’t as big a sweets fan as Winston, but she would appreciate the treat — and the story of how he got it. Woo-jin looked at their surroundings. Though they were seated under an immense concrete highway overpass and the scrub brush was gangly and overgrown, the morning was peaceful, sublime, and relaxing. Woo-jin leaned back and gazed up at the flawless Georgia sky, taking in the solace. Winston followed suit.
“I like it out here better,” Woo-Jim said.
“Me, too.”
After only a minute or two, Woo-jin got up.
“Gotta go. Big Day come soon.”
“What?”
Woo-jin shrugged.
“They no tell us — just know Big Day coming.”
Woo-jin unceremoniously walked off, but turned and said, “be careful, Winston. Bad men around.” He dropped the Twinkie wrapper at the trash pile, collected the canvas sack, and disappeared into the woods.
“Indeed, my friend,” Winston said to himself, “indeed.”
Winston refilled the one water jug that had spilled, hid all three of them in the thickets near the grave, and climbed all the way to the top of the embankment beneath the overpass. There on the ledge were Jimmy’s possessions — a blanket, a pillow without a pillowcase, and assorted tchotchkes. There was no food, and it all reeked of the dead man. He lay on the cold concrete ledge, closed his eyes, and pondered what to do with his day on the outside.
Winston had told May that he wouldn’t be back until the soldiers were eating their dinner — just after nightfall. It was early, but it was daytime, and certainly more dangerous to be out and about gallivanting as if his small town was not part of a country at war. He had deliberated for less than ten minutes before deciding to take the risk and leave the safety of the overpass. He slid down the concrete embankment, let his eyes adjust to the sunlight, and shuffled back to the trash pile. He rifled through the new batch of garbage Woo-jin and his irritable partner had delivered, but there were no scraps that looked edible — even to his ravenous belly. He did find a clean sandwich bag and placed the Twinkie inside. He checked on the grave to find it still unmolested, hid the Twinkie with the water in the brush, and then Winston was on his way — to where, he was clueless, though Jimmy did say that there were plenty of people living outside.
He tracked his own footprints back across the road and into the tall grass, and was nearly caught by a column of Russian Kombat Jeep-like vehicles that escorted an American panel van. The trucks passed by him and stopped at his driveway. When it was clear, he bolted across the street and into the field. He squirmed with the thought of running through the tick-infested field again, so he skirted the edge of it, careful to keep out of the tall grass. It was a far more dangerous trek than just careening straight through the middle of the field. Near the edge of the woods, on the bank of Little River, Winston turned back to look at the corner of his property, just barely out of sight of the soldiers who guarded his driveway, and watched as the panel van backed down the driveway. It was still very queer to him that this site — where the very generals who were running the campaign against Atlanta had chosen to set up headquarters — was practically bereft of any form of security with only a dozen or two soldiers at most milling about the place. Queer, indeed. He balanced across the pipe over Little River, and hid when he reached Calef’s apple orchard. Sneakily, he paced to the central corridor of the orchard, once again using the trees as cover, and headed due north, which was one hundred eighty degrees away from the store. He didn’t want to be seen by Ben, George, and the other men being held captive behind the store. He just didn’t have the courage yet to witness their suffering in unmitigated daylight.
A hundred or so feet from the rear of the orchard, Winston happened across a decomposed body. He didn’t recognize it as Julie’s boyfriend, Mick, but only as another poor bastard casualty of this pathetic war his president started. He said a quick prayer for the dead man, which was unlike him, and continued to the back of the orchard until he found himself deep in Georgia woodlands. This flora was familiar to him, as he, May, and Mayor Wellbeloved often strolled this area in the winter because of the beech trees and their edible nuts. Mary had taught May as a young girl how to collect the prickly beechnuts, and husk and gently roast them for use as a pie filling. Mary’s family had always been too poor to afford the expensive nuts for Christmas pecan pie, and the beechnuts were abundant and free after the first frost — they just needed collecting and processing, which May took over after Mary died. She also assumed the tradition of making the Christmas beechnut pies. When Winston came into her life, he helped. Usually a daylong affair, Winston often carried along a heavy iron skillet and built a fire right there in the woods where they sat on the cold ground and shelled and roasted the nuts right there on site. The nuts were good to eat just out of their shells, though folks not used to eating them often experienced gastric difficulties. Roasting the nuts rid them of the chemical compound that caused the discomfort. Winston was one of those people who had to watch his beechnut intake. It made him fart for days. May, not so much.