“Where the hell are we going to find chow out here?” Ernie asked.
The village was composed of rickety wooden buildings lining either side of the main road. There were a few signs painted on rotted wood but they said things like GRAIN WAREHOUSE or PAK’S FARM EQUIPMENT. Finally, at the single intersection in town, I spotted the flag of the Republic of Korea hanging from a metal pole on a cement-block building. The local KNP headquarters. We cruised past slowly. No one looked out. Apparently, they were still asleep. A few yards down the road, I spotted three kimchi cabs parked in front of a sign that said Unchon Siktang. The Driver’s Eatery.
“Pull the jeep around the corner,” I said. “We’ll eat here.”
Ernie found a place to park the jeep out of sight of the KNP office and padlocked the steering wheel to the chain welded to the metal floor. I woke Captain Prevault, and she looked around groggily.
“Chow time,” I said.
She rubbed her eyes and climbed out of the backseat. As we walked toward the eatery, she did her best to wipe the sleep from her eyes and straighten her hair. Once she had it properly arranged, she pulled her field cap down low.
“Do you think they’ll know I’m a woman?” she asked.
“I think they’ll figure it out,” I told her. Even though she was shapeless in her fatigues and combat boots, Ernie and I still towered over her.
The glass in the sliding door was smeared with steam, and when I slid it open and ducked through, the clatter of metal bowls, wooden chopsticks, and porcelain cups stopped abruptly. All eyes turned toward me. I was used to this, and I was not going to let it stop me. The aroma of onions and garlic and hot peppers bubbling in a huge vat alongside chunks of beef made my mouth water. Unfortunately, all of the small tables were taken, but I stood my ground. A woman who I figured to be either the proprietress or a waitress glanced at me and then looked away, as if I represented a problem she hoped would go away on its own. Ernie and then Captain Prevault bumped in behind me.
“No place to sit?” Captain Prevault asked.
“Not yet,” I replied.
Ernie scanned the room. There were fewer than a dozen customers there, most of them workmen wearing jackets, at least three of them the drivers of the cabs parked outside. Ernie spotted a table that was round and big enough for the three of us. Only one man sat there. Ernie took a couple of steps forward and motioned to him. The man was studiously ignoring us, his nose buried in his soup. Ernie slipped through the crowd and wrapped his knuckles loudly on the round table. The man looked up from his soup, startled.
Ernie pointed outside. “You drive kimchi cab?” The man stared at him with blank surprise so Ernie mimicked both hands turning a steering wheel. “You drive?” he asked. “Outside?”
The man shook his head negatively and turned back to his soup. Another man rose from a smaller table near the wall and stepped up to Ernie, smiling and motioning toward one of the cabs outside and nodding and pointing at his own nose.
“You?” Ernie said. “You’re the driver?”
The man nodded, smiling broadly, sensing a cash-paying fare. Ernie patted him on the back and put his arm halfway around the man’s shoulders and then motioned to me and Captain Prevault. “Come on over here,” he said. “This is the ajjoshi who drives the cab.” We walked over, not sure what Ernie was up to. When we approached, Ernie swiveled away from the smiling driver and grabbed the mostly empty bowl and cup and spoon and chopsticks that had sat on his small table and lifted them over to the larger round table. Ernie motioned for me and Captain Prevault to sit at the small table he had just cleared. We did. Then Ernie motioned to the driver and together they sat down at the larger round table, joining the morose man who glared at their intrusion.
We waited and within a couple of minutes the rotund middle-aged woman who I believed to be the proprietress approached us, a worried look on her face. When I greeted her in Korean and asked her what they served, she visibly relaxed. In fact she was so relieved we wouldn’t have to wrestle with sign language that she started speaking faster than I could follow. I asked her to slow down and she did. It turned out they had komtang, sliced beef in noodle broth, and since you could usually rely on that to be edible wherever you went I ordered a bowl for myself, as did Ernie and Captain Prevault. Ernie also ordered a chilled bottle of Sunny-tan orange drink. Captain Prevault and I stuck to barley tea.
The morose man got up and left, so we all slid over to the larger table. This time the driver grabbed the bowl and chopsticks the man had left behind and shoved them out of the way. Now we were comfortable and the driver beamed with joy at having stumbled into such august company. Captain Prevault nodded at him and smiled occasionally, adding to his glee.
“Yoja i-eyo?” he asked me. Is she a woman?
Koreans are more frank than Americans about matters of sex.
“Yes,” I told him. “A woman soldier.”
“She’s not very pretty,” he told me.
I translated none of this until Captain Prevault, still smiling, asked me what he said.
“He said this is the first time he’s ever seen a female American soldier.”
She smiled back at him and nodded.
The steaming metal bowls of komtang arrived along with an array of small dishes: rice, cabbage kimchi, and muu-maleingi, dried turnip slices. We wolfed down the soup and the rice and the cabbage kimchi, but when Ernie tried one of the slices of dried turnip he spit it out on the table.
“What the hell is this?”
I told him.
“Who would want to dry a turnip?” he asked. “Isn’t it tasteless enough to begin with?”
Captain Prevault tried the muu-maleingi, chewed thoroughly and said, “Not bad.”
Ernie frowned.
When we were done, I paid the proprietress and we left. The driver followed us outside. He scurried in front of us, reached his cab, and popped open the back door, waving with his hand for Captain Prevault to enter first.
Ernie waved his open palm at the driver.
“No need there, papa-san. I drivey jeep. You arra? Jeep.”
When we breezed past the driver, his face soured. Placing his hands on his hips he walked after us a few paces. When we turned the corner, he was right behind us. Ernie leaned into the open door of the jeep and popped open the padlock. As we started to climb in, the driver screamed at Ernie.
“Okay, okay,” Ernie said, continuing to wave his open palm in the irate man’s face. “So you lost your seat at the chop house. Tough shit. Life’s a bitch.”
Ernie offered the man a stick of ginseng gum. When he refused to accept it, Ernie groaned and pulled out a thousand-won note, two bucks. This the driver accepted. He bowed and smiled. As we drove away, the man stared after us, hands on his hips.
The Simkok-sa Buddhist Monastery sat on a craggy granite cliff surrounded by rolling grey clouds. The roads were treacherous, slippery with mud, and Captain Prevault and I held on for dear life during the entire ride. Ernie, however, seemed to be having a wonderful time, zooming around curbs, downshifting up inclines, slamming on brakes, steering into skids, acting as if the entire rock-hewn road had been especially designed for his driving pleasure. When we finally pulled into the gravel clearing in front of the main gate of the temple, Ernie turned off the engine and Captain Prevault and I climbed out to pay homage, at last, to solid ground.