I knelt on the floor. So did Ernie.
“Anyonghashimnika,” I said. The formal greeting. Are you at peace?
She stared at me a long time. Confused. Finally she said, “Nugu?” Who?
“Nanun Mipalkun,” I said. I’m from 8th Army. Then I launched into my standard explanation of being an investigator, giving my name and Ernie’s name and then briefly flashing my badge.
The woman seemed totally uninterested.
I told her I was sorry about her daughter’s untimely death.
“Sorry?” she said in English. “You sorry?”
“Yes,” I replied.
She turned her head and barked a sardonic laugh. “You Americans kill her, then you sorry?”
She barked the laugh again.
Ernie started to say something but I waved him off.
“Jill Matthewson,” I said. “The woman MP at the accident. She tried to help. She tried to save your daughter.”
Madame Chon gazed into the darkness of the incense-filled hall. Before answering, she grabbed the bowl of rice gruel, pushing it forward slightly, mumbling something indecipherable as if speaking to a presence sitting across the table from her. Satisfied, she turned her attention back to me.
“Yes,” she said. “Jill try. She no understand. She no understand we want to bring Un-suk-i back home. We want Un-suk-i die here. So she no lose.” She gazed at me with a quizzical expression, realizing that her English was faltering. “How you say?”
“So Un-suk-i wouldn’t get lost.”
“Yes. That right. So she no get lost.”
Ernie coughed, shuffling uncomfortably, not used to kneeling on a hard wooden floor.
“Is that why you’re continuing these ceremonies?” I asked. “Because Un-suk-i is lost?”
“Yes. If Jill not stop my husband, he bring Un-suk-i back here, we perform… how you say?”
She placed her palms together and bowed rapidly.
“You’d perform ceremonies,” I said.
“Yes. Ceremony for people pretty soon going to die. And then Un-suk-i’s spirit happy. Un-suk-i spirit know she at home. Know mama and daddy take care of her. No have to wander around, looking for food, looking for smell.”
She cupped her right hand and waved it toward her nose, indicating the smoke from the incense.
“Un-suk-i no have to wander,” she continued, “all over place looking for someone to pray for her. She come home, mom and dad help her, and she go to heaven.”
Madame Chon pointed toward the roof and then dropped her hand and bowed her head. She sat silent for a long time. Then, softly, she spoke.
“I know. Jill feel bad. That’s why she go demo.”
Demo. The Korean word for a political demonstration.
Ernie sat up straight. Electrified.
I leaned forward and spoke English as clearly as I could. “You mean, ajjima, that Jill Matthewson went to the demonstrations that happened after Un-suk-i died?”
She looked up at me and her eyes widened slightly. “You don’t know?”
“No. Nobody told me.”
“Jill feel bad. She come here, bow to me, bow to Un-suk-i’s daddy, she say she sorry many times. She no understand Korean custom. But now GI get… how you say?”
She pounded her fist into her palm as if banging a gavel.
“Court-martial,” I said.
“Yes. GI get court-martial. Jill angry, she no can speak at court-martial. Jill angry because GI drive truck too fast but GI no get punishment. Just go back to States. Jill very angry. She go demo. Many Korean people there, only one American. Jill. How you say her last name?”
“Matthewson.”
“Yes. Jill Matthewson.”
I allowed the silence to stretch and then I asked the question I’d come to ask.
“Madame Chon, where is Jill Matthewson now?”
“Where? I don’t know. Many times I look, I no find.”
“You searched for Jill Matthewson?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
Un-suk’s mother, Madame Chon, stared at me as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Because I want her to help find Un-suk-i. Show Un-suk-i how to get home.”
Ernie and I glanced at one another.
“You mean,” I said, “pray to Un-suk and help guide her spirit home to you?”
“Yes.”
“What makes you think Jill Matthewson can do that?”
Again, she stared at me and then Ernie as if we were both a little dense.
“Mudang say.”
Mudang. A Korean sorceress. A female shaman.
Madame Chon continued. “Mudang say Jill last person Un-suk-i saw, then Jill can find Un-suk-i. Bring her home. Mudang dance, sing, drink mokkolli.” Rice beer. “Help Jill find Un-suk-i. No problem. Mudang show Jill how to do.”
It took me a moment to puzzle out exactly what she was saying. Then it became clear. The sorceress would teach Corporal Jill Matthewson how to travel to the land of the dead, commune there with spirits, find Chon Un-suk, and convince the wandering ghost of Chon Un-suk to return with her to the home of her parents.
“Sort of like TDY,” Ernie whispered. The military acronym for traveling on temporary duty away from your home compound.
Excited now by the idea, Madame Chon brushed her hair back and scooted across the lacquered wooden floor until she sat cross-legged directly in front of me. Then she reached out and grabbed both my hands in her cold grip.
“You find Jill,” she said. “You find, bring back here.”
She wouldn’t let go of my hands until I promised to bring Jill Matthewson back for an interview with the mudang. Then Madame Chon slid across the floor to her left, grabbed Ernie’s hands, and made him promise the same thing.
After we’d both promised, she told me what she could about the demonstrations held outside the Camp Casey main gate. About how many people had participated. About the anger directed at the 2nd Infantry Division. And, more gruesomely, what the Korean National Police had done to break up the demonstration. And what they’d done to the demonstrators they’d managed to catch. It wasn’t a pretty picture. But Madame Chon recited it all as if she were revealing her family recipe for winter kimchee.
So far, Ernie and I’d managed to gather more information about Corporal Jill Matthewson than the 2nd ID had during their entire investigation. Why? Maybe they’d been sloppy. Or maybe they hadn’t actually wanted to gather information on her disappearance. Maybe. But my theory was that they were unable-or unwilling-to gather information from Koreans. There’s an arrogance that infects Americans in Korea and it often transcends their common sense. They begin to believe that only people who speak English can be trusted, that any American who believes otherwise is simply naive. Why exactly they believe this is beyond me, but they do. Also, it’s laziness. They conduct their investigations amongst Americans, usually on compound, and that’s it.
I didn’t have much time to figure out why 2nd ID had conducted such a miserable investigation. Something more pressing was occupying my mind: finding Jill Matthewson. And learning what, if anything, the death of Private Marvin Z. Druwood had to do with Jill’s disappearance. What I could be sure of was that someone working for the Division PMO, or the Division provost marshal himself, had lied. I’d seen the evidence with my own eyes. Druwood’s corpse revealed that he’d cracked his skull on cement, but there was no cement near the obstacle course tower.
And now I had another burden. Not only was it my duty to find Jill Matthewson-and report back to her mother in Terre Haute, Indiana-but I also had to worry about the spirit of Chon Un-suk wandering through eternity as a hungry ghost.
I didn’t believe in hungry ghosts; Ernie didn’t believe in hungry ghosts. But Chon Un-suk’s mother did believe in hungry ghosts. And I’d promised to find Jill Matthewson so she could convince a hungry ghost to stop its wandering.