Ernie noticed the reaction and said to a couple of the business girls, “Hey, what about me?”
They ignored him.
As we climbed in the jeep, I folded myself into the tattered back seat; Jill sat up front next to Ernie. The business girls approached the jeep, as if mesmerized. Still, Jill Matthewson acted as if she hadn’t noticed their reaction.
For a moment, sitting in the back seat, I thought of pulling my. 45, disarming Corporal Jill Matthewson, and placing her under arrest. But then what would I do? Take her back to Seoul? Charge her with being AWOL? Eventually, I’d be forced to turn her over to the Division provost marshal. No way. First, I was going to encourage her cooperation and hear what she had to say. Then we’d make a decision as to what our next move would be.
Ernie started the jeep, jammed it into gear. He rolled forward slowly because of the awestruck business girls surrounding us. Finally, when he was clear of them, he gunned the engine to the next intersection and started to turn right, toward the main paved street that led to Reunification Road.
“Not right,” Jill told him. “Left. Back to the Bunny Club.”
“Why?” Ernie asked.
“You’ll see. Just do as I tell you.”
Ernie shrugged and turned the wheel to the left. As we approached the Bunny Club, the glow from the neon out front illuminated the jeep that Bufford and Weatherwax had driven up in. Still sitting there, untouched.
“Pull over!” Jill shouted.
Ernie did. Before the jeep had come to a full stop, she leaped out, running, and for a moment I thought she was escaping. She ran toward the front of the Bunny Club. The designation stenciled in white lettering on the jeep’s bumper said: HQ CO, 2ND ID PMO. Translation: Headquarters Company of the 2nd Infantry Division Provost Marshal’s Office. I pulled my. 45, fearing that Bufford and Weatherwax might appear at any moment.
Jill Matthewson approached the jeep, drew her. 45, and took aim. She fired six rounds; two into the radiator, one each into the four tires. Satisfied, she reholstered her pistol, trotted back, and jumped into the passenger seat next to Ernie.
“We ain’t left yet?” she asked.
Ernie stared at her for a moment, immobile. Then he seemed to come to his senses, nodded grimly, let out the clutch, and jammed the little jeep into gear. We lurched forward. He gunned the engine, twisted the steering wheel, and after a few hairpin turns, the three of us sped off toward Reunification Road.
When we told her that Private Marvin Druwood was dead, Jill Matthewson slammed her fist into the wall of the hooch. The entire building shook.
“Damn!” she shouted.
She wouldn’t look at us. She stared at the floor, shaking her head, and then she gazed out the open sliding double doors of the little hooch.
“Damn, damn, damn,” she said. “Private Marvin Druwood, United States Army Military Police Corps. Innocent little Marv Druwood.”
I thought of asking something like, You knew him well? But every sentence I composed mentally sounded lame, so I kept my mouth shut.
After leaving Bongil-chon, Jill had instructed Ernie to turn north on Reunification Road, guiding us farther away from Seoul. A mile later, she had us turn left onto a two-lane highway running east. For twenty minutes, we drove through rice paddies and wooded hills barely illuminated by a rising moon. Finally, we reached the town of Wondang. There were no U.S. military compounds anywhere near here and, as far as I could tell, no ROK Army compounds either.
We’d parked the jeep near the city center in front of a Buddhist temple. According to Jill, the temple held an ancient bronze bell that was sounded by bald monks every morning at dawn. Two blocks farther on, we reached a walled compound into which were crammed about a dozen hooches, including Jill’s.
Inside the hooch, we sat on an ondol floor. It was a comfortable little hooch, old but well maintained; Jill Matthewson seemed to have mastered all the intricacies of Korean housekeeping. As soon as we arrived, she’d unlaced her combat boots and slipped on a pair of rubber sandals. She used metal tongs to reach into a subterranean stone furnace at the base of the outer wall of the hooch. She pulled out one flaming charcoal briquette and replaced it with a new one. Next, she carried the spent briquette over to a cement storage space tucked away from the other hooches so as to prevent fire.
Then she observed as Ernie and I slipped off our shoes and stepped up onto the wooden porch. After we had entered the hooch, she used a moist rag to wipe down the porch’s immaculate varnished surface. In the cement-floored kitchen-adjacent to the one-room living space- she had used a wooden match to light a single butane burner. Then she’d gone outside to fill a brass teapot with water from an outdoor spigot. Fifteen minutes later she’d unfolded the legs of a one-foot-high, mother-of-pearl serving table and Ernie and I were sipping Folgers instant coffee ladled from a short bottle with a Korean customs duty stamp emblazoned on it. We sat on flat, square cushions covered with silk.
“Where’s Kim Yong-ai?” I asked, once Jill had settled down.
“At work,” Jill replied.
“Where does she work?”
Jill eyed me suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”
I raised two open palms in mock surrender. “Just curious.”
“I know you’re curious,” she replied. “That’s why you spent so much time looking for me. You want to find out what’s really going on in Division.”
I did. But first I thought I’d show her something. I pulled out the photocopy of the letter that her mother had sent to her congressman. I handed it to her. While Jill read, Ernie stirred more sugar into his coffee, content for the moment to let me handle the interview. Anything touchy-feely, Ernie held no truck with.
Jill read the letter, then read it again. She began to cry. Angry at herself, she wiped the tears from her eyes.
“It’s understandable why you didn’t write your mom. Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said.
“It’s not that,” Jill replied. “It’s just that she pulled it off so well.”
“ ‘Pulled it off’?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“Mom’s not real good at writing letters. But I called her from a pay telephone on Camp Casey. Told her what I was planning to do.”
Now it was Ernie’s turn to be amazed. “You told your mom that you were planning to go AWOL?”
“Right,” Jill said calmly, stirring more sugar into her coffee. “And I told her why.”
Ernie and I glanced at one another. Waiting. Both of us afraid to interrupt Jill Matthewson.
“I told my mom to write the letter to her congressman,” Jill said. “And I told her what to say, and I told her when to send the letter.”
“Why?” I ventured to ask.
Jill stopped stirring her coffee and stared at each of us in turn.
“To get you guys up here,” she said. “I need help. From Eighth Army or the Marines or the FBI or somebody.” She waved her arms in a broad circle. “I can’t do all this on my own. And somebody has to put a stop to what’s happening in Division.”
Neither Ernie nor I responded. Maybe we were both too dumbfounded by this turn of events. Or maybe it was because once a principal in an investigation starts answering questions you didn’t ask, the best thing to do is keep your trap shut. Jill examined the cover letter from the office of the congressman from the district that encompasses Terre Haute, Indiana. She snorted a laugh.
“Finally, somebody up top is interested in what goes on in Division.”
“What do you mean ‘finally’?” I asked.
“‘Finally,’ because first I went to the IG.” The Inspector General.
“The Division IG?”
“Yes. I told him about the black marketing, the whole thing, from A to Z. Then he called the provost marshal.”
“They called the very guy you were complaining about?”