Memory 881
Jake bites his lower lip with the thought of chowing down on a rack of ribs — smoking, charred, succulent ribs. He shakes his head and returns his focus to the moment... to the wild hog he's been tracking through the woods all morning and afternoon. But he can't get the thoughts out of his mind. He's never had such a hard time keeping his focus. When he's not thinking about food he's thinking about the past, about home, about the argument. Seems like it happened so long ago. The argument started on Friday and by Monday morning, he was out on his own, exiled from the only life he knew for disobedience. But it wasn't disobedience. Not to Jake. To Jake it was a need. No. It was more than a need. It was a longing... a profound longing to know where he came from and why his father never talked about him.
"But you didn't have to push him so hard, did you?"
"I did. I had to. I had to because I had the right to know who he was. Don't you see? I have an emptiness inside me that no money or thing can fill. Yet... he never told me anything about him... he just distracted himself with the business and all the trappings of a superficial life and —"
"Raising you, Jake! Raising his boys!"
Jake stares past trampled grass and he hears his mother's voice resounding through his head.
"Jake... please... you are expecting a straight thing, and no straight thing has ever been made. Your father isn't perfect, and everything he's done is to give you a better life than he had. He has his reasons."
"And I have mine!"
Jake closes his eyes. He remembers leaving home without saying goodbye. He remembers backpacking across Korea, meeting people who had known his grandfather and could tell him stories about how he had lived. And none of the stories he had been told justified burying the past the way his father had done. He had expected his grandfather to be an abusive, deadbeat and yet... he had discovered a hero... a legend even. He had saved and reunited so many families and so many were grateful and indebted and still... he never mentioned him.
"Maybe he didn't want a legend, Jake. Maybe he wanted something else. But why does it matter? Why does it matter right now?"
A voice of caution suddenly brings Jake back to the moment. His grandfather's voice or what he thinks his grandfather would have sounded like. "Jake... stop thinking about everything else except what you need to think about. You need to eat before you begin to see things that aren't there. You've been at it all morning and afternoon with that make-shift spear, and if you don't get the hog you'll end up like me."
Jake nods with a slight respectful bow as he examines the freshly trampled grass.
Memory 882
Jake charges after the boar as it zigzags through the long grass and suddenly disappears near the creek. Panting, he slows to a jog, searching left and right. He's hiding. Hiding like the letter his father hid in the attic. Don't lose your focus, Jake... not now... not again...
"I don't understand why he would hide such a beautiful letter in a shoebox?"
"Ah, yes... the letter. It's the letter that set you off on your journey. It's the letter that inspired you to learn your father's language properly."
"You wanted to translate it for yourself, and you did. But now, Jake, you need to stop thinking about the letter, about your father, about the past... you need to focus on the hunt or none of it will matter anymore. Find food or become food."
Jake winces. His grandfather would never say such a thing. That's something his father would say. The voices in his head are mixing like a horrible stew of fermenting leftovers. He doesn't remember when he started hearing the voices but at some point out on his own in the mountains, he realised he was talking to himself and that talking to himself helped him cope with the loneliness.
"Everyone hears voices inside their head, Jake, although most are too distracted to listen or even acknowledge them, or, if they do acknowledge them, they keep them private for fear of ridicule."
Most of Jake’s voices are family members and old friends that make friendly talk here and there, but as of late the voices poke and question everything he does.
And now for the last two days he was hearing a new voice. A mocking voice that highlighted and criticised every mistake he made like his dreaded high school English teacher that made him read garbage he didn't connect with or gave him nicknames like ‘muddle brain’ for mixings up words, reading backwards and seeing things in the stories she claimed weren't there. They were. She just lacked imagination and perspective.
It was her voice — teeth grinding on wool — that squelched through his mind to undermine his dignity and confidence as a thinking human being.
Jake was convinced his teacher had existed solely to prevent those with other ideas and perspectives from ever pursing a literary career. His father didn't care about his issue with his English teacher or with teachers in general.
It didn't matter.
Stories didn't matter.
Just tell the teacher what she wants to hear. Think of her as your boss and think of grades as money. Parrot her ideas and opinions and you'll be rewarded with lots of money... maybe even a bonus or a promotion.
Easy enough advice to follow.
And yet his father's advice did nothing to improve his sense of otherness in relation to the stories and curriculum he was subjected to on an almost daily basis. He still felt like an outsider for lacking interest in the literature and history he was expected to read and memorise as truths undeniable. Seemed like there was a big chunk of perspective missing from the overall narrative being poured into him like concrete that made him feel like he didn't belong.
"But what does it matter now?"
"It doesn't."
"Leave the past in the past and focus on what needs to get done."
"I'm trying."
Listen here, big brother... the sun's coming down, you're having conversations with yourself, and your cells are about to cannibalise one another. Find your focus."
Memory 883
Jake sits on a stone and watches a hawk circle against the golden dusk. He sighs and feels his stomach twist. He needs something... anything... and he regrets not taking the free granola bars from the clerk at the hunting store. He still doesn't understand what he was trying to prove and to whom he was trying to prove it to. "I guess I want to see if I could be like him."
"You've brought trail mix and other snacks before. What's so special this time?"
Jake draws a deep, anxious breath. "I don't know...
The hawk sails through the darkening sky, then swoops and quickly disappears near the stream. Jake stares after it for a long moment, then decides. He grabs his spear, staggers to his feet and stealthily makes his way toward the shimmering water.
By a fallen tree he sees the hawk picking at feathers and bones. He inches closer, lifts his spear and launches it. The spear hits the ground, and the hawk rockets to the sky, leaving scraps behind. "Scraps... Scraps will do. For now."
Jake kneels by a sticky clump of flesh and feathers. He smells the pungent odour of heart-pounding red. He touches the sticky innards and the plucked skin and the bones... bones as white as the hog's grin.
Jake sighs his frustration and shakes his head. He doesn't know if hogs display any kind of emotion. But if they can... this hog is definitely smiling. No... Not smiling... Laughing.
"What kind of bird is this, anyway?"
"Doesn't matter." Jake pulls out matches and cooks the guts, preparing a kind of bird-pudding.
"You brought matches but no granola bars?"
"I don't know what I was thinking."
"You're not him, Jake."
"I know."
"He died out there."
"He disappeared."
"Same thing."
"Not to me."
Memory 884
Jake tries to spit the rancid taste of regurgitated bird out of his mouth as he tracks the boar. His stomach rejected most of what he tried to stuff into it, but he's grateful he got some nourishment for his starving cells. He can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to guide and care for others in the middle of nowhere. How'd he do it? How'd he feed them? How'd he lead them out of the woods with soldiers tracking them?
Jake stops suddenly to examine a few broken twigs. He brings his focus back to the hunt, trying to determine which direction the hog took. Then he hears it.
Snorting.
Almost inaudible, but he hears it. He turns towards a patch of shuffling high grass and narrows his gaze. The snorting grows louder and louder. "He's laughing at me! Sunnava bitch, is laughing at me!"
"You aren’t worthy, kid!"
"The hell I'm not!"
Jake launches his spear into the moving grass. A high pitch squeal follows, and the hog jolts away!
Jake surges after him, tracking a trail of red to the mouth of a small cave. He laughs to himself and knows he will feast tonight. "He's done!"
"So sure?"
"I searched that cave before... there's no other way out. It's just a matter of time and patience.
"And focus... Jake... focus...
Memory 885
Jake figures an hour or so has passed and he's noticed no movement or attempt to escape. This is a worthy adversary. He thinks he can outwait me.
"It's a good plan... He might actually escape. I'm betting on the hog."
"You'll lose, bro."
Jake considers his options, then grabs a small shovel out of his rucksack and begins to dig a pit. He feels cobalt eyes watching him and he grins to himself. "It will take a bit of time... but this deadfall will put the odds in my favour."
The people his grandfather helped said he dug a tunnel under a small clearing to avoid detection... He dug a tunnel... Digging a small pit is nothing in comparison.
"What I don't understand is... you brought a shovel... and matches but no granola bars... What the hell were you thinking?
"I guess I wasn't."
"You're a walking contradiction, Jake."
"I guess."
"The stupid shit we do when we're lost and alone."
"I'm not lost or alone... I'm exactly where I want to be."
"Yeah, yeah. The whole turn your back on civilised living because humanity and not you have lost your way. Make yourself believe whatever you want... but in the end... he's your father."
"He didn't even try to reach out to me!"
You didn't try to reach out to him."
"He kicked me out!"
"You poked and twisted an old wound. You hit a nerve and he reacted."
"His father was a hero!"
"Maybe he didn't want a hero, Jake. Maybe he just wanted a father... A living, breathing father to do shit with... kinda like what you got."
Memory 886
Jake stands next to his father and brother by the sizzling barbeque and the turquoise, inground pool. He takes in the scent of thick, fatty, white bacon melting into mounds of burning black charcoal. He reaches around his father and pulls off a strip and devours it. His father smiles and says it's like he's never seen food before.
Jake's eyes widen as thick, droplets of grease drip off his chin. He suddenly pushes past his father and brother, attacking the grill, stuffing his face with greasy, life-giving fat and protein. His father tries to hold him back but Jake won't be denied when suddenly the meat morphs into a living, wild hog. The hog turns to Jake and winks.
Jake stumbles back and falls into the pool.
The pool swirls and turns into a deadfall as several spikes rip through his chest. Jake yells in agony, waking up with a start, finding himself in a small pit beside thick, sharpened branches pointed outward.
Jake wipes the sweat off his brow and slowly clambers to his feet. He climbs out of the deadfall and stares into the darkness of the cave for a long moment. Then he hears his mother's soothing voice.
"Jake... please... finish the letter and send it to him."
"Why? What's the use? It's just gonna end up in a shoebox in the attic like his father's letter."
"You're wrong. It will be like the picture in his wallet."
"That's just a stupid picture!"
"Not to him."
Memory 887
"I'm tired of waiting!"
Jake grabs a few branches, sets them ablaze and tosses them into the dark, gaping mouth of the cave. He watches the darkness fill with lashing, flames and swirling, smoke, and he waits for the inevitable. As he stares at the thickening smoke, he's reminded of a story and his thoughts drift away to his grandfather.
He reunited so many broken families. He helped so many people survive exposure, exhaustion and starvation. He saved them all and yet... he couldn't save himself.
They said there was a kind of smoke, too... a thick black smoke that suddenly surrounded them. One minute he was there. The next... he was gone. The survivors Jake had spoken to in Seoul said he was probably captured and executed but that they didn't know for sure.
A piercing squeal followed by a meaty thunk suddenly brings Jake back to the moment. He didn't even see the hog make a dash for it. He leans over the pit and stares at the skewered hog shaking and convulsing as life pours out of its wounds.
Jake sighs and feels mingled relief and regret. Sorry, brother... it was either you or me.
Memory 888
Jake swallows a piece of charred meat and stares beyond the flickering fire at the gutted hog. All he needs to do now is salt the meat. Took the whole day to get him but it was worth it. There's enough meat on him to last him months. The bloody and carved hog suddenly turns to Jake. "But you didn't really get me, did you?" Jake blinks. And blinks, again. "Truth is I let you catch me cause I figured you chased me long enough." Jake shakes his head in disbelief, and he knows his mind is still playing tricks on him despite having eaten. The hog sighs sadly. "You and I, Jake, we're caught in the same vicious cycle so don't feel so bad, all right? Today it's me. Tomorrow it's you."
Jake pinches himself but the hog continues. "Chase something long enough and it will surrender itself to you. It will stop running and let you catch it so long as you stay the course. Just like that story you chased in the old country." Jake narrows his gaze on the grinning hog. "Now you're here on Blood Mountain trying to be your grandfather while trying to forget your father without realising you're both and neither of them at the same time."
Jake tries to shake the hallucination out of his head. "Don't worry, Jake, I'm not really talking... you're tired and dehydrated... and completely lost in the woods. I'm just trying to give you some perspective or rather... you're trying to give yourself some perspective."
Jake sighs deeply. "I have no idea who I am or what I want to do and I'm talking to a dead hog in the middle of nowhere." The hog nods. "Yes, you are. It's interesting because your grandfather was poor and didn't have many options and you're not so poor and have too many options... I'm not sure which is worse... the tyranny of too little or the tyranny of too much... either way... a distracted life is a wasted life..."
"It's good that you came out here to figure things out. And you know what else is good? If you let go... if you just let go..."
"I have let go and I'm still as lost as I ever was."
The hog snorts. "You haven't let go, Jake. You're still playing the old scripts over and over again like a broken record. But let's see... you like chasing stories... especially the hidden ones... you talk to yourself constantly... and you like being alone... maybe you're a writer, Jake. Or maybe you're a historian."
Jake laughs out loud. "Are you kidding me! I hate history, and I failed every English class in high school cause I thought the rules were stupid and the teachers were boring."
"You and every other writer that actually made a dent. English class doesn't make a writer, Jake... Fighting class and dancing class do."
"I don’t even know what that means!"
"It means you need guts and style, not grades and diplomas. It means you need courage and not the validation of some coward that doesn't know what it's like to lead someone on a dancefloor or step into a ring. It means your country needs a lot more stories like yours. Because let's face it, Jake, if your story isn't in the main narrative... if you're just a footnote in a history book... you may as well not exist."
"You're not your grandfather, Jake. You're not your father either. And every generation has its challenge. Oppression. War. Separation. Maybe the challenge of your generation is... representation. You gotta get your stories out there whether you're a writer, historian, filmmaker or producer. Seems to me a lot of kids like you in the new country need to hear your story or stories like yours to know they aren't alone. To know they belong and that they aren't outsiders in their own home."
A chorus of howls brings Jake back to the moment. "Wolves! And they're coming for what's mine!" They howl again, and above the racquet he hears his father's voice. "In every transaction, Jake, there are wolves."
"Not in this one."
"Especially this one."
Jake ignores the voice in his head and tries to focus as he considers his next move carefully.
Memory 889
Jake sits high in a tree with the hog dangling from a cord. He grips the cord tightly and hopes the branch he's uses as support doesn't give way. Another howl rents the night and the chirping insects go silent. The wolves are coming, and they want what's rightfully his. He's glad he ate, and he feels new life coursing through his veins. He feels his focus sharpening, and yet he still hears his mother.
"You should have finished the letter when you had a chance."
"I'll finish it another time."
"If you get ‘another time’ Jake."
"I will."
"And what if you die here? What if you go missing? Your father will sell everything just to find you."
"Yeah, right. All he cares about is his packaging empire."
"You really don’t know your father if that's what you think... or why he carries that picture with him everywhere he goes."
Jake scoffs. "The picture means nothing! Even the fortune-teller didn't know what it meant."
"But it means something to him, Jake. It means the world to him. You point your finger at your father and accuse him of not understanding you... but did you ever try to understand him?"
Several wolves approach the tree and peer up at Jake with eyes that reflect the shining full moon. Jake tries to silence the voice and reign his focus on the threat at hand. But the voice — the voice of family — refuses to be silenced.
"Let me tell you something about your father, Jake... If he could give all his money away for just one chance to meet his father, he would. And... if you disappear because you were too pig-headed to let go... he'd drop everything just to find you. We all would."
"Let go, Jake, and the wolves will disappear."
Memory 890
Wolves growl and lunge and rip pieces of flesh off the dangling carcass. Jake holds the cord tightly with one hand as he uses the other hand to attack the wolves with a branch. He's exhausted and doesn't know what to do. He feels like a tick beaten and battered by the rain... broken... beaten... defeated... Not by the hunt, or the wolves but the thoughts and emotions swarming in his head like a hive of anxious bees.
The wolves circle the tree with cackles and growls that seem like laughter in the night. "How the hell did I end up here? Up a tree fighting wolves in the middle of nowhere! And how the hell am I gonna get down?" He hears his brother's voice break through the din below."
"The stupid shit we do when we're lost and alone, right bro?"
Jake swallows a growing lump in his throat and admits the truth for the first time in years. "You've always seen right through me, little bro. God, I miss you. But you're right... I am lost and I am alone... and I have no idea who I am or what I want to do with my life... and that fortune-teller was right... I didn't know what to choose... so I chose nothing."
His mother's voice returns. "No, Jake. He was wrong. You did choose something."
Jake draws a deep shuddering breath and closes his eyes, remembering his first birthday as his mother had described it so many times."
He's dressed in his first red and blue Hanbok, sitting on a white blanket with all kinds of objects spread before him. Pens. Rice. Paint. Ink. Brushes. Money. His aunts, uncles and cousins encourage him to choose something with exaggerated baby-talk."
The fortune-teller asks everyone to be quiet and says the object Jake picks first will be the driving motivation of his life. The birthday boy drags himself toward the objects... drags himself past the pen... past the rice and the cake... past the ink and the brushes... nothing seems to interest him. But then —
He spots something. His eyes go wide with excitement, and he charges towards —
The money!
Yells! Screams! More baby-talk to encourage him to take the money! But —
Jake doesn't take the money. He doesn't even look at it. He surprises everyone by charging past the money with perfect focus and he only stops when he reaches a man kneeling in prayer. One year old Jake looks up at his father, smiles, and grabs his finger. His father smiles back at him, and his mother takes a picture —
The picture.
Jake opens his eyes and now he hears his mother's voice above the snapping and snarling wolves. "The fortune-teller didn't really know what to tell us. He said we didn't arrange the objects properly. He said you chose nothing. But I think we both know he was wrong."
"I don't understand..."
"It's been years, Jake. Finish the letter. Teach him about his father. And come back home."
"I wouldn't know what to write... what to say..."
"You'll figure it out. Just remember that he respects what you did because in the end he knows..."
"You chose family."
"You always did, and you always will. That's why I know you'll do what needs to be done. Come back... help him complete his story."
The imaginary words strike Jake's heart like lightning. His eyes widen with sudden understanding, and for the first time in his life he wonders... he wonders what it would have been like to grow up without a father. To miss all the things his father gave him. To miss all the things he took for granted...
Hiking. Fishing. Hunting. Camping. Fun and fierce games of Baduk in moonlit tents. It wasn't all superficial bullshit. There was good, too. A lot of good.
He was so contradictory.
"Aren't we all?"
"I suppose we are."
Jake loosens his grip on the cord and stares at the frenzied wolves below, and for the first time in his life, he knows exactly what he needs to do.
