Chapter 13: Family Housing

Bom watched Yook come back down the steps of the stone column, wiping tangerine juice off his thumb.

Up in the seat, the gray hood hadn't moved.

She didn't need to hear what Yook had said up there, because she knew the way he walked when he had won.

He stopped at the front row on his way to the stairs and leaned down to her.

"Wednesday morning," Yook said. "You're going to Geumsan with Ki-tae."

"What for?" Bom asked.

"To help an old woman pack," Yook said.

He patted her cheek and went on up the aisle.

On Wednesday Ki-tae drove the Hanbat van out of Dunsan-dong with its hazard lights on.

In the underpass three boys in fake Hanbat jackets saluted it, with gold wheat ears ironed onto cheap black nylon.

Ki-tae saluted back, and it was the only time he smiled all morning.

He didn't say a word to her the rest of the way.

Bom sat with her left hand under her thigh so it wouldn't shake where he could see it.

On his floor in November, a farmer's thumb had rested on that wrist, and the shaking had stopped.

She kept thinking about the thumb, which was stupid, and about the radish, which was less stupid.

Her account at the exchange said zero now.

She had bid the last of her savings on his radish, and the farmer had never known the coins were hers.

At the top of the last ridge before Geumsan the cloud lifted, and the Tower showed in the mirror on the north horizon.

It was a gray needle with no top.

She had climbed it for six years and never once thought there was a field inside it.

Maeng Bok-sun was in the yard under the persimmon tree, hanging radish greens on a line to dry.

She watched the van stop and didn't put the greens down.

Ki-tae got out with a clipboard.

"Grandma," he said. "You can't stay here anymore."

"I've stayed here fifty-six years," said his grandmother.

"The Association rated the field a breach zone on Monday," Ki-tae said. "A breach that opens twice opens a third time."

He held up the clipboard, with the Association's order clipped on top of a Hanbat form.

"Everyone in a breach zone gets moved," he said. "Next of kin decides where."

"Gyu-ho is my next of kin," the old woman said.

"Gyu-ho's dead," Ki-tae said. "The Association says so. That makes it me."

Bom watched his face while he said it, and nothing in it moved.

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