A Korean Dyad

“Saying that people need to know the objective truth about what goes on Up There, the objective truth about evil places fueled by imported wine and blank consciences.”

Mister Park

Early April. Smogless. The sky tall. The world fresh. A warm day.

He approached me in the park as I skipped rope. Hard, fast, and parallel. He gestured, smiling. I halted my arms, my wrists, my motion, stopped training. The world was silent without the terminant click of rubber on concrete.

His army fatigues hung limp off his shoulders. The sleeves flaccid—too long, extending past his cuffs, encroaching upon his palms. The pants bagged around the hips, around the knees, at the ankles. The suit wore him. A patch on the jacket’s right sleeve read “Mountain,” the word running horizontal under a sharp, bottomless triangle. The word and the triangle white, the patch’s background black. Sewn to his fatigues. Sagging, baggy cargo pants, pockets distended. A fanny pack clipped and stowed beneath the unbuttoned front of the too-large jacket.

The man’s eyelids drooped low over his irises, his eyes dark half-moons cupped by bloodshot, milky white. Skin olivine, husky, wrinkled and riveted as a sacred scroll. His fingers thick and hairless, his fingernails yellow, ridged, rogue crescents. He stood a close distance from me, his back against the cool metal chassis of an exercise machine, a shoulder wheel left unused.

I holding a jumprope, calm.

He said that he was tortured. Had been tortured, he said, in a voice louder than a whisper, soft enough to go undetected on the breeze. By two North Korean spies. Spies who broke his back. He was in the hospital for six months, he said, and still made regular visits to the same doctor. He spends his time in the park now, he said, because of the fresh air. The air, and the scent of the palm trees.