Silver Stallion by Junghyo Ahn Read Free Book Online

us?”
    â€œWhat’s happening now?”
    â€œThey passed the town, I guess, because they know the People’s Army is no longer around.”
    â€œThat must be the reason.”
    The townsfolk who had scattered quickly gathered again at the granary and continued to fill their bags and sacks much faster than before. The old man returned to claim his sawdust stove.
    â€œThese planes looked very strange,” Mansik said to Chandol. “They are different from those we saw the other day.”
    â€œHaven’t you seen those planes before?” asked a town boy who had just started to fill his pail beside them.
    â€œNo. I’ve never seen such big planes before,” said Mansik.
    â€œThey are called B-29s,” the town boy stated, importantly. “A B-29 has four propellers. The plane with one propeller is called Mustang. And you’ve seen the strafers that have something like sweet potatoes attached to their wing tips, haven’t you? Those are Spanglers.”
    Their conversation was interrupted by Ollye, who asked Mansik to lift her hemp bag and place it on top of her head. “Let’s go home before other planes show up, Mansik. I want to get out of this place as quickly as possible,” Ollye insisted. “Whether they bomb us or not, I just hate that piercing sound. You’d better hurry too, Chandol’s mother.”
    The four of them waddled out of the granary, carrying their rice, and hurried along the alley which was littered with debris, burnt shreds of clothes and broken cement slabs from previous bombings. Then they skidded down the steep path to the Soyang River. Ollye kept urging them to hurry, hurry.
    When, breathlessly, they crossed the shingle and reached the ferry, three Hyonam women were loading their rice and barley onto the boat. The wall-eyed boatman watched them offhandedly, standing aside and puffing at his long bamboo pipe. When all seven were aboard with their booty the old man pushed off with a long pole. They heard two or three automatic weapons burp intermittently in the direction of Kongji Creek.
    â€œWhat is that? What is that?” Chandol’s mother gasped in a frightened voice. “What was that noise?”
    â€œThe main force of the People’s Army in Chunchon and on Phoenix Hill has fled to Hwachon, but another unit is retreating from Wonju. Maybe some of them are fighting over there,” the boatman explained calmly.
    The passengers in the boat kept silent. The boat was loaded so heavily that the water almost reached the place where Mansik was sitting. The seat of his pants was getting wet. When Mansik tried to move forward to the bow, Chandol grabbed him by the elbow and signaled with his eyes for Mansik to come closer so that he could tell him something privately. Mansik leaned toward him.
    â€œWhen we get back home,” Chandol whispered so that their mothers would not hear him, “you go and tell the boys to come to the sand under the bridge right after lunch hour.”
    35
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œYou know what for.”
    Of course Mansik knew. Chandol was planning to come back to town with the other boys for some sort of adventure. “But I won’t have time to find all the boys and pass the word,” Mansik said. “Maybe I won’t even have time to come to the bridge at all.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI have to go to Charcoal village on Old Hwang’s errand today.”
    â€œIt won’t take more than two hours for you to make the trip to Charcoal, if you really walk fast,” said Chandol. “I will tell Toad to pass the word to other boys.”

    Bong watched the four boys strip themselves by the sand dune near where the village stream joined the river. They could not use the boat because the boatman would tell their parents. Squatting on the white clean sand, he looked at the river and the boys in turn, and then down at the clothes strewn before him, crestfallen.