Martoons

Cast of characters

Fred

A couple working Korean men

Caffeine

*

As Fred briskly walked through the back alleys toward Central (his usual route), everything was quiet.

This was the only time of day when most of the city was still shut down, even all the restaurants.

Fred had tried to find breakfast places before but all had their rolling doors pulled down and neon lights off –

and their bags of wet, rotten and rancid food garbage piled up outside awaiting the trash collector.

A pick-up truck rumbled down the alley and stopped at a corner just ahead of Fred.

Two cocky-looking working men in their mid-to-late 20s got out at a coffee machine, leaving the truck idling noisily.

“HYUNDAI” was printed in a familiar font across the backs of their clean, bright blue coveralls.

Both men were about the same height and build and had their hair cropped almost identically.

Company robots, Fred thought and looked straight ahead as he passed, thinking it wasn’t all that bad to be Fred Pineridge, even though foreigners were freaks in Korea.

Within seconds, though, he could feel the men’s eyeballs all over him. And barely audible were some mumbled remarks between them.

“Another one of those foreigners, ayeesh!” said one.

Fred couldn’t make out much of their quick exchange but could feel their disdain.

It was hard to describe and although he couldn’t prove it, the feminist credo ‘if it feels like harassment it probably is’ came to mind.

On the other hand, Fred knew that feelings can be wrong sometimes. Totally wrong. Only an earshot away, he turned toward the two Koreans.

“Good morning!” he exclaimed and bowed, Korean-style.

Their eyes were angled away from him, and not a single facial muscle twitched on either man.

Fred wondered if they’d heard him or were pretending they didn’t.

Nevertheless, the foreigner continued on and commented: “Work hard!” (The Korean equivalent of ‘Don’t work too hard.’)

“Ayeesh! They speak Korean now, very well too,” came a mumbled response.

“So many of them in this city these days.”

“Too many. More every day. Ayeesh. Frickin’ Americans!”

Fred felt himself involuntarily stiffening up and quickened his pace for a block or two. Once he’d built up some distance he digested the mini incident.

It was the first time he’d directly encountered anti-foreigner remarks at such close range. It left him frustrated and angry.

He fought off the urge to go back and give the pair of company men a piece of his mind.

The rage inside him was reaching a boiling point but he kept a tight lid on it.

The electrical currents diverted, deflected and distributed inside his nervous system …and died out.

Why can’t we all just be friends? He chuckled, relieved to be out of the Hyundai guys’ range.

At the halfway mark of his walk to work, Fred routinely passed Hot Sauce’s middle school.

Usually the playground was unpopulated at this hour; however this morning dozens of uniformed students were in front of a fence that demarked the school yard.

* How come? *

Temperatures hovered around zero and the youngsters were huddled around a makeshift oil-drum fire, which flickered in the blackness.

Mrs Won had said it was exam day, but this atmosphere was strangely festive.

A few kids boiled tea on little portable stoves and passed out cups to others. Fred slowed his pace and watched with curiosity.

One teenage girl came out of the black and approached him.

“Here you are.” She handed him a paper cup of tea. She looked familiar. “Do you remember me? I am Hot Sauce’s friend.”

He remembered. It was Caffeine, who’d started the whole rumour mill churning about Fred supposedly leaving Korea.

He wondered now if that rumour and the whole underlying rotary incident was just some stupid practical joke authored by Damion with the unwitting help of Mr Go.

He flashbacked to how horrified he’d been only days ago.

* Will the incident with Damion be re-visited? *

*

Tomorrow: Fred’s opportunity to join in on the housewives’ hike is not lost after all.