My Seoul Man

Chapter 25

I felt AJs hands slide up my back and onto my shoulders. Made me shiver and glance back toward Mama Sadie's house to see if anyone was watching.

And he murmured, "Relax, okay? If they see, they see."

I let my head fall back against his chest out of sheer exhaustion. The anger had faded into a kind of...bewilderment. "It's like that...QAnon...Deep State...conspiracy kinda stuff."

He began to knead my muscles with those magic hands of his. "Well, this is real."

"Should I have just...God, I don't know. Everyone else wants to go back tomorrow, but..."

"Why don't you want to go back? Talk to me."

First time any man had said that like he really meant it. Made me feel all kind of warm inside.

So, I told him, "I'm worried about your grandparents, actually. Now that Wally has explained what's really going on."

"God bless him..."

"Amen to that," I said. Like I really meant it.

Cause in the midst of the turmoil I'd had the presence of mind, somehow, to call Wally. Who called some other people, who called some other people—the mayor, some city council and county officials...

And he gradually cobbled the hemming and hawing together into a scary little story.

Told me, "Y'all shook a big old hornet's nest, kiddo. That wun a cute little, small-town get-together. It was put together by a little cabal of developers wantin' to show potential buyers the future they have in mind. And Seoul Food sounded like...well, foreign, you know? Kinda things they're tryin'a promote."

He'd gotten the impression that the developers had done some "pretty big favors" for the local politicians over the past two or three years, to get them on board with those future plans.

"So they couldn't have corn dogs and fried chicken gettin' more play than that fancy stuff they wanted the media to cover," he concluded. "I mean, that noodle thing was more like it, but it wasn't run by any of those famous people they were tryin'a promote. Ya'll Quarters folks are the kinda history they're tryin'a play down. It brings to mind allat slavery time stuff. Like them shacks you show to tourists, you know? They'd like to shut that down. Pretend it never happened."

Oh, I definitely knew. And it cut me to the quick that our survival was an embarrassment now. Something to be hidden, not celebrated.

And then seeing Grandma Ahn's eyes go from joy to fear when those guys started sniffing around that somen slide...God, that hurt me so bad.

They'd sent away the people who'd booked it for that hour and ordered Ronnie to show them how it worked as if it were a moonshine still or something. I had to explain the whole concept, too. "Cold noodles?" one said. Like that was a crime of some sort.

Ronnie knew it was all for show like when the Feds came to the rez to act like they actually gave a shit a couple of times a year. So he told them what "this" did and how "that" worked in this monotone that told them he knew the rules of this game.

So, finally the icy-eyed one said, "You wanna use it like a fountain...that's cool, but we don't know enough about this kinda stuff to make a final decision right this minute." Kinda of smug, like he was loving having the last word on the subject.

Cause he'd completed his mission, pretty much. Gave the truck a thumbs up, but the mortal blow had been struck. Everyone had seen them go rummaging around in there looking all stern and serious.