Sixty Sacks, Two Cauldrons

The first sack was coming down over the embers when it slipped, rope and all. O Bokrye had sixty sacks to get into two cauldrons tonight. Rush, and someone would fall into the fire. Stop, and the dock relief station and the gate relay crew would be scraping empty pots.

"Don't pull!"

O Bokrye stepped on the rope. The four men of the west crew braced reflexively, then stopped. The sack swayed a hand's width above a scorched plank. Gunfire cracked twice across the river, and a startled horse kicked at the cart shaft.

"Chilseong, loosen the left knot. Seokman, cover the horse's eyes. Count the people first!"

Bak Chilseong pushed at the knot with his palm, unable to straighten his injured index finger. Seokman limped toward the horse's head. O Bokrye looked at the fraying on the rope. She had picked it out that afternoon as a dry line, but where it rubbed against the sack's edge, the fibers had gone white and frayed.

"Drop this rope."

The cart driver shouted. "Switching to a new rope costs us half an hour!"

"If it snaps, one man loses the rest of his life."

O Bokrye untied the backup line from her own waist and looped it under the sack. Only once two lines were bearing the weight did she cut the old rope. When the first sack touched the ground, none of the laborers cheered. O Bokrye tapped the sack, listening for any wet sound, then pried open the seam to check that the grain inside was dry.

"One."

Kim Wonjung, ledger in hand, wrote down the number. Once when it was loaded onto the cart at the Mapo warehouse, once when it came off at the dockside yard. The same sack was recorded under the same number in both ledgers.

The garrison officer waved the release order. "It bears both the Inspectorate's seal and the Ministry of Taxation's seal. Move the entire shipment at once."

O Bokrye threw the old rope down in front of his feet.

"The full amount is four hundred twenty seven sacks, and what's authorized right now is sixty. In the eyes of your betters, does a number hold the rope for you?"

"Don't you hear the gunfire?"

"I hear it, that's why I'm checking the rope first."

The officer pointed his scabbard at the second cart. "If the gate relay runs empty, your warehouse will be the first thing seized."

"If someone gets crushed, there won't be any hands left to carry anything to your gate."

O Bokrye split the east and west crews into six each, and had one crew swap out after unloading six sacks. Putting all twenty four people they'd agreed on that afternoon onto the work at once would have been faster. But a horse spooked by gunfire, the smoldering embers, one misstep on a dark plank, any of it would drag straight into the next sack.

"Rotate every six sacks. Check the rope every time. If a frayed fiber catches your palm, stop."

The officer said, "At that pace you won't make it before sundown."

"The sun's already down."

O Bokrye set her shoulder against the second sack. She never left the most dangerous line to others alone. But by the time she'd carried the third sack herself, her right elbow was shaking.

That was when Han Seorin walked into the yard. She counted the line of people first, not the carts. Two merchant house clerks followed behind her, carrying twenty four small envelopes instead of a strongbox.

"Bokrye. Put your arm down."

"If you brought money, set it down there. We're changing ropes."

"That's why I'm opening it now."

Seorin spread the envelopes out beside the work ledger. Name, last night's wages, tonight's night hazard pay, injury compensation. Bak Chilseong's and Seokman's envelopes each had one more line item than the others. Seorin untied the first envelope herself.

"O Bokrye. Confirm the amount."

O Bokrye didn't let go of the rope. "If mine goes first, who checks whether the others are right?"

"It's not that yours goes first, it's the order on the list. Your name is the first line."

"Change the order. The injured ones first."

Seorin drew a thin line through the first entry and moved Bak Chilseong to the top. "Mr. Chilseong, count with your left hand, not your right. Clerk, read the amount aloud."

Kim Wonjung read out the count of silver coins. Bak Chilseong moved them one by one with his left hand, counting. Even after he confirmed the amount was right, Seorin didn't close the envelope.

"Mark your own receipt."

Bak Chilseong pressed his left thumb into the ink. Seokman had the clause about today's exemption from cart duty and full wage payment read aloud to him again before he pressed his own thumbprint. It took time for those who could read and those who couldn't to confirm the same terms.

The officer clicked his tongue. "Wages before rice?"

Seorin answered. "Rice doesn't move on orders. These hands move it."

O Bokrye added, "Wages, now."

Twelve envelopes had been confirmed when a third round of gunfire sounded in the distance. A young laborer from the east crew reached for the rope again. O Bokrye knocked his wrist away.

"Your envelope isn't open yet."

"There's no time."

"All the easier to cheat you out of your money, then."

Seorin laid out the remaining envelopes in two rows. In rotation order, each laborer confirmed the silver coins and left a name or a thumbprint in the ledger. Finally it was O Bokrye's turn.

Seorin asked, "Is the amount right?"

"The hazard pay is right. So is last night's back pay."

"Injury compensation?"

"There's none for me."

"I saw your arm shaking."

"I'm not hurt yet."

"If you only get paid after you're hurt, that's not a right to stop work."

Seorin added one more blank line item. Advance payment for treatment if pain occurs. O Bokrye snorted.

"Are you trying to pay me to stop?"

"I'm trying to make sure you don't lose money when you do stop."

O Bokrye read the line herself, straight off the ledger. She didn't say she liked it. Instead she signed under her own name, and wrote in large letters in the box for who decides to stop work. O Bokrye.

"Now you've paid, and I'm the one who decides when to stop."

"Agreed."

"And if you go back on it later?"

"It's on record in both copies of the ledger."

Seorin handed O Bokrye a copy of the labor register. It wasn't an envelope handed down from a generous employer. It was a contract stating who had taken on which risk for how much, and when they could stop.

In the payment date field of both copies, she wrote the same words: 1894, the day the first telegram was sent, the first watch after sundown. She noted in parentheses that this was later than the promised sundown deadline. O Bokrye rechecked the receipt marks and times for all twenty four, then signed as representative on both ledgers.

Work started again.

On the twelfth sack, a new rope frayed apart. O Bokrye raised her hand at once. The officer swore, but all twenty four pairs of hands stopped together. While they cut out the frayed section and retied the knot, a woman came from the dock relief station carrying an empty pot.

"The children have had nothing but water. Could you spare even one sack first?"

The officer cut her off. "The allocation is twenty sacks to the relief station, forty to the gate. Once all the carts have left..."

O Bokrye cut in. "The pot's already come all the way here. Are you going to load the rice on a cart and haul it back again?"

Seorin looked at the allocation sheet. The twenty sacks for the relief station specified only a destination, not that they had to arrive all at once.

"Release two sacks first from the relief station's share. Record the recipient's name and the time."

The officer thrust the release order at her. "Are you changing the order again?"

"The total doesn't change. The order of arrival does."

O Bokrye asked the woman from the relief station, "Your name?"

"Jeong Buni. I watch over the relief station's pot."

"How many mouths?"

"Forty three. Twelve of them children."

"Clerk Kim, write down forty three, twelve children. Get Jeong Buni's thumbprint."

Jeong Buni didn't cry after receiving the two sacks. She spread grains across her palm to check they were dry, then carried them to the relief station herself with two laborers. The first rice reached the side of a cooking pot, not just a destination in a ledger.

As the twentieth sack came down, sparks flew at the edge of the yard. A stray bullet had struck an oil stained plank. The laborers dropped flat. A small fire began to crawl along the straw litter.

"Don't pour water! It'll run toward the rice!"

O Bokrye kicked over a sand barrel, dumping it onto the fire. When Bak Chilseong hid his injured hand and tried to drag a sack anyway, she grabbed him by the collar.

"Your shift is over."

"If it catches, everything burns."

"That's why there's a next crew."

The west crew smothered the flames with sandbags. The east crew moved the carts to the far side. If everyone had piled in at once it would have gone faster, but exhausted people crowding the same plank would only have caused a second accident. O Bokrye counted heads before she counted sacks.

"Twenty four?"

"Twenty four!" the answer came back from all sides.

"Anyone hurt?"

Seokman's knee had swollen up again, and a cart driver's shin had been grazed by a horse's hoof. Seorin added two more names to the back of the payment ledger. Work stopped for about half an hour.

The officer ground his teeth. "At this rate the gate falls first."

O Bokrye pressed out the last embers with her shoe. "Burn to death the people carrying food to the gate, and it falls faster."

They checked the ropes again and swapped crews. By the time sack number thirty six came down, counting the two sent ahead to the relief station, thirty four newly unloaded sacks sat in the yard. The first three carts, carrying eighteen of them, set off for the gate. Each horse got a handful of feed, and each cart carried two laborers and one soldier. Seorin recorded the departure time and tied the seal cords. Sixteen sacks stayed in the yard, still bearing their number tags.

Including the twenty four still not unloaded from the carts, forty sacks remained. O Bokrye divided that into eighteen for the relief station and twenty two for the gate. Add the two already sent to the relief station and the eighteen already sent to the gate, and the final split came to twenty for the relief station and forty for the gate. When the last cart left, not one handful of rice had spilled onto the yard floor.

"Sixty." Kim Wonjung said.

O Bokrye didn't trust the number outright, she checked the empty carts against the remaining tags herself. All sixty numbers were there, one by one, in the departure and receipt ledgers.

At the dock relief station, the first pot came to a boil. Jeong Buni opened one of the two sacks and set out bowls for the twelve children and the injured first. O Bokrye didn't take her own share. Instead she recounted the silver envelopes and pressed them into the hands of the laborers heading home herself.

A messenger returned late from the gate. "Forty sacks received. Sergeant Bak Sangho split them straight into the relay crew's pots."

For the first time, the officer said nothing.

It was a small result. Not six hundred sacks, not even the full four hundred twenty seven dry sacks. Just sixty sacks, twenty four wages paid, and the first steam off two cauldrons.

Instead of cheering, O Bokrye counted the people heading home. Twenty four. Seokman couldn't straighten his swollen knee, but he had his envelope and the exemption clause tucked inside his jacket.

Just then a second messenger from the gate arrived, gasping for breath. "Ito's advance unit has reached the designated warehouse. The door was open, but the army stores were empty. They demanded the garrison hand over its weapons, but Sergeant Bak Sangho refused, showing them the ration slips and the pots still in use."

"Fighting?" O Bokrye asked.

"Both sides are holding the doorway. Even they can't push through right away, not with the warehouse empty. It's not over as a seizure, it's turned into a standoff."

O Bokrye looked back and forth between the empty yard and the two steaming pots. Sixty sacks hadn't ended the war. But they had kept someone from having their weapons taken tonight.

The gunfire from the palace had stopped. In its place, the sound of people who meant to hold out a long while, banging on their pots, carried through the dark.