Oh Bokrye's Right Hand Would Not Close Into a Fist

Oh Bokrye's right hand would not close into a fist.

Every time she tried to curl her palm, a hot nail drove from between her second and third fingers down to her wrist. The bloodied rope still lay under the pulley. After the bell had rung three times, no one had moved to clear it away.

"Let go of the rope. Count the people first!"

The words came out, but her body would not rise. As Oh Bokrye pushed up on one knee, Yun Sunhwa pressed her shoulder down.

"Twenty three. Twenty four counting you, Bokrye."

"Where's Seokman?"

"Right here."

Seokman was down on one knee. The trouser leg over his old swollen knee had gone wet with dirt again. In his hand was the empty measurement sheet Jang Munsu had thrown down and left behind.

"Twelve on the east, twelve on the west, that right?"

"That's right. No one pinned underneath. One rope mark on Park Chilseong's arm, that's all."

Only then did Oh Bokrye let her back settle against the plank. Sunhwa bound cloth above her wrist and pressed each fingertip in turn. Feeling remained in the thumb, and the little finger responded, slow but present. The two middle fingers turned her stomach every time they were touched.

"Is it broken?"

"I don't know yet. First I stop the bleeding, clean it, then I check the movement again."

"You learn that phrase from a telegraph clerk? Saying you don't know, sounds just the same."

"Living people don't fit report forms very well."

Sunhwa didn't smile. She pulled rope fibers from the wound with tweezers. Every time Oh Bokrye clenched her teeth, Seokman crumpled the measurement sheet a little more.

Outside the dock, the wheels of the army grain carts had stopped in a single line. Sacks meant to move on the joint water schedule sat piled in the storage yard, and two garrison officers shouted at the work stoppage line.

"The truce is only forty eight hours! We move it while the water route is open!"

Sunhwa spoke without lifting her head.

"Seokman, don't let anyone past that line."

"This is an army grain order." the officer shot back.

"There are two injured and the cause of the pulley failure hasn't been confirmed."

"Then just keep the injured out of it."

Sunhwa set the last of the rope fibers down on white cloth. Her voice stayed soft, but a short refusal followed it.

"No."

When the officer tried to step over the line, Seokman set down the measurement sheet and spread both arms wide. Oh Bokrye's twenty two laborers stood up behind him. No one picked up a rope.

Oh Bokrye shouted.

"The high and mighty are lighter than a sack of grain, aren't they, crossing over without even a rope. Take one more step and you'll be the one lying under the axle!"

The officer's face reddened. But Oh Bokrye's blood still pooled on the ground. He drew his foot back.

Sunhwa asked.

"What order did you get right before you got hurt?"

"Order to hoist the sacks."

"Who gave it, and when?"

Oh Bokrye started to answer and stopped. She remembered the officer's face but not his name. Before the bell rang, the water team had raised the third jug, and the horse bound north had turned away. The time fell somewhere between those two.

"Ask him for the name. The time was after the third water jug went up, before Jang Munsu's horse left."

Sunhwa took out her register. On the earlier pages, Park Chilseong's forefinger, Seokman's knee, Choi Seokgu's ankle were each recorded with a date. She started a new line beneath them.

Oh Bokrye. Right hand, crush injury and laceration. After the order to restart the hoist pulley. Sender unconfirmed. After the third shared water jug.

"Sender unconfirmed?" the officer said. "I gave the order to resume."

Sunhwa looked at him.

"Your name first."

The officer was silent for a moment, then gave his rank and name. Sunhwa wrote it beside the time he had admitted to giving the order. She did not write a sentence saying Oh Bokrye's injury was his fault. She kept only what was needed for treatment and tracing.

"Hand over that register."

"It's a patient register."

"I need it for the grain delay investigation."

Sunhwa tucked the register under her own knee.

"Neither the patient nor the register leaves this spot until the safety check is finished."

Oh Bokrye lifted her bandaged hand to show him.

"I have to leave, though."

"You're going to the relief station."

"The dock has stopped."

"That's exactly why you're going."

Oh Bokrye pressed her good hand against the ground. This time she managed to sit up halfway. Her fingertips throbbed like a heartbeat and the plank in front of her tilted. When Seokman caught her arm, she shook him off roughly.

"Let go."

Seokman actually let go. Oh Bokrye sank back down at once. None of the laborers laughed. That silence hurt worse than the officer's shouting.

"If I can't hold a rope, will these people still listen to you?"

Seokman said,

"You rang the bell three times, sister. Right now, they're all listening."

"Not right now. The next sack."

"I'll count the next one too."

Oh Bokrye looked at Seokman's hand. He used to be a boy who couldn't even write his own name in full, who stamped his thumbprint instead. Now he was writing twenty four names and positions on the measurement sheet, one line at a time. The handwriting was crooked, but he hadn't lumped a single person together as "minor injury."

"Then it's yours to handle."

Seokman raised his eyes.

"Handle what?"

"The bell and the headcount. East and west, both. If another crew comes in, put them in the same line."

"Until you come back?"

Oh Bokrye said nothing back. She pulled Sunhwa's register toward herself instead. Unable to hold a brush, she dipped her left thumb in ink.

"Don't write until I come back. If my hand seizes up like this, you'll be doing it from now on."

Seokman bit his lip.

"What about my wages?"

"Take my share on top of yours. But if anyone cuts the twenty three others' pay just because I'm one short, ring the bell before you take it lying down."

Oh Bokrye called out, not to the officer but to Han Seorin, who had just arrived at the dock entrance.

"Steward Han! Bring the ledger."

Seorin glanced once at the blood and the stopped carts, then opened the copy kept for the laborers. She did not begin with an apology.

"I'll pay the treatment cost up front, now."

"That's already spent."

"I'll pay lost wages at the average shift rate until you're cleared to work again."

"Just mine?"

Seorin's brush stopped.

"I'll pay standby wages to all twenty three for the full stoppage."

"What if another crew comes to inspect?"

"Inspection time counts as work too."

Oh Bokrye tilted her chin toward Seokman.

"The signature to resume work goes to him and two laborer inspectors. If the trading house or the officers open it first, the next boat doesn't come down either."

Seorin didn't write in her own copy first. She turned the blank correction space in the laborers' copy toward Seokman. He wrote "acting in charge," then struck through the word "acting." Oh Bokrye did not correct it.

When the officer called for the army carpenter as inspector, Oh Bokrye struck the plank with her left hand.

"If the side that gave the order to hoist also picks the inspector, is that even an inspection?"

She named Na Okdong and Park Nosik instead, the two who had corrected accident and shortage entries in the ledger before.

"Add one more, from another crew." Oh Bokrye said. "If we only look with our own eyes, we'll hide our own bad knots too."

An old ropemaker from the west landing came forward as well. Seokman wrote down the three names first, then took down the army carpenter's objection separately.

The workers didn't go underneath the pulley. They used long hooks to drag both rope ends and the wooden axle out to the line. The outside looked bright as new, but the inner wraps around the axle were pressed black and shedding powder.

"Is it burned?" the officer asked.

Park Nosik leaned in close, then shook his head.

"There's an oil smell. Whether it's fire or friction, I can't tell."

"That was delivered as new rope." Seorin said.

The ropemaker pulled the cross section open. One side of the core strand was thin. He called it only "uneven core thickness, black compression, oil smell," and Seokman wrote it down exactly that way.

Oh Bokrye looked at her own hand. The rope had looked fine on the outside too. Not knowing what had broken down inside before loading the weight, the price of that ignorance always fell on whoever stood underneath.

"Did the rest of the rope all come from the same batch?"

The trading house storekeeper brought the number tags. Of twelve coils in the same bundle, three were already on the pulleys and nine remained with their seals unbroken. Seokman had the three coils taken down and set apart, and tied the numbers of the remaining nine to the work stoppage tag.

"Only one snapped." the officer said. "Why not use the two that didn't?"

Oh Bokrye threw the bloodied cloth at his feet.

"Then put your own hand in first."

The officer didn't answer.

Seorin split the payment between the treatment advance and the standby wages for the twenty three. Oh Bokrye left her own share to Sunhwa and had Seokman and Na Okdong mark the standby wages.

"Do it through their hands today. I want it seen that I handed it off."

Seokman's mark stayed on the laborers' copy as the representative signature. Oh Bokrye stared, not at the blank space where her own name should have gone, but at where the next person now stood.

Sunhwa called for the dock relief station's cart. Oh Bokrye refused a stretcher but climbed onto the cart. Holding her right hand higher than her heart made her shoulder shake. Sunhwa fixed the arm in place with a cloth strap looped around her neck.

"If I can't use my fingers, what happens to the rope work?" Oh Bokrye asked.

"I won't answer that today."

"The wage ledger needs an answer."

"Have it say lost wages are paid for as long as you can't work."

Seorin, listening, did not cross out "until cleared to recover." Instead she added beside it: "confirmed jointly by laborer and healer, payment continues through the unrecovered period." Sunhwa signed in the healer's column, and Seokman wrote his own name in the laborer's.

Only then did Oh Bokrye let her body rest against the back of the cart. The pain hadn't lessened. But one sentence now existed that wouldn't disappear even if her hand never came back.

Sunhwa tied off the end of the bandage.

"Until the inspection is done, I won't let anyone through, not even myself."

"Does a healer double as a dock gatekeeper now?" the officer sneered.

"Today I do."

A telegraph office messenger came running from behind the cart, breathless. In his hand was a copy of a public report, the ink still wet. He hesitated between the officer and Seorin, unsure who to hand it to first.

"Read it out loud, for everyone." Oh Bokrye said.

The messenger read the first line. Sent by Yun Haejun. Comparison of the six hundred sacks ordered for the Mapo warehouse against the actually confirmed amount, and subsequent disbursements and losses.

His voice shrank on the second line.

"Missing sacks: one hundred seventy three."

The garrison officer shouted to seize the trading house first for siphoning off army grain. The trading house clerk shot back that the army had already taken carts of its own. Even the halted cart drivers started waving their own receipts.

Seorin held out her hand for the report copy, and the officer grabbed the handle at the same moment. The single sheet of paper drew taut between them.

Oh Bokrye pressed her bandaged hand to her chest. One hundred seventy three wasn't a hole that had opened today. It was a number the allied powers had been covering up together, and it had only now found its voice, in the middle of the dock.

"Let go." she said.

Neither of them let go.

Oh Bokrye called for Seokman.

"Ring the bell. Tell them this time it's the ledger, not the rope, that's stopping everyone's hands."