Familiar Things by Hwang Sok-Yong

Author:Hwang Sok-Yong
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000, FIC048000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2017-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

4

As autumn deepened, the work grew harder. Homes were being heated again with coal briquettes to ward off the cold nights, and with the return of the ten-day-long kimchi-making season, not only the first-line workers but even the second-line ones were hard-pressed to find any items worth salvaging from the trash. Non-stop waves of spent coal briquettes and withered cabbage leaves buried every last bit of vinyl, plastic, aluminium, cardboard, and scrap metal. There was no exception for any of the districts: at least half of everything that came in was cabbage leaves and coal ash.

‘That’s how it goes,’ the Baron kept reminding his team. ‘Goodbye flies and mosquitos, hello coal!’

When the morning shift ended, the bulldozers that brought in fill dirt rolled over the coal briquettes, flattening the earth back down and blanketing everything in a layer of white ash. Faces that were once a shiny black from dirt and grease now turned white, as if everyone had been dredged in flour.

On the evening of the first snow, Bugeye was helping his mother to sort out and deliver the items she’d pulled from the trash. They had come down to the sorting area at the base of the dumpsite and were dividing the items up into large vinyl sacks when Peddler Grandpa came over to them from the line of parked motorcycles and trucks.

‘Anything good today?’ he asked Bugeye’s mother.

‘It’s been nothing but cabbage,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But we did get a lot of cardboard at least. You should take some cardboard and vinyl.’

The peddlers, who acted as middle-men, carrying off whatever items they could on their motorcycles or in small trucks, bought whatever they wanted regardless of whether it was purchasing day, and so whenever the trash pickers were in need of a little extra, they could usually make a few bills from them.

‘Put all those cans and plastic in the truck for me, kid,’ Peddler Grandpa said to Bugeye.

Bugeye dragged the five sacks they’d collected off to the side. After everything was weighed on the scales and Peddler Grandpa paid Bugeye’s mother, Bugeye slung the sacks over his shoulder and carried them to Peddler Grandpa’s truck.

Peddler Grandpa got behind the wheel and asked, ‘You done for the day?’

‘I was sorting stuff.’

‘They’re looking for you.’

‘Scrawny’s mama?’

‘I think she’s with your little brother.’

Bugeye nodded and ran back to his mother to tell her he was off to find Baldspot. Since she’d made him work all day from the crack of dawn, and he was always left to his own devices anyway when it came to dinner, she turned a blind eye and continued with what she was doing, throwing him only a quick glance in acknowledgement. When the truck headlights turned on, Bugeye saw something flying around in the air. He hadn’t felt it through the several layers of work clothes and the cap he wore, but it had begun to snow. Bugeye cried out, his voice trembling with the barest edge of excitement.

‘It’s snowing!’

‘So it is,’ Peddler Grandpa said as he steered the truck away.

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