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BUT I AM NOT A KOREAN315Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfZt82GPGnt
315Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4tOa0MOpwx
They watched Robinson work. The man seemed inexhaustible. Near the end of the day, the others had gathered eagerly around the water bucket Yoshihiro carried. As the ladle went from hand to hand, only Robinson remained at his work. His hammer rang in a steady rhythm. Watching him, Kinoshita shook his head and turned to the others. "It is plain the man needs no company."
Yoshihiro smiled at him. The revelation of Robinson's identity had energized the little man, Kinoshita thought; he could not have been more pleased if Robinson were his son. "The Hwarangdo of Korea are at one with themselves," he said.
Kimoto looked again out at Robinson. Now that he knew something more about the man, he understood less. It was a mystery. What was a Hwarangdo doing in America, suffering like this? The ways of the Koreans were strange and complex, he knew....but this could not be part of their catechism. If he knew nothing else, Kinoshita thought that he knew this. Robinson in some way was a vagabond.
"From what is he fleeing?" he said. "What brings a Hwarangdo to America?"
"To labor on the roadbed?" Hoga, the Okinawan, asked. "In clothes which conceal what he is?"
Kimoto smiled bitterly. "He must need to be thought of as one of us," he said, "otherwise he would surely assume his truest identity. Would he not? Isn't that reasonable?"
"Enough," Yoshihiro said. As the oldest, he thought of himself as the leader and disciplinarian, for all the good, Kimoto thought, that this would do. Yoshihiro was first among the fools. "No more of this. We all work on the roadbed; we must wear the clothes that fit the task. Of course, he would choose them; he does not take his identity from clothing."
"No?" Kimoto said and paused. The heads of the others swung to him, he waited them out "That may be true. He wears clothing to work on the roadbed and I wear clothing to work on the roadbed as well."
He ran a hand lightly over his garb, showing them. "But I," Kimoto said, "I, friends, am no Korean."
They looked at him, Kimoto held their gaze and held it, held it longer and finally one by one, Yoshihiro's glance last of all, their eyes fell from him and Kimoto looked out again to the strong figure wrestling with the earth outside----the earth and man linked together in some way which Kimoto thought none of them would ever know.
Then the voice of the overseer interrupted. "You!" he shouted to Yoshihiro. "Move on there with that water!" As the men picked up their hammers again, Kinoshita wondered briefly what Robinson thought of during his long, isolated work.
Robinson thought of the temple.
ns 18.68.41.147da2
