From Klail City to Korea with Love: Two Master Works

By Rolando Hinojosa

“We’ve never needed a Mexican before,” someone says at a meeting about the possibility of hiring Jehú Malacara at the Klail, Belken County Bank, known simply as the Bank. But times are changing, and Jehú is smart, capable and well-liked.
Containing two volumes from Rolando Hinojosa’s acclaimed Klail City Death Trip Series—Rites and Witnesses and Korean Love Songs—From Klail City to Korea with Love returns to familiar territory as Hinojosa continues his examination of life along the border, including the discrimination faced by Texas Mexicans and locals’ involvement in war.
In brief, brilliant chapters composed of conversational fragments, each one a tile in a vivid mosaic of narrative, Rites and Witnesses captures the complex relationships and unsettling power struggles in both civilian and military life. Alternating chapters reveal the unfolding plans and schemes of the local elite—bankers, ranchers and real-estate moguls—while on the other side of the globe, Klail City native Corporal Rafe Buenrostro engages in skirmishes with the North Koreans, the Communist Chinese and the power brokers of the U.S. Army.
Korean Love Songs, Hinojosa’s only poetry book, captures the horror of war through Rafe Buenrostro’s recollections. “I’m sick. They didn’t stop coming, / And we wouldn’t stop firing. / But we stopped them. / Brutally.” Passing on his beer ration, he says: “Drink? I don’t even want to eat …” In verse that depicts the slaughter of enemy soldiers, friendships made and lost and a military bureaucracy more interested in discipline than keeping its men safe, Hinojosa chillingly revives the terror and atrocity of human conflict. Originally published in 1978 by Editorial Justa Publications, this installment in the Klail City Death Trip Series has long been out of print.
From Klail City to Korea with Love brings together and makes available two important books in Hinojosa’s lauded series that has frequently been compared to the work of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arte Público Press
• Release date: Aug 31, 2018
• ISBN: 9781518501173

Book preview

Praise for the Work of Rolando Hinojosa

Although his sharp eye and accurate ear capture a place, its people and a time in a masterly way, his work goes far beyond regionalism. He is a writer for all readers.

—The New York Times Book Review

"Another unusual police procedural is Rolando Hinojosa’s realistic-feeling Ask a Policeman. As this case about cross-border murder and drug-smuggling unravels, Hinojosa gets to you in his sneaky way. He’s witty about the Orwellian bylaws in the middle-class neighborhoods of Klail City, Texas . . . and once in a while he nails a character with a single line of dialogue. Hinojosa is also mordantly funny about the local law enforcement honchos who queue up at the U.S. federal trough."

—The Washington Post on Ask a Policeman

Rolando Hinojosa has established himself as sole owner and proprietor of fictional Belken County, which, like the author’s native Mercedes, is situated in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. If Belken is the Lone Star Yoknapatawpha, Hinojosa is its Faulkner.

—The Texas Observer on Ask a Policeman: A Rafe Buenrostro Mystery

The timeless truths of war—the slaughter of civilians, atrocities condoned, legions of refugees—are related with near-documentary realism in this powerful novel of the Korean War. Hinojosa draws on his own experience in Korea to reveal the racism that Mexican Americans faced from fellow soldiers. Hinojosa gives us a graphic picture of the unchanging face of war—raw, gritty and inhumane.

—Publishers Weekly on The Useless Servants

Hinojosa’s novel is in the form of a diary kept by a young Mexican American soldier serving in the Korean War. Its spare style, heavily spiced with military lingo, and episodic form are intended to recreate the fragmented process of discovery that occurs when one is at war. But what the narrator, Rafe Buenrostro, discovers is not heroism or patriotism, but the futility of war and its heavy human toll.

—Booklist on The Useless Servants

"Like Faulkner, [Hinojosa] has created a fictional county (Belken County), invested it with centuries of complex history and populated it with generations of families and a host of unique characters. The saga is a rich mosaic, and Hinojosa renders the collective social history of a Chicano community. Hinojosa’s tack in this novel is to dramatize how the community responds to la mujer nueva, the Chicana who eschews traditional roles and asserts her independence and individuality. [He] spins the story of Becky and her twenty-five friends and enemies with sensitivity, humor, wit and keen insight into the history and attitudes of the people of the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas."

—World Literature Today on Becky and Her Friends

Hinojosa turns his Faulknerian gaze upon a particular family struggle, in this case a divorce. It is an opportunity to observe a master of voice and characterization at work, to watch a web-spinner weave a narrative masterpiece.

—The Texas Observer on Becky and Her Friends

Themes which predominate and are explored in a humorous, good natured fashion include: the migration experience of Texan Mexicans, family feuds, the ongoing conflict between Anglos and Mexicans and the experiences of Mexicans in the Korean conflict and the Second World War. While Hinojosa explores the exploitation of Texas Mexicans at the hands of Anglos, his message is never heavy-handed or didactic, but rather pointed and understated. Hinojosa has an unusual talent for capturing the language and spirit of his subject matter.

—Western American Literature on Klail City

"Hinojosa’s Dear Rafe effectively uncovers social, economic and political relationships along the Texas border. A mystery of sorts, it permits readers to make their own judgments about the reality of Klail City. The dozens of characters speaking in their own voices create not a babble but a sort of call and response pattern between cultures, classes and generations. With a quiet irony and persistent understatement, Hinojosa describes an alien place that is part of who we are as a people."

—Newsday on Dear Rafe

Hinojosa’s obvious and heartfelt feminism, his linguistic facility, erudite allusions, and, above all, his witty, colloquial, epigrammatic pronouncements make this novel a feast for scholars.

—Choice on Dear Rafe

"Rites and Witnesses has delighted and mystified [Hinojosa’s] audience. In the very ambiguity of the documents, his purpose becomes known. The issues are clear, the battle lines are drawn, the reader now knows that what is at stake is the death of a culture."

—Houston Chronicle on Rites and Witnesses

From Klail City to Korea with Love: Two Master Works

Korean Love Songs

From Klail City Death Trip

Rites and Witnesses

A Comedy

Rolando Hinojosa

From Klail City to Korea with Love: Two Master Works is made possible by grants from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Texas Commission on the Arts. We are grateful for their support.

Recovering the past, creating the future

Arte Público Press

University of Houston

4902 Gulf Fwy, Bldg 19, Rm 100

Houston, Texas 77204-2004

Cover design by Victoria Castillo

Names: Hinojosa, Rolando, author. | Hinojosa, Rolando. Korean love songs. |Hinojosa, Rolando. Rites and witnesses.

Title: From Klail City to Korea with love : two master works / by Rolando Hinojosa.

Other titles: Korean love songs. | Rites and witnesses.

Description: Houston, TX : Arte Publico Press, [2017] | Series: Klail City death trip series

Identifiers: LCCN 2017003705| ISBN 9781558858411 (softcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781518501173 (ePub) | ISBN 9781518501180 (kindle) | ISBN 9781518501197 (pdf)

Classification: LCC PS3558.I545 A6 2017 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017003705

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Korean Love Songs © 1978 by Rolando Hinojosa

Rites and Witnesses © 1982 by Rolando Hinojosa

Printed in the United States of America

17  18  19  20                  5  4  3  2  1

Contents

Korean Love Songs

Rites and Witnesses A Comedy

Acknowledgments

Gratitude is expressed to the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota for its generous assistance which provided the writer the time to complete this work.

Korean Love Songs

To Patti, Clarissa and Karen Louise

I

II

III

According to the Japanese, the Spring of 1950 had been the warmest in the island of Honshu since the Disaster of 1945; at the end of that Spring, the understrength 219th Field Artillery Battalion was completing its seventh month as part of the occupation force in Japan.

And, on August 3, 1950, a week before the 219th Field joined the Second Division of the Pusan Perimeter, Rafa Buenrostro, David Ruiz, José Vielma and Rosalío Villalón, deposited eight hundred and seventy dollars in the Kobe Nihongo Bank; an additional one hundred and forty dollars were left in the care of Miss Toshiko Ogura of the Pages of Wisdom geisha in Tokyo.

The sum, $1,010.00, was a gift for Hiro Watanabe, 9, and for his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kazuo Watanabe of the Boso Peninsula.

And Jehu said, What hast thou to do with peace?

The Old Army Game

Talking about Ben Fletcher,

our barracks sergeant at Sill;

the four of us marked him down as a son-of-a-bitch,

and he didn’t disappoint us.

Three weeks before we finished the course, the talk was

he was up for transfer. Well, so were we,

but the brown-nosers took up a collection anyway:

One buck is all . . . Whaddayasay? Just a buck each for Old Fletch.

Screw Old Fletch, the four of us said.

Now:

Guess who didn’t get a three-day pass when the training was over?

The world remains as round as ever, and

with any luck at all,

                one will run into old friends.

You see, there’s just a set number of artillery outfits over here,

and there’s Old Fletch

conducting a course on quadrants.

But you’ve probably guessed by now:

                He’s due to be transferred in three weeks.

So, the four of us refuse again,

but this time,

guess who got the shit kicked out of him

                as he left the noncom club?

Rookies Under Stress Acting Tough

When I was at Chaffee . . .

Hey, shut the hell up over there.

It was different at Lewis. At Lewis we . . .

And who gives a big goddam?

Yeah, knock it off; let’s have some quiet around here.

Blow it out your homesick ass.

The noncom breaks in:

"It’s a long day tomorrow, boys;

You can talk all the way to the line then."

Fact is tomorrow they won’t feel like talking.

There’ll be a lot of crying, though.

They’ll remember Mama then,

and Forts Chaffee and Lewis will be the last things on their minds.

After a while, they’ll remember Lewis and Chaffee

  and the good times,

and they’ll forget Mama soon enough, and then,

those that are left,

will brag about their good life in Japan.

Nothing new here: just some month-old rookies who think Death is not for them.

Now, when I was at Fort Campbell . . .

Yeah, I know, but let me tell you something, that Rucker’s a bitch . . .

Friendly Fire

Light travels faster than sound,

but sound travels fast enough for some.

The burnt hand caught the shrap direct and sailed off

as the abandoned arm shot upward

looking for its partner

now partly buried in the mud.

The hip, too, felt the smoking clumps

which now don’t have to be surgically removed:

That wire-laying signalman is as good as dead.

The spent shell

bounces and clangs with the others,

as the hangman’s lanyard sways and waits to reactivate the howitzer

Sometimes, however, sound doesn’t travel fast enough:

"Raise those sights, Sergeant Kell,

the forward ob. says you’re still short."

Still, sound travels fast enough for some

as it did for them

who heard the first scream

in time to hug the sodden field.

The Evening Shift

(Moving North)

When the firing stops, and the noise dies

on the last click

of the high trajectory gun,

we sit exhausted and high-strung

as unsatisfied bitches in Death Valley heat.

A fly zooms by, little knowing it risks its life

while it seeks the salty sweet sweat produced by work and hot steel.

It’s been a long fire;

we neither see nor hear what’s before us:

we merely lower the sights or raise them;

fire long or short; short and then long;

and then,

success! Got ourselves a bracket, we have.

And they’re catching hell, they are . . .

We seldom see them now,

but we know they are there, and when they fire

sometimes they kill some of us.

It evens out. It all comes out in the wash,

as they say.

Two more cigarettes and then it’s:

"Police the area, boys;

let’s keep our house and home neat as a firing pin."

The fly calls in some support, but it’s too late;

the troops have settled down after someone passes the beer around.

And now, those flies haven’t got a chance;

the betting is on to see who kills the most.

Clean up time. The brushes are worked

back and forth, the rags are introduced and rubbed

until the barrels gleam. The guns are really cleaned for luck, you know.

A just in case-maybe-perhaps

there’ll be no more firing until late tonight or

with any luck

tomorrow.

A Sheaf of Percussion Fire

(Moving North)

Death is alive and well in our zone;

older, somewhat tired, yet up and around.

Early this morning, we opened up on Them;

tit for tat, then,

They opened up on Us, and there was Death,

out of breath,

trying to keep the count. Death is badly in need of assistants,

but the young and able are busy for the moment.

So, resourceful Death makes do

with a Burroughs for Us and an Abacus for Them.

No matter; it’s totting the numbers right what counts

at this stage of affairs,

and Death is having one hell of a time:

"You’ve no idea what I’ve been going through with these children;

I mean, it’s enough to make you cry;

hear them? They’ve been at it all day and half the night.

And it’s all I can do to keep