Impetuous

The question ~
where do you come from?
seemed harmless. Mr. Lee, the
questioner, Korean, fifty-two years of age,
the GM of the chaebol baseball team,
was the possessor of
showstopper knowledge
(ancestrily):
he was generation
thirty-four, followed
up with this:
"A salesperson on the staff is thirty-two", he said,
ashing his seven o' clock cig, "technically, I
should bow to him."

We laughed heartily and for reasons each our own.
No way would he, Lee, in
reality, trade this corner palace office for a
cramped amped cube,
give up secretary service and
mohagony for serve
yourself and shoulder-width space -
times two.
(Here credit is due since
Lee took the residency for
each desk from three to two).

Mr. Lee's tea was expertly mixed,
"with the drop of milk - something we
never had as a kid", he
smiled, remarking how
kind GIs gave Cokes or
chocolate bars to a boy
whom I imagined never needed them.
Maybe that's why his breast pocket
read KJL, initials sewn in royal blue.
Maybe that's why he knew thirty-four.

Long slender fingers tapped on
long slender filters as he repeated
a question I had long forgotten,
Where do you come from?,
as my eyes noted the perfect muddy consistency
of my coffee.

Telling him he had me beat
34-3 made him laugh,
but the earlier, got-the-world-beat laugh
had been replaced by something more.

He leaned forward, knived his elbows into
the hardwood, and I
told him him how my maternal
great-grandparents had met
under moonlight,
in an area that was Italy one week,
Czechosolvakia the next,
kissing behind trees
or holding hands with only
the hillsides in cahoots while the
village slept.
They stowed away on a steam
ship just as a baby was stowed away
in Nona's belly.

Another cigarette was lit as
the story reached Los Angeles,
the Depression thrust out its paw and
took, and
the Pullman train company relieved
Great- Grandpa of the need to
paint train cars.

Did you know a nickle got you a
crate of bruised fruit in 1932?

My mom's dad came from Portugal:
came to Hawaii,
hacked sugarcane with scythes and immigrant hands,
made it to Oakland, to Oakland!,
realized the shoulder swinging made for a mean fastball,
and hustled his way up to Triple A.

Smoke could not veil Mr. Lee's smile,
the smile that did not hide
could not hide
would not hide
that the Japanese built their occupatory promontory
where King Sejong had simplified the alphabet
and taught farmers to read.

Words at Grandpa's funeral sounded like this:
" . . . he coulda got called up."
" . . . he woulda played pro."
Then I ran out of words,
realizing all Japan hadn't taken from me.

Grandpa instead tried not to get dead,
staff sargeanted twelve,
spent two weeks with malaria,
spent a lifetime with a bullet in his knee,
a second in his eye.

He was a man -
his generosity only matched by
his patience, unless
his television was wheeled from the
rightside of his recliner to the left.
"How did he die?" asked Mr. Lee, and I give him the
mortal story.
"Cancer. A pack a day for thirty-eight years."

Mr. Lee puts out his cigarette.

My paternal history goes unsaid because it is
eight o' clock and we have spent a whole hour
of history discussing history. His story. My
story. Our story. History.

"Korea is very traditional", he says.

"Korea is very rooted", I say. "Thank you."

"America is very young", he says.

"America is very impetuous", I say.

We walk to the door - the sales staff
still sits in sedans - and he thanks me
with a simultaneous shaking of hands
and a pat on the shoulder
then the bus rumbles up to
take me to my real teaching job -
you know, the one you can prepare for -
and,
later that day,
I receive an e-mail,
from the vice-president of the
Lucky Goldstar corporation,
thanking me for the "lesson" and
for teaching him the definition of
impetuous.