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Bags of rice and barley had rolled down and burst open on the ground, the grain spilling out all over the place, he explained. Some townspeople had gathered with baskets and sacks to take away the abandoned rice, but did not dare to go near the collapsed walls because Communist soldiers armed with submachine guns were standing guard around the ruin to protect their military provisions.
    â€œThe Red soldiers?” she said doubtfully. “But you said they had started to run away to the north early yesterday evening, didn’t you?”
    â€œSome of them did, but there are still quite a lot of them left in the town,” the miller said. “I saw a dozen soldiers guarding the storehouse until their trucks come to take away the rice. But the townspeople are waiting, hoping that the People’s Army may leave at least some of the spilled rice behind.”
    â€œIf the World Army is really arriving in a day or two, the Reds will have to leave tonight,” said Kangho’s mother, as if to herself, calculating. “Or tomorrow morning at the latest.”
    Realizing what his wife was scheming, the miller warned, “Don’t even dream of going to town to get that free rice, woman. The Reds are now as mad as rabid dogs because they are losing the war, and at this very moment, they say, they’re killing everybody in sight in many towns, out of sheer anger. If you hang around the storehouse, they might just start shooting and. …”
    She had experienced too much poverty in her childhood, surviving on nothing but potatoes and corn for months, to give any heed to his warning. Now the Hans were quite well off, running the only rice mill in West County, and some villagers suspected that the miller had secretly bought rice paddies and vegetable patches here and there, and the Hans were even richer than the Rich House these days, but she would never be rich enough to overlook any morsel she could get for free. At least she had to see the granary with her own eyes.
    Without telling her husband, Kangho’s mother sneaked out of the mill about an hour later, went over to the widow who lived with her six children next door, and briefly explained about the free rice piling up in the street. The two women headed for the town. They came back so late that although they shouted and screamed for more than half an hour the boatman, sound asleep on the opposite shore, did not hear them. They might have spent the whole night on Cucumber Island if the worried miller, suspecting his wife had gone for the rice after all, had not come to the ferry around eleven o’clock to check with Yom.
    Both women, of course, wanted to go back to town for more rice but Kangho’s mother had to stay home; the miller beat her with a broken piece of old conveyor belting until she foamed at the mouth for ignoring his warning and swore that he would kill her if she left the mill by so much as one single step. The neighbor woman went back to the ferry at midnight and woke the boatman up to take her across the river again, but Yom refused. A woman without a husband was a half person, and few people respected a widow’s wish. The widow had to wait until daybreak.
    Chandol’s mother found out about this when she went to the ferry very early to take a dozen bamboo baskets she had made to her sister-in-law, who ran a general store at the Central Market, so that she could return home before the day’s work began at the rice paddies. She met the widow at the bench before the boatman’s cabin and they waited together for a male passenger to arrive. Yom, like any other boatman, never took a woman as the morning’s first passenger because it would bring him bad luck; shops, inns, bathhouses, and all other public places never served a woman as their first customer for the same reason. While they waited for the boatman, the widow told her what had happened the previous night, and Chandol’s mother hurried back to