Jung

A Sawyer moment from "The Cage."

I'm a slave to a watch.

Prisons, guards, guns, conspiracies, mobs, soldiers and sadists . . . throw 'em all at me. Bring it on. Old news by now. But now there's a ten-buck heart monitor on my wrist, and I'm done before I started.

I'm emasculated just as effectively as a surgery a little lower down. No, this is worse. That, I'd just have to deal with the consequences-these consequences I gotta enforce. Don't run, don't fight, don't risk a taser shock . . . don't even sneak a look at a well-built woman's naked back, conveniently visible two iron bars away. That was the only fun worth having on this **** island anyway. Just shoot me now.

And the worst part is that she has to be here to watch it. Watch it without understanding, not knowing if I wussed up or sold out or what. I gotta lie, gotta evade, gotta listen to her begging for some kinda reassurance that she's still got somebody with her through this mess. I'd give it to her if I could. Too late now.

I guess it comes down to jung.

Sun explained jung to me last week. It started with fish. I'm suddenly noticing that I get second pick of Jin the Sailor's daily catch. First pick's for his pregnant wife, which is fair. And then he brings 'em up to me, holding 'em by the tails, glossy and heavy and full'a protien, free for the asking. Anything I don't want, the rest of the posse gets.

And this strikes me as weird, so I snap at Sun, who's coming back from washing the garden dirt off her hands. "Hey! You wanna tell me just what your worse half thinks he's up to, Madama Butterfly?"

She stops and turns, drying her hands on the hem of her shirt. "What?"

"Jin. Why'm I suddenly gettin' all the best fish ahead of everybody else? He tryin' to butter me up for a favor or something?"

She raises a hand over her eyes, to get a better look at me through the middle-of-the-morning glare. "It's because you were on the raft," she tells me, the r sound fighting to turn into an l. "Both of you. You have jung now."

This answer is weird enough that now I'm almost more curious than ticked. I fold down the corner of the page I'm on and toss the book onto the sand. "I got what?"

Sun crouches down on the sand in front of my chair, sitting on her ankles with her butt off the ground in a position that's painful to look at, but that she can hold for hours at a stretch while she's gardening. She brushes a patch of sand smooth and writes out a character with her finger.

"Oh, the squiggly lines are real helpful. Thanks."

"Jung is not an easy word to translate. It might mean . . . 'solidarity.' It comes from human connection, from shared history. If a man asks you for a favor, if he is a stranger you will probably not help him. But if he is known to you, is a part of your life . . . if he has jung with you . . . then you will help. You were on the raft with Jin. Those experiences connected you, gave you jung. So now you get the best fish."

"He don't even like me." This isn't much of a stretch . . . nobody likes me. I wouldn't, if I were them.

"That is not important. Jung can be negative as well as are more connected to a man you hate than a man that you do not know." She stands up, brushes sand off her pants. Looks like my Korean lesson's over for the day.

But I find the word hanging around in my head, and after some consideration I decide I like it. It spells out a lot of stuff that I get but can't really spell out in so many words. Useful vocab for a con man. And it explains a lot of stuff. Like why Claire kept fretting her head off about Charlie even after she'd kicked the baby-napping stoner out of her tent . . . 'cause they've got jung, Charlie and Claire. Why nobody ever even thinks about saying anything nasty about Hurley . . . he's gotten himself meshed into everybody's life, in golf courses and peanut butter, and he's got jung across the board. Why I spilled my guts to Jack about Anna. Life with Jack's been one long pain, all guns and drugs and 'who's in charge here' and 'caught in a net my ***' . . . but it's been life with Jack. Don't like the doc, don't trust him, don't respect him . . . but there's something there, and I guess the something's jung. Somehow feels righter than callin' us friends.

The big mistake I made today was getting jung mixed up with love.

Here's now this worked. The highlight of what's been otherwise about the most craptastic day of my life was the moment when Kate, her arms wrapped around my torso, screamed right in my ear "I LOVE HIM!", which wasn't the most romantic thing ever, but hey, I'll take it. Even with my face all bloodied and hurting like hell, I had half a mind to twist around and kiss her before anybody could drag me back into my cage. Probably would've done it if not for the *********** pacemaker. And my biggest worry right then was, if we got outta this alive, what was I gonna do to follow up on her admission without taking my heart rate above 140? 'Cause she definitely admitted it. She spat it out. L-word. Which made the problem of me having to lie my guts out seem less important. She knew I was lying, and she loved me anyway. And now she was stuck with me knowing she'd fallen for me. No takebacks, Freckles.

So an hour later, when she'd figured out how to wiggle out of the top of her cage and was trying to beat off the lock on my door, I played my card. If you really love me, I told her, go. If she loved me, she wouldn't need truth. She'd do what I said, just for the sake of me being the man she loved, and I'd make love to her by making her get out of here if I couldn't do anything else.

And the little snit climbed back into her cage, and there she still is, not looking at me, trying not to cry.

'Cause between us, there's a whole lot of plain old-fashioned mutual attraction. There may even be love. But when she turns her back on the only help I can give her, stays where she is just to show me I can't boss her around . . . when she outright lies back to me just to break whatever's got us tied together . . . then she's kicked all the jung out the window. There's no us. We're not on the same team here. Just two strangers who happened to be on the same airplane and now happen to be in adjoining cages. Live together, die alone.

And any other day, I wouldn't let her get away with that. But I'm a slave to this watch now. I can't fight back.

Worst day of my life. And that's saying something.