Fields of Fire by James Webb

Western clothes, a skirt and blouse. The first thing he noticed as she approached was her legs. They were well shaped, slim, an apparent rarity among Okinawan women. Hodges grinned, dismounting the fence he had been sitting on. Dig it.
    She walked up to him, obviously uneasy. She did not smile or even look at him as he called a taxi and opened the door for her. She moved to the other side of the seat. He scooted over next to her. Her perplexity was fresh and innocent. He was not terribly experienced in such matters, but she was making him look like a regular cavalier.
    Hodges called to the taxi driver. “Koza.” He remembered a dance hall from a few days before.
    The taxi left the Camp gate, and wound down a crowded road, through the lighted, sign-drunk village. Kin village, mused Hodges, was nothing but a gate ghetto. He tried a few questions about sights on the streets, Japanese signs, pawnshops, steambaths, all the Conqueror's amenities. He found her incredibly shy. She attempted gamely to answer, but it was convoluted and intense, a mix of Japanese and English and American slang. He caught something about how Camp Hansen had once been “a tousan’ farms,” but could not decipher the rest.
    They left the city and struggled southward down small hills, fighting a myriad of winding curves, and soon were driving along the beach road, which ran at the edge of the long, thin island. He watched the white sand in the gloomy light. She pointed to the silent surf from the taxi's dark.
    “Good swim. Officer beach. No Okinawan.”
    IT wasn't any louder or dirtier or cruder than it had been two nights before. It only seemed that way. Hodges ushered her in past scores of groping couples, Okinawan girls and American men, to a table in back of a large, packed dance floor. An Oriental band imitated the Rolling Stones, too loudly and obnoxiously, on an elevated stage.
    She had tightened up the moment she had realized where Hodges was taking her. She insisted on moving all the way to the rear of the room, to a virtually hidden table. Hodges bought them each a soft drink. The music was beginning to sober him up. He studied her under the flashes of a strobe light. Her eyes were low and she was so refreshing. He felt a deep, protective affection for her, and began to comprehend his mistake in taking her to the club. He sensed that, somehow, he had insulted her.
    The band relented from its wailing fuzztones and played a slow song. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Dance.”
    She stared at the couples on the floor. “No.”
    “Come on. That's what we came for.”
    They moved slowly along the edge of the dance floor, not really a part of it. He felt comfortable in her arms. She was deceptively curved underneath the loose clothes she wore, and strong. He felt like smothering her to him, poring over her body as some of the other dancers were doing, but he thought that it might make her cry. She was deeply upset. He chided himself. Way to go, Casanova. You really scored.
    The song ended and he felt alone, adrift with her in a world that was hostile to them both. He put an arm around her and pulled her to him, she not resisting, and kissed her. She merely allowed herself to be kissed, not responding. Then she demanded that they leave.
    THEY caught another taxi back to Camp Hansen. He was depressingly sober now, sobriety assuring him of the true distance between him and her, but also convincing him of his deep attraction to her. As they pulled away from the nightclub he smiled apologetically across the seat to her.
    “Terrible, O.K.? Sorry.”
    He watched her in the taxi's dark, she looking straight ahead out at the narrow road, and he felt the ache of losing her. He kissed her again but still she did not respond one way or the other. She merely allowed herself to be kissed.
    She had a long conversation with the driver. Her face became lit and she appeared amazed, incredulous. She translated bits and pieces to Hodges in apparent politeness,