This Scorching Earth

by Donald Richie

  The Major was edging closer.

  "Look, isn't the sky lovely—so blue—for November, that is."

  Just as his hand touched hers she reached for her purse, drew forth her handkerchief, and daintily blew her nose. Then she put both hands securely in her lap.

  She looked at the neck of the driver. His hair had been recently cut and lay short on the back of his head. His ears, nicely shaped, were flat on either side of his head. Whenever he turned his head, his profile, seen against the moving background of traffic, was of a wonderful regularity, his nose meeting his forehead with complete lack of bridge, his mouth firm, and his chin square. He was quite handsome, and just in time Gloria realized she had been about to lay her hand upon the newly cut hair at the back of his neck.

  The Major followed her gaze. "These Japanese are good drivers, aren't they?"

  "Extremely good. Good at most mechanical things."

  "But not quite good enough, eh, Miss Wilson?" and the Major laughed heavily.

  Gloria smiled and turned to him. "Not quite, Major. . . . Tell me, what did you do during the war?"

  He smiled ruefully and dug his fist into the car seat. "Aw, I was one of those poor guys that got stuck in the States. Boy, I tried everything and just couldn't get into the game. They really had me stuck there—responsible position, you know—couldn't replace me. Got a game leg, you know, playing basketball in my high-school days."

  "How unfortunate."

  "Don't hurt none but can't go in much for athletics, you know. Course, I'm a bit out of that age group now." He shrugged his shoulders, laughed, and slapped his thigh, then winced painfully. "It's nothing, nothing," he murmured, but Gloria Was paying no attention,

  "Boy, I was sure hopping mad," said the Major. "Had to fill some old executive position over there when I wanted to be out with the boys giving these Japs—" He laughed uneasily and went on: "—these Japanese the licking they deserved."

  The driver skilfully turned the corner, and Gloria was thrown against the Major.

  "Very good at mechanical things," said Gloria.

  The Major laughed indulgently and made an attempt to put his arm around her. This she avoided, and the Major, a bit put out, said: "For whatever that's worth. I must say I've gotten along well enough without knowing much about machinery. Mechanics always bother me."

  I wish they'd bother me, thought Gloria and continued looking out the window. The back of the driver's neck and the stretched-out regiment at Tachikawa occurred to Gloria simultaneously. What was that story she'd heard about some WAC's and a jeep driver?

  The crisp, straight black hair lay straight against the very lightly colored skin. The driver opened the window and held out his hand. The rush of air brought to Gloria the smell of polished rice and hair pomade. The driver turned his head, and the long, beautifully formed tendons in his neck stood in relief for a second. His eyes were completely black and reminded Gloria of the eyes of children, the eyes of a little boy who does not yet know the meaning of the word Sin. And his face was somehow vaguely familiar, as though they'd once met.... Oh, to hell with it. She closed her eyes, and suddenly the car stopped.

  "Well, here we are. Hope you got a big appetite, Miss Wilson." They were under the marquee of the American Club.

  "Famished," she said pleasantly.

  With officious help from the Major she climbed from the sedan and stood waiting by the curb. Leaning back inside, the Major was talking with the driver, signing the trip ticket. The driver had turned his head toward the Major, and his throat rose cleanly above his open collar.

  Gloria looked away, then impulsively said: "Oh, can I borrow that pencil a moment, Major? I want to jot something down before I forget." She opened her purse and found an envelope containing a letter from her parents. On the back of it she wrote the car's number and the driver's number. To ascertain the latter she peered in at the identification badge he wore. She glanced up to see him looking at her. He was smiling, but looking a bit puzzled as though he were afraid he had done something wrong, as though he was afraid of having his number taken. She smiled reassuringly, felt faint, and handed back the pencil.

  "What time is it, Miss Wilson?" asked the Major, still leaning into the sedan.

  "About one."

  "I got to know exactly, I'm afraid—it's for this damn ticket."

  Her watch showed exactly one. "It's precisely ten minutes after one, Major." She felt like a goddess, dispensing the supreme gift of time to her worshippers.

  "Thank you," he called, preoccupied, the important man—not too important, however, to pause over those little details he was so far above—trip tickets for example. Then he fumbled at his jacket pocket and finally drew out two bent cigarettes. These he gave to the driver, who touched his cap. Gloria smiled at him, and he, at first surprised, smiled back, reassured, and touched his cap again. The Major turned away from the car, and with a backward half-smile the driver drove off.

  The Major glared after the car. "What's he grinning so about? You know him, or was he being fresh? If he was, I'll get his number right now, and believe you me—"

  "Oh, shut up."

  "Well, maybe I'm just being silly, Miss Gloria, but when a man, even a Jap—I mean, Japanese, looks at a lady like that, my blood boils. Particularly about you ... somehow."

  "You've been in Texas too long, Major. Besides, he's my brother."

  He gazed at her for a long second, then laughed heartily. "Oh, you're joshing me, Miss Wilson. You're pulling my leg."

  "Oh, no—not that. Not now that I know about your poor leg. It might come off."

  He laughed even more heartily and guided her, by the elbow, across the drive and up the steps. Suddenly he looked at her watch. "Why, it's only one. You said ten after one."

  "That's so my brother will have time to get back to the Motor Pool and smoke one of those cigarettes before they send him out again."

  The Major looked at her suspiciously and then, deciding it was yet another joke, laughed. "You're really a card, you are, Miss Wilson—really a good Joe."

  She looked at him coldly and took off her fur coat, throwing it over his arm. "Check this, will you? I'll be in the bar."

  As he followed her up the steps, he looked puzzled, scratched his head, and smiled at the two small uniformed boys who opened the doors and bowed. Then he crossed the carpet to the checkroom, where he threw the coat at the girl and turned to look after the tall Miss Wilson as she disappeared between the swinging-doors of the bar.

  Inside the bar Gloria found a stool, ordered Scotch, and looked around. The room was nearly full—all the imitation-rustic booths were in use and all the overstuffed divans and armchairs in the next room were full of people eating, laughing, talking, and drinking. At the other end of the bar a young lady dressed in extreme fashion was talking with four captains. They all had their arms around her.

  The Major came in, laughing as he walked toward her. "My, you really sailed in here. Thought you'd run away from me, didn't you?"

  She looked at him and tried to veil her distaste under an alluring glance. It wasn't that he wasn't good-looking—in a bucolic kind of way—it was simply that he was such an ass. Actually, he was sort of interesting looking, like any number of Angus bulls she'd seen in Indiana. The same wide-apart eyes, the same surly set of the mouth. All he needed was horns and bangs—she presumed he had the other necessary appurtenances.

  "Oh, no," she said, "nothing like that. I just thought I'd save us seats."

  "Lucky you did. Really crowded. . .. By the way, you a member here?"

  "Why, no. I took it for granted you'd borrowed someone's card to get us in."

  "Well, that's just what I did," said the Major, both embarrassed and pleased. "Thought I might blow us to a little treat, you know. Just wondered if you were a member."

  "No, I've avoided that ever since the place opened, but of course I make full use of it." She smiled at the Major's knowing wink and drank her Scotch.

  "What you drinking?"
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  "Scotch is its name. It's good, but sort of tickles my nose."

  "Guess I'll get that too—sounds good." He ordered two more.

  There was no opportunity—since both were seated on separate stools—for further advances, so the Major put his elbow on the bar and lay his head, little-boy fashion, against his fist.

  "Be careful, Major," said Gloria. "You remember what happened at the officers' bar in Kyoto."

  "But I've never been there."

  "No, not you, dear. Those others, in Kyoto, who used it."

  "What about it?"

  "Well, it seems the lacquering wasn't too well done or something, or else in Kyoto they lean more. At any rate, three days after it opened, in the heat of summer, everyone—every member—was down with lacquer poisoning, which is a bit like poison ivy only worse. There was one young lady who contracted it in the most intimate place—like under her arms, you know—and no one has ever been able to figure out how she got it." She smiled.

  The Major smiled, then glowered like that Angus bull again. "Do you think they did it on purpose? Sort of a last-ditch stand, like?"

  "The Japanese you mean? Sabotage, you think?"

  "Something like that," said the Major vaguely as he took his arm off the bar. But he kept his fist against his cheek, which looked a bit odd now that his elbow was unsupported,

  "You know, you look fresher than any dame here," he said, and removed his fist.

  Gloria now realized that the cheek in fist was simply to enhance the little-boy aspect. She understood the Major's game at any rate. "That's what comes of clean living." It was really a riot—his taking her for the motherly type!

  "Wish I'd lived clean last night. You were swell, but me, I drank too much. I got a little headache, you know."

  "Um poor widdle boy," said Gloria, "But I rather imagine a drink or two will fix that up."

  He turned bashful. "You know, I still feel funny about drinking before supper."

  "So do I, but only after the first five. In fact I usually feel funny about drinking after supper."

  He slapped his leg but forgot to wince. "You really are a card, Miss Wilson. I didn't know you were so much fun."

  She smiled wanly. "People never do."

  "... and so I said to him: 'You leave my breasts out of this,'" said the young lady at the end of the bar, and all four captains broke into simultaneous guffaws.

  The Major, embarrassed, looked into his Scotch. "Wonder what kind it is?"

  "Oh, probably flown from the Orkneys or someplace—they do things on a big scale here."

  "Wonder what they got to eat?"

  "Everything."

  "Yes, sir, home was never like this."

  She looked around the bar. "I supposed that's why most people are here. I doubt you could make them go home."

  "Well, here's one boy you wouldn't have any trouble making go back to God's country."

  "Major—I bet you're from Texas!"

  "Aw, you've known that all along, Miss Gloria." He looked down modestly.

  "Well, that's so. But today you're even more inimitably Texan than usual."

  "Boy, you sure do take the cake, Miss Wilson." He looked at her appreciatively. "You know, you're one swell egg—kind of hard to understand—deep, you know—but still a real good kid—"

  "—at heart," concluded Gloria, and the Major slapped his thigh.

  "What say we get more of this stuff?" said the Major. "And get to know each other? Why, I feel I scarcely know you at all."

  "You do." And she pushed her glass toward the boy behind the bar. "This is our first real date, you know. Last night we didn't know each other at all." She wrinkled her nose, and he leaned forward on the stool.

  "... and then, of course, there was nothing for me to do but gather my clothes as best I could, and go home," continued the young lady at the end of the bar, and again the four captains bent forward, choking with simultaneous laughter. She was a thin, blonde girl, wearing an extremely low-cut dress of green felt.

  The Major turned his head. "Her kind is a disgrace to American womanhood."

  "It certainly is."

  "You know her?"

  "Really, Major, what do you take me for? Naturally not. She's probably another secretary though. They all get delusions of grandeur out here."

  "Know what I like about you? You're the real home type somehow."

  "So are you, Major."

  "There—see? We do have something in common. You know, I get kind of lonely out here, far away from home and those I love—my family, my Mama. Surrounded by hostile strangers, in a strange land where there is nothing familiar and where I'm cut off in this lonely outpost.. .."

  "You mean Special Services?"

  "No, I mean Japan."

  "There's nothing very lonely nor very strange about the part of Japan we see. Look around you."

  "I thought you might be sympathetic, Miss Wilson."

  "Oh, but I am. At the proper times."

  "And this isn't one of them?" He looked hurt, like a sick Hereford, and withdrew his hand the distance it had advanced toward hers.

  "Really—you sound like your own copy, Major. Remember—it's little me that types for you."

  "And what's the matter with my copy? I bet it wrings their hearts back home."

  "That it undoubtedly does. But, just between us, we both happen to know how true it is—which isn't very."

  "Miss Wilson, that hurts." The Major adopted a puzzled expression and put his face in both hands, resting his elbows on the bar again.

  She became grimly pleasant. "All right, Major. Didn't mean to hurt you. Let's be friends again."

  He at once held out a hand and, after shaking hers, did not again release it. "Hungry, Miss Wilson?"

  "Not yet. But I'm rather thirsty."

  "So am I. Hey, boy. Fill 'em up—pronto! hackoo!"

  The bar was more full than when they had first come. Others were standing, glasses in hand. A female voice called past Gloria's ear: "Gimme a Bloody Mary, Jack."

  "What's that?" asked the Major. "What it sounds like?"

  "I trust not," said Gloria.

  "Haven't you ever had one, honey?" asked the female voice. "They're divine. You take half vodka, half tomato juice, and half Worcestershire—I think—sauce. They're divine. Can't taste the tomato juice at all."

  "Wanna try one?" the Major asked Gloria.

  "I think not. I'll stick to this." Gloria looked around the crowded room and then opened her purse. "You know, Major, around this time the bar actually begins to look interesting. When anyone in it begins to look good, then I go home." She lit herself a cigarette and saw the envelope in her purse. Closing her purse impatiently, she bit her underlip—really, I am such a fool.

  The Major leaned forward, thrusting his face into hers. "Doesn't anyone look good, Miss Wilson?"

  "No one, Major, just no one."

  "Well," he said, narrowing his eyes craftily, "that one at the end looks kind of good to me." He stared at the young lady at the end of the bar, who was now deep in whispered conversation with three of the captains. The other captain was building matches on top of a beer bottle.

  "Well, if I wore my dress slashed to the navel, you might like me too," said Gloria.

  "But I do like you," said the Major, then laughed. "Anyway."

  "Well, I hope she doesn't lean over," said Gloria. "It will be a second Hindenberg disaster if she does. All those matches."

  But the Major didn't hear. He was too busy trying to look down the green-felt front—a bit difficult at thirty feet.

  Gloria looked around her. The bar was full of people who, like herself, had never had it so good. We're a nation of nouveaux riches, thought Gloria, now nicely muddled, as she looked at her Orkney Scotch, as she fingered her Mikimoto genuine cultured pearls.

  Had it not been for the Occupation of Japan, when could all these people, herself included, have enjoyed the benefit of servants, of an inflated social position, of tax-free liquor and unobstruc
ted use of the Sears Roebuck catalog? They'd still be home in Kokomo and Tacoma and Muncie, still going to bed early, still dreading the dull expanse of Sunday. But the Occupation had taken care of all that. Here everything, including love, was free to an American citizen, here where there was a continuous air of the simply extraordinary, as though the end of the world were just around the corner and they'd rediscovered the calf of gold.

  It was also a bit like being on stage before the final curtain, when the comedy of manners was reaching its height and the husband was about to burst into the plywood and chenille drawing room. One felt continually on display, and the groundlings all had slanted eyes and would have worn pigtails if they hadn't been white enough to cut them off. There was no doubt about it—those of the Occupation were sitting on top of the world.

  Except, felt Gloria, that they were sitting on top of an enormous bubble, a balloon which was going to be pricked at any moment. It didn't much matter who did the pricking—the Russians, the Japanese, or the loyal American taxpayers—the important thing was that it was going to happen. The mushroom couldn't get any larger, and Gloria felt as though she were in Sodom before the sword fell, the tiptop of the tower of Babel before the revolution, the Garden of Eden before the Fall.

  And so it was with a feeling of enormous self-satisfaction that Gloria looked around her and, in so doing, saw the Ainsleys.

  Dave and Dot Ainsley were a pair and, like book ends, did not look well separated. Had Dave had his way they would never have been. He never called her Dorothy or even Dot; instead, it was always "Hey, Beautiful," or "What you say, Good-lookin'?" She was beautiful; she had the face of an expensive doll and the body of an aging athlete. She never called him anything except Dave.

  He was Irish and cultivated the appearance of a newspaperman. Half the time he was sloppy in an open collar and dirty cuffs. The other half he was a meticulous dandy in Cuban-heeled shoes. When they had first met, the glamorous war was still on. She was a singer for the USO, and he was a correspondent for U.P. They married as soon as possible in Tokyo. It had been a case of love at first sight, for he had adored her instantly.