I was in a bar in Yokohama
accessed down steps below the sidewalk
in late afternoon

it was quiet
just the bartender
and a young woman like an island
at the end of the bar

I had a beer
and eventually went to the restroom
when I returned the woman

ever so politely, slid a saucer toward me, then withdrew
it contained a small, steaming towel
for me to wash my hands

I was stunned by this subtle etiquette 
having just come from Korea
where women commonly used rough language
they learned from soldiers

“Wheatleeey! You motherfucker! Wheatleeey!”
a woman clawing the fence cried all night, betrayed
by likable, freckle-faced Wheatley from Ohio,
who had promised to marry her.

It was our last night before rotating home
after fifteen months in the remote mountains
just outside the village of To Ko Ri.

Wheatley had the pillow over his head
other guys in the quonset hut giving him shit
because her screaming was keeping them awake

Wheatley was our B-A-R man, a heavy, automatic rifle
and once on a live-fire assault exercise up a hill
I looked over at him, concerned
because he was being driven backward
on the loose hillside rocks 
by the successive recoil of his rifle.

It was risky with live rounds
you were supposed to advance in a horizontal line
so you didn’t shoot someone in the back by accident
Wheatley, a short, sturdy guy with legs like fire hydrants,
smiled at me helplessly, sliding downhill as he fired.

That Yokohama woman’s gesture
sliding the steaming towel toward me
then quietly retiring,
touched me with its grace. Years later
I learned it’s a custom of hospitality called Oshibori
that goes back over a thousand years
but the plaintive cry of Wheatley's betrayed moose*
still rings in my mind. 

“Wheatleeey! Motherfuck Wheatleeey!”

moose - GI slang for young Korean women, often mistresses or servants of servicemen. 
The term originated from the Japanese word "musume," meaning "girl" or “daughter.”