'For us, living or dying is not the important thing,' Goto Dengo says.
'Hey! Tell me something I didn't fucking already know!' Shaftoe says. Even winning battles isn't important to you. Is it?'
Goto Dengo looks the other way, shamefaced.
'Haven't you guys figured out yet that banzai charges DON'T FUCKING WORK?'
'All of the people who learned that were killed in banzai charges,' Goto Dengo says.
As if on cue, the Nips in the left field dugout begin screaming 'Banzai!' and charge, as one, out onto the field. Shaftoe puts his eye up to a bullet hole in the wall and watches them stumbling across the infield with fixed bayonets. Their leader clambers up the pitcher's mound as if he's going to plant a flag there, and takes a slug in the middle of his face. His men are being dismantled all around him by thoughtfully placed rifle slugs from the Huks' dugout. Urban warfare is not the metier of the Hukbalahaps, but calmly slaughtering banzai-charging Nipponese is old hat. One of the Nips actually manages to crawl all the way to the first base coach's box. Then a few pounds of meat come flying out of his back and he relaxes.
Shaftoe turns to see that Goto Dengo is aiming a revolver at him. He chooses to ignore this for a moment. 'See what I mean?'
'I have seen it many times before.'
'Then why aren't you dead?' Shaftoe asks the question with all due flippancy, but it has a terrible effect on Goto Dengo. His face scrunches up and he begins to cry. 'Aw, shit. You pull a gun on me and start bawling at the same time? How unfair can you get? Why don't you kick some fucking dirt in my eyes while you're at it?'
Goto Dengo lifts the revolver to his own temple. But Shaftoe sees that one coming a mile away. He knows Nips well enough, by this point, to figure out when they are about to go hari-kari on you. Shaftoe jumps forward as soon as the barrel of the revolver begins to move. By the time it is against Goto Dengo's skull, Shaftoe has his finger stuck into the gap between the hammer and the firing pin.
Goto Dengo collapses to the floor sobbing piteously. It just makes Shaftoe want to kick him. 'Knock it off!' he says. 'What the fuck is eating at you?'
'I came to Manila to redeem myself-to get back my lost honor!' Goto Dengo says. 'I could have done it here. I could be dead on that field right now, and my spirit going to Yasukuni. But then-you came! You ruined my concentration!'
'Concentrate on this, dumbshit!' Shaftoe says. 'My son is in a church right over on the far side of that wall, with a bunch of other helpless women and children. If you want to redeem yourself, why not help me get 'em out alive?'
Goto Dengo seems to have gone into a trance now. His face, which was blubbering just a minute ago, has solidified into a mask. 'I wish I could believe what you believe,' he says. 'I have died, Bobby. I was buried in a rock tomb. If I were a Christian, I could be born again now, and be a new man. Instead, I must go on living, and accept my karma.'
'Well, shit! There's a padre right out there in the dugout. He can Christianize your ass in about ten seconds flat.' Bobby Shaftoe strides across the bathroom and swings the door open.
He is startled to see a man standing just a few paces away. The man is dressed in an old but clean khaki uniform, devoid of insignia except for a pentagon of stars on the collar. He has jammed a wooden match down into the bowl of a corncob pipe and is puffing away futilely. But it's as if all of the oxygen has been sucked out of the air by the burning of the city. He throws the match away in disgust, then looks up into the face of Bobby Shaftoe- staring at him through a pair of dark aviator sunglasses that give his gaunt face the appearance of a skull. His mouth forms into an 0 for a moment. Then his jaw sets. 'Shaftoe. . . Shaftoe! SHAFTOE!' he says.
Bobby Shaftoe feels his body stiffening to attention. Even if he had been dead for a few hours, his body would do this out of some kind of dumb ingrained reflex. 'Sir, yes sir!' he says wearily.
The General composes his thoughts for half a second, and then says: 'You were supposed to be in Concepcion. You failed to be there. Your superiors did not know what to think. They have been worried sick about you. And the Department of the Navy has been positively insufferable ever since they became aware that you were working for me. They assert, in the most high-handed way, that you know important secrets, and should never have been placed in danger of capture. In short, your whereabouts and your status have been the subject of the most intense, nay, feverish speculation for the last several weeks. Many supposed that you were dead, or, worse, captured. This distraction has been most unwelcome to me, inasmuch as the planning and execution of the reconquest of the Philippine Islands have left me little time to devote to such nagging distractions.' An artillery shell rips through the air and detonates in the bleachers, sending jagged fragments of planks, about the size of canoe paddles, whirling through the air all around them. One of them embeds itself like a javelin in the dirt between The General and Bobby Shaftoe.
The General takes advantage of this to draw breath, and then continues, as if he were reading this from a script. 'And now, when I least expect it, I encounter you, here, many leagues distant from your assigned post, out of uniform, in a disheveled condition, accompanied by a Nipponese officer, violating the sanctity of a ladies' powder room! Shaftoe, have you no sense whatsoever of military honor? Do you not respect decorum? Do you not believe that a representative of the United States military should comport himself with more dignity?'
Shaftoe's kneecaps are joggling up and down uncontrollably. His guts have become molten, and he feels strange bubbling processes going on in his rectum. His molars are chattering together like a teletype machine. He senses Goto Dengo behind him, and wonders what the poor bastard can possibly be thinking.
'Begging your pardon, General, not to change the subject or anything, but are you here all by yourself?'
The General juts his chin towards the men's room. 'My aides are in there relieving themselves. They were in a great hurry to do so, and it is good that we came upon this place. But none of them considered invading the powder room,' he says severely.
'I apologize for that, sir,' Bobby Shaftoe says hastily, 'and for all of those other things that you mentioned. But I still think of myself as a Marine, and Marines do not make excuses, so I will not even try.'
'That is not satisfactory! I need an explanation for where you've been.'
'I have been out in the world,' Bobby Shaftoe says, 'getting butt fucked by Fortune.'
The door of the men's room opens and one of The General's aides walks out, woozy and bowlegged. The General ignores him; he is gazing right past Shaftoe now.
'Pardon my manners, sir,' Shaftoe says, turning sideways. 'Sir, my friend Goto Dengo. Goto-san, say hi to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.'
Goto Dengo has been standing there like a pillar of salt this whole time, utterly dumbfounded, but now he snaps out of it, and bows very low. MacArthur nods crisply. His aide is staring darkly at Goto Dengo and has already drawn his Colt.
'Pleasure,' The General says airily. 'Pray tell, what sort of business were you two gentlemen prosecuting in the ladies'?'
Bobby Shaftoe knows how to lunge for an opening. 'Uh, it is very funny you should ask that question, sir,' he says offhandedly, 'but Goto-san, just now, saw the light, and converted to Christianity.'
Some Nips on top of the wall open up on them with a machine gun. The flimsy, tumbling rounds crack through the air and thump into the ground. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur stands motionless for a long time, lips pursed. His sniffles once. Then he removes his aviator glasses carefully and wipes his eyes on the immaculate sleeve of his uniform. He pulls out a neatly folded white hankie and wraps it around his hawklike nose and honks into it a few times. He folds it up carefully and puts it back in his pocket, squares his shoulders, and then walks right up to Goto Dengo and wraps him up in a big, manly bearhug. The remainder of The General's aides emerge from the shitter
Finally MacArthur unhands the stiff body of Goto Dengo, steps back dramatically, and presents him to his staff. 'Meet Goto-san,' he announces. 'You have all heard the expression, 'the only good Nip is a dead Nip'? Well, this young fellow is a counterexample, and as we learned in mathematics, it only takes one counterexample to
