Joe let his voice drop the way Oppy did to make a listener lean forward. Oppy hunched closer. “As soon as it was dark, the Filipinos pushed me and the boat out. No motor, no oars. I couldn’t believe my own scouts wanted to kill me, but that’s what they seemed to be doing. I mean, if they wanted to kill me, I couldn’t stop them. They could have brought my head in to the Japs and made some money. I tried to paddle back in to shore because I could see ammo dumps going up in Mariveles, fuel dumps going up in Manila, and Long Toms, the 155mm’s, answering from Corregidor, the whole thing reflected in the water like the end of the world, and I wanted to get back in the fight.

“Have you ever had dysentery? You pass out and you shit blood. Finally I couldn’t sit up any longer, no matter what was happening. I lay back in my own shit and piss in a drifting boat under the fireworks. There were holes in the shark net from when the Japs landed. We’d caught them in the water when they first came in, and the sharks followed them and finished them off. Once the sharks were in, they didn’t leave. They’d bump into the boat, give it a spin. It was a leaky boat. Sharks have an amazing sense of smell. I raised my head, and there must have been fifty sharks around the boat slowly swimming in a big circle. I did see the humor in the situation. I mean, how many New Mexico Indians get eaten by sharks? I kept thinking, If I only had a paddle, if I only had a gun, if I only had wings. If I only could kill myself, I thought, but I didn’t have the strength to hold my breath. The main thing was to keep thinking, I told myself. Keep struggling. The problem was, every time I stirred, so did the sharks. Those fucking Filipinos, they should have told me.”

He stopped talking to watch the beam of a searchlight swing above the West-10,000 bunker. The beam no sooner found the erratic diagonal ascent of a weather balloon than it vanished into clouds.

“Told you what?” Oppy asked.

“To stop struggling. During the night the tide came in and lifted the boat over the shark nets, and when the tide went out I went with it into the bay. A gunboat picked me up and put me on a sub, and that’s how I heroically escaped from Bataan, by finding out that fighting the tide may not be a test of courage so much as a sign of stupidity. That’s the last time I went sailing.”

He held up a damp butt. “Son-of-a-bitch went out.”

“You’re suggesting that fighting the rain is like fighting the tide? You’re suggesting I’m stupid?”

“Was I?”