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recall doing since he was a boy trying to talk to his father, a young boy, before he finally gave up and became silent: he promised himself that when a certain thing happened he would tell Joe: when his cigarette burned down; when he finished his beer; when the girl brought the sukiyaki; when Joe finished telling his story; and as each of these occurred, a third and powerful hand of his clutched his throat and squeezed.
    The girl stood smiling and serving them until all the sukiyaki was on their plates and then she left, and he was chilled by her leaving because he had been flirting with her, praising the meal and her kimono and her face and small delicate hands, he had been cocking his head to her and glancing up at her, not up very high because he was a tall man and sat tall and she was barely over five feet and maybe not even that; now she was gone. He started to look at Joe, then poured sake into the china tumbler and carefully pinched rice with his chopsticks and dipped it into raw egg and, leaning forward, quickly raised it to his mouth, and heard over Joe’s voice the drinking talk of the Marines at the bar, and he chewed his rice and hated his fear and silence and when he took another swallow of sake the acid rose to his throat and he held his breath for a moment till it went down, and then took another swallow and that one was all right. Joe was laughing: ‘—and he said I couldn’t bail out, Commander. I’m afraid of sharks. You see, he really meant it but the bombardier and the crewman didn’t believe him. They thought he believed he had a chance to make it, and he was just being cheerful to help them along. Truth was, he thought he’d go down, but he wasn’t going into the water without that plane around him. So he kept telling them: look, you guys better jump, and they’d say what about you, and he’d say not me, I ain’t getting down there with no sharks. So they stuck with him and he hit the ship first try, he said if he’d got waved off that time he’d have gone in and too low for anybody to bail out and he was cussing the other two for making him responsible for them going down too. But then he made it and I gave him a shot of rye in my room and he told me, You see, I don’t even wade. Not in salt water. I haven’t been in salt water for fourteen years. He was shot down, you see, in the Pacific, and he swam to his raft and he was climbing aboard when a shark got his co-pilot. He said the water turned red. He said I heard that scream every night for ten years. He said I ain’t been in the water ever since and if any shark’s going to get Chuck Thomson he’s going to be the most disguised shark you ever saw because he’s going to cross two hundred feet of sand walking on his tail and wearing a double-breasted pinstripe suit and some of them reflecting sunglasses—’ Then Joe was laughing again, and the Captain was too, his body jerked and made sounds and then he was telling a story too, listening to it as it took shape, just as he had watched and listened to his own laughter: another story of men who had nearly gone into the sea and then had laughed, and after that Joe told one and then he told another, and they kept going. They did not tell stories of valor without humor, as though valor were expected but humor was not, and the man who had both was better. And they did not talk about the dead. Sometimes they spoke a name but that was all. Three o’clock came and the girl brought more tea and Captain Devereaux went to the men’s room and chewed two more tablets, standing alone at the mirror, but Joe’s ghost was with him, and he went back to the table and looked at Joe and he could not feel the wine now, his heart was quick, his fingers tight on the tumbler of tea, and he said: ‘There are two men, Joe. On my ship. Or they were. They’re coming back tonight.’ And already Joe’s eyes brightened, even