The clamor of the Marines’ rifles echoes through the cemetery, the sharp reports pinging from tombstone to tombstone like pachinko balls. Goto Dengo bends down and thrusts his hand into a pile of loose dirt. It feels good. He scoops up a handful of the stuff, it trickles out from between his fingers and trails down the legs of his crisp new United States Army uniform, getting caught in the trouser cuffs. He steps to the sharp brink of the grave and pours the earth from his hand onto the General Issue coffin containing Bobby Shaftoe. He crosses himself, staring at the coffin lid stained with dirt, and then, with some effort, lifts his head up again, towards the sunlit world of things that live. Other than a few blades of grass and some mosquitoes, the first living thing that he sees is a pair of feet in sandals made from old jeep tires, supporting a white man wrapped in a shapeless brown garment of rough fabric with a large hood on the top. Staring out from the shade of that hood is the supernaturally weird-looking (in that he has a red beard and grey hair) head of Enoch Root—a character who keeps bumping into Goto Dengo as he goes around Manila trying to carry out his duties. Goto Dengo is seized and paralyzed by his wild stare.