Catch-22 (36 page)

   ‘What will you do when winter comes?’

   ‘Oh, I expect to be back in the squadron by then,’ the
captain answered with a kind of martyred confidence. ‘Chief White Halfoat kept
promising everyone that he was going to die of pneumonia, and I guess I’ll have
to be patient until the weather turns a little colder and damper.’ He
scrutinized the chaplain perplexedly. ‘Don’t you know all this? Don’t you hear
all the fellows talking about me?’

   ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone mention you.’

   ‘Well, I certainly can’t understand that.’ The captain was
piqued, but managed to carry on with a pretense of optimism. ‘Well, here it is
almost September already, so I guess it won’t be too long now. The next time
any of the boys ask about me, why, just tell them I’ll be back grinding out
those old publicity releases again as soon as Chief White Halfoat dies of
pneumonia. Will you tell them that? Say I’ll be back in the squadron as soon as
winter comes and Chief Halfoat dies of pneumonia. Okay?’ The chaplain memorized
the prophetic words solemnly, entranced further by their esoteric import. ‘Do
you live on berries, herbs and roots?’ he asked.

   ‘No, of course not,’ the captain replied with surprise. ‘I sneak
into the mess hall through the back and eat in the kitchen. Milo gives me
sandwiches and milk.’

   ‘What do you do when it rains?’ The captain answered frankly.
‘I get wet.’

   ‘Where do you sleep?’ Swiftly the captain ducked down into a
crouch and began backing away. ‘You too?’ he cried frantically.

   ‘Oh, no,’ cried the chaplain. ‘I swear to you.’

   ‘You do want to cut my throat!’ the captain insisted.

   ‘I give my word,’ the chaplain pleaded, but it was too late,
for the homely hirsute specter had already vanished, dissolving so expertly
inside the blooming, dappled, fragmented malformations of leaves, light and
shadows that the chaplain was already doubting that he had even been there. So
many monstrous events were occurring that he was no longer positive which
events were monstrous and which were really taking place. He wanted to find out
about the madman in the woods as quickly as possible, to check if there ever
really had been a Captain Flume, but his first chore, he recalled with
reluctance, was to appease Corporal Whitcomb for neglecting to delegate enough
responsibility to him. He plodded along the zigzagging path through the forest
listlessly, clogged with thirst and feeling almost too exhausted to go on. He
was remorseful when he thought of Corporal Whitcomb. He prayed that Corporal
Whitcomb would be gone when he reached the clearing so that he could undress
without embarrassment, wash his arms and chest and shoulders thoroughly, drink
water, lie down refreshed and perhaps even sleep for a few minutes; but he was
in for still another disappointment and still another shock, for Corporal
Whitcomb was Sergeant Whitcomb by the time he arrived and was sitting with his
shirt off in the chaplain’s chair sewing his new sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve
with the chaplain’s needle and thread. Corporal Whitcomb had been promoted by
Colonel Cathcart, who wanted to see the chaplain at once about the letters.

   ‘Oh, no,’ groaned the chaplain, sinking down dumbfounded on
his cot. His warm canteen was empty, and he was too distraught to remember the
lister bag hanging outside in the shade between the two tents. ‘I can’t believe
it. I just can’t believe that anyone would seriously believe that I’ve been
forging Washington Irving’s name.’

   ‘Not those letters,’ Corporal Whitcomb corrected, plainly
enjoying the chaplain’s chagrin. ‘He wants to see you about the letters home to
the families of casualties.’

   ‘Those letters?’ asked the chaplain with surprise.

   ‘That’s right,’ Corporal Whitcomb gloated. ‘He’s really going
to chew you out for refusing to let me send them. You should have seen him go
for the idea once I reminded him the letters could carry his signature. That’s
why he promoted me. He’s absolutely sure they’ll get him into The Saturday
Evening Post.’ The chaplain’s befuddlement increased. ‘But how did he know we
were even considering the idea?’

   ‘I went to his office and told him.’

   ‘You did what?’ the chaplain demanded shrilly, and charged to
his feet in an unfamiliar rage. ‘Do you mean to say that you actually went over
my head to the colonel without asking my permission?’ Corporal Whitcomb grinned
brazenly with scornful satisfaction. ‘That’s right, Chaplain,’ he answered.
‘And you better not try to do anything about it if you know what’s good for
you.’ He laughed quietly in malicious defiance. ‘Colonel Cathcart isn’t going
to like it if he finds out you’re getting even with me for bringing him my
idea. You know something, Chaplain?’ Corporal Whitcomb continued, biting the
chaplain’s black thread apart contemptuously with a loud snap and buttoning on
his shirt. ‘That dumb bastard really thinks it’s one of the greatest ideas he’s
ever heard.’

   ‘It might even get me into The Saturday Evening Post,’
Colonel Cathcart boasted in his office with a smile, swaggering back and forth
convivially as he reproached the chaplain. ‘And you didn’t have brains enough
to appreciate it. You’ve got a good man in Corporal Whitcomb, Chaplain. I hope
you have brains enough to appreciate that.’

   ‘Sergeant Whitcomb,’ the chaplain corrected, before he could
control himself.

   Colonel Cathcart Oared. ‘I said Sergeant Whitcomb,’ he
replied. ‘I wish you’d try listening once in a while instead of always finding
fault. You don’t want to be a captain all your life, do you?’

   ‘Sir?’

   ‘Well, I certainly don’t see how you’re ever going to amount
to anything else if you keep on this way. Corporal Whitcomb feels that you
fellows haven’t had a fresh idea in nineteen hundred and forty-four years, and
I’m inclined to agree with him. A bright boy, that Corporal Whitcomb. Well,
it’s all going to change.’ Colonel Cathcart sat down at his desk with a
determined air and cleared a large neat space in his blotter. When he had
finished, he tapped his finger inside it. ‘Starting tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I want
you and Corporal Whitcomb to write a letter of condolence for me to the next of
kin of every man in the group who’s killed, wounded or taken prisoner. I want
those letters to be sincere letters. I want them filled up with lots of personal
details so there’ll be no doubt I mean every word you say. Is that clear?’ The
chaplain stepped forward impulsively to remonstrate. ‘But, sir, that’s
impossible!’ he blurted out. ‘We don’t even know all the men that well.’

   ‘What difference does that make?’ Colonel Cathcart demanded,
and then smiled amicably. ‘Corporal Whitcomb brought me this basic form letter
that takes care of just about every situation. Listen: “Dear Mrs., Mr.,
Miss, or Mr. and Mrs.: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced
when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported
missing in action.” And so on. I think that opening sentence sums up my
sentiments exactly. Listen, maybe you’d better let Corporal Whitcomb take
charge of the whole thing if you don’t feel up to it.’ Colonel Cathcart whipped
out his cigarette holder and flexed it between both hands like an onyx and
ivory riding crop. ‘That’s one of the things that’s wrong with you, Chaplain.
Corporal Whitcomb tells me you don’t know how to delegate responsibility. He
says you’ve got no initiative either. You’re not going to disagree with me, are
you?’

   ‘No, sir.’ The chaplain shook his head, feeling despicably
remiss because he did not know how to delegate responsibility and had no
initiative, and because he really had been tempted to disagree with the
colonel. His mind was a shambles. They were shooting skeet outside, and every
time a gun was fired his senses were jarred. He could not adjust to the sound
of the shots. He was surrounded by bushels of plum tomatoes and was almost
convinced that he had stood in Colonel Cathcart’s office on some similar
occasion deep in the past and had been surrounded by those same bushels of
those same plum tomatoes. Déjà vu again. The setting seemed
so familiar; yet it also seemed so distant. His clothes felt grimy and old, and
he was deathly afraid he smelled.

   ‘You take things too seriously, Chaplain,’ Colonel Cathcart
told him bluntly with an air of adult objectivity. ‘That’s another one of the
things that’s wrong with you. That long face of yours gets everybody depressed.
Let me see you laugh once in a while. Come on, Chaplain. You give me a belly
laugh now and I’ll give you a whole bushel of plum tomatoes.’ He waited a
second or two, watching, and then chortled victoriously. ‘You see, Chaplain,
I’m right. You can’t give me a belly laugh, can you?’

   ‘No, sir,’ admitted the chaplain meekly, swallowing slowly
with a visible effort. ‘Not right now. I’m very thirsty.’

   ‘Then get yourself a drink. Colonel Korn keeps some bourbon
in his desk. You ought to try dropping around the officers’ club with us some
evening just to have yourself a little fun. Try getting lit once in a while. I
hope you don’t feel you’re better than the rest of us just because you’re a
professional man.’

   ‘Oh, no, sir,’ the chaplain assured him with embarrassment.
‘As a matter of fact, I have been going to the officers’ club the past few
evenings.’

   ‘You’re only a captain, you know,’ Colonel Cathcart
continued, paying no attention to the chaplain’s remark. ‘You may be a
professional man, but you’re still only a captain.’

   ‘Yes, sir. I know.’

   ‘That’s fine, then. It’s just as well you didn’t laugh
before. I wouldn’t have given you the plum tomatoes anyway. Corporal Whitcomb
tells me you took a plum tomato when you were in here this morning.’

   ‘This morning? But, sir! You gave it to me.’ Colonel Cathcart
cocked his head with suspicion. ‘I didn’t say I didn’t give it to you, did I? I
merely said you took it. I don’t see why you’ve got such a guilty conscience if
you really didn’t steal it. Did I give it to you?’

   ‘Yes, sir. I swear you did.’

   ‘Then I’ll just have to take your word for it. Although I
can’t imagine why I’d want to give you a plum tomato.’ Colonel Cathcart
transferred a round glass paperweight competently from the right edge of his
desk to the left edge and picked up a sharpened pencil. ‘Okay. Chaplain, I’ve
got a lot of important work to do now if you’re through. You let me know when
Corporal Whitcomb has sent out about a dozen of those letters and we’ll get in
touch with the editors of The Saturday Evening Post.’ A sudden inspiration made
his face brighten. ‘Say! I think I’ll volunteer the group for Avignon again.
That should speed things up!’

   ‘For Avignon?’ The chaplain’s heart missed a beat, and all
his flesh began to prickle and creep.

   ‘That’s right,’ the colonel explained exuberantly. ‘The
sooner we get some casualties, the sooner we can make some progress on this.
I’d like to get in the Christmas issue if we can. I imagine the circulation is
higher then.’ And to the chaplain’s horror, the colonel lifted the phone to
volunteer the group for Avignon and tried to kick him out of the officers’ club
again that very same night a moment before Yossarian rose up drunkenly,
knocking over his chair, to start an avenging punch that made Nately call out
his name and made Colonel Cathcart blanch and retreat prudently smack into
General Dreedle, who shoved him off his bruised foot disgustedly and order him
forward to kick the chaplain right back into the officers’ club. It was all
very upsetting to Colonel Cathcart, first the dreaded name Yossarian! tolling
out again clearly like a warning of doom and then General Dreedle’s bruised
foot, and that was another fault Colonel Cathcart found in the chaplain, the
fact that it was impossible to predict how General Dreedle would react each
time he saw him. Colonel Cathcart would never forget the first evening General
Dreedle took notice of the chaplain in the officers’ club, lifting his ruddy,
sweltering, intoxicated face to stare ponderously through the yellow pall of
cigarette smoke at the chaplain lurking near the wall by himself.

   ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ General Dreedle had exclaimed
hoarsely, his shaggy gray menacing eyebrows beetling in recognition. ‘Is that a
chaplain I see over there? That’s really a fine thing when a man of God begins
hanging around a place like this with a bunch of dirty drunks and gamblers.’
Colonel Cathcart compressed his lips primly and started to rise. ‘I couldn’t
agree with you more, sir,’ he assented briskly in a tone of ostentatious
disapproval. ‘I just don’t know what’s happening to the clergy these days.’

   ‘They’re getting better, that’s what’s happening to them,’
General Dreedle growled emphatically.

   Colonel Cathcart gulped awkwardly and made a nimble recovery.
‘Yes, sir. They are getting better. That’s exactly what I had in mind, sir.’

   ‘This is just the place for a chaplain to be, mingling with
the men while they’re out drinking and gambling so he can get to understand
them and win their confidence. How the hell else is he ever going to get them
to believe in God?’

   ‘That’s exactly what I had in mind, sir, when I ordered him
to come here,’ Colonel Cathcart said carefully, and threw his arm familiarly
around the chaplain’s shoulders as he walked him off into a corner to order him
in a cold undertone to start reporting for duty at the officers’ club every
evening to mingle with the men while they were drinking and gambling so that he
could get to understand them and win their confidence.

   The chaplain agreed and did report for duty to the officers’
club every night to mingle with men who wanted to avoid him, until the evening
the vicious fist fight broke out at the ping-pong table and Chief White Halfoat
whirled without provocation and punched Colonel Moodus squarely in the nose,
knocking Colonel Moodus down on the seat of his pants and making General
Dreedle roar with lusty, unexpected laughter until he spied the chaplain standing
close by gawking at him grotesquely in tortured wonder. General Dreedle froze
at the sight of him. He glowered at the chaplain with swollen fury for a
moment, his good humor gone, and turned back toward the bar disgruntedly,
rolling from side to side like a sailor on his short bandy legs. Colonel
Cathcart cantered fearfully along behind, glancing anxiously about in vain for
some sign of help from Colonel Korn.