Joseph Heller - Catch-22

“What is that?” Major -- de Coverley demanded at last.

“An egg,” Milo answered

“What kind of an egg?” Major -- de Coverley demanded.

“A hard-boiled egg,” Milo answered.

“What kind of a hard-boiled egg?” Major -- de Coverley demanded.

“A fresh hard-boiled egg,” Milo answered.

“Where did the fresh egg come from?” Major -- de Coverley demanded.

“From a chicken,” Milo answered.

“Where is the chicken?” Major -- de Coverley demanded.

“The chicken is in Malta,” Milo answered.

“How many chickens are there in Malta?”

“Enough chickens to lay fresh eggs for every officer in the squadron at five cents apiece from the mess fund,” Milo answered.

“I have a weakness for fresh eggs,” Major -- de Coverley confessed.

“If someone put a plane at my disposal, I could fly down there once a week in a squadron plane and bring back all the fresh eggs we need,” Milo answered. “After all, Malta’s not so far away.”

“Malta’s not so far away,” Major -- de Coverley observed. “You could probably fly down there once a week in a squadron plane and bring back all the fresh eggs we need.”

“Yes,” Milo agreed. “I suppose I could do that, if someone wanted me to and put a plane at my disposal.”

“I like my fresh eggs fried,” Major -- de Coverley remembered. “In fresh butter.”

“I can find all the fresh butter we need in Sicily for twenty-five cents a pound,” Milo answered. “Twenty-five cents a pound for fresh butter is a good buy. There’s enough money in the mess fund for butter too, and we could probably sell some to the other squadrons at a profit and get back most of what we pay for our own.”

“What’s your name, son?” asked Major -- de Coverley.

“My name is Milo Minderbinder, sir. I am twenty-seven years old.”

“You’re a good mess officer, Milo.”

“I’m not the mess officer, sir.”

“You’re a good mess officer, Milo.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll do everything in my power to be a good mess officer.”

“Bless you, my boy. Have a horseshoe.”

“Thank you, sir. What should I do with it?”

“Throw it.”

“Away?”

“At the peg there. Then pick it up and throw it at this peg. It’s a game, see? You get the horseshoe back.”

“Yes, sir. I see. How much are horseshoes selling for?”

The smell of a fresh egg snapping exotically in a pool of fresh butter carried a long way on the Mediterranean trade winds and brought General Dreedle racing back with a voracious appetite, accompanied by his nurse, who accompanied him everywhere, and his son-in-law, Colonel Moodus. In the beginning General Dreedle devoured all his meals in Milo’s mess hall. Then the other three squadrons in Colonel Cathcart’s group turned their mess halls over to Milo and gave him an airplane and a pilot each so that he could buy fresh eggs and fresh butter for them too. Milo’s planes shuttled back and forth seven days a week as every officer in the four squadrons began devouring fresh eggs in an insatiable orgy of fresh-egg eating. General Dreedle devoured fresh eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner-between meals he devoured more fresh eggs-until Milo located abundant sources of fresh veal, beef, duck, baby lamb chops, mushroom caps, broccoli, South African rock lobster tails, shrimp, hams, puddings, grapes, ice cream, strawberries and artichokes. There were three other bomb groups in General Dreedle’s combat wing, and they each jealously dispatched their own planes to Malta for fresh eggs, but discovered that fresh eggs were selling there for seven cents apiece. Since they could buy them from Milo for five cents apiece, it made more sense to turn over their mess halls to his syndicate, too, and give him the planes and pilots needed to ferry in all the other good food he promised to supply as well.

Everyone was elated with this turn of events, most of all Colonel Cathcart, who was convinced he had won a feather in his cap. He greeted Milo jovially each time they met and, in an excess of contrite generosity, impulsively recommended Major Major for promotion. The recommendation was rejected at once at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters by ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen, who scribbled a brusque, unsigned reminder that the Army had only one Major Major Major Major and did not intend to lose him by promotion just to please Colonel Cathcart. Colonel Cathcart was stung by the blunt rebuke and skulked guiltily about his room in smarting repudiation. He blamed Major Major for this black eye and decided to bust him down to lieutenant that very same day.

“They probably won’t let you,” Colonel Korn remarked with a condescending smile, savoring the situation. “For precisely the same reasons that they wouldn’t let you promote him. Besides, you’d certainly look foolish trying to bust him down to lieutenant right after you tried to promote him to my rank.”

Colonel Cathcart felt hemmed in on every side. He had been much more successful in obtaining a medal for Yossarian after the debacle of Ferrara, when the bridge spanning the Po was still standing undamaged seven days after Colonel Cathcart had volunteered to destroy it. Nine missions his men had flown there in six days, and the bridge was not demolished until the tenth mission on the seventh day, when Yossarian killed Kraft and his crew by taking his flight of six planes in over the target a second time. Yossarian came in carefully on his second bomb run because he was brave then. He buried his head in his bombsight until his bombs were away; when he looked up, everything inside the ship was suffused in a weird orange glow. At first he thought that his own plane was on fire. Then he spied the plane with the burning engine directly above him and screamed to McWatt through the intercom to turn left hard. A second later, the wing of Kraft’s plane blew off. The flaming wreck dropped, first the fuselage, then the spinning wing, while a shower of tiny metal fragments began tap dancing on the roof of Yossarian’s own plane and the incessant cachung! cachung! cachung! of the flak was still thumping all around him.

Back on the ground, every eye watched grimly as he walked in dull dejection up to Captain Black outside the green clapboard briefing room to make his intelligence report and learned that Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn were waiting to speak to him inside. Major Danby stood barring the door, waving everyone else away in ashen silence. Yossarian was leaden with fatigue and longed to remove his sticky clothing. He stepped into the briefing room with mixed emotions, uncertain how he was supposed to feel about Kraft and the others, for they had all died in the distance of a mute and secluded agony at a moment when he was up to his own ass in the same vile, excruciating dilemma of duty and damnation.

Colonel Cathcart, on the other hand, was all broken up by the event. “Twice?” he asked.

“I would have missed it the first time,” Yossarian replied softly, his face lowered.

Their voices echoed slightly in the long, narrow bungalow.

“But twice ?” Colonel Cathcart repeated, in vivid disbelief.

“I would have missed it the first time,” Yossarian repeated.

“But Kraft would be alive.”

“And the bridge would still be up.”

“A trained bombardier is supposed to drop his bombs the first time,” Colonel Cathcart reminded him. “The other five bombardiers dropped their bombs the first time.”

“And missed the target,” Yossarian said. “We’d have had to go back there again.”

“And maybe you would have gotten it the first time then.”

“And maybe I wouldn’t have gotten it at all.”

“But maybe there wouldn’t have been any losses.”