Joseph Heller - Catch-22

“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.

“That’s a fine thing,” General Dreedle growled at the bar, gripping his empty shot glass in his burly hand. “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 sighed with relief. “Yes, sir,” he exclaimed proudly. “It certainly is a fine thing.”

“Then why the hell don’t you do something about it?”

“Sir?” Colonel Cathcart inquired, blinking.

“Do you think it does you credit to have your chaplain hanging around here every night? He’s in here every goddam time I come.”

“You’re right, sir, absolutely right,” Colonel Cathcart responded. “It does me no credit at all. And I am going to do something about it, this very minute.”