Joseph Heller - Catch-22

“He’s a major,” Dunbar explained. “Why don’t you aim a little lower and try becoming Warrant Officer Homer Lumley for a while? Then you can have a father in the state legislature and a sister who’s engaged to a champion skier. Just tell him you’re a captain.”

Yossarian turned to the startled patient Dunbar had indicated. “I’m a captain,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Screw.”

The startled patient jumped down to the floor at Yossarian’s command and ran away. Yossarian climbed up into his bed and became Warrant Officer Homer Lumley, who felt like vomiting and was covered suddenly with a clammy sweat. He slept for an hour and wanted to be Yossarian again. It did not mean so much to have a father in the state legislature and a sister who was engaged to a champion skier. Dunbar led the way back to Yossarian’s ward, where he thumbed A. Fortiori out of bed to become Dunbar again for a while. There was no sign of Warrant Officer Homer Lumley. Nurse Cramer was there, though, and sizzled with sanctimonious anger like a damp firecracker. She ordered Yossarian to get right back into his bed and blocked his path so he couldn’t comply. Her pretty face was more repulsive than ever. Nurse Cramer was a good-hearted, sentimental creature who rejoiced unselfishly at news of weddings, engagements, births and anniversaries even though she was unacquainted with any of the people involved.

“Are you crazy?” she scolded virtuously, shaking an indignant finger in front of his eyes. “I suppose you just don’t care if you kill yourself, do you?”

“It’s my self,” he reminded her.

“I suppose you just don’t care if you lose your leg, do you?”

“It’s my leg.”

“It certainly is not your leg!” Nurse Cramer retorted. “That leg belongs to the U. S. government. It’s no different than a gear or a bedpan. The Army has invested a lot of money to make you an airplane pilot, and you’ve no right to disobey the doctor’s orders.”

Yossarian was not sure he liked being invested in. Nurse Cramer was still standing directly in front of him so that he could not pass. His head was aching. Nurse Cramer shouted at him some question he could not understand. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said, “Screw.”

Nurse Cramer cracked him in the face so hard she almost knocked him down. Yossarian drew back his fist to punch her in the jaw just as his leg buckled and he began to fall. Nurse Duckett strode up in time to catch him. She addressed them both firmly.

“Just what’s going on here?”

“He won’t get back into his bed,” Nurse Cramer reported zealously in an injured tone. “Sue Ann, he said something absolutely horrible to me. Oh, I can’t even make myself repeat it!”

“She called me a gear,” Yossarian muttered.

Nurse Duckett was not sympathetic. “Will you get back into bed,” she said, “or must I take you by your ear and put you there?”

“Take me by my ear and put me there,” Yossarian dared her.

Nurse Duckett took him by his ear and put him back in bed.

Nurse Sue Ann Duckett was a tall, spare, mature, straight-backed woman with a prominent, well-rounded ass, small breasts and angular ascetic New England features that came equally close to being very lovely and very plain. Her skin was white and pink, her eyes small, her nose and chin slender and sharp. She was able, prompt, strict and intelligent. She welcomed responsibility and kept her head in every crisis. She was adult and self-reliant, and there was nothing she needed from anyone. Yossarian took pity and decided to help her.

Next morning while she was standing bent over smoothing the sheets at the foot of his bed, he slipped his hand stealthily into the narrow space between her knees and, all at once, brought it up swiftly under her dress as far as it would go. Nurse Duckett shrieked and jumped into the air a mile, but it wasn’t high enough, and she squirmed and vaulted and seesawed back and forth on her divine fulcrum for almost a full fifteen seconds before she wiggled free finally and retreated frantically into the aisle with an ashen, trembling face. She backed away too far, and Dunbar, who had watched from the beginning, sprang forward on his bed without warning and flung both arms around her bosom from behind. Nurse Duckett let out another scream and twisted away, fleeing far enough from Dunbar for Yossarian to lunge forward and grab her by the snatch again. Nurse Duckett bounced out across the aisle once more like a ping-pong ball with legs. Dunbar was waiting vigilantly, ready to pounce. She remembered him just in time and leaped aside. Dunbar missed completely and sailed by her over the bed to the floor, landing on his skull with a soggy, crunching thud that knocked him cold.

He woke up on the floor with a bleeding nose and exactly the same distressful head symptoms he had been feigning all along. The ward was in a chaotic uproar. Nurse Duckett was in tears, and Yossarian was consoling her apologetically as he sat beside her on the edge of a bed. The commanding colonel was wroth and shouting at Yossarian that he would not permit his patients to take indecent liberties with his nurses.

“What do you want from him?” Dunbar asked plaintively from the floor, wincing at the vibrating pains in his temples that his voice set up. “He didn’t do anything.”

“I’m talking about you!” the thin, dignified colonel bellowed as loudly as he could. “You’re going to be punished for what you did.”

“What do you want from him?” Yossarian called out. “All he did was fall on his head.”

“And I’m talking about you too!” the colonel declared, whirling to rage at Yossarian. “You’re going to be good and sorry you grabbed Nurse Duckett by the bosom.”

“I didn’t grab Nurse Duckett by the bosom,” said Yossarian.

“I grabbed her by the bosom,” said Dunbar.

“Are you both crazy?” the doctor cried shrilly, backing away in paling confusion.

“Yes, he really is crazy, Doc,” Dunbar assured him. “Every night he dreams he’s holding a live fish in his hands.”

The doctor stopped in his tracks with a look of elegant amazement and distaste, and the ward grew still. “He does what?” he demanded.

“He dreams he’s holding a live fish in his hand.”

“What kind of fish?” the doctor inquired sternly of Yossarian.

“I don’t know,” Yossarian answered. “I can’t tell one kind of fish from another.”

“In which hand do you hold them?”

“It varies,” answered Yossarian.

“It varies with the fish,” Dunbar added helpfully.

The colonel turned and stared down at Dunbar suspiciously with a narrow squint. “Yes? And how come you seem to know so much about it?”

“I’m in the dream,” Dunbar answered without cracking a smile.

The colonel’s face flushed with embarrassment. He glared at them both with cold, unforgiving resentment. “Get up off the floor and into your bed,” he directed Dunbar through thin lips. “And I don’t want to hear another word about this dream from either one of you. I’ve got a man on my staff to listen to disgusting bilge like this.”

“Just why do you think,” carefully inquired Major Sanderson, the soft and thickset smiling staff psychiatrist to whom the colonel had ordered Yossarian sent, “that Colonel Ferredge finds your dream disgusting?”

Yossarian replied respectfully. “I suppose it’s either some quality in the dream or some quality in Colonel Ferredge.”

“That’s very well put,” applauded Major Sanderson, who wore squeaking GI shoes and had charcoal-black hair that stood up almost straight. “For some reason,” he confided, “Colonel Ferredge has always reminded me of a sea gull. He doesn’t put much faith in psychiatry, you know.”