Joseph Heller - Closing Time

"Yes, I understand. You can all sit down if you wish."

The commanding officer of the squadron was a major, and his surname was Major too, I saw, and was amused by the oddity.

"Yes, I think I will sit down," said Appleby. The rest of us kept silent. "Sergeant, about how long will I have to wait? I've still got a lot to get done today so that I can be fully prepared bright and early tomorrow morning to go into combat the minute they want me to."

To me it peemed that Towser could not believe his ears.

"Sir?"

"What's that, Sergeant?"

"What was your question?"

"I About how long will I have to wait before I can go in to see the major?"

"Just until he goes out to lunch," Sergeant Towser replied. "Then you can go right in."'

"But he won't be there then. Will he?"

"No, sir. Major Major won't be back in his office until after lunch."

"I see," Appleby decided uncertainly. "I think I'd better come back after lunch, then."

Schroeder and I stood mute, as we always did when the officers were settling things. Yossarian was listening with an appearance of incisive inquiry.

Appleby walked first out the door. He stopped abruptly as soon as I stepped out behind him and drew back against me with a gasp. My gaze followed his, and I was sure I saw a tall, dark officer wearing the gold leaf of a major come jumping out the window of the orderly room and go scooting out of sight around the corner. Appleby was squeezing his eyes closed and shaking his head as though in fear he was ill.

"Did you-" he began, and then Sergeant Towser was tapping him on the shoulder and telling him he could now go in to see Major Major if he still wished to do that, since Major Major had just gone out. Appleby regained his good military posture.

"Thank you, Sergeant," he replied very formally. "Will he be back soon?"

"He'll be back after lunch. Then you'll have to go right out and wait for him in front till he leaves for dinner. Major Major never sees anyone in his office when he's in his office."

"Sergeant, what did you just say?"

"I said that Major Major never sees anyone in his office while he's in his office."

Appleby stared at Sergeant Towser intently a few moments and then adopted a stern tone of rebuking formality. "Sergeant," he said, and paused, as though waiting until certain he was commanding his undivided attention, "are you trying to make a fool out of me just because I'm new in the squadron and you've been overseas a long time?"

"Oh, no, sir," answered Towser. "Those are my orders. You can ask Major Major when you see him."

"That's just what I intend to do, Sergeant. When can I see him?"

"Never."

But Appleby could make his report in writing, if he chose. In two or three weeks we were practically veterans, and the matter was no longer of consequence even to Appleby.

Appleby was soon a lead pilot and was paired with a bombardier of longer experience named Havermeyer. Yossarian was good enough at first to be lead bombardier and was matched with a sweet-tempered pilot named McWatt. Later I preferred Yossarian for his quicker bomb runs.

We had everything, it seemed to me. The tents were comfortable and there was no hostility that I could see toward anyone. We were at peace with each other in a way we would not find feasible; anywhere else. Where Lew was, with the infantry in Europe, there was death, terror, blame. We were all of us fun-loving for the most part and did not grieve deeply over our occasional losses. The officer in charge of both our mess halls then was Milo Minderbinder, the industrialist and big export-import man now, and he did an excellent job, the best in the whole Mediterranean Theater of Operations, everyone knew. We had fresh eggs every morning. The workers in the kitchen under Corporal Snark were Italian laborers recruited by Milo Minderbinder, and he found local families nearby who were pleased to do our laundry for practically nothing. All we had to do to eat was follow orders. We had ice cream sodas every weekend, the officers had them every day. Only after I ditched off France with Orr did we find out that the carbonation for the ice cream sodas from Milo was coming from the carbon dioxide cylinders that were supposed to be in our Mae West life jackets to inflate them. When Snowden died, we found out Milo had taken the Syrettes of morphine from the first-aid kits too.

As I was moving into my tent that first day, I stopped at the sound of many planes and, looking up, watched three flights of six returning from a mission in perfect formation against the clear blue backdrop of the windless sky. They had gone that morning to bomb a railroad bridge on the near side of Italy outside a town called Pietrasanta, and they were back in time for lunch. There had been no flak. There were no enemy planes. There were never enemy planes in all the time I was there. This war looked just right to me, dangerous and safe, exactly as I'd hoped. I had an occupation I enjoyed that was respectable too.

Two days later I flew my first mission, to a bridge at a place called Piambino. I regretted there was no flak.

Not until I saw a kid my own age, Snowden, bleed and die just a few yards away from me in the back of a plane did the truth finally dawn that they were trying to kill me too, really trying to kill me. People I did not know were shooting cannons at me almost every time I went up on a mission to drop bombs on them, and it was not funny anymore. After that I wanted to go home. There were other things that weren't funny either, because the number of missions I had to complete had gone up first from fifty to fifty-five and then to sixty and sixty-five, and might go up even further before I could get there, with the ghastly chance I might not survive that far. I had thirty-seven missions then, and twenty-three more to fly, then twenty-eight. They had gotten rougher too, and after Snowden, I prayed on every one as soon as we were aloft and I had taken my place on my bicycle seat in the tail, facing backward, before I prepared to load and test-fire my machine gun when we were in formation and setting out over the water. I remember my prayer: "Dear God, please get me home safe, and I swear I will never go into an airplane again." Later on I broke that promise for a sales conference without a second thought. I never told Glenda or anyone else I ever prayed.

My second week there I found myself riding to Bastia in a jeep with a lieutenant named Pinkard I'd already made friends with on a mission, who had the car from the motor pool and invited me along to see the place. When we weren't on missions our time was our own. Not long after that, Pinkard went down over Ferrara in the plane with Kraft and was presumed dead with the rest. Along the straight road heading north on the level terrain near the beaches we came upon two grinning girls hitchhiking, and he screeched to a stop to take them aboard. A few minutes later he turned off the road into a flat patch of ground shielded by bushes, where he brought the car to another skidding stop, pointing out and downward and talking gibberish.

"Ficky-fick?" the elder of the two inquired, when she guessed she understood.

"Ficky-fick," Pinkard answered.

The girls glanced at each other and agreed, and we dismounted and paired off in different directions. I had the older one and we walked with our arms around each other. Mine went to the ground near the rusting pair of railroad tracks that ran down that coast of the island and were no longer in use. Between the tracks lay the metal pipeline that brought us our gasoline from the docks in Bastia. She knew what to do. She prepared herself quickly and put me inside. I did not feel as much contact as I had expected would be there, but I had no doubt I was at last doing it. I even reared up once and enjoyed looking down to make sure. I finished before Pinkard did, but I was ready for a second one sooner. By then we were back in the jeep and none of the others wanted to stop again.