Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [105]
‘Does the colonel know you took it?’
‘Yes, sir. He gave it to me.’
‘Oh, in that case I guess it’s okay,’ Colonel Korn said, mollified. He smiled without warmth, jabbing the crumpled folds of his shirt back down inside his trousers with his thumbs. His eyes glinted keenly with a private and satisfying mischief. ‘What did Colonel Cathcart want to see you about, Father?’ he asked suddenly.
The chaplain was tongue-tied with indecision for a moment. ‘I don’t think I ought—’
‘Saying prayers to the editors of The Saturday Evening Post?’ The chaplain almost smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’ Colonel Korn was enchanted with his own intuition. He laughed disparagingly. ‘You know, I was afraid he’d begin thinking about something so ridiculous as soon as he saw this week’s Saturday Evening Post. I hope you succeeded in showing him what an atrocious idea it is.’
‘He has decided against it, sir.’
‘That’s good. I’m glad you convinced him that the editors of The Saturday Evening Post were not likely to run that same story twice just to give some publicity to some obscure colonel. How are things in the wilderness, Father? Are you able to manage out there?’
‘Yes, sir. Everything is working out.’
‘That’s good. I’m happy to hear you have nothing to complain about. Let us know if you need anything to make you comfortable. We all want you to have a good time out there.’
‘Thank you, sir. I will.’ Noise of a growing stir rose from the lobby below. It was almost lunchtime, and the earliest arrivals were drifting into the headquarters mess halls, the enlisted men and officers separating into different dining halls on facing sides of the archaic rotunda. Colonel Korn stopped smiling.
‘You had lunch with us here just a day or so ago, didn’t you, Father?’ he asked meaningfully.
‘Yes, sir. The day before yesterday.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Colonel Korn said, and paused to let his point sink in. ‘Well, take it easy, Father. I’ll see you around when it’s time for you to eat here again.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ The chaplain was not certain at which of the five officers’ and five enlisted men’s mess halls he was scheduled to have lunch that day, for the system of rotation worked out for him by Colonel Korn was complicated, and he had forgotten his records back in his tent. The chaplain was the only officer attached to Group Headquarters who did not reside in the moldering red-stone Group Headquarters building itself or in any of the smaller satellite structures that rose about the grounds in disjuncted relationship. The chaplain lived in a clearing in the woods about four miles away between the officers’ club and the first of the four squadron areas that stretched away from Group Headquarters in a distant line. The chaplain lived alone in a spacious, square tent that was also his office. Sounds of revelry traveled to him at night from the officers’ club and kept him awake often as he turned and tossed on his cot in passive, half-voluntary exile. He was not able to gauge the effect of the mild pills he took occasionally to help him sleep and felt guilty about it for days afterward.
The only one who lived with the chaplain in his clearing in the woods was Corporal Whitcomb, his assistant. Corporal Whitcomb, an atheist, was a disgruntled subordinate who felt he could do the chaplain’s job much better than the chaplain was doing it and viewed himself, therefore, as an underprivileged victim of social inequity. He lived in a tent of his own as spacious and square as the chaplain’s. He was openly rude and contemptuous to the chaplain once he discovered that the chaplain would let him get away with it. The borders of the two tents in the clearing stood no more than four or five feet apart.
It was Colonel Korn who had mapped out this way of life for the chaplain. One good reason for making the chaplain live outside the Group Headquarters building was Colonel Korn’s theory that dwelling in a tent as most of his parishioners did would