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By Root 7296 0

that day with those two newlyweds looking at me as though I were telling them something nobody’d ever heard of before. You never saw anybody so interested. “You mean like this?” he asked me, and worked the models for himself awhile. You know, I can see where a certain type of person might get a big kick out of doing just that. “That’s it,” I told him. “Now, you go home and try it my way for a few months and see what happens. Okay?” “Okay,” they said, and paid me in cash without any argument. “Have a good time,” I told them, and they thanked me and walked out together. He had his arm around her waist as though he couldn’t wait to get her home and put it to her again. A few days later he came back all by himself and told my nurse he had to see me right away. As soon as we were alone, he punched me in the nose.’

‘He did what?’

‘He called me a wise guy and punched me in the nose. “What are you, a wise guy?” he said, and knocked me flat on my ass. Pow! Just like that. I’m not kidding.’

‘I know you’re not kidding,’ Yossarian said. ‘But why did he do it?’

‘How should I know why he did it?’ Doc Daneeka retorted with annoyance.

‘Maybe it had something to do with Saint Anthony?’ Doc Daneeka looked at Yossarian blankly. ‘Saint Anthony?’ he asked with astonishment. ‘Who’s Saint Anthony?’

‘How should I know?’ answered Chief White Halfoat, staggering inside the tent just then with a bottle of whiskey cradled in his arm and sitting himself down pugnaciously between the two of them.

Doc Daneeka rose without a word and moved his chair outside the tent, his back bowed by the compact kit of injustices that was his perpetual burden. He could not bear the company of his roommate.

Chief White Halfoat thought he was crazy. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with that guy,’ he observed reproachfully. ‘He’s got no brains, that’s what’s the matter with him. If he had any brains he’d grab a shovel and start digging. Right here in the tent, he’d start digging, right under my cot. He’d strike oil in no time. Don’t he know how that enlisted man struck oil with a shovel back in the States? Didn’t he ever hear what happened to that kid—what was the name of that rotten rat bastard pimp of a snotnose back in Colorado?’

‘Wintergreen.’

‘Wintergreen.’

‘He’s afraid,’ Yossarian explained.

‘Oh, no. Not Wintergreen.’ Chief White Halfoat shook his head with undisguised admiration. ‘That stinking little punk wise-guy son of a bitch ain’t afraid of nobody.’

‘Doc Daneeka’s afraid. That’s what’s the matter with him.’

‘What’s he afraid of?’

‘He’s afraid of you,’ Yossarian said. ‘He’s afraid you’re going to die of pneumonia.’

‘He’d better be afraid,’ Chief White Halfoat said. A deep, low laugh rumbled through his massive chest. ‘I will, too, the first chance I get. You just wait and see.’ Chief White Halfoat was a handsome, swarthy Indian from Oklahoma with a heavy, hard-boned face and tousled black hair, a half-blooded Cree from Enid who, for occult reasons of his own, had made up his mind to die of pneumonia. He was a glowering, vengeful, disillusioned Indian who hated foreigners with names like Cathcart, Korn, Black and Havermeyer and wished they’d all go back to where their lousy ancestors had come from.

‘You wouldn’t believe it, Yossarian,’ he ruminated, raising his voice deliberately to bait Doc Daneeka, ‘but this used to be a pretty good country to live in before they loused it up with their goddam piety.’ Chief White Halfoat was out to revenge himself upon the white man. He could barely read or write and had been assigned to Captain Black as assistant intelligence officer.

‘How could I learn to read or write?’ Chief White Halfoat demanded with simulated belligerence, raising his voice again so that Doc Daneeka would hear. ‘Every place we pitched our tent, they sank an oil well. Every time they sank a well, they hit oil. And every time they hit oil, they made us pack up our tent and go someplace else. We were human divining rods. Our whole family had a natural affinity for petroleum deposits, and soon every oil company in the world had technicians