Catch-22 - Heller, Joseph [53]
‘I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ Major Major answered. ‘Colonel Cathcart is our commanding officer and we must obey him. Why don’t you fly the four more missions and see what happens?’
‘I don’t want to.’ What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend was not? What could you say to him?
‘Suppose we let you pick your missions and fly milk runs,’ Major Major said. ‘That way you can fly the four missions and not run any risks.’
‘I don’t want to fly milk runs. I don’t want to be in the war any more.’
‘Would you like to see our country lose?’ Major Major asked.
‘We won’t lose. We’ve got more men, more money and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having fun. Let somebody else get killed.’
‘But suppose everybody on our side felt that way.’
‘Then I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn’t I?’ What could you possibly say to him? Major Major wondered forlornly. One thing he could not say was that there was nothing he could do. To say there was nothing he could do would suggest he would do something if he could and imply the existence of an error of injustice in Colonel Korn’s policy. Colonel Korn had been most explicit about that. He must never say there was nothing he could do.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But there’s nothing I can do.’
Catch-22
Wintergreen
Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy. Eighteen planes had let down through a beaming white cloud off the coast of Elba one afternoon on the way back from the weekly milk run to Parma; seventeen came out. No trace was ever found of the other, not in the air or on the smooth surface of the jade waters below. There was no debris. Helicopters circled the white cloud till sunset. During the night the cloud blew away, and in the morning there was no more Clevinger.
The disappearance was astounding, as astounding, certainly, as the Grand Conspiracy of Lowery Field, when all sixty-four men in a single barrack vanished one payday and were never heard of again. Until Clevinger was snatched from existence so adroitly, Yossarian had assumed that the men had simply decided unanimously to go AWOL the same day. In fact, he had been so encouraged by what appeared to be a mass desertion from sacred responsibility that he had gone running outside in elation to carry the exciting news to ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen.
‘What’s so exciting about it?’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen sneered obnoxiously, resting his filthy GI shoe on his spade and lounging back in a surly slouch against the wall of one of the deep, square holes it was his military specialty to dig.
Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen was a snide little punk who enjoyed working at cross-purposes. Each time he went AWOL, he was caught and sentenced to dig and fill up holes six feet deep, wide and long for a specified length of time. Each time he finished his sentence, he went AWOL again. Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen accepted his role of digging and filling up holes with all the uncomplaining dedication of a true patriot.
‘It’s not a bad life,’ he would observe philosophically. ‘And I guess somebody has to do it.’ He had wisdom enough to understand that digging holes in Colorado was not such a bad assignment in wartime. Since the holes were in no great demand, he could dig them and fill them up at a leisurely pace, and he was seldom overworked. On the other hand, he was busted down to buck private each time he was court-martialed. He regretted this loss of rank keenly.
‘It was kind of nice being a P.F.C.,’ he reminisced yearningly. ‘I had status—you know what I mean?—and I used to travel in the best circles.’ His face darkened with resignation. ‘But that’s all behind me now,’ he guessed. ‘The next time I go over the hill it will be as a buck private, and I just know it won’t be the same.