“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 124
missions was raised to sixty that Dobbs stole into Yossarian’s tent while Orr was out
looking for gaskets and disclosed the plot he had formulated to murder Colonel
Cathcart. He needed Yossarian’s assistance.
‘You want us to kill him in cold blood?’ Yossarian objected.
‘That’s right,’ Dobbs agreed with an optimistic smile, encouraged by Yossarian’s ready
grasp of the situation. ‘We’ll shoot him to death with the Luger I brought back from Sicily
that nobody knows I’ve got.’
‘I don’t think I could do it,’ Yossarian concluded, after weighing the idea in silence
awhile.
Dobbs was astonished. ‘Why not?’
‘Look. Nothing would please me more than to have the son of a bitch break his neck
or get killed in a crash or to find out that someone else had shot him to death. But I don’t
think I could kill him.’
‘He’d do it to you,’ Dobbs argued. ‘In fact, you’re the one who told me he is doing it to
us by keeping us in combat so long.’
‘But I don’t think I could do it to him. He’s got a right to live, too, I guess.’
‘Not as long as he’s trying to rob you and me of our right to live. What’s the matter with
you?’ Dobbs was flabbergasted. ‘I used to listen to you arguing that same thing with
Clevinger. And look what happened to him. Right inside that cloud.’
‘Stop shouting, will you?’ Yossarian shushed him.
‘I’m not shouting!’ Dobbs shouted louder, his face red with revolutionary fervor. His
eyes and nostrils were running, and his palpitating crimson lower lip was splattered with
a foamy dew. ‘There must have been close to a hundred men in the group who had
finished their fifty-five missions when he raised the number to sixty. There must have
been at least another hundred like you with just a couple more to fly. He’s going to kill us
all if we let him go on forever. We’ve got to kill him first.’ Yossarian nodded
expressionlessly, without committing himself. ‘Do you think we could get away with it?’
‘I’ve got it all worked out. I—’
‘Stop shouting, for Christ’s sake!’
‘I’m not shouting. I’ve got it—’
‘Will you stop shouting!’
‘I’ve got it all worked out,’ Dobbs whispered, gripping the side of Orr’s cot with whiteknuckled
hands to constrain them from waving. ‘Thursday morning when he’s due back
from that goddam farmhouse of his in the hills, I’ll sneak up through the woods to that
hairpin turn in the road and hide in the bushes. He has to slow down there, and I can
watch the road in both directions to make sure there’s no one else around. When I see
him coming, I’ll shove a big log out into the road to make him stop his jeep. Then I’ll step
out of the bushes with my Luger and shoot him in the head until he’s dead. I’ll bury the
gun, come back down through the woods to the squadron and go about my business
just like everybody else. What could possibly go wrong?’ Yossarian had followed each
step attentively. ‘Where do I come in?’ he asked in puzzlement.
‘I couldn’t do it without you,’ Dobbs explained. ‘I need you to tell me to go ahead.’
Yossarian found it hard to believe him. ‘Is that all you want me to do? Just tell you to go
ahead?’
‘That’s all I need from you,’ Dobbs answered. ‘Just tell me to go ahead and I’ll blow his
brains out all by myself the day after tomorrow.’ His voice was accelerating with emotion
and rising again. ‘I’d like to shoot Colonel Korn in the head, too, while we’re at it,
although I’d like to spare Major Danby, if that’s all right with you. Then I’d murder
Appleby and Havermeyer also, and after we finish murdering Appleby and Havermeyer
I’d like to murder McWatt.’
‘McWatt?’ cried Yossarian, almost jumping up in horror. ‘McWatt’s a friend of mine.
What do you want from McWatt?’
‘I don’t know,’ Dobbs confessed with an air of floundering embarrassment. ‘I just
thought that as long as we were murdering Appleby and Havermeyer we might as well
murder McWatt too. Don’t you want to murder McWatt?’ Yossarian took a firm stand.