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“Catch-22” <strong>By</strong> <strong>Joseph</strong> Heller 166<br />
bent his intense face very close to Yossarian’s, the muscles in his bronze, rocklike jaw<br />
bunching up into quivering knots. ‘Just say it’s okay and I’ll do the whole thing tomorrow<br />
morning. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I’m whispering now, ain’t I?’<br />
Yossarian tore his eyes away from the gaze of burning entreaty Dobbs had fastened on<br />
him. ‘Why the goddam hell don’t you just go out and do it?’ he protested. ‘Why don’t you<br />
stop talking to me about it and do it alone?’<br />
‘I’m afraid to do it alone. I’m afraid to do anything alone.’<br />
‘Then leave me out of it. I’d have to be crazy to get mixed up in something like this<br />
now. I’ve got a million-dollar leg wound here. They’re going to send me home.’<br />
‘Are you crazy?’ Dobbs exclaimed in disbelief. ‘All you’ve got there is a scratch. He’ll<br />
have you back flying combat missions the day you come out, Purple Heart and all.’<br />
‘Then I really will kill him,’ Yossarian vowed. ‘I’ll come looking for you and we’ll do it<br />
together.’<br />
‘Then let’s do it tomorrow while we’ve still got the chance,’ Dobbs pleaded. ‘The<br />
chaplain says he’s volunteered the group for Avignon again. I may be killed before you<br />
get out. Look how these hands of mine shake. I can’t fly a plane. I’m not good enough.’<br />
Yossarian was afraid to say yes. ‘I want to wait and see what happens first.’<br />
‘The trouble with you is that you just won’t do anything,’ Dobbs complained in a thick<br />
infuriated voice.<br />
‘I’m doing everything I possibly can,’ the chaplain explained softly to Yossarian after<br />
Dobbs had departed. ‘I even went to the medical tent to speak to Doc Daneeka about<br />
helping you.’<br />
‘Yes, I can see.’ Yossarian suppressed a smile. ‘What happened?’<br />
‘They painted my gums purple,’ the chaplain replied sheepishly.<br />
‘They painted his toes purple, too,’ Nately added in outrage. ‘And then they gave him a<br />
laxative.’<br />
‘But I went back again this morning to see him.’<br />
‘And they painted his gums purple again,’ said Nately.<br />
‘But I did get to speak to him,’ the chaplain argued in a plaintive tone of selfjustification.<br />
‘Doctor Daneeka seems like such an unhappy man. He suspects that<br />
someone is plotting to transfer him to the Pacific Ocean. All this time he’s been thinking<br />
of coming to me for help. When I told him I needed his help, he wondered if there wasn’t<br />
a chaplain I couldn’t go see.’ The chaplain waited in patient dejection when Yossarian<br />
and Dunbar both broke into laughter. ‘I used to think it was immoral to be unhappy,’ he<br />
continued, as though keening aloud in solitude. ‘Now I don’t know what to think any<br />
more. I’d like to make the subject of immorality the basis of my sermon this Sunday, but<br />
I’m not sure I ought to give any sermon at all with these purple gums. Colonel Korn was<br />
very displeased with them.’<br />
‘Chaplain, why don’t you come into the hospital with us for a while and take it easy?’<br />
Yossarian invited. ‘You could be very comfortable here.’ The brash iniquity of the<br />
proposal tempted and amused the chaplain for a second or two. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he<br />
decided reluctantly. ‘I want to arrange for a trip to the mainland to see a mail clerk<br />
named Wintergreen. Doctor Daneeka told me he could help.’<br />
‘Wintergreen is probably the most influential man in the whole theater of operations.<br />
He’s not only a mail clerk, but he has access to a mimeograph machine. But he won’t<br />
help anybody. That’s one of the reasons he’ll go far.’<br />
‘I’d like to speak to him anyway. There must be somebody who will help you.’<br />
‘Do it for Dunbar, Chaplain,’ Yossarian corrected with a superior air. ‘I’ve got this<br />
million-dollar leg wound that will take me out of combat. If that doesn’t do it, there’s a<br />
psychiatrist who thinks I’m not good enough to be in the Army.’<br />
‘I’m the one who isn’t good enough to be in the Army,’ Dunbar whined jealously. ‘It<br />
was my dream.’<br />
‘It’s not the dream, Dunbar,’ Yossarian explained. ‘He likes your dream. It’s my<br />
personality. He thinks it’s split.’<br />
‘It’s split right down the middle,’ said Major Sanderson, who had laced his lumpy GI