“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 172
‘I’ve only got eighteen missions.’
‘But you’ve been shot down on almost every one. You’re either ditching or crashlanding
every time you go up.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind flying missions. I guess they’re lots of fun. You ought to try flying a
few with me when you’re not flying lead. Just for laughs. Tee-hee.’ Orr gazed up at
Yossarian through the corners of his eyes with a look of pointed mirth.
Yossarian avoided his stare. ‘They’ve got me flying lead again.’
‘When you’re not flying lead. If you had any brains, do you know what you’d do? You’d
go right to Piltchard and Wren and tell them you want to fly with me.’
‘And get shot down with you every time you go up? What’s the fun in that?’
‘That’s just why you ought to do it,’ Orr insisted. ‘I guess I’m just about the best pilot
around now when it comes to ditching or making crash landings. It would be good
practice for you.’
‘Good practice for what?’
‘Good practice in case you ever have to ditch or make a crash landing. Tee-hee-hee.’
‘Have you got another bottle of beer for me?’ Yossarian asked morosely.
‘Do you want to bust it down on my head?’ This time Yossarian did laugh. ‘Like that
whore in that apartment in Rome?’ Orr sniggered lewdly, his bulging crab apple cheeks
blowing outward with pleasure. ‘Do you really want to know why she was hitting me over
the head with her shoe?’ he teased.
‘I do know,’ Yossarian teased back. ‘Nately’s whore told me.’ Orr grinned like a
gargoyle. ‘No she didn’t.’ Yossarian felt sorry for Orr. Orr was so small and ugly. Who
would protect him if he lived? Who would protect a warm-hearted, simple-minded
gnome like Orr from rowdies and cliques and from expert athletes like Appleby who had
flies in their eyes and would walk right over him with swaggering conceit and selfassurance
every chance they got? Yossarian worried frequently about Orr. Who would
shield him against animosity and deceit, against people with ambition and the
embittered snobbery of the big shot’s wife, against the squalid, corrupting indignities of
the profit motive and the friendly neighborhood butcher with inferior meat? Orr was a
happy and unsuspecting simpleton with a thick mass of wavy polychromatic hair parted
down the center. He would be mere child’s play for them. They would take his money,
screw his wife and show no kindness to his children. Yossarian felt a flood of
compassion sweep over him.
Orr was an eccentric midget, a freakish, likable dwarf with a smutty mind and a
thousand valuable skills that would keep him in a low income group all his life. He could
use a soldering iron and hammer two boards together so that the wood did not split and
the nails did not bend. He could drill holes. He had built a good deal more in the tent
while Yossarian was away in the hospital. He had filed or chiseled a perfect channel in
the cement so that the slender gasoline line was flush with the floor as it ran to the stove
from the tank he had built outside on an elevated platform. He had constructed andirons
for the fireplace out of excess bomb parts and had filled them with stout silver logs, and
he had framed with stained wood the photographs of girls with big breasts he had torn
out of cheesecake magazines and hung over the mantelpiece. Orr could open a can of
paint. He could mix paint, thin paint, remove paint. He could chop wood and measure
things with a ruler. He knew how to build fires. He could dig holes, and he had a real gift
for bringing water for them both in cans and canteens from the tanks near the mess hall.
He could engross himself in an inconsequential task for hours without growing restless
or bored, as oblivious to fatigue as the stump of a tree, and almost as taciturn. He had
an uncanny knowledge of wildlife and was not afraid of dogs or cats or beetles or moths,
or of foods like scrod or tripe.
Yossarian sighed drearily and began brooding about the rumored mission to Bologna.
The valve Orr was dismantling was about the size of a thumb and contained thirty-seven
separate parts, excluding the casing, many of them so minute that Orr was required to
pinch them tightly between the tips of his fingernails as he placed them carefully on the
floor in orderly, catalogued rows, never quickening his movements or slowing them