“Catch-22” By Joseph - Khamkoo

“Catch-22” By Joseph Heller 71
‘You goddam stinking lousy son of a bitch,’ Hungry Joe screamed from his tent as they
sped into the squadron.
‘Jesus, is he back here tonight? I thought he was still in Rome with the courier ship.’
‘Oh! Ooooh! Oooooooh!’ Hungry Joe screamed.
Chief White Halfoat shuddered. ‘That guy gives me the willies,’ he confessed in a
grouchy whisper. ‘Hey, whatever happened to Captain Flume?’
‘There’s a guy that gives me the willies. I saw him in the woods last week eating wild
berries. He never sleeps in his trailer any more. He looked like hell.’
‘Hungry Joe’s afraid he’ll have to replace somebody who goes on sick call, even
though there is no sick call. Did you see him the other night when he tried to kill
Havermeyer and fell into Yossarian’s slit trench?’
‘Ooooh!’ screamed Hungry Joe. ‘Oh! Ooooh! Ooooooh!’
‘It sure is a pleasure not having Flume around in the mess hall any more. No more of
that "Pass the salt, Walt." ‘
‘Or "Pass the bread, Fred." ‘
‘Or "Shoot me a beet, Pete." ‘
‘Keep away, keep away,’ Hungry Joe screamed. ‘I said keep away, keep away, you
goddam stinking lousy son of a bitch.’
‘At least we found out what he dreams about,’ Dunbar observed wryly. ‘He dreams
about goddam stinking lousy sons of bitches.’ Late that night Hungry Joe dreamed that
Huple’s cat was sleeping on his face, suffocating him, and when he woke up, Huple’s
cat was sleeping on his face. His agony was terrifying, the piercing, unearthly howl with
which he split the moonlit dark vibrating in its own impact for seconds afterward like a
devastating shock. A numbing silence followed, and then a riotous din rose from inside
his tent.
Yossarian was among the first ones there. When he burst through the entrance,
Hungry Joe had his gun out and was struggling to wrench his arm free from Huple to
shoot the cat, who kept spitting and feinting at him ferociously to distract him from
shooting Huple. Both humans were in their GI underwear. The unfrosted light bulb
overhead was swinging crazily on its loose wire, and the jumbled black shadows kept
swirling and bobbing chaotically, so that the entire tent seemed to be reeling. Yossarian
reached out instinctively for balance and then launched himself forward in a prodigious
dive that crushed the three combatants to the ground beneath him. He emerged from
the melee with the scruff of a neck in each hand—Hungry Joe’s neck and the cat’s.
Hungry Joe and the cat glared at each other savagely. The cat spat viciously at Hungry
Joe, and Hungry Joe tried to hit it with a haymaker.
‘A fair fight,’ Yossarian decreed, and all the others who had come running to the
uproar in horror began cheering ecstatically in a tremendous overflow of relief. ‘We’ll
have a fair fight,’ he explained officially to Hungry Joe and the cat after he had carried
them both outside, still holding them apart by the scruffs of their necks. ‘Fists, fangs and
claws. But no guns,’ he warned Hungry Joe. ‘And no spitting,’ he warned the cat sternly.
‘When I turn you both loose, go. Break clean in the clinches and come back fighting.
Go!’ There was a huge, giddy crowd of men who were avid for any diversion, but the cat
turned chicken the moment Yossarian released him and fled from Hungry Joe
ignominiously like a yellow dog. Hungry Joe was declared the winner. He swaggered
away happily with the proud smile of a champion, his shriveled head high and his
emaciated chest out. He went back to bed victorious and dreamed again that Huple’s
cat was sleeping on his face, suffocating him.
Major—De Coverley
Moving the bomb line did not fool the Germans, but it did fool Major—de Coverley,
who packed his musette bag, commandeered an airplane and, under the impression
that Florence too had been captured by the Allies, had himself flown to that city to rent
two apartments for the officers and the enlisted men in the squadron to use on rest