McWatt went, and McWatt was not crazy. And so did Yossarian, still walking with a limp, and when Yossarianhad gone two more times and then found himself menaced by the rumor of another mission to Bologna, helimped determinedly into Dobbs’s tent early one warm afternoon, put a finger to his mouth and said, “Shush!”
“What are you shushing him for?” asked Kid Sampson, peeling a tangerine with his front teeth as he perused thedog-eared pages of a comic book. “He isn’t even saying anything.”
“Screw,” said Yossarian to Kid Sampson, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder toward the entrance of thetent.
Kid Sampson cocked his blond eyebrows discerningly and rose to co-operate. He whistled upward four timesinto his drooping yellow mustache and spurted away into the hills on the dented old green motorcycle he hadpurchased secondhand months before. Yossarian waited until the last faint bark of the motor had died away inthe distance. Things inside the tent did not seem quite normal. The place was too neat. Dobbs was watching himcuriously, smoking a fat cigar. Now that Yossarian had made up his mind to be brave, he was deathly afraid.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s kill Colonel Cathcart. We’ll do it together.”
Dobbs sprang forward off his cot with a look of wildest terror. “Shush!” he roared. “Kill Colonel Cathcart? Whatare you talking about?”
“Be quiet, damn it,” Yossarian snarled. “The whole island will hear. Have you still got that gun?”
“Are you crazy or something?” shouted Dobbs. “Why should I want to kill Colonel Cathcart?”
“Why?” Yossarian stared at Dobbs with an incredulous scowl. “Why? It was your idea, wasn’t it? Didn’t youcome to the hospital and ask me to do it?”
Dobbs smiled slowly. “But that was when I had only fifty-eight missions,” he explained, puffing on his cigarluxuriously. “I’m all packed now and I’m waiting to go home. I’ve finished my sixty missions.”
“So what?” Yossarian replied. “He’s only going to raise them again.”
“Maybe this time he won’t.”
“He always raises them. What the hell’s the matter with you, Dobbs? Ask Hungry Joe how many time he’spacked his bags.”
“I’ve got to wait and see what happens,” Dobbs maintained stubbornly. “I’d have to be crazy to get mixed up insomething like this now that I’m out of combat.” He flicked the ash from his cigar. “No, my advice to you,” heremarked, “is that you fly your sixty missions like the rest of us and then see what happens.”
Yossarian resisted the impulse to spit squarely in his eye. “I may not live through sixty,” he wheedled in a flat,pessimistic voice. “There’s a rumor around that he volunteered the group for Bologna again.”
“It’s only a rumor,” Dobbs pointed out with a self-important air. “You mustn’t believe every rumor you hear.”
“Will you stop giving me advice?”
“Why don’t you speak to Orr?” Dobbs advised. “Orr got knocked down into the water again last week on thatsecond mission to Avignon. Maybe he’s unhappy enough to kill him.”
“Orr hasn’t got brains enough to be unhappy.”
Orr had been knocked down into the water again while Yossarian was still in the hospital and had eased hiscrippled airplane down gently into the glassy blue swells off Marseilles with such flawless skill that not onemember of the six-man crew suffered the slightest bruise. The escape hatches in the front and rear sections flewopen while the sea was still foaming white and green around the plane, and the men scrambled out as speedily asthey could in their flaccid orange Mae West life jackets that failed to inflate and dangled limp and useless aroundtheir necks and waists. The life jackets failed to inflate because Milo had removed the twin carbon-dioxidecylinders from the inflating chambers to make the strawberry and crushed-pineapple ice-cream sodas he servedin the officers’ mess hall and had replaced them with mimeographed notes that read: “What’s good for M & MEnterprises is good for the country.” Orr popped out of the sinking airplane last.
“You should have seen him!” Sergeant Knight roared with laughter as he related the episode to Yossarian. “Itwas the funniest goddam thing you ever saw. None of the Mae Wests would work because Milo had stolen thecarbon dioxide to make those ice-cream sodas you bastards have been getting in the officers’ mess. But that wasn’t too bad, as it turned out. Only one of us couldn’t swim, and we lifted that guy up into the raft after Orrhad worked it over by its rope right up against the fuselage while we were all still standing on the plane. Thatlittle crackpot sure has a knack for things like that. Then the other raft came loose and drifted away, so that allsix of us wound up sitting in one with our elbows and legs pressed so close against each other you almostcouldn’t move without knocking the guy next to you out of the raft into the water. The plane went down aboutthree seconds after we left it and we were out there all alone, and right after that we began unscrewing the capson our Mae Wests to see what the hell had gone wrong and found those goddam notes from Milo telling us thatwhat was good for him was good enough for the rest of us. That bastard! Jesus, did we curse him, all except thatbuddy of yours, Orr, who just kept grinning as though for all he cared what was good for Milo might be goodenough for the rest of us.
“I swear, you should have seen him sitting up there on the rim of the raft like the captain of a ship while the restof us just watched him and waited for him to tell us what to do. He kept slapping his hands on his legs every fewseconds as though he had the shakes and saying, ‘All right now, all right,’ and giggling like a crazy little freak,then saying, ‘All right now, all right,’ again, and giggling like a crazy little freak some more. It was likewatching some kind of a moron. Watching him was all that kept us from going to pieces altogether during thefirst few minutes, what with each wave washing over us into the raft or dumping a few of us back into the waterso that we had to climb back in again before the next wave came along and washed us right back out. It was surefunny. We just kept falling out and climbing back in. We had the guy who couldn’t swim stretched out in themiddle of the raft on the floor, but even there he almost drowned, because the water inside the raft was deepenough to keep splashing in his face. Oh, boy!
“Then Orr began opening up compartments in the raft, and the fun really began. First he found a box ofchocolate bars and he passed those around so we sat there eating salty chocolate bars while the waves keptknocking us out of the raft into the water. Next he found some bouillon cubes and aluminum cups and made ussome soup. Then he found some tea. Sure, he made it! Can’t you see him serving us tea as we sat there soakingwet in water up to our ass? Now I was falling out of the raft because I was laughing so much. We were alllaughing. And he was dead serious, except for that goofy giggle of his and that crazy grin. What a jerk! Whateverhe found he used. He found some shark repellent and he sprinkled it right out into the water. He found somemarker dye and he threw it into the water. The next thing he finds is a fishing line and dried bait, and his facelights up as though the Air-Sea Rescue launch had just sped up to save us before we died of exposure or beforethe Germans sent a boat out from Spezia to take us prisoner or machine-gun us. In no time at all, Orr had thatfishing line out into the water, trolling away as happy as a lark. ‘Lieutenant, what do you expect to catch?’ Iasked him. ‘Cod,’ he told me. And he meant it. And it’s a good thing he didn’t catch any, because he would haveeaten that codfish raw if he had caught any, and would have made us eat it, too, because he had found this littlebook that said it was all right to eat codfish raw.
“The next thing he found was this little blue oar about the size of a Dixie-cup spoon, and, sure enough, he beganrowing with it, trying to move all nine hundred pounds of us with that little stick. Can you imagine? After that hefound a small magnetic compass and a big waterproof map, and he spread the map open on his knees and set thecompass on top of it. And that’s how he spent the time until the launch picked us up about thirty minutes later,sitting there with that baited fishing line out behind him, with the compass in his lap and the map spread out onhis knees, and paddling away as hard as he could with that dinky blue oar as though he was speeding to Majorca.
Jesus!”
Sergeant Knight knew all about Majorca, and so did Orr, because Yossarian had told them often of suchsanctuaries as Spain, Switzerland and Sweden where American fliers could be interned for the duration of thewar under conditions of utmost ease and luxury merely by flying there. Yossarian was the squadron’s leadingauthority on internment and had already begun plotting an emergency heading into Switzerland on every missionhe flew into northernmost Italy. He would certainly have preferred Sweden, where the level of intelligence washigh and where he could swim nude with beautiful girls with low, demurring voices and sire whole happy,undisciplined tribes of illegitimate Yossarians that the state would assist through parturition and launch into lifewithout stigma; but Sweden was out of reach, too far away, and Yossarian waited for the piece of flak that wouldknock out one engine over the Italian Alps and provide him with the excuse for heading for Switzerland. Hewould not even tell his pilot he was guiding him there. Yossarian often thought of scheming with some pilot hetrusted to fake a crippled engine and then destroy the evidence of deception with a belly landing, but the onlypilot he really trusted was McWatt, who was happiest where he was and still got a big boot out of buzzing hisplane over Yossarian’s tent or roaring in so low over the bathers at the beach that the fierce wind from hispropellers slashed dark furrows in the water and whipped sheets of spray flapping back for seconds afterward.
Dobbs and Hungry Joe were out of the question, and so was Orr, who was tinkering with the valve of the stoveagain when Yossarian limped despondently back into the tent after Dobbs had turned him down. The stove Orrwas manufacturing out of an inverted metal drum stood in the middle of the smooth cement floor he hadconstructed. He was working sedulously on both knees. Yossarian tried paying no attention to him and limpedwearily to his cot and sat down with a labored, drawn-out grunt. Prickles of perspiration were turning chilly onhis forehead. Dobbs had depressed him. Doc Daneeka depressed him. An ominous vision of doom depressed himwhen he looked at Orr. He began ticking with a variety of internal tremors. Nerves twitched, and the vein in onewrist began palpitating.
Orr studied Yossarian over his shoulder, his moist lips drawn back around convex rows of large buck teeth.
Reaching sideways, he dug a bottle of warm beer out of his foot locker, and he handed it to Yossarian afterprying off the cap. Neither said a word. Yossarian sipped the bubbles off the top and tilted his head back. Orrwatched him cunningly with a noiseless grin. Yossarian eyed Orr guardedly. Orr snickered with a slight, mucidsibilance and turned back to his work, squatting. Yossarian grew tense.
“Don’t start,” he begged in a threatening voice, both hands tightening around his beer bottle. “Don’t startworking on your stove.”
Orr cackled quietly. “I’m almost finished.”
“No, you’re not. You’re about to begin.”
“Here’s the valve. See? It’s almost all together.”
“And you’re about to take it apart. I know what you’re doing, you bastard. I’ve seen you do it three hundredtimes.”
Orr shivered with glee. “I want to get the leak in this gasoline line out,” he explained. “I’ve got it down now towhere it’s only an ooze.”
“I can’t watch you,” Yossarian confessed tonelessly. “If you want to work with something big, that’s okay. Butthat valve is filled with tiny parts, and I just haven’t got the patience right now to watch you working so hardover things that are so goddam small and unimportant.”
“Just because they’re small doesn’t mean they’re unimportant.”
“I don’t care.”
“Once more?”
“When I’m not around. You’re a happy imbecile and you don’t know what it means to feel the way I do. Thingshappen to me when you work over small things that I can’t even begin to explain. I find out that I can’t standyou. I start to hate you, and I’m soon thinking seriously about busting this bottle down on your head or stabbingyou in the neck with that hunting knife there. Do you understand?”
Orr nodded very intelligently. “I won’t take the valve apart now,” he said, and began taking it apart, workingwith slow, tireless, interminable precision, his rustic, ungainly face bent very close to the floor, pickingpainstakingly at the minute mechanism in his fingers with such limitless, plodding concentration that he seemedscarcely to be thinking of it at all.
Yossarian cursed him silently and made up his mind to ignore him. “What the hell’s your hurry with that stove,anyway?” he barked out a moment later in spite of himself. “It’s still hot out. We’re probably going swimminglater. What are you worried about the cold for.”
“The days are getting shorter,” Orr observed philosophically. “I’d like to get this all finished for you whilethere’s still time. You’ll have the best stove in the squadron when I’m through. It will burn all night with thisfeed control I’m fixing, and these metal plates will radiate the heat all over the tent. If you leave a helmet full ofwater on this thing when you go to sleep, you’ll have warm water to wash with all ready for you when you wakeup. Won’t that be nice? If you want to cook eggs or soup, all you’ll have to do is set the pot down here and turnthe fire up.”
“What do you mean, me?” Yossarian wanted to know. “Where are you going to be?”
Orr’s stunted torso shook suddenly with a muffled spasm of amusement. “I don’t know,” he exclaimed, and aweird, wavering giggle gushed out suddenly through his chattering buck teeth like an exploding jet of emotion.
He was still laughing when he continued, and his voice was clogged with saliva. “If they keep on shooting medown this way, I don’t know where I’m goi............