Yossarian no longer gave a damn where his bombs fell, although he did not go as far as Dunbar, who dropped hisbombs hundreds of yards past the village and would face a court-martial if it could ever be shown he had done itdeliberately. Without a word even to Yossarian, Dunbar had washed his hands of the mission. The fall in thehospital had either shown him the light or scrambled his brains; it was impossible to say which.

　　Dunbar seldom laughed any more and seemed to be wasting away. He snarled belligerently at superior officers,even at Major Danby, and was crude and surly and profane even in front of the chaplain, who was afraid of Dunbar now and seemed to be wasting away also. The chaplain’s pilgrimage to Wintergreen had provedabortive; another shrine was empty. Wintergreen was too busy to see the chaplain himself. A brash assistantbrought the chaplain a stolen Zippo cigarette lighter as a gift and informed him condescendingly thatWintergreen was too deeply involved with wartime activities to concern himself with matters so trivial as thenumber of missions men had to fly. The chaplain worried about Dunbar and brooded more over Yossarian nowthat Orr was gone. To the chaplain, who lived by himself in a spacious tent whose pointy top sealed him ingloomy solitude each night like the cap of a tomb, it seemed incredible that Yossarian really preferred livingalone and wanted no roommates.

　　As a lead bombardier again, Yossarian had McWatt for a pilot, and that was one consolation, although he wasstill so utterly undefended. There was no way to fight back. He could not even see McWatt and the co-pilot fromhis post in the nose. All he could ever see was Aarfy, with whose fustian, moon-faced ineptitude he had finallylost all patience, and there were minutes of agonizing fury and frustration in the sky when he hungered to bedemoted again to a wing plane with a loaded machine gun in the compartment instead of the precision bombsightthat he really had no need for, a powerful, heavy fifty-caliber machine gun he could seize vengefully in bothhands and turn loose savagely against all the demons tyrannizing him: at the smoky black puffs of the flak itself;at the German antiaircraft gunners below whom he could not even see and could not possibly harm with hismachine gun even if he ever did take the time to open fire, at Havermeyer and Appleby in the lead plane for theirfearless straight and level bomb run on the second mission to Bologna where the flak from two hundred andtwenty-four cannons had knocked out one of Orr’s engines for the very last time and sent him down ditching intothe sea between Genoa and La Spezia just before the brief thunderstorm broke.

　　Actually, there was not much he could do with that powerful machine gun except load it and test-fire a fewrounds. It was no more use to him than the bombsight. He could really cut loose with it against attacking Germanfighters, but there were no German fighters any more, and he could not even swing it all the way around into thehelpless faces of pilots like Huple and Dobbs and order them back down carefully to the ground, as he had onceordered Kid Sampson back down, which is exactly what he did want to do to Dobbs and Huple on the hideousfirst mission to Avignon the moment he realized the fantastic pickle he was in, the moment he found himselfaloft in a wing plane with Dobbs and Huple in a flight headed by Havermeyer and Appleby. Dobbs and Huple?

　　Huple and Dobbs? Who were they? What preposterous madness to float in thin air two miles high on an inch ortwo of metal, sustained from death by the meager skill and intelligence of two vapid strangers, a beardless kidnamed Huple and a nervous nut like Dobbs, who really did go nuts right there in the plane, running amuck overthe target without leaving his copilot’s seat and grabbing the controls from Huple to plunge them all down intothat chilling dive that tore Yossarian’s headset loose and brought them right back inside the dense flak fromwhich they had almost escaped. The next thing he knew, another stranger, a radio-gunner named Snowden, wasdying in back. It was impossible to be positive that Dobbs had killed him, for when Yossarian plugged hisheadset back in, Dobbs was already on the intercom pleading for someone to go up front and help thebombardier. And almost immediately Snowden broke in, whimpering, “Help me. Please help me. I’m cold. I’mcold.” And Yossarian crawled slowly out of the nose and up on top of the bomb bay and wriggled back into therear section of the plane—passing the first-aid kit on the way that he had to return for—to treat Snowden for thewrong wound, the yawning, raw, melon-shaped hole as big as a football in the outside of his thigh, theunsevered, blood-soaked muscle fibers inside pulsating weirdly like blind things with lives of their own, the oval,naked wound that was almost a foot long and made Yossarian moan in shock and sympathy the instant he spied it and nearly made him vomit. And the small, slight tail-gunner was lying on the floor beside Snowden in a deadfaint, his face as white as a handkerchief, so that Yossarian sprang forward with revulsion to help him first.

　　Yes, in the long run, he was much safer flying with McWatt, and he was not even safe with McWatt, who lovedflying too much and went buzzing boldly inches off the ground with Yossarian in the nose on the way back fromthe training flight to break in the new bombardier in the whole replacement crew Colonel Cathcart had obtainedafter Orr was lost. The practice bomb range was on the other side of Pianosa, and, flying back, McWatt edgedthe belly of the lazing, slow-cruising plane just over the crest of mountains in the middle and then, instead ofmaintaining altitude, jolted both engines open all the way, lurched up on one side and, to Yossarian’sastonishment, began following the falling land down as fast as the plane would go, wagging his wings gaily andskimming with a massive, grinding, hammering roar over each rocky rise and dip of the rolling terrain like adizzy gull over wild brown waves. Yossarian was petrified. The new bombardier beside him sat demurely with abewitched grin and kept whistling “Whee!” and Yossarian wanted to reach out and crush his idiotic face withone hand as he flinched and flung himself away from the boulders and hillocks and lashing branches of trees thatloomed up above him out in front and rushed past just underneath in a sinking, streaking blur. No one had a rightto take such frightful risks with his life.

　　“Go up, go up, go up!” he shouted frantically at McWatt, hating him venomously, but McWatt was singingbuoyantly over the intercom and probably couldn’t hear. Yossarian, blazing with rage and almost sobbing forrevenge, hurled himself down into the crawlway and fought his way through against the dragging weight ofgravity and inertia until he arrived at the main section and pulled himself up to the flight deck, to stand tremblingbehind McWatt in the pilot’s seat. He looked desperately about for a gun, a gray-black .45 automatic that hecould cock and ram right up against the base of McWatt’s skull. There was no gun. There was no hunting knifeeither, and no other weapon with which he could bludgeon or stab, and Yossarian grasped and jerked the collarof McWatt’s coveralls in tightening fists and shouted to him to go up, go up. The land was still swimming byunderneath and flashing by overhead on both sides. McWatt looked back at Yossarian and laughed joyfully asthough Yossarian were sharing his fun. Yossarian slid both hands around McWatt’s bare throat and squeezed.

　　McWatt turned stiff:

　　“Go up,” Yossarian ordered unmistakably through his teeth in a low, menacing voice. “Or I’ll kill you.”

　　Rigid with caution, McWatt cut the motors back and climbed gradually. Yossarian’s hands weakened onMcWatt’s neck and slid down off his shoulders to dangle inertly. He was not angry any more. He was ashamed.

　　When McWatt turned, he was sorry the hands were his and wished there were someplace where he could burythem. They felt dead.

　　McWatt gazed at him deeply. There was no friendliness in his stare. “Boy,” he said coldly, “you sure must be inpretty bad shape. You ought to go home.”

　　“They won’t let me.” Yossarian answered with averted eyes, and crept away.

　　Yossarian stepped down from the flight deck and seated himself on the floor, hanging his head with guilt andremorse. He was covered with sweat.

　　McWatt set course directly back toward the field. Yossarian wondered whether McWatt would now go to theoperations tent to see Piltchard and Wren and request that Yossarian never be assigned to his plane again, just asYossarian had gone surreptitiously to speak to them about Dobbs and Huple and Orr and, unsuccessfully, aboutAarfy. He had never seen McWatt look displeased before, had never seen him in any but the most lightheartedmood, and he wondered whether he had just lost another friend.

　　But McWatt winked at him reassuringly as he climbed down from the plane and joshed hospitably with thecredulous new pilot and bombardier during the jeep ride back to the squadron, although he did not address aword to Yossarian until all four had returned their parachutes and separated and the two of them were walkingside by side toward their own row of tents. Then McWatt’s sparsely freckled tan Scotch-Irish face brokesuddenly into a smile and he dug his knuckles playfully into Yossarian’s ribs, as though throwing a punch.

　　“You louse,” he laughed. “Were you really going to kill me up there?”

　　Yossarian grinned penitently and shook his head. “No. I don’t think so.”

　　“I didn’t realize you got it so bad. Boy! Why don’t you talk to somebody about it?”

　　“I talk to everybody about it. What the hell’s the matter with you? Don’t you ever hear me?”

　　“I guess I never really believed you.”

　　“Aren’t you ever afraid?”

　　“Maybe I ought to be.”

　　“Not even on the missions?”

　　“I guess I just don’t have brains enough.” McWatt laughed sheepishly.

　　“There are so many ways for me to get killed,” Yossarian commented, “and you had to find one more.”

　　McWatt smiled again. “Say, I bet it must really scare you when I buzz your tent, huh?”

　　“It scares me to death. I’ve told you that.”

　　“I thought it was just the noise you were complaining about.” McWatt made a resigned shrug. “Oh, well, whatthe hell,” he sang. “I guess I’ll just have to give it up.”

　　But McWatt was incorrigible, and, while he never buzzed Yossarian’s tent again, he never missed an opportunityto buzz the beach and roar like a fierce and low-flying thunderbolt over the raft in the water and the secludedhollow in the sand where Yossarian lay feeling up Nurse Duckett or playing hearts, poker or pinochle with Nately, Dunbar and Hungry Joe. Yossarian met Nurse Duckett almost every afternoon that both were free andcame with her to the beach on the other side of the narrow swell of shoulder-high dunes separating them from thearea in which the other officers and enlisted men went swimming nude. Nately, Dunbar and Hungry Joe wouldcome there, too. McWatt would occasionally join them, and often Aarfy, who always arrived pudgily in fulluniform and never removed any of his clothing but his shoes and his hat; Aarfy never went swimming. The othermen wore swimming trunks in deference to Nurse Duckett, and in deference also to Nurse Cramer, whoaccompanied Nurse Duckett and Yossarian to the beach every time and sat haughtily by herself ten yards away.

　　No one but Aarfy ever made reference to the naked men sun-bathing in full view farther down the beach orjumping and diving from the enormous white-washed raft that bobbed on empty oil drums out beyond the siltsand. Nurse Cramer sat by herself because she was angry with Yossarian and disappointed in Nurse Duckett.

　　Nurse Sue Ann Duckett despised Aarfy, and that was another one of the numerous fetching traits about NurseDuckett that Yossarian enjoyed. He enjoyed Nurse Sue Ann Duckett’s long white legs and supple, callipygousass; he often neglected to remember that she was quite slim and fragile from the waist up and hurt herunintentionally in moments of passion when he hugged her too roughly. He loved her manner of sleepyacquiescence when they lay on the beach at dusk. He drew solac............