Catch-22 by Joseph Heller Read Free Book Online Page A

Group Headquarters building, as did all the members of the headquarters
staff, with the exception of the chaplain. The Group Headquarters building was
an enormous, windy, antiquated structure built of powdery red stone and banging
plumbing. Behind the building was the modern skeet-shooting range that had been
constructed by Colonel Cathcart for the exclusive recreation of the officers at
Group and at which every officer and enlisted man on combat status now, thanks
to General Dreedle, had to spend a minimum of eight hours a month.
       Yossarian shot skeet, but never hit any. Appleby shot skeet
and never missed. Yossarian was as bad at shooting skeet as he was at gambling.
He could never win money gambling either. Even when he cheated he couldn’t win,
because the people he cheated against were always better at cheating too. These
were two disappointments to which he had resigned himself: he would never be a
skeet shooter, and he would never make money.
       ‘It takes brains not to make money,’ Colonel Cargill wrote in
one of the homiletic memoranda he regularly prepared for circulation over
General Peckem’s signature. ‘Any fool can make money these days and most of
them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one
poet who makes money.’
       ‘T. S. Eliot,’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen said in his mail-sorting
cubicle at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters, and slammed down the
telephone without identifying himself.
       Colonel Cargill, in Rome, was perplexed.
       ‘Who was it?’ asked General Peckem.
       ‘I don’t know,’ Colonel Cargill replied.
       ‘What did he want?’
       ‘I don’t know.’
       ‘Well, what did he say?’
       ‘“T. S. Eliot”,’ Colonel Cargill informed him.
       ‘What’s that?’
       ‘“T. S. Eliot”,’ Colonel Cargill repeated.
       ‘Just “T. S. —”‘
       ‘Yes, sir. That’s all he said. Just “T. S. Eliot.”‘
       ‘I wonder what it means,’ General Peckem reflected. Colonel
Cargill wondered, too.
       ‘T. S. Eliot,’ General Peckem mused.
       ‘T. S. Eliot,’ Colonel Cargill echoed with the same funereal
puzzlement.
       General Peckem roused himself after a moment with an unctuous
and benignant smile. His expression was shrewd and sophisticated. His eyes
gleamed maliciously. ‘Have someone get me General Dreedle,’ he requested
Colonel Cargill. ‘Don’t let him know who’s calling.’ Colonel Cargill handed him
the phone.
       ‘T. S. Eliot,’ General Peckem said, and hung up.
       ‘Who was it?’ asked Colonel Moodus.
       General Dreedle, in Corsica, did not reply. Colonel Moodus
was General Dreedle’s son-in-law, and General Dreedle, at the insistence of his
wife and against his own better judgment, had taken him into the military
business. General Dreedle gazed at Colonel Moodus with level hatred. He
detested the very sight of his son-in-law, who was his aide and therefore in
constant attendance upon him. He had opposed his daughter’s marriage to Colonel
Moodus because he disliked attending weddings. Wearing a menacing and
preoccupied scowl, General Dreedle moved to the full-length mirror in his
office and stared at his stocky reflection. He had a grizzled, broad-browed
head with iron-gray tufts over his eyes and a blunt and belligerent jaw. He
brooded in ponderous speculation over the cryptic message he had just received.
Slowly his face softened with an idea, and he curled his lips with wicked
pleasure.
       ‘Get Peckem,’ he told Colonel Moodus. ‘Don’t let the bastard
know who’s calling.’
       ‘Who was it?’ asked Colonel Cargill, back in Rome.
       ‘That same person,’ General Peckem replied with a definite
trace of alarm. ‘Now he’s after me.’
       ‘What did he want?’
       ‘I don’t know.’
       ‘What did he say?’
       ‘The same thing.’
       ‘“T. S. Eliot”?’
       ‘Yes, “T. S.