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

Eliot.” That’s all he said.’ General
Peckem had a hopeful thought. ‘Perhaps it’s a new code or something, like the
colors of the day. Why don’t you have someone check with Communications and see
if it’s a new code or something or the colors of the day?’ Communications
answered that T. S. Eliot was not a new code or the colors of the day.
       Colonel Cargill had the next idea. ‘Maybe I ought to phone
Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters and see if they know anything about it.
They have a clerk up there named Wintergreen I’m pretty close to. He’s the one
who tipped me off that our prose was too prolix.’ Ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen told
Cargill that there was no record at Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters of a
T. S. Eliot.
       ‘How’s our prose these days?’ Colonel Cargill decided to
inquire while he had ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen on the phone. ‘It’s much better now,
isn’t it?’
       ‘It’s still too prolix,’ ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied.
       ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if General Dreedle were behind the
whole thing,’ General Peckem confessed at last. ‘Remember what he did to that
skeet-shooting range?’ General Dreedle had thrown open Colonel Cathcart’s
private skeet-shooting range to every officer and enlisted man in the group on
combat duty. General Dreedle wanted his men to spend as much time out on the
skeet-shooting range as the facilities and their flight schedule would allow.
Shooting skeet eight hours a month was excellent training for them. It trained
them to shoot skeet.
       Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of
it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the
skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as
much as eleven-times-seventeen years.
       ‘I think you’re crazy,’ was the way Clevinger had responded
to Dunbar ’s discovery.
       ‘Who wants to know?’ Dunbar answered.
       ‘I mean it,’ Clevinger insisted.
       ‘Who cares?’ Dunbar answered.
       ‘I really do. I’ll even go so far as to concede that life
seems longer I—’
       ‘—is longer I—’
       ‘—is longer—Is longer? All right, is longer if it’s filled
with periods of boredom and discomfort, b—’
       ‘Guess how fast?’ Dunbar said suddenly.
       ‘Huh?’
       ‘They go,’ Dunbar explained.
       ‘Years.’
       ‘Years.’
       ‘Years,’ said Dunbar. ‘Years, years, years.’
       ‘Clevinger, why don’t you let Dunbar alone?’ Yossarian broke
in. ‘Don’t you realize the toll this is taking?’
       ‘It’s all right,’ said Dunbar magnanimously. ‘I have some
decades to spare. Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away?’
       ‘And you shut up also,’ Yossarian told Orr, who had begun to
snigger.
       ‘I was just thinking about that girl,’ Orr said. ‘That girl
in Sicily. That girl in Sicily with the bald head.’
       ‘You’d better shut up also,’ Yossarian warned him.
       ‘It’s your fault,’ Dunbar said to Yossarian. ‘Why don’t you
let him snigger if he wants to? It’s better than having him talking.’
       ‘All right. Go ahead and snigger if you want to.’
       ‘Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away?’
Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. ‘This long.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘A second
ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today
you’re an old man.’
       ‘Old?’ asked Clevinger with surprise. ‘What are you talking
about?’
       ‘Old.’
       ‘I’m not old.’
       ‘You’re inches away from death every time you go on a
mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you
were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you
ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a
small kid with a ten-week summer vacation