Catch-22(153)

“Go up, go up, go up!” he shouted frantically at McWatt, hating him venomously, but McWatt was singing buoyantly over the intercom and probably couldn’t hear. Yossarian, blazing with rage and almost sobbing for revenge, hurled himself down into the crawlway and fought his way through against the dragging weight of gravity and inertia until he arrived at the main section and pulled himself up to the flight deck, to stand trembling behind McWatt in the pilot’s seat. He looked desperately about for a gun, a gray-black .45 automatic that he could cock and ram right up against the base of McWatt’s skull. There was no gun. There was no hunting knife either, and no other weapon with which he could bludgeon or stab, and Yossarian grasped and jerked the collar of McWatt’s coveralls in tightening fists and shouted to him to go up, go up. The land was still swimming by underneath and flashing by overhead on both sides. McWatt looked back at Yossarian and laughed joyfully as though 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 on McWatt’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 bury them. They felt dead.

McWatt gazed at him deeply. There was no friendliness in his stare. “Boy,” he said coldly, “you sure must be in pretty 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 and remorse. He was covered with sweat.

McWatt set course directly back toward the field. Yossarian wondered whether McWatt would now go to the operations tent to see Piltchard and Wren and request that Yossarian never be assigned to his plane again, just as Yossarian had gone surreptitiously to speak to them about Dobbs and Huple and Orr and, unsuccessfully, about Aarfy. He had never seen McWatt look displeased before, had never seen him in any but the most lighthearted mood, 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 the credulous new pilot and bombardier during the jeep ride back to the squadron, although he did not address a word to Yossarian until all four had returned their parachutes and separated and the two of them were walking side by side toward their own row of tents. Then McWatt’s sparsely freckled tan Scotch-Irish face broke suddenly 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, what the 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 opportunity to buzz the beach and roar like a fierce and low-flying thunderbolt over the raft in the water and the secluded hollow 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 and came with her to the beach on the other side of the narrow swell of shoulder-high dunes separating them from the area in which the other officers and enlisted men went swimming nude. Nately, Dunbar and Hungry Joe would come there, too. McWatt would occasionally join them, and often Aarfy, who always arrived pudgily in full uniform and never removed any of his clothing but his shoes and his hat; Aarfy never went swimming. The other men wore swimming trunks in deference to Nurse Duckett, and in deference also to Nurse Cramer, who accompanied 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 or jumping and diving from the enormous white-washed raft that bobbed on empty oil drums out beyond the silt sand bar. Nurse Cramer sat by herself because she was angry with Yossarian and disappointed in Nurse Duckett.