“I still don’t get it,” Yossarian protested. “Is Doc Daneeka right or isn’t he?”
“How many did he say?”
“Forty.”
“Daneeka was telling the truth,” ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen admitted. “Forty missions is all you have to fly as far as Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters is concerned.”
Yossarian was jubilant. “Then I can go home, right? I’ve got forty-eight.”
“No, you can’t go home,” ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen corrected him. “Are you crazy or something?”
“Why not?”
“Catch-22.”
“Catch-22?” Yossarian was stunned. “What the hell has Catch-22 got to do with it?”
“Catch-22,” Doc Daneeka answered patiently, when Hungry Joe had flown Yossarian back to Pianosa, “says you’ve always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to.”
“But Twenty-seventh Air Force says I can go home with forty missions.”
“But they don’t say you have to go home. And regulations do say you have to obey every order. That’s the catch. Even if the colonel were disobeying a Twenty-seventh Air Force order by making you fly more missions, you’d still have to fly them, or you’d be guilty of disobeying an order of his. And then Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters would really jump on you.”
Yossarian slumped with disappointment. “Then I really do have to fly the fifty missions, don’t I?” he grieved.
“The fifty-five,” Doc Daneeka corrected him.
“What fifty-five?”
“The fifty-five missions the colonel now wants all of you to fly.”
Hungry Joe heaved a huge sigh of relief when he heard Doc Daneeka and broke into a grin. Yossarian grabbed Hungry Joe by the neck and made him fly them both right back to ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen.
“What would they do to me,” he asked in confidential tones, “if I refused to fly them?”
“We’d probably shoot you,” ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen replied.
“We?” Yossarian cried in surprise. “What do you mean, we? Since when are you on their side?”
“If you’re going to be shot, whose side do you expect me to be on?” ex-P.F.C. Wintergreen retorted.
Yossarian winced. Colonel Cathcart had raised him again.
• • 7 • •
McWatt
Ordinarily, Yossarian’s pilot was McWatt, who, shaving in loud red, clean pajamas outside his tent each morning, was one of the odd, ironic, incomprehensible things surrounding Yossarian. McWatt was the craziest combat man of them all probably, because he was perfectly sane and still did not mind the war. He was a short-legged, wide-shouldered, smiling young soul who whistled bouncy show tunes continuously and turned over cards with sharp snaps when he dealt at blackjack or poker until Hungry Joe disintegrated into quaking despair finally beneath their cumulative impact and began ranting at him to stop snapping the cards.
“You son of a bitch, you only do it because it hurts me,” Hungry Joe would yell furiously as Yossarian held him back soothingly with one hand. “That’s the only reason he does it, because he likes to hear me scream—you goddam son of a bitch!”
McWatt crinkled his fine, freckled nose apologetically and vowed not to snap the cards any more, but always forgot. McWatt wore fleecy bedroom slippers with his red pajamas and slept between freshly pressed colored bed-sheets like the one Milo had retrieved half of for him from the grinning thief with the sweet tooth in exchange for none of the pitted dates Milo had borrowed from Yossarian. McWatt was deeply impressed with Milo, who, to the amusement of Corporal Snark, his mess sergeant, was already buying eggs for seven cents apiece and selling them for five cents. But McWatt was never as impressed with Milo as Milo had been with the letter Yossarian had obtained for his liver from Doc Daneeka.
“What’s this?” Milo had cried out in alarm when he came upon the enormous corrugated carton filled with packages of dried fruit and cans of fruit juices and desserts that two of the Italian laborers Major —— de Coverley had kidnapped for his kitchen were about to carry off to Yossarian’s tent.
“This is Captain Yossarian, sir,” said Corporal Snark with a superior smirk. Corporal Snark was an intellectual snob who felt he was twenty years ahead of his time and did not enjoy cooking down to the masses. “He has a letter from Doc Daneeka entitling him to all the fruit and fruit juices he wants.”
“What’s this?” cried out Yossarian as Milo went white and began to sway.
“This is Lieutenant Milo Minderbinder, sir,” said Corporal Snark with a derisive wink. “One of our new pilots. He became mess officer while you were in the hospital this last time.”