Catch-22(87)

“Yes, sir. If it doesn’t include the time necessary to excuse the atheists from the room and admit the enlisted men.”

Colonel Cathcart stopped in his tracks. “What atheists?” he bellowed defensively, his whole manner changing in a flash to one of virtuous and belligerent denial. “There are no atheists in my outfit! Atheism is against the law, isn’t it?”

“No, sir.”

“It isn’t?” The colonel was surprised. “Then it’s un-American, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” answered the chaplain.

“Well, I am!” the colonel declared. “I’m not going to disrupt our religious services just to accommodate a bunch of lousy atheists. They’re getting no special privileges from me. They can stay right where they are and pray with the rest of us. And what’s all this about enlisted men? Just how the hell do they get into this act?”

The chaplain felt his face flush. “I’m sorry, sir. I just assumed you would want the enlisted men to be present, since they would be going along on the same mission.”

“Well, I don’t. They’ve got a God and a chaplain of their own, haven’t they?”

“No, sir.”

“What are you talking about? You mean they pray to the same God we do?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And He listens?”

“I think so, sir.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” remarked the colonel, and he snorted to himself in quizzical amusement. His spirits drooped suddenly a moment later, and he ran his hand nervously over his short, black, graying curls. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to let the enlisted men in?” he asked with concern.

“I should think it only proper, sir.”

“I’d like to keep them out,” confided the colonel, and began cracking his knuckles savagely as he wandered back and forth. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, Chaplain. It isn’t that I think the enlisted men are dirty, common and inferior. It’s that we just don’t have enough room. Frankly, though, I’d just as soon the officers and enlisted men didn’t fraternize in the briefing room. They see enough of each other during the mission, it seems to me. Some of my very best friends are enlisted men, you understand, but that’s about as close as I care to let them come. Honestly now, Chaplain, you wouldn’t want your sister to marry an enlisted man, would you?”

“My sister is an enlisted man, sir,” the chaplain replied.

The colonel stopped in his tracks again and eyed the chaplain sharply to make certain he was not being ridiculed. “Just what do you mean by that remark, Chaplain? Are you trying to be funny?”

“Oh, no, sir,” the chaplain hastened to explain with a look of excruciating discomfort. “She’s a master sergeant in the Marines.”

The colonel had never liked the chaplain and now he loathed and distrusted him. He experienced a keen premonition of danger and wondered if the chaplain too was plotting against him, if the chaplain’s reticent, unimpressive manner was really just a sinister disguise masking a fiery ambition that, way down deep, was crafty and unscrupulous. There was something funny about the chaplain, and the colonel soon detected what it was. The chaplain was standing stiffly at attention, for the colonel had forgotten to put him at ease. Let him stay that way, the colonel decided vindictively, just to show him who was boss and to safeguard himself against any loss of dignity that might devolve from his acknowledging the omission.

Colonel Cathcart was drawn hypnotically toward the window with a massive, dull stare of moody introspection. The enlisted men were always treacherous, he decided. He looked downward in mournful gloom at the skeet-shooting range he had ordered built for the officers on his headquarters staff, and he recalled the mortifying afternoon General Dreedle had tonguelashed him ruthlessly in front of Colonel Korn and Major Danby and ordered him to throw open the range to all the enlisted men and officers on combat duty. The skeet-shooting range had been a real black eye for him, Colonel Cathcart was forced to conclude. He was positive that General Dreedle had never forgotten it, even though he was positive that General Dreedle didn’t even remember it, which was really very unjust, Colonel Cathcart lamented, since the idea of a skeet-shooting range itself should have been a real feather in his cap, even though it had been such a real black eye. Colonel Cathcart was helpless to assess exactly how much ground he had gained or lost with his goddam skeet-shooting range and wished that Colonel Korn were in his office right then to evaluate the entire episode for him still one more time and assuage his fears.