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'Those letters?' asked the chaplain with surprise.
'That's right,' Corporal Whitcomb gloated. 'He's really going to chew you out for refusing to let me send them. Y
ou should have seen him go for the idea once I reminded him the letters could carry his signature. That's why he promoted me. He's absolutely sure they'll get him into The Saturday Evening Post.' The chaplain's befuddlement increased. 'But how did he know we were even considering the idea?'
'I went to his office and told him.'
'You did what?' the chaplain demanded shrilly, and charged to his feet in an unfamiliar rage. 'Do you mean to say that you actually went over my head to the colonel without asking my permission?' Corporal Whitcomb grinned brazenly with scornful satisfaction. 'That's right, Chaplain,' he answered. 'And you better not try to do anything about it if you know what's good for you.' He laughed quietly in malicious defiance. 'Colonel Cathcart isn't going to like it if he finds out you're getting even with me for bringing him my idea. You know something, Chaplain?' Corporal Whitcomb continued, biting the chaplain's black thread apart contemptuously with a loud snap and buttoning on his shirt. 'That dumb bastard really thinks it's one of the greatest ideas he's ever heard.'
'It might even get me into The Saturday Evening Post,' Colonel Cathcart boasted in his office with a smile, swaggering back and forth convivially as he reproached the chaplain. 'And you didn't have brains enough to appreciate it. You've got a good man in Corporal Whitcomb, Chaplain. I hope you have brains enough to appreciate that.'
'Sergeant Whitcomb,' the chaplain corrected, before he could control himself.
Colonel Cathcart Oared. 'I said Sergeant Whitcomb,' he replied. 'I wish you'd try listening once in a while instead of always finding fault. You don't want to be a captain all your life, do you?'
'Sir?'
'Well, I certainly don't see how you're ever going to amount to anything else if you keep on this way. Corporal Whitcomb feels that you fellows haven't had a fresh idea in nineteen hundred and forty-four years, and I'm inclined to agree with him. A bright boy, that Corporal Whitcomb. Well, it's all going to change.' Colonel Cathcart sat down at his desk with a determined air and cleared a large neat space in his blotter. When he had finished, he tapped his finger inside it. 'Starting tomorrow,' he said, 'I want you and Corporal Whitcomb to write a letter of condolence for me to the next of kin of every man in the group who's killed, wounded or taken prisoner. I want those letters to be sincere letters. I want them filled up with lots of personal details so there'll be no doubt I mean every word you say. Is that clear?' The chaplain stepped forward impulsively to remonstrate. 'But, sir, that's impossible!' he blurted out. 'We don't even know all the men that well.'
'What difference does that make?' Colonel Cathcart demanded, and then smiled amicably. 'Corporal Whitcomb brought me this basic form letter that takes care of just about every situation. Listen: "Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs.: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action." And so on. I think that opening sentence sums up my sentiments exactly. Listen, maybe you'd better let Corporal Whitcomb take charge of the whole thing if you don't feel up to it.' Colonel Cathcart whipped out his cigarette holder and flexed it between both hands like an onyx and ivory riding crop. 'That's one of the things that's wrong with you, Chaplain. Corporal Whitcomb tells me you don't know how to delegate responsibility. He says you've got no initiative either. You're not going to disagree with me, are you?'
'No, sir.' The chaplain shook his head, feeling despicably remiss because he did not know how to delegate responsibility and had no initiative, and because he really had been tempted to disagree with the colonel. His mind was a shambles. They were shooting skeet outside, and every time a gun was fired his senses were jarred. He could not adjust to the sound of the shots. He was surrounded by bushels of plum tomatoes and was almost convinced that he had stood in Colonel Cathcart's office on some similar occasion deep in the past and had been surrounded by those same bushels of those same plum tomatoes. Déjà vu again. The setting seemed so familiar; yet it also seemed so distant. His clothes felt grimy and old, and he was deathly afraid he smelled.
'You take things too seriously, Chaplain,' Colonel Cathcart told him bluntly with an air of adult objectivity. 'That's another one of the things that's wrong with you. That long face of yours gets everybody depressed. Let me see you laugh once in a while. Come on, Chaplain. You give me a belly laugh now and I'll give you a whole bushel of plum tomatoes.' He waited a second or two, watching, and then chortled victoriously. 'You see, Chaplain, I'm right. You can't give me a belly laugh, can you?'
'No, sir,' admitted the chaplain meekly, swallowing slowly with a visible effort. 'Not right now. I'm very thirsty.'
'Then get yourself a drink. Colonel Korn keeps some bourbon in his desk. You ought to try dropping around the officers' club with us some evening just to have yourself a little fun. Try getting lit once in a while. I hope you don't feel you're better than the rest of us just because you're a professional man.'
'Oh, no, sir,' the chaplain assured him with embarrassment. 'As a matter of fact, I have been going to the officers' club the past few evenings.'
'You're only a captain, you know,' Colonel Cathcart continued, paying no attention to the chaplain's remark. 'You may be a professional man, but you're still only a captain.'
'Yes, sir. I know.'
'That's fine, then. It's just as well you didn't laugh before. I wouldn't have given you the plum tomatoes anyway. Corporal Whitcomb tells me you took a plum tomato when you were in here this morning.'
'This morning? But, sir! You gave it to me.' Colonel Cathcart cocked his head with suspicion. 'I didn't say I didn't give it to you, did I? I merely said you took it. I don't see why you've got such a guilty conscience if you really didn't steal it. Did I give it to you?'
'Yes, sir. I swear you did.'
'Then I'll just have to take your word for it. Although I can't imagine why I'd want to give you a plum tomato.' Colonel Cathcart transferred a round glass paperweight competently from the right edge of his desk to the left edge and picked up a sharpened pencil. 'Okay. Chaplain, I've got a lot of important work to do now if you're through. You let me know when Corporal Whitcomb has sent out about a dozen of those letters and we'll get in touch with the editors of The Saturday Evening Post.' A sudden inspiration made his face brighten. 'Say! I think I'll volunteer the group for Avignon again. That should speed things up!'
'For Avignon?' The chaplain's heart missed a beat, and all his flesh began to prickle and creep.
'That's right,' the colonel explained exuberantly. 'The sooner we get some casualties, the sooner we can make some progress on this. I'd like to get in the Christmas issue if we can. I imagine the circulation is higher then.' And to the chaplain's horror, the colonel lifted the phone to volunteer the group for Avignon and tried to kick him out of the officers' club again that very same night a moment before Yossarian rose up drunkenly, knocking over his chair, to start an avenging punch that made Nately call out his name and made Colonel Cathcart blanch and retreat prudently smack into General Dreedle, who shoved him off his bruised foot disgustedly and order him forward to kick the chaplain right back into the officers' club. It was all very upsetting to Colonel Cathcart, first the dreaded name Yossarian! tolling out again clearly like a warning of doom and then General Dreedle's bruised foot, and that was another fault Colonel Cathcart found in the chaplain, the fact that it was impossible to predict how General Dreedle would react each time he saw him. Colonel Cathcart would never forget the first evening General Dreedle took notice of the chaplain in the officers' club, lifting his ruddy, sweltering, intoxicated face to stare ponderously through the yellow pall of cigarette smoke at the chaplain lurking near the wall by himself.
'Well, I'll be damned,' General Dreedle had exclaimed hoarsely, his shaggy gray menacing eyebrows beetling in recognition. 'Is that a chaplain I see over there? That's really a fine thing when a man of God begins hanging around a place like this with a bunch of dirty drunks and gamblers.' Colonel Cathcart compressed his lips primly and started
to rise. 'I couldn't agree with you more, sir,' he assented briskly in a tone of ostentatious disapproval. 'I just don't know what's happening to the clergy these days.'
'They're getting better, that's what's happening to them,' General Dreedle growled emphatically.
Colonel Cathcart gulped awkwardly and made a nimble recovery. 'Yes, sir. They are getting better. That's exactly what I had in mind, sir.'
'This is just the place for a chaplain to be, mingling with the men while they're out drinking and gambling so he can get to understand them and win their confidence. How the hell else is he ever going to get them to believe in God?'
'That's exactly what I had in mind, sir, when I ordered him to come here,' Colonel Cathcart said carefully, and threw his arm familiarly around the chaplain's shoulders as he walked him off into a corner to order him in a cold undertone to start reporting for duty at the officers' club every evening to mingle with the men while they were drinking and gambling so that he could get to understand them and win their confidence.
