Catch-22 (Catch-22 1) - Page 106

'Come along.' The chaplain pulled back i

n frightened confusion. 'Where? Why? Who are you, anyway?'

'You'd better come along with us, Father,' a lean, hawk-faced major on the chaplain's other side intoned with reverential sorrow. 'We're from the government. We want to ask you some questions.'

'What kind of questions? What's the matter?'

'Aren't you Chaplain Shipman?' demanded the obese colonel.

'He's the one,' Sergeant Whitcomb answered.

'Go on along with them,' Captain Black called out to the chaplain with a hostile and contemptuous sneer. 'Go on into the car if you know what's good for you.' Hands were drawing the chaplain away irresistibly. He wanted to shout for help to Yossarian, who seemed too far away to hear. Some of the men nearby were beginning to look at him with awakening curiosity. The chaplain bent his face away with burning shame and allowed himself to be led into the rear of a staff car and seated between the fat colonel with the large, pink face and the skinny, unctuous, despondent major. He automatically held a wrist out to each, wondering for a moment if they wanted to handcuff him. Another officer was already in the front seat. A tall M.P. with a whistle and a white helmet got in behind the wheel. The chaplain did not dare raise his eyes until the closed car had lurched from the area and the speeding wheels were whining on the bumpy blacktop road.

'Where are you taking me?' he asked in a voice soft with timidity and guilt, his gaze still averted. The notion came to him that they were holding him to blame for the mid-air crash and the death of Nately. 'What have I done?'

'Why don't you keep your trap shut and let us ask the questions?' said the colonel.

'Don't talk to him that way,' said the major. 'It isn't necessary to be so disrespectful.'

'Then tell him to keep his trap shut and let us ask the questions.'

'Father, please keep your trap shut and let us ask the questions,' urged the major sympathetically. 'It will be better for you.'

'It isn't necessary to call me Father,' said the chaplain. 'I'm not a Catholic.'

'Neither am I, Father,' said the major. 'It's just that I'm a very devout person, and I like to call all men of God Father.'

'He doesn't even believe there are atheists in foxholes,' the colonel mocked, and nudged the chaplain in the ribs familiarly. 'Go on, Chaplain, tell him. Are there atheists in foxholes?'

'I don't know, sir,' the chaplain replied. 'I've never been in a foxhole.' The officer in front swung his head around swiftly with a quarrelsome expression. 'You've never been in heaven either, have you? But you know there's a heaven, don't you?'

'Or do you?' said the colonel.

'That's a very serious crime you've committed, Father,' said the major.

'What crime?'

'We don't know yet,' said the colonel. 'But we're going to find out. And we sure know it's very serious.' The car swung off the road at Group Headquarters with a squeal of tires, slackening speed only slightly, and continued around past the parking lot to the back of the building. The three officers and the chaplain got out. In single file, they ushered him down a wobbly flight of wooden stairs leading to the basement and led him into a damp, gloomy room with a low cement ceiling and unfinished stone walls. There were cobwebs in all the corners. A huge centipede blew across the floor to the shelter of a water pipe. They sat the chaplain in a hard, straight-backed chair that stood behind a small, bare table.

'Please make yourself comfortable, Chaplain,' invited the colonel cordially, switching on a blinding spotlight and shooting it squarely into the chaplain's face. He placed a set of brass knuckles and box of wooden matches on the table. 'We want you to relax.' The chaplain's eyes bulged out incredulously. His teeth chattered and his limbs felt utterly without strength. He was powerless. They might do whatever they wished to him, he realized; these brutal men might beat him to death right there in the basement, and no one would intervene to save him, no one, perhaps, but the devout and sympathetic major with the sharp face, who set a water tap dripping loudly into a sink and returned to the table to lay a length of heavy rubber hose down beside the brass knuckles.

'Everything's going to be all right, Chaplain,' the major said encouragingly. 'You've got nothing to be afraid of if you're not guilty. What are you so afraid of? You're not guilty, are you?'

'Sure he's guilty,' said the colonel. 'Guilty as hell.'

'Guilty of what?' implored the chaplain, feeling more and more bewildered and not knowing which of the men to appeal to for mercy. The third officer wore no insignia and lurked in silence off to the side. 'What did I do?'

'That's just what we're going to find out,' answered the colonel, and he shoved a pad and pencil across the table to the chaplain. 'Write your name for us, will you? In your own handwriting.'

'My own handwriting?'

'That's right. Anywhere on the page.' When the chaplain had finished, the colonel took the pad back and held it up alongside a sheet of paper he removed from a folder. 'See?' he said to the major, who had come to his side and was peering solemnly over his shoulder.

'They're not the same, are they?' the major admitted.

'I told you he did it.'

'Did what?' asked the chaplain.

Tags: Joseph Heller Catch-22 Classics
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