Catch-22 Read Online Free Page B

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course, he no longer did. It was still more frustrating to try to appeal
directly to Major Major, the long and bony squadron commander, who looked a
little bit like Henry Fonda in distress and went jumping out the window of his
office each time Yossarian bullied his way past Sergeant Towser to speak to him
about it. The dead man in Yossarian’s tent was simply not easy to live with. He
even disturbed Orr, who was not easy to live with, either, and who, on the day
Yossarian came back, was tinkering with the faucet that fed gasoline into the
stove he had started building while Yossarian was in the hospital.
       ‘What are you doing?’ Yossarian asked guardedly when he
entered the tent, although he saw at once.
       ‘There’s a leak here,’ Orr said. ‘I’m trying to fix it.’
       ‘Please stop it,’ said Yossarian. ‘You’re making me nervous.’
       ‘When I was a kid,’ Orr replied, ‘I used to walk around all
day with crab apples in my cheeks. One in each cheek.’ Yossarian put aside the
musette bag from which he had begun removing his toilet articles and braced
himself suspiciously. A minute passed. ‘Why?’ he found himself forced to ask
finally.
       Orr tittered triumphantly. ‘Because they’re better than horse
chestnuts,’ he answered.
       Orr was kneeling on the floor of the tent. He worked without
pause, taking the faucet apart, spreading all the tiny pieces out carefully,
counting and then studying each one interminably as though he had never seen
anything remotely similar before, and then reassembling the whole apparatus,
over and over and over and over again, with no loss of patience or interest, no
sign of fatigue, no indication of ever concluding. Yossarian watched him
tinkering and felt certain he would be compelled to murder him in cold blood if
he did not stop. His eyes moved toward the hunting knife that had been slung
over the mosquito-net bar by the dead man the day he arrived. The knife hung beside
the dead man’s empty leather gun holster, from which Havermeyer had stolen the
gun.
       ‘When I couldn’t get crab apples,’ Orr continued, ‘I used
horse chestnuts. Horse chestnuts are about the same size as crab apples and
actually have a better shape, although the shape doesn’t matter a bit.’
       ‘Why did you walk around with crab apples in your cheeks?’
Yossarian asked again. ‘That’s what I asked.’
       ‘Because they’ve got a better shape than horse chestnuts,’
Orr answered. ‘I just told you that.’
       ‘Why,’ swore Yossarian at him approvingly, ‘you evil-eyed,
mechanically-aptituded, disaffiliated son of a bitch, did you walk around with
anything in your cheeks?’
       ‘I didn’t,’ Orr said, ‘walk around with anything in my
cheeks. I walked around with crab apples in my cheeks. When I couldn’t get crab
apples I walked around with horse chestnuts. In my cheeks.’ Orr giggled.
Yossarian made up his mind to keep his mouth shut and did. Orr waited.
Yossarian waited longer.
       ‘One in each cheek,’ Orr said.
       ‘Why?’ Orr pounced. ‘Why what?’ Yossarian shook his head,
smiling, and refused to say.
       ‘It’s a funny thing about this valve,’ Orr mused aloud.
       ‘What is?’ Yossarian asked.
       ‘Because I wanted—’ Yossarian knew. ‘Jesus Christ! Why did
you want—’
       ‘—apple cheeks.’
       ‘—apple cheeks?’ Yossarian demanded.
       ‘I wanted apple cheeks,’ Orr repeated. ‘Even when I was a kid
I wanted apple cheeks someday, and I decided to work at it until I got them,
and by God, I did work at it until I got them, and that’s how I did it, with
crab apples in my cheeks all day long.’ He giggled again. ‘One in each cheek.’
       ‘Why did you want apple cheeks?’
       ‘I didn’t want apple cheeks,’ Orr said. ‘I wanted big cheeks.
I didn’t care about the color so much, but I wanted them big. I worked at it
just like one of