Free Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

were bursting and booming and
billowing all around and above and below him in a climbing, cracking,
staggered, banging, phantasmagorical, cosmological wickedness that jarred and
tossed and shivered, clattered and pierced, and threatened to annihilate them
all in one splinter of a second in one vast flash of fire.
       Aarfy had been no use to Yossarian as a navigator or as
anything else, and Yossarian drove him back from the nose vehemently each time
so that they would not clutter up each other’s way if they had to scramble
suddenly for safety. Once Yossarian had driven him back from the nose, Aarfy
was free to cower on the floor where Yossarian longed to cower, but he stood
bolt upright instead with his stumpy arms resting comfortably on the backs of
the pilot’s and co-pilot’s seats, pipe in hand, making affable small talk to
McWatt and whoever happened to be co-pilot and pointing out amusing trivia in
the sky to the two men, who were too busy to be interested. McWatt was too busy
responding at the controls to Yossarian’s strident instructions as Yossarian
slipped the plane in on the bomb run and then whipped them all away violently
around the ravenous pillars of exploding shells with curt, shrill, obscene
commands to McWatt that were much like the anguished, entreating nightmare
yelpings of Hungry Joe in the dark. Aarfy would puff reflectively on his pipe
throughout the whole chaotic clash, gazing with unruffled curiosity at the war
through McWatt’s window as though it were a remote disturbance that could not
affect him. Aarfy was a dedicated fraternity man who loved cheerleading and
class reunions and did not have brains enough to be afraid. Yossarian did have
brains enough and was, and the only thing that stopped him from abandoning his
post under fire and scurrying back through the crawlway like a yellow-bellied
rat was his unwillingness to entrust the evasive action out of the target area
to anybody else. There was nobody else in the world he would honor with so
great a responsibility. There was nobody else he knew who was as big a coward.
Yossarian was the best man in the group at evasive action, but had no idea why.
       There was no established procedure for evasive action. All
you needed was fear, and Yossarian had plenty of that, more fear than Orr or
Hungry Joe, more fear than Dunbar, who had resigned himself submissively to the
idea that he must die someday. Yossarian had not resigned himself to that idea,
and he bolted for his life wildly on each mission the instant his bombs were
away, hollering, ‘Hard, hard, hard, hard, you bastard, hard!’ at McWatt and
hating McWatt viciously all the time as though McWatt were to blame for their
being up there at all to be rubbed out by strangers, and everybody else in the
plane kept off the intercom, except for the pitiful time of the mess on the
mission to Avignon when Dobbs went crazy in mid-air and began weeping
pathetically for help.
       ‘Help him, help him,’ Dobbs sobbed. ‘Help him, help him.’
       ‘Help who? Help who?’ called back Yossarian, once he had
plugged his headset back into the intercom system, after it had been jerked out
when Dobbs wrested the controls away from Huple and hurled them all down suddenly
into the deafening, paralyzing, horrifying dive which had plastered Yossarian
helplessly to the ceiling of the plane by the top of his head and from which
Huple had rescued them just in time by seizing the controls back from Dobbs and
leveling the ship out almost as suddenly right back in the middle of the
buffeting layer of cacophonous flak from which they had escaped successfully
only a moment before. Oh, God! Oh, God, oh, God, Yossarian had been pleading
wordlessly as he dangled from the ceiling of the nose of the ship by the top of
his head, unable to move.
       ‘The bombardier, the bombardier,’ Dobbs answered in a cry
when Yossarian spoke. ‘He doesn’t answer, he doesn’t answer. Help the
bombardier, help the