In another minute the chaplain felt strong enough to rise and walk with glum reluctance to the tent next door for Sergeant Whitcomb. They drove in Sergeant Whitcomb's jeep. The chaplain made fists of his hands to keep them from shaking as they lay in his lap. He ground his teeth together and tried not to hear as Sergeant Whitcomb chirruped exultantly over the tragic event. Twelve men killed meant twelve more form letters of condolence that could be mailed in one bunch to the next of kin over Colonel Cathcart's signature, giving Sergeant Whitcomb hope of getting an article on Colonel Cathcart into The Saturday Evening Post in time for Easter.
At the field a heavy silence prevailed, overpowering motion like a ruthless, insensate spell holding in thrall the only beings who might break it. The chaplain was in awe. He had never beheld such a great, appalling stillness before. Almost two hundred tired, gaunt, downcast men stood holding their parachute packs in a somber and unstirring crowd outside the briefing room, their faces staring blankly in different angles of stunned dejection. They seemed unwilling to go, unable to move. The chaplain was acutely conscious of the faint noise his footsteps made as he approached. His eyes searched hurriedly, frantically, through the immobile maze of limp figures. He spied Yossarian finally with a feeling of immense joy, and then his mouth gaped open slowly in unbearable horror as he noted Yossarian's vivid, beaten, grimy look of deep, drugged despair. He understood at once, recoiling in pain from the realization and shaking his head with a protesting and imploring grimace, that Nately was dead. The knowledge struck him with a numbing shock. A sob broke from him. The blood drained from his legs, and he thought he was going to drop. Nately was dead. All hope that he was mistaken was washed away by the sound of Nately's name emerging with recurring clarity now from the almost inaudible babble of murmuring voices that he was suddenly aware of for the first time. Nately was dead: the boy had been killed. A whimpering sound rose in the chaplain's throat, and his jaw began to quiver. His eyes filled with tears, and he was crying. He started toward Yossarian on tiptoe to mourn beside him and share his wordless grief. At that moment a hand grabbed him roughly around the arm and a brusque voice demanded,
"Chaplain Shipman?"
He turned with surprise to face a stout, pugnacious colonel with a large head and mustache and a smooth, florid skin. He had never seen the man before. "Yes. What is it?" The fingers grasping the chaplain's arm were hurting him, and he tried in vain to squirm loose.
"Come along."
The chaplain pulled back in 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.
"Chaplain, this comes as a great shock to me," the major accused in a tone of heavy lamentation.
"What does?"
"I can't tell you how disappointed I am in you."
"For what?" persisted the chaplain more fiantically. "What have I done?"
"For this," replied the major, and, with an air of disillusioned disgust, tossed down on the table the pad on which the chaplain had signed his name. "This isn't your handwriting."
The chaplain blinked rapidly with amazement. "But of course it's my handwriting."
"No it isn't, Chaplain. You're lying again."
"But I just wrote it!" the chaplain cried in exasperation. "You saw me write it."
"That's just it," the major answered bitterly. "I saw you write it. You can't deny that you did write it. A person who'll lie about his own handwriting will lie about anything."
"But who lied about my own handwriting?" demanded the chaplain, forgetting his fear in the wave of anger and indignation that welled up inside him suddenly. "Are you crazy or something? What are you both talking about?"
"We asked you to write your name in your own handwriting. And you didn't do it."
"But of course I did. In whose handwriting did I write it if not my own?"
"In somebody else's."
"Whose?"
"That's just what we're going to find out," threatened the colonel.
"Talk, Chaplain."
The chaplain looked from one to the other of the two men with rising doubt and hysteria. "That handwriting is mine," he maintained passionately. "Where else is my handwriting, if that isn't it?"
"Right here," answered the colonel. And looking very superior, he tossed down on the table a photostatic copy of a piece of V mail in which everything but the salutation "Dear Mary" had been blocked out and on which the censoring officer had written, "I long for you tragically. R. O. Shipman, Chaplain, U.S. Army." The colonel smiled scornfully as he watched the chaplain's face turn crimson. "Well, Chaplain? Do you know who wrote that?"
The chaplain took a long moment to reply; he had recognized Yossarian's handwriting. "No."
"You can read, though, can't you?" the colonel persevered sarcastically. "The author signed his name."
"That's my name there."
"Then you wrote it. Q.E.D."
"But I didn't write it. That isn't my handwriting, either."
"Then you signed your name in somebody else's handwriting again," the colonel retorted with a shrug. "That's all that means."
"Oh, this is ridiculous!" the chaplain shouted, suddenly losing all patience. He jumped to his feet in a blazing fury, both fists clenched. "I'm not going to stand for this any longer! Do you hear? Twelve men were just killed, and I have no time for these silly questions. You've no right to keep me here, and I'm just not going to stand for it."
Without saying a word, the colonel pushed the chaplain's chest hard and knocked him back down into the chair, and the chaplain was suddenly weak and very much afraid again. The major picked up the length of rubber hose and began tapping it menacingly against his open palm. The colonel lifted the box of matches, took one out and held it poised against the striking surface, watching with glowering eyes for the chaplain's next sign of defiance. The chaplain was pale and almost too petrified to move. The bright glare of the spotlight made him turn away finally; the dripping water was louder and almost unbearably irritating. He wished they would tell him what they wanted so that he would know what to confess. He waited tensely as the third officer, at a signal from the colonel, ambled over from the wall and seated himself on the table just a few inches away from the chaplain. His face was expressionless, his eyes penetrating and cold.
"Turn off the light," he said over his shoulder in a low, calm voice. "It's very annoying."
The chaplain gave him a small smile of gratitude. "Thank you, sir. And the drip too, please."
"Leave the drip," said the officer. "That doesn't bother me." He tugged up the legs of his trousers a bit, as though to preserve their natty crease. "Chaplain," he asked casually, "of what religious persuasion are you?"
"I'm an Anabaptist, sir."
"That's a pretty suspicious religion, isn't it?"
"Suspicious?" inquired the chaplain in a kind of innocent daze. "Why, sir?"
"Well, I don't know a thing about it. You'll have to admit that, won't you? Doesn't that make it pretty suspicious?"
"I don't know, sir," the chaplain answered diplomatically, with an uneasy stammer. He found the man's lack of insignia disconcerting and was not even sure he had to say "sir". Who was he? And what authority had he to interrogate him?
"Chaplain, I once studied Latin. I think it's only fair to warn you of that before I ask my next question. Doesn't the word Anabaptist simply mean that you're not a Baptist?"
"Oh, no, sir. There's much more."
"Are you a Baptist?"
"No, sir."
"Then you are not a Baptist, aren't you?"
"Sir?"
"I don't see why you're bickering with me on that point. You've already admitted it. Now, Chaplain, to say you're not a Baptist doesn't really tell us anything about what you are, does it? You could be anything or anyone." He leaned forward slightly and his manner took on a shrewd and significant air. "You could even be," he added, "Washington Irving, couldn't you?"
