Ten minutes passed.
He looked about in stern displeasure, his jaws clamped together indomitably, and then turned suddenly to water as he remembered the staff sergeant’s exact words: he could go right in, since Major Major was out.
The enlisted men were playing a practical joke!
The chaplain shrank back from the wall in terror, bitter tears springing to his eyes. A pleading whimper escaped his trembling lips.
Major Major was elsewhere, and the enlisted men in the other room had made him the butt of an inhuman prank.
He could almost see them waiting on the other side of the canvas wall, bunched up expectantly like a pack of greedy, gloating omnivorous beasts of prey, ready with their barbaric mirth and jeers to pounce on him brutally the moment he reappeared.
He cursed himself for his gullibility and wished in panic for something like a mask or a pair of dark glasses and a false mustache to disguise him, or for a forceful, deep voice like Colonel Cathcart’s and broad, muscular shoulders and biceps to enable him to step outside fearlessly and vanquish his malevolent persecutors with an overbearing authority and self-confidence that would make them all quail and slink away cravenly in repentance.
He lacked the courage to face them.
The only other way out was the window.
The coast was clear, and the chaplain jumped out of Major Major’s office through the window, darted swiftly around the corner of the tent, and leaped down inside the railroad ditch to hide.
He scooted away with his body doubled over and his face contorted intentionally into a nonchalant, sociable smile in case anyone chanced to see him.
He abandoned the ditch for the forest the moment he saw someone coming toward him from the opposite direction and ran through the cluttered forest frenziedly like someone pursued, his cheeks burning with disgrace.
He heard loud, wild peals of derisive laughter crashing all about him and caught blurred glimpses of wicked, beery faces smirking far back inside the bushes and high overhead in the foliage of the trees.
Spasms of scorching pains stabbed through his lungs and slowed him to a crippled walk.
He lunged and staggered onward until he could go no farther and collapsed all at once against a gnarled apple tree, banging his head hard against the trunk as he toppled forward and holding on with both arms to keep from falling.
His breathing was a rasping, moaning din in his ears.
Minutes passed like hours before he finally recognized himself as the source of the turbulent roar that was overwhelming him.
The pains in his chest abated.
Soon he felt strong enough to stand.
He cocked his ears craftily. The forest was quiet. There was no demonic laughter, no one was chasing him.
He was too tired and sad and dirty to feel relieved.
He straightened his disheveled clothing with fingers that were numb and shaking and walked the rest of the way to the clearing with rigid self-control. The chaplain brooded often about the danger of heart attack.
Corporal Whitcomb’s jeep was still parked in the clearing.
The chaplain tiptoed stealthily around the back of Corporal Whitcomb’s tent rather than pass the entrance and risk being seen and insulted by him.
Heaving a grateful sigh, he slipped quickly inside his own tent and found Corporal Whitcomb ensconced on his cot, his knees propped up.
Corporal Whitcomb’s mud-caked shoes were on the chaplain’s blanket, and he was eating one of the chaplain’s candy bars as he thumbed with sneering expression through one of the chaplain’s Bibles.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he demanded rudely and disinterestedly, without looking up.
The chaplain colored and turned away evasively.
‘I went for a walk through the woods.’
‘All right,’ Corporal Whitcomb snapped. ‘Don’t take me into your confidence.
But just wait and see what happens to my morale.’
He bit into the chaplain’s candy bar hungrily and continued with a full mouth. ‘You had a visitor while you were gone. Major Major.’
The chaplain spun around with surprise and cried:
‘Major Major?
Major Major was here?’
‘That’s who we’re talking about, isn’t it?’
‘Where did he go?’
‘He jumped down into that railroad ditch and took off like a frightened rabbit.’ Corporal Whitcomb snickered.
‘What a jerk!’
‘Did he say what he wanted?’
‘He said he needed your help in a matter of great importance.’
The chaplain was astounded. ‘Major Major said that?’
‘He didn’t say that,’ Corporal Whitcomb corrected with withering precision.
‘He wrote it down in a sealed personal letter he left on your desk.’ The chaplain glanced at the bridge table that served as his desk and saw only the abominable orange-red pear-shaped plum tomato he had obtained that same morning from Colonel Cathcart, still lying on its side where he had forgotten it like an indestructible and incamadine symbol of his own ineptitude.
‘Where is the letter?’
‘I threw it away as soon as I tore it open and read it.’
Corporal Whitcomb slammed the Bible shut and jumped up.
‘What’s the matter?
Won’t you take my word for it?’
He walked out. He walked right back in and almost collided with the chaplain, who was rushing out behind him on his way back to Major Major.