Chief White Halfoat and Captain Flume

The relationship between Chief White Halfoat and Captain Flume is one of the most grotesquely comic and psychologically devastating dynamics in the squadron. It is built entirely on a single, whispered threat that never materializes, yet it utterly destroys one man's life while the other regards it as a harmless joke. The pairing illustrates how arbitrary power, even when wielded without intent, can shatter a person's sanity and social existence.

The Threat and Its Origin

Captain Flume, the squadron's silent, haunted public-relations officer, lived in mortal fear of his tentmate, Chief White Halfoat. The fear was not abstract. One night, as Flume was dozing off, Chief White Halfoat tiptoed up to his cot and hissed portentously that one night when Flume was sound asleep, he was going to slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Flume turned to ice, his eyes flung open wide, staring directly up into Chief White Halfoat's, glinting drunkenly only inches away. When Flume managed to croak out a single word—"Why?"—Chief White Halfoat's answer was the chillingly indifferent "Why not?" For Chief White Halfoat, the threat was merely his idea of a joke, no different from his boasts about dying of pneumonia, his habit of punching Colonel Moodus in the nose, or his challenges to Doc Daneeka to Indian wrestle. All he wanted when he staggered in drunk each night was to go right to sleep, and Hungry Joe's nightmares often made that impossible. But for Flume, the joke was catastrophic.

Flume's Transformation and Exile

The effect on Captain Flume was immediate and total. He entered his bed that night a buoyant extrovert and left it the next morning a brooding introvert. Chief White Halfoat proudly regarded the new Captain Flume as his own creation. Flume forced himself to keep awake as long as possible each night, aided immeasurably by Hungry Joe's maniacal howling, which he grew to hate. He began wishing that Chief White Halfoat would tiptoe up to his cot one night and slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. In a grim irony, Flume slept like a log most nights and merely dreamed he was awake, waking from these dreams in complete exhaustion and falling right back to sleep. Eventually, Flume abandoned the squadron entirely and took to living in the woods. He became a mad hermit, a tall, cadaverous figure who leaped out at the chaplain from behind a mulberry bush, shrieking "Don't hurt me!" He survived by sneaking into the mess hall through the back, where Milo gave him sandwiches and milk, and by having his laundry done by a washerwoman in a nearby farmhouse. He kept his belongings in his trailer and sneaked inside once or twice a day for a clean handkerchief or a change of underwear. When it rained, he got wet. His body became a bony shell inside rumpled clothing, with wisps of dried grass glued all over him and great, dark circles under his eyes.

The Omen and the Return

Chief White Halfoat, for his part, grew almost fond of Captain Flume since his amazing metamorphosis. He had never intended to slit Flume's throat. The dynamic was sustained by a bizarre, symbiotic superstition. Flume believed he could only return to the squadron when Chief White Halfoat died of pneumonia, a death the Chief himself had long promised. When the chaplain encountered Flume in the woods, Flume asked if Chief White Halfoat had died yet, and when told he had not, he expressed a martyred confidence that he would be back in the squadron as soon as winter came and the Chief died of pneumonia. The omen of Flume's return was unmistakable to Chief White Halfoat. When the cold weather came and Captain Flume, driven by exposure, finally moved back into his trailer, Chief White Halfoat knew it was time. His chest ached, whiskey no longer warmed him, and he decided to move up into the hospital to die of pneumonia. The relationship, born of a drunken joke, thus reached its grimly logical conclusion: the predator fulfilled his prophecy of death, and the prey, having survived the winter, reclaimed his place in the squadron.