MASH 13 MASH goes to Montreal

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  “Of course not,” Josephine agreed. “And I must say that I admire you for holding to your standards of gentlemanly behavior, Mr. Framingham. I can see what a burden it has been for you.”

  “Very kind of you to say so,” Matthew said. “Oh, here we are.”

  The Rolls rolled to a stop before the Ritz-Carlton. The doorman bowed as he reached to pull open the door. It wouldn’t open. He tugged a little harder, and it still wouldn’t open. Finally, with Matthew kicking from the inside while the doorman and two bellboys tugged from the outside, they got it open.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Framingham,” the doorman said. “Madame.”

  “Good afternoon, Charles,” Framingham replied. “I trust we are expected?”

  “Indeed, sir,” the doorman said

  Josephine Babcock was absolutely sure that the doorman had winked at Matthew Q. Framingham.

  An assistant manager, carnation in the buttonhole of his morning coat, greeted them just inside the door.

  “How nice to have you with us, Mr. Framingham,” he said. “And you, too, madame.” He bowed them toward the elevator.

  Josephine Babcock was absolutely sure that the assistant manager had also winked at Matthew Q. Framingham VI. And so, she saw, did the elevator operator as he slid the door shut.

  “Might I ask you a personal question, Mr. Framingham?” Josephine asked as they rose sedately upward.

  “Of course,” Matthew replied.

  “Do you come here often?”

  “From time to time,” he said. “But that’s not a very personal question.”

  The door to the elevator opened, temporarily suspending their conversation. The Ambassadorial Suite had been laid for lunch. There was a dining table covered with a heavy cloth, laden with glistening silver and shining crystal. There was a small candelabra, and a jeroboam of Piper Hiedseck cooling in a silver cooler. A recording of a gypsy violinist at his most romantic was coming softly over loudspeakers.

  A waiter winked at Matthew Q. Framingham, and then left them alone.

  “Might I offer you a glass of champagne, Widow Babcock, before we get down to business?”

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Framingham,” Josephine Babcock said. “I think I’d rather have a martini. Light on the vermouth, please, and a double if you don’t mind.”

  “My pleasure,” Matthew replied, and with the speed and skill that comes only to martini mixers of long experience and those who keep in practice, he mixed up a batch, poured her one and took one for himself.

  Josephine, the widow Babcock, was staring at him with undisguised curiosity. He was unnerved.

  “Mr. Framingham,” she said, “you did bring me up here to discuss disengaging my son from that gold digger, didn’t you?”

  He flushed in the face, and it was a moment before he replied: “I was afraid you’d notice,” he said. “But believe me, Widow Babcock, I’m as embarrassed by this as you are. I can’t imagine what these hotel people have been thinking vis-à-vis you and I.”

  “I can,” Josephine said. “And actually, I’m rather flattered,” she said. “Not, I hasten to add, because there is any chance that I could be unfaithful to the memory of my late husband …”

  “May he rest in peace,” Matthew said.

  “But because it presents a possible solution to our little gold-digger problem.”

  “And how is that?” Matthew inquired. "Can I freshen your martini?”

  “Don’t mind if you do,” Josephine said. “What I’m saying, Mr. Framingham, is that it just occurred to me that the best way to deal with a gold digger is to feed her gold, or at least the appearance of gold.”

  “I don’t quite understand.”

  “How old are you, Matthew?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Now, just between you and me, Matthew, while you’re not nearly as handsome as my Precious Babykins, you’re young enough for this big-busted blonde hussy, and with the Rolls and the clothing you’re wearing, you look like you’ve got money.”

  “I’m beginning, I think, to detect the direction of your thought,” Matthew said. “Big-busted blonde, you said?”

  “I have her photograph right here,” she said, taking one from her purse.

  Matthew examined it with interest.

  “Could you possibly find it in your heart, Mr. Framingham, as a Framingham Foundation Fellow coming to the assistance of a poor widow woman, to make a pass at that big-boobed blonde gold digger?”

  “Could I ever!” Matthew said. “Let’s drink to it!”

  “Once Precious Babykins sees her for what she is,” Josephine said, holding out her own glass, “this ridiculous notion of marriage will disappear.”

  “You are a woman wise beyond your years, Widow Babcock,” Matthew said. “It is a great honor for me to be able to come to your assistance in this matter, a great privilege to stand in, so to speak, for your late husband …”

  “May he rest in peace …”

  “... and rescue your innocent son from the clutches of this female. My, they are large, aren’t they? And she obviously has no trouble passing the pencil test, either.”

  “Give me the photograph back, please, Mr. Framingham,” Josephine said. “Your hands are getting all sweaty.”

  “Well now,” he said. “Now that’s all settled, shall we have another little nip before partaking of lunch?”

  “You’re a man after my own heart, Matthew,” she said. He turned to the bar and mixed another batch of martinis.

  “I’m going to get on the telephone and see if I can find out where they are,” Josephine said. “I presume you are free to accompany me?”

  “Anywhere in the wide world, dear lady, in pursuit of this noble objective,” Matthew replied. “I’d follow those ... I mean, them ... anywhere.”

  Mrs. Babcock had to make four telephone calls before she finally got word of the present whereabouts of Precious Babykins and the big-busted blonde hussy. Bubba had apparently tired of jumping Scarlett over Fort Bragg, and had carried her to Winston-Salem, where they had jumped in on his grandparents. Josephine’s father had infuriated her by reporting that he found Scarlett charming, and by offering the opinion that Bubba “was really a chip off the blockhead, blonde-wise, wasn’t he?” He also reported that Bubba and Scarlett had left Winston-Salem aboard Bubba’s plane, bound for Spruce Harbor, Maine, where they planned to jump in on two doctors whom they had met at the time they had met each other. En route, they planned to drop off three tons of dehydrated soja hispida Babcockisis at the old T Bar X, so that Bubba’s plan to feed Uncle Hiram's bison Americanus could be put to the test.

  “Let’s go, Framingham,” Josephine had said, hanging up the phone. “My Precious Babykins and that gold digger are on their way to Spruce Harbor.”

  “Haste, my dear lady, as you yourself have pointed out, makes waste,” Matthew replied, handing her another martini. “I suggest that having a quiet drink and a leisurely lunch will not only do wonders for our stomachs, but permit us to plan in great detail precisely how I am to woo Scarlett away from your Bubba.”

  “You may have a point,” Josephine agreed. “It can’t be far away by jet, anyway.”

  “Well, that’s the sort of thing I mean. If I appear on your jet, that wouldn’t get to Scarlett’s gold-digger’s heart nearly as much as arriving in my Rolls, now would it?”

  “You’re right, of course,” Josephine said.

  Two hours later, Mr. Matthew Q. Framingham VI and Mrs. Burton Babcock III descended, somewhat unsteadily, the steps of the Ritz-Carlton, and stood there holding each other up, while the doorman, two bellboys and the assistant manager struggled to get the rear door of the Rolls open for them.

  Then, their voices joined not unpleasantly in song, the two set out for Spruce Harbor, Maine, equipped, courtesy of the management, with a half-gallon pitcher of martinis against the rigors of the journey.

  Chapter Eleven

  At just about the time Chairperson and Presidentress Babcock and Exe
cutive Secretary Framingham settled down to partake of their first Oyster Onassis* in the Ambassador Suite of the Ritz-Carlton, a helicopter fluttered to the ground just over the hill from the simple ranch house of the old T Bar X.

  (* Lightly broiled in a sauce of garlic, truffles and champagne, and in sterling-silver ramekins, of course, in lieu of those ugly things in which oysters come, au naturel.)

  A bald man with bad teeth and thick eyeglasses peered out the door and spoke to Taylor P. Jambon, who was in the process of unfastening his seat belt.

  “You’d better be right about this, Jambon,” the bald man said. “I’m beginning to have second thoughts about the whole thing.”

  His voice was pleasant. It had resonance, depth, and machismo. It was, in fact, one of the most famous voices in America. It belonged to Don Rhotten, co-anchor-person of “Waldo Maldemer & the Evening News Starring Don Rhotten,” which was telecast every evening at six p.m. to 11,456,567 viewing families.

  “Have I ever led you astray, Don Baby?” Taylor P. Jambon replied.

  “You bet your sweet blap you have!” Mr. Rhotten replied.

  “Aside from Vienna, I mean, Don Baby,” Jambon corrected himself, “and that hurt me more than it hurt you, remember!”

  “All that happened to you, Jambon, was that you were publicly revealed as a cheat and a scoundrel,” Don Rhotten said. “I was the one who got thrown in the fountain in full view of my 11,456,567 viewing families at home!”

  “The water wasn’t very deep in the fountain, Don,” Taylor said. “You really didn’t have to scream for help that way. You could have crawled out by yourself.”

  “I’ve made up my mind,” Don Rhotten said. “Coming here was a mistake!” He stuck his head out the door further and screamed up at the pilot: “O.K., Jack, back to civilization!”

  “Now, wait a minute, Don,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “You’ve come this far, you might as well take advantage of it.”

  “Take advantage of what?”

  “Of being out here in the wide-open spaces,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “In your safari suit.”

  “Get to the point, Jambon,” Don Rhotten said.

  “All I’m suggesting, Don, is since you’ve come all this way you might as well have them shoot a little stock footage. You getting out of the helicopter, for example. And then standing there, looking philosophical, staring off over the plains.”

  “I have your absolute guarantee there’s no lions, tigers or anything else like that out there, right?”

  “Would Taylor P. Jambon lie to you, Don Baby?”

  “Do I have your guarantee—which means you get out first, and never get between me and the helicopter—or don’t I?”

  “You got it, Don,” Taylor P. Jambon said, extending his hand to be shaken.

  “You know I don’t like to shake your bare hand, Taylor,” Don Rhotten said. “Either put a glove over that clammy skin of yours, or forget it!”

  Mr. Jambon cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled into the rear of the helicopter: “Makeup! Camera crew! Audio!”

  A group of technicians, a rather odd-appearing group anywhere but here on the plains a sight to send the Chiricahua Apache fleeing in abject terror, disembarked from the ABS helicopter. The audio crew set up their microphones and mixers; the camera crew set up their cameras and lights and reflectors. And then the two crews, working together, set up a canvas fly under which, shaded from the sun, they could nap or play pinochle or otherwise idle away the time while the makeup crew, which had a far more difficult job, went to work on Mr. Rhotten.

  In the early days of his career, it had been a simple matter of simply sticking the Paul Newman-blue contact lenses in his eyes; installing the set of pearly white caps over his grayish, somewhat uneven teeth, and finally slapping the midnight black toupee with the boyish bangs on his head. But, with the passing of time, other problems had arisen. There were crow’s feet at his eyes now, his jowls had begun to sag and he was lately the possessor of a purplish-red nose that would have put the probiscus of W. C. Fields to shame.

  Treating these facial characteristics obviously took both time and skill, and more than an hour passed before Don Rhotten was ready to face the cameras.

  When the day had dawned, Mr. Rhotten had had absolutely no inkling that when the sun began to set, it would set on him in the wilds of west Texas. As a matter of fact, when the phone (his private unlisted number) had rung that morning, and he had seen how dark it was, he was afraid that he had overslept and it would again be time for him to be rushed by limousine to the ABS studios for the “Evening News.”

  “I hate to wake you up,” the familair voice of Taylor P. Jambon had said. “But this is important.”

  “It’s all right, Taylor,” Don Rhotten had replied graciously. “It must be five o’clock anyway, and time for me to get to the studio.”

  “It’s six-fifteen, Don,” Jambon said.

  “My god! I’ve missed the broadcast!”

  “In the morning, Don,” Jambon said.

  Mr. Rhotten was now fully awake; the old brain, as he thought of it, was now firing on all four cylinders.

  “What’s the matter with you, Taylor? You been at the sauce again? You in your second childhood, or what? Sending me that box of stinky soap flakes—Jesus, what a smell!—was bad enough. But waking me up in the middle of the night! That’s going too far, Jambon!”

  “Those weren’t soap flakes, Don,” Jambon replied.

  “They looked like soap flakes,” Mr. Rhotten replied. “But when I soaked my tee shirts and boxer shorts in them, there was nothing left but the rubber bands and the labels.”

  “Those weren’t soap flakes, Don. That stuff is dehydrated soja hispida Babcockisis.”

  “What?”

  “The stuff I was telling you about. The stuff Burton Babcock & Company tried to feed my precious porkers.”

  “You didn’t have to send it to me, Jambon. I’ll never get the smell out of here. And so far as I’m concerned you owe me three tee shirts and three boxer shorts. They were those Burt Reynolds Briefs, too, the sexy ones, with the slit on the side. Two ninety-eight a pair, I paid for them. That comes to ... let me figure a moment,.

  “I’ll send you a check, Don.”

  “You’d better.”

  “I wanted you to smell it, Don,” Jambon said. “That’s why I sent it to you.”

  “What are you, some kind of a smell freak? That was a lousy thing to do to a friend, Jambon.”

  “I wanted you to see for yourself how horrible that stuff is.”

  “You made your point.”

  “I wanted you to see just how unspeakably cruel and barbaric Burton Babcock & Company is being to the poor animals.”

  “You mean, they actually did try to feed that stuff to animals?”

  “Yes, they did.”

  “But you told me that pigs wouldn’t eat it.”

  “They wouldn’t” Jambon said. “But now they’ve gone even farther.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I have it from a usually reliable, highly placed, confidential source,* Don, that Burton Babcock & Company, in a callous gesture of contempt not only for animal life but for one of America’s most treasured symbols, is now going to try to feed it to buffalos.”

  (* He referred here, of course, to the pig thief, who was keeping an eye on the Possible Porcine Products Research Establishment from a tree house.)

  “Buffalos?”

  “Bison Americanus,” Taylor said.

  “I thought you said buffalos.”

  “I did.”

  “I thought buffalos were extinct,” Don Rhotten said.

  “Not at all,” Taylor P. Jambon said.

  “Jees, I didn’t know that!”

  “And those people at Burton Babcock & Company are going to try to feed them that stuff.”

  “That’s terrible, Taylor!” Don Rhotten said. “Let’s tell on them!”

  “I thought you’d feel that way, Don.�
�

  “Call the cops or something,” Don Rhotten said. “There should be a law!”

  “Indeed there should, and after the broadcast you’re going to make, it will be known in the public’s mind as the Don Rhotten Buffalo Protective Act.”

  “What broadcast?”

  “The one in which you bring this outrageous behavior of Burton Babcock & Company to your 11,456,567 viewing families.”

  “I’m going to do that?”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Taylor,” Don Rhotten said. “It would violate the television code.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “The television code only prohibits saying nasty things about sponsors. They can’t advertise cigarettes on the boob tube anymore, Don. That means Burton Babcock & Company isn’t a sponsor. You’re free to say anything about them you want to.”

  “You have a point, Jambon,” Mr. Rhotten said. “Sometimes you’re not as dumb as you look. But how are we going to do it? We’d probably need special permission to bring a buffalo into New York City. Presuming we could catch one, I mean.”

  “Well, Don, we’re going to bring the mountain to Mohammad.”

  “What the hell are you talking about now?”

  “I mean, we’re going out to where the buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “West Texas.”

  “Like hell we are,” Don Rhotten said. “You want me to do this show, you catch the buffalo and bring it here. In a sturdy cage.”

  “Don, do you remember what you told me the last time I saw you?”

  “The last time I saw you, you were so drunk they had to carry you out of P. J. Clarke’s.”*

  (* P. J. Clarke’s is a New York City watering place popular with TV biggies. The decor has been described as early-New York Third Avenue.)