Big Maxie and Trapper John McIntyre were leaning on Hawkeye to make a decision, but Hawkeye was reluctant. “I’ll think about it,” he said.
“What’s to think about?” asked Trapper as the three of them sipped Scotch in Maxie’s office one evening, after the last patient had left.
“Well,” said Hawk, “I sure as hell ain’t going to Texas, and I’m kind of scared to stay around here.”
“Why?” asked Maxie.
“Because it says in the Farmer’s Almanac that the Lord’s going to give the world an enema before the year 2000 and He’s going to stick the nozzle either here or in Calcutta. I got my family to think of. My insurance doesn’t cover tidal waves.”
Trapper John was very annoyed with his old buddy, but Maxie Neville, from Wyoming, said, “Don’t worry about it, Hawk. Anything you decide is okay. If you want to go home after this year, do it. I’ll see you through the Thoracic Boards. A good chest surgeon won’t do any harm in Spruce Harbor, Maine.”
Hawkeye, immediately and forever, was grateful for these words from Maxie Neville. Maxie was willing to push Hawkeye in the big league, but, because Maxie was a country boy, he knew that Hawkeye didn’t belong in New York, or Dallas, or North Jersey. Trapper John, then, didn’t understand because he was from Boston.
As though on cue, there was loud conversation in the secretary’s office, just as Max Neville blessed Hawkeye’s return to Spruce Harbor.
“This here Hawkeye Pierce’s office?” they heard.
“This is Dr. Maxwell Neville’s office. Dr. Pierce is his resident,” said Bette, the secretary.
“Hawkeye around?”
Dr. Neville heard this, got up, walked to the secretary’s office and saw two visitors who could only have come from Spruce Harbor, Maine: Jocko Allcock and Wooden Leg Wilcox, the One-Legged Bandit of Ocean Street, Spruce Harbor’s leading wholesale fish dealer.
Wooden Leg had been a college classmate and fraternity brother of Hawkeye’s.
Confronted by Maxie Neville, Jocko and Wooden Leg suddenly felt conspicuous and ill at ease, but Maxie smiled and said, “If you guys are looking for Hawkeye, come on back and have a drink.”
The guests were subdued only briefly. Given a Scotch and soda, Wooden Leg said, “Jesus Christ, ain’t this something? Go to a doctor’s office and get a drink.
I always knew medicine was more advanced in the city.”
“You betcher ass, boy,” agreed Mr. Allcock. “Why the hell are you guys in New York?” asked Hawkeye.
“Mostly to see you wasn’t backslidin’,” Jocko answered. “We talked to Mary and she said you was thinkin’ of stayin’ down heah and not comin’ home.”
“That and Jocko wants to change his luck,” said Wooden Leg. “I figured I’d drop him off in Greenwich Village and go down and look around the Fulton Fish Market.”
Maxie Neville scribbled a Village address on a prescription blank and handed it to Jocko. “Go here,” he said. “Ask for Alice. Say Max sent you.”
“Jesus, he’s a pimp, too,” Wooden Leg whispered loudly to Hawkeye.
“Max,” said Hawkeye, “don’t do too much too quick for these grunts. While appreciating your help, they’ll tend to misinterpret your sure touch with urban refinements.”
Max smiled and said, “Don’t worry. I get no patients from Spruce Harbor. What do you guys have in mind for Hawkeye?”
“We’re gonna manage Hawkeye,” replied Jocko. “The whole thing depends on him bein’ the best around. We know you’re okay. Dr. Neville, because we looked you up. Now what we gotta know is whether Hawkeye is any good in the chest. If he ain’t, me and Wooden Leg gonna take a christly bath. If he is, we can clean up bettin’ with him ’cuz the word in Maine is all chest surgical patients croak, and there ain’t no problem gitten’ people to bet against them.”
“I don’t really understand your program,” said Dr. Neville, “but I think if you manage it judiciously you’ll achieve a measure of success.”
“Finestkind,” said Wooden Leg.
“Ayuh,” agreed Jocko.
“Just what is your plan?” asked Hawkeye. “I’d like to be among the first to know.”
“Simplest thing in the world,” explained Jocko. “We’re gonna book bets on all major surgery done in Spruce Harbor, by you or anybody else. But the odds we’re gonna offer on your patients are gonna be more in favor of the patient than if they go to Ramsey Coffin or old Wiley Morgan. For example, say somebody has to have their gallbladder out. If they go to Coffin or Morgan we’re gonna say there’s one chance in ten, or maybe twenty, dependin’ on his age and general condition, the guy ain’t goin’ to walk out of the hospital. If they go to you, we’re gonna say there’s one chance in two hundred, or thereabouts, that he won’t make it. We gotta make money because you won’t lose no routine surgery and Ramsey and Wiley are as bad as the odds we’ll be givin’ on them. Furthermore, when the word gets around, everybody’ll be comin’ to you anyhow and by that time our business oughta be well established.”
“Oh, my sweet Jesus,” moaned Hawkeye.
“It certainly is an interesting approach,” said Dr. Maxwell Neville, “but who are you going to get to bet on this sort of thing?”
“The jeezly guineas,” Wooden Leg told him.
“They’ll bet on anything. They’ll get us started and then the shitkickers will jump on.”
“What is a shitkicker?” asked Dr. Neville.
“Jesus, Max, didn’t you ever play baseball in a cow pasture where something else looks like second base?”
“I understand,” said Dr. Neville.
Jocko, Maxie, Trapper and Wooden Leg continued the discussion while Hawkeye sat and thought. Really, nothing unethical about the arrangement. Certainly not as unethical as the lousy surgery perpetrated by Ramsey Coffin and Wiley Morgan. What’s more, it could work. There were, perhaps, a thousand Italians in Spruce Harbor, all fishermen or related to fishermen, and Wooden Leg Wilcox had them all in his pocket.
During working hours, Mr. Wilcox begun nearly all sentences with, “Look, you fucking guinea,” and the Italian population responded unfailingly with the endearing rejoinder, “Look, you fuckin’ One-Legged Bandit.” Regardless of the words, the guineas and Wooden Leg had great mutual respect. Leg had inherited the business from his father and had proved himself just as honest.
Hawkeye remembered asking a fisherman, “How come you guys take so much shit from Wooden Leg?”
“Whadda yuh mean, Hawk?”
“Well, all this guinea stuff.”
“Hawk,” said the fisherman, “it ain’t what a man calls you. It’s how he uses you, and Wooden Leg uses everybody good. Like last week Dominic come in with a trip of fish. He knew Leg was all bought up so he tries to sell it to them other places. They couldn’t touch it and Leg knew they couldn’t. He’s watchin’ Dominic’s boat and he says, Where’s that fuckin’ Dominic? Don’t he know I gotta have fish? So I call Dominic on that bullhorn Leg has and Dominic comes in and Leg says, I gotta have fish and I’ll give you a nickel a pound and not a cent more, you fuckin’ guinea thief. So Leg gives Dominic two hundred dollars and tells Shine to go dump the fish. Course it works the other way, too. When the market’s good, Leg gets our fish and all the other guys get is what Leg don’t need, bu’t it’s Wooden Leg takes care of us, no matter what.”
“Well, really, it’s just good business on his part, isn’t it?”
“Look, Hawkeye,” said the fisherman. “I know your father and I know you, but don’t nobody come down to this here waterfront and badmouth Wooden Leg Wilcox. I don’t care who.”
“Hey, Hawkeye,” said Jocko Allcock, interrupting Dr. Pierce’s peaceful recollection of Wooden Leg and the Italian fishermen. “We got it worked out how to get you off to a fast start. You gotta apply for your privileges at Spruce Harbor General right off because about two months afore you start practice you’re gonna make a guest appearance and take out Pasquale’s left lung.”
“I am? Who th
e hell is Pasquaie?”
“Pasquale Merlino. He’s sixty-two years old. He’s got bronchiectasis in his whole left lung. His right lung is good. He don’t smoke no more. He’s got a normal electrocardiogram. I had Dr. Black see him and he says he’s a good risk but them jerks has told him an operation would kill him.”
“So?”
“Well,” said Jocko, “me and Wooden Leg and your old man, Big Benjy, has all talked to Pasquale and Pasquale says he’ll let you try to take his lung out. He ain’t no good, coughin’ up that mess all the time, so he figures he ain’t got nothin’ to lose.”
“Where do you guys come in?”
“We’re gonna have ten grand with him and we can get three to one, easy, from the guineas,” said Wooden Leg. “They want him to get well, but they’re sure he can’t make it and they won’t turn down a bargain.”
“So you guys will make thirty grand and I’m lucky if I get paid?”
“We’ll pay the surgeon’s lee and this’ll give us what we need to git rollin’,” said Jocko. “If you pull this one off we got two other chest cases lined up for you. Also three bad-risk gallbladders the quacks won’t touch.”
“Hawkeye,” said Maxie Neville, “I think you’d better stay here.”
“No,” Hawkeye said reflectively, “I guess I’ll give it a go. I’ll take Trapper along to operate on Pasquale. Maybe we can do the other chest cases before I actually start practice. You’ll give me a few half-weeks off, won’t you?”
“Far be it from me to stop surgical progress,” said Maxie.
4
ON a Wednesday in April of 1956, Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre left Saint Lombard’s Hospital and drove to Spruce Harbor, Maine, where on Friday they removed Pasquale Merlino’s left lung. This, the first pneumonectomy ever done at Spruce Harbor General, made everyone nervous except the surgeons and the anesthesiologist, Dr. Ezekiel Bradbury (Me Lay) Marston. Early in his career, as a result of saying “Me Lay, you lay?” to so many young damsels, Dr. Marston had become exhausted. He chose, therefore, a sedentary occupation.
“It’s a pleasure to work with you guys,” Me Lay declared in the doctors’ dressing room after the operation. “I’m tired of Ramsey Coffin and Wiley Morgan.”
“What’s with them?” asked Hawkeye.
“This Coffin is our age. He’s had very little surgical training but he talks a big game. He has superficial technical facility and the large personality. Broads of all ages take one look at him and want to lie down.
They don’t care if he sticks a scalpel or anything else into them.”
“And Wiley?”
“Until ten years ago he was okay because he was ahead of anyone else doing surgery around here. Now he’s too old and he should quit, but he’s not about to. He’s lost sight of reality and the public suffers. Fortunately, they suffer happily because they don’t know any better. They think an old guy who trained himself is far superior to a young guy out of a good surgical residency program.”
“Who’s Doggy Moore use for surgery?”
“He uses both these guys for stuff he thinks they can do. He does a little himself. The rest he sends to Bangor and Portland.”
“You think Doggy will use me?”
“Sooner or later,” said Me Lay. “Doggy takes nObody’s word for anything. He waits and watches. When he finally makes up his mind, there’ll need to be three of you because be sees more patients and finds more surgery than anybody else.”
“Wasn’t Doggy Chipmunk Moore’s father? asked Hawkeye.
“Sort of,” said Me Lay.
Both Me Lay and Hawkeye were silent for a moment. Then Trapper John asked: “Who was Chipmunk Moore?”
“I’m not sure,” said Hawkeye, “but he was something else.”
“That,” Trapper complained, “is about as clear an answer as anyone in Maine ever gives me.”
“What about the rest of the talent around here?”
Hawkeye asked Me Lay. “Anybody new besides this Coffin character?”
“The rest are okay. We have two good internists and most of the general practitioners are competent. Probably th’e biggest problem is Goofus MacDuff. Actually he’s more pest than problem. Somebody decided we had to have a Medical Director and the job description calls for chicken shit. Goofus doesn’t know whether Christ was crucified or went down with the Titanic so he won the job by acclamation.”
“Goofus!” exclaimed Hawkeye. “Is he that tall, skinny, redheaded clown who was a couple years ahead of us at Androscoggin? Looked like a toothbrush with hair?”
“He’s the one, but don’t worry. Just laugh at him. Don’t let him bother you.”
“Guys like that bother me,” said Hawk, “if they have titles. I’ve heard about a Limey practicing over in Eagle Head. What’s the word on him?”
“That’s Tony Holcombe,” said Me Lay. “He’s doing a damn good job. He flew a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain and that background didn’t equip him for the National Health Service so he came over here. You’ll like him. Let’s go to the coffee shop.”
Jocko Allcock and Wooden Leg Wilcox were there, anxiously awaiting news of the operation. “You fix Pasquale?” Jocko asked as the surgeons entered.
“Did we have a choice?”
“Sure. You could cool him and take your chances with the guineas.”
“Hell, they’re all betting against,” complained Trapper.
“They are of two minds but they’d rather lose their dough than Pasquale.”
Dr. Goofus MacDuff joined them and said, “Nice to have you fellows, but gee, Pasquale’s been getting along okay. I’m not so sure he needed to have the lung out.”
“If I had any early doubt, you’ve just removed it, Goofus,” Hawkeye told him.
“I don’t know,” said Goofus. “Do you think we’re ready for this kind of surgery here?”
“Hey, you. I don’t like you,” said Trapper, who fixed Goofus with a malignant stare.
Dr. MacDuff suddenly remembered he had business elsewhere.
The surgeons watched Pasquale over the weekend and, satisfied with his progress, returned to New York on Monday. They returned for two more guest appearances before July when, nine years after his graduation from medical school, the time finally came for Hawkeye Pierce to enter private practice. Dr. Pierce entered with more of a bang than most surgeons enjoy.
Jocko had lined up the three poor-risk gallbladders and Hawkeye did all three of them his first week. All got along well, mostly because they weren’t really poor-risk patients. They were just fat. Ralph Young in Port Waldo had been saving a few hernias and a carcinoma of the rectum. After three weeks in practice, Dr. Tony Holcombe approached Dr. Pierce and said: “Hello, Hawkeye. I guess you and I should have a talk.”
“Finestkind,” said Hawkeye.
“Don’t drown me in the local jargon,” said Tony, “particularly when I’m about to make you my surgeon.”
“I’d like to be your surgeon.”
“I’m just a bloody general practitioner,” Tony Holcombe said, “but I won’t have my patients anywhere near those two quacks who’ve been doing the surgery here.”
Tony and Hawkeye, although opposites in many ways, became friends. In the operating room Tony was a hopelessly inept assistant but his clinical knowledge and judgment were of the highest caliber. Although Tony was more culturally advanced than Hawkeye they found many common, extramedical interests. For Hawkeye, Tony filled the void created by the loss of Trapper John and Maxie Neville and the other urban hotshots.
Throughout Hawkeye’s first months in practice he was being watched closely by Doggy Moore, Spruce Harbor’s busiest and most versatile doctor. Nothing, in or out of medicine, had happened in Spruce Harbor for more than thirty years that Doggy Moore didn’t know about, so he knew about the betting on Hawkeye’s patients and he knew that Jocko Allcock, Wooden Leg and Ralph Young were preparing Hawkeye for stardom. Still, Doggy wanted to wait and see for himself.
Whi
le Doggy was sniffing at Hawkeye, Hawkeye was sniffing at Doggy, and the more he sniffed the more fascinated he became. Doggy, in 1956, was about sixty-three years old, a tall, gray-haired, big-boned, sometimes loud-voiced, sometimes mumbling giant of a man who’d played three sports at Androscoggin College and who, twice, had been the Maine
Amateur Golf Champion. He was called Doggy because in his station wagon, or pickup truck, whichever be chose to drive, there were always two Chesapeake Bay retrievers. Doggy had them along partly to chase rabbits, partly for company and partly to guard the golf clubs, fishing poles, shotgun and rifle which he always carried with him.
Doggy took care of more sick people than anyone else. He played as much golf as anyone else. He shot as many rabbits and birds as anyone else. He caught more fish and shot more deer than anyone else.
In Spruce Harbor the prevailing opinion was that Doggy Moore might be able to walk on water. Other doctors had patients only because no one, not even Doggy Moore, could take care of everybody. Up until the age of fourteen, the citizens of Spruce Harbor addressed Dr. Moore as Dr. Doggy. Reaching puberty, they addressed him as Doggy. In drugstores, garages, grocery stores, wherever he went, it was “Hi, Doggy. How they goin’, Doggy?” He could have made a career of just walking through town looking at pictures of kids he’d delivered. He was called “Dr. Moore” only on the hospital page system. Smyrna Boggs, the switchboard operator, would say, “Dr. Moore, telephone please,” but if he didn’t answer immediately and Smyrna thought it might be important, she’d yell, “Doggy, will you please answer the phone?”
Although some, of the competition had evening and Saturday office hours (a horrible habit which still exists in some rural areas), Dr. Moore spent only four afternoons a week in his office. How did. Doggy see more patients than any other doctor in Spruce Harbor?
Very simple. Doggy held office hours everywhere. This annoyed certain people, particularly his golfing companions who objected to Doggy having office hours on the golf course. On an average day Doggy saw one patient per hole. Maybe he’d hold off on a patient on short par threes, but he’d squeeze in an extra one on a par five. He charged the same as for regular office calls, claiming professional effort on the golf course took away from his concentration and caused him to blow a few shots, thereby decreasing his winnings. His opponents, who were always trying to get even on the bets, maintained that the patients bugged their concentration more than Doggy’s.
M*A*S*H Goes To Maine Page 3