“You really think they do, Lucinda?”
“Yes, sir, I know they do. I always call doctors sir’ when the discussion gets serious.”
“Why do you think they want me?’ There are lots of neurosurgeons. Because I was a football player and they happen to know me?”
Lucinda sat up straight, leaned forwardin her chair and said: “No, sir. I don’t understand it completely and I haven’t known Duke and Hawkeye very long, but if they want you, they want you.”
“Lucinda, are you in love with Hawkeye?”
“I don’t know. If I am, it has no future, so what difference does it make? I’ll take a long look at Trapper John, if he ever comes.”
“He’ll come, Lucinda.”
“How about you, Spearchucker?”
“Probably I will. Now you and that animal get out of here before the White Citizens Council catches me in here with a white girl.”
After Lucinda Lively and Little Eva left his room in the Spruce Harbor Motel, Dr. Jones tried to do some careful thinking. One afternoon with Goofus MacDuff and the good guys had confirmed what his friends had said about them. One was dumb and the others were phonies and they wanted him not for the benefit of the community but to help fight or contain Pierce and Forrest. But what about friends? Dr. Jones knew that there would be enough work and he’d make a good living. He knew that Duke and Hawkeye wanted him because he was their friend and that, up to a point, they were color-blind. He remembered, though, Hawk’s response in Korea to, “Why do you cut ou’t so often when my friends come to visit me?” Hawk had said: “Do you like all the white boys around here?”
Dr. Jones had many friends of all colors but, mostly, they were black. He knew that Duke and Hawkeye were opinionated, arbitrary screwballs. But how, he wondered, would they swing if he did as they suggested and tried to bring other blacks into Maine?
Would they overlook the occasional loser, the bad choice, or would they say, as Hawkeye had in. the past: “Live human, or live colored, and don’t bomb us with wrong niggers.”
As Spearchucker Jones stepped out of his shower and picked up the bourbon and coke he’d left on the, washstand, he decided: I’m going to do it. These guys are crazy, but I hate the city, too. If they like me as much as they seem to, they’ll go along with my need to be a nigger. So relax, Jonesy, and roll along and see what happens. The kids will love it around here.
The staff meeting at Spruce Harbor General Hospital always began with the reading of the minutes of the last meeting and a listing of those who had attended the last meeting. Class D ball, thought Spearchucker. Maybe I’ll change my mind. Goofus MacDuff presided over a variety of nonprofessional, irrational, pointless reports before announcing that the clinical meeting (which always was secondary to the nonsense) would be postponed in favor of a party at his house where everyone could meet Dr. Oliver Wendell Jones.
At the party, Spearchucker heard Duke Forrest say,
“Y’all just don’t understand nigras,” and Dr. Tony Holcombe’s comment was, “Can you imagine that bloody great savage rummaging around in one’s brain?”
When Dr. Jones left Spruce Harbor on Thursday, he thanked Doctors MacDuff, Coffin and the other good guys for their hospitality and said: “Gentlemen, I’ve already reached a decision. I am coming to Spruce Harbor. I appreciate your kind offer to join you gentlemen in practice but Doctors Pierce, Forrest and Holcombe have convinced me that my future lies with the Finestkind Clinic and Fishmarket.”
Goofus and the good guys were quite hung up. They didn’t know how it had happened, but they got the word. They’d been had.
6
DR. and Mrs. Pierce had, with money borrowed from Jocko and Wooden Leg, built a big new house in Crabapple Cove, a few yards inland from the tide-lapped quarters they had first occupied. Duke and Sandra Forrest bought an old farm half a mile farther down Pierce Road and rebuilt it, nearly from the ground up. Duke and Hawkeye thought Spearchucker should also live in Crabapple Cove, but Jocko vetoed this idea.
“No. That wouldn’t be no good,” said Jocko. “Wooden Leg’s gettin’ him that old Howard place that’s been fixed up down on Harbor Point right near where the clinic and hospital’s going to be. Him and his kids shouldn’t be way out. They gotta be normal. You and Duke is crazy so it don’t matter.”
Jocko Allcock, as a VA employee with clinical awareness, knew where to find any number of ruptured intervertebral discs which the VA couldn’t or wouldn’t handle, as well as a variety of other potential neurosurgical problems. Spearchucker Jones’s first month in Spruce Harbor was very busy.
The Pierces and Forrests were always socially backward, but a month after Spearchucker and Evelyn Jones arrived, they were invited to a welcome party at the Pierces’. They’d already been to several large parties given by doctors and other prominent citizens where the Pierces and Forrests, although invited, had not appeared.
The Pierce-Forrest party was small, attended only by the hosts, the guests of honor, Jocko Allcock, the Wilcoxes, and Big Benjy Pierce, who was pressed into service as bartender and cook until he passed out. Spearchucker, of course, had visited Crabapple Cove before but had never happened to meet Big Benjy, whose reaction, even before the introduction, was, “Jesus Christ, ain’t he a big one? I’d sure hate to have him muckle onto me.”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, you old bastard,” said Hawkeye, “or I’ll see that he does muckle onto you. Spearchucker, I’d like you to meet my father.”
“I’m happy to meet you, Mr. Pierce. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Gawd, boy, I guess I’m some proud to meetcha,” answered Big Benjy. “I tell you my boy was sure some happy when you come down heaii to work. How you likin’ it?”
“Oh, finestkind,” said Spearohucker, with a straight face and a slight twinkle of the eye.
Before Spearchucker’s arrival in Spruce Harbor, Hawkeye had feared the possible consequences, in terms of local morbidity and mortality, of Dr. Jones’s being addressed as “boy.” He had planned to warn Dr. Jones but later decided to wait and see what happened. Nothing happened except that, more and more, Spearchucker addressed others as “boy.”
“You seem to be falling into the local vernacular, Chucker,” observed Hawkeye one day.
“At first I didn’t understand and came damn close to coldcocking a citizen or two but I caught on in time. What I dread is the possibility of, eventually, being addressed as young fella.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Haven’t you noticed? Around here one is greeted with ‘Hi, boy’ until the age of seventy. Then the greeting is changed to ‘Hi there, young fella.’”
Spearchucker’s wife Evelyn cornered Jocko Allcock.
She was curious about him and the surgical lottery and she was well aware that Jocko was responsible for the initial flood of patients.
“Where on earth do you dig up all these ruptured discs, Mr. Allcock?”
“Jocko, ma’am, if you don’t mind.”
“All right. Jocko it is, and I’m Evelyn.”
“Well, Evelyn, I work for the VA and I know lots of people, so it ain’t hard to put my finger on plenty of stuff when a new boy comes in. I tell you, me and Wooden Leg been makin’ good money. Just like when Hawkeye come. Everybody’s sure these fancy specialists are goin’ to knock em off right and left and Jonesy ain’t had no trouble so we’re cleanin’ up.”
“Jocko, I thought there might be some resistance. I wasn’t sure Oliver would be accepted by the patients, particularly at first.”
“Oliver? Oh, you mean the Chucker. Hell, no. Only trouble I had was with some folks over to Tedium Cove thought he might be related to them Joneses they got over theah. Worst bunch you ever see.”
The party was relatively quiet except that Big Benjy got loaded on Scotch and wanted to fight Spearchucker, just because Big Benjy, when he wants to fight, always picks the biggest guy around. Jimmy and Alice Richards dropped in for a drink and to meet the Joneses. Jimmy, an ol
d high school classmate of Hawkeye’s, was the druggist in Port Waldo and daylighted, in summer, as pro at the Wawenock Harbor Country Club. where he and Hawkeye had caddied as kids. After the Riehardses left, Spearchucker said, “I’m probably going to have your friend Jimmy as a patient pretty soon.”
“Why?”
“You didn’t notice his right leg? A couple of times it twitched and he couldn’t control it. He was scared as hell.”
“No. I didn’t notice. What do you think it means?”
“Any number of things or nothing. Let’s wait and see.”
The wait wasn’t long. At ten fifteen the next morning, with ten people in the drugstore, Jimmy Richards fell to the floor, gasping for breath, his whole right side involved in a violent, uncontrollable convulsion. Dr. Ralph Young arrived in time to see the tag end of it.
There was nothing he could do.
“I’ll call Hawkeye,” he said. Finding Pierce at Spruce Harbor General, Dr. Young described the situation as best he could.
“Throw him in Jack Leeman’s hearse and whistle him over here,” advised Hawkeye. “This sounds like work for the Spearchucker.”
In November Jimmy Richards had gone up-country, deer hunting. After tramping over three miles of wooded hills he had a sensation of numbness in his right leg. Leaning against a tree, he massaged the leg, which began to twitch and turn inward. Within seconds the spasm was over. Half an hour later Jimmy shot a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound buck and forgot about his leg.
In early December there was a spell of warm weather. One Sunday morning Jimmy went to the golf course, walked down the first fairway and across the green into the woods, looking for lost golf balls. As he bent to pick one up, his right leg began to shake. Just as in the drugstore, the convulsion spread upward and involved his whole right side. This time it lasted a full minute, leaving Jimmy breathless, frightened and completely exhausted. For a time, his right leg and thigh were paralyzed, but he stumbled and fell until he reached his car. Sensation and motion returned slowly and he drove home. After a stiff drink he felt perfectly well and watched the Giants and Packers on TV.
At Spruce Harbor, after the drugstore episode, Dr. Jones went to work. A spinal tap showed some elevation of pressure in the spinal fluid. An electroencephalogram, a brain-wave test, was of no help. The neurological findings were all within normal limits.
Spearchucker decided to do a cerebral arteriogram, which means be injected dye into the carotid artery in the neck and took pictures of the dye as it went through the arteries in the brain.
Jimmy had the kind of head which sat right on his shoulders with little or no neck in between. Spearchucker blew the shot. He couldn’t get the dye in the right place, but he did cause some bleeding. He decided to wait two weeks for the swelling to go down before repeating the test. He prescribed a sedative and sent Jimmy home.
This was during Christmas and New Year’s and Hawkeye was avoiding all but mandatory work. He visited Jimmy Richards every day. Many citizens of Port Waldo, although aware of Hawkeye’s increasing reputation as a surgeon, were wary of him because of his family background, namely Big Benjy Pierce. Now, however, they were impressed by his concern for Jimmy Richards. The public did not know that most of the visits were spent drinking and haggling over football bets or that Dr. Pierce took Jimmy for sixty-eight dollars in ten days. The sedation prevented all but one mild recurrence of the convulsion. Jimmy looked better and better, but Hawkeye Pierce looked worse because he’d decided, in his own mind, that Jimmy had a brain tumor. So had everyone else but with less reason.
Jimmy was a popular guy. The Lions’ Club, the Rotary Club, the Masons, all came with gifts, flowers and good wishes.
At 1:30 P.M. on the day of the NFL playoff, Dr. Pierce called on Jimmy. There were fifteen people in the living room and gifts from every organization in town. Hawkeye said, “Jimmy, it’s a christly insult. The NAACP ain’t sent you a thing.”
The Methodist minister and two others who for some reason didn’t like Dr. Pierce departed hurriedly. That left a dozen. Jimmy, panic-stricken, took Hawkeye aside.
“What am I going to do? I don’t want to seem ungrateful, but if they don’t leave I won’t be able to watch the game.”
“Pitch a fit,” suggested Hawkeye.
Doing it from memory Jimmy Richards had another attack. Hawkeye considered it a rather poor performance, but most of the guests found it quite convincing. Those who didn’t left precipitously when Dr. Pierce, brandishing a pocket knife, held it to Jimmy’s neck and announced, “I guess I better do a tracheotomy.”
On January 2, Hawkeye took Jimmy back to Spruce Harbor. Most of the tests were repeated and a week later Dr. Jones, with Pierce assisting, exposed the carotid artery in Jimmy’s left neck, injected dye and got good X-rays. They showed possible block of one small artery in the brain but did nothing to establish the diagnosis of a brain tumor. The next day Spearchucker explained to Jimmy and Hawkeye that he could neither make a positive diagnosis of brain tumor nor rule it out. However, if there were a tumor, it was so situated that a surgical exploration of that part of the brain would produce weakness or paralysis of the whole right side. Therefore he felt that the most reasonable course was to increase sedation and await further developments. He suggested two more weeks of rest. If there were no convulsions, the patient could gradually return to work.
Again Dr. Pierce took Mr. Richards home to Port Waldo, where they opened a bottle of Scotch and had a drink. Jenny, Jimmy’s wife, came home from the store all upset. Two people had told her how sorry they were that Jimmy had an incurable brain tumor. She’d given them a good answer: “The doctors aren’t at all sure of that. If you have special information, you should certainly inform Dr. Jones at Spruce Harbor General.”
Then Hawkeye made a speech: “Jimbo, I think your case had been handled very well by the Spearchucker. He’s left you on the hook, I admit, but with good reason. All the signs are favorable and he’s been completely honest with you. You understand your problem as well as your doctors do. However, whether you realize it or not, Port Waldo has written you off. Uninformed small-town gossip is malignant and uncontrollable. You’ll overhear all kinds of stupid opinions and a lot of dumb things are going to be said right to your face. You gotta roll with it, buddy, and remember that you and the gourdcracker are the only two authorities on your illness.”
Jimmy was relieved or tried to be. “Let’s have another drink,” he suggested.
During the second drink, Pierce’s mouth started running again: “Jim, old buddy, what I just said is so damned true that some people aren’t going to be happy if you go ahead and get well. The Lions’ Club may make you pay for the flowers. I think you’d better take advantage of the situation.”
Dr. Pierce usually stopped in Port Waldo to buy a paper on nights when he could come home to Crabapple Cove. Twice in the next few days people cornered him and asked questions about Jim Richards. On each occasion he answered the questions warily, hinted that Jimmy’s future behavior might be peculiar and expressed the hope that people would be tolerant of it.
Two weeks after his release from the hospital, Jimmy returned to work in the drugstore. At eleven o’clock in the morning he retired to the drug room and, a few minutes later, reappeared behind the soda fountain clad in a jockstrap. He was happy and convivial. No one knew what to do. Dr. Ralph Young was out on a call. Joe Moody, editor of the Port Waldo Press, engaged Jimmy in conversation.
“Why are you going around in the jockstrap, Jim?” he asked politely.
“Because the girls like me better this way,” Jim explained, looking interestedly at the two young village matrons who were looking interestedly at him.
“Jim, let’s go in the drug room and talk this over. I think you oughta get dressed.”
Jimmy kept looking at the two young matrons of the village.
Joe Moody went to the phone, called Dr. Pierce and defined the situatiqn as concisely as he could.
“I don’t seem to
understand the problem,” said Hawkeye. “You say Jimmy’s got nothing on but a jockstrap and he’s eyeing a couple broads. I been watchin’ those two myself. Lemme know, how he makes out.”
Suddenly, Jim Richards vaulted over the soda fountain. The two young village matrons scurried out the door, with the druggist in pursuit. Billy Jordan, the state cop, arrived and, with Joe Moody’s help, got Jimmy into the cruiser and took him home.
This was accepted in the village as a manifestation of Jim’s brain tumor There was no criticism. Only pity.
Jimmy’s business increased. Curiosity brought customers who hoped to observe unusual behavior. On a Saturday afternoon Jim arrived at the store, climbed onto the soda fountain bar brandishing an iron skillet, and announced to the gathering crowd, “I’m going to kill Hawkeye Pierce.”
On cue, Hawkeye walked in. Jimmy jumped from the counter and Hawkeye went out the door with Jim right on his heels, swearing and swinging the skillet. Before anyone could react, victim and assailant had turned a corner and disappeared. Billy Jordan arrived quickly. He and Joe Moody rode around for a while but found no trace of them, so they decided to go to Jimmy’ house. Jimmy and the unmurdered physician were drinking Scotch whiskey and watching a golf tournament on television.
“Come in, boys, but keep it quiet. Player’s putting for a bird,” said Hawkeye. “The booze is in the kitchen. Help yourselves.”
Trooper Jordan started to ask a question just as Gary Player stroked his putt. Jimmy looked menacingly at the state policeman.
As the golfers walked to the next tee, Dr. Pierce asked, “You guys got a problem? You look worried.”
“We can’t have Jimmy chasing people. Somebody’s gotta do something about him,” declared Billy Jordan.
“Like what? Put him in jail? He wasn’t chasing people. He was only chasing me. It so happens I like to be chased by guys with a skillet. I’m strange that way. Anyway, I’ve had half a step on Jimmy ever since we were in high school.”
Dr. Ralph Young appeared and was brought up to date by Billy Jordan.
M*A*S*H Goes To Maine Page 6