M*A*S*H Goes To Maine

by Richard Hooker

  Just before flight 518 took off for Idlewild, Wrong Way’s Uncle Pasquale, who'd stayed home with a hangover, approached his nephew and said: “Wrong Way, you sedda you was agonna spotta da fish tonight. You a very unreliable—”

  “No, I’m not. Get on the radio. We got time to kill. Idlewild is stacked up. Tell the boys I’ll give them fifteen minutes.”

  As 518 took off over Thief Island, Trapper John and Lucinda, stark naked, were running back and forth in the little field carrying a sheet which, in big red letters, cried: HELP!!

  The stewardess then announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have just received word that our landing at Idlewild, due to circumstances beyond our control, will be delayed by twenty minutes. Captain Tannenbaum suggests that a look at the beautiful islands of Penobscot Bay from a height of twelve hundred feet rivals any scenery in the Bay of Naples. Accordingly we will spend a few minutes in this delightful area, rather than join the crowd and smog over New York.”

  Ten minutes later, although Wrong Way had spotted three large schools of herring, the word came from below: “Hey, a Wrong Way. You getta that bigga noisamaka the hell outa here. You gonna scara da fish.”

  Later, when the weekly Intercontinental jet flight to Spruce Harbor became a regular thing, Wooden Leg Wilcox, enjoying a beer at the Bay View Café with the two flyers, said: “I gotta admit, for a guinea kamikaze pilot and a left-handed Hebe, you guys have done okay.”

  10

  LATE in the afternoon of August 14, 1959, Hawkeye and Mary Pierce, on their way to the Gaspé Peninsula, checked into the Golden View Motel in Dalhousie, New Brunswick, after six hours of hot-weather driving. They quickly put on swimsuits and ran for the beach in front of the motel. Comforted, a few minutes later, by the cool water of the Bay of Chaleur, they lay on a beach blanket and sipped cold beer.

  “Don’t forget,” said Mary, “you promised if you ever got to Dalhousie, you’d call on Laurie.”

  “I say lots of things. What the hell. That was two years ago.”

  “You are going to call on Laurie Kirkaldy and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Yeah, but Jesus.”

  “Now look, Hawkeye,” Mary said, “you know how he’d feel if he ever found out you were here and hadn’t called.”

  “Yeah. I’d like to see him, but maybe he won’t want to see me.”

  “Don’t be foolish.”

  Mary and Hawkeye had dinner in the motel dining room. A calendar on the wall of the tiny bar which guarded the entrance to the dining room offered the drinking public a nearly nude damsel, with the best regards of Kirkaldy’s Insurance Agency, Dalhousie, N. B.

  “Helluva picture,” said Hawkeye to the bartender as they entered. “Is that why they call New Brunswick the Picture Province?”

  “Sir?” inquired the bartender.

  “Two Beefeater Marts on the rocks,” replied Hawkeye.

  “Yes, sir.”

  When the bartender brought the martinis Hawkeye asked: “Do you know the Mr. Kirkaldy who provided you with that fine picture?”

  “Aye, sir. Everyone knows Laurie.”

  “How’s he hittin’ em?”

  “Sir?”

  “How’s his golf game?”

  “Oh, topnotch, sir. Not like in the old days afore the sickness, but not many can beat him.”

  “Do you play?” Hawkeye asked the bartender.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “What’s your handicap?”

  “Ten, sir.”

  “How do you play Laurie? You get strokes from him?”

  “Aye. Three to a side. Six in eighteen holes.”

  “That’s what I’m going to get. Where’s he live?”

  “Two twenty Chathain Street.”

  While they ate, Mary was silent for a while and then prodded Hawkeye: “Tell me again about Laurie and golf.”

  “Well,” he said, “Laurie was born about 1914 in a place called Denhead, near Saint Andrews, Scotland. By the time he was ten he was caddying on the Old Course, and he is related to Andrew Kirkaldy, who was once the Honorary Professional at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. He emigrated to Canada when he was twenty-two and tried to make a living out of golf. He became a greenskeeper first, then a pro, but found that golf in Canada is not like golf in Scotland, where you can play the year around. So he learned the insurance business and became successful. He played enough golf to remain the best golfer in Dalhousie, and be sells a lot of insurance on the golf course.”

  After dinner Hawkeye and Mary drove, slowly, along Chathazn Street, looking for 220, which was a small, well-kept house with a neat front lawn and a cookout rig in the backyard. All the houses on Chatham Street seemed similarly equipped. Hawkeye drove his dirty, bent-fendered station wagon into Laurie’s driveway. A bit nervously, be went to the front door and knocked.

  It was quite clear that no one was home, but Hawk went through the motions. He had noticed a lady in the next yard weeding her garden. Aware that she was watching him, he walked toward her and asked: “Does Laurie Kirkaldy live here?”

  “You’re the doctor who operated on Laurie, aren’t you?” she asked.

  In the background Mary Pierce heard the neighbor’s question and emitted a sort of whoop.

  Hawkeye Pierce’s immediate unvoiced answer was, “Lady, you some kind of a christly nut? I’m just a guy in old clothes and I need a haircut. I drove into Laurie’s yard in a beat-up station wagon and you ain’t even seen the license plates so what the hell makes me the guy who operated on Laurie?”

  What he actually said was, “Yes, I’m Laurie’s doctor.”

  “I knew it!” she said. “I’m Mrs. MacTavish. We’ve been neighbors to Laurie and Bertha for twenty years.”

  “Do you think every stranger is the man who operated on Laurie?”

  “No indeed, Doctor, but Laurie told me you’d be by one day and that you were tall and nice-looking and wouldn’t be acting like a doctor. So, I just knew. Laurie’s at his cottage at the beach. I’ll send my daughter,” offered Mrs. MacTavish, “but she won’t be home for half an hour.”

  “Tell Laurie we’re at the Golden View and we’ll be expecting him and Bertha.”

  “Oh, he’ll be so happy,” exclaimed Mrs. MacTavish.

  As the Pierces rode slowly back to the Golden View Motel, Mary saw tears in the corners of her husband’s eyes.

  “Why does this guy get to you?” she asked. “Every time you think of Laurie Kirkaldy you start crying.”

  “His was a special kind of case and he’s a special kind of guy. In a sense, Laurie did more for me than I did for him. He had such complete faith that I’d get him well that he sort of inspired me to get him well. The fact that he didn’t die made me a confident surgeon and, to be commercial, a lot of the material success we’re enjoying now has come to us just because Laurie and I got lucky together.”

  “I’m not sure you make sense all the time, Hawkeye. You saved Laurie after Ramsey Coffin almost killed him and then you used that as an excuse to destroy Ramsey Coffin. At least, that’s a common version of the story.”

  “So you’re still not sure whether I’m the hero or the villain?”

  “Frankly, no. A lot of people still blame you for Ramsey Coffin’s having to leave town. Maybe you should tell me about it.”

  “In addition to his other shortcomings, Ramsey Coffin had square toes, like he never had a bad lie in the rough.”

  “Do you hate everyone who cheats at golf?” asked Mary.

  “If you don’t shut up, I’ll rape you in the motel swimming pool.”

  “Never mind that,” said Mary. “Give me your latest version of the story before we meet Laurie and Bertha.”

  “Well,” said Hawkeye, driving even more slowly, “Laurie and Bertha were visiting Bertha’s niece and her family in Eagle Head in August, 1957. There was a clambake. Laurie, his golf game in trim, his insurance business growing, his waistline burgeoning, was playing the role of perfect guest. He partook of clams, lobsters, corn,
beer and Scotch whiskey. What was it? The last lobster claw? The last ear of corn? Who knows? Suddenly Laurie had too much of something and felt sick. Before he could retreat to privacy he vomited, violently, in his niece’s back yard. ‘My God,’ he yelled, and fell to the ground, clawing at his chest. Searing breathtaking pain radiated upward into his neck and jaw, into his shoulders, down his arms. Laurie writhed on the ground and begged for help.

  “Laurie’s niece, Nancy Barnes, knew that it’s quicker to drive four miles in the area of Eagle Head than to make a phone call so she jumped into her car, drove to the home of Tony Holoombe, found him mowing his lawn and gave him the word. Tony responded by mounting his station wagon and driving to Nancy’s house with the enthusiasm, if not the skill, of Stirling Moss. Tony decided correctly that Laurie had ruptured his esophagus, the tube that leads to the stomach. Tony prepared a syringeful of Demerol to give intravenously. He told Nancy to call the hospital, that immediate surgery was necessary and to get hold of Dr. Pierce. That’s me.”

  “I know,” Mary agreed.

  “Tony Holcombe arrived with Laurie on a mattress in the back of his black-and-yellow station wagon. ‘Let’s get him directly to the OR,’ Tony said to the supervisor, Minnie Morse, and asked, Have you located Dr. Pierce?’

  “‘Dr. Pierce is on the golf course, but Dr. Coffin is here,’ Minnie told him.

  “‘My good woman,’ said Tony, ‘I know you haven’t called the golf course because I imagine you wouldn’t roll over in bed without a list of instructions. Right now, send someone to the golf course and get Dr. Pierce.’

  “At this point, just when the need was for action, not talk, Goofus MacDuff, the Mighty Medical Director, intruded. He’d come in on Sunday afternoon to pursue his hobby of finding out which doctors were delinquent in their records. His contribution to this act was to say, I don’t see why you need Pierce. Dr. Coffin is on surgical call. Why not let him handle it?’

  “‘Because,’ replied Tony, ‘Dr. Coffin is not a thoracic surgeon and Dr. Pierce is and this is a total, classic thoracic surgical emergency and the patient’s life depends on everything being done properly. Even you should understand this.’

  “‘You can’t talk to me that way,’ said Goofus.

  “I think Tony might have stolen two minutes to clean Goofus’s clock at this point had not Jocko Allcock and Half A Man Timberlake arrived. Jocko had seen Tony’s wagon going fast and followed. As usual he took command. To Half A Man he said:

  “Hawkeye’s probably on the sixteenth. Wherever he is find him and get his ass in here or it’s going to be your ass. Take my car and hurry.”

  “Well, hell, you know Half A Man. Six feet and two inches of gorgeous thirty-five-year-old male with an I.Q. of eighty and a total preoccupation with sex. He's Jocko’s main man and Jocko gets him laid often enough to blunt his horns and usually Half A Man performs routine chores with more enthusiasm and efficiency than normal people. But the ride to the country club took Half A Man past that whorehouse on Elm Street. Bette Bang-Bang, Mattress Mary and Made Marion were sitting on the front porch sipping gin and tonic because Sunday afternoons are slow for them. They spotted Half A Man and yelled. Half A Man heard and all else left the small compartment of his brain which could be described as his mind. The girls did him up brown while I had two drinks in the clubhouse and went on home, with no inkling that I was the most wanted man in the area.”

  Hawkeye told Mary this much of the story on the way back to the Golden View, where they mixed some rum and bitter orange, sat on the back porch of their motel room and watched the moon shine on the tranquil Bay of Chaleur.

  “This was ridiculous, of course,” said Mary, as the story continued. “They could have found you. They could have called everywhere, alerted the police. It wasn’t as though you’d been swallowed up.”

  “Yes, but remember the confusion. Tony and Me Lay thought I’d be right there so they put Laurie to sleep. Meanwhile Old Wiley Morgan, the fearless one, had arrived. When I didn’t show, they let Coffin and Morgan have a go at it. They made a hole in Laurie’s chest about four inches too high, got out a few kernels of corn and a little Scotch whisky. Laurie got better, so they figured they were heroes.”

  “And then?” asked Mary.

  “Then it started to get complicated. Tony told Mrs.

  Kirkaldy’s niece, Nancy Barnes, that I should take over, but Nancy, like so many broads, was under Ramsey’s spell. Tony was a foreigner, I was a newcomer, and Goofus told her Laurie was Dr. Coffin’s case and that I wasn’t needed.”

  “But you did get to Laurie, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. Three days later he had a temperature of 105, a pulse of 150, a falling blood pressure and everyone but Ramsey was taking the choke. Ramsey was calmly telling the family that Laurie couldn’t possibly make it and that any further surgery would kill him. Tony, meanwhile, was telling the family that if I wasn’t called in he’d never attend any of them again. So I decided to take over, regardless of who liked it.”

  “Shouldn't you have done that earlier?” asked Mary.

  “Sure, but I’d been in practice just a year or so. I’d know what to do now, but back then I was just spinning my wheels when I should have been moving.”

  “As I recall,” said Mary, “when you decided to move you did it in your usual crude way.”

  “I guess. Obviously the guy couldn’t live unless something was done, so when Tony gave me the word I scheduled Laurie for surgery and didn’t bother to talk to anyone. I knew I might kill him and if I did there’d be hell to pay. Goofus and Ramsey swooped down on me and I told Goofus that if he made one sound I’d deck him and I told Ramsey that he was a mealymouthed phony and that I was going to get him sooner or later.”

  “How was that received?”

  “I was too concerned with the main issue to assess peasant reaction. Would you like to hear about the operation?”

  “Well, Me Lay put Laurie to sleep and said, Whatever you’re going to do, do it quick.’ As I told you, Ramsey had made the incision much too high. I ripped out his tenth rib and scooped out lobsters, clams and corn. There was a big hole in the lower esophagus. I sewed this up even though I knew it wouldn’t stay closed because you simply can’t get healing at this stage of the game. I established good dependent drainage and then we flipped him onto his back and made a hole in his belly and stuck a tube in the beginning of the small bowel so we could feed him. I didn’t spend over forty minutes doing all this and Laurie was better even before the operation was over. He had the wherewithal to survive. There was a long haul ahead but we started a winning game that morning.”

  “Postoperatively,” asked Mary, “did you take a moment to assess peasant reaction?”

  “Not really. When Laurie came out of the OR alive, Ramsey and Goofus were some upset, but I ignored both of them except to give Ramsey a look which indicated that I intended to bear him in mind.”

  “That was when you decided to destroy him, wasn’t it?” insisted Mary.

  “I wish for Chrissake you’d stop using that word destroy. I just decided to study him in depth and find a way to separate him from the local surgical scene. This was a completely justified and reasonable decision. I know that everyone blames me for it because so many of your dumb friends thought he was a christly saint.”

  “What, exactly, did you do?”

  “First, I made sure that what Me Lay had told me about his training was true. He’d have needed two more years of formal training just to qualify for the American Board of Surgery. Still, at Workmen’s Compensation hearings he described himself as Board-certified.”

  “So,” said Mary, “he lied about his training?”

  “Yes. Then I went over everything he’d done since he’d been in practice. He made out like a tall dog jerking normal gallbladders and uteri. I satisfied myself that he was totally incompetent.”

  “Even by Spruce Harbor standards at the time?”

  “Yes. Old Wiley Morgan was better, but Ramsey h
ad the come on.”

  “I still don’t see where this got you,” said Mary. “The hospital didn’t require specialized training then and ho wasn’t the only one around doing unnecessary hysterectomies. You must have found something else.”

  “I did, indeed,” said Hawkeye with a pleased smirk. “Ramsey seemed to be large with the broads. He had that Jaguar and a speedboat and an airplane. He was single, young, good-looking and he should have been getting enough to kill three men. I learned that Ramsey could hack it only with married women.”

  “And how did you find that out?”

  “I heard it from Bette Bang-Bang.”

  “You do swing in High Society, don’t you?” said Mary.

  “Bette Bang-Bang is a very basic person. She told me that Ramsey flunked out with her and Mattress Mary and Made Marion. But stick him in bed with a married amateur and he was a tiger. You never tried him, did you?”

  “Oh go to hell. Before you tell me more of that sordid story. I want to hear about Laurie and what happened to him.”

  “Well, once I had his chest drained properly, he stabilized. We fed him through the tube in his bowel and he didn’t need intravenous fluids, but four days after surgery it became clear that the hole in his esophagus had reopened, as I’d known it would.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Nothing to do. I gave nature time. I figured if he could heal it himself it’d be better than a surgical attempt. This meant nothing by mouth. Not even swallow his spit. Anything that went by that hole in his esophagus delayed healing so I came on strong with him. Laurie kept saying, So help me God, Hawkeye, if I ever get well enough to go home to New Brunswick, I’m going to stop at every stream along the way and have a drink of cool, clear water.”