To a lesser man than Wrong Way Napolitano this statement might have seemed, at best, bizarre. Wrong Way was not the common, ordinary man. “This is a true challenge,” he said. “Whose ear?”
“The Reverend Titcomb’s.”
“What type fish did you have in mind?”
“You will need pinpoint accuracy with everything from sardines to halibut. Also loaves of bread.”
“Loaves of bread?” asked Wrong Way.
“Yeah.”
“It’s a detail and not important, and I don’t want to seem unduly curious, or nosy, and it’s none of my business but—”
“You mean you want to know why you are to stick a fish in the Reverend’s ear?” asked Trapper.
“I admit to a certain curiosity.”
“Sticking one in his ear is but a figure of speech. I do, however, want him blessed with fish and bread at a time and in a place which I shall select. The Reverend Titcomb is an unusual human being, perhaps even more than human. I believe he has star quality.”
“No doubt about it,” agreed Wrong Way. “Biggest skin baron in the State of Maine. Present company excepted, of course.”
“I am interested in developing a different facet of his character. I believe that he has star quality as a theologian and that all he needs is that one big break, which I am going to provide. I believe that the world, not Tedium Cove, is his parish.”
Wrong Way took a long pull at his beer, achieved a look of deep reflection, and said, “I got a feeling that this conversation is getting nowhere. What exactly do you want me to do?”
“You fish-spotting tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” said Trapper. “Just take me along. I’ll bring a few mackerel and you can start working out. Can we take that plane you use for the parachute jumpers? You’ll need to lean out and wind up if you’re going to get the right action on the fish.”
That evening Trapper appeared at Spruce Harbor International Jetport with a bushel basket of mackerel which he and Lucinda had caught from the shore of Thief Island, just north of the cranberry bog. Out over the bay Trapper took the controls while Wrong Way threw mackerel after mackerel at the boats below. The bushel basket was nearly empty before he got the hang of it. Unloading the one hundred and third mackerel, he watched its course for a moment and yelled: “Trapper! Look. That one’s on target all the way.”
Trapper looked down and saw Pasquale Merlino stagger, put his hands to his head and then, in obvious consternation, look to the heavens. “I guess that’s enough for tonight,” Trapper said.
Darkness came. The aviators and the fishermen returned to port and congregated in the Bay View Café.
Pasquale Merlino told an enthralled audience how he’d been hit on the head by a mackerel.
“I’m a thinka it’s a sign,” said Pasquale after his fourth beer. “Maybe I’m a gonna be da nexta Pope.”
Trapper John and Wrong Way decided to eschew live targets and, for a week, they practiced hitting Thrumbcap Ledge with various fish and loaves of bread. Wrong Way, possessed of great reflexes, was intrigued by this endeavor and did, indeed, achieve nearly pinpoint accuracy. Having honed their technique on Thrumbeap, they concentrated on other targets, including the Tedium Cove Church and the Finestkind Clinic and Fishmarket. The presence of mackerel in both areas was attributed, by the public, to seagulls.
Lucinda Lively called on Hawkeye at his office one afternoon, after the last patient had left. Fully dressed for once, she sat nervously in Hawk’s consulting room. “What’s up, babe?” asked Dr. Pierce.
“Trapper has proposed. We are getting married on Sunday, September twenty-eighth, the day the clinic opens.”
“Finestkind,” said Hawkeye.
“I’m not so sure.”
“Why?”
“That idiot, Titcomb, came out to the island again,” she said, “and he and Trapper must have prayed for twenty minutes and then Trapper announced that we would get married on September twenty-eighth.”
“So what’s the problem? Isn’t that what you want?”
“It’s just so screwy. Now Trapper says that Reverend Titcomb is going to deliver the invocation when the clinic opens and then marry us a couple hours later in Me Lay’s back yard. I don’t want anything to do with that nut.”
Hawkeye laughed. “Sounds to me,” he said, “as though Trapper has really heard the word.”
“Oh, please, Hawk. I don’t want to marry a nut. What is going on?”
“Let’s have a drink,” said Hawk. “Let me find the office jug and some ice and I’ll explain the fundamentals of this even though I don’t know the details.”
Lucinda drained half her drink in a gulp and said:
“So explain.”
“Look, honey. Trapper was probably about to propose to you anyhow. Then came Titcomb. Trapper is a guy who likes to do everything in a peculiar way. He is making a project of Titcomb and your imminent marriage is a byproduct of Trapper’s project.”
“Good lord,” wailed Lucinda, “you mean my wedding is going to be the byproduct of a project?”
“Oh, for Chrissake, take it easy. You love him. He wouldn’t marry you if he didn’t love you. He just has a project. Will you deny him that? Can I have my thermometer back, now that you are engaged?”
“I should say not. I still intend to have my baby.”
“And your goat?”
“Of course.”
The tide was high in Crabapple Cove at 7 P.M. On the hot evening of September 18, and the Pierce family was having a cookout, in their back yard. The noise and dissension which normally accompanies a cookout involving young children was intruded upon by the sound of a boat’s horn. Looking due east the Pierces saw a boat coming full tilt, its horn blowing repeatedly.
“Who in hell is that?” asked Hawkeye.
“It’s Uncle Trapper and Aunt Lucinda,” said a young Pierce.
“Wonder why they’re coming here?” Mary Pierce asked her husband. “I thought they never did anything but have sexual intercourse.”
“Perhaps Aunt Lucinda has become frigid and Trapper is coming for you.”
“I doubt it,” said Mary, “but I can dream until they get here.”
The new lobster boat charged into Hawkeye’s inlet and bumped into his wharf. Trapper and Lucinda jumped out, threw a line to Billy Pierce, and ran up the lawn.
“Hawkeye, Hawkeye,” yelled Trapper.
“What the Christ ails you?” demanded Hawk.
“We’re gonna have a kid,” proclaimed Trapper John.
“Oh, I’m so happy,” said Mary to Lucinda, who was now in tears.
“I love the broad,” announced Trapper.
“That’ll turn out to be handy as time goes by,” Hawkeye observed. “I gather we are the first to know?”
“Sure.”
“It would be within the realm of reason to allow the news to stop here, would it not? I mean, usually this type news is dispensed after the wedding.”
“I came for booze and congratulations, not sociology. Gimme a drink,” demanded Trapper John, “and send one of the kids down to Lew the Jew’s and tell him he’s going to be best man at the wedding?”
Sunday, September 28, dawned like so many dawns on the rockbound coast of Maine. There was fog and a steady, relentless drizzle which occasionally became rain. It was in Dr. and Mrs. Me Lay Marston’s spacious back yard, no more than a drive and a five iron from Thief Island, that Trapper and Lucinda were to be married. Me Lay and Mrs. Marston were unhappy about the weather. They called Maria Tannenbaum, who called Tip Toe at Idlewild and soon a message came: the sun will shine on Trapper and Lucinda and on the grand opening of the Finestkind Clinic and Fishmarket.
Dr. Pierce, bothering everybody, had planned on missing the grand opening and playing golf. He stubbornly insisted that all the clinic needed was to open and that ceremonies were unnecessary. Whatever the weather authorities at Idlewild said about the afternoon, even Hawkeye rejected morning golf in
the fog and rain. He made rounds in the new Spruce Harbor General, found everyone reasonably healthy and decided to inspect Wooden Leg’s new wharf, separated by a wide lawn from the Finestkind Clinic and Fishmarket. Parked at the wharf was a jeep which, he knew, belonged to Wrong Way Napolitano.
Inside the fish palace, Hawkeye found Wrong Way cursing and struggling with a halibut which must have weighed at least a hundred pounds. Every time the aviator seemed to get a stranglehold on it, the huge fish would slip to the floor.
“How long you been stealin’ fish?” Hawk inquired.
“You got it all wrong,” protested Wrong Way. “This is not larceny. It’s an act of God. Leastways it will be if I can get this and that other one over there into the jeep. You wanta help?”
“Such an opportunity comes even less than once in some lifetimes. I would consider it a rare privilege.”
“Okay,” said Wrong Way after the purloined fish were safely in the jeep. “Meet me at the airport. I may need a little help delivering these things. Some acts of God require group effort.”
Wooden Leg Wilcox arrived just in time to see Wrong Way’s jeep leaving the premises. Discovering the loss of two halibut which the Massasoit Inn had specifically ordered for this Sunday, Leg put two and two together and raced for the airport. Hawkeye and Wrong Way, having loaded the halibut aboard, were just climbing into the plane when Wooden Leg pulled up in his pickup truck, and demanded, “Gimme back my halibut, you guinea bastard.”
“Can’t do it, Leg. Don’t worry. You’ll receive your recompense in heaven.” With that, Wrong Way taxied to the runway and took off.
Airborne, Hawkeye inspected the other cargo and found five loaves of Double-Enriched Superbread (builds strong bodies twelve ways). “What’s the bread for?” he asked.
“I don’t know. The customer ordered two fish and five loaves.”
The visibility was limited, and Hawkeye was uneasy while Wrong Way searched the gloom for Eagle Head Light. He found it and banked sharply to starboard, barely missing it. Circling around he said: “We start our run at 10:52. I’ll take care of the loaves. When I give the word, dump those halibut.”
“What are we trying to destroy?” asked Hawkeye.
“Nothing. Don’t worry. Trapper and I got it down to a line art.”
“Have you worked with halibut before?”
“No, but I thought it would be a nice touch.”
“Jesus, you are a crazy guinea. We’re likely to wipe out half of Spruce Harbor with these goddamn haJibut.”
“Quiet,” growled Wrong Way. “We’re about to start our run.”
“Hey, Wrong Way, I hear a team of Italian surgeons just performed the first successful hernia transplant.”
“What?”
While Wrong Way and Hawkeye roamed the still cloudy but clearing sky in a halibut laden Tri-Pacer, a crowd gathered for the grand opening of the Finestkind Clinic and Fishmarket. Community leaders from Spruce Harbor and adjoining towns were proud to attend. Hospital administrators and physicians from all over Maine had made the pilgrimage. Nurses and paramedical personnel abounded. Representatives of the fishing industry included Pasquale Merlino and Zeke Simmons. Duke Forrest, Tony Holcombe, Spearchucker Jones were there with their families. Mary Pierce, resigned to her husband’s peculiar ways, arrived with Billy and Steve Pierce. Several high-ranking members of the Cardia Nostra, former colleagues of Trapper John’s, managed to get there, slightly obtunded by prenuptial ceremonies held the previous evening. Trapper and Lucinda, of course, were there.
At 11 A.M., while Wooden Leg Wilcox leaned against the railing on his new wharf and absentmindedly stabbed his right thigh with an ice pick, Dr. Goofus MacDuff, Medical Director (by acclamation) of the Finestkind Clinic, introduced the guest speaker, Dr. Maxwell Neville of Saint Lombard’s Hospital. Dr. Neville, by now, had recovered from his ffight from New York the day before with Wrong Way Napolitano, who had dropped five mackerel in the vicinity of home plate while flying over Fenway Park.
Maxie Neville praised the ambition, the foresight, the determination of the men who were bringing advanced surgical and medical skills to Spruce Harbor.
His talk was brief, straightforward, to the point and easily quoted by the Spruce Harbor Courier. Most important, his endorsement established Trapper John as the don of Spruce Harbor—a man whose work in cardiovascular surgery should receive continued subsidization from charitable foundations and goverment agencies.
At 11:20 Dr. MacDuff thanked Dr. Neville and introduced the Reverend Richard Titcomb who, he proclaimed rather dubiously, would deliver the invocation. Reverend Titcomb moved with alacrity and zest into his talk. At 11:25, Trapper John, at the rear of the crowd, raised his right arm as the Reverend said, “And they say unto Him, we have here but five loaves and two fishes.
“He said, bring them hither to me,” continued Reverend Titcomb and was about to add: “and he commanded the multitude to sit down upon the grass” when the Finestkind Clinic and Fishmarket took two direct hits. Each fish landed on the roof with a loud, frightening bang and then, on the first bounce, at the feet of Reverend Richard Titcomb.
The crowd, stunned, barely noticed five loaves of bread which, with one exception, floated harmlessly down upon them. One loaf of Double-Enriched Super-bread struck Low Pierce on the right shoulder, causing him to exclaim: “Shit a goddamn.”
Among the first to assess the situation was Zeke Simmons. “By the Jesus,” observed Zeke, “I guess someone sure’n hell brung them hither to him. The Lord heard that young feller. Tain't often we get a parson like that around heah.”
“It’s a miracle. A message from the Lord,” avowed Trapper John, genuflecting before Reverend Titcomb, while local TV cameras recorded the event.
“Why don’t you kiss his feet while you’re at it?” asked Lucinda Lively.
As the crowd, fear and surprise overcome, began to comprehend what had befallen, they surged around Reverend Titcomb. “Hallelujah,” stated several elderly ladies.
“Didn’t I tell you he’s divine,” said one young matron to another.
Mrs. Ophelia Witherspoon of the Spruce Harbor Courier, after thirty years of covering the Eastern Star, church meetings and baked-bean suppers, knew her time had come. Within five minutes she was on the phone to everywhere and an hour later radio stations throughout New England and the world were supplying their listeners with early, still fragmentary details of The Miracle of Spruce Harbor.
Jocko Allcock, informed in advance of The Miracle, had appointed himself Reverend Titcomb’s business manager and press secretary. He had rented a suite at the Massasoit Inn where, between The Miracle and the wedding, the Reverend could remain incommunicado and where, after the wedding, he could receive the press.
And so it came to pass that the Reverend Titcomb even after the sun came out on this glorious day, was slow to understand how brightly the Lord had made his face to shine upon him. Bemused, confused, that afternoon, he joined Trapper John McIntyre and Lucinda Lively in some kind of matrimony.
At the wedding, Hawkeye provided the only offbeat note by arriving with a goat, which he led on a leash.
“Good-looking goat,” said Trapper.
“Glad you like him,” said Hawkeye. “He’s Yours.”
“Oh Hawkeye!” said Lucinda, kissing him.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Trapper.
“Son of a howah,” observed the best man, Mr. Lewis Pierce.
At the reception, where Me Lay provided more than enough of everything, the happy couple divulged that their honeymoon would be spent on Thief Island.
Many well-wishers seemed to feel that this had been used up as a honeymoon spot. Trapper patiently explained that when you live on a place like Thief Island there’s really no other place to go because you’re already there.
Three days later Intercontinental’s flight from Rome landed at Spruce Harbor to pick up lobsters and ten members of the international press. They were accompanying the Reverend Richard Titcomb and his
manager, Mr. Jocko Allcock, who were embarking on the first leg of a worldwide crusade.
As Captain Tannenbaum took off from Spruce Harbor International Jetport, he announced over the intercom: “Ladies and gentlemen, the ancient Indian fertility rites on Thief Island, which our passengers have been privileged to view for the past three months, have been canceled because of cold weather. However, if you look down you can see the happy couple, their home, their domestic animals, including a goat, and the famous cranberry bog.”
Trapper and Lucinda, sensibly dressed, stood next to the cranberry bog and waved at the plane. In the pilot’s cabin, Captain Tannenbaum said to his copilot, “Looks like they got a sheet over the cranberries with something written on it. What’s it say?”
Wrong Way Napolitano studied the area with binoculars and replied: “Hey, Tip Toe, it says FINESTKIND.”
13
THE first year of the Finestkind Clinic and Fishmarket was a success. Its founders felt that their vision and ambition had been justified and that they had created a rural medical center which rivaled and, in certain ways, surpassed the big city competition. In the Finestkind Clinic and in the Spruce Harbor General Hospital, patients were made to feel important, and patients like this.
The cardiovascular surgical unit flourished and Trapper gradually reintroduced Hawkeye Pierce to the Cardia Nostra. Lucinda Lively gave birth to a son. The surgeons were busy and thinking about bringing in new talent. There was, however, no real excitement until shortly after the 1960 presidential election when Coot Yeaton’s jackass got the colic. Coot, an amoral, alcoholic, indigent seventy-year-old former rum-runner, had not been gainfully employed since the repeal of the Volstead Act. When out of jail, Coot had a succession of housekeepers who shared his shack on a lonely cove on the north end of East Haven Island, but his true love was George, a big gray jackass. George and Coot were inseparable. On the rare days when Coot decided to tend his lobster traps George came right along in Coot’s old lobster boat. On windy summer days, people in pleasure boats would see, in the distance, a jackass walking on water. Even when they closed in for a better look there seemed to be more jackass than boat. Coot made as much money posing with George as he made hauling lobsters. The pleasure cruisers had to have pictures to prove to themselves that they hadn’t been drunk and hallucinating.
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