"Shoot, Judge," Hawkeye said.
"Dr. Pierce, have you also played the course at Ulan Bator?"
"Sure. Ever since Penelope got her new broomstick it's a quick shot over there, and Penelope wants to break it in. Nice course. Greens don't hold too well, but I can get home at five, ride over with Penelope, tee off at five-twenty, play nine, fly back, have a drink and eat supper at seven-thirty."
"The course isn't very crowded, I guess," observed Judge Carr.
"Hell, no. Only three members."
"Who's the pro at Ulan Bator?"
"Ghengis Khanstein. Used to be big on the Siberian tour, but he got the yips with his putter, like Hogan."
"They're crazy, Judge," said Goofus MacDuff.
"Hey, Hawkeye," said Duke. "Maybe we're in trouble. You better show the judge your letter from General MacArthur. He put in a nice word for you. Might help out now."
"It might," Hawkeye agreed. "Only fair, after what I done for Doug."
"Gentlemen," said Judge Carr, "enough is enough. Let's leave General MacArthur out of it."
"Judge," interjected Hawk's lawyer, Jim Holden, "I request that a letter from General Douglas MacArthur be presented as a testimonial to the character and sanity of Dr. Benjamin F. Pierce."
"Okay, boys," said the Judge, "let's not get silly. Just what did General MacArthur have to say?"
"How Hawkeye Pierce won World War II single- handed, with the help of Mrs. Penelope Flewelling," stated Attorney Holden. "We'll subpoena General Eisenhower's records, too, if we have to."
"Gee, Judge, I think the lawyer's crazy, too," said Goofus.
"Shut the hell up, Goofus," admonished Judge Carr, who then asked Dr. Pierce, "Is this story of how you won World War II single-handed something you can get through in less than half an hour?"
"If I hurry."
"Proceed quickly."
"Well," Hawkeye said, "most people around here will recall that, up until about thirty years ago, the coast of Maine, particularly Muscongus Bay, was infested with dragons. A lot of people don't realize that if it hadn't been for me and Mrs. Penelope Flewelling the State of Maine would be up to its ass in dragons, even Aroostook County."
"Informal though this hearing may be," said the judge, "watch your language."
"Sure, Jim," Hawk agreed. "Anyway, as a kid I had a dragon boat, that fourteen-foot dory I still got and a five-hoss Johnson, and I took up dragon crunching. One way or another, with Penelope's help, I crunched every jeezely dragon in Muscongus Bay. I got so good I could handle the little ones, the twenty- to thirty-footers, all alone. If they ran over thirty feet, Mrs. Flewelling was around to help out. She had this sharp-pointed broomstick she used against dragons. By the Jesus, when she hit them dragons going seven hundred, maybe eight hundred miles an hour, you better believe they folded quick. As it turned out, after losing to me and Penelope for three or four years, the survivors took off and went to Europe, which is why I made it possible for our troops to invade France on D-Day."
"Will you explain that, please?" asked the judge.
"Sure. When I got drafted into the Army they asked me what I was good at and I told them dragon crunching so they classified me as a 2750 A, which means Dragon Cruncher, First Class. All I did the first two years in the Army was sit around waiting for dragons to crunch, and I was kinda bored. But then it come to be early June 1944 and they put me and my boat on a big plane and flew me to England where they took me to a house in London, 10 Downing Street I think it was, and introduced me to General Eisenhower and Mr. Winston Churchill, a limey politician who gave me a cigar and a shot of brandy.
" 'Nice to meet you fellers,' I said. 'In what way may I be of service?'
" 'Well,' Ike explained, 'we're landing in France in a few days and it turns out the pretzel benders have hired a thousand dragons to guard the beaches and repel our invasion. Personally, I have no experience with dragons and I'm fearful lest their presence have a deleterious, maybe even fatal effect on our troops.'
" 'Me, too,' said Mr. Churchill.
" 'Well,' I said, 'I shouldn't wonder but what you fellers want me to crunch those dragons, or leastways run them off.'
" 'Private Pierce,' Ike said, 'you pierce right to the heart of a subject, don't you?'
"I had to agree, of course. 'Gimme two days and I'll solve the dragon problem, Ike,' I told him.
" 'Bless you, Private Pierce,' said the general.
" 'Oh, wizard,' said the Prime Minister."
Goofus MacDuff was becoming restive. "Do we have to listen to any more of this?" he asked the judge.
"I don't know about you, Goofus," said Judge Carr, "but when I have the chance to hear, first-hand, of history in the making, I listen. You may continue, Dr. Pierce."
"Well," Hawkeye continued, "I won't string it out. Mrs. Flewelling was hanging around close so I decided not to bother with my boat. She had a new two-seater for a stick and we left right from 10 Downing Street for the Normandy Beaches. It took us two days, me crunching them and her stabbing them with her stick, but we de-dragoned that whole coast. Without our efforts, obviously, the invasion would have been impossible."
"Obviously," agreed Judge Carr. "But how does General MacArthur get into the story?"
"Well, after I got through in Normandy, Ike let me come home on furlough, and said to have a good time so long as he could find me if he needed me. So one day I'm sitting in the Tea House of the March Wind—you know that joint Ace Kimball still runs down on Ocean Street—I was having my third tea when the phone rings and Ace says, 'Hawk, it's for you,' and I answer and a guy asks, 'Is this Private Pierce?'
" 'Ayuh,' I said.
" 'This is General Douglas MacArthur,' the guy says.
" 'How they goin', Doug?' I asked him.
" 'No good,' Doug says. 'We got a dragon problem out here in the Pacific. Ike says you are right handy with dragons.'
" 'They give me little trouble,' I told him. 'What is the nature of your dragon problem?'
" 'It is the Grand Dragon,' explained Doug. 'This dragon runs around three hundred feet in length and breathes fire so hot that it melts aircraft carriers. He can submerge for hours at a time. Shells and bullets bounce off him. He is wiping out our fleet. At night he crawls ashore and eats the planes on our airstrips. He is, in fact, a very tough dragon and he is impeding our war effort.'
" 'Doug,' I said, 'I dunno. This sounds like maybe loo much dragon, even for me. Perhaps you could try someone else.'
" 'Soldier,' said the General, 'a plane will pick you up in Bangor. Bring anything you need, but be on that plane or you know what it's gonna be!'
" 'Yes, sir,' I said and drove home and went through the hollow tree into Mrs. Flewelling's cave where I explained the situation. Well, this was one time Penelope let me down. She outright refused to have anything to do with a three-hundred-foot dragon, so I loaded my dragon boat onto my old man's pickup and he drove me to Bangor and three days later I landed in Manilla and met Doug. Doug said the Grand Dragon was cruising a few miles offshore and was probably figuring to have supper at a nearby airstrip and the estimate of his average appetite came to six fighter planes and a couple of bombers.
"So I gassed up that old five-hoss Johnson and headed the dory to sea. Pretty soon I saw a big wave and a lot of foam and something that looked like a submarine except it had six-foot spines all along its back and I knew this had to be the Grand Dragon. He gave me a dirty look and breathed some fire as a sort of warning, but I kept right on going. He just watched me, and finally I pulled up alongside of him.
" 'Hi, Dragon,' I said. 'How they goin'?'
" 'Finestkind,' he replied, and asked, 'What are you? A nut? They don't even dare send a battleship out when I'm around.'
" 'So I hear,' I said. 'I'm Hawkeye Pierce. Perhaps you've heard of me?' |
" 'Are you from Maine? Are you the famous dragon cruncher?' he asked.
" 'None other,' I assured him, and asked, 'What' your name?'
" 'Big Sid,' he
said with a grin that revealed a tremendous mouthful of teeth the size of telephone poles And then he asked, 'Hey, Hawk, you gonna give me a try?'
" 'Look, Sid,' I said, 'let us understand one another right here and now. I am a fair country dragon cruncher, but I am out of shape and I have no experience with dragons of your type build. Let me assure you that this is purely a friendly visit. I have not come to fight. I have come to bargain.'
" 'Go on, I'm listening,' roared Big Sid.
" 'I hear you have a dietary weakness. I hear you like airplanes,' I said to the Grand Dragon.
" 'Your information is correct,' he assured me. 'What's your offer? I'm some hungry.'
" 'Could I interest you in the entire Japanese air force?'
"Big Sid, the Grand Dragon, thought for a moment before answering: 'I've already eaten part of it. Them Zeros is tasty but they don't stay with you. You gotta do better than that.'
" 'Well,' I told him, 'there'll be a lot of surplus outdated planes on our side once the war's over. I'll arrange for you to get them, and all the surplus outdated planes for the next hundred years. How's that grab you?'
" 'First rate,' he said. 'What have I got to do?'
" 'Very little,' I told him. 'All I want you to do is cruise up to Japan and breathe on some city about' ten davs from now. I'll let you know the exact time and place and we'll work it out so one of our bombers drops a bomb at the same time. You head for Japan, mid I'll be in touch with you.'
"A week later a submarine surfaced at night a few miles off the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Two miles farther out, Big Sid, the Grand Dragon, was lolling leisurely in the waves.
"My dory with the five-hoss Johnson was launched from the sub and I went to see Big Sid. 'Here's the deal, Sid,' I explained. 'Tomorrow at seven o'clock I want you to crawl ashore at Hiroshima. Wait until you see a bomber overhead and wait till you see a big bomb drop. Then I want you to take the deepest breath you can and blast off. You got it?' I asked.
" 'A piece of cake,' he said and grinned.
" 'I sure hope so,' I said. 'If this act swings, you're booked at Nagasaki the week after next. That should do it.'
"Well, as everybody knows, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wiped off the map. It is not, however, common knowledge that the atom bomb wasn't invented until 1950. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki it was my buddy, Big Sid, the Grand Dragon, just blowing off a little steam and giving our scientists time to perfect the bomb."
At the conclusion of this moving tale, Judge Carr, so overcome with emotion that words failed him, rose from his chair, approached Hawkeye and solemnly shook his hand, as did Lawyer Holden and Duke Forrest. "I'm so very, very proud of you, Hawkeye," the Judge was able to say, finally, in a voice choked with emotion.
"But what about committing him?" demanded Goofus.
"MacDuff, I'm thinking of having you put away," said Judge Carr as he left his chambers and departed for the Spruce Harbor Country Club.
"But," squealed Rex Eatapuss, "Pierce is a deviate."
"A what?" asked Judge Carr.
"A deviate," asserted Rex.
"Oh, I know what you mean," said the Judge. "His drives deviate slightly to the left. You really mean he's a hooker, because his left wrist is a little limp."
"But," expostulated Rex, though getting no furth
"Get that hunky outta here, Henry," Judge Carr instructed the bailiff.
CHRISTMAS STORY
EDDIE STEMKOWSKY, the notorious Jumping Polack of Lincoln County, now teaches history at Port Waldo High School, where Hawkeye and I matriculated. My surgeons, the former Swampmen, are a tightly knit group. Their inner circle is small. How one gets to be a member is impossible to define. The Jumping Polack, for whatever reason, is in. Possibly because he jumped, naked, into a snowbank from a second-story girls' dormitory window as an undergraduate at the University of Maine at Orono.
Eddie is married to Alice, a helluva nice broad he met when he was going to the University. They have two little kids, a small house, two VW's, two jobs and a pure-bred Dutch-type dog called a Keeshond that produces seven or eight puppies every eight months. The puppies are worth a hundred and fifty bucks each. Obviously they have economic significance.
Eddie's dog, fascinatingly named Arf-Arf, calved eight times in November 1973. One night in early December Eddie and Alice hit a patch of ice and left the road. The Volkswagen protected neither of their right femurs. Truly a family accident. Both immobilized, out of work, out of action for at least three months. .Money still coming in, but not enough to cover all expenses. Minor tragedy, negligible in fact, but their friends had to help.
Mrs. Lucinda Mclntyre gathered to her growing bosom not only the two Stemkowsky children. She also took in Arf-Arf and the eight puppies, worth twelve hundred dollars if the puppy market was right. Trapper John, visiting Eddie and Alice in the hospital, expressed his approval of Lucinda's act of kindness. "I like dogs and Polacks," he told them.
Lucinda set out to sell the puppies. She advertised them in the Press Herald and the Boston Globe. There were no takers. She talked to pet shops, which offered only fifty to seventy-five a puppy, explaining that merchandising a puppy is enhanced by allowing the customer to see the puppy. Lots of puppy sales, it seems, are on the spur of the moment. Newspaper ads for puppies, she was told, are particularly ineffective during energy crises. Nobody asked for an explanation of this and none was offered, to the best of my knowledge.
Lucinda had also taken over the Stemkowsky family finances. As Christmas approached she realized that there wasn't quite enough money to pay all the bills and buy presents for the children. She decided on December 24 to start her own pet shop in the window of Stiff Standing Hooper's real estate office, which is right next to his outstanding funeral parlor on Main Street in Spruce Harbor. Lucinda, along with other activities, is a part-time real estate saleslady. She had all eight puppies in a big basket where the last-minute Christmas shoppers could see them. The sign said: "Keeshonds for sale."
Let me make it quite clear that I never heard of a Keeshond until Eddie and Alice came up with Arf-Arf. I'm told they are very large in Holland. What I do know is that a seven-week-old Keeshond puppy is about the most lovable, cuddly little ball of silver gray face-licking fur you'll find anywhere. Certainly the best of anything that ever appeared in the window of Stiff Standing Hooper's real estate office.
Lucinda opened her pet shop at 10 a.m. She told me about the first sale and the whole crazy business at a New Year's Eve party. "Oh, Hook," she said, "I'd no more than put them in the window than a young service man, Air Force I think, and his wife and two little boys stopped. They were an awfully nice looking young couple. I think the boy played basketball for us a few years ago, real nice looking kids, maybe seven or eight. I began to get this awful feeling, watching those kids look at the puppies. I watched the parents. I just knew what they were saying with their eyes and they said something to each other, all the time looking at the kids and the puppies. And they tried to get the kids moving but they just kept staring fascinated at the puppies. Finally the father talked to the older boy. I just know Mommy and Daddy were on a tight budget. They were embarrassed to come in and ask how much. They decided maybe they could afford twenty, maybe thirty dollars. Daddy told the boy to come in and ask how much.
"I'd already made up my mind those kids were going to have a puppy and I was going to say twenty bucks, the hell with it, but just before the kid came I saw Spearchucker Jones come out of the bank across the street. He, too, was attracted by the puppies and, as the kid came in, I realized he'd been monitoring the scene, just as I had. The older boy came in and his little brother followed him. They looked into the basket and, well, you know kids and puppies, they were just dying to pick one of them up, but they didn't and finally the older boy asked, 'How much for a puppy?' The look on his face, wish you could have seen it, and, well, you know me, but I had a hunch, so I said, hundred and fifty dollars.'
"I almost broke down. The smaller boy had tears
in his eyes. Corny, isn't it? Yeah, well, so it is, but if happened. In a choked-up little voice the kid said,; 'Thank you,' and he and his brother walked out. I watched him tell his parents and saw their look of frustration—more than that, despair. And then I saw my main man make his move and I knew, I just knew my hunch had paid off. Spearchucker Jones walked up to the couple, and I opened the door so I could hear. 'I'm Dr. Jones,' he said. 'Didn't I see you play' basketball a few years ago?' he asked the airman, and the young man said, 'Yes,' obviously proud to be recognized by Dr. Jones. And before you knew it, they'd told the Chucker about the one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar puppies and Chucker was saying, 'I'm sure there's some mistake. Will you allow me to inquire?' So in he comes, lays one hundred and thirty dollars in my hand with that funny look he sometimes has, Then he goes out and says, 'Just as I suspected. The little boy must have misunderstood the lady. They're only twenty dollars.'
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