MASH Mania

by Richard Hooker

  "Well, you know me. I gathered in the twenty, dollars and had all I could do not to whimper when those kids took their puppy."

  "How'd you move the rest of them?" I asked.

  "Spearchucker watched this transaction and he went into what Trapper calls his vaudeville smile, all teeth and whites of eyes, and he says in that fake black routine, 'Miss Lucinda, look like you and me in the puppy business, but first I gotta get us some sustenance.' He reappeared ten minutes later with four six packs of Coke and five bottles of what he and Duke call Jack in the Black, Jack Daniels Black Label, and a whole bunch of paper cups and a bag of ice cubes.

  " 'Miss Lucinda,' he said, pouring a bourbon and Coke for us, 'we are now in business.'

  "You know our office is right on the street. Chucker dipped once on his Jack in the Black and, looking out I lie window, he says, 'I believe I see a live one.' The live one was Hawkeye Pierce, who was doing his usual last-minute Christmas shopping. As Hawk walked by, the door opened and this great arm just reached out, plucked him off the sidewalk and sat him down on the sofa.

  " 'Hey, boy, have a drink,' said Spearchucker.

  "You can imagine the conversation, but the end of it was, 'Hawkeye, I Santa Claus. Man, like you gotta tithe for Santa Claus. I'm movin' a few puppies here and I need a contribution of maybe two pneumonectomies from you.'

  " 'Christ,' said Hawk, 'that's a large one. A grand even at Blue Shield prices. You're outta your nigger mind.'

  " 'Pay, brother. Wasn't that a nice drink?'

  "Hawkeye got out his checkbook. 'Who do I make it out to?' he asked.

  " 'Santa Claus Jones.'

  " 'Okay, buddy boy. You do this to me, you gotta hit some other folks. You want me to steer a few this way?'

  " 'Now you talkin', boy. Oops. Wait just a tiny moment.'

  "The door opened, the big arm went out and came back in with Dry Hole Pomerleau, the French well-driller. 'Well, lookee here what I found. A rich swamp canary just dying for a drink of good old Jack and a chance to help out Santa Claus.'

  " 'What the hell are you up to now, you crazy ------?” Then he stopped, because I was there, but I knew what he was going to say.

  " 'I want a check for five hundred bucks so I can play Santa Claus. That's how much you overcharge me for that well, because I'm a nigger.'

  " 'I didn't overcharge you because you're a nigger, you goddamn fool. I overcharged you because you're a doctor.'

  " 'Five hundred, Dry Hole.'

  " 'Do I get a puppy?'

  " 'You just get to know that you've made a little kid happy.'

  " 'Okay,' said Dry Hole. 'You get that sonovabitch, Stiff Standing Hooper, too.'

  "At this point," Lucinda told me, "Spearchucker sent me across the street to cash the two checks. I came back with fifteen hundred bucks.

  " 'What are we doing?' I asked the Chucker.

  " 'Well, I'm not sure, but I'm getting a feel for this. We got the puppies paid for. Let's start giving them away.'

  "It was only ten-thirty. By noon the puppies were gone and we'd collected another two thousand dollars. Chucker seemed to have some instinct for matching puppies and kids. He knew, I'm sure he did, which kid really wanted a puppy, would love it, care for it, train it. Three little girls and four more little boys got puppies. You should have seen the looks, first of wonder, then of pure joy, when this great black giant came out, spoke to their parents and got permission for the kid to have a puppy. Oh, Hook, he was just great."

  "You're somewhat partial to superlatives," I reminded Lucinda, "but okay, he was great. How'd he get the extra two grand?"

  "That was just the start of it. Hawkeye and Dry Hole, having been grabbed, steered the suckers in.

  He got a thousand from my husband by threatening to go to bed with me, and five hundred from Stiff Standing Hooper just by towering over him, and you know how Hooper is with money. About eleven-thirty Crazy Horse Weinstein went by. Well, you know Horse, he's about as big as the Chucker. He was a little hard to drag in. Chucker had to go right out on the street and use two hands. He gave him a drink and said, 'Congratulations, Horse, I'm dealing you in for only five hundred in return for grabbing all the rich Jews for maybe ten grand.'

  " 'Who do you think you are?' Crazy Horse demanded.

  " 'Man, I Santa Claus.'

  "Well, I thought Crazy Horse was going to die laughing, but finally he reached into his pocket and peeled off five hundred-dollar bills. 'Okay,' he said, 'I get you ten grand, we spend it all out on the reservation—food, clothes, toys for kids.'

  " 'Deal,' said Chucker. 'Have another Jack in the Black, Horse. How you gonna raise the ten?'

  " 'Easy. I'll go to my most prosperous brethren and tell them, for a grand, I can talk you out of moving in next door. Be back in two hours.'"

  Lucinda's story was interrupted by an hors d'oeuvre tray and a new drink.

  "Well, where was I?" she asked. "Oh, yes. Horse went out to hit half his people so he could play Santa Claus for the other half. There was a lull, so Chucker and I had a drink. It was, I don't know, twelve-thirty, one o'clock, we looked out and we saw Scrooge Prouty coming out of the bank. Scrooge, you know how he walks, like every step might be his last, like a marathon runner the last hundred yards? And he was carrying one of those one quart jars people use to preserve things in, Mason jars, I guess you call them."

  Lucinda dissolved into laughter at this point, a: the story stopped again, temporarily.

  Jim (Scrooge) Prouty, of the Prouty Lumber Com pany, is a Spruce Harbor Brahmin. Old, old family His forebears built ships. Much loot. At seventy, Scrooge, a seventeen handicapper, has been through a lot. Hawkeye took out his left lung ten years ago. Spearchucker removed a cervical disc seven years ago. Someone replaced his original right hip joint with a steel prosthesis five years ago. His arthritis is so bad he can't get a golf club back very far. Hawkeye nailed him for a gallbladder just a couple of years back and fixed his hernia at the same time. In September of '73, Duke removed his urinary bladder, a cystectomy as my boys say, for cancer. As I understand it, in this kind of case they plug the ureters, the tubes that carry urine from the kidney to the bladder, into an isolated segment of lower small bowel—they call it an ileal bladder. The opening for this is in the right lower quadrant of the abdomen about where many of us have our appendectomy scars. So they'd done this to Scrooge in September. In October Scrooge came back to the hospital with an intestinal obstruction. Duke and Hawkeye operated on him. Where they'd made the new bladder, the small intestine was all stuck down. They freed it up, had to take out about two feet of bowel. For the next two weeks things were nip and tuck, but Scrooge, as usual, emerged victorious and left the hospital in late November. He spent two weeks at home gathering strength before going to the Mid- Ocean Club in Bermuda for sun, golf and assorted rehabilitation. The Bermuda vacation was enjoyable, but toward the end Scrooge wasn't feeling too well. Urine from his new bladder was bloody and foul smelling, and he had a low-grade fever.

  For Jim Prouty, the name "Scrooge" is inappropriate, which everybody knows, and which is why, with our simple small-town minds, we think it's funny to call him Scrooge. In some ways he is not loose with his money. Hear him talk, you'd think everybody was out to grab him. "You take that Hawkeye," he'll say, "his wife says she needs a new refrigerator, what's he do? He calls me up, says, " 'Scrooge, I need a thousand, you gotta come in, have an operation.' I says to him, 'Gawd, boy, whyn't you just come down to the yard, hold me up with a gun, take a thousand. I won't have to go through all that sufferin'.' But he says, 'No, Scrooge, I want you to suffer for the refrigerator.' "

  Scrooge knows perfectly well that if he went to Boston for his surgery it'd cost him three times as much, and he could afford it, but he keeps on complaining. The thing about Scrooge, though, any time I'm a little short at the hospital and Wooden Leg Wilcox is temporarily embarrassed, Leg'll say, "Call Scrooge, see if he's in a charitable mood." When I call Scrooge, I never get the whining we all hear at the g
olf course or the Rotary Club. What I hear is, "How much you need, boy?" and "You ain't gonna tell nobody?"

  Well, let's get back to the story. Lucinda was telling me about Scrooge coming out of the bank with this jar cradled in his arms. She said Chucker grinned in anticipation, swallowed some Jack in the Black, and put that great black hand on Scrooge as he passed the door.

  " 'You leggo me, you darky thief,' Scrooge whined. 'I ain't ready for no more operations.'

  " 'I'm Santa Claus,' Chucker explained. 'All I want is a thousand bucks and you don't even have to get operated on. Where else you gonna get a bargain like that?'

  " 'Put it that way, I suppose you're right. Not even a hospital bill?'

  " 'Straight grand, no strings, Scrooge.'

  " 'Mighty nice of you, boy. First time one of you fellers ever let me off so easy. You take my check?'

  " 'An honor, Scrooge. May I ask what you have in the jar which you cradle so protectively in your arms like you were carrying it into the Dolphin defense?'

  " 'Oh, well, it's sort of a Christmas present for Duke. He made this new bladder for me but it come out. I thought 'twas a mite unusual. Thought he'd like to have it. Don't s'pose I could get my money back.'

  "Chucker looked a little alarmed, but not really. 'Now don't you put me on, Scrooge,' he warned. 'You funnin' me, ain't you?'

  " Hell, no. My bladder, I got it in this hear jar.' " •

  " 'Lemme see,' said Chucker. All of a sudden the game of the day disappeared. Chucker grabbed the jar, took it into the john and poured the contents into the sink. What he saw was about ten inches of necrotic small intestine. He came charging out like he needed two yards to win the Superbowl and ordered, 'Lucinda, find Duke and call the hospital.'

  " 'Now you wait just a goddamn minute here, young fella," Scrooge Prouty whined. 'You told me all I had to do was pay a thousand dollars, I wouldn't have to have no doctors or no hospital. What do you think you're doin' anyhow?'

  "There's a sofa in one corner of the office," Lucinda continued. "Chucker picked Scrooge up, laid him down on the sofa and said, 'You just rest easy now, Scrooge baby, we gonna take care of you.'

  " 'Here we go again,' moaned Scrooge.

  "Duke arrived. He'd already been tapped for a grand and was hanging out in the bank looking for new victims. Spearchucker took him to the john to view the ileal bladder."

  Then, as Lucinda told it, "Duke looked like he'd jumped out of his own bladder. He almost ripped Scrooge's clothes olf and viewed his belly where the bladder was supposed to empty. 'How you feel, Scrooge?' he asked.

  " 'Feel good, Duke. Ever since that thing come out, two weeks ago. Afore that I was feelin' right ghormy.'

  " 'Right what?'

  " 'Ghormy.'

  "'Of course. Ghormy. You mean to tell me this happened two weeks ago?'

  " 'Ayuh?'

  " 'Why the . I mean why in the hell didn't

  you let me know then?'

  " 'I was afeard you'd get all upset.'

  " 'I'm all upset now.'

  "'Ayuh, but I tell you, Duke, I thought I was havin' a baby, maybe you fellers knocked me up, when this thing come out. I still got that nice little pink thing on the surface,, put the catheter in like you show me, let the water out, feel finestkind. Just was bringin' it in to show you, thought you'd be interested.'

  "Hawkeye blew in then and heard the story. 'Jesus,' he said, 'we musta knocked off the blood supply to that christly ileal pouch when we fixed his small bowel obstruction. So, he's leaking urine into a walled-off pocket in his belly instead of the ileal pouch. If he's swinging with it, we sure as hell ain't gonna mess with it.'

  "The three doctors," said Lucinda, "mulled this I hought for a few seconds, and then Spearchucker said, 'Scrooge, Merry Christmas. Get off the sofa and have some Jack in the Black.' "

  Scrooge, liberated, no longer under threat of immediate surgical indictment, moved moderately, as is his way in everything, into the Jack in the Black!

  Ere long, according to Lucinda Mclntyre, he suggested, "If my bladder is as unusual as you fellers seem to think it is, sittin' in that there sink, and you fellers is tryin' to collect money to help the poor folks, which I figure is what's goin' on here, and I gather you run out of puppies, which I gathered before I come, why don't you charge money to look at my bladder? How many of them ileal bladders bfl they on exhibit for the general public in Spruce Harbor today, or ever in an average ye-ah?"

  It was then that Spearchucker sent Lucinda on a special assignment. I've pieced the rest of the story together from further talks with her and others. Everyone agreed that placing Scrooge's bladder on exhibition would, indeed, be a public service. The first customer was Solly (Live Better Electrically) Davis, the new psychiatrist at Spruce Harbor Medical Center. Solly, once of Brooklyn, wore black cowboy boots, Levis, a black leather jacket and a blue button-down Hathaway shirt, all below a big black beard and bright, piercing, sparkling eyes. When Spearchucker saw him coming, he rejoiced.

  "Put me down, you meshugene schwartzer," Solly ordered a moment later, "or I'll cool you out with my Thorazine spray gun, in preparation for the electric shock treatments. May I be so bold as to inquire what you and these other Christian gentlemen are doing?"

  "For two hundred bucks," Hawkeye exclaimed, "we gonna let you look at Scrooge's bladder."

  "It's part of our Christmas pogrom," Scrooge explained.

  "I knew it, I knew it," exclaimed Solly. "Everywhere I go, to the school, no matter where, somebody invites me to a Christmas pogrom. I give you Iwo bills, whaddaya do, go buy an oven?"

  "We already got the oven. For two bills we won't turn it on."

  Solly, he's a little different. He paid the two hundred and joined the group, after politely explaining that, as a psychiatrist, his interest in bladders was minimal.

  "Surely," quothe Hawkeye, "someone will wish to view Scrooge's bladder, no doubt a first in urological history. May I have just another small touch of that fine middle-aged mash?"

  Chucker, always alert, saw a prominent aviator approach.

  "Oh, Lordy, we got us a live one. Here comes The Stoned Eagle, Mr. Wrong Way Napolitano. Yuh all come right in here Wrong Way and have yourself a little warmth."

  Whisked off the street, Wrong Way, always a realist, had a drink. "We gotta have two hundred bucks, Wrong Way, or Solly Davis is gonna hit you with this Thorazine spray," he was told.

  To reinforce the threat, Solly gave him a small sample of Florient, which Lucinda had used to negate the not inconsiderable smell of Scrooge's bladder.

  "Here's the deuce. I better have another drink," said the aviator.

  "Finestkind. You wanta see Scooge's bladder?" offered Solly Davis, who was quick to adopt the native language and custom.

  "Sure," said Wrong Way.

  "Somebody better go with him," Hawk warned, "make sure he doesn't eat it."

  The next victim was the illustrious leader of the Spruce Harbor Mental Health Clinic, Dr. Ferenc Ovari, known to one and all as Rex Eatapuss. Rex, like the others, was speared by the long arm of Spearchucker Jones. His slightly porcine features were reddened and aquiver with fear and noncomprehension when the Chucker placed him on the sofa and said, "Rex, baby, where you been? Ah been waitin' for you. Here, have a nice shot of Jack in the Black."

  "I hear you rode into town on a horse with no name," Trapper said to him.

  Rex sort of whimpered.

  "Two bills for the drink and you get to see Scrooge's bladder," Hawkeye explained.

  "Part of our Christmas pogrom," added Scroogge.

  "Will you stop saying that?" exclaimed Solly Davis who approached Rex with his can of Florient and gave him a light dusting. "Two bills, Rex," he repeated, "or I plug you into my electric bed and turn you into a coal miner again."

  "Swine," said Rex.

  "You're a true con man, Rex," Hawkeye told him. "You talk like a movie hunky. When you were| growin' up in Scranton, you'd have said something really unpleasant. Two bills."


  Rex paid. The boys forgot to let him see Scrooge's bladder. He left, I guess feeling lucky to escape with his life.

  Meanwhile Scrooge, moderately but with the plodding Yankee determination that had characterized his business career, had moved into the Jack in the Black. So determinedly, in fact, that at 2:15 p.m.i he said, "I figure this here is a good Christmas pogrom. I gonna match what you get, dollar for dollar."

  Hawkeye sat down next to him. "We got thirty-two grand, counting what Crazy Horse'll get from the Hebes. You already gave a grand. Another thirty-one will suffice. Gimme a check. Make it out to Spruce Harbor General."

  "I sure as hell ain't gonna make it out to you."