MASH Mania

by Richard Hooker

  Crazy Horse reappeared with two trucks, ten grand and Tip Toe Tannenbaum. Lucinda Mclntyre returned with four social workers, a list of needy families from the County Department of Health and Welfare and two of Scrooge Prouty's lumber trucks. Lucinda and the social workers spent a hectic Our assessing the needs of various families. By the line they'd made a hasty plan of where and how to spend twenty-one large, Crazy Horse and Tip Toe had already swept through supermarkets buying food, and Zayre's buying clothing and toys for the Indians at Moose Isle Reservation. There are a variety of stories going around about the thirty-mile trip to Moose Isle. It seems that Horse had liberated a bottle of Jack in the Black, fearing a change in the weather. Tip Toe, who does not drink, except when he's driving a truck, is said to have caught the spirit of the season. The only ascertainable fact is that they played Santa Claus at the reservation, where their gifts were received with gratitude. Crazy Horse wants to be governor and, according to Tip Toe, couldn't resist a small political pitch, which prompted one of the Indian leaders to speculate as to whether "Jewboy speak with forked tongue."

  Mind you, that's just what Tip Toe told me. I doubt if it's true.

  Lucinda organized a twenty-grand food, clothing and toy onslaught for the underprivileged, unfortunate, inept or what have you. She was assisted by my surgeons, the social workers, Solly Davis, Dry Hole Pomerlau and Wrong Way Napolitano. They swept through the stores like a herd of locusts, bringing joy to overstocked proprietors of discount everythings. Darkness was upon them when Lucinda and the social workers embarked in Scrooge's two overloaded trucks, one driven by Hawkeye, the other by the Chucker.

  Here and there, isolated farms, walk-up apartments, even a couple of islands visited in Trapper's boat, they appeared, usually led by Spearchucker who'd announce, "Evenin', I'm with Santa Claus. He told me to leave this stuff here."

  By ten o'clock they were done. "You saved out a grand, Lucinda. What's that for?" asked Hawkeye.

  "For Peter and Alice. Their puppies got us going, and that'll give them a little extra."

  "I suppose that's fair. Horse gave ten grand the Indians. How about Chucker? Maybe we should have saved something out for the coons."

  "Well," said Duke, "don't worry about it. I saw the check he sent to the foundation he and his brother run in Forrest City, Georgia. That's why he does the work of two neurosurgeons. Half is for him, and half is for something else."

  Hawkeye Pierce got home at 11:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve. His wife Mary, a long sufferer who never asks questions, said, "The children missed you."

  "I know. I'm sorry. I'll make it up to them tomorrow."

  MEANSTREAK

  July 8, 1974.

  LAST NIGHT, in one of the sumptuous function rooms at the Bay View Cafe, three hundred people attended a party for Meanstreak Morse. The headline in today's Spruce Harbor Gazette read: "Welcome Home, Meanstreak."

  "Probably just got out of jail," I heard a summer complainant say down at the newsstand. That's not the way of it.

  Fourteen years ago, in 1960, a short biography of Mr. Morse would have read: "Claremont (AKA Meanstreak, or Mean) Morse. Born March 16, 1923, Crabapple Cove, Maine. Graduated Port Waldo High School 1941 (All-state center, football). U.S. Marine Corps 1942-1945. Bronze Star. Silver Star. Purple Heart. Married Evelyn Pierce 1941. Five children. Occupation: lobster fisherman; clamdigger. Height 6'4". Weight 230 pounds, all muscle."

  Old Mean Morse. I am not usually overly sentimental, but I got all choked up at that party last night Hawkeye Pierce, Mean and I played on the Port Waldo team that beat Spruce Harbor back in '41, Mean got his name before that. I think it was '39. We were playing Belfast, and Mean was working over their center quite actively. I can still see and hear that kid pointing at Mean, jumping up and down and yelling to one of the officials, "That big sonovahowah Morse has got a mean streak."

  In a way, maybe he did, but usually with provocation. When he was seventeen he knocked up Hawkeye Pierce's fifteen-year-old sister Evelyn and had to get married because her father, Big Benjy, was just as big as Mean and came armed to discuss the nuptials. Then there was the war and the Marines and Guadalcanal and Okinawa. Details of all that are hazy. He was, according to the story, recommended for the Congressional Medal of Honor by his commanding officer, who caught a sniper bullet a day later. The recommendation got filed and the witnesses buried. Specifics of his wounds are not known, at least to me. The local consensus at the time was something like, "Jeezely gooks like to shoot the ahss off'n Old Mean."

  Mean came home in late '45 for a hero's reception at the Grange Hall in Crabapple Cove. The Spruce Harbor Gazette made quite a to-do over him, since he was about the only genuine war hero the area had produced. By this time he and Evelyn had two kids. Mean bought a lobster boat, dug clams, did a little carpentry and other odd jobs, and found time to get three more kids before Evelyn had her hysterectomy. He was a worker, no question about it, made good money for around here, took good care of the kids. Hawkeye's wife Mary got his oldest, Susan, a scholarship into Wellesley, and Mean would go lobstering and dig two tides to keep up with what the scholarship didn't cover.

  In 1960 Jocko Allcock and Tip Toe Tannenbaum (the only left-handed Jewish jet pilot, working part-time as the house dick at the Massasoit Inn) went Into the insurance business. This was just one of many ventures for these farsighted entrepreneurs, but they pursued it assiduously. Early on they sold Mean Morse a policy designed especially for the self- employed which provided income and vocational retraining in the event of injury at work. Three days later, as Mean bent over to start the day's clam digging, something popped in his back. He collapsed in the mud. Any effort to get up was greeted with muscle spasms so excruciatingly painful that his vocal response attracted the attenion of fellow diggers three hundred yards away. Mean was taken to Spruce Harbor Medical Center where Spearchucker Jones sedated him and eventually operated on him for a ruptured intervertebral disc. His recovery was fairly rapid, but he found that he could not dig clams. Spearchucker said that, although the disc problem was solved, Mean had a chronic ligamentous strain induced by bending over the clam hoe from his great height for so many years. Despite Mean's enormous strength, Chucker declared him disabled not only for clam digging but for lobstering, fearing that recurrence of the muscle spasms in a heavy chop five miles offshore might render Mean unable to manage the boat.

  So, Jocko and Tip Toe came across with the insurance. Meanstreak Morse, thirty-seven years old, father of five, one kid in Wellesley, another at the University of Maine, was sidelined with an income of one hundred a week. He took to drinking. In the fifteen years since the war, Mean had never been too big on the sauce because there wasn't time for it, but now and then, maybe once a month, he and his father-in-law Big Benjy Pierce, would get into Benjy's Old Bantam Whiskey. They'd invade the deadfalls and bistros of Spruce Harbor, Maine. After their first invasion, new of their approach caused the Spruce Harbor police force to evacuate any area chosen by the invaders, This was because Meanstreak and Benjy had decided that the police were gooks and Ace Kimball's joint, the Tea House of the March Wind, was Iwo Jima. The devastation wrought upon the police force, to say nothing of the Tea House, has its niche in local history. Mean's overall reputation and Hawkeye's influence with Jocko, Wooden Leg and other czars of Spruce Harbor thwarted any serious attempt at prosecution.

  After two months on the Old Bantam, Mean began to taper off, and one day he called upon his insurance agent, Mr. Jocko Allcock, to discuss the vocational retraining clause in the insurance policy. Immediately after Mean's, departure, Mr. Allcock headed directly for the Bay View Cafe and started drinking some of Angelo's razor blade soup (Beefeater's on the rocks) and muttering to himself. According to Angelo, asked later to interpret, Jocko muttered consistently and repetitively: "stupid sonovabitch."

  After the fourth bowl of razor blade soup, Angelo called Tip Toe Tannenbaum, expressing concern over his partner's future health. Tip Toe was at the airport on his way to Boston,
whence he had to drive a 707 to Rome. He suggested consultation with Hawkeye Pierce.

  Hawkeye arrived after office hours and joined Jocko. "Whatsa matta, Jock?" he asked. "You seem distraught, perhaps even juiced."

  "Your Christless brother-in-law, that's what's the matta."

  "What about him?"

  "He came in today and wants his insurance to pay for vocational retraining."

  "What's wrong with that? It's in the contract, isn't it?"

  "Yeah."

  "So what are you so upset about? Lord knows, he can't live on a hundred a week, and all he knows is clams and lobsters."

  "I'll tell you what's wrong!" roared Jocko. "The stupid sonovabitch wants to be a brain surgeon."

  Hawkeye apparently didn't help matters any by relapsing into a seemingly uncontrollable spasm of laughter. This, rather than lulling Mr. Allcock, vexed him to the point of ordering still another bowl of soup, livery time Hawkeye subsided slightly he'd be struck with further spasms. Five minutes passed before the surgeon was able to say, "What the hell are you worried about, Jocko. Even if he had any smarts, Mean couldn't become a brain surgeon. The dumb bastard's only been to high school, he can't even pronounce his own name, he calls himself MO-AHSS and he's thirty-seven years old. Let's see, four years of college, four years medical school, six years of residency. Christ, he'd be fifty-one years old. Impossible, even with the smarts."

  "That's what I told him. He picked me up and held me in a corner and said vocational training was due him and he was gonna be a brain surgeon, and me and Tip Toe gotta pay."

  "Chrissake, Jocko. Don't worry about it. I'll go talk to him. He'll listen to me."

  Later Hawkeye entered his sister's kitchen in the little house near the end of Pierce Road on the shore of Crabapple Cove. "Where's Mean?" he asked.

  "Susan is tutoring him. She's home from Wellesley for the weekend."

  "Tutoring him in what?"

  "Spelling."

  "Oh, my sweet Jesus," Hawk groaned. "Gimme a drink. I don't suppose you have anything besides that rotgut he and the old man are so thirsty for."

  "No, but there's a little left. I'll get it." Pouring her brother a drink, Evelyn Morse said, "He's serious, you know, Hawkeye. You're going to help him."

  "Evelyn, honey, don't be ridiculous. Mean's a great guy, the Audie Murphy of Crabapple Cove if you will, but gentle Jesus, he had all he could do to get through high school -----"

  "You stop, Hawkeye. You're too busy to pay any attention to anybody around here. You don't really know Claremont anymore."

  "Claremont? Who the hell is Claremont? Oh, yeah, I forgot."

  "Claremont for years has been reading all kinds of books late into the night, then getting up at four-thirty to haul traps. He may not be educated, but he's smarter'n you think and knows more'n you think."

  "Come to think of it, that Susan didn't get into Wellesley just on Pierce chromosomes. Maybe I been overlooking something."

  "Will you help?"

  "Evelyn, please. I'll help, but you have to be realistic. Yes, maybe go to college, be a teacher, maybe coach some football, something like that, but I won't be party to encouraging an impossible dream. It is impossible. You and Mean are a little isolated from the mainstream. You simply have no conception of what you're talking about. As I said, it's ridiculous. I'd be unkind to encourage him."

  "Claremont wants to be a brain surgeon. That insurance has to pay, and you're gonna help," Evelyn insisted.

  "I doubt like hell the insurance policy covers college expenses. Jocko will try to jink him out of it. Tip Toe Tannenbaum's another story. I probably can get Tip Toe to go along with college. Hell, why not? Let him try college. After a time he'll see for himself the brain surgery bit is foolish, but, like I said, maybe teaching ---------------"

  "Thanks, Hawk. You're a great brother."

  Hawkeye, picking up the phone, called a familiar number, that of Rat Randall, principal of Port Waldo High and prominent golfer.

  "Hey, Rat, I need a favor."

  "Yeah. Anything."

  "I'm gonna send Meanstreak up in the morning for an IQ test."

  "Look, Hawk. Oh well, hell, yes, if you say so."

  Mean came out of the back room, the spelling lesson over. Before he could say anything, Hawkeye talked. "Look, Mean, I ain't gonna argue with you. I just called the Rat. He's gonna give you a test in the morning, see if you can get through doors and around corners. Then we'll talk."

  Pierce had a call from the Rat the next afternoon.

  "Hey, Hawk."

  "Yeah."

  "I looked up the old records, 1941. He was in two figures. Low normal."

  "How'd you clock him today?"

  "Two under for 36 at Wawenock (par 70)."

  "One thirty-eight?"

  "You got it."

  "The machinery go haywire? That's about genius country."

  "Yeah. One of the counselors I got says if he'd been associating with humans instead of Crabapple Cove grunts he might run 150 or better. Seems like he might be intelligent."

  "Well, I'll be dipped in lobster bait," said Hawkeye reflectively. "Thanks, Rat."

  Dr. Pierce buzzed Alice D'Angelo, his secretary. "Get me the coon," he ordered.

  "Do you mean Dr. Jones?"

  "You know goddamn well who I mean. You wanta be a Democrat, go on relief."

  "I am a Democrat."

  "So's the guinea thief you're married to. Get me the coon."

  "Yes, sir," with the well-known icicle voice.

  When Dr. Jones answered, Hawk asked, "Hey, Chucker, you think Meanstreak could play football for Androscoggin with his back the way it is?"

  "You pose a very interesting question," Chucker replied quite delicately. "I have him on back exercises., I know he can't bend over three hours a day on the clam flats, and I don't dare let him be out there all alone hauling traps. On the other hand, he could eat them small college players alive playing center. If he got in trouble, at least there's help nearby, not like he washed up on a ledge cause he couldn't move. I'd say yes, he can try football."

  "Good," said Hawkeye.

  "You don't seem very surprised."

  "I'm surprised at nothing."

  Although the time was late to apply for the class of '64 at Androscoggin College, Hawkeye thought he could arrange it. This was because Ho Jon, the Korean houseboy he, Duke and Trapper had sent to Androscoggin nine years earlier, was now the Director of Admissions. Androscoggin College was riding the first ripple of the tide of liberalism that flooded the Sixties. What more appropriate than to make an alumnus who'd arrived the hardest way possible Director of Admissions? Ho Jon, on the job just a year, had ruffled a few alumni feathers by refusing to accept well-financed but poorly endowed alumni offspring. "Time'll come," said Hawkeye, "a nice dumb white Protestant kid won't be able to go to college."

  In June 1960 Dr. Pierce called the Director of Admissions and demanded of the secretary. "Lemme talk to the gook. Tell him it's the Hawk."

  "Hey, Hawk," he was soon greeted, "how they goin'?"

  "Finest kind. Where you been? We ain't seen you."

  "Busy keeping people like you out of college. What's up, Hawkeye? You want to get your old man into college?"

  "Hey, Babe, nothing like that. I want to do you and Androscoggin a tremendous favor. I want to arrange an interview for probably the greatest scholar-athlete ever attended that college since, maybe, me. He ain't my old man. He's my brother-in-law."

  "Oh, come on, Hawk. How old is he?"

  "Only thirty-seven. Ho Jon, he fought on Guadal and Oki. Took out yea many Japs."

  Hawk figured that might give Mean a little edge. Ho Jon, enlightened as only a young Director of Admissions could be, had never forgotten that his parents and two brothers had been killed by the Japanese. Hawk also figured Ho Jon might turn away even young Pierces when the time came, but no way he'd turn down Meanstreak Morse.

  "He got any brains? He been through high school?" (We must remember that H
o Jon, although college educated, learned his early English from Hawkeye, Duke and Trapper John.)

  "He graduated high school with me in '41. He just had an IQ test. He was two under for 36."

  "One thirty-eight?"

  "Yeah."

  "Bring him down."

  "Thanks, Ho Jon. Hey, Ho Jon, do it for me on more, will yuh?"

  "What?"

  "Say 'cholangiogram.'"

  "Chorangiogram."

  "Jesus, you're beautiful. I'll see you when?"

  "Next Saturday. At 10 a.m.."

  Hawkeye went down to see Mean Thursday evening to discuss his forthcoming interview at Androscoggin. Mean acted a little nervous, so Hawkeye brought in a jug of gin and produced martinis. Evelyn was even more nervous, proclaiming that Mean had no clothes fit for a college interview. Hawkeye insisted that there was nothing to fear, that everyday clothes were fine. He did suggest that Mean refrain from expressions such as, "How be yuh," and practice saying "yes" instead of "ayuh." He also explained that although Ho Jon fitted the general picture of what Mean referred to as a gook, he was a gook who'd been on our side, and therefore was not to be annihilated on sight.