MASH Mania

by Richard Hooker

  Amiko thought she was cured and that Dr. Duke was Jesus Christ, Buddha, Emperor Hirohito and Elvis Presley all wrapped up in one package. Effective communication with her was impossible, and she was the only one around who thought Duke was that great, so he accepted her evaluation. He started her on thyroid hormone, which occasionally will help her kind of cancer—and it helped hers. In a few weeks she was miraculously cured.

  This miracle didn't impress Amiko as much as it did Duke because she expected it. When Duke made rounds she greeted him with a foolish grin, which he chose to interpret as blind adoration. Whatever he said made her smile from ear to ear, and Amiko's face is so arranged that she can nearly do it.

  Information provided by nurses and other sources allowed Duke to reconstruct Amiko's past and assess part of her future. The latter was easy. She'd go home and cheerfully submit to the whims, fancies and muscles of Moose Bend's only war hero. Laurier Castonguay was impatient throughout his wife's hospitalization. He wanted her home because he was tired of the kids, and a man from Moose Bend doesn't like to cook his own hot dogs. His visits, though infrequent, upset her. He came only to demand that she return home immediately.

  Two weeks after surgery the head nurse called Duke and said Mr. Castonguay was on the ward, trying to cause trouble. Duke went to the ward and invited Mr. Castonguay to join him in the doctors' room for a quiet conversation.

  "Sit down," he suggested, because Mr. Castonguay just stood in front of him and glared.

  "By Jeez, when you gon sen Miko home, you?" he demanded.

  "Laurier," Duke said, "I know you don't understand much English, but I'm going to speak very slowly. You pay attention, and I think you'll be able to understand me."

  "By Jeez," Laurier said, starting another speech, but Duke shoved him into a chair and continued. "Sit down and keep your mouth shut, you stupid sonovabitch."

  Mr. Castonguay sat down.

  "I'm going to send Amiko home in a week," Duke said. "I shall expect to see her every two weeks here in the clinic. Every time she comes here I'm going to find out if you've been good to her. If I ever hear of you beating her up, I'm not going to call the cops. I'm coming to Moose Bend, and when I leave there's going to be a dead Frenchman, and the dead Frenchman is going to be you. Any questions?"

  Amiko returned every two weeks for a while but then stopped coming, and Duke lost track of her. He didn't forget her, but doctors get busy with new patients and one can do just so much. Six months after surgery Duke insisted that she be contacted. A visiting nurse went to Moose Bend and reported that Amiko "seemed to be all right."

  In May 1959, a year after Amiko's discharge, Duke, Trapper John, Hawkeye and Spearchucker decided to take advantage of Doggy Moore's offer to use his camp on an island in Lake Chesuncook in northern Maine. This is an area of relative wilderness where paper companies own all the land and where the fishing, in May, is good, and the blackfiies would eat an elephant, tusks and all. The four surgeons boarded Hawkeye's station wagon on Saturday morning with hope, enthusiasm, beer, booze, food and a variety of fishing equipment. The road to Chesuncook goes through Moose Bend, so Duke decided to make a house call on Amiko Castonguay. Moose Bend offers the weary traveler a store that sells beer and groceries, and a sleazy restaurant where woodsmen eat venison burgers and drink beer. There are some rickety trailers, a few tar paper shacks and a haphazard blend of empty beer cans and Castonguays. The fishermen asked for Amiko at the store and were directed to a tar paper shack that sat precariously on the edge of a rushing stream, along with an outdoor privy. The front yard was a sea of mud which, unfortunately, was not deep enough to engulf the rusted carcass of a 1951 Kaiser that sat smack-dab in its middle. In 1951 someone said that the Kaiser, if it had been called a Buick, would have sold like hotcakes. In 1959 a new Silver Cloud wouldn't have looked good in this location, particularly with two frail chickens and a depleted tomcat perched on its roof.

  "Looks like a nigger shack down home," said Duke.

  "Down home," said Spearchucker, "no niggers live this way. Only poor white trash."

  "You guys wait," ordered Duke. "Ah'm goin' in."

  Duke couldn't knock on the door because it was open, as were the windows, which had no screens. Duke found Amiko changing diapers on the latest dividend of Laurier Castonguay's Saturday night beer and whiskey libido. When she saw Duke standing there, taking in her scene, Amiko was, of course, surprised. Overcoming this, she was ashamed, but her pride was strong so she smiled. Her smile was not the ear-to-ear phenomenon she'd given Duke the morning after he'd saved her life. It was a tentative, confused smile.

  Duke assessed his patient and decided that her emaciation was more likely due to malnutrition than recurrence of thyroid cancer. The children, who played listlessly in one corner, the chickens and the tomcat obviously shared the deprivation.

  "Doctor Duke," said Amiko, "why you come here?"

  "Amiko, I should have come sooner."

  "What you mean, Doctor Duke?"

  "Honey, all you and I went through, it turns out I've let you down. This is no way for you to live. Where's that no-good husband of yours?"

  "To restaurant."

  Duke turned and started to leave, with just one thought. He was going to the so-called restaurant and beat hell out of Laurier Castonguay. Amiko knew this and ran to him and took his arm.

  "Please, Doctor Duke," she begged, "don't hurt him. He good to me, now, since you talk to him. It's just Laurier, he no good. He no know how to do nothing. Laurier, you think I crazy, I love him."

  Duke tried to comprehend, decided he couldn't and walked out saying: "I'm going to the store and get something for you and the kids to eat."

  Outside in the station wagon, the surgical talent, under the influence of Moose Bend, had opened cans of beer. They saw Duke stalk out of Amiko's shack and head for the grocery store. Ten minutes later he reappeared, carrying a large parcel. He stopped at the wagon and said, "Y'all go down to that store and get the rest of it."

  The rest of it, mostly food, included toys for children—the twenty-nine cent trinkets that in 1959 hung on racks in all Maine country stores—cans of cat food and a bag of grain for the chickens .By the time Hawkeye, Trapper and Spearchucker had delivered this, Duke was in the restaurant where, at 11:30 on a sunny spring morning, Laurier Castonguay was well in the bag.

  The surgeons, having delivered their share of the largesse and returned to the station wagon, heard noise from the restaurant and decided that Duke and Laurier Castonguay were in disagreement. They went to the restaurant, where their decision was confirmed. Duke, older and smaller than Laurier, hardly in fighting trim, was slowly but surely dragging his protesting quarry toward the door. Duke, somewhat short of breath, was in nowhere near the state of respiratory distress that afflicted Laurier Castonguay, whose resistance was diminishing and whose face was blue.

  The surgeons came to Duke's assistance and picked up Laurier. "Whatcha want us to do with him?" asked Hawkeye.

  "We're taking him with us," said Duke. "He can do the chores and show us where to fish. Maybe we can beat some smarts into this dumb swamp canary."

  "What is a swamp canary?" asked Spearchucker.

  "A frog," replied Trapper John.

  Duke, with Laurier subdued in the station wagon, revisited Amiko and explained that they'd hired her husband as a guide for their fishing trip and asked, "Does he get out of breath easy?"

  "Oh yes, Doctor Duke. That's why he no work in woods and cut the pulp, him. He got no wind, him."

  "In Maine," said Duke, "they think I talk funny, but that Japanese Canuck of yours is real different."

  "What?" asked Amiko.

  "You pack up, Amiko. You and the kids and Laurier are moving out of here in a few days."

  Amiko's pride was working, but pride can work just so hard. All of a sudden" the phenomenon recurred. Amiko gave Duke an ear-to-ear grin.

  With Laurier half-drunk and gasping for breath in the back of the wagon, the surgeons re
sumed their journey to Lake Chesuncook. "What are you going to do with your guest?" Hawkeye asked Duke.

  "Wait'll he sobers up. If he behaves himself he can guide for us and do the chores. If he doesn't, I'll drown the bastard."

  In Moose Bend the public reaction to Laurier's abduction fell far short of consternation, but someone casually mentioned it to Jack Marvin, the state cop from Greenville. Jack was making his weekly tour of Moose Bend in search of stolen cars. His interview with Amiko confused him, but he was forced to conclude that Laurier had been spirited away against his will and that a crime had been committed. Amiko innocently identified Dr. Duke as one of the kidnappers.

  By the time the surgeons reached Doggy Moore's island, Laurier Castonguay, having achieved relative sobriety, was demanding to know what was going on. "You're working for us. You are our guide," explained Duke.

  "I ain't gon work for you, you, you son beech."

  "Now, look here, Laurier," said Spearchucker, "how about working for me?"

  Laurier inspected Dr. Jones, assessed his attitude and decided that mature judgment called for quiet acquiescence. "Okay, you. I work for you, me," he agreed.

  There was time for a few hours of fishing. Laurier did have talent as a guide, and then they returned with six big salmon for supper. Waiting at the island were Jack Marvin and two game wardens he'd recruited as deputies.

  "Evening, gentlemen," Hawkeye greeted the law. "Surely you cannot be in search of wrongdoers in this unspoiled natural paradise."

  "You men are suspected of kidnapping. Laurier, did you come here willingly?"

  "No, by Jeez."

  "Which of you is Dr. Forrest?" asked the State Trooper.

  "I am," said Duke.

  "He's the one who done it," said Hawkeye. three other guys is innocent, us. Ain't we, Laurier?

  "No, by Jeez."

  "Okay, gentlemen, may I have your names?" requested Trooper Marvin.

  "Sure," said Hawkeye. "Me, I'm Jean Beliveau.”

  "Maurice Richard," said Trapper John.

  "Happy to make your acquaintance, officer," said Spearchucker. "My name's Bernard Geoffrion, but my admirers call me Boom-Boom."

  Trooper Marvin wrote down their names and told them to get their things together and accompany him to Greenville, where he would lock them up.

  "Guess again," said Duke. "We're not coming. Why don't you just take Laurier home and ask Amiko who she'd rather have locked up. Me or her husband?"

  "I'm afraid I can't do it that way," the trooper informed him.

  "So shoot us," suggested Jean Beliveau.

  "Go on, officer," urged Boom-Boom Geoffrion. "Shoot us. You fellers, too," he said, including the wardens in the invitation. "Start shooting."

  Trooper Marvin for five years had been the only state cop in a vast area of northern Maine because he was one of the few on the force capable of handling the job. The average state cop would have become confused at this point, but Jack Marvin began to get a message.

  "Well," he said, "I guess you gentlemen aren't going to come peacefully and I'm not justified in shooting you. The fact is, if I shoot anybody today, I'd like to shoot Laurier Castonguay. I've been thinking about it for five years."

  "Good thinking," said Jean Beliveau.

  "How about staying for supper?" asked Rocket Richard.

  "You're very kind," said Trooper Marvin. "Laurier," he ordered, "get to work. I'd like to see you

  work."

  "By Jeez, I feex you," growled Laurier.

  "Now Laurier," counseled Boom-Boom Geoffrion, "don't be unpleasant. Clean the fish, build a fire, and I'll prepare drinks for everyone but you."

  As the group relaxed and sipped Scotch whiskey around the fire Laurier built in Doggy Moore's big fieldstone fireplace, Trooper Marvin seemed for a while lost in thought. Unlike the two wardens, who were just confused by it all, Jack Marvin knew that something unusual was going on. He didn't want to blow it. He knew, particularly, that Amiko Castonguay had a hard life, and if these screwballs wanted to help her, he was all for it.

  Finally he asked Duke, "Doctor, will you tell me what you are up to?"

  "Sure," said Duke. "Ah'm gonna put Laurier in the hospital and find out why he can't breathe well, and ah'm gonna move Amiko and the kids to Crabapple Cove and put them up in a house I know of there. Then, when Laurier gets out of the hospital, he's either going to work and take care of his family, or I'll get him put away somewhere."

  "What house do you have in mind?" asked Jean Beliveau, the former Hawkeye Pierce.

  "Your old house."

  "That's what I figured."

  "Boom-Boom," Trooper Marvin said, "you guys will have to go through Greenville on your way home. Is there any chance you and Mr. Richard and Mr. Beliveau could stop by at my house on your way through?"

  "Sure, glad to. Why?"

  "Well," explained Trooper Marvin, "I have three teenage boys and they're all crazy about hockey."

  "We're leaving here Tuesday," said Boom-Boom. "We'd be delighted to stop by and meet the kids."

  Trooper Marvin thought his request might disconcert Boom-Boom Geofirion. When it didn't, Trooper Marvin began to laugh.

  "What's funny?" asked Boom-Boom.

  "Dr. Jones, I just made you. The word in my organization is that any trooper has a head injury, get Dr. Jones."

  "Can I still say hello to your kids?" asked Spa chucker.

  "My kids would probably rather meet Spearchucker Jones than even Boom-Boom Geoifrion."

  "They'll want to meet me, too," said Rocket Richard. "I'm the real McCoy."

  "Officer," ordered a slightly mulled Jean Beliveau "Arrest that man. He's an imposter."

  "I'm not arresting anybody, but I'm likely to have you all committed. What about Laurier? You want to keep him? "

  "Why don't you take him with you and get him down to the Spruce Harbor General. I'll send orders with you. By the time we get back we'll have some information."

  "I ain't gon no hospital," protested Laurier.

  "Jail, then?" asked Trooper Marvin.

  "I no do nothin'."

  "That's the charge, Laurier."

  "Son beech."

  When the fishermen passed through Greenville a few days later they stopped at Jack Marvin's, where 78 percent of the town's children had gathered to meet Spearchucker Jones. Fifty-seven percent of those present had never heard of either Boom-Boom Geoffrion or Spearchucker and would have accepted him as either, but the others were sufficiently impressed. Dr. Jones walked among his admirers, shook hands and had a word with everyone while Rocket Richard, Jean Beliveau and Duke Forrest sat in the station wagon drinking beer.

  "I wish I was famous, too," Duke complained. "So be famous," suggested Jean Beliveau. "Go out there and steal his thunder."

  "Who'll I be?"

  "Tough call," said the Rocket. "They never heard of anybody."

  Jean Beliveau got out of the car and spoke to a mil group of mid-teenagers. "Hey, you guys wanta meet Mickey Mantle? That's him, there, in the back of the station wagon."

  In 1959, even in Greenville, Maine, Mickey Mantle lid been heard of. Within minutes the wagon was surrounded and Dr. Jones was left with only Jack Marvin to talk to.

  "Your trade seems to have fallen off," Rocket Richard said to Spearchucker.

  "What's going on?" asked Trooper Marvin.

  "Who cares about nigger fullbacks when you can meet Mickey Mantle?" asked Jean Beliveau.

  "Oh, my God," moaned the state policeman. "Dr. Jones, I really appreciate your coming, but I think you and Mr. Richard and Mr. Beliveau and Mr. Mantle had better get a move on. I see our local newspaper photographer and he's bound to want pictures. I'm sure Mr. Mantle doesn't want his picture in the Bangor Daily News."

  As the station wagon with Hawkeye Pierce (the former Jean Beliveau) at the wheel sped out of Greenville, Duke Forrest was needling his companion in the back seat. "You a real uppity nigra, Jones. I guess I showed you some White Power."

  "Oh, t
hat's okay, Duke. You guys just proved what so many of my brothers claim is true, but even I haven't believed it until now."

  "What's that?"

  "The black race is superior."