MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  Mr. Crumley had gone so far as to write offering his services, absolutely free of charge, to the Pleasant Valley General Hospital. He was “professionally equipped,” he wrote (c/o the Amalgamated Broadcasting System, New York City), to straighten out not only the Pleasant Valley General Hospital’s laboratory but their personnel office as well. The Pleasant Valley General Hospital did not reply, a happenstance Mr. Crumley ascribed to shame and remorse. Any hospital with a laboratory which had great difficulty differentiating between gangrene and measles (not to mention that between mononucleosis and a certain social disease involving spirochetes*) would not want to come right out and admit it.

  (* This came up when Dr. Jerome Dashing, home from one of his frequent trips to the Upper Amazon, had a physical check-up at Pleasant Valley General and the lab reported he had an advanced case of social disease involving spirochetes. Before their error was discovered, and his illness properly diagnosed as mononucleosis, Martha-Jane had for the sixteenth time seriously considered suicide, and Dr. Dashing had had to go through the embarrassment of suggesting to Heloise Horter, the wife of his best friend, Dr. A. Satchwell Horter, that as the result of her rather warm greeting of him on his return, he had to suggest that she seek medical attention, and seek it far from Pleasant Valley General, so that the nature of her distress would not become fodder for the Pleasant Valley gossips.)

  A rather serious free-for-all brawl had taken place in the geriatric ward between two octogenarians, one of whom had violently objected to the other’s referring to Martha-Jane as a “one-legged hooker” and begun the affray by crashing into him with his wheelchair.

  And there were other unfortunate incidents as well, involving practically everybody from Inez Heidenheimer, the Spruce Harbor Medical Center telephone operator, to the Honorable “Moosenose” Bartlett, mayor of Spruce Harbor, who violently insisted that a scheduled surgical procedure (involving the removal of a wart from his nose) be delayed until after “Life’s Little Agonies, Part II” had been telecast. “I simply couldn’t risk my life under the surgeon’s knife without knowing whether fatherly Reverend Kenman had really been making those obscene telephone calls to Martha-Jane or whether it was really the chief of police.”

  Only three people at Spruce Harbor seemed immune to “Life’s Little Agonies, Part II.” Dr. Pierce was immune, and so were his professional associates and close friends, Dr. John Francis Xavier McIntyre, F.A.C.S., and Esther Flanagan, R.N., chief of nursing services. Among themselves they had worked out a rather simple solution to the problem: From 2:00 until 2:30 P.M. weekdays no hospital procedure more complicated than changing bedpans was scheduled. Emergencies, of course, arose from time to time during the telecast. These were handled by hospital personnel on a roster basis, amid muttered references to the effect that while they had fully expected to make sacrifices in the course of their medical careers, they had really expected nothing like this.

  Dr. Pierce was thus not especially disturbed to find his wife sobbing into a soggy Kleenex over “Life’s Little Agonies, Part II.” What really worried him in his heart of hearts was when he could expect the other screw to come loose and what would happen when it did. His father, who was a wise man and who had never lied to him, had spoken of loose female secrets in the plural.

  As he comfortingly patted his wife’s shoulder, he could see the boob tube screen. The day’s episode was over. As the studio organist enthusiastically thumped out some of Johann Sebastian Bach’s more melancholy musical passages, the screen showed the “Life’s Little Agonies, Part II” trademark. The camera pulled in close on the Mona Lisa, mounted on a slowly moving pedestal standing in a sea of fog. It pulled closer and closer until only Mona’s face was visible. The viewer could then see a solitary tear run down Mona’s face. Mona then began to fade as the “credit drum” rolled.

  Created by Wesley St. James.

  A Wesley St. James Production.

  Executive Producer, Wesley St. James.

  Filmed Before a Live Audience at the Wesley St.

  James Studios.

  Hollywood, California.

  All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

  Any Infringements of Copyright will be Personally Prosecuted by Wesley St. James.

  Finally the screen went momentarily dark.

  Then, as the words appeared, one by one,* an announcer with a deep, if somewhat lisping, voice intoned, “Now stay tuned for ‘The Globe Spinneth,’ a Wesley St. James Production.”

  (* It is an article of faith among the folks in the television industry that at least half of their audience is illiterate. Hence the practice of having announcers slowly read what words appear on the screen as they appear. This is known as taking positive action to meet the public need.)

  “It’s over, dear,” Hawkeye said. “And I am here to console you in your hour of need.”

  “So you are,” Mary Pierce said. Her tone of voice suddenly changed. She suddenly pushed free from her husband. “Knock that off,” she said. “What if one of the children should come home unexpectedly from school?”

  “But you said you were glad to see me,” Hawkeye said.

  “Not that glad,” she said. “You men are all alike. You-know-what is all you ever think about.”

  “Aren’t you even going to ask what I’m doing home in the middle of the afternoon?”

  “I don’t have to ask,” she said. “The answer is no.”

  “Then why did you say you were glad to see me?”

  “I wanted to see you before supper,” Mary said.

  “I should, I suppose, be flattered, but I sense a curve ball in there somewhere,” Hawkeye said.

  “I wanted specifically,” Mary said, “to catch you before the regularly scheduled afternoon conference of the chief of surgery and staff began. To make sure, in other words, that you came home from work smelling of nothing stronger than mint Life Savers.”

  “What’s the occasion?” Hawkeye asked jocularly. “Are we having Brother ‘Born-Again Bob’ Roberts for supper?”

  Brother “Born-Again Bob” Roberts was one of the more visible and audible clergypersons in the Spruce Harbor area. He and his wife, popularly known as “Sister Wilma” and even more popularly as “Weeping Wilma ” had come to the Rock Bound Coast from somewhere in the Deep South with the announced intention of driving Satan’s favorite dark angel, John Barleycorn, out of Maine even as St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.

  To accomplish this end, they acquired controlling interest in a radio station which had been going rapidly broke broadcasting what is known as classical music. Thirty minutes after he had handed over the check (Brother Bob paid cash, the revival business being one of the more lucrative professions south of the Mason-Dixon Line) and acquired title, the programming of The Cultured Voice of Spruce Harbor was interrupted in the middle of Felix Mendelsshon-Bartholdy’s Sonata No. 2 in D Major for Cello and Piano, Opus 58.

  “We interrupt this program to bring you a special announcement,” Brother “Born-Again” Bob’s deep voice had intoned. “God has come to Spruce Harbor, and it’s time for you, John Barleycorn, to get out!” He paused to let this sink in, and all twenty-four listeners heard for the first time in the background a sound with which they would soon become all too familiar: Sister Wilma, carried away with emotion, was sobbing loudly in the background.

  “We now resume our regular programming,” Brother Bob intoned. But it was not Maestro Mendelsshon who came back on the air. It was a musical ensemble known as Porky Pig & the Swine, a hard-rock organization whose appeal to classical music lovers was rather limited.

  Brother Bob was not interested in classical music lovers.

  He was after what he thought of as “ordinary folks” and the way to reach them was with Porky Pig & the Swine and others of that genre. He did follow, however, the practice of The Cultured Voice of Spruce Harbor in the matter of finance. BBB (Before Brother Bob) the musical programs were periodically interrupted with plaintive pleas for the listening audience to mak
e a financial contribution to keep the station on the air. Brother Bob maintained this practice but added to it the information that contributions to The Voice of Total Temperance, as the station was now known, were tax deductible. BBB the station had been a commercial enterprise. It was now the radio voice of the Get Thee Behind Me John Barleycorn Religious Foundation, and according to IRS regulation, a bona fide recipient of charitable and/or religious donations.

  The Get Thee Behind Me John Barleycorn Religious Foundation also sponsored the Brother Bob Rock In & Revivals, which featured such famous groups as the Swines’ in person, admission free, in what had once been the Spruce Harbor Roxy Movie Palace. Those who wished to sit down were asked to make a tax-free religious donation of $7.50. Between “sets,” as they are known in the profession, Brother Bob gave little talks about the benefits of total temperance.

  Truth being stranger than fiction, two of the twenty-four faithful listeners to the classical* music BBB were Drs. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce and John Francis Xavier “Trapper John” McIntyre. They had even had it piped into the surgical suites. Neither gentleman was especially pleased with the change in musical programming, and both were more than a little annoyed with Brother Bob’s radio style. The found his standard opening remark “Put that bottle down!” rather disconcerting, particularly if it reached them just as they were, in fact, about to pick a bottle up.

  (* At one time, this sort of music was known as “long hair” music. For obvious reasons, this is no longer applicable.)

  Brother Born-Again Bob’s radio programming was a thorn, so to speak, in Dr. Pierce’s side. When he inquired of his bride whether that clergyperson was coming for super, he was making his little joke.

  “Somebody told you!” Mary Pierce responded.

  “You’re kidding!” Hawkeye replied. “This is your idea of a joke, right?”

  “He’s really a very nice man, Benjamin,” Mary Pierce replied.

  “Not in my house! Over my dead body!”

  “He just walked into the Spruce Harbor Working Mother’s Child-Care Center this morning and presented us with a very nice check,” Mary said. Mary, who was co-chairwoman of the Working Mother’s Child-Care Center, worked there four mornings a week.

  “He gave money away?” Hawkeye asked, curiosity having got the better of him.

  “Five thousand dollars,” she said. “And you know how we need the money.”

  “What’s the catch?” Hawkeye asked.

  “Don’t be so suspicious,” Mary said. “He said he had learned what good work we were doing and how we were always short of money, and he said that as fellow laborers in the Lord’s work, he felt it his duty to help as best he could.”

  “Have you tried to cash the check?” Hawkeye asked.

  “Oh, I rushed it right to the bank,” she said. “It was good as gold.”

  “I’ll be damned!”

  “I rushed it right to the bank right after I asked him to supper,” Mary said quickly.

  “I hope you have a very pleasant supper,” Hawkeye said. “I’ll be at the Bide-a-While.”*

  (* Dr. Pierce here referred to the Bide-a-While Pool Hall/Ladies Served, Fresh Lobsters & Clams Daily Restaurant and Saloon, Inc., Stanley K. Warczinski, Sr., Proprietor.)

  “Actually, Benjamin,” Mary said. “I think it would be better if you were here. Brother Bob really wants to talk to you.”

  “Oh, my God, the other screw finally came loose!” Hawkeye said.

  “What did you say?”

  “Freely translated, dear, there is no way I am going to have supper with Brother Bob.”

  “He wants to talk to you,” Mary said.

  “I thought it would be something like that,” Hawkeye said.

  “Now see here, Benjamin,” Mary said. “I put up with your weird religious friends. Turnabout is fair play.”

  “But you like Hot Lips*!” Hawkeye protested.

  (* This reference here is to the Reverend Mother Emeritus Margaret Houlihan Wachauf Wilson, R.N., of the God Is Love In All Forms Christian Church, Inc. Scholars of ecclesiastic phenomena are referred to other books in the M*A*S*H series (especially M*A*S*H Goes to Paris, M*A*S*H Goes to London, and M*A*S*H Goes to Las Vegas. Pocket Books makes these books available as a public service, and at very reasonable prices, considering their all-around high class, indeed.)

  “And you will like Brother Bob and Sister Wilma, once you get to know them,” Mary-said.

  “You know where I’ll be,” Hawkeye said, turning around and starting to leave.

  “I know where you’ll be, Benjamin,” Mary said softly. “There’s one little thing I didn’t mention.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not asking you, Benjamin,” she said. “This is more in the nature of what you could call a nonnegotiable demand. If it means five thousand dollars for the Child-Care Center, darling, you’re not only going to have supper with Brother Bob and Sister Wilma, but you’re going to act as if you’re having a fine time.”

  “What do they want to talk to me about?” Hawkeye asked. He had been married long enough to recognize defeat when it smote him on the forehead.

  “Their daughter,” Mary said.

  “Their daughter?”

  “She wants to become an opera singer,” Mary said. “And when it came out in the course of conversation that you are such fast friends with dear Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov ...”

  "Dear Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov? Is that the same dear Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov you customarily refer to as ‘Old Bull Bellow’? Or as ‘That disgusting drunk’?”

  “Don’t be argumentative, dear,” Mary said. “Pointless arguments are the death of a happy marriage—you said that yourself.”

  “Do you know why I came home from the hospital at this time, Mary?”

  “I know why, and I told you no.”

  “The reason I came home, Mary, was to tell you that I had just spoken with Boris on the phone.”

  “How nice!” Mary said. “That’s what they call a fortuitous circumstance, isn’t it?”

  “I wanted to tell you what I told him, Mary,” Hawkeye said, “when he said that he and Dr. Yancey and Horsey and Abdullah wanted me and Trapper John to come to a stag party in Paris.”

  “I’m glad you came home so that we could have this little chat,” Mary said, “but why didn’t you telephone?”

  “You can’t use that kind of language on the telephone,” Hawkeye said. “It’s against the law.”

  “Why, whatever did you say?”

  He told her.

  “Shame on you, Benjamin Franklin Pierce!” Mary said. “You ought to have your mouth washed out with soap! And besides, that’s a physiological impossibility, isn’t it?”

  At nine minutes after six, Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce answered his door and found Dr. and Mrs. John Francis Xavier McIntyre standing there.

  “I just want you to know, Hawkeye,” Trapper John said, in a tone that could not accurately be described as friendly, “that I blame this entirely on you!”

  “I should have listened to my father,” Hawkeye said. “He warned me about times like this.”

  “Come right in!” Mary Pierce cheerfully called. “The Reverend and Mrs. Roberts will be here soon.”

  “Whoopee!” Trapper John said.

  “Come into my study a moment, please,” Dr. Pierce said to Dr. McIntyre, and Dr. McIntyre dutifully followed him into the small room filled with discarded furniture and the so-far-unironed week’s wash. Hawkeye pushed the wash baskets aside, giving him access to a shelf of books. He began taking the books off the shelf.

  “I was a Boy Scout, you know. And I took to heart the maxim to always be prepared.” He reached for something at the back of the shelf.

  “Put that bottle down!” a deep, Southern-flavored voice called.

  “My God, he can see through walls!” Trapper John said. “Let me have that first. I’m the guest.”

  He drank quickly from the bottle and handed it back to Hawkeye. “I real
ly shouldn’t give it back,” he said. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be home by my own hearth with a bottle of my own.”

  Hawkeye took a quick pull at the bottle and then quickly turned his back as the door opened.

  “Benjamin,” Mary Pierce cooed sweetly in the manner of women in the presence of clergypersons. “The Reverend Roberts is here.”

  “Put that bottle down!” Born-Again Bob intoned in his loud voice.

  “I just did,” Hawkeye muttered, stuck the bottle back where it had been, and stood up.

  “Reverend Roberts,” he said.

  “God loves you!” Born-Again Bob announced.

  “Sometimes I wonder,” Hawkeye said.

  “If I didn’t know better,” Born-Again Bob announced, “I would swear that I sniff John Barleycorn’s evil product in these premises.”

  “Oh, no,” Mary Pierce said.

  “My sniffer is seldom wrong, Sister Mary,” Born-Again Bob said.

  “While I must admit that liquor has, on rare occasion, passed the lips of my husband, the doctor,” Mary Pierce said, “I’m sure that neither he nor Dr. McIntyre would think about so much as sniffing a cork knowing that you and Sister Wilma would be here. Would you, Benjamin?”

  “Perish the thought,” Hawkeye said.

  “A pleasure to meet you, too, Brother John,” Brother Bob said to Trapper John. “Sister Lucinda has told me so much about you.”