MASH 12 MASH goes to Texas Read online

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  M*A*S*H Goes to Texas (V2)

  Note: footnotes have been moved from the bottom of paper copy to below relevant paragraph and italicized.

  Among the more illustrious fans at the Saints-Cowboys game were:

  HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS SHEIKH ABDULLAH BEN ABZUG: The sheikh's English was limited to a few pleasantries such as "Up yours!" and "Your mother wears army boots"—greetings he bestowed on everyone he met.

  LANCE FAIRBANKS and his friend BRUCIE:

  They were proud owners of the only lavender Winnebago camper in the West. It had, among other things, a doorbell that chimed "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."

  IDA-SUE DALRYMPLE: A former University of Texas pom pom girl, she had long ago offered her "pearl of great price" to her future husband, Congressman Davy Crockett "Alamo" Jones. This she had done in the back seat of the convertible given to her by her adoring Daddy.

  "BUBBA" BURTON: Known as Pigman to all the C.B.'ers back in Carolina, Bubba finally heard heavenly music when he met Ida-Sue's voluptuous daughter, Scarlett.

  TEDDY ROOSEVELT: A splendid specimen of Bison Americanus, Teddy had the distinct honor of owning a genuine American cowboy and an Indian chief.

  M*A*S*H Goes to Texas

  Further misadventures of M*A*S*H

  Richard Hooker

  And

  William E. Butterworth

  Pocket Book edition published February 1977

  M*A*S*H GOES TO TEXAS

  POCKET BOOK edition published February, 1977

  This original POCKET BOOK edition is printed from brand-new

  plates made from newly set, clear, easy-to-read type.

  POCKET BOOK editions are published by

  POCKET BOOKS,

  & division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.,

  A gulf+western company

  630 Fifth Avenue,

  New York, N.Y. 10020.

  Trademarks registered in the United States

  and other countries.

  Standard Book Numbers 671-80892-3.

  Copyright, ©, 1977, by Richard Hornberger and William E. Butterworth, All rights reserved. Published by POCKET BOOKS, New York, and on the same day in Canada by Simon & Schuster of Canada, Ltd., Markham, Ontario.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Books in the MASH Series

  MASH

  MASH Goes to Maine

  MASH Goes to New Orleans, January, 1975

  MASH Goes to Paris, January, 1975

  MASH Goes to London, June, 1975

  MASH Goes to Las Vegas, January, 1976

  MASH Goes to Morocco, January, 1976

  MASH Goes to Hollywood, April 1976

  MASH Goes to Vienna, June, 1976

  MASH Goes to Miami, September, 1976

  MASH Goes to San Francisco, November, 1976

  MASH Goes to Texas, February 1977

  MASH Goes to Montreal, June, 1977

  MASH Goes to Moscow, September, 1977

  MASH Mania, February, 1979

  In fond memory of Malcolm Reiss, gentleman literary agent

  June 3, 1905-December 17, 1975

  —Richard Hooker and W. E. Butterworth

  Chapter One

  Truth to tell, T. Alfred Crumley, Sr., administrator of the Spruce Harbor, Maine, Medical Center, who happened to be of the Roman Catholic persuasion, privately regarded Benjamin Franklin Pierce, M.D., F.A.C.S., who did not happen to be of the Roman Catholic persuasion, as a fire-breathing heathen.

  Dr. Pierce, who was the chief of surgery, had, it must in honesty be related, not done very much to disabuse Mr. Crumley of his belief. Quite the contrary, in fact. Secretly aided and abetted by his longtime crony, the co-proprietor of the Finest Kind Fish Market and Medical Clinic, John Francis Xavier McIntyre, M.D., F.A.C.S., who, although he himself was a Roman Catholic in more or less good standing, shared Dr. Pierce’s belief that T. Alfred Crumley, Sr., was a prime example of the southern end of a northbound horse, Dr. Pierce had arranged for Mr. Crumley to come upon him, prior to a surgical procedure, engaged in what looked like the celebration of an obscene pagan rite.

  Actually, there were three co-conspirators, the other two also adherents of the Roman Catholic faith. Esther Flanagan, R.N., Chief of Nursing Services, had, demonstrating a high level of skill with needle and thread, come up with the hooded black robe and personally designed the pagan symbols with which she liberally adorned, in sequins, the back of the robe.

  Stanley K. Warczinski, Sr., proprietor of the Bide-a-While Pool Hall/Ladies Served Fresh Lobsters & Clams Daily Restaurant and Saloon, Inc., had contributed the moose head and wildcat. Both of these items were stuffed, of course, and usually decorated Mr. Warczinski’s place of business. He also contributed a very large and freshly boiled lobster and a raw, plucked chicken.

  Mr. T. Alfred Crumley had received a telephone call from Nurse Flanagan, asking him to investigate the strange noises coming from a room designated as the female surgeons’ locker room.

  Mr. Crumley had been quick to do his duty and investigate. There was no surgeon of the female variety on the Spruce Harbor medical staff, and thus the locker room in question was unused.

  Mr. Crumley had paused outside the female surgeons’ locker room when he pressed his ear to the door so that he might hear whatever was going on in there. His face had paled when a most horrifying sound came through the door. It instantly gave him visions of the hereafter as depicted by Dante. What he heard was music, or at least a profane, indecent, and horrifying kind of music, discordant, mournful and blood- chilling.*

  (* What this was was a tape recording of Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians singing “I Want a Girl—Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad,” played backward and at a very slow speed.)

  He gathered his courage and, sweating clammily, he pushed open the door. A chain lock kept the door from opening more than a crack, but there was enough room for T. Alfred Crumley to press his eye to the crack and see what was going on inside.

  He recoiled in shock and horror, closing his eyes in a futile attempt to wipe from his brain what he had seen. Then, shivering, he looked again. His eyes had not fooled him; what he had seen before he saw again.

  Crossing himself in what he hoped was a gesture of exorcism, he considered his next step of action. And then he rushed down the corridor to report this outrageous circumstance to his superior, the chief of staff.

  “What is it, Crumley?” that distinguished healer asked. “You look as if you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “Worse!” Mr. Crumley said. “Much worse!”

  “Stop babbling, Crumley, and get to the point.”

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, Doctor,” Mr. Crumley said, “but the thing is, Dr. Pierce is celebrating a black mass in the female surgeons’ locker room.”

  “You want to let me have that again, Crumley?” the chief of staff said. “It sounded for a moment like you said that Hawkeye* was celebrating a black mass in the female surgeons’ locker room.”

  (*Dr. Pierce’s father was a great fan of James Fenimore Cooper. He wished to name his firstborn after Cooper's character, the Indian brave, Hawkeye. Mrs. Pierce prevailed at christening time, but Mr. Pierce was undaunted. He never called his little Benjamin anything but Hawkeye, and the name stuck.)

  “That’s what I said!” Crumley said. “That’s what I said!”

  The chief of staff moved very close to Mr. Crumley, close enough to get a good sniff of his breath'. He couldn’t smell anything, but he realized that vodka is generally odorless.

  “You don’t say?” he said, remembering f
rom his courses in psychiatry that it is a good idea never to argue with a nut, no matter how absurd a pronouncement the nut makes. “What makes you think so?”

  “I don’t think you believe me, Doctor!” Mr. Crumley said, right on the edge of hysteria.

  “Why don’t you just tell me what you saw, Mr. Crumley?”

  “I’ll tell you what I saw,” Mr. Crumley said. “What I saw was Dr. Pierce—in a hooded black robe.”

  “Really?”

  “With all kinds of pagan symbols on it,” Crumley went on.

  “How interesting!”

  “Shocking is a better word,” Crumley said.

  “And what was he doing?”

  “There were flickering candles and an awful smell of incense!” Crumley said.

  “I see. And was Dr. Pierce doing anything unusual?”

  “Was he ever!”

  “What, specifically?”

  “There was a wildcat in there with him,” Crumley said.

  “You don’t say?”

  “Standing up on his hind legs and snarling,” Crumley amplified.

  “How interesting! But what was Dr. Pierce doing that makes you think he was celebrating a black mass?”

  “I’ll tell you what he was doing,” Crumley said. “With his right hand he was feeding a dead chicken to the wildcat; and with the other hand he was feeding a lobster to a moose head!”

  “Well, now,” the chief of staff replied. “Why don’t we just go take a look?”

  By the time the chief of staff and Mr. Crumley got back to the female surgeons’ locker room, of course, the chicken and lobster had been taken to the kitchen; the moose head and the stuffed wildcat had been sent on their way back to Bide-a-While in the custody of Mr. Warczinski; and the sole occupant of the room was Esther Flanagan, R.N., Chief of Nursing Services.

  She turned around from examining her coiffure in the mirror when Mr. Crumley flung the door open and announced, “See for yourself, Doctor!”

  “Shame on you, Mr. Crumley!” Nurse Flanagan said rather indignantly. “How dare you burst in here like that!”

  “I won’t go into detail, Nurse Flanagan,” the chief of staff said. “I’ll just ask you, as senior member of our staff, to trust me. I’m afraid Mr. Crumley has been under a good deal of pressure lately.”

  “Where’s Dr. Pierce?” Mr. Crumley demanded. “Where’s Dr. Pierce?”

  “I would suppose that he’s in the other locker room,” Nurse Flanagan replied. “What made you think he’d be in here?”

  “I saw him in here, that’s why!” Mr. Crumley replied.

  “I hardly think that’s possible,” Nurse Flanagan replied.

  The chief of staff winked at Nurse Flanagan.

  “Tell her what you saw him doing, Mr. Crumley,” he said.

  “He was feeding a lobster to a moose head—that’s what he was doing!”

  “Poor Mr. Crumley,” Nurse Flanagan said, oozing professional and feminine sympathy from every pore. “I guess he has been working too hard.”

  When he had time to think about it* over the next two weeks, Mr. Crumley came to understand what had happened. The insight came after U.P.S. delivered a small brown box containing the hooded black robe. He had been made a fool of. He was smart enough to realize that he would look like even more of a fool if he carried the robe to the chief of staff. He was even smart enough to conclude (correctly) that this was Hawkeye’s intention in sending him the robe. The chief of staff would believe, when he rushed to show him the “proof,” that he had had the robe made up to prove his story. He would look even worse.

  (* Mr. Crumley was immediately placed on two weeks’ sick leave by the chief of staff, a circumstance that took something—not much, but something—from the feeling of sweet triumph shared by Drs. Pierce and McIntyre and Nurse Flanagan.)

  So he burned the robe and said nothing, not even when he stopped by Bide-a-While for a cold beer and saw the wildcat and the moose head in their usual positions above the bar. There was an explanation for the whole thing. Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce was a heathen. Only a heathen would be capable of thinking up something like that, and only a fire-breathing heathen would be capable of carrying it out. Mr. Crumley took what solace he could from his belief in what would happen to Dr. Pierce in the hereafter. Dr. Hawkeye Pierce would get what heathens got, and double.

  Among Dr. Pierce’s many other annoying habits was what Mr. Crumley considered his severe case of telephonitis. Whenever he wished to ask someone something, or tell someone something, he thought absolutely nothing about picking up the telephone and calling them, no matter where they might be. Not only did this run up the hospital’s telephone bill outrageously, but it deprived Mr. Crumley’s staff of typists and file clerks of their right to type letters, and file copies of same, together with replies, if any.

  Mr. Crumley’s weekly litany of complaints about the telephoning to the chief of staff finally bore fruit.

  At a brief little conference held as Dr. Pierce was about to leave the hospital for Bide-a-While, Dr. Pierce promised the chief of staff faithfully, with Crumley standing there as a witness, that he would henceforth and forever more call long distance only in cases of absolute necessity, and that he would pay for personal calls himself.

  It was hours later before Mr. Crumley realized that Dr. Pierce would be the judge of what was an “absolutely necessary” telephone call, and that things were, and would be, unchanged in these circumstances. He then decided it was not only his right, but his clear duty, to “monitor” Dr. Pierce’s long-distance telephony.

  He issued strict orders that whenever Dr. Pierce placed a long-distance call, he was to be notified of all the details, and immediately.

  And so it came to pass that Mr. Crumley became a silent listener to a telephone call placed to New Orleans, Louisiana. It began when his own telephone rang.

  “Office of the hospital administrator,” he said, “T. Alfred Crumley, Sr., speaking.”

  “Crumbum,” Hazel, the telephone operator, said, “violating my sense of right and wrong, I’m reporting that Hawkeye just put in a call to New Orleans.”

  “That’s ‘Mr. Crumley’ and ‘Dr. Pierce,’ Hazel,” he corrected her. He realized at that point that she had hung up on him. Pursing his lips in displeasure, he got her back on the line.

  “To whom, Hazel, did Hawkeye place the call?”

  “That’s ‘Dr. Pierce’ to you, Crumbum,” Hazel said. “The call is to Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes.”

  “To whom?” What, wondered Mr. Crumley, would a fire-breathing heathen be up to by placing a call to a party whose name suggested she was a distinguished religious of the Church?

  “Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes,” Hazel replied.

  Mr. Crumley dropped his phone in its cradle and rushed to the switchboard, where he picked up a headset and punched the appropriate buttons so that he could, as he thought of it, “monitor” the conversation.

  “Lousy eavesdropper,” Hazel said in something louder than a whisper. Mr. Crumley ignored her.

  “Gates of Heaven Hospital,” an operator said.

  “Dr. B. F. Pierce calling for Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes,” Hazel said.

  “One moment, operator. I’ll see if I can find the Reverend Mother,” the operator said. Another voice came on the line.

  “The Reverend Mother’s office, Sister Piety speaking.”

  “Dr. Pierce for the Reverend Mother,” the operator said.

  “She’s in conference, operator,” Sister Piety said, then added, “but I’m sure she’ll be only too happy to talk to Dr. Pierce. Hold on a moment, please.”

  Crumley’s face registered mild surprise that a reverend mother would be “only too happy” to speak with a fire-breathing heathen, and then it registered complete surprise when that distinguished religious came on the line.

  “Ciao, Hawkeye,” she said. “How’s my favorite heathen-cutter?”

  “One mome
nt, please, Reverend Mother,” Hazel said, somewhat flustered. “I’ll ring Hawkeye for you.”

  “Dr. Pierce,” he said, coming on the line.

  “Your dime, Hawkeye,” Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes* said. “Start talking.”

  (* Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes, M.D., F.A.C.S., Chief of Staff of the Gates of Heaven Hospital, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Dr. Pierce became both professionally and personally acquainted several years before when Dr. Pierce operated upon His Eminence John Patrick Mulcahy, Archbishop of Swengchan. The details of this ecumenical cutting have been recorded for posterity in M*A*S*H Goes to New Orleans (Pocket Books) for those with a prurient interest in surgical procedures.)

  “Hi-ya, Bernie,” Hawkeye said.

  “How’re things on the well-known rock-bound coast?” the Reverend Mother inquired. “Specifically, how’s Esther and that back-sliding crony of yours?”

  “Trapper John* sends regards,” Hawkeye said. “And I’m calling about Esther.”

  (* The reference here is to John Francis Xavier McIntyre, M.D., F.A.C.S., who in his college days was accused by a University of Maine coed of trapping her in the gentlemen’s rest facility of a Boston & Maine railroad car. The accusation, which Dr. McIntyre denied vehemently, came after the pair was caught, more or less, flagrante delicto, by a nosy conductor. Despite Dr. McIntyre’s denial, the accusation was generally believed; hence, the designation of “Trapper John.”)

  “Nothing wrong, I hope.”

  “Not yet,” Hawkeye said. “You know how Hot Lips keeps asking Esther to come down there for a little vacation?”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, she’s got reservations on the nine-fifteen plane tomorrow morning.”

  “Well, that’s grand,” the Reverend Mother said. “I’ll look forward to seeing her.”

  “The reason she’s going is so that she and Hot Lips can go to the Saints-Cowboys game,” Hawkeye added, “in Dallas.”