MASH 10 MASH goes to Miami Read online

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  DOÑA ANTOINETTA: Just this side of fifty, ample-bosomed and unmarried, she had taken a spectacular fall from chastity twenty-five years before. And she confessed her sin in loving detail at least once a week to her long-suffering priest.

  THE REVEREND MOTHER EMERITUS HOT LIPS: In gratitude for a generous endowment (financial, that is) from Doña Antoinetta, she wished to present that lady with a holy relic. But there are holy relics and holy relics. And the Hot Lips variety was definitely unsuitable for a redoubtable spinster lady, even one who had fallen in her hot-blooded youth.

  WALTER WALDOWSKI: Doctor of Dental Surgery, he met his former buddies of the 4077th MASH during an alcoholic moment in Paris. This accident of fate sent him winging at dizzying speed to the furious festivities in Miami.

  BORIS KORSKY-RIMSAKOV: He was known as the world’s greatest opera singer. Others affectionately called him old Lion Loins. He was a devoted practitioner of special exercises advocated by his old friend, Dr. Yancey; the exercises endeared him to a vast number of ladies and seemed to improve his vocal performance.

  MASH GOES TO MIAMI

  is an original POCKET BOOK edition.

  M*A*S*H Goes to Miami

  Further misadventures of M*A*S*H

  Richard Hooker

  And

  William E. Butterworth

  Pocket Book edition published Spetember 1976

  M*A*S*H GOES TO MIAMI POCKET BOOK edition published September, 1976

  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,

  a division of Simon 8c 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 Number: 0-671-80705-6.

  Copyright, ©, 1976, 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

  One of the many offices in various organizations held by Benjamin Franklin Pierce, F.A.C.S., chief of surgery of the Spruce Harbor, Maine, Medical Center was that of official surgeon of Boy Scout Troop 147, of Spruce Harbor.

  Normally, this was the least taxing and most pleasurable of his four appointments as surgeon to nonprofit organizations. Dr. Pierce was also post surgeon, Rockbound Shores Post No. 5660, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Spruce Harbor; foundation surgeon, the Matthew Q. Framingham Foundation, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Grand Exalted Royal Physician and Healer, Bayou Perdu Council, Knights of Columbus, Bayou Perdu, Louisiana.

  Not by coincidence, in each post he had an assistant. Dr. John Francis Xavier McIntyre, F.A.C.S., his longtime friend and co-proprietor of Spruce Harbor’s well-known Finest Kind Fish Market and Medical Clinic, also contributed (without charge) his professional services to the Boy Scouts, the V.F.W., the Framingham Foundation, and the K. of C.

  Only the Boy Scouts, however, actually required any Doñation of professional services. Once a year, before starting out for summer camp, long lines of little boys appeared for physical examinations. Aside from that, and the occasional removal of a splinter or the diagnosis and treatment of poison ivy, the official surgical role of the two official surgeons had little to do with the practice of the healing arts.

  For Post No. 5660 of the V.F.W., it was only necessary for one of the two healers to drop by the bar of the Post Home on Friday afternoon about five. This permitted the members of the post to truthfully tell their wives they would be a little late for supper as they were going “to stop in and see the doctor.”

  As foundation surgeon and deputy foundation surgeon, respectively, of the Matthew Q. Framingham Foundation, Pierce and McIntyre had even less to do. The foundation numbered sixty-two other properly licensed physicians in its membership. By a century-old tradition, the posts of foundation surgeon and deputy went to the last two physicians remaining on their feet at the annual Framingham Foundation Tribute to Hippocrates Banquet and Clambake. Their appointment was based on an ability having little to do with their knowledge of the practice of medicine.

  Similarly, as Grand Exalted Royal Physician and Healer and Grand Exalted Royal Deputy Physician and Healer of Bayou Perdu Council, K. of C., they were never called upon to recommend so much as an aspirin. K. of C. rules and regulations required the appointment of duly licensed medical practitioners to the posts in each council, and the members of Bayou Perdu Council had no intention of appointing some spoilsport when Hawkeye* and Trapper John** were available.

  (*Dr. Pierce’s father was a devout fan of James Fenimore Cooper, and especially of his novel, The Last of the Mohicans. On the birth of his only child, he gave in to his wife, granting that “Hawkeye” would appear a bit strange on a birth certificate. He had never, however, called his son anything else, and the name had stuck.)

  (** Dr. McIntyre, while an undergraduate, succeeded in enticing a University of Maine coed into the gentleman’s rest facility aboard a Boston & Maine railway train. When, made curious by certain obviously feminine murmurs of pleasure coming from that place, the conductor found them somewhat deshabille, the young lady traitorously announced that she had been “trapped.” Dr. McIntyre has been known to friend and foe alike as Trapper John since that time.)

  As official surgeon and official deputy surgeon of Boy Scout Troop 147, however, it was clear to both Hawkeye and Trapper John that their firm duty under both the Boy Scout and Hippocratic oaths was to insure that the scouts under their medical supervision were properly and adequately cared for while far from home and hearth at summer camp.

  On alternate days, therefore, either Hawkeye or Trapper John drove the thirty miles from Spruce Harbor to the summer camp, stopping for luncheon en route and arriving about one-fifteen, or just after lunch had been served to the Scouts. Neither healer was fond of la cuisine Boy Scout.

  After ascertaining that none of their uniformed charges was suffering from anything more serious than a wasp sting or the first signs of acne, the next stop was the boat dock. As a privilege of their official position, they were free to make use of the fleet of Boy Scout boats. Furthermore, on a sort of roster basis, deserving Boy Scouts were granted the great privilege of wie
lding the oars. Lazy summer afternoons could thus be spent in piscatorial pleasure. If either physician had any luck, the rower could expect to have broiled fish for his evening meal, while his less fortunate fellows were forced to get by on the standard camp fare, which was frankly heavy on hot dogs and baked beans.

  On one bright August afternoon, Dr. Pierce showed up at Camp Kitatinny with a stranger in tow. The camp chaplain, the Rev. Elmore T. Johnston, who had a very well-developed sniffer, was absolutely convinced that he smelled spirits on the stranger’s breath, a suspicion buttressed somewhat by the telltale outline of a flask in the stranger’s blue jeans.

  The stranger was introduced as Horsey de la Chevaux, and when Mr. de la Chevaux acknowledged the introduction with a pronounced French accent, the Rev. Johnston felt quite sure that, for reasons he couldn’t possibly understand, Dr. Pierce was in the company of a French-Canadian logger. The Maine woods abounded with French-Canadian loggers, most of whom were fond of the sauce.

  The Rev. Johnston erred slightly. He did indeed smell spiritous liquors on Mr. de la Chevaux’s breath, and the bulge in the hip pocket of Mr. de la Chevaux’s blue jeans was indeed a flask, but Mr. de la Chevaux was not a French-Canadian logger. He was, in fact, a Louisiana Cajun.

  As Mr. de la Chevaux watched, Dr. Pierce removed two splinters, treated a nasty pimple, and painted with a patented medicine the nether regions of three young gentlemen who would, he said, remember in the future to look where they stood before they leaked, in order to avoid poison-ivy contamination of their nether regions.

  And then, with two scouts in tow, Dr. Pierce and Mr. de la Chevaux proceeded to the boat dock. They settled themselves comfortably in the sterns of their respective row boats and were rowed to distant parts of the lake, where hooks were dropped into the water.

  They had been fishing, without much success, for about thirty minutes when suddenly Mr. de la Chevaux called to Dr. Pierce.

  “Hey, Hawkeye!” he called.

  “Don’t scare the fish!” Dr. Pierce hissed in reply.

  “Take a look at the dock, Doc,” Mr. de la Chevaux went on.

  There were three people on the dock—the Rev. Johnston and two Boy Scouts. Rev. Johnston was waving his arms around and one of the Boy Scouts was making signals with his arms.

  “I hope,” Hawkeye said, “that those are manifestations of religious fervor, and that the reverend hasn’t been at the sauce again.”

  “I tink,” Mr. de la Chevaux said, “dat it’s something serious, Hawkeye.”

  Hawkeye looked again.

  “He’s signalling S.O.S.,” his Boy Scout rower said.

  “In that case, pal,” Hawkeye said, “you get up here and navigate, and I’ll row.”

  It was indeed an emergency of a medical nature.

  “One of the boys has been badly cut,” Rev. Johnston said, even as Hawkeye was getting out of the row boat.

  “How?” Hawkeye asked.

  “The head came off an axe,” Rev. Johnston said.

  “Where is he?”

  “In the dispensary.”

  “Get my bag, Horsey, will you?” Hawkeye called as Mr. de la Chevaux pulled up to the dock in his row boat. “One of the kids has been cut.”

  The injured boy, black-haired, light brown in color, was in pain, frightened, and on the edge of hysteria. That was understandable. He had been badly cut, and there was a good deal of blood. The cutting edge of the axe blade had opened his lower right arm to the bone. Hawkeye saw that the arm was broken as well. It was a nasty wound.

  The camp director had applied a tourniquet. As Hawkeye waited for the bag from his car, he tried to speak to the boy. The boy looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  “He doesn’t speak much English, Doctor,” the camp director said, so shocked by the sight of the arm that he used Hawkeye’s official title.

  “How come?”

  “He’s Cuban,” the camp director said.

  “Here you go,” Frenchy said, delivering the bag. And then he saw the boy. “My God!”

  “He doesn’t speak any English, Frenchy,” Hawkeye said. “Tell him that I’m a doctor, and that he’s going to be all right.”

  Frenchy, in what sounded like (and indeed was) fluent Spanish, spoke consolingly to the boy as Hawkeye applied a pressure compress to the wound.

  “Get on the telephone,” Hawkeye said, “and call the hospital and the state cops. Tell them to set up an operating room, and ask Dr. McIntyre and Nurse Flanagan to stand by. Tell the cops I’d appreciate an escort.”

  The camp director reached for the telephone.

  “Tell him, Frenchy,” Hawkeye said, “that we’re going to take him to the hospital and fix him up.”

  Horsey did as he was told. The look of near animal terror in the boy’s eyes seemed to diminish a little.

  “You drive, Horsey,” Hawkeye said. “We’ll prop him up on the back seat, and I’ll ride with him.”

  A state police car was waiting at the intersection of the dirt road leading to Camp Kitatinny and the highway. As Horsey eased the car onto the concrete, the siren began to wail.

  Trapper John and Nurse Flanagan, a cart, two orderlies, and the emergency room intern were waiting for them when Horsey pulled up outside the Spruce Harbor Medical Center.

  “Prep him,” Hawkeye said as the orderlies took the boy from the car. “He doesn’t speak much English, so Horsey will translate for you.”

  Forty-five minutes later it was all over, and Hawk-eye and Trapper John and Horsey, all three in surgical greens, stood around the small pale figure in the recovery room waiting for him to wake up.

  “Where did he come from?” Trapper John asked. “We don’t have any Cubans around here.”

  “The kid who was rowing me said that the troop had two of them up from Miami,” Hawkeye reported. “Some sort of an exchange program. I don’t know where the other one was.”

  “He was probably on the other end of the axe,” Trapper replied.

  The small, greyish-faced figure stirred.

  “Talk to him, Horsey,” Hawkeye ordered. “Try to get his attention.”

  After first throwing up all over Horsey’s shoes, the boy woke up to find his arm in a cast. Thirty minutes after that, he was ready to leave the recovery room. “Where do we put him?” Nurse Flanagan asked.

  “Put him in with somebody cheerful,” Hawkeye ordered. “Horsey and I will look in on him after a bit.” Dr. Pierce, Dr. McIntyre, Nurse Flanagan and Col. de la Chevaux then moved to Dr. Pierce’s chief of surgery’s office. The door was locked, the IN CONFERENCE sign in the anteroom illuminated, and the lower file drawer unlocked. From this stout steel repository were taken a bottle of gin, a bottle of vermouth, a jar of olives, suitable mixing utensils, and, for Col. de la Chevaux, who thought martinis were “sissy,” a half-gallon bottle of Old White Stagg Blended Kentucky Bourbon.

  (*Several years before, as has been recorded in M*A*S*H Goes to New Orleans, a volume already widely acclaimed for its literary style, attractive cover, stout binding, and remarkably low cost, Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux had been directly commissioned colonel in the Louisiana National Guard by His Excellency the Governor. Citing Mr. de la Chevaux’s distinguished active military service record and his many civic good works, the governor stated that he was simply recognizing talent when he saw it. He "refused to dignify with a reply” allegations made by his political opponents that Col. de la Chevaux’s appointment had come shortly after the discovery of “the largest pool of natural gas ever found in North America” under de la Chevaux’s property in Bayou Perdu, La., and that the appointment itself had been made at four o’clock in the morning in the bar at Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans following what the New Orleans Picaroon-Statesman had editorially described as a “booze-washed bacchanal setting new standards even for our governor.”)

  Within two minutes of entering the office, the three practitioners of the healing arts and the distinguished military representative of the Louisiana governor’s staff were a
ll sitting around the coffee table, feet up, having a wee nip.

  “He gonna be all right, Hawkeye?” Horsey asked.

  “He came close to a lot of trouble, but he’ll be all right,” Dr. Pierce replied.

  “He’s a Cuban refugee,” Horsey said. “They just sneaked him out of there.” He paused thoughtfully, and then grabbed the telephone on the coffee table.

  Doctors Pierce and McIntyre and Nurse Flanagan each raised an eyebrow. They wondered what Horsey was doing, but none of them would ask. Hawkeye reached over and punched the button that turned on a loudspeaker, permitting them all to hear.

  “Hey, Sweetie,” Horsey said to the hospital telephone operator. “Lemme speak to Crumbum.”

  “Is that you, Horsey?” the operator asked, nearly in a giggle.

  “Who else?” Horsey replied.

  “Thank you for the gumbo, Horsey,” the operator said.

  “Glad you liked it,” Horsey said, blushing a little. “We made a couple of pots for a party, but the Knights started to drink a little early, and there was a lot left over, so I figured what the hell, I bring some with me. Hate to see it go to waste.”

  (* Col. de la Chevaux referred to the Knights of the Bayou Perdu Council, Knights of Columbus, in which organization he had for many years served as Grand Exalted Royal Keeper of the Golden Fleece, or treasurer.)

  “I’ll connect you with Crumbum,” she said. Mr. T. Alfred Crumley served as administrator of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center.

  “T. Alfred Crumley speaking.” The voice was dignified, precise, and a trifle nasal.

  “Hey, Crumbum,” Horsey said. “Here’s Horsey, how dey hanging?”

  “Col. de la Chexaux,” Mr. Crumley said. “As I have told you and told you, my name is Crumley.”