MASH 12 MASH goes to Texas Read online

  “And how was the steam, Congressman Bambino?” the attendant asked.

  “The steam was all right,” Tiny Tony Bambino replied. “But I think it’s outrageous that the House Committee still hasn’t got The Short and Stylishly Stout model installed. It’s really no fun sitting in there in the dark.”

  “I’m sure they’re doing the best they can.”

  “Their best is obviously not good enough,” Congressman Bambino snorted, then marched across the room to a massage table. “Where are the disinterested bipartisan witnesses?” he demanded.

  “Over here, Mr. Bambino,” the attendant said, indicating two respectable-looking gentlemen in terry cloth bathrobes sitting against the wall.

  “In that case, you may proceed,” Congressman Bambino said. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as I was saying to the President just the other day.* And get me a telephone, will you?”

  (* Following some scurrilous allegations by yellow journalists whose sole purpose was to discredit the Congress in the eyes of the public concerning some hanky-panky between certain congressmen and certain practitioners of the Massagic Art, the Congressional Breakfast Prayer Meeting Club, Incorporated, House Committee had authorized the employment of suitable disinterested bipartisan witnesses for their steam room. But then Congressman Edward “Smiling Jack” Jackson (Farmer, Free-Silver, Ark.) had offered an amendment. Since the function of the disinterested, bipartisan witnesses was obviously to protect the good name of Congress and its members, there was no reason why they (the congressmen) should pay for them personally with their own money. Six members of the capital police force were ordered to show up in their bathrobes at the steam room first thing the next morning.)

  One of the disinterested bipartisan massage witnesses was kind enough to dial a number for Congressman Bambino as he laid, somewhat unevenly, on his stomach and rocked back and forth under the ministrations of the masseuse.

  “Congressman Vishnefsky is on the line, Congressman,” the witness said and handed him the phone.

  “Val?” Congressman Bambino said. “Tony, here. How’s every little thing? The wife and all the little Vishnefskys?”

  “Get to the point, Tony, I’m a busy man,” Vibrato Val Vishnefsky boomed. “Cut the baloney.”

  “I was sitting inside the steam cabinet just now,” Tiny Tony said, “to get to the bottom line.”

  “You mean they still haven’t installed The Short and Stylishly Stout model for you yet?”

  “No, they haven’t, and I’m going to raise hell about it at the next prayer meeting,” Tiny Tony said. “But let me get to the point.”

  “By all means,” Vibrato Val said.

  “As I was saying, I was sitting inside the steam cabinet and thinking ... there’s not even a lousy light in there ... when it occurred to me that in addition to being Vice-Chairman of the House Committee on Honesty in Government, I am also Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Honesty in Football, Baseball and Other All-American Sports.”

  “So what?” Vibrato Val replied somewhat impatiently.

  “It has come to my attention, Congressman,” Tiny Tony said, “that certain allegations have been made, by certain responsible citizens, that one of the causes of violence in the streets among our young is the violence they see on their television screens while watching professional football.”

  “Tony,” Vibrato Val replied tiredly, “it’s after midnight. I need my sleep.”

  “Let me continue,” Tiny Tony said. “These same responsible citizens allege that the greatest violence of all occurs when the New Orleans Saints play the Dallas Cowboys. They also allege, and I fear their suspicions are justified, that wagers are made, in violation of the law, on the outcome of the game.”

  “In words of one syllable, Tony, so what the hell?”

  “The aforementioned teams are going to play together tomorrow, or later today, actually, seeing that I can tell by my steamproof electronic watch that it is past the hour of midnight, and thus tomorrow has become, in effect, today.”

  “How much Chianti did you take into the steam cabinet with you, Tony?”

  “Dallas, Texas,” Tiny Tony went on, “by the most innocent of coincidences, happens to be in the same great state as our dry oil wells.”

  “I’m beginning to see the drift of your thought, Congressman,” Vibrato Val said. “Pray, continue.”

  “As you well know, Congressman,” Tiny Tony said, “I am prepared to make any sacrifice, pay any price ... with the taxpayers’ money, of course ... to meet my responsibilities to the fine people who have seen fit to reelect me to office.”

  “Me, too,” Vibrato Val said.

  “I am prepared, in other words, to go to Texas and see about this violence and gambling for myself.”

  “That’s very noble of you, Congressman,” Vibrato Val said.

  “I know. Now, what I have in mind, Congressman, is the notion that you might similarly be disposed to tear yourself away from home and hearth and accompany me.”

  “I was thinking along those lines myself,” Vibrato Val said. “How far is Texas Stadium from our oil wells?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s no problem, as I see it. When I call the Defense Department for the air force plane to take us to Texas, I’ll tell them to have an army helicopter standing by in Texas.”

  “What about our esteemed colleague, the distinguished gentleman from Texas, ‘Dry Hole’ Jones? Are we going to take him with us?” Vibrato Val asked.

  “Of course we are,” Tiny Tony replied. “It would be a violation of congressional courtesy, even to a lousy freshman, to visit his district without taking him along. Besides, he can show us our oil wells.”

  “While you call the Defense Department, just to do my part, I’ll call Alamo and tell him to pack his saddlebags. We’re off to his home where the buffaloes roam,” Vibrato Val said, jocularly, “and the bears and the billy goats play.”

  “That’s deer and antelope, Val,” Tiny Tony said, “deer and antelope.”

  “Whatever,” Vibrato Val said. “Well, Congressman Bambino, see you on the Congressional Air Force Base Bus* in the morning.”

  (* The Congressional Air Force Base Bus ferries members of Congress from their offices and homes to and from Bolling Air Force Base, where the air force maintains a fleet of aircraft solely to carry senior governmental officials wherever in the world their official duties require them to go. The bus was formerly a limousine, until certain yellow journalists brought the arrangement to the public’s attention, and Congress unanimously forbade the use of limousines for such purposes. The vehicles currently in use, equipped with flashing lights and sirens, are Cadillac Model-75 seven-passenger motor vehicles, with a separate compartment for the driver, and on the door of which is printed, in letters a full three-quarters of an inch high, the legend congressional bus.

  Chapter Ten

  For most of her life, truth to tell, Margaret Houlihan Wachauf Wilson, R.N., had not had many close friends of the same gender. Once she had crossed, so to speak, the threshold between innocent childhood and the first blush of feminine maturity—when she had, in other words, begun to blossom forth above the waist and below the chin with the most visible anatomical characteristics of her sex—the other girls had immediately become violently jealous.

  She had, in her high school years, been cruelly referred to by her female peer group as “Big Boobs Houlihan,” and this had seemed to throw her, so to speak, into the arms of her male peer group, who, although they were quite as aware of her glandular development as the girls, had too much sense to comment upon same, at least in Margaret’s company, for even then she had a well-deserved reputation for a wicked right hook.

  Once she had completed her preparatory and nursing education and accepted the commission from the President of the United States to go forth and do good as First Lieutenant, U.S. Army Nurse Corps, the references by members of her peer group to her mammary gland development had been replaced by an appellation that can
not be printed in a morally uplifting tome such as this.*

  (* The reference, more commonly applied to male officers who display an unusual fervor to strictly enforce each and every petty military regulation, makes vulgar reference to the product of the excretory function of the chicken.)

  While she enjoyed her military career (she was ultimately retired in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel), she had not made any lasting friendships with her fellow female officers, all of whom seemed to resent the attention Nurse Houlihan was paid by her fellow officers of the male persuasion, as well as her devoted (some said “fanatic”) dedication to military courtesy and protocol.

  It was only after she had been retired and twice widowed that “Hot Lips” Houlihan, to use the affectionate pet name she had acquired as chief nurse of the 4077th MASH in the Korean War, finally found a pal.

  This was, of course, Esther Flanagan, R.N., who had been off doing good with the U. S. Navy Nurse Corps while Hot Lips had been off with the U. S. Army, and who, by a fortuitous coincidence, had found employment in her native Spruce Harbor, Maine, as Chief of Nursing Services and head operating room nurse of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center.

  Spruce Harbor Medical Center’s Chief of Surgery Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, M.D., F.A.C.S., and his assistant, John Francis Xavier “Trapper John” McIntyre, M.D., F.A.C.S., had also served, in the same roles, at the 4077th MASH during the period when Major Houlihan had been with that famous military medical facility.

  It was at the 4077th MASH (known affectionately as the “Ol’ Double Natural”), too, that Hot Lips had made her first true friend of the opposite gender, Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the world’s greatest opera singer. The Maestro was then doing his military service under the nom de guerre of “Bob Alexander” and had been brought to the Ol’ Double Natural leaking in several places from wounds suffered carrying his platoon sergeant, Technical Sergeant Jean-Pierre “Horsey” de la Chevaux, down a rocky Korean mountain.

  Major Houlihan had been making her rounds of the surgical recovery ward tent when P.F.C. Alexander called out plaintively to her, asking if he could speak with her privately. Normally, aware as she was that when men, even men with both arms and legs encased in casts, as was P.F.C. Alexander, wished to “speak” with her, they wished to do so in what has become known as “body language,” Major Houlihan would have told him to go “through channels” bringing whatever it was that he wished to discuss to be brought to her attention via one of the junior nurses. But there was something about this soldier that was different, so she violated her own rules about keeping the enlisted men in their proper place.

  “What is it, soldier?” she asked.

  “As I understand the purpose of this olive-drab charnel house,” P.F.C. Alexander said, “it is to restore soldiers such as I to such physical condition as will make it possible for them to resume their front-line duties. Would you consider that, sir, a fair statement of the purpose?”

  She bit off the reply (“Soldier, don’t say ‘sir’ to female officers”) that sprang to her lips. Her curiosity was piqued.

  “That’s it,” she said. “What’s your problem?”

  “Unless you can keep your nurses away from me, lady,” P.F.C. Alexander rushed on, “I’ll be eligible for twenty-year retirement before I get my strength back.”

  “What are you suggesting?” she asked, anger and disbelief mingled in her voice.

  “What you think I’m suggesting,” he replied, “except that I’m not suggesting it—I’m announcing it. And wrapped up in thirty pounds of plaster of Paris like this, there is absolutely nothing I can do to escape their unwanted attention. God knows I’ve tried! But here I am, a trapped mouse, so to speak, to be toyed with until all my strength is gone, satisfying their lewd desires, and then cast aside like a broken toy.”

  She looked at him, composing the succinct little speech that would really shut him up, when she saw tears running down his cheeks.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “You have no idea how terrible it is to be regarded as nothing but a sexual plaything,” he sobbed, “incessantly pursued by the opposite sex, with only one thing on their minds!”

  “Oh, but I do!” Major Houlihan said. “I do!”

  “You do?” he asked, then looked at her more closely. “Yeah, I can see why, now that you mention it.”

  “Put your mind at rest, soldier,” Major Houlihan said. “I’ll have a word with my nurses. Never again will one steal into your tent for lewd and/or lascivious purposes.”

  “We don’t really have to go that far,” P.F.C. Alexander said. “Maybe you could set up some kind of a roster. I realize that someone like myself has an obligation to spread as much pleasure around as possible. But this, you could say, was expecting too much of a good thing.”

  Major Houlihan had looked down at him, shocked to the tips of her toes with the realization that, without being all that conscious of it, her maternal instinct had compelled her to gather the weeping soldier to her bosom, in a motherly fashion, of course. As incredibly, the soldier’s reaction to the proximity of her bosoms was absolutely nil.

  “Say, Major,” he said, wholly oblivious to the feminine charms that had driven every other male of her acquaintance, in such circumstances, bananas, “you wouldn’t happen to have a little belt of something around, would you? It’s been a long dry spell.”

  “Liquor in the wards is absolutely against regulations!” she said automatically.

  “Yeah, I know,” P.F.C. Alexander said. “But we understand each other, don’t we? Drawn together by our irresistible, to other people, charms.”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “A little brandy would be medically indicated to help you sleep—especially after all you’ve gone through, you poor lamb.”

  “Shake, Major,” P.F.C. Alexander said. “You’re all right. What did you say your name was?”

  “I’m Major Margaret Houlihan,” she said, “U.S. Army Nurse Corps, soldier.” But then she softened. “But you can call me ... when there’s no one around, of course ... Hot Lips.”

  Years later the musical world was shocked when Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov, the world’s greatest opera singer, flew into New Orleans from Paris by chartered jet to sing at the wedding of Margaret Houlihan Wachauf* and the Reverend Buck Wilson, announcing that he was waiving his customary fee of fifty dollars per note of music as a small gesture of affection for the lady he described as “my old army buddy.”

  (* The bride had been previously briefly married to, and widowed by, Mr. Isadore Wachauf, Chairman of the Board of Wachauf Metal Recycling, International (formerly Izzy's Junkyard). The details of her marriages may be found in M*A*S*H Goes to New Orleans (Pocket Books).)

  And the Maestro was at her side, too, when the Reverend Wilson, “Blessed Brother Buck,” was summoned to that final roll call up yonder.* He stood by her side when Blessed Brother Buck was planted, and it was Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov who urged her to accept the awesome responsibility urged upon her by the founding disciples of the God Is Love in All Forms Christian Church, Inc. After some machinations, which are far too complicated to relate here (suffice it to say they would have turned the Borgias green with envy, machination-wise), the founding disciples came to the widow Wilson to ask her to assume the leadership of the God Is Love in All Forms Christian Church, Inc., now that Blessed Brother Buck had gone to his last reward.

  (* The Reverend Wilson expired on the day of his marriage, quite literally upon the nuptial couch. The coroner’s report listed “heart failure, due to overexertion” as the cause of death.)

  They wanted her, specifically, to accept ordination as the Reverend Mother Emeritus of the body, to serve, so to speak, as its symbolic mother, temporally and spiritually.

  “I don’t really know what to do, Boris,” the widow Wilson confided, tearfully, in the man she described as her “one bosom buddy.”

  “What the hell, Hot Lips?” Boris advised. “Why not? Somebody’s got to
keep that collection of perfumed pansies in line, and you can bet your ass there’s a beautiful tax dodge somewhere in that outfit.”

  Several years after that, by which time she had become something of a legend in New Orleans as the leader of the GILIAFCC, Inc., she learned that the Maestro had been grievously maimed in a fishing expedition accident while visiting Dr. Hawkeye Pierce and Dr. Trapper John McIntyre. Realizing that, by tending to his needs in his hour of pain and travail, she could in some small way repay him for his kindness and friendship over the years, she had rushed to his side in an Aero-Jet Commander provided by his old comrade in arms, now Col. (Louisiana National Guard, retired) Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux.

  As critically as her professional eye judged the surgical procedures with which the fishhook had been removed from the epidermal covering of the singer’s left gluteus maximus, she could find nothing wrong.

  “I see Hawkeye hasn’t lost his touch,” she said to Boris. “You can pull your pants up now.”

  “It wasn’t Hawkeye, or Trapper John, who saved my life, Hot Lips,” Boris said, doing as he was ordered. “Before they could rush to my side, a local angel of mercy, a Florence Nightingale possessed of medical skills nearly as superb as your own, took the bull by the tail, so to speak, and took the hook out.”

  “You don’t say?” she replied rather coldly.

  At that moment the door to his room opened, and a nurse in uniform marched in, bearing a tray upon which sat a towel-wrapped bottle bearing a strong resemblance to a magnum of champagne.

  “Get rid of the crazy lady,” she said, “and you can have some of the bubbly you’ve been screaming for.”*