MASH 12 MASH goes to Texas Read online

  “You’re really a glutton for punishment, aren’t you, birdbrain?” Scarlett said to him.

  “I don’t quite know how to say this,” Bubba said, running in place, taking care to stay outside the reach of her right hook, “but I think I love you.”

  “Out of simple compassion,” Scarlett said, “for someone who is either missing most of his marbles, or plastered out of his mind at six o’clock in the morning, I will give you a friendly little warning. It’s a good thing for you that my Uncle Hiram and Sitting Buffalo went out to buy us some groceries for breakfast. If either of them saw you near me, much less talking like that, you’d be so full of bullet holes, and so full of arrows ...”

  “My intentions are entirely honorable!” Bubba protested.

  “Go take a cold shower,” Scarlett said, “before I sic Teddy Roosevelt on you myself!” And, with that, she nimbly leaped up on Teddy Roosevelt’s back, kicked him in the ribs and galloped off. “And stay away from me!” she called over her shoulder. “Understand?!”

  “I’m your slave!” Bubba shouted after her. “Yours to command!”

  “A long, cold shower, and then some black coffee!” she called.

  “Right away!” Bubba said, then ran toward the Winnebago. “And then, after I’ve showered and had some coffee, I’ll find you again!”

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Scarlett’s voice floated back to him faintly from the far corner of the parking lot, it nearly being drowned out by the sound of the buffalo’s hoofbeats.

  At that precise moment, Air Force Six-twenty-three rolled up before the Chevaux Petroleum hangar at New Orleans’ Moisant Field.

  “I thought Horsey said he was in one of his own planes,” the Reverend Mother Emeritus mused.

  “But who else would it be?” Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes* asked.

  (* Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes had not been made privy to the governor’s brilliant little plan of action, an omission he would later rue, hell having, as they say, no fury like a reverend mother ignored.)

  The same conclusion was reached by the leader, Henry-Philippe Trudeau, of the Bayou Perdu Council, K. of C., Marching Band.

  “Okay, boys,” he said, raising his baton, “hit it!”

  The familiar strains of “When the Saints Go Marching In” rose in the early morning, somewhat foggy, air.

  “Damn those swamp rats!” Hot Lips said. “Excuse me, Bernie, but they beat us again.” She turned to the GILIAFCC, Inc., a cappella choir. “Hit it!” she ordered. “And loudly! Let’s hear it for old Esther!”

  A hundred voices, sort of a low-pitched soprano in timbre, burst forth with the first few bars of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” as the door in the side of Air Force Sabreliner Six-twenty-three unfolded from the fuselage. C. Bromwell Fosdick stepped onto the top stairs as two of the founding disciples of the GILIAFCC, Inc., in full ecclesiastical vestments, advanced on him, bearing the dyed-green lily “Top of the Morning!” floral display, and followed by the Reverend Mother Emeritus in her vestments and Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette of Lourdes in hers.

  “I think, perhaps,” Fosdick said, “there’s been a slight mix-up. I don’t really think, Sisters, that those lovely flowers are for me.”

  “You bet your bazooka they’re not for you!” the Reverend Mother Emeritus replied. “Where the hell is Esther Flanagan?”

  At that precise moment, “When the Saints Go Marching In,” as being rendered by the Bayou Perdu Council, K. of C., Marching Band, died in mid-note, and a male voice cried out “Okay, guys, on the plane! Horsey went nonstop to Dallas.”

  The one-hundred-voice-strong GILIAFCC, Inc., a cappella choir kept right on, of course, at least until Hot Lips requested them to cease and desist.

  “Cut!” she bellowed, making the standard “cutting” motion with her hand across her throat. “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” died a slow death. Then she turned to C. Bromwell Fosdick.

  “Who the hell are you?” she asked.

  “C. Bromwell Fosdick, United States Secret Service, at your service, Sister.”

  “That’s the Reverend Mother Emeritus to you, Jack. And, to reiterate, where the hell is Esther?”

  “I’m afraid, ma’am,” he replied, “I have no idea to whom you refer. My business here is to protect His Royal Highness Sheikh Abdullah ben Abzug from harm by any enemies, foreign or domestic.”

  “Forgive me for saying so, fella,” Hot Lips said, “but you protecting Abdullah is like sending a Congressman to guard the U.S. Treasury ... an odd idea, at best.”

  “I put it to you, Reverend Mother Emeritus,” C. Bromwell Fosdick said, “that it is your clear, patriotic duty, if, indeed, you have the knowledge, to make me aware, as the senior governmental official on the scene, of the present whereabouts of His Royal Highness.”

  “I’d say that he’s halfway to Dallas,” Hot Lips replied. She interrupted her reply to issue another order: “Okay, guys, get on the plane! Esther’s probably with Horsey, which means they didn’t stop here.”

  “Halfway to Dallas?” C. Bromwell Fosdick inquired. “But he was supposed to land here first.”

  “We all have our little problems,” Hot Lips said as she, taking Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette’s arm, ran with her across the field and clambered aboard the Chevaux Petroleum Corporation 747 carrying the Bayou Perdu Council, K. of C., Marching Band.

  C. Bromwell Fosdick climbed back aboard his airplane.

  “Dallas, Texas!” he ordered. “And step on it!” He grabbed a set of earphones from a hook and put them on in time to hear the control tower.

  “Moisant departure control clears Chevaux Petroleum Seven as first for takeoff, and Chevaux Petroleum Thirteen as second.”

  Fosdick snatched the microphone: “Control, this is Fosdick of the Secret Service. I demand takeoff priority for Air Force Six-twenty-three.”

  “You got it, Fosdick,” Moisant departure control replied immediately. “Moisant departure control clears Air Force Six-twenty-three for priority takeoff, immediately after Chevaux Petroleum Seven and Thirteen.”

  “Chevaux Seven rolling,” the pilot of Chevaux Six announced.

  “Chevaux Thirteen rolling,” the pilot of Chevaux Twelve announced.

  “Air Force Six-twenty-three rolling.”

  “Chevaux Seven and Thirteen, Air Force Six- twenty-three, Moisant departure control. I’m handing you over to Dallas approach control at this time.”

  “Dallas approach control, this is Chevaux Seven. Estimate Dallas in forty-five minutes. Request landing and taxi instructions for ... wait a minute. Hey, Lou, got your ears on?”

  “Go ahead, Big Bad Bird, I got your back door,” the pilot of the following aircraft replied.

  “Where did Horsey say I was to go with Holy Beaver Lady? I just got word she’s on here, instead of where she’s supposed to be.”

  “Ten-four, Big Bad Bird, you got both Holy Beavers. I guess you’d better go to Love, and I’ll go to Dallas-Fort Worth with the boys, to use the term loosely. Ten-four?”

  “Ten-four, Back Door,” the pilot of Chevaux Seven said. “Big Bad Bird going Ten-ten. Hey, Dallas approach control, you still there?”

  “Ten-four, Big Bad Bird ... I mean, go ahead, Chevaux Seven.”

  “Chevaux Seven, a Boeing 747 aircraft, passing over Baton Rouge Omni at two-five thousand, estimated ground speed five-niner-zero, estimated time of arrival at Dallas four-zero minutes, requests landing and taxi instructions for Love Field.”

  “Chevaux Thirteen, a Boeing 747 aircraft, over the Baton Rouge Omni at about two-three thousand, estimated ground speed six hundred, wants the same thing at Dallas-Fort Worth.”

  The pilot of Air Force Six-twenty-three turned to Mr. C. Bromwell Fosdick.

  “I can follow only one of those planes at a time, Mr. Fosdick,” he said. “Which should it be?”

  “You ordinary people have no conception of how lonely it is here at the top,” Fosdick said. “It’s one momentous decisio
n after another.” He took a quarter from his pocket, flipped it in the air and caught it against his wrist. He peeked at it.

  “Heads is Dallas-Fort Worth,” he said.

  “Dallas approach control, Air Force Six-twenty- three for landing and taxi instructions at Dallas-Fort Worth,” Air Force Six-twenty-three’s pilot said.

  “Ten-four,” Air Force Six-twenty-three replied.

  “I guess you got my back door, good buddy,” Chevaux Thirteen replied.

  About thirty minutes later, as the clock ticks, that is to say, about six-forty in the morning, Chevaux Petroleum Seventeen came in for a landing at Dallas’ Love Field.

  As they taxied toward the terminal, Dr. Hawkeye Pierce looked up from counting the money he had just taken from his friends on the strength of a trio of sevens and a fine ability to bluff and saw a Chevaux Petroleum 747 parked on the side of the field.

  “What’s that, Horsey?” he asked. “Did they get here before us?”

  Horsey peered out the window.

  “Naw,” he said. “That one’s in here to pick up some swamp buggies* for Venezuela. See ’em?”

  (* The vehicles to which Colonel de la Chevaux referred are oil- industry special-purpose vehicles. Equipped with enormous (ten-foot) wheels and tires, and powered by diesel engines, they can negotiate practically any kind of wet, swampy terrain, hence the popular name. Dr. Pierce was familiar with the vehicle, for Colonel de la Chevaux had presented one to Dr. Pierce’s youngest child at his birth.)

  “Yes, I do,” Hawkeye said.

  “I just thought of something,” Horsey said. “I’m glad you saw that, Hawkeye.” He picked up the intercom and spoke to the pilot. “Get on the horn and tell them to knock off loading the swamp buggies,” he ordered.

  “Gotcha, Horsey,” the pilot replied.

  “If it’s all the same to you, Horsey,” Hawkeye said, “I’d rather ride to Texas Stadium in a bus with the others. Not that I don’t think your swamp buggies are the finest kind of their genre, of course ...”

  “So would I,” Horsey said. “But I sent the plane with the K. of C. buses on it to Dallas-Fort Worth. It’ll take them all day to get into Dallas from way out there, and you know you never can get a taxi during a Saints-Cowboys game.”

  “Don’t be such a spoilsport,” Trapper John said.

  The Sabreliner taxied over to where the larger aircraft sat, and Colonel de la Chevaux requisitioned two of the vehicles.

  “That’ll be enough for us, even with Hot Lips and Reverend Mother Superior Bernadette,” he said.

  “Oh, is Reverend Mother Doctor coming along?” Hawkeye said. “Great!”

  “That’s Doctor Reverend Mother, Hawkeye,” Trapper John said. “Bernie’s told you that and told you that.”

  “I never can keep it straight.”

  “And Hot Lips’ pansies,” Horsey went on, just a little smugly, “will have to get out to Texas Stadium the best way they can.”

  “If I didn’t know you better, Horsey,” Hawkeye said, “I’d get the feeling that you didn’t approve of either the GILIAFCC, Inc., congregational football society or the a cappella choir.”

  “Not me,” Horsey said innocently. “Live and let live, I always say. It’s just that it throws the Saints off their game when those guys start throwing roses at them.”

  “If you clowns think that I’m going to let you risk my life and limb by letting you drive me around this strange town in that swamp buggy,” Esther Flanagan announced, “you’ve got another thing coming.”

  “As I understand our options, you either ride in the swamp buggy, or you walk to Texas Stadium,” Trapper John said. “Is that a fair appraisal of the situation, and the options available, Doctor?”

  “Well-spoken, Doctor,” Hawkeye said. “You have a way with words. Pity you’re such a lousy cutter.”

  “There’s one other option,” Esther Flanagan said, putting her hands on the ladder that one must climb to board a swamp buggy.

  “What is that?” Hawkeye asked.

  “I’ll drive,” she said, then climbed up the ladder. Colonel de la Chevaux erred, of course. The Chevaux 747 that touched down at Love Field a few minutes later was the one, carrying the Bayou Perdu Council, K. of C., Marching Band. Hot Lips and Bernie had climbed abourd that plane, and the other 747, the one carrying the GILIAFCC, Inc., a cappella choir and congregation had gone onto the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

  This turn of events pleased just about everybody except Hot Lips, who frankly suspected that Colonel de la Chevaux was entirely capable of playfully sending her God Is Love family to, for example, Nome, Alaska, just for the hell of it.

  But she was so pleased to be with Esther Flanagan, and after Horsey personally led the Bayou Perdu Council, K. of C., Marching Band in their “Welcome, Esther!” rendition of “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,” that she realized she didn’t have it in her heart to stay angry with him.

  “I forgive you, you miserable swamp rat,” she said, kissing him on both cheeks, following which she climbed aboard the first of the swamp buggies and took her place beside Esther.

  By the time the band had finished playing, the self-contained cargo elevators on the plane had lowered, one by the one, the four Greyhound-type buses in which the Knights traveled, to the ground.

  Esther Flanagan, at the wheel of swamp buggy number one, pulled on the rope actuating the air horn. A chorus of “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” played by the air horns atop the K. of C.’s canary-yellow buses, answered, signaling their readiness to move out. With a mighty clash of gears, the roar of powerful diesel engines and with the K. of C. band playing “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon Us,” the convoy rolled out of Love Field bound for Texas Stadium.

  Chapter Twelve

  The swamp buggy and bus convoy, however, did not, sadly, get to roll very far before minor disaster struck. Specifically, as Esther turned onto the highway into town from the airfield access road, there was what the law enforcement authorities term an “unanticipated multiple interference with a pursuit operation.”

  Esther Flanagan, what with the roar of the swamp buggy’s diesel engine, plus the music coming from the buses behind her, certainly could not be blamed for not hearing the sirens, although there is some merit to the argument that she should have seen the flashing blue lights on the police cars.

  But, as she said, immediately after the collision, “How was I to know what was going on? You don’t normally see a hearse running a red light at seventy-five miles an hour with the cops on its tail.”

  As well as the incident could later be reconstructed, Vehicle A (a 1951 Cadillac hearse), then being pursued by Vehicles B through G (current model Ford and Chevrolet sedans of the Texas Rangers and Texas Highway Patrol, all equipped with standard siren and flashing light assemblies, said assemblies operating at full volume), ran the red stop light at the intersection of Airport Boulevard and Dallas Avenue, such action constituting still another affront to the peace and dignity of the Great State of Texas.

  As Vehicle A passed Airport Boulevard, Vehicle H (a 1974 “Super Swamper” model swamp buggy) entered Dallas Avenue from Airport Boulevard, and the driver of Vehicle H thereby committed an affront to the peace and dignity of the Great State of Texas by completely ignoring the flashing lights and sirens on Vehicles B through G.

  Vehicle H then struck Vehicle A in the right rear side, finally coming to a halt with its left front wheel resting in that portion of Vehicle A in which the casket generally rides.

  Vehicle B then struck the left side of Vehicle H between the wheels, passing under Vehicle H the full length of its hood. Vehicle C then struck Vehicle B on its rear bumper, pushing Vehicle B even farther under the swamp buggy. Vehicle D then struck Vehicle C on its rear bumper, and in a similar manner, Vehicles E through G then struck Vehicles D through F on their rear bumpers.

  Although damage to vehicles involved (except Vehicle H) was severe, no personal injuries resulted. However, in the confusion that followed the collision, d
uring which the driver of Vehicle H further affronted the peace and dignity of the Great State of Texas by referring to the various law enforcement officers present as “the dumbest collection of Keystone Cops” she “had ever seen,” adding that she “had seen a lot of dumb cops,” the fugitives in Vehicle A managed to escape from their hearse, and at this writing they are still at large.

  No arrests were made at the time because of the circumstances, the circumstances being that the occupants of Vehicle H were accompanied by three buses full of friends, who immediately de-bused and demonstrated with law enforcement officers in a most ungentlemanly manner.

  That was something of an understatement. The decision not to make any arrests was made, in fact, only after the Knights of Columbus had de-bused, disarmed the Texas Highway Patrol officers and Texas Rangers, relieved them of their pants and left them, handcuffed with their own handcuffs, making sort of a daisy chain around the wrecked hearse.

  The Texas Rangers, as is well known, do not often willingly give up their guns, take off their pants and allow themselves to be handcuffed to wrecked automobiles on major traffic arteries, and neither, to a somewhat less violent degree, do the stalwarts of the Texas Highway Patrol.

  The Bayou Perdu Council, K. of C., in other words, suffered a few casualties of its own during the “remonstration.” Esther Flanagan, R.N., was in bus 3, and she was tending to the rather spectacular shiner suffered by Antoine Gaspair, when she began to be aware of a gentle tugging at her sleeve.

  She turned to see a cowboy and an Indian.

  “I always wondered what had happened to the Lone Ranger and Tonto,” she said. “Keymo Sabee, you all.”

  “Howdy, ma’am,” the cowboy said.

  “Now I know who you are,” Esther Flanagan said. “You’re the hot-rodder in the hearse!”

  “Ma’am,” Hiram said, “I’m sure sorry I got you in trouble.”

  “Think nothing of it, pop,” Esther said. “But, tell me, aren’t you a little old to be starting off on a life of crime? You look like you’d be better off in a rocking chair.”