MASH 13 MASH goes to Montreal Read online

“She’s serious,” Hawkeye replied. “She even gave me his name. Henri Flambeau.”

  “She’s marrying the premier?” Trapper John asked. “I thought he already had a wife!”

  “The premier’s not named Flambeau, Trapper. He’s got another funny name. Budreau, I think.”

  “Right!” Trapper John said. “Then who is this Flambeau character?”

  “He’s connected with the provincial government in a communications capacity.”

  “You could say the same thing about me,” Trapper John replied. “I’m connected with the United States government in a communications capacity. The IRS sends me threatening letters, and I send them money.”

  “You’re suggesting that Flambeau may not be the right Mr. Right for our Esther?”

  “That possibility has passed through my mind,” Trapper John said.

  “Well, what do we do?” Hawkeye asked. “I told her we were coming right away.”

  “We’ll go, of course,” Trapper John said.

  The telephone rang. As Hawkeye grabbed for it, he said, “cross your fingers, maybe it’ll be Esther calling us back to tell us she was kidding.”

  But it was not Esther, it was Wrong Way Napolitano.

  “Bide-a-While,” Hawkeye said. “Stanley’s not here.”

  “Hawkeye? Is that you? How come you’re answering the phone?”

  “I found out that when I pick it up, the bell stops ringing,” Hawkeye said. “The bell interferes with my drinking.”

  “Horsey and Hot Lips are about twenty minutes out,” Wrong Way reported. “I just got a call on the radio.”

  “That’s all I need right now,” Hawkeye said. “Call them back, Wrong Way, and see if Uncle Hiram is with them.”

  “Who’s Uncle Hiram?” Wrong Way asked.

  “Anybody’s Uncle Hiram,” Hawkeye said.

  Scarlett’s ears, in addition to being (in Bubba’s opinion) the cutest ears in the whole wide world, also had the range and sensitivity of those of a fox. She came walking over, with Bubba breathing heavily in her wake.

  “Did I hear you say Uncle Hiram, Dr. Hawkeye?”

  “Perish the thought,” Hawkeye said.

  “I would have sworn I heard you say Uncle Hiram,” Scarlett said.

  “Hawkeye,” Wrong Way came back on the telephone. “Affirmative. Your Uncle Hiram is aboard. How come I don’t know him?”

  Mr. Napolitano’s voice, coming as it did from a long line of Neapolitan bargemen, was audible anywhere within six feet of the telephone, even though Hawkeye had pressed the earpiece tightly to his head.

  “I distinctly heard Uncle Hiram,” Scarlett said.

  “My god, I’ve lost her!” a rather deep, Harvardian voice said, somewhat thickly.

  It was Matthew Q. Framingham, making his entrance to Bide-a-While supported by the chauffeur, who was visibly under a strain that threatened to get the best of him at any moment.

  “Well, as I live and breathe, if it isn’t Matthew Q. Framingham VI,” Trapper John said. “Whom have you lost?”

  “The last thing I remember, there we were in the backseat of the Rolls, singing, ‘Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild Wild Women,’ ” Matthew said. “And the next thing, I’m here.” He spotted Scarlett and, leaning forward to get a better look, announced, “My god, they’re real!”

  Bubba, for some reason, took umbrage at Mr. Framingham’s remark, even though it could be reasonably argued that it was simply a statement of fact. He expressed his displeasure by punching Mr. Framingham in the nose. Mr. Framingham fell backward, blood oozing from same.

  “Oh, Bubba, you’re so strong!” Scarlett said, wonder in her voice.

  “What now, oh, wise one?” Trapper John inquired of Hawkeye.

  “While the run-of-the-mill bloody nose can be treated with an ice pack,” Hawkeye said, “there are bloody noses that require hospitalization.”

  “And this is one of those cases?”

  “I think so,” Hawkeye said. “Stanley, you and the colonel load Mr. Framingham in the ambulance.”

  “What about my Polish wedding feast?” Stanley said.

  “Take it with you, if you like, in the ambulance,” Hawkeye said. “We may need it.”

  “To the Spruce Harbor Medical Center?”

  “No. We’re going to the Greater Montreal General Hospital,” Hawkeye said. “They’ve got a fine reputation, bloody nose-wise.”

  “Isn’t that, what shall I say, making a mountain out of a bloody nose?” Trapper John asked.

  “Can you think of any other way we can get from here to Montreal behind flashing red lights on and whooping whooper?” Hawkeye asked.

  “For a lousy bloody nose?”

  ‘To save Esther from this bureaucrat who has short- circuited her usual good sense,” Hawkeye said. “And to get us out of town before you-know-who wakes up, and before you-know-who and her friends arrive.”

  “Hurry up, Stanley,” Trapper John snapped. “You carry Framingham. I’ll help with the Polish ham, the Roast goose and the vodka.”

  Ten minutes later, Spruce Harbor Medical Center’s Ambulance Number Three, with the Framingham Foundation’s Rolls-Royce on its bumper, raced out of town at a speed considerably in excess of the fifty-five mph maximum laid down upon the American people by what has been laughingly called the World’s Most Exclusive Club.

  It had just passed the sign reading, YOU ARE NOW LEAVING SPRUCE HARBOR, GOOD RIDDANCE! when a 747 jumbo jet touched down at Spruce Harbor International and taxied to a parking space.

  There came a whirring sound, and a door opened in the bottom of the fuselage. There was another whirring noise, and then a platform on cables was lowered from inside the aircraft. On the platform was a Chevaux Petroleum Company swamp buggy. Even before the platform touched the ground, the driver of the vehicle had started the engine and tried out the air horns.

  Mr. Napolitano came out to greet the arriving aircraft.

  “Hi, Abdullah!” he called out to the driver of the vehicle.

  “Up yours, Wrong Way!” His Royal Highness replied warmly, waving at him. And then with a mighty clash of gears and a farewell blast on the air horns, the swamp buggy lurched off.

  “Go directly to the hospital,” the Reverend Mother Emeritus Margaret H. W. Wilson ordered, in fluent Abzugian. “After Horsey buzzed the hospital, Esther will know we’re coming anyway.”

  No sooner had the peculiar roar of the swamp buggy diesel faded than Wrong Way’s ears detected the sound of more aircraft engines. He climbed back up the wooden ladder to the control tower and turned the radio back on.

  “Spruce Harbor, this is Borscht Belt Fly Now & Pay Later Airways Number Sixteen for landing and taxi instructions.”

  “Go ahead, Borscht Belt.”

  “Which runway should I use?”

  “How many do you see?”

  “All I see is one dirt strip,” the Borscht Belt pilot replied.

  “What you see is what you get,” Wrong Way said. “Welcome to Spruce Harbor!”

  “Spruce Harbor, this is Air Force 909 for landing and taxi instructions.”

  “Air Force 909, you’re number two to land after the Borscht Belt Convair on final.”

  “Spruce Harbor, this is Babcock Six. Landing and taxi instructions, please.”

  “Babcock Six, hold in the pattern.”

  “Far be it from me to suggest in any way that I’m asking for special treatment, Spruce Harbor, but as a matter of incidental intelligence, this is the private, personal aircraft of Mrs. Burton Babcock III, chairperson and presidentress of Burton Babcock & Company.”

  “In that case, Babcock Six, you might as well divert to, say, Montreal, because you’re sure as hell not going to get Wrong Way Napolitano’s permission to land here.”

  “But Montreal is more than 150 miles, as the crow flies, from here.”

  “Be glad I didn’t divert you to Seattle, Washington,” Wrong Way replied.

  “Do I detect a certain attitude of unfriendliness on your behal
f, Spruce Harbor?”

  “Let me put it to you this way,” Wrong Way said. “How would you like it if your bride of nearly twenty years, the mother of your children, your companion on life’s rocky road, suddenly started to sniff snuff?”

  “Babcock Six diverting to Montreal at this time,” Babcock Six said. Instead of landing, then, Babcock Six flew right over Spruce Harbor’s runway. He saw the Borscht Belt Convair, the air force Sabreliner, and a familiar airplane.

  “Spruce Harbor, how come you let Babcock Learjet Eleven land and I can’t?” Babcock Six complained.

  ‘The pilot of Babcock Eleven is an old friend of Stanley K. Warczinski,” Wrong Way replied. “I made an exception in his case.”

  “Oh, I see,” Babcock Six replied. “Of course, that explains everything.”

  “Babcock Six,” another voice came over the radio, “did I understand you to say that your aircraft is the personal private aircraft of Mrs. Josephine Babcock, chairperson and presidentress of Burton Babcock & Company?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “What’s that mean? This is Don Rhotten speaking, and everyone should know by now that I simply can’t stand people who use big words like that.”

  “Affirmative means yes,” the pilot of Babcock Six said.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? If there’s one thing Don Rhotten can’t stand, it’s a smart ass,” Mr. Rhotten said. “Boston area control, this is the Don Rhotten Special. We’re going to Montreal, instead of Spruce Harbor. This is Don Rhotten saying good afternoon, and that’s the way it is, here at thirty thousand feet, over the rockbound coast of New Hampshire.”

  “This is Maine,” Wrong Way chauvinistically corrected him.

  “Don Rhotten is never wrong,” Mr. Rhotten said. “If I say it’s New Hampshire, it’s New Hampshire.”

  Although the personal private aircraft of Mrs. Burton (Josephine) Babcock III, chairperson and presidentress of Burton Babcock & Company, was going to Montreal, the lady herself was not, at least just then, for she was at that moment, incognito and attired in a white, tie-up- the-back garment, snoring loudly in a room of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center.

  She was not, however, as Hazel had informed Dr. McIntyre, passed out. While she had been resting her eyes rather heavily (all though the process of being off loaded from the Framingham Foundation’s Rolls, on loaded onto a Spruce Harbor Medical Center cart, and finally off loaded into bed, where she had been stripped and installed in a hospital gown), she was not what one could truthfully call dead to the world.

  At the sounds of a powerful diesel engine, a clashing of gears, and the peal of air horns outside her window, she had, in fact, suddenly returned to full wakefulness. She sat up in bed as if she had been shocked.

  Directly across from the foot of the bed was a chest of drawers and a mirror. In it, she saw herself dressed in the hospital gown.

  “My god!” she said. “Where am I?”

  God chose not to reply to the interrogatory, and Josephine Babcock was forced to find her own answer to the question. She slid out of the bed and walked on her toes to the door, pulled it open, and peered out. The reception desk of the Medical Center was perhaps thirty feet away. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes and looked again. She realized that something was seriously wrong with her; she was hallucinating.

  Gathered around the receptionist’s desk were an odd assortment of people. One was a tall statuesque blonde lady in clerical vestments, including a bishop’s cappa magna, which was flashing the message “God Is Love” at five-second intervals. Beside the lady in the flashing bishop’s hat was an Arab in full robes. Beside the Arab stood an English gentleman, complete to derby hat and rolled umbrella. Beside the English gentleman was an American Indian gentleman in blue jeans, deerskin shirt and feather in headband. Beside him stood a very large gentleman in an international-distress orange nylon jacket on the back of which was embroidered the legend “Cajun Air Force.”

  As Josephine watched, the gentleman in the Cajun Air Force orange nylon jacket handed the lady a gallon bottle of Old White Stagg Blended Kentucky Bourbon. Holding her cappa magna, lights still flashing, in one hand, the lady in the clerical vestments hooked the thumb of her other hand into the ring on the bottle neck, and then hoisted it to her Ups. After taking a good four swallows, she passed the bottle to the English gentleman and then contentedly patted her stomach.

  As she was doing this, she spotted Josephine Babcock.

  “Be right there!” she waved and called out, and came down the corridor to her. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  “Who are you?” Josephine asked.

  “I’m the Reverend Mother Emeritus, actually,” the lady said. “But since you can’t get anybody to answer your ring, I’ll come to your assistance. What’s wrong with you, anyhow?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” Josephine exploded.

  “Of course not,” the lady said, soothingly. “Now you just crawl back in bed, dear, like a good girl.”

  “I will like hell!” Josephine replied.

  “You will either be a good girl and get back in bed,” the lady said, “or the Reverend Mother will put you back in bed.”

  “Now see here,” Josephine said, “I’m Josephine . . . Mrs. Burton . . . Babcock III, and if you lay a hand on me, I’ll break your arm!”

  “You’re Bubba’s mother?” the lady asked. Josephine, shocked, nodded agreement.

  The Arab and the English gentleman and the Indian, together with the chap in the orange jacket, came down the corridor.

  “Isn’t this the most interesting coincidence?” the lady in the vestments said. “This is Bubba’s mother!”

  “Up yours!” the Arab gentleman said, handing Josephine a small diamond with a broad smile.

  “What did he say?” Josephine asked.

  “Don’t pay him any attention, dear,” the Reverend Mother Emeritus said. “He means well.”

  “Fat squaw look like Bubba,” Sitting Buffalo said. “Same white hair. Same teeth. Same big feet.”

  A woman wearing a telephone operator’s headset on her head came running down the corridor.

  “Well?” the Reverend Mother Emeritus asked.

  “Hot Lips,” the woman said, “I just talked to the Bide-a-While.”

  “And?”

  “Everybody just left in an ambulance. For Montreal.”

  “For Montreal? Montreal, Canada? That Montreal?”

  “That Montreal,” the lady repeated. “Something happened to Framingham’s nose, and Hawkeye’s rushing him to the Greater Montreal General Hospital.”

  “Framingham?” Josephine asked. “Would that possibly be Matthew Q. Framingham VI of the Framingham Theosophical Foundation?”

  “As if you didn’t know,” the lady with the headset sniffed. “You should be ashamed of yourself, at your age, carousing around with someone his age!”

  “What about Bubba?” Hot Lips asked.

  “They went, too. Bubba and his girl friend and Trapper John. Even Stanley.”

  “It must be really serious,” Horsey offered. “Otherwise, Hawkeye would have brought him here.”

  “You’re right, Horsey,” Hot Lips said. “Montreal, here we come!”

  “I’m coming, too,” Josephine said. She reached over and snatched the gallon bottle of Old White Stagg Blended Kentucky Bourbon from the English gentleman, who was cradling it in his arms like a baby. She took a swallow neat.

  “I think it would be best, dear, if you just crawled back in bed.”

  “The next time you call me dear, honey, I’m going to break this jug over your head,” Josephine said. “Don’t you know better than to get between a mother and her Precious Babykins in a situation like this?”

  “You may have a point,” Hot Lips said.

  “Hot Lips, I wasn’t supposed to tell you this,” Hazel said. “But under the circumstances, I think I’d better. Esther’s in Montreal.”

  “What’s she doing in Montreal?”
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  “She’s going to marry some French-Canadian, who’s connected with the provincial government in a communications capacity.”

  “Over his dead body, she is!” the English gentleman said. “Not my little prairie flower!” He took a Colt .45 from his belt, made sure it was loaded, and put it back.

  “We must all put our personal problems aside in this hour of Matthew Q. Framingham’s need,” the Reverend Mother Emeritus said. “Hazel, you get Esther on the horn, and tell her what’s happening. Tell her to set things up at Montreal General and to hold the fort until we get there!”

  “Got it,” Hazel replied.

  “Let’s get this show on the road!” Hot Lips cried, and they all rushed out of the hospital and back into the swamp buggy. On the way back to Spruce Harbor International, they passed two taxicabs.

  Josephine Babcock recognized Sydney Prescott in the first taxi by her purple hair.

  “Why, there’s that horrible female,” she said. “I wonder what she’s doing here?”

  Uncle Hiram had recognized Ida-Sue Jones in the second taxi.

  “I’m happy to hear you say that, ma’am,” he said. “I’m a Texan and we don’t like to badmouth our women. But that one’s an exception.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Henri Flambeau was not at all pleased with the latest developments in his romance, and for a number of reasons.

  The fond romantic dream he had had was to take Esther as his bride in a small ceremony, and then immediately start out on the wedding trip. They would whip right through Spruce Harbor, pausing only long enough for him to add his signature to hers on her checking account at Spruce Harbor First National Bank and then go directly to Niagara Falls.

  He had been more than a little surprised when the doctor she had called to give her away had readily agreed to come. Under the circumstances, there had been nothing for him to do but announce that he was absolutely delighted with the doctor’s demonstrated gesture of friendship, even if that meant delaying the ceremony until after two p.m., which meant he’d get stuck with another day’s rent of the Jean Claude Killy Suite.”

  It also meant that he would probably have to buy the doctor a post-ceremony drink, and possibly even something to eat. Henri had already promised himself that he was not going to waste a dime of the dowry Esther Flanagan was bringing into their union, so that when, after the pro forma night at Niagara Falls, they went on to Florida and the race track at Hialeah, he wouldn’t have to associate with the riffraff at the two- and five-dollar windows.