MASH 13 MASH goes to Montreal Read online

  Certainly, he came to believe, there must be money in livestock. Money he could pry loose from the suckers out there in TV Land, the same suckers who had been so generous to the pups and pussies of APPLE.

  He toyed with several ideas (among them, a Twilight Years Pasture for worn-out bulls and, what had seemed like pure inspiration. Clothe Our Naked Animal Friends, Inc., only to learn that someone else had thought of it first and threatened instant legal action against him) but nothing, he realized, had the zip, zang and pathos that had made APPLE so successful.

  And then he stumbled, more or less, across something that had potential. With the honorarium from APPLE gone, it was necessary for Mr. Jambon to hit again what he called “the cold-chicken and mashed-peas circuit.” He offered himself on the marketplace, in other words, as a speaker. He had three stock speeches written for him by one of Don Rhotten’s writers* and gave them, in turn, sometimes all three in one day, while driving around the United States. The only thing he asked of his audience was money.

  (*His friendship with Mr. Rhotten had continued on a secret basis. Both he and Mr. Rhotten were unwilling, no matter what the provocation, to cut off what was for both their only nonbusiness relationship with another human being.)

  One day, while driving between Fayetteville and Rocky Mount, North Carolina in his mauve-over- tangerine Volvo, en route from one talk to another, a foul odor assailed his nostrils. It was of such overpowering revulsion that it was all Mr. Jambon could do to pull off the highway and stop the car.

  At first, naturally perhaps, he thought that something was wrong with the car, but when he stopped and turned the engine off, the smell endured. The air conditioner having failed him in his hour of need, the windows open, he came to the logical conclusion that the smell was not the car’s fault after all, for the smell was getting worse, not better.

  He was, he saw, in a bucolic setting. It reminded him, in fact, of the advertising photographs used to promote Back on the Farm Brand Country Bay-kin and So Sweet Saw-sage, his most loyal sponsor.* There were gently rolling green hills, divided by neat white fences. There was a collection of bright red farm buildings, several silos, and the other to-be-expected accoutrements of a farming situation.

  (* Country Bay-kin and So Sweet Saw-sage are made from what the manufacturer terms “textured proteins.” As a ruie of thumb, whenever one reads "textured proteins,’* one may presume "textured soybeans.”)

  It even, he realized suddenly, smelled like the manufacturing facilities of the Back on the Farm people. Their base of operations was in Hohokus, New Jersey, right across the Hudson River from New York City, and Mr. Jambon had been forced by that circumstance to visit the place, even though the smell had made him sick from the moment he got out of the Lincoln Tunnel.

  Somewhat surprised that the Back on the Farm folks would have a manufacturing facility so far out here in the boondocks, Mr. Jambon put the Volvo in gear and drove to the gate. There was a neatly lettered sign:

  BURTON BABCOCK & COMPANY

  POSSIBLE PORCINE PRODUCTS RESEARCH

  ESTABLISHMENT

  ABSOLUTELY NO ADMITTANCE

  “O.K., Fatso, the jig’s up,” a very crude person, armed with a shotgun and dressed in striped overalls and a straw hat, announced.

  “My dear chap,” Taylor P. Jambon had replied. “Do you have any idea whatever whom you are addressing?”

  “Just offhand, I’d say it was a fat Yankee, hog thief,” the man said. “Get out of the car, Fatso!” he said, gesturing with the shotgun.

  “Whatever for?”

  “Cause I’ll shoot you if you don’t,” the crude person in the overalls had replied, whereupon Mr. Jambon had rapidly exited the Volvo. Prodded by the shotgun, America’s Most Famous TV Gourmet was led to a small building where a very large, blond young man with a massive chest and pearly white teeth was seated at a desk reading The Hog Fancier’s Journal.

  “Got him, Bubba,” the fellow in the overalls said.

  “He looks like a hog thief, all right,” the young man said.

  “And he was driving a Volvo, too,” the man with the shotgun added.

  “Unfortunately, this fat fellow is not our man, Clarence,” the young man said. “The sheriff just telephoned from town to report that he apprehended our hog thief in the very act of offering our prizewinning sow, Babcock’s Swedish Princess Elfriede XIX, to the Moran Sausage Works.”

  “Oh, damn!” Clarence said. “And I was so looking forward to shooting this one!”

  “I can understand your feelings,” Bubba replied. “Tell me, Fat Man, who are you and what are you doing here at the Possible Porcine Products Research Establishment?”

  “I am Taylor P. Jambon,” he replied, “America’s Most Famous TV Gourmet. That’s who I am!”

  “And what are you doing here?”

  “I was attracted by the smell,” Jambon replied. “What is that sickening odor, anyway?”

  “It’s soja hispida Babcockisis, actually,” Bubba said.

  “I see,” Taylor P. Jambon said.

  “It’s an experimental hog feed,” Bubba explained.

  “You’re actually going to feed that foul-smelling concoction to innocent little porkers?” Taylor had exploded.

  “We’re having a little trouble getting them to eat it, as presently constituted,” Bubba said. “But, with hard work and some imaginative feeding procedures, yes, that is our ultimate intention.”

  “He is a trespasser, Bubba,” the chap in the overalls said. “If I can’t shoot him where he stands, how about letting me give him a fifty-yard start and then shooting him?”

  “Alas, no, Clarence,” Bubba had replied. “As desirable an idea as that is to you and me, I’m afraid that Little Mama would disapprove. Just escort him off the premises.”

  By the time Taylor P. Jambon was back on the highway, inspiration had struck. Protect Our Precious Porkers, in other words, was born. It was a natural, he knew that in the pit of his stomach. A baby pig is just as appealing as a puppy or kitten. Just as soon as he worked out the details, the money would start rolling in again. In a way, it was better than Pups & Pussies. The end product of a puppy was a dog and the end product of a pussy was a cat. Dogs and cats have to be fed. The reverse was true of a piglet: one ate the final product of a piglet. He’d get the suckers to feed his precious porkers until they reached maturity, and then he’d sell them to the slaughterhouse.

  He stopped by the county jail and went bail for the pig thief. He then entered into a business relationship with him. In exchange for his lawyer’s fees and a certain amount of money, the pig thief was to keep an eye on the Possible Porcine Products Research Establishment, keeping notes, and taking what photographs he could of how this cruel and inhumane operation was forcing the precious porkers to digest that foul-smelling soja hispida Babcockisis. When they had incontrovertible proof of this, Taylor P. Jambon would get his pal Don Rhotten to break the story, giving him full credit, naturally, on the “ABS Evening News.”

  Taylor P. Jambon had been so excited by this new turn of events that he cancelled the rest of his speaking engagements and returned directly to his Beverly Hills home.

  Two weeks later, the pig thief had telephoned with bad news. The pig feeding had failed; the pigs would not eat the soja hispida Babcockisis no matter how the people at the Possible Porcine Products Research Establishment had tried to disguise the taste.

  It was, or course, a crushing disappointment. It meant going back on the road and giving talks to all those bluehaired rural women.

  “Rome, my pig-stealing friend,” Taylor P. Jambon had replied, “wasn’t built in a day. You keep your eye on that place and those people. Sooner or later, that broad-chested chap with the pearly teeth is going to do something beastly to my precious porkers, or my name isn’t Taylor P. Jambon.”

  Chapter Five

  A week later, a UPS messenger delivered an enormous package of eleven-by-fourteen-inch black-and-white and full-color photographs to the exe
cutive suite of Burton Babcock & Company.

  They showed a battered old cowboy of the west Texas plains and his faithful Indian companion. Unlike the preliminary artwork, which showed the cowboy at a campfire, the photographs depicted the cowboy and the Indian on the crude and falling-down porch of an ancient, falling-down ranch house. There was even a buffalo, one visibly past his prime, who stood eyeing the camera suspiciously.

  How this trio was going to entice the American consumer into buying, much less eating, a bean the pigs wouldn’t eat was frankly beyond Josephine Babcock’s understanding. But, neither—she told herself as she examined the leathery face, the somewhat-bloodshot blue eyes, and dirty gray hair of the old cowboy—had she been able to understand how Sydney Prescott had been able to get millions of women to start sniffing snuff, as she had with Old Billy Goat. (Old Billy Goat, now Olde Billie Goat, continued to expand its sales, and was closing in, sales-wise, on Mountain Lion Plug Cut Chewing Tobacco, dollar-wise.)

  “Ernestine,” Josephine Babcock said to her senior executive secretary, “have them bring a car around. I’m going to the pig parlor.”

  “One of the Rolls, Mrs. Babcock?” Ernestine replied. “It’s a nice day; you could put the roof down on the Corniche.”

  “No, I think not. I’m going to the farm. I’ll rough it. Have them bring the Cadillac pickup around.* I’ll even drive it myself.”

  (* Those who question the existence of Cadillac pickup trucks are referred to spring-summer, 1976, catalog of Neiman-Marcus Company, Dallas, Texas.)

  An hour later, Mrs. Babcock came upon her son. Dressed only in a pair of khaki trousers converted to shorts, a pair of aviator-type sunglasses, and a broad-brimmed straw hat, Precious Babykins was guiding a 250-horsepower Burton “Green Giant” diesel tractor through the fields. The sun caused his pearly white teeth to glisten rather attractively against the tanned darkness of his skin. His massive chest was moist with honest sweat.

  Precious Babykins, his mother decided, was proof positive of how well she had done her maternal duty to the poor, fatherless boy. And her duty on earth was nearly over. All she had to do now was (a) get him off the damned tractor and into the executive suite and (b) see him march down the aisle on the arm of some suitable female.

  “Hello, there, Little Mama,” Precious Babykins said in his deep, masculine voice, after he had jumped nimbly from the Green Giant diesel tractor. “What brings you out here?”

  “Too much sun isn’t good for you, Pre . . . Bubba,” Josephine said.

  “You didn’t come all the way out here to tell me that, did you, Little Mama?”

  “I came to show you these, Bubba,” she said, handing him the enormous envelope. “This is how that horrid Sydney Prescott woman thinks we can get rid of the soja hispida Babcockisis.”

  “Huh!” he said. It was sort of a snort, and she didn’t quite know what he meant by it.

  He examined the photos.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. “This may solve our problem completely!”

  “You really think so, dear?” she replied. “And watch your language!”

  “Forgive me, Little Mama,” he said. “No offense intended.”

  “I forgive you, Precious Babykins,” she said, and pinched his cheek.

  “Do you know where these photographs were taken?”

  “Somewhere in Texas,” she said.

  “I’m going right out there,” Bubba said.

  “Bubba,” Josephine said, “you must try to remember that you’re a Babcock. You don’t go to see people. You send for people, and they come to you.”

  “Mother,” he said, “by your own statement, we don’t have any solution for soja hispida Babcockisis. We can’t get people to smoke it anymore, the pigs won’t eat it, and we can’t even burn it, by presidential executive order. This is no time to stand on protocol!”

  “You’re right, Precious Babykins!” she said.

  “Mother, I’ve asked you, and I’ve asked you. Please don’t call me that!”

  “Bubba, it just slips out!” she said.

  “Well, knock it off!” he said, angrily, sounding just like his late daddy when he was piqued. He turned back to the Green Giant tractor and picked up the C.B. microphone.

  “Breaker, breaker,” he said, “this is the Old Pigman. You got your ears on, Bald Eagle?”

  “Come back, Pigman,” the radio crackled. “You got the Old Bald Eagle.”

  “Warm up the bird, Bald Eagle. Pigman’s leaving his work Ten-Twenty for the Bird Nest at this time. Come back.”

  “Ten-four, Pigman. Where’re we going? Come back.”

  “Don’t know yet, Bald Eagle. I’ve got to get that Ten-twenty from Little Mama. Someplace in Texas. Come back.”

  “Ten-four, Pigman, the Old Bald Eagle’s going Ten-ten and standing by.”

  “Ten-four, Bald Eagle. This is the Old Pigman, King King Queen Seven Zero One Zero, Mobile Unit Four, we’re down and gone.”

  “Am I correct in inferring, Bubba, that that was Colonel Merritt T. Charles, U.S. Army, retired, the pilot of your personal Learjet, with whom you were speaking?” Josephine asked.

  “That’s right, Little Mama,” Bubba replied. “We’re going to head for Texas. What I want you to do is find out where the photographs were taken, and get that information to me while we’re en route.”

  “Of course, dear,” she said. “I’ll get right through to that terrible woman on the telephone and find out.”

  “You can drop me at the airport,” Bubba said, getting behind the wheel of the Cadillac pickup truck. “I really hate to leave this field half-plowed, but these are special circumstances.”

  “I understand completely, dear,” Josephine said. “And I must tell you that I am touched at this display of interest in the corporate problems of Burton Babcock & Company.”

  “As you yourself are always saying, Little Mama,” Bubba said, as he put his foot to the floor, causing the Cadillac pickup to rocket away from the field, “what’s good for Burton Babcock & Company is good for the country.”

  Josephine Babcock, a little tear in her eye, reached for the microphone dangling from the C.B. in the cab of the Cadillac pickup.

  “Breaker, breaker,” she said. “Typewriter Lady, you got your ears on? This is Little Mama. Come back.”

  “You got Typewriter Lady,” the radio replied. “Come back, Little Mama.”

  “Typewriter Lady, get Weird Beaver on a landline and find out where those photographs were taken. Precious ... Old Pigman’s on his way out there.”

  “Ten-four, Little Mama,” Typewriter Lady (who was, of course, Mrs. Babcock’s senior executive secretary), replied. “Stand by.”

  “Bubba, darling,” Josephine said, “please don’t take offense. But aren’t you dressed, well, a little informally, shall I say, to be going all the way to Texas?”

  “I always keep a tee shirt, a pair of jeans and a pair of jump boots in the plane, Little Mama,” Bubba replied. “Against just such an unforseen contingency as this.”

  “You’re planning to parachute into Texas?”

  “There’s no better way to go, Little Mama,” Bubba said. “I’ve told you that.”

  And so, fifteen minutes later, she had watched her first- (and only) born soar off from Babcock Airfield (also known as the Bird Nest) in his personal Learjet. While she would really have preferred that he land in the airplane rather than jump out of it, on balance, she was delighted. Bubba was finally showing an interest in corporate affairs. Once he had nibbled at the fruit, she was convinced, he would be hooked. She would have him in a white shirt and tie and highly polished shoes in no time at all.

  Four days later, the little blue light on Josephine Babcock’s very personal telephone began to glow. Only eight people, among them Precious Babykins, knew that number, and even as she reached to pick up the phone, some maternal extrasensory perception told her that it would, indeed, be Precious Babykins.

  “Hello, darling,” she said. “I’ve missed you
so much!”

  “This is Colonel Charles, ma’am,” the Old Bald Eagle said, rather embarrassed. “Mr. Burton Babcock IV is calling.” Then, she heard him say, “Bubba, I’ve got your mother,” and then Bubba came on the line.

  “Mother?” he said.

  “Yes, dear? How did things go in Texas?”

  “I can’t tell you how well, Mother,” Bubba said. “You’ll have to see for yourself. Can you meet me at the airfield?”

  “Of course, I can, darling,” she said.

  “We’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Bubba said. “Mother, I must tell you that I really didn’t believe you. But it happened!”

  “Believe me about what? What happened?”

  “I’ll explain all at the airfield,” Bubba said. “I’m sure you’ll be as happy as I am, Mother, dear,” Bubba said. “Until then, Little Mama!”

  Twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds later, as Josephine Babcock waited at Babcock Airfield in the yellow Rolls Corniche, practically beside herself with mingled feminine and maternal curiosity, Burton Babcock & Company Learjet Number Three, Bubba’s personal airplane, zoomed across the field at no more than fifty feet, did a barrel roll, and then climbed to about five thousand feet where it leveled out.

  She didn’t want to look, for she knew what was about to happen, but she had to. A little black speck, which she knew with a sinking feeling in her stomach was Precious Babykins, detached itself from the Learjet and fell like a rock toward earth.

  She held her breath (eventually she turned a little blue) until Bubba pulled the D ring on the rip cord and the parachute canopy filled with air. It opened at no more than five hundred feet off the earth, close enough for her to be able to see Precious Babykins’ pearly white teeth exposed in the happiest smile she could ever recall.