MASH 14 MASH goes to Moscow (10 page)

“We interrupt this program to bring you a special announcement,” Brother “Born-Again” Bob’s deep voice had intoned. “God has come to Spruce Harbor, and it’s time for you, John Barleycorn, to get out!” He paused to let this sink in, and all twenty-four listeners heard for the first time in the background a sound with which they would soon become all too familiar: Sister Wilma, carried away with emotion, was sobbing loudly in the background.

“We now resume our regular programming,” Brother Bob intoned. But it was not Maestro
Mendelsshon
who came back on the air. It was a musical ensemble known as Porky Pig & the Swine, a hard-rock organization whose appeal to classical music lovers was rather limited.

Brother Bob was not interested in classical music lovers.

He was after what he thought of as “ordinary folks” and the way to reach them was with Porky Pig & the Swine and others of that genre. He did follow, however, the practice of The Cultured Voice of Spruce Harbor in the matter of finance. BBB (Before Brother Bob) the musical programs were periodically interrupted with plaintive pleas for the listening audience to make a financial contribution to keep the station on the air. Brother Bob maintained this practice but added to it the information that contributions to The Voice of Total Temperance, as the station was now known, were tax deductible. BBB the station had been a commercial enterprise. It was now the radio voice of the Get Thee Behind Me John Barleycorn Religious Foundation, and according to IRS regulation, a bona fide recipient of charitable and/or religious donations.

The Get Thee Behind Me John Barleycorn Religious Foundation also sponsored the Brother Bob Rock In & Revivals, which featured such famous groups as the
Swines
’ in person, admission free, in what had once been the Spruce Harbor Roxy Movie Palace. Those who wished to sit down were asked to make a tax-free religious donation of $7.50. Between “sets,” as they are known in the profession, Brother Bob gave little talks about the benefits of total temperance.

Truth being stranger than fiction, two of the twenty-four faithful listeners to the classical* music BBB were Drs. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce and John Francis Xavier “Trapper John” McIntyre. They had even had it piped into the surgical suites. Neither gentleman was especially pleased with the change in musical programming, and both were more than a little annoyed with Brother Bob’s radio style. The found his standard opening remark “Put that bottle down!” rather disconcerting, particularly if it reached them just as they were, in fact, about to pick a bottle up.

(* At one time, this sort of music was known as “long hair” music. For obvious reasons, this is no longer applicable.)

Brother Born-Again Bob’s radio programming was a thorn, so to speak, in Dr. Pierce’s side. When he inquired of his bride whether that clergyperson was coming for super, he was making his little joke.

“Somebody told you!” Mary Pierce responded.

“You’re kidding!” Hawkeye replied. “This is your idea of a joke, right?”

“He’s really a very nice man, Benjamin,” Mary Pierce replied.

“Not in my house! Over my dead body!”

“He just walked into the Spruce Harbor Working Mother’s Child-Care Center this morning and presented us with a very nice check,” Mary said. Mary, who was co-chairwoman of the Working Mother’s Child-Care Center, worked there four mornings a week.

“He gave money away?” Hawkeye asked, curiosity having got the better of him.

“Five thousand dollars,” she said. “And you know how we need the money.”

“What’s the catch?” Hawkeye asked.

“Don’t be so suspicious,” Mary said. “He said he had learned what good work we were doing and how we were always short of money, and he said that as fellow laborers in the Lord’s work, he felt it his duty to help as best he could.”

“Have you tried to cash the check?” Hawkeye asked.

“Oh, I rushed it right to the bank,” she said. “It was good as gold.”

“I’ll be damned!”

“I rushed it right to the bank right after I asked him to supper,” Mary said quickly.

“I hope you have a very pleasant supper,” Hawkeye said. “I’ll be at the Bide-a-While.”*

(* Dr. Pierce here referred to the Bide-a-While Pool Hall/Ladies Served, Fresh Lobsters & Clams Daily Restaurant and Saloon, Inc., Stanley K.
Warczinski
, Sr., Proprietor.)

“Actually, Benjamin,” Mary said. “I think it would be better if you were here. Brother Bob really wants to talk to you.”

“Oh, my God, the other screw finally came loose!” Hawkeye said.

“What did you say?”

“Freely translated, dear, there is no way I am going to have supper with Brother Bob.”

“He wants to talk to you,” Mary said.

“I thought it would be something like that,” Hawkeye said.

“Now see here, Benjamin,” Mary said. “I put up with your weird religious friends. Turnabout is fair play.”

“But you like Hot Lips*!” Hawkeye protested.

(* This reference here is to the Reverend Mother Emeritus Margaret
Houlihan
Wachauf
Wilson, R.N., of the God Is Love In All Forms Christian Church, Inc. Scholars of ecclesiastic phenomena are referred to other books in the M*A*S*H series (especially
M*A*S*H Goes to Paris, M*A*S*H Goes to London,
and
M*A*S*H Goes to Las Vegas.
Pocket Books makes these books available as a public service, and at very reasonable prices, considering their all-around high class, indeed.)

“And you will like Brother Bob and Sister Wilma, once you get to know them,” Mary-said.

“You know where I’ll be,” Hawkeye said, turning around and starting to leave.

“I know where you’ll be, Benjamin,” Mary said softly. “There’s one little thing I didn’t mention.”

“What’s that?”

“I
^’
m not asking you, Benjamin,” she said. “This is more in the nature of what you could call a nonnegotiable demand. If it means five thousand dollars for the Child-Care Center, darling, you’re not only going to have supper with Brother Bob and Sister Wilma, but you’re going to act as if you’re having a fine time.”

“What do they want to talk to me about?” Hawkeye asked. He had been married long enough to recognize defeat when it smote him on the forehead.

“Their daughter,” Mary said.

“Their daughter?”

“She wants to become an opera singer,” Mary said. “And when it came out in the course of conversation that you are such fast friends with dear Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov
…”

“Dear
Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov? Is that the same
dear
Mr. Korsky-Rimsakov you customarily refer to as ‘Old Bull Bellow’? Or as ‘That disgusting drunk’?”

“Don’t be argumentative, dear,” Mary said. “Pointless arguments are the death of a happy marriage—you said that yourself.”

“Do you know why I came home from the hospital at this time, Mary?”

“I know why, and I told you no.”

“The reason I came home, Mary, was to tell you that I had just spoken with Boris on the phone.”

“How nice!” Mary said. “That’s what they call a fortuitous circumstance, isn’t it?”

“I wanted to tell you what I told him, Mary,” Hawkeye said, “when he said that he and Dr. Yancey and Horsey and Abdullah wanted me and Trapper John to come to a stag party in Paris.”

“I’m glad you came home so that we could have this little chat,” Mary said, “but why didn’t you telephone?”

“You can’t use that kind of language on the telephone,” Hawkeye said. “It’s against the law.”

“Why, whatever did you say?”

He told her.

“Shame on you, Benjamin Franklin Pierce!” Mary said. “You ought to have your mouth washed out with soap! And besides, that’s a physiological impossibility, isn’t it?”

At nine minutes after six, Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce answered his door and found Dr. and Mrs. John Francis Xavier McIntyre standing there.

“I just want you to know, Hawkeye,” Trapper John said, in a tone that could not accurately be described as friendly, “that I blame this entirely on you!”

“I should have listened to my father,” Hawkeye said. “He warned me about times like this.”

“Come right in!” Mary Pierce cheerfully called. “The Reverend and Mrs. Roberts will be here soon.”

“Whoopee!” Trapper John said.

“Come into my study a moment, please,” Dr. Pierce said to Dr. McIntyre, and Dr. McIntyre dutifully followed him into the small room filled with discarded furniture and the so-far-
unironed
week’s wash. Hawkeye pushed the wash baskets aside, giving him access to a shelf of books. He began taking the books off the shelf.

“I was a Boy Scout, you know. And I took to heart the maxim to always be prepared.” He reached for something at the back of the shelf.

“Put that bottle down!” a deep, Southern-flavored voice called.

“My God, he can see through walls!” Trapper John said. “Let me have that first.
I’m
the guest.”

He drank quickly from the bottle and handed it back to Hawkeye. “I really shouldn’t give it back,” he said. “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be home by my own hearth with a bottle of my own.”

Hawkeye took a quick pull at the bottle and then quickly turned his back as the door opened.

“Benjamin,” Mary Pierce cooed sweetly in the manner of women in the presence of clergypersons. “The Reverend Roberts is here.”

“Put that bottle down!” Born-Again Bob intoned in his loud voice.

“I just did,” Hawkeye muttered, stuck the bottle back where it had been, and stood up.

“Reverend Roberts,” he said.

“God loves you!” Born-Again Bob announced.

“Sometimes I wonder,” Hawkeye said.

“If I didn’t know better,” Born-Again Bob announced, “I would swear that I sniff John Barleycorn’s evil product in these premises.”

“Oh, no,” Mary Pierce said.

“My sniffer is seldom wrong, Sister Mary,” Born-Again Bob said.

“While I must admit that liquor has, on rare occasion, passed the lips of my husband, the doctor,” Mary Pierce said, “I’m sure that neither he nor Dr. McIntyre would
think
about so much as sniffing a cork knowing that you and Sister Wilma would be here. Would you, Benjamin?”