Richard Hooker - MASH - A Novel About Three Army Doctors

“Tell me something,” he said to Captain Jones. “Where’d you get that Spearchucker handle?”

“I used to throw the javelin,” Jones told him. “Somebody started calling me that, and the sports writers thought it was good and it stuck.”

“How come you and the Hawk here got to be such big buddies down in Taegu?”

“Well,” said Jones, “I got assigned there and there weren’t any other colored and they didn’t have a room for me all by myself. Hawkeye went to the C.O. and said: ’Tell that big animal he can live with me if he wants to.’”

“That was nice,” Trapper said, “but let’s not give him the Legion of Merit.”

“Nobody’s handing out any medals,” Spearchucker said, “but there are so goddamn many phonies around. The worst are the types who knock themselves out to show you that your color doesn’t make any difference, and if it wasn’t for your color they wouldn’t pay any attention to you. They’re part of the black man’s burden, too.”

“Understood,” Trapper said.

“Anyway,” Spearchucker said, “there are a lot of colored boys over here, and I know quite a few. Every now and then some of them would drop in to visit me. Now and then Hawkeye would stay around but most often he’d cut out. One day I said: ’Hawkeye, how come you don’t care for some of my friends?’”

“So this guy,” Spearchucker said, nodding toward Hawk-eye, “says to me: ’Do you like all the white boys around here?’ I said: ’No, Hawkeye, and thank you.’ That’s what I mean.”

“The hell with this,” Hawkeye said now. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“In a minute,” the Duke said, and up to now he had been just monitoring the conversation. “I want to say something.”

“What?” Spearchucker said, looking right at him.

“I’m from Georgia,” Duke said.

“I know that,” Spearchucker said.

“If you and I had a problem,” Duke said, “we’d be the only ones who could understand it. These Yankees couldn’t, but what I wanta say is that I don’t have a problem, and if y’all do, tell me now.”

Captain Jones sipped his drink and grinned and looked at the Duke.

“No problem with me, Little Duke,” he said.

“Wait a minute,” the Duke said, eyeing Captain Jones. “How come y’all call me Little Duke?”

“Well,” Spearchucker said, “Hawkeye wrote me about you two guys and he said you’re from Forrest City, Georgia. Right?”

“Right,” Duke said, “but. ..”

“Your daddy a doctor?”

“Yeah.”

“He used to own a little farm north of town?”

“Oh, no,” Trapper John said. “Please.”

“Wait a minute,” Duke said. “He’s right. Let the man talk.”

“Who tenant-farmed that place?” asked Captain Jones.

“John Marshall Jones,” Duke said.

“I should have been a lawyer,” said Oliver Wendell Jones. “What happened to John Marshall Jones?”

“He got knifed by another nigra,” Duke said.

“What happened to his family?”

“They went north.”

“That’s right,” Captain Jones said. “They went north. You know where they got the money for the trip?”

“No.”

“The doctor sold the farm, paid the family’s debt and gave my mother a thousand dollars. They called him The Big Duke. Now how do you like that, Little Duke?”

Captain Forrest said nothing. He just sat there, looking at Captain Jones and shaking his head.

“You see why I got no problem?” Spearchucker said.

“Duke,” Hawkeye said, “as Grant said to Lee at Appomattox: ’You give up?’”

“Yeah,” the Duke said.

Colonel Henry Blake was busier than he had been since The Deluge, and happier than he had been since his arrival in Korea. The first thing he did on the morning after his new neurosurgeon reported was call General Hammond in Seoul and, still chuckling to himself, wonder if, by any chance, the football team of the 325th Evacuation Hospital would care to meet an eleven representing the 4077th MASH.

General Hammond was delighted. The previous year his team had administered such thorough hosings to the only two pickup elevens in Korea foolish enough to challenge his powerhouse that both of those aggregations had abandoned the game. This had left him with a whining streak of two straight, visions of some day joining the company of Pop Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg and Knute Rockne—and no one to play. The date was set for Thanksgiving Day, five weeks away, on the home field of the champions at Yong-Dong-Po.

The next thing Colonel Blake did was write Special Services in Tokyo and arrange for the use of two dozen football uniforms, helmets, shoes and pads, all to be airlifted as soon as possible. Then he dictated a notice, calling for candidates to report at two o’clock the next afternoon, and copies were posted in the messhall, the latrines, the showers and in the Painless Polish Poker and Dental Clinic. After that he showed up at The Swamp.

“Now,” he said, after he had finished his report, “when do we start getting our dough down?”

“Why don’t we wait a while, Coach,” Trapper John sug­gested, “until we see what we’ve got for talent?”

“It doesn’t matter what we’ve got,” Henry responded. “That Hammond doesn’t know anything about football.”

“But if we seem too eager, Coach,” Hawkeye said, “we may tip our hand.”

“I guess you’re right,” Henry agreed.

The following afternoon, at the appointed hour, fifteen candidates appeared on the ball field. The equipment would not arrive for several days, so Henry, a whistle suspended from a cord around his neck, and as previously advised by his neurosurgeon, ran the rag-tag agglomeration twice around the perimeter of the field and then put them through some calisthenics. After that he just let them fool around, kicking and passing the three available footballs, while he and the Swampmen sized them up.

“Well,” Henry said, at cocktail hour that afternoon in The Swamp, “what do you think?”

“Can we still get out of the game?” the Duke said.

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “Whose idea was this anyway?”

“Yours, dammit,” Trapper said.

“God, they looked awful,” Hawkeye said.

“They’ll look fine,” Henry said, “once the uniforms get here.”

“Never,” the Duke said.

“Listen,” Spearchucker said. “The coach is right. I don’t mean particularly about the uniforms, but no team ever looks good the first few days. I noticed a few boys out there who have played the game.”

“Besides,” Henry said, “what does that Hammond know about football? It’s like having another man on our side.”

“The first thing we’ve got to do,” Spearchucker said, “is decide on an offense.”

“That’s right,” Henry said. “That’s the first thing we’ve got to do. What’ll it be? The Notre Dame Box?”

Trapper had been a T quarterback at Dartmouth, and Duke had run out of the T as a fullback at Georgia. Androscoggin, where Hawkeye had played end, had still used the single wing, but Spearchucker had played in the T in college and, of course, with the pros. Hawkeye was outvoted, 3 to 1, with Henry abstaining but agreeing.

“Now we’ve got to think up some plays,” Henry said. “Why don’t you fellas handle that while I look after some of the other details?”

Spearchucker diagrammed six basic running plays and four stock pass plays, and that evening presented them to Henry, with explanations. Henry studied these, established a training table at one end of the mess hall and ordered his athletes to cut down on the consumption of liquor and cigarettes. The Swampmen settled for two drinks before dinner and none after, and reduced their inhalation of nicotine and tobacco tars by one half.