Trapper and Duke operated on him. Trapper lined it up ahead of time. “He’s got blood in his pericardium. Before we open it we’ve got to have control of the vena cavae. We’ve got to have plenty of blood. Once we get to the heart we’ve got to close the holes quick or we lose.”
They did it all as right as they could, but when they opened the pericardium everything went to hell. The shell fragment had made several small holes in the right atrium. Trapper and Duke handled it better than any other two people in Korea could have, but they and Angelo needed three or four more minutes.
Angelo died. He would never see Ted Williams step to the plate again, and half an hour later Dago Red found Trapper John Mclntyre wandering around in the dark, took him to his tent and gave him a can of beer. Then he went in search of Duke Forrest and found him alone in The Swamp. The Duke had already opened a can of beer, but he wasn’t drinking it. He was crying into it.
“And a Yankee, too,” the Duke said, to cover his embarrassment when he looked up and saw Dago Red. “You know somethin’? The way I’m goin’ I shouldn’t even be operatin’ on Yankees.”
It was obvious that something had to be done for the Swampmen. It was obvious, of course, to Dago Red, and it was obvious to Colonel Blake who realized that he had a serious problem on his hands—his problem boys were too exhausted and too dispirited to create their usual problems. It was also obvious to Radar O’Reilly who, tuned in as he was to everyone, was the most empathic member of the 4077th MASH, and who came up with two solutions.
The first of these was Dr. R. C. Carroll. Dr. R. C. Carroll had arrived at the Double Natural about five weeks before, was from deepest Oklahoma and somehow, while acquiring a medical education and two years of post-graduate training, had remained curiously unexposed to certain elements of human existence. Trapper John, most urbane of the Swamp-men, had put the handle on Dr. Carroll.
“I thought I lived with the two biggest rubes in Korea,” Trapper John said, “until this jeeter came along.”
“Jeeter” became his name. Being new in the outfit he was not yet a member of the inner circle that gathered regularly at The Swamp for a drink before supper, but he did drop in occasionally. One afternoon, during the depth of the depression that followed The Deluge, he knocked on the door and was bade to enter. The Swampmen were alone.
“Excuse me,” Jeeter said, “but Corporal O’Reilly said you fellas wanted to see me,”
“Radar,” said Hawkeye, who had been mooning into his martini, “must have his wavelengths mixed.”
“Don’t pay any attention to Captain Pierce,” Trapper John said, handing Jeeter a water glass filled with a martini he had mixed for himself. “Sit down and have a drink.”
“What is it?” Jeeter inquired.
“A martini, more or less,” Trapper said.
“It looks like water,” Jeeter said.
“That’s right,” Trapper said, “and it’s sort of like water, but you don’t drink it when you’re thirsty.”
“Right,” the Duke said.
“Oh,” Jeeter said.
Perhaps Jeeter was thirsty. He finished the drink in five minutes and indicated his need for another. Trapper gave him another, although somewhat reluctantly.
“You know somethin’?” Jeeter said.
“What?” the Duke said.
“Ah only been here a little over a month,” Jeeter said, “but ah’m hornier than a bitch in heat.”
“Good,” the Duke said.
“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. “That just indicates you’re healthy.”
“Oh,” Jeeter said.
“So what’s your problem?” Hawkeye said.
“Well,” Jeeter said, “what do ah do?”
“Did you ever think of the nurses?” Hawkeye said.
“All the time, but ah figured they were all took or didn’t put out.”
“I’ll give you a word on nurses, Jeeter,” volunteered Captain Pierce. “They’re human, just like us.”
“Oh,” Jeeter said.
“Some of them do all of the time, some of them do some of the time, and observation over a period of many months convinces me that very few of them are queer.”
“Oh,” Jeeter said, halfway through his second martini now, “but how do ah go about it?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Trapper. “Captain Pierce, here, seems to be the big authority.”
“Well,” Hawkeye said, warming to the assignment, “there are two methods. One is the simple, staid, stateside, hackneyed, civilian approach where you devote all your spare time for a week, softening the broad up with drinks, eating with her, taking her to Seoul on her day off, to our so-called Officers’ Club on Saturday night, getting her stoned and then escorting her to a tent or down to the river with a blanket.”
“Oh,” Jeeter said.
“But if you go with the blanket,” Hawkeye said, “under no circumstances should you proceed more than ten yards north from the O Club because you might place the blanket on top of a mine. An exploding mine may give the protagonist and his partner the impression that he’s Thor, the God of Thunder, but actually it’s the worst form of coitus interruptus.”
“Right,” the Duke said.
“And, of course,” Hawkeye said, “this method doesn’t guarantee success. You may strike out. The flower of femininity you select may require not one but two weeks of cultivation, and then you run into the law of diminishing returns. Our leading tacticians recommend a week at the outside for this method.”
“Oh,” Jeeter said, indicating a desire for martini number three, “but what’s the second method?”
“The second method is quicker and statistically almost as sound. You talk to the broad for a few minutes in some social situation, preferably over a drink, and you say, ’Honey, let’s go somewhere and tear off a piece.’ Either she says OK, or she takes off like a candy-assed baboon. The big plus of this method is that you either score fast or lose fast, and if you lose you can go on to the next blossom without further waste of time, effort and good booze.”
“But which do you recommend?” asked Jeeter.
“Well, I don’t really know,” said Hawkeye. “This is mostly theory with me. What do you think, Trapper?”
“Well,” Trapper said, “maybe he should announce his availability. Most of them will be in the mess hall swilling coffee, so let’s go eat.”
Jeeter, by now finding even ambulation a difficult exercise, was assisted to the door of the mess hall. Most of the nurses were indeed present, and Jeeter, silhouetted in the doorway but with the Swampmen out of sight on either side of him, made his announcement.
“Ah’m gonna screw every goddam nurse in the place!” he proclaimed loudly.
“Starting with Hot-Lips Houlihan,” Trapper John whispered to him.
“Startin’ with Hot-Lips Houlihan!” Jeeter shouted.
The Swampmen did not follow him in. They went back to The Swamp, had a short one and ate later. The next morning Jeeter knew only that he felt terrible and, after Colonel Blake had chewed him out, that he was in disgrace. It remained for Roger the Dodger Danforth, in a matter of hours, to take him off the hook.
Roger the Dodger Danforth was a surgeon at the 6073rd MASH, twenty-five miles to the East. Roger and Ugly John Black had trained together in the States, so Roger and the Swampmen were all well acquainted. In fact, they shared a mutual disrespect for most things held dear by others and a mutual respect for each other, and although Roger the Dodger was not considered, by observers of both phenomena, to be a greater menace than the three members of The Swamp, he was held to be at least their equal.
“Thank God,” Colonel Blake would say, after Roger the Dodger’s visits, “that that sonofabitch isn’t assigned here, too.”
On the day following Jeeter’s pronunciamento in the portal of the mess hall, Roger the Dodger arrived about noon. Hawkeye had just finished amputating the leg of the only customer of the morning—a Korean who had thought himself immune to minefields—and he had gone to the mess tent for a light lunch.