Ignored by the poker players who were more interested in the game than in the side show, Colonel DeLong retreated. At two-forty-five Hawkeye left the game. The patient was taken into the operating area. Ugly John started putting him to sleep.
“Send for Colonel DeLong,” Hawkeye told a corpsman.
The Colonel arrived and joined Hawkeye at the scrub sink. Hawkeye was beginning to feel a little contrite.
“Colonel,” he said, “at one-thirty this guy had had less than a pint of blood, and he’d lost two or three. His pulse then was 120, and his blood pressure was about 90. Now, at three o’clock, he’s had three pints of blood. His pulse is 80 and his blood pressure 120. His collapsed lung is expanded. He’s had a gram of Terramycin intravenously. We can operate on him safely. We should do it quickly, but we don’t have to do it frantically or carelessly.”
The operation went the usual route. Numerous holes had to be repaired, and one piece of small bowel had to be removed. After an hour all the apparent damage had been corrected.
“Now, Colonel,” said Hawkeye, “I’m going to sandbag you. Do you figure we’re ready to get out of this belly?”
“Obviously you don’t think so, and I don’t know why,” admitted Colonel DeLong.
“Well, Dad, we haven’t found any holes in the large bowel. They’ve all been in the small bowel, but the smell is different. I caught a whiff of large bowel, but it ain’t staring us in the face, right?”
“Right,” the Colonel said.
“So if it ain’t staring us in the face it’s got to be retroperitoneal,” Hawkeye said, meaning that the perforation had to be in a portion of the large intestine hidden in the abdominal cavity. “Therefore, and from the look of the wounds, I figure he’s got a hole in his sigmoid colon that we won’t find unless we look for it.”
They looked for it and found it. The Colonel was impressed. They closed the hole, did a colostomy and closed the belly.
Afterwards, over a cup of coffee, the Colonel said, “OK, Pierce, that was a nice job, but you must realize that I can’t afford to tolerate the rudeness and insubordination you demonstrated when I tried to talk to you during the poker game.”
“So don’t afford it,” suggested Hawkeye.
“Pierce, you don’t like me, do you?”
“For Christ’s sake, Colonel,” exploded Hawkeye, “why don’t you go to bed? Right now I don’t even like myself, and all I need to set me off is to be bugged by a Regular Army medical officer.”
The Colonel went to bed. There wasn’t much else he could do.
Two days later there was no work at all. The heat persisted. It was too hot to drink. It was too hot to sleep. It was too hot to play baseball. It was too hot to play poker. The Swampmen made a halfhearted effort at rehabilitation. They’d been reading some Somerset Maugham stories about Malayan rubber plantations. At 9:00 a.m. they got their ice cube tray out of the refrigerator in the laboratory. Soon they were sitting in chairs in front of The Swamp holding tall glasses of Pimm’s #1 Punch and making believe they were Malayan rubber plantation foremen. Whenever a Korean houseboy came into sight, they yelled at him to get to work and start turning out the rubber, and they were thus laconically passing the time when Colonel DeLong sauntered by.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he greeted them.
“You just out from home?” asked Trapper John.
“No, I’ve been in Tokyo for some tune.”
“Y’all married?” asked the Duke.
“Yes.”
“Bring your wife with you?” asked Hawkeye.
“Of course not.”
“I say, I wish I knew how you fellows get away with it,” said Trapper. “We three have our brides along, and it’s pure grief. They can’t stand the beastly climate, and they won’t let us commingle with the native girls. You don’t know how lucky you are!”
“I believe I’ll wander down to the pool for a dip,” said Hawkeye. He got his air mattress from the tent and headed for the river. The others followed, leaving the Colonel standing with his mouth open.
“Oh, I say, Colonel,” Trapper called back to him, “perhaps you’d join us for a set or two of doubles later, after the heat has abated?”
So they went to the river, swam a little and slept a little. By 3:00 p.m., Hawkeye Pierce was awake, pensive and bored. He lay belly down and naked on his air mattress, peering into the murky water below.
“Hey, Duke,” he asked, “whadda ya know about mermaids?”
“Nothin’,” Duke assured him.
Trapper John, a leading authority on many subjects, joined the conversation. “In my opinion, there are mermaids in this river.”
“I’m forced to keep an open mind on that,” said Hawkeye. “Certainly if there are mermaids in this river, we’d be just plain foolish not to grab a few of them.”
“How y’all gonna catch a mermaid?” asked Duke.
“In a mermaid trap, naturally,” said the Hawk.
“How do you make a mermaid trap?”
“Just like a lobster trap, only bigger.”
“Let’s get goin’ on it.”
“OK”
They paddled ashore, dressed, went to the supply tent, where a cooperative sergeant provided material and tools. Hawkeye Pierce, in his boyhood, had built many lobster pots. For a man of his experience and background, the construction of a mermaid trap didn’t seem to present a major problem, and the next morning found the Swampmen well along on their project when again Colonel DeLong dropped by.
“What are you doing here, gentlemen?” he asked.
“Buildin’ us a mermaid trap,” Duke informed him. “Y’all want to help?”
The Colonel was trying to blend into the environment. “I see,” he said. “Where do you expect to catch mermaids?”
“The river’s alive with them,” answered Trapper.
“I see,” said the Colonel again. “Assuming that you are able to catch one of these creatures, what do you propose to do with it?”
Hawkeye gave the Colonel a look of impatience and scorn. “We’re gonna screw the ass off her,” he stated.
The Colonel was desperately trying to hang in there. “Do you have reason to believe that mermaids may be effectively utilized for that purpose?”
“Oh, Finest Kind,” Hawkeye assured him.
“Numero Uno,” said Trapper John.
“Yeah,” said the Duke,
Colonel DeLong retreated to his tent to think. Colonel Blake, before departing for Toyko, had deliberately and perhaps maliciously not briefed him on the Swampmen.
Meanwhile, Hawkeye had words with the Duke and Trapper John, which went something like this: “I haven’t built a lobster trap in years, and I’ve lost the touch. This mermaid trap has already become bigger than I am. Let’s change the game. We got this guy DeLong buzzing anyhow. Let’s convince him we’re nuts, and maybe he’ll ship us out for awhile until Henry gets back and catches on. They got psychiatrists in Seoul, and we’ll be close enough to get back if business picks up.”
Trapper took the cue. He went to the next tent and spoke to Rafael Rodriguez, a lieutenant in the Medical Service Corps.
“Rafe,” he said, “we’d like a little help. Would you be willing to go tell Colonel DeLong we’ve flipped and suggest emergency psychiatric care?”
Rafael Rodriguez had been on The Swamp’s list of nonsurgical good boys for several months, and now he justified the faith bestowed upon him. He went to Colonel DeLong’s tent, knocked respectfully and was bade to enter.
“Sit down. Have a beer, Lieutenant,” the Colonel urged him.
“Thank you, Sir. Sir, you look troubled. Perhaps I could be of help. I’ve been here for some time, you know.”
“Perhaps you could, Rodriguez,” the Colonel said. “I’m new. This is a strange and unusual situation for me. I’m very worried about three of our surgeons: Pierce, Mclntyre and Forrest. Their work, in the little time I’ve been here, has impressed me, but the last day or two their general behavior has caused me considerable concern.”