janecarnall (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} janecarnall) wrote,@ 2004-12-10 21:49:00 |
 |
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mirror M*A*S*H, part 9
Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, and part 8.
“You’ve heard of it? Normally no one outside Maine ever has. Ever been there?”
The man shook his head. His gaze rested on Hawkeye, seeming fascinated.
“No reason to. About three thousand people live there. During the summer, that is. Less during the winter. Most people live by fishing, those that don’t live by the tourists. Or both. I mean, lives by fishing and tourists. I don’t know anyone who lives by tourist fishing. I don’t know what you’d fish for a tourist with. Ever been fishing?”
The man nodded.
“Line fishing? Or crabbing? Or lobstering? I’ve done all three.”
“Line fishing,” the man whispered, in that odd, cracked voice. “Not often.”
“Where?”
“In Korea,” the man said, after a long pause. “With you. And BJ.”
Hawkeye was genuinely taken aback. “You’ve been fishing with the Colonel?”
The man didn’t say anything. He was shivering now. His right hand came up to clutch at nothing at the centre of his chest, and then to press against his mouth.
“You better not call him ‘BJ’ in front of anyone else,” Hawkeye said.
The man bent his head. Hawkeye thought he was nodding at first, but he bent his head further and further down, bending himself over, his injured arm trapped, his unhurt arm curved before his face. He was bent over completely, and he stayed there. Hawkeye stared at him.
The door opened. Trapper came in, his curls still sleeked down and shining, freshly shaved.
Hawkeye put the letter away under his pillow. He folded his hands behind his head. “Hey, Trap?”
“Yeah?”
“You remember you figured he’d calm down once he’d realised we weren’t going to hurt him?”
“Yeah?” Trapper came over and looked down at the man. “Told you we should’ve got him drunker.”
Hawkeye made a face. “Let’s get drunk.”
“Us two, or him too?”
“Have we got enough gin for three?
Trapper glanced at the still with an estimating frown. “No. Let’s head over to the officer’s club.” He looked at the man again. “You didn’t scrub Francis.”
“Aw, we don’t need to take him everywhere.” Hawkeye sat up. “Besides, all the kids will want a go. Hey, you put on aftershave!” He sniffed. “You put on my aftershave.”
“It was that or your whisky. And I don't even want to drink your whisky.”
“That was my aftershave!” Indignation was a splendid alternative to depression.
“You borrowed my watch,” Trapper said, unanswerably. He looked down at the huddled form of the man. “And look what you got for it.” He glanced over at his bed. “Did you put those dirty blankets on my bed?”
“That’s where they came from.”
“You definitely owe me a drink.”
Hawkeye stood up. “I’ve got five dollars in small change to last me till next payday.”
“Okay, I definitely owe you a drink. I knew it was one or the other.”
“Let’s go,” Hawkeye said. He didn’t feel exactly cheerful, but he could fake it until he got drunk enough. “Stay here, okay?” he said to the man. He got no response, but it didn’t look like the man was going to go anywhere.
“We should’ve tied him up,” Trapper said. He was swaying on his feet.
“To what?” The tent was swaying on its feet, too. Hawkeye collapsed on to his empty cot and looked down into the hiding space beside it. That was empty, too. “He’s probably gone to the latrines.”
“Did we have supper?”
“We had pretzels,” Trapper said after a minute. “Didn’t we?”
“Yeah, I think we did.” Hawkeye frowned. There was a reason why he should care about this, but he couldn’t think what it was.
“They were terrible pretzels,” Trapper announced, and collapsed onto his cot. “Where do they get them?”
Hawkeye dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “Wait a minute. You were there. I was there. If we were both there eating pretzels, who fed Francis?”
“To what?” Trapper asked, and snickered.
“No,” Hawkeye said again, and pushed himself upright. The tent was still swaying. “I’m supposed to make sure he’s fed. Where is he?”
“Maybe he ran off to get something to eat?”
Hawkeye had a complicated witticism in his head about the man getting more to eat than he could swallow, but he stopped trying to get it out after a couple of goes. “I’m going to ask Radar where he is.”
“You do that,” Trapper said. His voice had gone sleepy drunk. “And tell him we need a better laundry service. These blankets stink.”
That made Hawkeye giggle all the way across the compound. There was a light on in Radar’s office. Of course, there always was: Hawkeye suspected the kid was scared of the dark.
Radar was sitting at his desk: he looked up and jumped up as Hawkeye came in. “Oh, boy, am I glad to see you. He said he wanted to see the Colonel and I couldn’t get him to move and the Colonel’s probably busy it being late and all but he might have come in and I’m sure glad you’re here now, sir.”
“What?”
Radar stepped back and opened the door to the Colonel’s office. “Can you get him out of there please, soon, now? Nobody’s supposed to be in there when the Colonel’s not there.”
“Oh,” Hawkeye said. “Light dawns. So to speak. Why’s he sitting in there in the dark?” He reached in and switched the light on. The man was sitting in a chair in front of the desk.
“I switched the light off,” Radar said. “I didn’t want the Colonel to see it and think there was someone in his office.”
“Yeah, I can see where that would be bad,” Hawkeye said. He walked in. “Okay, Francis, out of here.”
The man looked at him. He didn’t move. Hawkeye shook his head. “I hate to resort to cliches, but you can do this the easy way, or you can do this the hard way. The easy way is going to be so much less effort, and I am so drunk, so we’ll just do it the easy way, okay?”
“Sir,” Radar said, “I don’t think he wants to do it the easy way. What’s the hard way?”
“Go get me a needle and a bottle of sodium pentothal.”
“That’s what you use to get them to talk,” Radar said in a small voice. “What do you want him to say…?”
“Just go get it, Radar. Fast.”
“If it’s, you know, an emergency, the Colonel’s got some in the safe.”
“It’s locked.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got the keys. I sleep with them, you know.”
“That’s more than I wanted to know.”
Radar had disappeared. He came back with an impressive bunch of keys, unlocked the safe, and produced the sodium pentothal and a needle inside a sterile pack. “Though I don’t see how this is going to help,” he said. “I mean, it’s not like you want to get him to say anything.”
“Radar,” Hawkeye said, filling the needle carefully from the bottle. “One thing not many people here know about sodium pentothal. Not too much, and it makes people very anxious to tell us everything, or rather very relaxed and unanxious to tell us everything. Rather more than not too much – ” Hawkeye glanced at the man, estimated bodyweight, and added another fraction “ – and it puts them out. Cold. Hold his arm for me – his right arm.”
The man stood up. Radar’s hands twitched back from taking hold of his arm.
“Just grab him, Radar,” Hawkeye said. He put down the sodium pentothal bottle, which left him with only the problem of a loaded needle he was anxious to deliver to the right person.
“Oh, gee, I don’t know – ” Radar said.
“You grab him, Pierce,” the Colonel said from the doorway. “He’s your problem. And what is he doing in my office?”
The man turned. “BJ,” he said. “I want to tell you – ”
Hawkeye grabbed him from behind: left hand over his mouth, clamping down on what the man had to say shut, and right hand sliding the needle into his right buttock. “Got him, right in the tush,” he said breathlessly.
The man jerked back and struggled a minute or two: but then his head nodded. He said something muffled against Hawkeye’s fingers. He was asleep. Hawkeye lowered him carefully into a chair, and said to Radar, “If you take his feet, we’ll get him out of here.”
“How much did you give him?” the Colonel asked.
Hawkeye told him. The Colonel nodded, briefly. “You meant to knock him out for quite a while, didn’t you?”
“He’s got more muscle than you’d think.”
“What was it he wanted to tell me?”
“How would I know?”
“I would think you do – since you moved so fast to make sure he didn’t say it.”
“He’s crazy,” Hawkeye said.
“Perhaps.” The Colonel smiled, a flash of white teeth that was somehow even more frightening than his usual imperturable look. “I want to see him here, in my office – ” He glanced at his watch “ – oh eight hundred tomorrow. I suggest you go to bed. And take that with you.”
Hawkeye dumped the man on his cot, kicked his shoes off, and lay down with him. An army cot was designed for one person, but he didn’t feel like wasting any time. The man’s unconscious body was relaxed and easy to manoevre. Hawkeye meant to fuck him now: he was angry and desperate. The man’s life was now better measured in hours, not days.
He knew it wasn’t going to happen after a few minutes groping: he was too tired and too drunk. He wrapped his arms around the man, and buried his face in the man’s hair. “Damn you,” he muttered out loud. “I never meant this to happen.” He should have known it: he broke everything he touched. There were no exceptions, inside or outside the OR. The man would have been better off if Hawkeye had picked some other door in the brothel, and left him be.
Someone was prodding at his shoulder. Hawkeye woke with a snarl. “What do you want? No, don’t tell me. Whatever it is, take it and go away.”
“Sir, the Colonel sent me over to tell you it’s oh seven thirty.”
“Tell the Colonel I’ve got my own watch.”
“Sir, I really don’t want to do that.”
Hawkeye blinked his eyes open. “I really don’t want to be awake. So that makes two of us. And I’m a captain. Don’t make me pull rank on you, Radar, I hate pulling rank before coffee, but go away.”
“The Colonel says you and Francis have an appointment with him at oh eight hundred.”
“Oh, yeah.” Hawkeye’s gut coiled up into a tight cold circle. “I was hoping I dreamed that.”
“No, sir, you didn’t, I was there.” Radar looked miserable. “Sir, is Francis going to be all right?”
Hawkeye looked down at the man. His gut twisted. No, I really doubt it. Not for any given value of ‘all right’. “Did you have any luck tracking him down?”
“Well, kind of,” Radar said.
“You did?”
“He’s an American,” Radar said. “I found his records this morning at oh six hundred, that’s like yesterday evening at home. But it doesn’t help.”
“Does the Colonel know?”
“Yes. I had to tell him. I’m sorry.”
“Why doesn’t it help?” Hawkeye said. He was dazed enough to think he ought to know the answer, but not to be able to think of it.
Radar dropped his voice. “Because he’s a – he’s one of those.”
“Which one of those is he?” Hawkeye said defensively. He remembered now. “A one of those one of those, or a one of these one of those?”
The man stirred, waking: his eyes opened. He stared up at Radar without a trace of fear, and then his head turned, and he looked at Hawkeye.
Hawkeye sat up. Not looking at the man, he said, “Okay. We got time for a shower, Radar?”
“Yes, sir, I guess, if you’re quick. I got two more sets of clothes for Francis.”
“Great,” Hawkeye said, without enthusiasm. He stood up. “Okay.” He glanced over at Trapper. “Don’t wake him.”
“No, sir, I don’t want to.”
“No,” Hawkeye agreed. He picked his bathrobe off the hook and grubbed on the floor for a towel. “Get Francis out of bed, would you? I’d do it but I don’t think he’s talking to me. Come to that, I’m not sure I’m talking to me.” He glanced over at the man, reluctantly.
“Where are we going?” the man asked.
“It speaks,” Hawkeye said. “I thought you’d taken a vow of silence. I wish you’d taken a vow of silence last night. We’re going to the showers, okay? Then we’re – ” He stopped. “We’re not going anywhere after that. Nowhere at all. Let’s go.”
to part 10
Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, and part 8.
“You’ve heard of it? Normally no one outside Maine ever has. Ever been there?”
The man shook his head. His gaze rested on Hawkeye, seeming fascinated.
“No reason to. About three thousand people live there. During the summer, that is. Less during the winter. Most people live by fishing, those that don’t live by the tourists. Or both. I mean, lives by fishing and tourists. I don’t know anyone who lives by tourist fishing. I don’t know what you’d fish for a tourist with. Ever been fishing?”
The man nodded.
“Line fishing? Or crabbing? Or lobstering? I’ve done all three.”
“Line fishing,” the man whispered, in that odd, cracked voice. “Not often.”
“Where?”
“In Korea,” the man said, after a long pause. “With you. And BJ.”
Hawkeye was genuinely taken aback. “You’ve been fishing with the Colonel?”
The man didn’t say anything. He was shivering now. His right hand came up to clutch at nothing at the centre of his chest, and then to press against his mouth.
“You better not call him ‘BJ’ in front of anyone else,” Hawkeye said.
The man bent his head. Hawkeye thought he was nodding at first, but he bent his head further and further down, bending himself over, his injured arm trapped, his unhurt arm curved before his face. He was bent over completely, and he stayed there. Hawkeye stared at him.
The door opened. Trapper came in, his curls still sleeked down and shining, freshly shaved.
Hawkeye put the letter away under his pillow. He folded his hands behind his head. “Hey, Trap?”
“Yeah?”
“You remember you figured he’d calm down once he’d realised we weren’t going to hurt him?”
“Yeah?” Trapper came over and looked down at the man. “Told you we should’ve got him drunker.”
Hawkeye made a face. “Let’s get drunk.”
“Us two, or him too?”
“Have we got enough gin for three?
Trapper glanced at the still with an estimating frown. “No. Let’s head over to the officer’s club.” He looked at the man again. “You didn’t scrub Francis.”
“Aw, we don’t need to take him everywhere.” Hawkeye sat up. “Besides, all the kids will want a go. Hey, you put on aftershave!” He sniffed. “You put on my aftershave.”
“It was that or your whisky. And I don't even want to drink your whisky.”
“That was my aftershave!” Indignation was a splendid alternative to depression.
“You borrowed my watch,” Trapper said, unanswerably. He looked down at the huddled form of the man. “And look what you got for it.” He glanced over at his bed. “Did you put those dirty blankets on my bed?”
“That’s where they came from.”
“You definitely owe me a drink.”
Hawkeye stood up. “I’ve got five dollars in small change to last me till next payday.”
“Okay, I definitely owe you a drink. I knew it was one or the other.”
“Let’s go,” Hawkeye said. He didn’t feel exactly cheerful, but he could fake it until he got drunk enough. “Stay here, okay?” he said to the man. He got no response, but it didn’t look like the man was going to go anywhere.
“We should’ve tied him up,” Trapper said. He was swaying on his feet.
“To what?” The tent was swaying on its feet, too. Hawkeye collapsed on to his empty cot and looked down into the hiding space beside it. That was empty, too. “He’s probably gone to the latrines.”
“Did we have supper?”
“We had pretzels,” Trapper said after a minute. “Didn’t we?”
“Yeah, I think we did.” Hawkeye frowned. There was a reason why he should care about this, but he couldn’t think what it was.
“They were terrible pretzels,” Trapper announced, and collapsed onto his cot. “Where do they get them?”
Hawkeye dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “Wait a minute. You were there. I was there. If we were both there eating pretzels, who fed Francis?”
“To what?” Trapper asked, and snickered.
“No,” Hawkeye said again, and pushed himself upright. The tent was still swaying. “I’m supposed to make sure he’s fed. Where is he?”
“Maybe he ran off to get something to eat?”
Hawkeye had a complicated witticism in his head about the man getting more to eat than he could swallow, but he stopped trying to get it out after a couple of goes. “I’m going to ask Radar where he is.”
“You do that,” Trapper said. His voice had gone sleepy drunk. “And tell him we need a better laundry service. These blankets stink.”
That made Hawkeye giggle all the way across the compound. There was a light on in Radar’s office. Of course, there always was: Hawkeye suspected the kid was scared of the dark.
Radar was sitting at his desk: he looked up and jumped up as Hawkeye came in. “Oh, boy, am I glad to see you. He said he wanted to see the Colonel and I couldn’t get him to move and the Colonel’s probably busy it being late and all but he might have come in and I’m sure glad you’re here now, sir.”
“What?”
Radar stepped back and opened the door to the Colonel’s office. “Can you get him out of there please, soon, now? Nobody’s supposed to be in there when the Colonel’s not there.”
“Oh,” Hawkeye said. “Light dawns. So to speak. Why’s he sitting in there in the dark?” He reached in and switched the light on. The man was sitting in a chair in front of the desk.
“I switched the light off,” Radar said. “I didn’t want the Colonel to see it and think there was someone in his office.”
“Yeah, I can see where that would be bad,” Hawkeye said. He walked in. “Okay, Francis, out of here.”
The man looked at him. He didn’t move. Hawkeye shook his head. “I hate to resort to cliches, but you can do this the easy way, or you can do this the hard way. The easy way is going to be so much less effort, and I am so drunk, so we’ll just do it the easy way, okay?”
“Sir,” Radar said, “I don’t think he wants to do it the easy way. What’s the hard way?”
“Go get me a needle and a bottle of sodium pentothal.”
“That’s what you use to get them to talk,” Radar said in a small voice. “What do you want him to say…?”
“Just go get it, Radar. Fast.”
“If it’s, you know, an emergency, the Colonel’s got some in the safe.”
“It’s locked.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got the keys. I sleep with them, you know.”
“That’s more than I wanted to know.”
Radar had disappeared. He came back with an impressive bunch of keys, unlocked the safe, and produced the sodium pentothal and a needle inside a sterile pack. “Though I don’t see how this is going to help,” he said. “I mean, it’s not like you want to get him to say anything.”
“Radar,” Hawkeye said, filling the needle carefully from the bottle. “One thing not many people here know about sodium pentothal. Not too much, and it makes people very anxious to tell us everything, or rather very relaxed and unanxious to tell us everything. Rather more than not too much – ” Hawkeye glanced at the man, estimated bodyweight, and added another fraction “ – and it puts them out. Cold. Hold his arm for me – his right arm.”
The man stood up. Radar’s hands twitched back from taking hold of his arm.
“Just grab him, Radar,” Hawkeye said. He put down the sodium pentothal bottle, which left him with only the problem of a loaded needle he was anxious to deliver to the right person.
“Oh, gee, I don’t know – ” Radar said.
“You grab him, Pierce,” the Colonel said from the doorway. “He’s your problem. And what is he doing in my office?”
The man turned. “BJ,” he said. “I want to tell you – ”
Hawkeye grabbed him from behind: left hand over his mouth, clamping down on what the man had to say shut, and right hand sliding the needle into his right buttock. “Got him, right in the tush,” he said breathlessly.
The man jerked back and struggled a minute or two: but then his head nodded. He said something muffled against Hawkeye’s fingers. He was asleep. Hawkeye lowered him carefully into a chair, and said to Radar, “If you take his feet, we’ll get him out of here.”
“How much did you give him?” the Colonel asked.
Hawkeye told him. The Colonel nodded, briefly. “You meant to knock him out for quite a while, didn’t you?”
“He’s got more muscle than you’d think.”
“What was it he wanted to tell me?”
“How would I know?”
“I would think you do – since you moved so fast to make sure he didn’t say it.”
“He’s crazy,” Hawkeye said.
“Perhaps.” The Colonel smiled, a flash of white teeth that was somehow even more frightening than his usual imperturable look. “I want to see him here, in my office – ” He glanced at his watch “ – oh eight hundred tomorrow. I suggest you go to bed. And take that with you.”
Hawkeye dumped the man on his cot, kicked his shoes off, and lay down with him. An army cot was designed for one person, but he didn’t feel like wasting any time. The man’s unconscious body was relaxed and easy to manoevre. Hawkeye meant to fuck him now: he was angry and desperate. The man’s life was now better measured in hours, not days.
He knew it wasn’t going to happen after a few minutes groping: he was too tired and too drunk. He wrapped his arms around the man, and buried his face in the man’s hair. “Damn you,” he muttered out loud. “I never meant this to happen.” He should have known it: he broke everything he touched. There were no exceptions, inside or outside the OR. The man would have been better off if Hawkeye had picked some other door in the brothel, and left him be.
Someone was prodding at his shoulder. Hawkeye woke with a snarl. “What do you want? No, don’t tell me. Whatever it is, take it and go away.”
“Sir, the Colonel sent me over to tell you it’s oh seven thirty.”
“Tell the Colonel I’ve got my own watch.”
“Sir, I really don’t want to do that.”
Hawkeye blinked his eyes open. “I really don’t want to be awake. So that makes two of us. And I’m a captain. Don’t make me pull rank on you, Radar, I hate pulling rank before coffee, but go away.”
“The Colonel says you and Francis have an appointment with him at oh eight hundred.”
“Oh, yeah.” Hawkeye’s gut coiled up into a tight cold circle. “I was hoping I dreamed that.”
“No, sir, you didn’t, I was there.” Radar looked miserable. “Sir, is Francis going to be all right?”
Hawkeye looked down at the man. His gut twisted. No, I really doubt it. Not for any given value of ‘all right’. “Did you have any luck tracking him down?”
“Well, kind of,” Radar said.
“You did?”
“He’s an American,” Radar said. “I found his records this morning at oh six hundred, that’s like yesterday evening at home. But it doesn’t help.”
“Does the Colonel know?”
“Yes. I had to tell him. I’m sorry.”
“Why doesn’t it help?” Hawkeye said. He was dazed enough to think he ought to know the answer, but not to be able to think of it.
Radar dropped his voice. “Because he’s a – he’s one of those.”
“Which one of those is he?” Hawkeye said defensively. He remembered now. “A one of those one of those, or a one of these one of those?”
The man stirred, waking: his eyes opened. He stared up at Radar without a trace of fear, and then his head turned, and he looked at Hawkeye.
Hawkeye sat up. Not looking at the man, he said, “Okay. We got time for a shower, Radar?”
“Yes, sir, I guess, if you’re quick. I got two more sets of clothes for Francis.”
“Great,” Hawkeye said, without enthusiasm. He stood up. “Okay.” He glanced over at Trapper. “Don’t wake him.”
“No, sir, I don’t want to.”
“No,” Hawkeye agreed. He picked his bathrobe off the hook and grubbed on the floor for a towel. “Get Francis out of bed, would you? I’d do it but I don’t think he’s talking to me. Come to that, I’m not sure I’m talking to me.” He glanced over at the man, reluctantly.
“Where are we going?” the man asked.
“It speaks,” Hawkeye said. “I thought you’d taken a vow of silence. I wish you’d taken a vow of silence last night. We’re going to the showers, okay? Then we’re – ” He stopped. “We’re not going anywhere after that. Nowhere at all. Let’s go.”
to part 10