Mirror M*A*S*H, part 11
Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, and part 10.


“Look like a good houseboy and you won’t have to.” Hawkeye was still hearing the anger in his own voice. “In fact, look like a lousy houseboy and you still won’t have to – but you’ll be better off if Chuckles thinks you’re a valuable property.”

“I’m not,” the man said, in the same quiet, frightened voice. “I’m a Catholic priest. I’m not going to say otherwise.”

“Say it again and I’ll kill you myself,” Hawkeye said. He caught the edge of disbelief in the man’s eyes. “You think I’m kidding?” he demanded again. “You know why I hate Frank Burns?”

The man shook his head.

“Because on my table they live, and on his table they die.” Hawkeye had never said that out loud before, but he was talking to a dead man. “I’ve done terminations that lasted two days. Frank can’t stretch his out longer than six hours. I can. I’m good at this lousy, stinking, rotten business – and Frank hates me because he wishes he was that good.” He stopped and thought about it. “Which is another reason for hating Frank Burns, come to that. Apart from his personality, his face, his manners, and his self-righteous self-aggrandising self.”

“Hawkeye – ?”

“I’d just as soon kill you right here, right now, as see you on my table in the OR. Sooner. So don’t think I’m kidding. I’m not. Shut up.” He stood up. He didn’t know for sure if he could kill someone outside the OR, but it would be worse to discover he couldn’t and find the man presented to him on the table with the restraints and the drains. He was conscious of a thudding pain in his hips and heard himself say something incoherent and noisy. He turned round and glowered at the man. “Shut up,” he repeated. He was shaking. “Don’t make me do it.” Don’t make me find out I can’t do it.

“Hawkeye,” the man said.

“Don’t call me that!” Hawkeye’s voice sounded too loud. “That’s what got you into this mess. Don’t – just call me – ” He had no idea what he wanted the man to call him. “Just stay alive, okay? Don’t get yourself killed. Don’t do anything to end up in OR. Got it? Live.”

The man was looking in Hawkeye’s direction, but his eyes were unfocussed. He lifted his right hand and rubbed it across his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. His voice was shaky.

“When did you last eat something?” It occurred to Hawkeye for the first time that this shakiness could have a simple physiological cause.

The man looked confused. “Yesterday. Before you – yesterday.”

“Lunch yesterday?” Hawkeye glanced at his watch again. Trapper had been gone half an hour or so. “And you didn’t eat much breakfast, either. What did you eat while we were in the OR? You did eat, didn’t you?”

“Two of the drivers brought me sandwiches,” the man said. “When they – they brought me sandwiches.”

Hawkeye nodded, absently. “Okay.” He went over to his footlocker. Buried down at the back of it, out of nose range and far enough away that unless it was an emergency he’d get distracted before he got to it, there should still be – “Got it.” He looked up. “What were the drivers doing in here?”

The man looked at him.

“Oh,” Hawkeye said. He stood up. “Well, I hope they were good sandwiches. Here.” He sat down on the bunk beside the man, and handed him the bar of chocolate. “Eat this. It’ll help.”

The man took the bar, looked at it, stared at Hawkeye. “No,” he said after a moment. “It really won’t.”

“Just eat it,” Hawkeye said. “You need the energy.”

The man shook his head after a moment, and handed the chocolate back. “Not worth it,” he said. “Thanks.”

Hawkeye shook his head. “You just don’t learn, do you?” He leaned his weight across the man and pushed him back on the bed, pinning him down.

The man’s expression changed for a moment to stark fear. He turned his face away and Hawkeye saw him close his mouth and shudder. He was expressionless a moment later, but this close, Hawkeye could feel his heart racing.

“Steady,” Hawkeye said. “Not only am I not going to hurt you, I’m not even going to have sex with you.” He grinned. “Come on. Open your mouth.” He propped his weight up on his elbows and slit open the paper wrapping. “I’m not going to make you deep throat this. Though it would probably be educational to see you try.” He broke off two pieces of chocolate. “Now eat this.”

The man let out his breath in a small, choked sound. His lips parted. Hawkeye pushed the first piece of chocolate inside.

He fed the man the chocolate piece by piece, taking it slowly. As he’d thought, by the time the bar had all been swallowed, the man was noticeably calmer.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

The man swallowed. He didn’t say anything.

“Why are you so damned scared of me?”

Unexpectedly, after another moment’s silence, the man almost laughed: no sound came out, but Hawkeye felt the vibration of it in the man’s chest. Pinned and terrified, he was laughing at Hawkeye.

“Don’t give me that,” Hawkeye said, falling between anger and admiration. He was aware that he was mainly the anger that was coming through in his voice. “You were scared of me on sight. You were terrified of me on sight. You didn’t know I worked in a MATH unit. You’re claiming you didn’t know what a MATH unit was. And even if you did know, I haven’t hurt you. Have I?”

The man swallowed, again. He still wasn’t saying anything.

“Have I?” Hawkeye tapped the side of his face gently. The action made him remember, with a twitch, what had happened over breakfast yesterday: he had jabbed his fingers into the nerve cluster two inches down from where his fingers rested now. “Okay, once I hurt you.”

The man flinched from his touch. “Please – ”

“Tell me,” Hawkeye said. “Why are you so scared of me?”

The man stared at him. After a moment, he said “You can – ” He swallowed. His voice was firmer. “You can do anything you like to me. And you want to make sure I know it.”

“You have a hard time remembering it,” Hawkeye said.

“Not since yesterday,” the man said.

Hawkeye laughed. “You want me to list the number of times you forgot?”

“I didn’t forget,” the man said. “I just decided not to care.”

“That’s going to get you killed.”

“There are worse things.”

“I know.” Hawkeye stared down at the man’s face. “I’ve done most of them.”

The door opened: Winchester said, smoothly, “We’re not interrupting anything, are we?”

Hawkeye looked up. “I’m teaching him how to tapdance.”

Trapper snickered. He closed the door behind them: Hawkeye knelt up and pulled the man up with him.

“Come to inspect our houseboy?”

“In point of fact, Pierce, you borrowed more than half his cost from me.”

“Apply to – ”

“Yes, yes, I may apply to the Colonel if I want my money back.” Winchester laughed without amusement. “By the way, who dislocated his arm?”

Hawkeye stood up, and pulled the man to his feet. “Frank Burns.”

“So I heard,” Winchester said. He looked the man over and walked closer. “But I would be surprised if it were true.” He put his hand on the man’s right shoulder and made a clicking noise with his tongue, indicating with his other hand that the man should turn. Hawkeye let go of him. The man stared at Winchester and didn’t move. “Come now,” Winchester said, without much impatience.

“What makes you think that?” Hawkeye asked.

“Because had Burns dislocated his arm, and left the joint dislocated until you woke up from your swinish slumbers, Pierce, he would not now have even minimal functioning of his left arm.”

“Well, there’s that,” Hawkeye acknowledged.

“Also, from what I have been compelled to observe of Burns’ sexual habits, while he’s unprepossessing, he’s also unimaginative. It seems unlikely that he would accidentally dislocate an arm in the course of achieving sexual fulfillment, and still less likely that he would do so and fail to notice.”

“Ah.” Hawkeye lifted his hand to cover his eyes briefly, and turned away. “Yes.” He glanced at Trapper, who shrugged.

“Not that I plan to point this out to him,” Winchester said. He pushed at the man’s shoulder. “Turn around,” he said, with more impatience.

The man said, abruptly, “I’m a Christian, Major Winchester. A Catholic priest.”

“Fuck,” Trapper said.

“What?” Winchester said.

“I should have gagged you,” Hawkeye said. He said it with an almost gentle disbelief, and then as it sank in, he said it again, with loud outrage “I should’ve gagged you!”

Winchester had taken a step backwards. He was looking the man up and down with a kind of abstract disgust. “Well, well.”

“What difference does it make?” Hawkeye said.

“You know, Pierce, if I were a suspicious man, I might think you had intended to place this man with me in order to politically embarrass myself and my family. As a matter of fact I am a suspicious man – but I suspect that you were just trying to pass a hot potato on to someone else. Well, he’s all yours.” Winchester chuckled, an unamused sound from deep in his throat. “A priest.”

“I don’t intend to keep quiet about it, Charles,” the man said. He sounded a little choked, but not nearly as afraid as he should be. Hawkeye grabbed him by the shoulders, not bothering to be gentle, and pushed him down to his knees.

“Shut up.”

“And resolved to tell everyone,” Winchester said. He chuckled a little. “A self-destructive bent, eh? How many people have heard this little speech from him?”

Hawkeye glanced up. “As of now? You, me, Trap, the Colonel – probably Radar – ”

“The Colonel knows? And you haven’t been ordered to terminate him?” Amusement slipped away from Winchester’s voice. “You need to silence him, Pierce. Now. Immediately.”

“I’ve tried.” Hawkeye tightened his grip on the man’s shoulders. “I’ve tried. What do I do, keep him gagged permanently?”

“Cut his tongue out,” Winchester said.

Hawkeye felt the man jerk upwards under his hands, and he tightened his grip and pushed downwards.

“It’s a simple operation,” Winchester said. “I’ve done a hundred of them at least. Trivial, for a surgeon of my calibre. The only trick is in doing it neatly so that the subject doesn't drool excessively afterwards. Even you should have no difficulty, Pierce. I can draw you a diagram if you like. Can he write?”

Hawkeye glanced down. The man’s head was bent forward. “I don’t know,” he said.

“If he’s literate, cut his thumbs off. But that tongue must go. I have no wish to be compromised. Good day, gentlemen: another time, if you have a houseboy to dispose of, don’t hesitate to think of someone else.”

Hawkeye stared down at the man. “What the hell are you trying to do?” he asked.

The man didn’t answer.

“What are you going to do, Hawkeye?” Trapper asked.

Hawkeye shook his head. His mind was full of a buzzing confusion. “I’m going to find breakfast,” he said. “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.”

Trapper snapped off a mock salute. “Return with your stomach or – ”

“On it?”

“Don’t touch the sausages.”

“Thanks for the warning. Keep an eye on Francis, okay?”

“Sure.”

"Don't let him talk. To anyone."

Trapper grinned. His eyes looked disturbed, but his voice held nothing but amusement. "I won't let him say a word. Not even to me.”


to part 12