Mash (24 page)

“Me?” Vollmer said. “I can’t catch a pass.”

“You don’t have to,” Spearchucker said. “Trapper takes the snap and hands the ball right back to you between your legs. You hide it in your belly, and stay there like you’re blockin’.

Trapper, you start back like you got the ball, make a fake to me and keep going. One or both of those tackles will hit you …”

“Oh, dear,” Trapper said.

“Meanwhile,” Spearchucker said to Vollmer, “when your man goes by you, you straighten up, hidin’ the ball with your arms, and you walk – don’t run – toward that other goal line.”

“I don’t know,” Vollmer said.

“You got to,” Hawkeye said. “Just think of all that dough.”

“I suppose,” Vollmer said.

“Everybody else keep busy,” Spearchucker said. “Keep the other people occupied, but don’t hold, and Vollmer, you remember you walk, don’t run.”

“I’ll try,” Vollmer said.

“Oh, dear,” Trapper John said.

“Time!” the referee was calling again. “Time!”

When they lined up, all of the linemen to the right of the center except Hawkeye, they had some trouble finding their positions and the enemy had some trouble adjusting. As Trapper John walked up and took his position behind the center and then Duke jumped up into the line and Hawkeye dropped back, the enemy was even more confused.

“Hut!” Trapper John called. “Hut!”

He took the ball from the center, handed it right back to him, turned and started back. He faked to Spearchucker, heading into the line, and then, his back to the fray, he who had once so successfully posed as The Saviour now posed as The Quarterback With the Ball. So successfully did he pose, in fact, that both tackles from the Browns and two other linemen in orange and black fell for the ruse, and on top of Trapper John.

Up at the line, meanwhile, the sergeant from Supply and center from Nebraska had started his lonely journey. Bent over, his arms crossed to further hide the ball, and looking like he had caught a helmet or a shoulder pad in the pit of the stomach and was now living with the discomfort, he had walked right between the two enemy halfbacks whose attention was focused on the trappings of Trapper John. Once past this checkpoint, about ten yards from where he had started and now out in the open, the sergeant, however, began to feel as conspicuous as a man who had forgotten his pants, so he decided to embellish the act. He veered toward his own sideline, as if he were leaving the game.

“What’s going on?” Henry was screaming as his center approached him. “What’s going on out there? What are you doing?”

“I got the ball,” the center informed him, opening his arms enough for Henry to see the pigskin cradled there.

“Then run!” Henry screamed. “Run!”

So the sergeant from Supply and center from Nebraska began to run. Back upfield, the two tackles from the Browns had picked up Trapper John. That is, each had picked up a leg, and now they were shaking him out like a scatter rug, still trying to find the ball, while their colleagues stood around waiting for it to appear, so they could pounce on it. Downfield, meanwhile, the safety man stood, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scratching an armpit, peering upfield and waiting for something to evolve. He had noticed the center start toward the sidelines, apparently in pain, but he had ignored that. Now, however, as he saw the center break into a run, the light bulb lit, and he took off after him. They met, but they met on the two-yard line, and the sergeant from Supply and center from Nebraska carried the safety man, as well as the ball, into the end zone with him.

“What happened?” General Hammond, coach, was hollering on one sideline. “Illegal! Illegal!”

“It was legal,” the referee informed him. “They made that center eligible.”

“Crook!” General Hammond was hollering at Lieutenant Colonel Blake on the other sideline, shaking his fist at him. “Crook!”

“Run it up!” Henry was hollering. “Run it up!”

“Now we just gotta stop ‘em,” Spearchucker said, after Duke had kicked the point that made it MASH 28, Evac 24.

“Not me,” Trapper John said, weaving for the sideline.

And stop them they did. The key defensive play was made, in fact, by Dr. R. C. (Jeeter) Carroll. Dr. Carroll, all five feet nine inches and 150 pounds of him, had spent the afternoon on the offense just running passroutes, waving his arms over his head and screaming at the top of his lungs. He had run button-hooks, turn-ins, turn-outs, zig-ins, zig-outs, posts and fly patterns. Trapper John had ignored him and, after the first few minutes, so had the enemy. Now, with less than a minute to play, with the enemy on the Red Raiders’ forty, fourth and ten, Spearchucker had called for a prevent defense and sent for the agile Dr. Carroll to replace Trapper John.

“Let’s pick on that idiot,” Radar O’Reilly heard one of the enemy ends tell the enemy quarterback as Jeeter ran onto the field. “He’s opposite me, so let’s run that crossing pattern and I’ll lose him.”

They tried. They crossed their ends about fifteen yards deep but the end couldn’t lose Jeeter. Jeeter stuck right with him but, with his back to play, he couldn’t see the ball coming. It came with all the velocity the quarterback could still put on it, and it struck Jeeter on the back of the helmet. When it struck Jeeter it drove him to his knees, but it also rebounded into the arms of the Painless Pole who fell to the ground still clutching it.

“Great!” Henry was shouting from the sideline. “Great defensive play.”

“That’s using the old head, Jeeter,” Hawkeye told Dr. Carroll, as he helped him to his feet.

“What?” Jeeter said.

“That’s using the old noggin,” Hawkeye said.

“What?” Jeeter said.

Then Spearchucker loafed the ball into the line twice, the referee fired off his Army .45 and they trooped off the field, into the waiting arms of Henry, who escorted them into their dressing quarters, where they called for the beer and slumped to the floor.

“Great!” Henry, ecstatic, was saying, going around and shaking each man’s hand. “It was a great team effort. You’re heroes all!”

“Then give us our goddamn Purple Hearts,” said Ugly John, who had spent most of the afternoon under one or the other of the two tackles from the Browns.

When General Hammond appeared, he was all grace. In the best R.A. stiff-upper-lip tradition he congratulated them, and then he took Henry aside.

“Men,” Henry said, after the general had left, “he wants a rematch. Whadda you say?”

“I thought he was bein’ awful nice,” Spearchucker said.

“We might be able to do it to them again,” Henry said, still glowing.

“Never again,” Hawkeye said. “They’re on to us now.”

“Gentlemen,” the Duke, slumped next to Hawkeye, said, “I got an announcement to make. Y’all have just seen me play my last game.”

“You can retire my number, too,” Trapper John said.

“Mine, too,” Hawkeye said.

“Anyway, men,” Henry said, “I told you so.”

“What?” Hawkeye said.

“That Hammond,” Henry said. “He doesn’t know anything about football.”

14

For the next two days, Henry spent his spare time distributing the profits of the betting coup to the financial backers of the Red Raiders. The way the money had been bet – half of it before the game at two to one and the rest at halftime at four to one – meant that the ultimate payoff was three to one, so when Henry stopped off at The Swamp on the second afternoon and handed each of the occupants his original $500 and then $1,500 more, the recipients were more affluent than they had been in a long while.

“And no place to spend it,” the Duke said.

“Send it home,” the colonel advised.

“No,” Hawkeye said. “I got a better idea.”

“What?” Henry said.

“You keep all the money, and send
us
home.”

“No chance,” Henry said.

“But why, coach?” Duke wanted to know. “With the time the Hawk and me put in before they sent us to y’all, we been over here longer than anybody but you.”

“That’s right,” Hawkeye said, “and it ain’t fair.”

“Excuse me,” Trapper John said, getting up, “but I’ve heard this before and I don’t want to hear it again.”

“I’ll go with you,” Spearchucker said. “I can’t stand the sight of suffering, either.”

“Soreheads!” the Duke called after them. “Just because we get out before y’all!”

“Seriously, Henry,” Hawkeye said, “the Duke and I are scheduled to get shed of this Army in March. That’s only a little over three months away. Now, ever since we’ve been stuck out here at the tag end of nowhere, we’ve watched a procession of our contemporaries come and go. Singles and doubles hitters, strike-out artists, long down the fairway or off into the woods, it didn’t matter what they were, because they all got rotated back to stateside duty four – five months before they were to get sprung.”

“That’s right,” Henry said.

“But why?” the Duke said.

“I know why,” Hawkeye said. “It’s because the Army always gets even.”

“What do you mean?” Henry said.

“I mean,” Hawkeye said, “that the Duke and I are two of the three biggest screwups over here, or four if you count Roger the Dodger …”

“I don’t count him,” Henry said. “I don’t even think of him, and if that sonofabitch comes around here again I’m gonna have him shot on sight.”

“Anyway,” Hawkeye said, “you gotta admit it. We screwed up, so now the Army, defender of democracy and symbol of justice, is gonna take it out on us.”

“No,” Henry said. “You’re wrong. You won’t believe it, but it’s not a punishment.”

“Then what is it?” the Duke said. “It feels like a punishment.”

“It’s ironic,” Henry said, “but it’s because you two, like Trapper John, came here with more than average training and experience. You’ve done a good job when the chips were down, and now we can’t afford to waste you. If you went home now you’d be of no use to anyone but your wives. Therefore, we’ve got to keep you here until your enlistments expire.”

“Ain’t that the damndest thing?” the Duke said.

“In short,” Hawkeye said, “we screwed up in the wrong area. If we had dubbed it along in the working time and never given it the goddamn college try, we’d be back at some stateside hospital, living with our wives and behaving like officers and gentlemen? Is that right?”

“Yeah,” agreed Henry with a broad grin.

“I couldn’t stand a stateside Army hospital,” the Duke said. “Too many jerks.”

The next morning the two appeared in front of Colonel Blake’s tent. When the colonel came out in answer to their calls, they announced that the Spearchucker had arranged for them both to be given $25,000 bonuses by the Philadelphia Eagles and they were leaving immediately for the City of Brotherly Love. They then departed by jeep, and were neither seen nor heard from for three days. Colonel Blake, of course, was aware that the other two occupants of The Swamp knew where they were and could have them back in two hours if a hint of heavy work arose.

Four days after they returned, the two, whose previous escapade had been ignored by Henry, appeared once again in front of their colonel’s tent. Once again he went out to meet them.

“So where do you wise bastards think you’re going this time?” he inquired.

“Paris,” replied Hawkeye.

“Yeah,” said the Duke.

“That’s very interesting,” said Henry. “What for?”

“We gotta get the Duke fixed,” explained Hawkeye. “It’s an emergency. He’s been nice to me and Trapper and Spearchucker for three days in a row, and we think he’s turnin’.”

“Well,” said Colonel Blake, “that certainly is an emergency, and we can’t have that sort of thing around here, but why don’t you just take him down to Seoul? It’s so much closer.”

“Why, Colonel,” replied Hawkeye, “you can’t be serious. Just two days ago you gave the enlisted men a lecture on how they should not get it in Seoul because there is so much neisserian infection. What applies to enlisted men must certainly apply to officers, and we do not wish to set a bad example. We hear that there is not too much of it in Paris, so that’s where we are going.”