Disclaimer: These characters are not mine and I make no profit from them.
Author's Notes: The lyrics of the theme song from Gilligan's Island were written by George Wyle and Sherwood Shwartz. 'Mairzy Doats' is by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston.
Many thanks to Naomi for the original plot bunny: the guys in a truck, plagued by a couple of ditties that just won't go away. As she pointed out, this plot has a venerable ancestor in Mark Twain's tale, 'Punch, Brother, Punch'.
Two Men in a Truck
By L.M. Lewis
"Too much coffee," the judge said. "That's what it is."
He'd said it in reference to the man sitting over on the passenger side of the venerable GMC. It had been pretty evident, for the last half hour or so, that McCormick had a bad case of the fidgets.
"Okay," the younger man conceded, "how the hell else do you expect me to clip hedges all afternoon and then stay awake all night?" He shifted around again, though there didn't seem to be much point to it.
Hardcastle shook his head. The kid was new to the stakeout routine, and clearly he was not a natural for it.
He might have thought that something that involved no heavy lifting would appeal to his newest rehabilitation project. Instead, when it came to sitting quietly and paying attention, he'd quickly discovered that the guy was worse than a kid. For the last fifteen minutes he'd been half-expecting to hear him say 'Are we there yet?', except that they'd been at their destination for over four hours already.
"We sit here, keep a low profile. Eventually the guy will show up," the judge had said confidently when they'd first arrived.
The source of the information had been good. The stakes were high. It was worth losing a night's sleep over—to bring down Ricky Delcono. But hours had crept by without anything to show for them but a now-empty thermos of coffee, and an increasingly antsy Tonto. Now there was a deceptively quiet pause, actually more of a slow fuse. Hardcastle never took his eyes off the small bungalow that was the object of their surveillance, but he couldn't help the low mutter.
"I woulda thought you'da learned a little patience."
It didn't take much deduction to realize exactly where the judge thought the younger man might have honed that particular skill, and from the sudden, stiff silence, it was obvious that McCormick had gotten the reference. The silence stretched out, almost as though the alternative might be dangerous.
Hardcastle finally let his gaze drift sideward; curiosity had gotten to him. To his surprise, the face of the man next to him revealed absolutely nothing at all.
"I guess patience has never been my strong suit," McCormick finally said in a flat tone that sounded as if it had had every drop of anger distilled out of it.
The whole thing was just damn unexpected, the judge thought. In the few weeks he'd had the ex-con on board, Hardcastle had pretty much learned that the kid would give as good as he got. Routine requests and advice got questioned (perfectly reasonable requests, and very good advice), and the rehabilitation project rarely missed an opportunity to butt heads with his benefactor. The judge winced just a little at these descriptions, having a fleeting thought that he'd better not say them out loud in front of McCormick .
So what the hell did you say? What set this off?
The judge gave that a moment's ponder. He concluded that he might have struck a little too close to home, that it hadn't been fidgets, as much as some sort of weird claustrophobia, stuck in a small space with no option to get up and leave.
He risked another quick look to the side. The younger man was sitting back rigidly against his seat, arms crossed on his chest, his face still a bland mask. The body language and the expression were in complete disagreement. At least the fidgeting had temporarily subsided. In its place was a look of self-control achieved at some cost.
"Well," Hardcastle drawled. "If ya gotta go see a man about a horse, there's some trees back there a ways. Just try not to upset the neighbors; I don't want anybody calling the police right now."
The mask held for another brief moment, then was cracked by a small, chagrined smile.
"All right," Mark undid the door latch quietly, "I'll be back in a sec. If the damn house moves while I'm gone, just holler."
He eased out and closed the door quietly behind him, disappearing into the darkness off to the side of the road. Hardcastle shook his head. Just when you think you've maybe figured him out . . .There were walls, and some of them had a hell of a lot of concertina wire on top, but then, once in a while, the gates below were left standing wide open.
He was still considering this, when he heard the door again, and McCormick slid back into his seat.
"Anything happen while I was gone?"
The acerbity was back, Hardcastle noted with relief. "No," he sighed out his saint-like patience. "You weren't gone very long."
"Well, I didn't want to miss anything," McCormick matched him with a sigh of his own. "How long have we been here, anyway?"
"Oh," Hardcastle lied cheerfully, "'bout three hours."
"Seems longer." McCormick squinted down at his watch suspiciously, then gave it a cautious shake.
"Stopped again?" The judge asked mildly.
"Either that, or it's only been seven minutes. And I know that's not true," the younger man grumbled. "I don't think this guy's comin', Judge.'
Another period of silence. Still no signs of life at the bungalow.
"Dammit," McCormick broke into the pensive silence with a perfunctorily uttered curse.
"What now?" Hardcastle asked with equally mild irritation.
"What you said, 'three hours'," Mark muttered. "Now I've got that damn song stuck in my head."
Hardcastle gave him a puzzled look. "What song?"
"You know, that song," he said with some exasperation. Then, in an unexpectedly decent tenor, came a vaguely familiar half-phrase, ". . . a threeee hour tour."
Hardcastle frowned.
McCormick looked at him in disbelief. "Oh, come on, everybody knowsthat one. That show was on TV for, like, forever." Then there was a moment of quiet reflection from the younger man before he added, thoughtfully, "'Course John Wayne never guest-starred on it . . . I don't think."
"Yeah, I know it," the judge huffed impatiently.
"And you never got it stuck in your head?" McCormick said disbelievingly. "It's so damn insidious . . . long, too."
"No." Hardcastle shrugged.
"Well," McCormick grumbled, "now I'm stuck with it . . . 'Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale . . .'" he muttered liltingly, almost beneath his breath.
"You know," the judge started to explain practically, "the best way to get rid of a song that's stuck in your head—"
"I thought you said you don't get songs stuck in your head."
"Not that one," Hardcastle gave him a quick irritated look. "Like I said, my Aunt Zora had this trick she taught me—"
"You have an aunt?" Mark looked surprised.
"Yeah," the judge replied impatiently, "I gotta couple of aunts. Anyway—"
"And they're still alive?" Mark gave a low, quiet whistle. "They must be pretty old."
Hardcastle frowned. It would be more irritating, if the darn kid hadn't done it with such perfect, deadpan insouciance. He had a sneaking suspicion that even Aunt Zora would've laughed.
He kept his dignity about him and replied, "They're my father's younger sisters, May and Zora. Two very nice ladies from Arkansas . . . and if you called Zora old, she'd probably belt you with her purse."
"I'll bet," McCormick grinned. "Sorry. It's just hard to imagine the Lone Ranger having a family back on the old homestead. You know, sitting around at night, polishing the silver bullets."
The last bit fell into a sudden, gaping pit of silence. Even McCormick seemed to be aware of the change, and fumbled for a moment.
"And . . . um . . . what was your Aunt Zora's cure for a song curse?" He got it out after a moment of quiet awkwardness.
"Find another song," Hardcastle said, too quietly. Then, more firmly, he added. "Just replace it."
00000
All right, McCormick thought, twitching uncomfortably, another one of those 'No Trespassing' signs. He'd run over it roughshod. He swore he never even saw this one until after it had the tread marks on it, though it probably looked pretty intentional. He'd only been with the judge a few weeks and he already knew there'd been a Mrs. Hardcastle . . . and a son, and that the judge didn't talk about that very much.
Very much? You mean 'not at all'.
"Well," he said, trying to find his way back to unmined territory, "the problem is, when you've got one song stuck in your head, it's hard to come up with another. You know?"
"Yeah," the older man harrumphed, a little more animation in his expression, though it was mostly leaning toward disgust. "There was one. Jeez, I had it stuck in my head most of the way across the Pacific."
Mark cocked his head in questioning curiosity.
"Yup, came out in '43, or thereabouts. Very big hit." He paused for a moment, as though in recollection, then he said, half-talking, half singing, in a rusty baritone, "Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey, a kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?"
Mark felt his own breath catch in his throat before the first phrase was out. That song, transposed in memory up to an inappropriately smooth tenor, had sliced through twenty-five years, right to his heart.
A good bedtime song for a kid.
"You've heard that one, right?" It was Hardcastle, talking into what had become a fairly long silence. "I mean, it's kind of from before your time, but . . ."
Mark pulled himself together and answered, with every effort at nonchalance, "Oh, yeah, somewhere along the way."
"I used to know more of the words," Hardcastle went on. "Like I said, it was a big hit."
"In '43, huh?" Mark asked, with studied casualness.
"Yeah," the judge scratched his head, "and the guy who wrote it, his name was Milton something-or-another. That didn't help any. Every time somebody met me, found out my name, out would come that song again."
Mark shook his head in mock sympathy.
"It took a couple of weeks on the troop ship to get to the staging area—damn mares, damn does. I'd just about had it. They marched off the ship singing that song." He shook his head in obvious disgust.
"So, how'd you get rid of it?"
"Ah . . ." Hardcastle pondered for a moment. "I think I went with 'I'll Get By'."
Mark gave him a look of some astonishment. "'I'll Get By', as in Billie Holiday?" His eyebrows were up a notch. "That doesn't seem like your kinda song, Judge."
Hardcastle shot him a quick look, as if in surprise that he'd gotten the reference. Then he shrugged. "Anything but the lambs and the ivy. And it was either that or 'Pistol Packin' Mama'—I think the Andrews Sisters did that one."
"See," Mark shook his head, "and you complain when I play Bruce Springsteen."
"Yeah, well, he's not so bad," Hardcastle conceded. "I like the harmonica bits."
"Yeah," Mark grinned, "something for everybody. And thank God he hasn't done a cover of 'Mairzy Doats', huh?"
Hardcastle grimaced. "Yeah."
"And 'I'll Get By' did the trick?"
"Oh, yeah," Hardcastle assured him, "worked like a charm . . . Kinda worked too well," he added, after a few seconds.
Mark looked mildly puzzled at this.
"See," the judge when on, "we were on this island, a couple months later . . ." he paused for a moment, and then a frown. "Damn, I can't even remember which one . . . lots of islands. Doesn't matter." The frown stayed. "We we're dug in, between the beach and the tree line, going to push on in the next morning. Everybody twitchy as hell." He took a breath. "There were infiltrators all the time, sneaking in, trying to take out a few guys. Somebody had to stay awake in every foxhole. Lots of watching. And if you had to get out of your hole—"
"To see a man about a horse?" Mark grinned.
"Yeah, lot of horse-trading going on, half the guys in my company had dysentery by then." Hardcastle said it almost lightly, in a way that implied that it had been the least of their troubles. Then he frowned and picked up the story where he'd left off, "If you did have to get out of your hole, you'd damn well better not get lost, and wander too close to somebody else's."
"Friendly-fire?" McCormick asked soberly.
"Well," Hardcastle exhaled, "we didn't have that idiotic name for it, but it happened sometimes." He shook his head. "So, there were passwords, and questions, and you'd better have the right answers pretty quick.
"Andthat particular night—clouds, no light—I went off a little ways, did my business, headed back, but I must've miscalculated some, and pretty soon I hear somebody down at ground level, breathing fast and whispering 'Mairzy doats and dozy doats—' and I knew he was expecting me to throw him the next bit and the only damn thing I could think of was 'there'll be rain and darkness too.'" He was half-singing again; it was a passable baritone Billie Holiday.
Mark swallowed a laugh and finally gasped out "You had that stuck in your head?"
"Yeah," the judge replied ruefully. "And everything else had gone pretty blank."
"So what the hell did you do?" McCormick asked curiously.
"I started cussing a blue streak about mares and deers and how I never wanted to hear that damn song again, for the duration . . . and somebody from one of the other holes said, 'Hell, it's Capt'n Hardcase, from Charlie Company.'"
"So they called you that, too?" Mark said with some satisfaction. "I'm surprised they didn't shoot you anyway, just on general principle."
"It was a term of endearment," the judge said archly.
"Oh, yeah," Mark grinned knowingly.
Hardcastle shot him an indignant look, but it was pretty clearly a put-on.
"So you made it back to your foxhole in one piece, huh?"
"Yeah, the only thing wounded was my pride."
Mark let the grin settle into a smile. The old donkey was an utter contradiction sometimes. One minute the drawbridges were up, with every appearance of the guy on the other side having hostile intentions if you even shouted 'anybody home?', and then, out of nowhere, he'd come up with these stories that actually made him seem like a real human being.
"Liddle lamzy divey," he chuckled to himself. Now that he was past the first shock of memory, it really wasn't such a bad song. He closed his eyes cautiously and tried to picture the first person who'd sung it to him. No luck. Too long ago.
"Hey," Hardcastle prodded, "no falling asleep in the foxhole."
"Not sleeping," Mark opened his eyes and protested. "Just thinking."
"Well, I didn't bring you along to do that."
"'Course not," McCormick shook his head slowly. Back to square one, casual insults delivered almost reflexively, another reminder that his job description, though varied, didn't go much beyond: mow, clip, sit, fetch, and keep your mouth shut.
He fidgeted again; the cab of the truck was feeling too small. He got a quick, impatient look from the older man.
"Again?"
McCormick shrugged his reply and eased the door open one more time, then closed it just as quietly behind him. He stood there, back to the truck, and took a deep breath of the damp, midnight air. Just a little walk. It had helped last time. Though he hadn't wanted to get too far from the vehicle.
And why's that?
Because he might need me.
You're crazy, you know that? He was already twenty feet down and off to the side of the road, in the deep suburban shadows. He looked up at the sky. No answers there, not even any stars tonight, it was overcast. He went another few feet and stopped, arms crossed; it was a little too cool for shirtsleeves.
He took a couple more deep breaths and slowly turned around.
00000
He was frowning off into the past. He hadn't really intended to tell that story. The damn thing just came out. That's how it was sometimes, around the kid; stuff just got said. He was acutely aware that it hadn't been that way with any of the others. This one would listen. He'd talk back, too.
And then you went and shut him down. How come?
Keep him at a distance; it's safer that way.
It made perfect sense. If the kid screwed up, which seemed more than likely some days, if he had to pull his ticket—
He went to the wall with you last week, breaking into police impound.No, that part had been second nature to McCormick; that much was evident. It was what happened afterwards that had surprised the hell out of the judge—confessing to Lieutenant Carlton.
00000
He walked with slow deliberation, approaching almost warily. He was only an arm's-length from the passenger door, when he saw Hardcase staring pensively off in the general direction of the bungalow—way too pensive for a mere stakeout.
He smiled to himself. He whistled the first couple of bars of 'Mairzy Doats'. The judge jumped, then cast a baleful glare over his right shoulder.
McCormick opened the door and ducked his head forward, still smiling. "Just wanted to make sure it was safe to come back in."
He got a 'harrumph' in return and then, after a long pause, came a quiet admission, "I think you're right. I think maybe this guy isn't coming."
Mark climbed back into his seat. "I dunno," he sat there, looking straight ahead, "maybe we should give him a little more time."
Hardcastle turned his head, looking absolutely baffled.
Mark shrugged. "It's just that I hate to waste all that caffeine."
"Well, when you put it that way," the judge shook his head. "All right, you win," he said magnanimously. "We'll give it a little more time."
McCormick eased back in his seat, letting his smile broaden.
"Now you're cookin', Hardcase."