Title: With Love from Home
Rating: K+
Wordcount: 1200
Warnings/Spoilers: Basic MASH spoilers and speculation (teeny-tiny spoiler to Abyssinia Henry, s3e24). Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.
A/N: This was a gift for justalittlegreen. Thanks to PrairieDawn for the beta. Part Four of Tomorrow, If You Remember Anything. This is complete and will be posted within the next week; crossposted to ao3.
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"Enter the Mail"
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The parcel at the bottom of the mail bag was the most hopeful thing that anyone had seen in weeks. The only other things to emerge out of the bag had been letters, with their news, jokes, or stories from home, but while they were good, they were thin, insubstantial, not something enough to live on.
It was a medium-sized parcel, about the size of a shoebox, and it was heavy, heavy enough that Radar leaned off balance when he pulled it out of the bottom of the bag. It didn't look like much. There was the ubiquitous brown paper covering it, tied with butcher's twine, the once-crisp creases crumpled and shapeless at the corners and end. It had come a long way, with Army stamps and streaks of black grease or dirt on its surfaces. It had probably started out as a rectangular box but had been rendered vaguely lumpish by the smashing of any number of Army trucks, boat and planes, and the crushing weight of other, heavier packages.
Radar squinted at it for a minute, then turned it over. He brushed at the paper of the package with the flat of his hand, then poked at it with a short finger. The ring of olive-drab figures watched him, motionless, with a kind of eerie, insatiable hunger, like a ring of hunting, winter-lean wolves.
"Cut it out, you guys." Radar groused, then looked up from intently studying the package, pushing his glasses up his nose. If anyone knew, then Radar knew, knew the kind of desperation that the mail brought—particularly packages—boxed, sealed, addressed and sent with love. There was nothing quite like a package, the home that you could feel, weigh, hold onto.
"Anyone expecting a package from home?" He said, weakly, with half a question in the pitch of his voice, holding the package firmly to himself. A roar went up from the crowd circling him and his mail bag in the compound. Hawkeye started pushing his way into the center, near to Radar. He caught Radar's eye and said, with rising volume,
"What the revolting rabble would like to know, Radar, is what is that supposed to mean?"
"It has an address, doesn't it?" BJ chimed in, he could practically smell Mill Valley. "Someone must have sent it to someone."
"Well, that's just it." Radar responded, more than a little defensive, "there isn't one, see?"
He turned the package towards them. Hawkeye felt BJ come up behind his shoulder. They both squinted at the package.
"That says MASH 4077th, right there." Hawkeye concluded, reaching out to trace the letters on the package. The return address, if there had been one, was a smear of black with a few assorted letters, because that part of the package had gotten wet, and there was a darkish stain that covered the whole left-hand corner and reached several inches around.
"Return address has an A, two M's, one O—maybe an H?" BJ hazarded a guess, leaning more heavily over Hawkeye's shoulder. Hawkeye leaned back, and pointed at the address label, which had been addressed in thick, soft, smearing pencil, and had been obscured into a haze of thick, grey cloud by the constant motion against other packages. The MASH 4077th was still readable, but barely, as if whoever had addressed it had re-sharpened their pencil into a sharper point. It was easer to feel the indentations of the 4077th pressed into the paper than it was to read it.
"Anyone here spell their name with no letters?" Hawkeye asked, then took the package from Radar's hands. "Good! I guess that means it's up for grabs."
"You, you can't do that, Hawkeye! Geez, the mail's my responsibility." Radar said, flustered voice rising into a squeak.
"Look," BJ said reasonably, "you did deliver it, you just delivered it to us."
"But your names aren't on it!" Radar retorted, quickly, blowing all up, the way he did when he was agitated, and knew he was right and going to get in trouble.
"Radar, nobody's name is on it." Hawkeye snapped back, raising the package above Radar's head, to show it to the crowd.
"And we're nobody, just like anybody else." BJ agreed, trying to reach over Hawkeye's arm to grab the package. Hawkeye elbowed him in the gut, and BJ staggered back a step. "Why what long arms you have, Goldilocks." He growled, trying to push Hawkeye aside with his shoulder.
Hawkeye half-fell forward, catching himself on Radar, who tried to catch the package, but dropped it, then fell himself. Hawkeye pushed himself off his knees from his crouch and leaned down to pick up the package.
"Hawk." BJ said, his voice calm and remonstrative and paternal, and Hawkeye stopped, going to look up, but caught sight of Radar in the corner of his eye. And he saw Radar looking at him, sprawled on his backside in the frozen Korean mud, with the deer in the headlights look that he sometimes got, but mostly with Frank,powerless in the face of an officer pushing his weight around.
Hawkeye picked up the package with his left hand, and then offered Radar his right, to pull him up. Then he offered him the package. Radar took it, with a sort of furtive look, brushing it off busily, as if to give himself the appearance of having legitimate work to do. Hawkeye smiled, a bit sadly at himself, recognizing the protective strategy that Radar often donned with the Majors of the 4077th.
"Maybe you ought to ask the Colonel, Radar." BJ said, stepping forward next to Hawkeye. "He'll have some idea what to do." They both kept an arm's length from Radar, looking down at him, the way they did sometimes when they weren't certain what to do but proceed with caution.
"I'll do that." Radar said, clutching the package and the mail-bag to himself. If he put an emphasis on that "I'll,' both Hawkeye and BJ read the intent to do it all alone as what it was, a defensive self-reliance.
"Time to go commit suicide at lunch, folks." Hawkeye projected over the heads of the crowd. "A free martini from me if anyone survives it."
"If anyone survives it, who'd risk a martini with you?" Someone called out, and the crowd laughed, and then began to disperse.
"We'll go with you, Radar." BJ offered, coming to stand next to Radar, raising his arm to brush the dirt off Radar's back. Hawkeye stepped next to him, brushing off his own knees and then leaning over to help brush the dirt off Radar.
"Yeah, okay, thanks BJ, Hawkeye." Radar said, turning on his heel, pulling the mail bag strap over his shoulder, and straightening his glasses.
"Thank us in the next war." Hawkeye replied, his arm slinging around Radar with an easy nonchalance. The fact that Hawkeye was doing it on purpose was something that that BJ kept hidden in the corner of his mouth, a small smile hidden behind his moustache.