Island
The battle had raged for days.
Hawkeye wiped the dust from his sweating face. Everything was silent, and the air was oppressively still and close. Across the room, BJ groaned.
"'The Face on the Bar-Room Floor.' Come on, Hawk, if you're not even going to try, what's the point?"
The crowd at the Officers' Club applauded and laughed. Hawkeye made a disgusted noise and flung the chalk at BJ, who ducked. It bounced off his shoulder and landed on the floor near the sketch Hawkeye had just unveiled, a caricature of BJ with an absurdly big smile and even bigger forehead.
"Rats," Hawkeye said. "But you know, it was still better than your last one."
"Oh, come on!" BJ laughed. "'A horse of a different color,' what was wrong with that?"
"I'll tell ya what was wrong with that," growled Colonel Potter. "Getting green dye out of Sophie's coat! She looks like she belongs to the Jolly Green Giant!"
"Besides," Hawkeye said, "It's not a title of a movie or a book or anything, it doesn't count!"
"Sure it does. You're just sore 'cause you didn't guess it in three. Stock phrases count." BJ looked around at the bar for a verdict. "Right?"
Several people chimed in on BJ's side, and Hawkeye pouted. "All right, all right, all right. Have it your way. That just clears the way for my triumphant comeback!"
"We'll see," BJ said. "But it's four to three now -- I do believe you're outclassed."
"Out-somethinged," Hawkeye said, rolling his eyes as he settled in next to BJ at the bar. They clinked glasses and moved on to other talk, but the gleam in BJ's eyes spoke of terrible, truly terrible things to come.
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As they walked to breakfast the next day, Hawkeye broke their lockstep to stare at an enlisted man going the other direction. Trying to walk backwards and still stare, he stumbled into BJ, who caught him by the elbow and steered him back to their path.
"Beej, did you see that?"
"What?"
"Not what, who. I think it was Overman, from the motor pool. He was wearing makeup!"
BJ chuckled. "Klinger will be furious. That's strictly his purview."
"No, not like makeup. Like this --" Hawkeye mimed two stripes up each cheekbone. "Red stripes, like war paint."
"Huh." BJ looked blandly at Hawkeye. "Wonder what that was about." He held the mess tent door open for Hawkeye and they joined the line. Nurse Bigelow came in just behind them. Hawkeye handed her a tray, but when she thanked him and tried to accept it, she tugged fruitlessly for a moment. Hawkeye was staring at her head. Specifically, at the two feathers sprouting from the back of her head, attached to a narrow beaded ribbon. She struggled to keep a straight face.
Hawkeye said, "Okay, okay, I see what's going on here." He put down his tray and began stalking around the tent. Colonel Potter propped his feet on a bench and ostentatiously wiggled his toes inside a pair of fringed leather moccasins. Two more nurses were in feathers, and one wore war paint. Radar lit an elaborate long-stemmed pipe and promptly choked on the fumes.
Hawkeye stook at the end of a long table, taking a careful look around. He nodded slowly. "Boy, it sure seems there are a lot of little Indians around today. I bet there might be as many as, oh, say, ten? Ten little Indians? Is there an Agatha Christie in the house?"
BJ laughed and applauded, then swept the tent with a grand gesture. "Thank you, one and all. Fine performance!" Amid chuckles and pats on the back, he and Hawkeye rejoined the chow line.
"Nice. Very nice." Hawkeye nodded appreciatively at BJ.
"You're lucky a couple people backed out, you know."
"Why's that?"
"I was going to do 'Twelve Angry Men.'"
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"Okay, Father, right this way!" Hawkeye ushered Father Mulcahy into the Swamp.
"I'm happy to oblige, Hawkeye. This sounds like a most amusing diversion! What should I do now?"
"Just stand right there, that's perfect." Hawkeye positioned Mulcahy near the desk where Winchester sat writing a letter, pointedly ignoring all the shuffling about. Snickering in glee, Hawkeye looked across the tent at BJ, who was absorbed in a medical journal. "Oh, BJ ..." he sing-songed. "Are you ready for my devastating--"
Without looking up, BJ interrupted him. "Charlie. Chaplain."
Hawkeye gaped blankly for a moment. Then he made a fuming noise and walked out without a word, banging the door open so hard the tent frame shuddered.
BJ kept reading, but his lips quirked in a quiet smile.
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For the next two days their game was shelved as wounded soldiers flooded the MASH. Long hours in the O.R. patching young bodies finally gave way to quieter ones spent watching over them in the post-op ward. Every one of the kids that made it in would live this time -- the camp's collective victory over MacArthur and Mao and Truman and all the Frank Burnses of the world.
Hawkeye returned from his shift at 3 a.m. and dropped into the chair with a sigh. Blissful silence reigned. He groped for the beaker of gin; not finding it, he looked around the tent for it or the hot water bottle or some other stash of liquor. He was just starting to get seriously annoyed when the tent door creaked open and BJ sloshed in, waving an empty glass and with the hot water bottle hanging limply over his arm.
"Hawkeye! Hawkeye Hawkeye Hawkeye, you're home!" BJ weaved over to him like an ambulatory skyscraper -- a fascinating sight, but more than a little precarious. He walked into the stove and went down with a crash. As Hawkeye helped him up, he tried frantically to hush him, casting an eye towards Charles' sleeping form. He steered them outside.
"Hawkeye, I'm done!" BJ draped an arm over Hawkeye's shoulders and leaned in to talk with wide-eyed earnestness. "It took me five hours! Five hours!" he repeated, holding up four fingers.
"That's great, Beej," Hawkeye said, reaching for the bag of gin and BJ's forgotten martini glass. Every time he almost got his fingers on one or the other, though, BJ's triumphant gesturing took it out of reach.
"It's perfect! It's -- it's -- it sums up everything I want to say about Korea, in one mashterful ... excuse me ... masterful package of pure comedic and literary and comedic talent. A pun worthy of William Donne or John Shakespeare."
"That's great, now would you keep your voice down and let me get a drink?" Hawkeye finally got hold of the glass. BJ politely poured him a drink, some of which reached the glass. Then BJ was tugging him down the path to a scrubby patch near the chopper pad. It was close enough to the lights of the compound that Hawkeye could see the muddy, trampled area clearly. He walked forward, frowning in puzzlement. Behind him, BJ giggled.
A water hose was abandoned at the shore of a tiny new lake, perhaps six feet across. A shovel and some muddy work gloves lay near it. In the center of the puddle, a hillock of dirt rose above the water, and in the middle of that was a tall pole.
Hawkeye circled the lakeshore, humming quietly to himself. Some wooden structure was nailed to the pole, about seven feet up: a platform, with twigs forming a sort of loose basket above it. It clicked into place when Hawkeye saw the triangular flag hanging above it at the very top of the pole: it was a crow's nest or lookout platform. The two empty toilet paper rolls, taped together at the middle and hanging from a string, would represent binoculars.
"Mutiny on the Bounty?" he guessed.
BJ snickered happily and splashed through the puddle to stand next to the pole in the middle. "Nooope!" He looped his hands around the pole and swung from it, dragging it to about a seventy-degree angle in the soft earth. "Come on, come on, try again!"
"The Island of Doctor Moreau?"
"Wrong! One more!"
Hawkeye paced some more. Water, an island, a lookout stand ... He looked at BJ again. BJ had stopped his antics and was holding out a hand in invitation, though there was barely room for even one person to stand on the little island. BJ's eyes were intense and tender, suddenly not drunk at all.
It was his eyes that did it. Hawkeye took his friend's hand and swung across the little moat to stand next to him. His smile clearly said that he had the answer to this puzzle, but he said it aloud anyway.
"Isle of view, too, Beej."
--The End--