Title: With Love from Home
Rating: K+
Wordcount: 1800
Warnings/Spoilers: Basic MASH spoilers and speculation (teeny-tiny spoiler to Abyssinia Henry, s3e24). Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.
A/N: This contains two complimentary references to Pride & Prejudice and the Three Stooges. Also, Banter.
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 Winner
The tension in the Officer's Club was so thick you could have cut it with a piece of Mess Toast, surplus circa 1942. (It was a truth universally acknowledged that the toast was both stronger and sharper than the knives. Private Jones' finger had found that out, to the tune of three stitches.)
For two days, Radar had been selling raffle tickets to be the proud owner of one U.S. Army delivered Mystery Box from Home, entries a dollar a piece, all proceeds going to the Orphanage. Now, the half of the unit that wasn't on duty, and some who were, were pushing as one olive-drab collective, an over-excited mass of people wanting to hear the announcement of the lucky winner. Half of the excitement was simply seeing what was inside the box, much less winning.
Someone clever (Hawkeye denied it strenuously) had posted a memo with possible contents on the bulletin board, which included but was not limited to the banal and stretched all the way to the obscene.
"We should have gone for the cheap seats." Hawkeye jostled against BJ, trying to claim more than one-half of the bar stool he was sitting on.
"Speak for yourself—Klinger's in the cheap seats."
"Look lively, folks, Major Houlihan, as co-co-or-di-nat-or of this little soiree, is going to pull the winning name." Potter announced in his booming voice, holding the box in his hands and parting a way through the crowd. Major Houlihan followed after him, holding a bed-pain aloft.
The crowd fell silent in a single second. Someone giggled, then someone coughed, and a muffled yell was heard:
"Hey, hands off the Klinger collection, bub."
"The degeneracy of this unit never fails to surprise me." Frank pontificated sadly, speaking loudly to make himself heard. He had decided to attend after all, even if he hadn't bought a ticket, mainly because everyone else was.
"Why?" BJ wanted to know, stirring his drink with a pretzel. "After all, you're in this unit."
"I resent that remark."
"You resemble that remark, Frank." Margaret said, coolly. "Now if everyone'll shut up, we can draw a ticket."
Now, Margaret was not big on gambling (she said) and she didn't have Pierce's over-the-top style (she knew) but she knew how to throw a good punch, and like any woman in touch with her passions, knew how to knock them out.
She raised the bedpan above her head and gave it a little shake. The folded pieces of paper rustled, jostling against each other. Then she gave a smile to the whole Officer's Club, turning on her heel. It was a public beaming smile but there was a little hint of something, the way her lip softened at the edge, that said it was a very private smile, wouldn't you like to know. Then she turned and the whole crowd sighed as she offered the bedpan to Father Mulcahy, who had abandoned the piano bench for scrunching up on the last bar stool, between BJ and Kellye.
He reached in, plucked out a piece of paper and opened it, reading. Then he looked up, and every pair of eyes in the room didn't blink, watching him give a bemused smile.
"Well, I guess I won." He murmured, lifting the sheet up and showing it to the crowd. "The luck of the Irish, you know, always good for raffles." Fr. Mulcahy explained bemusedly, an embarrassed if good-natured smile lighting up his face.
The Officer's Club was dead-silent, as if no one could believe what had just happened.
"Well, cheers to the Father!" Hawkeye called out, raising his glass. "Two birds with one stone: funds for the orphanage and a Mystery Box for yourself." He leaned over, across BJ, and clapped him on the shoulder. "I never knew you had it in you."
A roar of applause and laughter shook the aluminum siding, and at least one mouse was dislodged from its nest.
"Well, Padre, this is yours." Potter announced, handing him the box, then turned to accept a glass of bourbon from Hawkeye. He settled against the bar and made a get-on-with-it gesture, as if he'd taken a front row seat at a birthday party. Behind him, Hawkeye and BJ's blue eyes were gleaming over the Colonel's head, and Radar edged around Potter's elbow, clutching a bottle of purple grape Nehi with both hands.
Father Mulcahy took the box from Potter with both hands. The string slipped over the edges easily, and the brown paper, so long abused, didn't even crumple when he unwrapped the end flaps and slid the box out.
He looked up into a sea of faces staring back at him, more faces than he had ever seen at a Mass or a non-denominational service, and understood, instinctively, that these people were yearning for something. They were hungry, hungry to taste the light and fluffy fresh-baked bread still warm from the oven, to smell the crisp scent of sheets, freshly washed and dried in the sun, to feel the soft brush of fresh-mown, wind-blown grass on bare feet, to have clean faces, clean hands, clean hearts—
Peace surpasseth all understanding.
The box was coarse under his fingers, limited, momentary; it was a crude comfort to be hungry for, but it was a part of home.
He shifted, pulling his Tom Mix pocketknife out of his left pocket. He flipped the blade out, and balanced the point on the taped seam of the box. He caught Radar watching him out of the corner of his eye. He'd let the straw for his Grape Nehi slip out of his mouth because he was so entranced.
It was just a box, and yet, as he slit the cellophane tape with a long shhh sound, and yet, in the motion of opening the box, Mulcahy had, unwittingly, held up a tarnished mirror to what it might be like to finally go home.
Home. He could see the glow of it softening each face, the light shining in each eye, as if the hope of home had kindled and settled, firmly, into the burnt out logs of each heart, in the chimney of each chest, and the rising flames had set up a rosy, warm radiance.
"Go on, Padre." Potter whispered, urgently, as if he, too, were caught up in the mysterious spell of the box just as everyone else was. "Open it."
"I feel rather like Pandora, opening her box." Mulcahy admitted, in a soft voice, and the layers of newspaper in the box crinkled as he laid his hand on them, as if in blessing.
"Who's Pandora?" Radar asked in a whisper, with an inquisitive tone in his voice.
"—Father, just be sure and leave hope inside—."
"We'll tell you later," BJ supplied kindly, looking down at the shorter corporal.
The whole crowd was holding its breath, and when he pulled back the thick wad of newspaper, he could feel the palpable disappointment as the front rows sighed. Lying there, tucked into place but horribly battered, were four Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup cans, a box of Ritz crackers and a package of Fig Newtons. It was a positive disappointment.
"Wait, what's happening?"
"It's just tinned soup, and a battered old package of crackers. Nothing exciting there."
It was, in fact, nothing particularly exciting. As the crowd melted away, Potter leaned over and picked up one of the cans, looking it over. The paper label was yellowed and had scrunched up from the bottom.
"Well, it's had a long pilgrimage." Potter exclaimed, running his finger over a large, oblong dent in the side of the can.
"Who knows how long it's been kicking around in Army mail bags?" BJ added, taking the Ritz box and shaking it. There was a sound like a waterfall, as if a ponderance of crumbs had just rattled their way from one end of the box to the other.
"Do they deliver WW2 surplus mail?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Pierce." Margaret said, having finally gotten her whiskey, neat.
"It's all yours, Father. Don't spend it in one place." BJ said, putting the Ritz crackers back in their place and leaning back on his barstool.
"Thanks." Mulcahy replied, feeling somewhat grumpy. It was his box, now, after all. Potter settled the can back into the box. He folded the flaps back in, with something of a proprietary feeling. He had just gathered it into his arms, when Radar went stiff.
"Choppers." He said quietly, and intently.
"Let's go, boys and girl." Potter said, settling his mostly full bourbon glass back on the bar with everyone else's. Hawkeye and BJ got off their stools, and there was a fatigue in their movements that had nothing to do with being tired.
"ATTENTION ALL PERSONNEL. INCOMING WOUNDED—THESE ARE NOT MYSTERY BOXES!"
In less than a minute, Father Mulcahy stood alone in the Officer's Club, holding the box, and feeling it turn colder and stiffer in his arms by the minute. In that moment, he felt perpetually lonely, as if he had been there before he had even existed and would be there long after he left, a person outside his place, with nowhere to lay down or sit or to rest that simply belonged to him. Where is the comfort of home, he thought, in all this?