Ignore the fact that 'H' comes before 'I' in the alphabet. Rules were made to be broken, right? In fact, you might as well forget I ever mentioned the alphabet, since I plan on screwing it up much more later on.
- In Love And War -
Chapter Thirty-Two: Hats Off
The camp was full of song—a few verses of "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead!" intermixed with a song Trapper, BJ, and I had made up, proudly titled "Ferret-Face Is Gone." Even Margaret, who still held that Frank hadn't been all bad, was persuaded to join in the singing, and the camp-wide celebration of Frank Burns' stateside reassignment went on long into the night.
The only hitch in the camp's collective giddyap was Frank's replacement, a certain Chaa'les Emerson Winch'ster, the third, as we endearingly (hatefully) called (mocked) him (in front of as well as behind his back). He was as high-and-mighty as they come, sitting up on a horse as tall as the White House, looking down a nose that would have put Pinocchio to shame, and with a pole shoved so far up his ass it was a wonder he could still walk. Luckily, Charles seemed to like us even less than we liked him (if that was even possible) and made a point of curling up on his bunk and not looking at or talking to anyone. Which was just fine by us.
He'd had a nice, cushy job up in Tokyo before he'd done something to piss a general off—something big enough to get himself shipped off to this hellhole. I'd made a bet with Trapper that Winchester would crack the first time we got more than a dozen wounded, and I didn't have to wait long to find out if my ten bucks had been wasted: jeeps, ambulances, and choppers coming in regularly, with a just-as-regular supply of wounded. But Winchester handled himself disgustingly well, calmly taking whatever was thrown at him—calmly, yes, but slowly. No matter how often Potter or I told him to speed things up, he just drawled, "I do one thing, I do it very well, and then I move on." His façade finally cracked a bit when I sent BJ to take over for Charles, to show him some shortcuts, and apparently reminding him of those panicked, unknowing days of residency. Any sympathy/empathy we might have had for him was wasted, though, since he saw it only as pity and "a Winchester is never pitied."
Winchester had claimed the Swamp as his sanctuary, playing records almost constantly—and the man had very little taste in music. To avoid the music and the man in general, Trap, BJ, and I were forced to seek shelter elsewhere, and so it was that we were the first to notice the supply truck roll into the compound, considering it nearly rolled over us.
We quickly abandoned our game of gin and scrambled out of the way, Trapper yanking a slower-moving BJ out of the direct path of very big tires. The truck screeched to a stop and I surged to my feet, pounding on the door and shouting at the driver—who slumped against me when I yanked the door open, bleeding from the chest. I swore and shouted for corpsmen to bring a litter and get the guy into pre-op.
"You need any help?" Trapper asked as I started towards OR.
"Nah, doesn't look too serious. Probably just got on the wrong side of a sniper. You and BJ check the supplies, make sure nothing got taken or shot or whatever, I'll take care of the driver."
It'd been a long time since I'd had a case as simple as extracting a bullet—no vital organs hit, no non-vital organs hit, and only a bit of digging and sewing required before I sent him off to post-op. I stripped off my whites and put on my greens, and walked out into the middle of a small uproar.
"Baker, what's going on?" I asked, grabbing the nurse's arm as she hurried by.
"You know that supply truck that came in?"
"More intimately than I'd like to. What about it?"
"We weren't supposed to be getting any supplies 'til next week, but quartermaster corps must've messed up or something—we've got twenty crates of hats."
"How many whats of what?"
"Twenty crates of hats," she repeated dryly. "Radar made a few calls, but according to the army, those twenty crates don't exist. We're stuck with 'em."
"You're kidding. You have to be kidding. Please tell me you're kidding."
She grinned, shrugged, and went on her way, and I went to confirm the idiocy.
The truck hadn't been moved from where it'd screeched to a halt over our card game, and I found Potter, BJ, Trapper, Margaret, and Radar gathered around the back of it, staring at it and looking a little lost. "Pierce!" the colonel called when he saw me. "How's the driver doing? Is he gonna live?"
"Yeah, he's fine, it was only—"
"That's good, because I want to be the one to kill him."
I looked into the back of the supply truck—the walls lined with stacks of crates. "This has to be a joke," I muttered.
"That's what we thought," Trapper said grimly. "No such luck."
"But…why do we—why does anyone need this many hats?"
"That's what I'm going to go ask the driver," Potter growled. "Radar, get on the horn again, and don't stop 'til you've got me a general!"
"How many hats are there?" I asked as Potter stalked and Radar scampered away.
"Well," BJ said with a grin, "the average count per crate is between fifty and two hundred—whoever sent these was kind enough to give us a variety of styles—which means we've got anywhere from a thousand to four thousand hats."
"That's…insane!"
"Welcome to the army," Trapper mumbled.
As far as the army was concerned, those twenty crates of hats now cluttering the compound were nonexistent. As far as the army was concerned, the driver I'd pulled a bullet out of hadn't been driving a truck, hadn't been shot, and hadn't been operated on. As far as the 4077th was concerned, the army could go screw itself.
We were stuck with all three thousand seven-hundred-and-fifty hats.
At first, BJ, Trapper, and I built a fort with the crates and taped a piece of paper to it that said 'No Girls Allowed' and another piece of paper below it that said 'No Winchesters Either'. But acting like cootie-fearing 10-year-olds stopped being so much fun after the first nine hours (plus, Margaret threatened to court-marshal us after Trapper threw a water-filled rubber glove at her), so we dismantled the fort and started prying open the boxes. Potter, at a complete loss for what to do with the sudden and extreme surplus, had given us permission to do whatever we wanted with the hats. I saw an idea light up BJ's face, and he started manhandling a crate over towards the basketball hoop; he refused to say what his idea was, but I could see in his eyes that it was big—which meant I had to think up something bigger.
"Hey—Trap," I said, grabbing a cap out of a crate and holding it up to the light. "Wouldn't you say that this particular shade of hat looks a little bit like grass?" He grinned and went for glue, needles, and thread, and I went off in search of knives and scissors.
(A/N: For fun and convenience, we now switch to Radar's POV for…a little bit.)
It looked like the captains'd gone nuts. I mean, not like Hawkeye'd gone nuts before, but they were just actin' kinda…you know, strange. Even more stranger than they usually acted, that is. BJ'd taken a box of hats just like the one I always wore (who'da thunk there were so many?) and he was over by the basketball hoop, stackin' the hats up and sewin' 'em all together. It looked like he was buildin' something, and when I asked him what it was, he just smiled and told me I'd have to wait an' see just like everyone else.
Hawkeye and Trapper were slicing up a buncha the hats and sewing the strips together and then—and boy, is this where it gets weird!—layin' all the sewed-together strips outside the Swamp. Least they weren't being all secretive like Cap'n Hunnicutt was—they said they were making a swamp for outside the Swamp, with plants and water and everything! Boy, it's no wonder Klinger can't get his Section Eight—he's only fourth-craziest!
Major Winchester just stayed in the Swamp listening to all this really weird music—he says it's 'classic' or somethin' like that, which I guess means it's really old and was made by dead guys. But I don't think he really liked me, since he told me to scram and not come back until I had his discharge papers. Hawkeye told me to just ignore him, since he was a…a 'pompous windbag' is what I think he said, and then the major called Hawkeye a cretton or somethin' like that and they just started yellin' back and forth at each other usin' all sortsa big words 'til Trapper told 'em both to just stuff it. Hawk asked me if I wanted to help, and then told me to start cuttin' up those big winter hats with the furry ear-flaps, 'cause they were gonna use the fur for moss and grass.
BJ came over to ask me if there was any wood layin' around not bein' used or anything, and Hawkeye tried to get him to tell what he was makin', but he just smiled and asked me again for the wood. I told him where he could get it and when he went away, Hawk told me he had a new job for me: to spy on Cap'n Hunnicutt and find out what he was making. I told him I didn't want to 'cause he was always using me as a spy and how come he couldn't just do the spying himself? He said that he was too big to fit behind trees and under rocks and stuff like that, and I was the only one who could do the job right, and he said I was a really good spy anyway.
Now, I like Cap'n BJ, so I didn't really wanna spy on him; but I like Hawkeye, too, and he lets me look at the nurses' chest x-rays if I do favors for him and stuff, and he always takes care of my pets…so I said I'd do it, and I went over to where BJ was back by the basketball hoop and asked if he'd found the wood fine and all, and he looked up at me with this really strange smile and said, "Hawkeye told you to spy on me, didn't he?"
I stared at him. "How did—?"
"You have this certain look about you when you're spying…it's almost like you're trying too hard to look innocent. So, what would you say to working for me instead?"
"Well, there's really not much to spy on with Hawkeye and Trapper…"
"I didn't say spying, did I?" he asked, smiling this kinda-scary smile. "I said working. Not any hard work, just something I think you're particularly suited to."
"Well, uh, Hawk already kinda hired me, you know…he said he'd borrow me one of his…you know, one of his, uh, nudey magazines, if I spied on you for him…"
"Tell you what, Radar. You do one or two teensy-weensy little things for me, and I will give you two of Hawkeye's magazines."
"But—but you—they're his—!"
"He won't ever notice," BJ said in the same kinda voice I used to calm Babsy down when she got too worked-up about something. "He's already got too many to keep count of, anyway."
I thought about it for a little while, and then I asked real sneaky-like, "So, uh…whaddya want me to do?"
Hawkeye
BJ, the rat, had turned Radar against us. Not only had he captured the spy, but he'd converted him. That betrayal was unforgivable. This merry little "police action" had been started for less.
It was war. All-out, full-blown, whole-hog, out-and-out, no-holds-barred, war.
Trap and I temporarily abandoned the Swamp swamp (which was turning out very nicely, by the way) in favor of plotting vengeance.
The enemy's stronghold (cleverly built out of the disassembled hat-crates and a few dozen nails) stood across the compound, with the Swamp and its neutral ruler Lord Winchester as a buffer zone. Trapper and I had commandeered the offer's latrine as our own headquarters and sent out a scouting party (a few randomly-chosen corporals); their report was grim: the enemy fortification was impenetrable to the eyesight of passers-by, too tightly built to glance casually into, and too high to peer over. We allowed the peasants to go get their rations, and attempted to create the mother of all schemes.
"He's clever," I mumbled. "Very clever, and he knows it. But that makes him smug. He'll think he's thought of everything, so we have to think of something he hasn't thought of. He has no idea just how inventive we are."
"So you got any ideas?"
"Not a one."
The door opened, and we turned to look at the intruder—none other than Winchester himself. "Traitor!" I shouted, pounding my fist down on the strategy table (the chess board set across the toilet bowl).
"What are you imbeciles doing in here?" he snapped.
Trapper draped his arms over the pieces of paper that held our plans (a few detailed sketches of certain parts of the female anatomy). "Wouldn't you like to know."
"What I would like is to use the latrine!"
"Oh, sure, that's what you say. But how do we know that fink didn't send you here to spy on us?"
"I will play no part in any of your ridiculous, childish games! Now get out!"
We made a mad dash for cover, crouching in Radar's zoo and casting around desperately for a more secure center of operations. Khaki-covered legs whisked by, and I reached out to grab one, nearly sending their owner tumbling face-forward into the ground, but managed to pull her instead into a graceful catch. "Margaret," I said as she gaped up at me with a mixture of shock, wonder, and fury, "we need your help." And after I'd persuaded her not to kill me or charge me with assault, and after I'd explained it all to her, she was surprisingly willing to help.
The plan was made.
Night—the perfect time for the doing of certain furtive acts that could be easily disguised under the cover of darkness. Trapper, Margaret, and I sat crouched between Margaret's tent and the VIP tent, looking out at BJ's fort and making the necessary preparations.
BJ had suggested a truce for the night, and Trapper and I had agreed with crossed fingers. It was almost endearing how he expected us to play fair. No one played fair in a war, and the winners were the best cheaters.
"Okay," I said in a loud enough whisper that they could both hear me, "Margaret, you know what you're doing, right?" She nodded firmly, a wonderfully mischievous smile playing across her lips. She'd turned out to be even more cunning than I'd ever given her credit for. "So while you're busy with Klinger, Trap and I will go around back—you got the stuff?" Trapper patted the med bag at his side. "This requires perfect synchronization. If one thing goes wrong, the plan's shot. We have to move fast, but not so fast that we're careless. We have—"
"We already went through this," Trapper interrupted testily. "We got it down, let's just get movin'!"
"Okay, okay, I just don't want anything to go wrong. Sheesh, kill a guy for being too careful. Okay, here comes Klinger. Margaret, you're on in…three…two…one…"
"BOO!"
The three of us jumped, and either Margaret or I screamed; Trapper careened into me and we both went tumbling into a heap on the ground, while Margaret's attempt to steady herself against the VIP tent resulted in a loud riiiiiiiiip and a just-as-loud crash as she fell through the hole in the tent. I shoved Trapper's armpit out of my face and looked up at the ghoul.
BJ stood there, arms crossed over chest, broad smile and lined face as he tried not to laugh. There was the click of pumps across the compound, and Klinger shouted from behind me, "Captains! Major? What's…goin' on?"
"Didn't I tell you Klinger?" BJ said with equal amounts of feigned innocence and exasperation, his eyes sparkling as he grinned down at me. "Didn't I tell you they wouldn't invite us to their little party?"
"You did, sir," Klinger said, and I could just hear him smiling.
I shoved Trapper off me and heaved myself to my feet, brushing dust off my clothes and titling my chin up, giving BJ my haughtiest glare. "You may have won the battle," I proclaimed, "but you haven't won the war." I spun on my heel and stomped away, leaving Margaret flailing in the wreck of the VIP tent and Trapper trying to drag together the shreds of his dignity. As I flopped down on my bunk, I heard Charles laugh softly; I would have thrown my pillow at him, but I wanted to save that for BJ.
I waited until the only sound in the Swamp was that of the soft, even breaths of three sleeping men. I climbed slowly, carefully, and quietly out of my bunk and tiptoed towards the door; I was almost there when a voice asked in a cheerful whisper from the other side of the tent, "Where you going, Ben?" I swore at him and went back to my bed.
I sat listlessly sewing together a hat-flower the next morning, glaring thoughtfully at BJ's fortress. "Give it up, Hawk," Trapper muttered.
"A Pierce never quits," I informed him. "Unless it leads to some personal gain, that is."
"Yeah? Well, giving up now could lead to you not looking like as much of an ass as you already do."
"Are you calling me an ass?"
"Sure sounds like it, don't it?"
"It takes two cheeks to make an ass, my friend, and as I recall, you were right there next to me the whole time."
"Okay, then we're both asses. But this ass knows when to quit. You won't be satisfied 'til someone's got your ass in a sling."
"What are we doing with Hawkeye's ass?" a voice asked from behind, and we both spun around to see BJ standing there with a very interested expression on his face.
I spluttered at him, "I thought—you—weren't you—there—now here—how?"
"I'm sneaky," he said with a shrug, and then smiled. "I thought you'd like to know that I finished it, and I'm ready to show it to the world."
"You—finished?"
"Sentences are your friends, Hawk. Try using them sometime."
"Jerk," I muttered, but I scrambled up to my feet and gave him an expectant look. "Let me see it."
He widened his eyes innocently. "I'd love to, Ben, but there are so many people around…"
Trapper was overtaken by a sudden fit of coughing, and I switched my eager face for an affronted one. "What happened to that nice, innocent, caring kid we raised?" I asked Trap.
"Don't look at me," he coughed. "It's your fault."
"You know what?" I said haughtily to BJ. "I don't want to see what you made, anyway. I don't care. So there."
He smiled knowingly. "Liar."
"Yeah, so? Stop being as much of an ass as I am and show me your stupid…whatever-it-is."
He hooked a finger at me in a very come-hither way, and I dragged Trapper up out of the Swamp swamp so we could both follow after BJ.
He was waiting at the wall of his impenetrable fort, grinning and bouncing like an impatient kid. "Ready?" he asked when we stopped in front of him, and we both nodded. Dramatically, he grabbed onto the crate-wall and gave it a studied tug, sending the whole structure toppling over and revealing the…thing…at its center.
Made entirely out of sewn-together and piled-up and sewn-again hats (with a little wood for support), it looked vaguely like a person, standing and with one arm stretched into the sky. I frowned at it, tilted my head, squinted, walked around it in a slow circle. It looked vaguely familiar… Looking back at BJ, I said slowly, "It looks like—"
He grinned broadly, proudly. "Yup."
I smirked. "Is it—?"
"Yup."
"And I assume you're calling it—?"
"Yup."
I sighed and shook my head at him.
Trapper, looking back and forth between us, said, "Wait, wait, wait, I'm lost. What's it look like and what's it called?"
"Look at it!" I shouted, waving my arms in the air. "Don't you see it?"
"It looks like a malformed, misshapen blob," Trap grumbled, tilting his head one way and then the other.
"How do you know it's misshapen if you don't know what it is?" BJ asked reasonably. "That could be exactly how it's supposed to look."
"Is that how it's s'posed to look?" Trapper demanded.
BJ grinned a little sheepishly. "Well, not exactly. But as close as I could get with such a limited budget."
"Can't you see it?" I demanded of Trapper, exasperated. "It's the epitome of bad puns!"
"It's not a bad pun!" BJ protested. "It's a brilliant pun!"
"Well, it is nice and all, Beej, but…I think I could make a better monument."
Trapper, still looking perplexed, asked, "Animal, vegetable, mineral, or other?"
"Other," BJ and I said at the same time, hardly sparing a glance for Trapper and instead staring each other down. BJ asked me rather condescendingly, "You really think so?"
"Bigger than a bread box?" Trap demanded
"Yes," Beej and I said again, and then I told BJ, "Yeah, I do."
"Monument—you said it was a monument. Is it a monument?"
"Yes." And BJ to me: "I'd like to see you try."
"Is it a monument from home—from the States?"
"Yes." Me to BJ: "Maybe I will."
"Would ya just tell me what it is?" Trap huffed, interrupting mine and BJ's conversation as well as the game of Twenty Questions.
"No, you've still got sixteen questions."
BJ grinned. "Sure, I'll tell you. I give you…" He spread his arms grandly, the grin increasing in length and width. "…the Hatue of Liberty."
I groaned and rolled my eyes, almost ashamed to be in the presence of such a terrible pun; but then Trapper started laughing, softly at first, but gradually increasing in volume and intensity until he was doubled over and wheezing; and I, who could never resist joining in with a good round of laughter, leaned against BJ's shoulder and guffawed along with Trapper, while BJ stood there grinning with pride.
I got enough breath back to gasp out, "My hat's off to you, Beej," which sent Trapper—and invariably, myself—into further gales of laughter, and we both succumbed to gravity and rolled around on the compound dirt for a bit, BJ eventually walking away and shaking his head, and Charles walking by with a muttered, "Imbeciles."