3) Peg Hunnicutt Can Handle It, as Thought by Her
The future Peg Hunnicutt prided herself on her ability to handle anything since a young age, often without having to say a word. She let her actions speak for her and let things roll off her like water off a duck's back. One of her proudest moments growing up was when a teenage friend convinced her parents to let her travel alone to visit Peg at school by stating, "If Peggy can't handle any thing that comes up, it means the world is coming to an end, and so we'll just have a good time anyway until it happens." Despite the flippancy in the tone, Peg recognized the awe in her friend's voice. In the end, her friend visited. The world did not end. They had a good time.
Laying eyes on handsome BJ Hunnicutt her third year of university, Peg knew she could handle that. Popular, fun-loving BJ had a wicked sense of humor and a propensity for jokes. She was one of the few who could best him in a duel of puns and could weasel out of practical joke trouble faster than he could. They challenged each other in classes and over dinners and on the dance floor. It wasn't long before she realized BJ was one of the few men who could handle her. They married shortly after graduation.
BJ's deployment to Korea was something she forced herself to handle. Being a single mother was the hardest job in the world, and she would handle it. Laying at night in their suddenly too big bed was hard to handle, but she could and would do it. Repairing gutters, balancing checkbooks and going back to work was easy; it kept her mind off of the lonely moments when Erin would be adorable and BJ wasn't there to meet her eyes. Moments like those reminded Peg of the moments right after an earthquake. You weren't sure the earth shook or the baby talked until you confirmed it with another person.
Peg knew BJ could handle her; she didn't know if he could handle the dangers of Korea and separation from his girls. That's when she found herself handling the written exploits of her husband's new best friend. From all accounts, Hawkeye Pierce was dashing, debonair and diabolical on occasion. He also was apparently devoted to her husband, for which Peg was eternally grateful. As long as she heard of all their different and often humorous adventures, Peg knew BJ was handling his situation. She and Erin were his life, the long-term goal. Hawkeye was his sanity, what kept him alive day-to-day.
When Peg lost the baby a few months after BJ's homecoming, she didn't know how to handle it. She didn't think BJ did, either, but he didn't leave her side, keeping all his grief and emotions bottled up for her sake. They muddled through the next few months together, until Peg realized she was handling it just by breathing. Each day, it became a little easier to breathe, a little easier to smile, but she didn't see that in BJ. Worried, especially as he lost weight and grew more and more haggard, she ventured into his study, shut the door and made her first of many years of calls to one Hawkeye Pierce, a man she had never spoken to before, only heard about. He was on her doorstep twenty hours later.
The tall, dark-haired flirtatious man swooped into her life, treating her not as a glass doll but as a human, a woman. He made her daughter giggle and eventually coaxed a smile on her grieving husband's face, reassuring her that he hadn't spent all that time in Korea keeping his best friend sane to lose him so shortly after returning to the States. He flirted outrageously with the neighbors, mucked up the plans for their new home in Stinson Beach and taught Erin several words of questionable content, like 'cretin' and 'horse hockey' but most notably 'Uncle Hawk is right, Dada,' which she repeated ad nauseam after Hawkeye spoke, annoying BJ to no end. And if BJ expressed annoyance, it meant he cared, and he was handling it, the loss of their child. Peg then and there named their new guest suite "Hawkeye's Room."
When Benjamin Hunnicutt was born a year and a half later, his proud godfather promptly flew across the country to hold him and giggle maniacally at all the trouble the two Benjamins were going to cause. Oh, did Hawkeye keep his promise. Little Ben was a hell raiser from a young age, so different from her angelic little girl, but loved no less. Little Ben helped keep an eye on his Dada, just as the bigger Ben did in Korea.
For years, Peg watched as Hawkeye traveled and flirted with girls and women on both coasts. The type of girls he liked didn't have enough flaws to put up with all of his idiosyncrasies in return. She was so surprised when, after a sudden phone call from Maine, BJ ran to their bedroom and started throwing clothes into suitcases. She followed him in to the room, aghast at the mess. "Hawkeye wants to propose!" He told her, all the while throwing both their clothes mishmash into the luggage. "I told him to wait until we meet her, so c'mon!" Not heeding the damage to her wardrobe, Peg promptly headed downstairs, made a phone call and threatened a certain gentleman long-distance with death and dismemberment by prank if he proposed without his other half's opinion. Besides, Hawkeye knew how much time it took for her to find a babysitter, so how could he be so inconsiderate? If he knew what was good for him, he needed to keep his mouth shut about marriage until they landed in Maine. Hawkeye agreed with alacrity.
BJ's parents thankfully came to stay over with Erin and Ben, BJ rearranged his shifts at the hospital and the two of them flew off. BJ had, over the years, kept Peg informed of all the times Hawkeye had fallen head over high heels in love and then fallen as quickly out when he realized that the current woman on his arm could not live up to his expectations. Peg had to hide shock and surprise that the woman of the phone call was the same woman on his arm weeks later when they landed on the East Coast.
Carmen Clayton was beautiful, yes, and oh so young. She could almost be Peg's daughter! But at the same time, she was fiercely intelligent, curious and when she thought no one was listening, could curse a mean streak of Spanish. Peg liked her immediately. BJ had told her of Carmen's sad family history, and Peg knew how Hawkeye needed someone who had no pretense of being perfect, someone who was as damaged as he was. Peg and BJ had built their relationship on similar thoughts and values, working through their problems quietly and side by side. However, that type of relationship would never work for Hawkeye, nor Carmen. They fought at full volume, both passionate and slightly crazed. Thankfully, both were also as stubborn as mules and not willing to give up on each other without a fight. Peg didn't think she could handle that type of relationship.
But Hawkeye could. If Hawkeye was happy, so was BJ, and therefore, so was she. So she had happily stood at Carmen's side after BJ walked her down the aisle to a brimming-with-happiness Hawkeye six months later.
It was the summer of 1962, ten years removed from Korea, when the phone call from Maine was surprisingly for her. Carmen Pierce had made friends in her adopted hometown, but she wanted Peg once again by her side as she gave birth. Honored, Peg was happy to handle that. The Hunnicutts flew to Maine for the birth of the Pierces' daughter, Karen, and Peg held Carmen's hand all the way through, just as she was sure BJ held up Hawkeye in the next room and kept him sober and semi-coherent throughout the night. Peg and BJ were the proud godparents, and Erin and Ben happily adored the baby girl, so opposite their sunny California coloring. Blessed with Carmen's exotic coloring and Hawkeye's blue eyes, Baby Karen was a beauty. Peace-loving Hawkeye soon joked about developing a shotgun collection to keep the boys away.
Peg and Carmen regularly and infrequently corresponded as only the mothers of young children could, and BJ and Hawkeye happily dragged their families across the country with regularity. It was a brief few years of happiness, despite the turbulent times. Ben, true to his namesake and more so than Erin, flirted with the counter-culture movement, but Peg and BJ both knew better than to expressively forbid any mention or behavior related to the summers of love, as to not make them even more tempting than they already sounded.
It surprised Peg how much BJ rebelled against the war in Vietnam, but very unsurprised her how hard he fought to keep Ben out of it. She also was not surprised when Hawkeye's anti-war effort antics landed both him and BJ in jail. Her husband's sheepish grin in the cell was enough to win her back. The times were changing. He stood by and sewed up young boys in one pointless war, and would refuse to sanction another. The Peg of twenty years ago would have blushed at picking up her half-naked, half-painted husband and his cohort in crime in jail. This Peg could handle it. The Hunnicutts could handle it, together. Ben had cleaned up enough to go to college and kept on deferment lists, despite his half-hearted pleas to serve. BJ rarely exposed the scars Korea left on him, and Peg worried her baby boy wouldn't be able to handle the same scars. Luckily she didn't need to worry.
Her god-daughter was the one to worry about. Karen Pierce, all of 16, shocked Peg when the news of her pregnancy echoed from the shouts from the walls of BJ's study. Peg, too, would be a grandmother, but Erin had recently wed, was almost thirty and a practicing medical specialist in Houston, not a scared teenage girl. All she could do to help Carmen was to listen, not saying a word as she sobbed into the phone. BJ and Peg offered to host Karen during her pregnancy, but Carmen had already lost her mother. She would not voluntarily lose her daughter. Once again, Peg and BJ flew to Maine for the birth. When little Danielle Elizabeth Pierce entered the world, Peg knew she and BJ, and Carmen and Hawkeye, could handle it. Carmen, who had returned to teaching once Karen started school, left her beloved second grade classroom once again to raise her granddaughter as her daughter finished up her high school and started college. This was a hurdle to overcome, nothing more.
It was the death of Karen Pierce, so young and vibrant, four years later, that made Peg question her own mortality for the first time. Carmen had lost her baby girl, Dani had lost her mother. How would anyone handle that? She dearly hoped she would be the first to die, as morbid as that sounded in her head. It seemed easier, that way. She pictured, when her end was near, BJ would be frantic, trying everything possible to save her, but she would be calm. She would call Erin and Ben over, kiss her babies goodbye for now and simply direct them to get their father to their Uncle Hawk as soon as possible. Peg had no doubts that BJ would find his way back to her eventually, he always did, but she wasn't sure where she would be going, and her babies, with babies of their own, still needed a parent. Erin's two little girls needed a grandfather, as well as any future family in Ben's future. She had no doubt Hawkeye would still be around. That one was a survivor, and he would make sure BJ survived, too. So many years ago, Hawkeye kept her husband safe, sound and secure in Korea for her. She knew he would do the same until the end of BJ's journey, when he would find her again. Korea had separated her and BJ briefly before. Death might separate them longer. They could handle it.