The Sidekick
Note and Disclaimer: I STILL don't own the characters and plots of M*A*S*H. This is the second short story in a new series titled "By the Graveside". Enjoy!
It has been a very rainy day when the man they called the sidekick entered the cemetery gates, indifferent to the horrible weather. It took him some time to navigate through the perilous pathways filled with the stench of the various stages of death, but he found the grave he had been searching for. The targeted corner stone in the military section was slick with rainwater, but nonetheless more poignant because of the bearer and the man he loved as a brother in war.
Luckily, nobody had stopped him and asked him why he was so intent on visiting an unwilling victim of the Korean Conflict, the commanding officer that used to be Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake. The sidekick was grateful for the time spent away and alone, without a soul to question him except those who whispered words that cannot be heard by the human ears, but in the heart. And he had a lot to say to this person who possibly listened from the great beyond anyway. Even as the partner-in-crime to all schemes big and small, he had a lot of confessing to do.
If Father Mulcahy were with him, he would tell the sidekick pretty phrases in this tell-all, most of it comforting ones from the Bible. The sidekick did not need the reminders about regret and grief, the most chief of all emotions. It had been those that held him since that death, he admitted quietly to Henry Blake. It wasn't only the good times in the future when they were home from Korea or the laughable moments they would drink to. Those would have been easily understandable.
No, no, not those. The sidekick had other reasons for these feelings.
It started with his arrival in Korea. He was the first surgeon Henry Blake got his hands on. Then, it was Frank Burns and Hawkeye Pierce, two opposite strangers that kept quiet until their true colors showed. They would have been almost akin to the three musketeers had not the Regular Army nut job opened his mouth and the nonmilitary womanizer took him by the hand and chased the nurses. Then, the bond between him and Hawkeye was completed. They were an inexorable pair that stopped it nothing to make hell more bearable.
That definitely was not what made this worse. No, it was the actions afterward that seemed out of the ordinary and surely longed to be rewritten. Sure, it made life better in that unbearable situation, several thousand miles from home. But there was much, much more the sidekick could have done if he was not reduced to the sidelines as the clown-in-waiting. Hawkeye Pierce was a swell guy and a great leader, but he liked the limelight too much and took it from the sidekick. There was no chance for the sidekick to make any moves, especially with the man who was now buried six feet deep.
There was a lot that the sidekick wished he could do, back in that hellhole with Henry Blake. Sure, it was great fun drinking and playing poker. But Henry had a side to him that not too many people saw because they were so concerned with forgetting the war. It was a kindred soul that the sidekick saw, yearning for peace and to have a good woman by his side, married and tied to their children as they were. They were unlike Hawkeye Pierce in every way, obligated to the ones they vowed to and helped to bring into the world, all those miles away.
Could there have been more bonding between them without that one man in the way? Could the sidekick have touched this man, made him aware that he too was suffering as a father and husband? Was there a way for them to connect as family men, wishing they were safely home with their wives and children?
There could have been, but it never would be. Maybe if Hawkeye Pierce had not been in the picture, the star of every show, then the sidekick would have had his opportunity to befriend this man better. Henry Blake was as lonely as the sidekick, worse in many ways. For now, as the sidekick stood there alive, this man now missed meeting his only son, born while he was in Korea and thriving as Henry became dust.
For Trapper John McIntyre, there could have been chances. Instead, his arms had been too short to reach, stilted because the man he decided to leave behind, almost like a bride left at the altar on a wedding day. He was swimming in this grief and regret, stabbing himself constantly for the rotten way he treated people. It wasn't Hawkeye that he was angry with (although his final act of defiance was perfect). He treated Henry with the same kind of disrespect, weeping only in death.
And that was when he lost all control. Trapper dropped to his knees in the mud and sobbed.