Chapter Text
PART ONE : “I KNOW A MAN’S SUPPOSED TO HAVE HIS HAIR CUT SHORT…”
OCTOBER 25th, 1958 — AN APARTMENT NEAR POLK GULCH, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
The key turned in the lock and the creaking wooden door gave way, shaking with the vigorous kick which Dr. BJ Hunnicutt knew was necessary to administer in order to open it. Shrugging off his trench coat, wet with the new spring rain, he toed off a pair of soaked Oxfords and hung up his hat on the rack. It was a veritable deluge outside. Sometimes he envied his colleagues, riding off to the suburbs dry and cozy in their Chevrolets. Living just a few blocks from his workplace had its perks, but they didn't include having to walk home in the rain.
He trudged into the living room in his socks, yawning off the long day. He must have left the desk lamp on when he left this morning — a dim orange glow bathed the whole room from the table at the window. He loosened his tie, threw it onto the eggplant purple Viko-Baumritter couch that Peg had steered him into buying, and considered the TV in its cabinet as he undid his belt. Then he glanced at the time on the wall clock: he'd be lucky if he caught the end of Black Saddle and he didn't want to watch the bowling. It was no use. He stepped out of his damp slacks, frumpy shirttails falling over his jockey shorts, and made his way towards the writing desk. His hospital cafeteria dinner — steak and potatoes, somewhat disgusting but still and as always infinitely superior to army food — still hung heavy on his stomach: he'd never get to sleep right away. Might as well finish Hawk's letter.
He sank down into the chair. The letter he'd received a few days ago was unfolded on the desk next to the picture frames, Hawkeye's all-capitals handwriting spelling out his address on the envelope.
Dear Beej,
Just a quick letter to let you know that I am fine and miss you something awful. It’s cold out here and surely the warmest place I can think to be is between the sheets of your bed. My tickets to SFO might as well be nudie postcards the way they make me feel whenever I catch sight of them. I’m counting down the days.
In recent news, I had a great evening with my Cary Grant & Scotty Rudolph Appreciation Society lasr week. We had a retreat in Cherry Grove and got utterly bombed on the deck. Additionally I have been invited to a Passover seder by the young student I was talking about over the phone. I figure it must have been mostly out of obligation due to me being one of the only Jews working at CPMC, lapsed as I am, but I'll take the offer as it will be a change of scenery from Sarah's place. Year after year the kibitzing is getting stale.
Did Margaret tell you that she is back from Sweden? She and Per are looking for a bigger place and she keeps talking about the Klingers’ work with the orphanage in Seoul which makes me think I should start preparing to be a godfather. Which suit should I wear to the christening? I’m thinking of growing payes just to give old Howitzer Al Houlihan a heart attack at the mere sight of me. If I wear the tallis I told you about I bet I could achieve a fifty percent fainting rate in the Houlihan clan. Ninety when they realize the baby’s Korean.
I slipped in this article that I think you will find very interesting. Apparently Minnesota's own H.H. Humphrey met Gurvich of Heart Fibrillation and Defibrillation fame during his tour of Moscow and has taken a sudden interest in reanimatology. Get this: he's commissioning a research program at the NIH so we can compete with the Russians on it. I will just let you know right now that I have put out some feelers for any interest in your work given you spearheaded the American use of this technology in a damn war zone. You should do the same. I know you don't plan on moving to Maryland any time soon but the anti-commie funding is so bountiful they might just throw the money at you from across the country.
Enough of that now. I have to turn in or I'll never get my beauty sleep. But I will leave you with the contents of this envelope — unless some mail censor has snatched them and already reported me to Columbia, the HUAC, and the Democratic Party on counts of having a good time. The heart of it is I finally learned how to fit the self-timer on the new Polaroid and took a few snapshots I think you'll like. Enjoy, you lech. Or is that me? Go figure.
Sweet kisses. I'll see you soon.
Love you,
Your Hawk.
BJ couldn't help but smile reading it over again. Overlooking the letter, next to Erin's latest school portrait, Hawkeye beamed at him from his picture frame, posing in front of the Golden Gate in a patterned shirt, his arm around BJ's shoulders. It was that toothy, cackling grin that crinkled all his features in joy, squinting eyes and deep dimples. BJ remembered chasing that smile like a high back in Korea, if only half-consciously. He’d have done just about anything for it at more than one point.
From under Hawkeye's stationery the dented corner of one of the three pictures he had sent teased BJ with the flash of an adorable, hairy nipple. He should have brought the rest of those back to the bedroom, but he'd been pacing himself. He wanted to savor them. He'd have to wait to be less tired and more focused until he could trust himself with putting a new one within reach of his habitual self-gratification spot.
He cast a glance outside the window to the darkened street. It was past eleven. The neighborhood was in the lull that came right before closing time. Save from the odd drunk and the immigrant workers sheltering under the awning of a closed liquor store to smoke, the only things stirring were the cars down Sacramento Street, their headlights rippling on the soaked pavement.
He picked up his fountain pen and pulled his unfinished response to the center of the desk.
Dearest Hawk,
Got your letter yesterday. First and foremost I too miss you like hell. I can't wait until you're here... The things I have planned I better leave unwritten.
First and foremost I have to get business out of the way. Erin has requested a little beret for her outings on the town (red). You know she's still wearing the cardigan everywhere, she thinks it makes her look like a right little lady with the new skirt Peg made her. I informed her of your fee for repeat orders but she just rolled her eyes. At eight she's already getting an attitude, I don't know who she gets it from. It's not me I was a model child.
Concerning Margaret this is all news to me, last I heard from those two was a postcard from Stockholm telling me all Swedish men look like me, only with better hairlines. I therefore support any mischief you might conspire to foment against her.
It is great that your James Dean fan club is so successful. I have got to tell you on this subject that I was having drinks at a “colleague”’s place a few weeks ago and the talk was marriage. Imagine! One of the boys there just had a “wedding” at his apartment, all shades pulled. They had bought two cake toppers so they could glue the two grooms together and then they spent two days vacuum-cleaning rice out of the carpet. It was all very gay I’m told.
Now, in relation to your lovely pictures I have been enjoying them thank you. I only wish I could reciprocate you know I look damn good in a dirty picture but I don’t have a self-timer for the Leica.
BJ wet his lips. He thought of the picture in the drawer of his nightstand: Hawk’s debauched smile, the strange lascivious angle; his hair as long now as it was back in its longest times of the war.
He shifted in his seat, poised to take a look at another one of the pictures for inspiration, when a knock sounded on the front door. BJ’s back stiffened.
At this hour of the night? It couldn’t have been a nuisance complaint, unless the aroused pounding of his heart counted. Could it have been the cops, even with such a quiet knock? Was he being arrested? Had a friend squealed about the meetings?
A rush of panic and total paranoia filled him where love and lust had been just a second ago. With a sweep of his arm he gathered the photos and papers on the desk, and without thinking he marched them down to the kitchen and stuffed them into the refrigerator. It was an incredibly stupid hiding place. It was better than nothing.
He only registered that he was about to open the door in his underwear and sock garters halfway through carefully turning the knob, leaving the chain on. Too late to make himself presentable now.
To his surprise and relief, the people on the other side of the door weren’t police — unless the police had started recruiting teenagers. BJ stalled, stunned and relieved, forgetting all about his bare legs.
The two boys were standing on his landing, one leaning on the other and looking a bad way. They were both bleeding from their faces, scratches and contusions on their arms and hands. The colorful knit polo-shirts they were wearing were stained; their suede loafers were scuffed and dirty. They were also drenched to the bone, and BJ recognized the one who was standing upright. He looked afraid. BJ knew that look, intimately. For a second he could hear the screams of triage, dirt under his fingernails, gruesome stomach wounds, wounded teenagers crying for their mothers—
“Doc, I’m sorry, I know it’s late but we got jumped and—“
“You’re Joe’s friend.” BJ squinted. “From the meeting. Eddie?”
The kid nodded. His buddy was obviously stunned, but his eyes were moving, and he was gripping rather tightly onto the shoulder he was leaning on, which that was a good sign. Neither could have been more than nineteen : their cheeks were still fat, their waxed hair thick and dark, but their plump lips were defiled with cuts and bruises. The old anger came back to BJ. Who would do this to a baby?
“Yeah. Yeah, I uh, well you said if anything happened—“ Eddie babbled.
BJ unlatched the chain and opened wide, instincts taking over.
“Come on in. Here, let’s go, quickly.” He sidled up to Eddie’s friend, sliding his arm underneath his free shoulder and helping haul him inside. As they marched him to the couch he turned to Eddie. “You’re wearing makeup.”
Black mascara, pink eyeshadow; no lipstick. It was all running and smudged by the rain and sweat and tears, but the kid was wearing it all alright. Eddie averted his eyes.
“You know, you’re real observant, doc. Where’d you go to school?”
“Very funny. Sit him down there. Is that advisable?”
The dizzy kid sunk down onto the couch and BJ went to get the first aid kit.
“What, going to school?” Eddie called after him.
BJ pulled the bag from the hallway cupboard, coming marching back into the living room, single-minded except for this mix of irritation and concern he only ever regularly felt for Hawkeye.
“Don’t get smart. The makeup.”
Eddie hadn't sat down. His fucked-up hands were trembling a little. He watched BJ crouch over to examine his friend.
“Well, I don’t know.” He paused. “So maybe it’s got something to do with the mean black eye I just got.”
“You think?” BJ asked, not just a little peeved. What had the kid thought would happen? Walking down the street like that — BJ thought it was practically inciting violence.
“Look, I’d rather not talk about that right now.” Eddie said.
BJ shrugged. He wasn't there to give life lessons, after all, but that didn't stop the anger and frustration from swirling in his belly in that dangerous way it still did sometimes. He didn't like that feeling. It reminded him of Korea, where it had made up one part of the three emotions he was able to feel — the others being depressed fear (prominent) and manic-hysteric delight (rare, sought after.) ‘Only happiness is shared, and anger, and the idea of love,’ the little Hawkeye in his head recited.
“What happened?” He enquired instead of insisting.
“We were coming out of the Black Cat—”
“No wonder that place gets raided all the time, letting in kids like you boys. What’s your name, buddy?”
“Randy,” he croaked. There was blood in his mouth. He seemed to have at least one broken tooth - down to the pulp. This should have been hospital matters, and it would be, but BJ understood why they'd come here first.
“Right, Randy. I’m BJ. I’m a general surgeon at St Francis just around the corner. We’ll clean you both up so that you’re nice and safe and then I’m bringing you there, alright?”
“Alright.”
“Thanks, doc.” Eddie murmured.
BJ started palpating the kid’s head and chest for broken bones. The supraorbital ridge seemed busted. His nose wasn't broken, but it was quite swollen. His eyes looked fine — he was lucky.
“So you come out of the Black Cat,” BJ said as he felt Randy’s wrist. “What next?”
“Well we were gonna walk home but I think we were on Broadway when this group of guys… Well, you know. They saw us and they were shouting at us. And I don’t run so good. So they got us.”
“They beat you up.”
Eddie nodded. “Got my money clip, too. They left us alone after that.”
“That’s good. Just tell the hospital you got mugged for your money. Stick to that story if anyone asks— Buddy, those fingers look broken. They step on them?”
Randy gave him a confused, unfocused look. Not a good sign.
“I guess.”
BJ felt his skull again. There was no blood in his hair, just rainwater and Brylcreem, and his pupil was reacting well to the light, but he could still have been mildly concussed.
“What day is it, Randy?”
“Uh, Friday? October 25th. 1958.”
“Who’s president of the United States?”
“Eisenhower?”
“Unfortunately.”
BJ let go of the kid's head, and put down the light.
"Now, I think you've got a couple broken ribs. I'm gonna need to get a closer look at your chest. Lift your shirt, please."
Behind them Eddie was standing still, staring, as if mesmerized. BJ could see him in the corner of his eye. Randy did as he was asked and BJ started feeling him again.
"So you got bashed, and you remembered my address and limped 20 blocks here?" he prompted Eddie while checking for bruising.
"Actually, when you gave it out at the meeting I noted it down," Eddie said, reaching into his pocket and producing a folded piece of paper. "I'm not too hot on memorizing things."
BJ felt his stomach drop again. This night was going to ruin his blood pressure. He bolted up and snatched the note from Eddie's hand. The teenager recoiled.
"Are you out of your mind?" BJ hissed, all-too aware of how scared he sounded. "If you get arrested and they find my address on you I'm in deep shit. Just because I help Hal and Joe doesn't mean I want to get involved. God damn it, I have a daughter!"
He unfolded the paper. Sure enough, in clumsy cursive, his address — hell, his name! He'd known this was a bad idea. Who knew how many other guys at that meeting had done the same as Eddie? He felt stupid. Giving out his address had been such a Hawkeye thing to do. Then again, these kids had come to him, hadn't they? And they'd needed his help. He could feel that familiar mix of fear and guilt and relief swimming around in his insides. He still wished he could have remained idealistic sometimes. He thought it would have made doing the right thing much less complicated. It would have made him more like Hawkeye.
Eddie was still as a statue, petrified. BJ hated when he made people look that way. Like they were scared of him. Like they thought he was going to hit. It made him sick to know that they could sense that he had it in him to hurt another person. He sighed, closed his eyes. Reset himself.
"It's fine," he said, quieter, against the darkness of his eyelids. "Just... don't carry it with you. Try to remember the way you came tonight for next time. Though I hope for own sake there isn't a next time."
"I'm really sorry, Doc. I didn't think..."
"It's fine,” he lied, again. “What matters is you came to me. You made the right decision."
He turned away, mostly not to have to see that face again, and crouched back down to finish examining Randy.
"Tell me if this hurts," he said, as he started pressing all along the abdominal cavity. "They kick you in the stomach?"
"Yeah, a couple times. Doesn't hurt anymore, though. Just my hand... and my face... And it's hard to breathe."
BJ stood up. The more he examined this kid the more he thought the only way to know for sure he was out of the woods was an X-Ray.
“Uh-huh. Eddie, go clean your face. The bathroom is the first on the right. I’ll go get dressed. Randy, just stay here. Don’t fall asleep. Here—“ He walked over to the radio and turned it on. “Concentrate on that."
The Everly Brothers were singing I Kissed You on the late night program ; BJ felt exposed now that he he'd reminded himself that he was half-naked in front of these kids, so he hurried to the bedroom. He took a pair of self-belted flannel slacks from the wardrobe and pulled them on, tucking his shirt in in the half-darkness. When he stumbled out it was to find a slightly fresher-faced Eddie staring at the pictures on the wall of the hallway — an innocent, inconspicuous combination of photographs of Peg and Erin, of his teenage motorcycle club, and a few Korean mementos. Good for visitors who might start wondering why a successful, married surgeon would spend most of his time living alone in a city apartment.
"That your girl, Doc?" He asked, pointing his thumb at a picture of BJ and Hawkeye at the 4077th. They were more disheveled than ever, posing half-heartedly in front of the post-op tent — 72 hours in the O.R. They must have still been high on adrenaline or pep pills, because they'd apparently let Klinger take the picture instead of telling him to go to hell before dragging themselves into bed.
"My guy." BJ corrected, not sure why the misapplied word made him feel so strongly. "His name's Hawkeye."
"Hawkeye! Is he an Indian?" Eddie squinted at the picture as if to detect potential traces of ancestry.
"No. Jewish.” Pause. “It’s hard to see here but he’s one of the funniest, most charming people you’ll ever meet.”
The little black-and-white version of himself in the picture stared at him with vacant eyes, arms hanging by his side, standing upright next to his tentmate — Hawkeye ever-stooped, ever-tired. Their bloodied surgical gowns were touching at the elbow; that was the extent of the contact between the two of them. And yet — Eddie knew. The knowledge both warmed and terrified him: Eddie knew. He'd recognized something in the both of them. BJ hoped to god it was only because the teenager had firsthand knowledge of what a man loving another man looked like.
“He looks cute. Which war is that?"
BJ scoffed. "Thanks. I always like being reminded of how old I look. I was in med school during WW2. This," he pointed at the picture, "Was Korea. That's where we met."
"Is he a doctor too, then?"
"A damn good one. He was chief surgeon at the field hospital we were assigned to. We were on TV, you know? Clete Roberts came and did a little special on our unit."
"On TV?" Eddie's eyes widened. "Gosh, I didn't know you were famous. You do any hero stuff in the army?"
BJ looked at the picture again, and then the one next to it — the one they'd all taken in front of that Fort Dix sign. He hated answering that question.
“Depends on who you ask,” he said. “Come on, let’s get you both to A&E. There’s a nice nurse on duty tonight.”
Eddie took one last look at the picture, and followed him back to the main room. When they got there Randy was no longer on the couch. BJ peeked into the kitchen and sure enough, there he was by the open fridge. Holding—
"I was just looking for a glass of milk, and I, uh—" the kid stumbled, looking equal times surprised and flustered on top of being visibly unsteady on his feet and covered in crusted blood.
In his hands, plucked straight from the world's worst hiding place, Hawkeye's polaroids. Hawkeye's dirty polaroids. Both of them miles racier than any physique magazine could ever be. BJ lurched forwards hands first as if possessed and gathered the pictures and loose sheets out of Randy's hands in one awkward movement.
"I'll take that, thank you," he said, with as much dignity as he could muster.
Ignoring Eddie on the threshold he made a beeline back to the bedroom, not without one of the pictures escaping his haphazard grip. By the time he'd dumped everything on the bed and returned it was too late: Eddie was already gawking at it.
"Damn, Doc. You lucky devil,” he gaped.
BJ didn't believe in a god anymore — he'd stopped some time two or three months after arriving in Uijeongbu, probably after losing four 18 year old boys before they'd even made it to pre-op when an incendiary bomb had burned off their faces and hands on the way to the 4077th. But tonight he looked up at the ceiling, and through his teeth he begged God for mercy.
SOME TIME DURING THE EARLY YEARS OF THE KOREAN WAR — KIMPO AIRBASE, GYEONGGI PROVINCE, KOREA
It was ironic, BJ Hunnicutt thought as he stepped off the US Army plane and onto the ravaged, pilfered, mangled and disputed ground of Korea, very ironic that his last night out in the world would happen to have taken place at the Top of the Mark.
Peg had been wearing her new green cocktail dress, the one her sister had made for her, adjusted for the occasion to her new mother's shape. BJ had stopped to notice how gorgeous she looked as he helped her out of the car, good enough to eat whole, with her blonde hair in curls and that sparkle in her eye: excitement, fondness, untamable fear. In the dim light, above the San Francisco skyline, they talked softly over the clinking of glasses and the chatter of patrons. By the bar a group of Navy draftees and their girls loudly drowned the coming of their orders in endless multicolored martinis — farewell drinks with a view on the close future. What a misnomer was the Pacific, BJ remembered thinking when he noticed Peg stealing nervous glances. Peaceful waters, beckoning again towards the horrors of war.
And there they both were, talking of neighbors and hospital colleagues; BJ with his Brilliantined hair and new sports coat, Peg with the pressed manners of an expectant widow. Down in BJ's glass, his olives stared back like tiny hand grenades and he recalled the squealing fear of thirty inept, out-of-shape doctors crawling in the dirt of Fort Sam Houston. Could still hear the ringing in his ears every night after training in the dry heat of Texas, gunfire lacerating his eardrums.
BJ Hunnicutt had always been a man who believed in playing by the rules. Everything in his life had confirmed to him that living a good and decent existence wasn't just a good for the spirit and the right thing to do, but that besides honesty and good-will begot likewise. It wasn't a matter of religious morality, or reactionary rigor: it was a matter of social responsibility, of playing one's part, so that, although bad things did happen to good people, the safeguards of humanity's natural solidarity could soften the blow, and justice would prevail. Yes, deep-down BJ had faith in the human race. Despite all its flaws he believed it worth saving, worth believing in, worth caring for. From there had come, four generations across, his calling as a doctor.
And so of course, of course he'd hoped that the draft notice and basic training would be the end of it, that he'd escape unscathed, even as he watched these young men bid adieu to their lives in this weeper's cocktail bar. What else could he do? This was who he was. There were Peg's soft lips on the bridge of his nose as he leaned down to let her kiss him, her small hands on his arm as he walked them back up the driveway, giggling half-drunk still. And there were the lights over the darkened hills as they drove over the bridge, oh was he in love with this girl, was he in love with this city. He wished he'd known this would be goodbye then.
Against his breast that night her shallow breathing felt like death, her tears rolling on his chest as he lay there in their bed knowing this was the saddest love he’d ever made.
He tried to kiss it better; found himself wanting. The day he left for Travis he broke down in her arms, sobbing into her waist, kneeling at his porch like a pew. Into her blue blouse he begged silently, please let me stay right here, please let me back alive — wishing the truth away.
The kisses she gave, mouth and eyes and ears and cheeks, left a stain on his skin. For hours he could still smell her on his collar, could still taste her on his tongue; recalled the weight of Erin, her eyes blue as the sky, as they soared across the murderous reaches of the western ocean.
And now there he was, Kimpo airbase, via Hawaii, via Tokyo, haggard layovers stumbling against unknown smells, sweating his fear in starched Class A's. He felt like a sideshow clown in the wrong costume, entirely misplaced, sleeping the sleep of terror in gradually shrinking aircrafts. When he emerged in the light the loudness hit him first; he hadn't finished gathering up his wits when a teenage corporal started leading him away. He was a doctor. He was a draftee. He was in Korea.
And here was Hawkeye Pierce.
There was an image of a war surgeon in his head, a projection of a future ghost which haunted him for five weeks of basic training and change, visited him as he dozed in the hospital by Peggy's side; for a second he could have sworn it had come to life.
Pierce stood a hunched figure, stooped and forward-headed as if the top of him were trying to escape his fatigues through the sewers. He was a striking sight, tall and unshaven, a little too skinny; BJ imagined he must have been fairly handsome back home, or more accurately that he still was, underneath what seemed like seven layers of dirt and exhaustion and visible upset. There was an ambiguously foreign yet familiar charm about him, Irish perhaps, Italian maybe: a convex, squarish kind of face rounded out by sanded-down cheekbones; a scar on his lip, a long pointed nose. Above deep-dug dark circles sat two large, wide-set blue eyes, almost constantly squinting with mischief.
But, to BJ, what immediately set him apart from the rest of the utter chaos knitting the chains of the war all around them was his head of thick, dark straight hair, about three inches past any acceptable length. It was left unstyled to fall over his ears and forehead in a fashion that could only be likened to that of the most awkward bobs of the bobby soxer hordes; or, in a pinch, to a toddler in gingham and barrettes.
It was a peculiar thing to see on an adult man, and right away BJ knew, before they even said a word to each other, that Pierce was the most interesting thing in this place by far. He felt inexplicably drawn to the man, as if they both were the unwitting holders of two poles of a gigantic, invisible magnet.
The feeling was hardly anything new. Back when he was a child in the hills of the North Bay BJ was known for being an insatiable tag-along, the eager sidekick of many a neighborhood boy, barefoot Okie, football teammate. At Tau Phi Epsilon he was the ultimate partner in crime, the associate of dozens of pranks which, without his blessed height and sweet looks, might have been unattainable. He did it all without complaint, just for the warmth of a friend's smile, for a peal of hysterical laughter, for the thrill of being wanted, needed. For the undivided attention of a fascinating being. And Pierce was it — fascinating.
"Rudyard Kipling." The words had escaped from BJ’s mouth like a cue from a play he didn't know he'd rehearsed, the way his wit sometimes came to him.
Pierce had done a double take, and that was all he needed to do. Despite the confusion, despite the exhaustion, despite the fear, BJ could feel a spark prickling through, intrigued by this new character who had just waltzed onto the stage of his brand-new Korean life with vaudevillian confidence. He had no idea what was happening around him — each second brought new helpings of terror and consternation — but as Pierce listened closely to his story, as he lied barefaced to colonels, as he navigated the crumbling picture of hell BJ had been dropped into like he had a map of it, he felt oddly comforted. Sure, Hawkeye was obviously insane; he'd ascertained as much while they sat — or rather tried to sit — in that dingy speakeasy shack at the edge of camp, him still shell-shocked with the gruesomeness of real war, Corporal O'Reilly consistent in his agitation, and Pierce magnificent in his desperate flippancy. He was insane, insane in a way that scared BJ, but he matched the drapes.
Each new day at the 4077th he collected new horrors like baseball cards, mangled guts and gushing necks, crushed legs, bone fragments, bashed-in skulls. Yet on the reverse of each of these pictures of nightmare, lined up like so many hits and RBIs, each new evening brought new revelations on the subject of one chief surgeon.
Hawkeye Pierce was a character, the way people were in books and movies and plays, teeming with sarcasm, quick to the trigger of a seemingly bottomless repartee. All day long from reveille to O.R. to mess tent to showers, his mouth strung joke after joke like machine gun fire. It seemed a wonder to BJ that he had time to think at all, and more than once he’d caught himself gawking at his new bunkmate with nothing short of amazement as he spouted out egregious insubordination and elaborate insults to anyone who would or wouldn't hear it.
But Hawkeye Pierce was also a skilled doctor, a compassionate, humanistic physician with a beautiful mattress stitch. And Hawkeye Pierce was also a flirt, and a sleaze, and Hawkeye Pierce really loved sex, not like every other man on earth loved sex, but in a way that made BJ think there was something spiritual about it, the way he described it. Hawkeye Pierce claimed to be from Maine, but spoke in what BJ thought to be a New York accent; Hawkeye Pierce loved Gershwin hits and Groucho Marx. Hawkeye Pierce clung to his quirks like so many life preservers.
Hawkeye Pierce was intoxicatingly masculine and unacceptably feminine, outrageous yet principled, sincere to a fault yet ready to lie. Hawkeye Pierce was kind and gentle, and wicked and passionate, intense to degrees BJ could barely fathom. Hawkeye Pierce couldn't stand injustice. Hawkeye Pierce wouldn't be reasonable. Sometimes he got so obsessed with doing the right thing that he terrified BJ to the point of nausea.
Everything about Hawkeye awoke something in BJ, something long-lost and boyish and unbearably true, a feral instinct of joy and childhood. There was just something to him, a vulnerability, a weakness which, despite himself, BJ was familiar with. He was so self-confident and so full of ego yet so disarmingly devoid of that stone-walled virile pride that BJ had long admired in the male companions he followed, a butch nature he envied but could never manage to emulate, only project, faintly, letting the wider world fill in the blanks.
Because BJ had been caught playing with dolls as a kid and knew how to hide when he started to cry; because he liked a manicure and the scent of cold cream and soft fabrics in pastel hues; because he'd taught himself to move differently after a teammate had pointed out he walked like a girl. Because one day in college Peg had put Red Velvet on his lips and Opalescent on his lids and painted his dark blonde eyelashes with a mascara brush; and they'd giggled together, him hiding how much he liked the treatment, the pampering, the grace his long fingers took when polished at their tips.
For all his masculine obsessions, BJ Hunnicutt knew one thing: once varsity sports fell by wayside, all a man with sensitive accesses the likes of his could scavenge from the aspirations of red-blooded American manhood was the smiling face of a Levittown billboard model. This was an embarrassment he liked to keep secret; this was a mask he liked the looks of; this was a door that Hawkeye Pierce was pounding at.
And so now, stuck in Korea, far away from Peg and Erin and their home, away from everything that made him who he was, all he could do was sit back and watch helplessly as Hawkeye Pierce tore down the walls he'd built around some kind of face he'd known not to bare, or perhaps had forgotten how to, until a 29 year old surgeon from Maine had flown by on a collision course to pull him irresistibly into his wild, epicene orbit.
A MONTH AFTER CAPTAIN BJ HUNNICUTT'S ARRIVAL — 4077TH MASH, OUTSKIRTS OF UIJEONGBU, KOREA
Hawkeye's hair had gotten longer.
It nipped at his jaw from the back of his head, reaching towards his shoulderblades. It escaped his winter hats and slipped out over his collars and scarves. It licked over his forehead down to his eyebrows, curled up in flips at the nape of his neck. He looked nearly Napoleonic, like an illustration in a Jane Austen novel, only that without the fanfare of costumes, narrow-shouldered in an army t-shirt, he was more hillbilly tomboy or fashionably modern nurse than Georgian beau.
BJ finished tying the top end of Hawkeye's mask up neatly against his surgical cap. Soon, he thought, he'd need a nurse's hat for all that overflow. The dark strands of his hair curled up softly under the bottom knot as BJ made sure it was tight enough.
"Thanks, Beej." Hawkeye said, turning around to head into the O.R.
"No problem, Doctor."
It was about three in the morning. An ammo stash had exploded near Hill 503, peppering three foxholes with a rain of shrapnel. The kid BJ was working on, his second, had had his leg blasted through like gruyere — fortunately, the damage had avoided the femoral, but he'd been speared right through by several fragments and he had a few other arterial lacerations. Hawkeye, for himself, had taken responsibility for tonight's triage winner, an unlucky sergeant whose upper right chest cavity had been quite literally smashed in by a chunk of debris. He'd been at it for two hours.
"This kid looks like a door with a mezuzah after an encounter with the Gestapo," he groaned from behind BJ. "Not to mention he's riddled with splinters. Suction."
"Suction." BJ heard Major Houlihan repeat.
"Yeah, this leg has more needles than a pine forest," BJ confirmed as he removed one more inch-long remain of the wooden ammo crates from the open wound. He wasn't too sure what a mezuzah was but he'd resolved that sometimes Hawkeye made references that went over his head, despite the fact that their brains were apparently on the exact same wavelength. "On a kid barely old enough to grow one of his own.”
"His lung was trying to herniate through the intercostal tear. Pickups."
"Pickups."
BJ checked the veins for damage one last time, looked out for a bleeder and any remaining splinter pieces that hadn’t been washed out, and prepared for closing up the perforation.
"Can you imagine?" Hawkeye continued. "Get in line, Herr Lung, everybody's trying to get out of here. Let's hope they don’t turn us away at Ellis Island."
"Can it, Pierce! Some people are trying to work here!" Frank barked from two tables over.
"3-0 silk." Nurse Able handed BJ the suture. He threaded the curved needle through the edges of the wound. The scar would be ugly, no matter what. He still couldn’t get used to having to do shoddy work: back in residency he’d made a name for himself for his aesthetic results. At least this was the last knitting job for this boy.
"What's going on, Frank?” Hawkeye retaliated. “Hemorrhoids in your tonsils again?"
"I heard removal reduces sniveling in men above forty," BJ commented. Against his back, Hawkeye nudged him playfully, a sign of approval that BJ relished in. "This one's all closed up. Send in the next course!"
"Colonel! Aren't you going to order them to stop?"
BJ spun around as Nurse Able provided him with fresh gloves and watched Potter dig out a piece of shrapnel from his patient's abdomen, not dignifying Frank with a look.
"I would, Major, but we've got more wounded in pre-op and I can't afford both of them taking a break right now. Hemostat."
"Hemostat."
The corpsmen brought in BJ's new patient. Multiple shrapnel impacts, possible permanent damage to function of hand and forearm. The kid was out of his mind on morphine already; Nurse Kellye had no trouble slipping the mask on him.
"Yeah, Frank, wouldn't want you to have too much on your hands." Hawkeye said. "Who knows, if you get overwhelmed you might slip up and accidentally save a patient's life."
BJ stopped to chortle, counted down the anesthesia, and proceeded to dive into the hashed-up flesh of yet another boy's massacred forearm.
They were in the O.R. for a couple more hours, a short shift by any and all measures. They trudged back to the Swamp and grabbed as much sleep as they could before the sun got too bright and the sounds of the camp too insistent. BJ could hear the vague fumbling of Hawkeye heading off to the showers, but even though he wasn't exactly asleep, he wasn't exactly awake either, and so he burrowed his face further into his lumpy pillow, floating off again in an exhausted daze.
"Captain Hunnicutt sir," Radar's voice enquired over the white noise of half-sleep. "I'm real sorry to wake you sir, but you're on duty, sir. Major Burns sent me, you gotta come relieve him."
"Can't he go to the latrine by himself? He's a big boy, he doesn't need my help," BJ mumbled. He wished Hawkeye had been there to hear that one.
“Aw, come on, please sir, he’ll yell at me!”
“That man needs a lesson in not shooting the messenger." BJ laboriously extracted himself from bed, groping blindly for his clothes behind ten-ton eyelids. "With our luck and his aim he'll shoot himself instead."
He dragged himself into post-op and was received with a half-coherent chewing out by Frank which reminded BJ of the worst of his high school teachers. He just about expected to be told he would never amount to anything if he kept hanging around with that motorcycle riffraff, but mercifully Frank absconded, no doubt on his way for a groping session with Major Houlihan if BJ was to believe the experience of his first month at the 4077th.
He yawned, picking up the cup of bitter coffee he'd grabbed from the mess tent on the way there, and shuffled into the aisle to check the charts. Nurse Gage was emptying bedpans — he wasn't going to ask her for a rundown just now.
His private with the porcupine leg's name was Kovich. He'd had a good few hours. BJ was still concerned about a possible infection, though — all these dirty wood splinters. The counts were up and the temperature was slightly heightened, so his worries seemed founded; they’d have to keep an eye on him. Further down, the first kid he'd operated on, an ugly head wound, was stable, but hadn't woken yet. BJ had always hated head wounds, and this one had been bleeding so much; there had been a lot of pressure building, and he was pretty sure there would be lasting damage. But he guessed that was the 121st's business. The kid would be heading out in not too long. In the bed next to him, the soldier with the butchered forearm, Fitchett, was hooked up on a bottle of premium B-. Potter had mentioned sending out for more as they all slunk out of their sullied gowns a few hours earlier.
In the bed nearest the corner desk, a kid had started talking to Nurse Gage while he checked Fitchett out. It was the usual questions — where am I, what happened, the whole thing. BJ wasn’t listening with any kind of close attention, checking Fitchett’s pulse and bandage, until he noticed the tone was changing.
“When will I be sent to a real hospital?”
“Well, you’re in it, Sergeant. It’s the doctor’s prerogative to see if you need extra care that can only be provided elsewhere and when you'll be sent down to Seoul. But we try to limit immediate evac, because the trip is rough on patients. I can promise you’re getting the best care you possibly can here.”
Gage sounded calm. She was changing the sheets on the neighboring bed, gently lifting a dozing kid with a belly wound to slide the sheet underneath him. The sergeant, though, had a tone of entitlement BJ rarely heard on enlisted men, and an accent that reminded him of certain parts of Stanford in the worst ways.
“Don’t bullshit me, I don’t have to stay in this dump, or in Seoul! I want to be sent to Tokyo General.“
BJ sighed, letting go of Fitchett’s limp wrist.
At all times there was a roiling tide at the bottom of his chest, threatening to rise up and overflow. It wasn't anything new, really. He'd caught sight of it before, in brief flashes: the time Johnny Lehmbeck had keyed his motorcycle, the day he'd gotten his draft notice, the nights when his father would raise his hand and strike. But he'd only really discovered it a few days after landing in Korea, when a wave threatened to overwhelm him on his way to the showers, realizing just where he was and what had happened to him in the past hundred hours. He'd never noticed just how vast and deep that raging water was, but it must have been lying there in wait for a long time. And these days he was never less than knee deep in it, fighting against the current raring to sweep him over. He could will the water down, with words of logic and grounding; even then the storm was never far, the moon pulling the tide with it and struggling against his will.
But BJ was better than that. He was bigger than that. He knew how proud Peg was to have married a man who didn't succumb to anger. He pushed the swell down firmly.
Nurse Gage looked up at him for support as he strolled up to the sergeant’s bed, taking a look at his chart. He was Hawkeye's patient — the one with the kicked-in chest. He seemed to be recovering well for someone who, just hours ago, was spilling his insides out of a hole in his ribs. He was a solid kid, Anglo-Saxon brow, the austere lips of someone raised in good taste and upstanding company. BJ knew enough to recognize a child of prep schools and WASP society. No doubt there was a pair of parents back on the East Coast furious to have an heir running around Korea.
“What seems to be the matter, Sergeant… Ballantine?” BJ asked, turning on his bedside manner.
The kid seemed, most of all, scared. BJ knew this was the root of most anger and all backlash in patients. His eyes were darting around, to the dirty windows, to the wooden walls, to the ramshackle beds and chipped enamel jugs. BJ couldn’t blame him.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Dr Hunnicutt. I'm one of the surgeons here."
"Great." Ballantine shot a completely unwarranted glare in Nurse Gage's direction, before looking back at BJ, straight in the eye. "So you can get me transferred to Tokyo, then?"
BJ felt his lips stretch into a flat smile, and made an effort to keep his teeth gnashed to stop himself from getting too witty, which would only make the attitude worse.
"Well, Ballantine, unfortunately you're not my patient. Only Dr Pierce can make these kinds of decisions, and—"
As if on cue, the door from the office swung open to let a still damp-haired, groggy-looking Hawkeye Pierce in, white-coated and holding some lab reports.
"Speak of the devil," BJ finished. The corners of his mouth were pulling up into a genuine smile. It was silly, but just seeing Hawkeye made him a little giddy, brightened his day. Most of the time, if he was off-duty, he'd look all around camp just to tag along with whatever Hawkeye was doing, craving the easy feeling of being on the exact same plane as someone else. He was comforted in his clinginess by the fact Hawkeye seemed to do the exact same for him.
"I knew my ears were burning," Hawkeye said, spinning towards him in his best impression of an effete marionette. "Have you seen Margaret?"
"Not today, no. But now that I have you here — you've met Sergeant Ballantine."
"Ah, yes, of course! Though he wasn't very talkative once we moved to the table last night." Hawkeye walked over to come sit down at the end of Ballantine's bed, his arm just about touching BJ's leg. BJ handed him the chart, which he took gracefully. "I have to admit it was quite the late dinner. You'd think ammo stashes would have the good sense to get shelled at a reasonable hour. I'm Dr Pierce, I operated on you."
BJ leaned over the support at the end of the bed, sliding a meaningful look at Hawkeye.
"The Sergeant here desires to know when he'll be able to leave this, I quote, dump."
"Really?" Hawkeye feigned surprise, taking the kid's pulse. "But Sergeant, this is the finest dump in all Korea! The best dirt, the freshest rats, the hottest new dysentery! You'd be a fool to leave it all behind. What's the hurry anyway?"
"Look, I'm not in the mood for this. I want to be transferred to a real facility. Now. Get on the phone with Tokyo and make it happen. My father's a senator, you know?"
"Oh, his father's a senator," Hawkeye told BJ, gravely, as if in an aside. "Look, Ballantine, I understand your frustration. However, I can guarantee you're getting the best possible level of care here — apart from the food, which pulls our survival rates way down. And besides, you're won't be well enough to travel for a little while. You'll be evac'd to the 121st Hospital in a couple days so that you can recover from these broken ribs, but overall you're in good shape, so I don't really see Tokyo in your close future. Unless you have R&R scheduled." He stood up, handing the chart back to BJ. "That's a good thing, Ballantine. You were very lucky to get to us when you did."
The look on Ballantine’s face had soured as soon when Hawkeye had confirmed he wouldn’t be going to Tokyo. But Hawkeye had said his piece, and already he was walking away, no doubt back on his search for Major Houlihan. BJ figured he could go back to Fitchett, so he turned around even as Ballantine closed his fists with visible anger. A mistake.
“I would be much luckier if I were being treated in a hospital rather than some sort of… of barn staffed with long-haired fruitcakes,” he gritted, gesturing towards Hawkeye. “I thought they didn’t let you people into the army anyway.”
BJ balked. He was used to antagonistic patients, but something about the personal insult (and the implication!) being directed at his friend stirred that water inside him just the wrong way — though he made himself settle. Even so, Hawkeye seemed relatively unfazed, if slightly exasperated.
“Well, I also thought so, but my draft board insisted, so that's both of us confused," he shrugged, looking back toward Ballantine as he headed for the door. "And stop waving your arm around like that, you'll tear up my stitches."
"If you don't have me sent to Tokyo I'll have you regret it."
"Promise?" Hawkeye grinned, coy and sickly-sweet, standing with his hand on the door.
"Ballantine, calm down." BJ held a firm hand down on his shoulder, anticipating the worst. He needed to try and defuse this. Couldn’t Hawkeye ever walk away without trying to get the last word in?
“Why should I? I shouldn’t have to rot away in this hole!”
"Ballantine, we don't send people straight to Tokyo General lightly." BJ figured the kid had to hear reason at some point.
"I don't care! What kind of doctor are you, anyway?" he shouted at Hawkeye. "You fucking pansy, can't even cut your hair."
BJ knew that Benjamin Franklin Pierce had his limits. Everything was suitable to be joked about until it wasn't, and when that line was reached, be it through injustice or annoyance, he was liable to get himself wound up into a serious case of righteous anger. BJ had seen it happen several times already. Whatever kind of ocean bubbled inside of him, it had a low boiling point. He turned around and strode back towards Ballantine's bed.
“Hey! I’m the guy who saved your life! A little gratitude goes a long way, buddy! Without me your lung would still be trying to escape your chest through your clavicle, so if I were you I would stop worrying about the length of my surgeon’s hair and start thinking hard about how I almost won a ticket straight to the afterlife in a foxhole yesterday!”
He was ticked off, finger pointing; incidentally, his hair was dropping in front of his wide eyes. On the bed, Ballantine was staring at him, mouth open just so, as if he hadn't expected Hawkeye to fight back, or maybe because Hawkeye's words were actually getting to him. Hawkeye, for himself, looked like he could go on. BJ decided that this was probably enough for the both of them, and he gently motioned Hawkeye back.
“Okay, Hawk, I think he’s got the message.”
Hawkeye tore his eyes away from Ballantine, looked up at BJ, and back at the patient. He shook his head, turned around, and disappeared through the door, leaving BJ and Ballantine to look at each other in silence.
He didn't see Hawkeye again until dinnertime, which was unusual. He didn't drop back into post-op the rest of BJ's shift; he wasn't in the Swamp when BJ finished. He wasn't in the O Club either; BJ thought maybe he'd gone off to romance a nurse. He finally found him walking towards the mess tent, and they nodded at each other silently. Together they queued for their chow and joined the table where Margaret, Potter and Frank were already sitting; although Frank was excusing himself to go back on duty.
"That kid was griping about you the whole rest of my shift, you know," BJ said, shoving a forkful of particularly unseemly beans into his mouth. "Sitting there grumbling to himself. I was this close to asking him if he needed a rectal exam."
Hawkeye was busy sniffing at his meatloaf, nose wrinkling at the smell.
"Who was?" Margaret asked.
"That kid, Ballantine. One of Hawkeye's patients. I'm sure right now he's ruminating on who his senator father can bribe to get him to Tokyo General."
"Is there an issue I should know about, Captains?" Potter asked from behind his newspaper.
Hawkeye had moved on to sniffing his peas and carrots and didn't seem to be planning on replying. That was fine. BJ was okay with doing it.
"Not much, Colonel. Some Social Register sergeant thought a MASH was beneath a person of his standing. He took it out on the length of Hawkeye's hair."
"That mane of yours is getting long, Pierce. Now you know I let you boys flaunt the rules around this camp because you're doctors, but it wouldn't hurt to get yourself sheared now and then. You're starting to look like Claudette Colbert."
Hawkeye looked up from his food, his forkful of peas suspended in mid-air.
"I'll have you know I'm growing it out so I can have it marcelled for the Spring Dance. The boys won't be able to take their eyes off of me. I'll be the prettiest flapper in school." He threw his head back and flicked at his hair with a vapid smile that immediately slipped off his face. “Why is everyone so interested in my hair all of a sudden? It’s not like you don’t see it every day. The nurses certainly don’t mind.”
“What have my nurses got to do with this, Doctor?” Houlihan yapped.
“Nothing, Major, nothing.” Hawkeye put his hands up in innocence, having returned to staring at his food as if it would magically transform into something edible. “But the fact is that my hair is longer than Lieutenant Baker’s and yet I’m the only one at this table who goes dancing at least once a week. Margaret, you don’t count, Frank thinks the Charleston is a city in South Carolina.”
Houlihan's face gaped in outrage; BJ had to hold back a snort of a laugh. Hawkeye was incorrigibly funny to him, even when he was more annoyed and antagonistic than purposefully jesting. It was silly, but BJ felt almost smitten, laughing at all of Hawkeye's jokes, finding his eyes constantly drifting back to him for a smile or a bon mot. Once again he was reminded of the bronze-skinned boys of his childhood, Merle McDaniel with his grown-up humor and Oklahoman accent (he'd always thought his attraction to Peg had started when he'd first heard her — he'd been so charmed by Merle's effortless wit and lilting voice, and in a woman he'd found that impossible to resist); Gene Pereira's daredevil motorcycle antics and loudmouthed quips; Leo Bardonaro's big laugh and wicked schemes.
“That’s a horse of a different color, Pierce. Hunnicutt and I are married,” Potter pointed out.
“And you didn't invite me to the wedding? For shame.” Hawkeye stood up. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got Civil War surplus beans to return to the mass graves of Gettysburg.”
He lifted his tray, and left out the door, leaving the three of them in unexpected silence.
"Well, looks like someone's got a sharp rock lodged in his hoof today." Potter commented, watching the door swing on its hinges. "You sure nothing else happened, Hunnicutt? With that sergeant?
"Well, Hawkeye wasn't pleased at the kid's attitude, Colonel, but neither was I. He called Hawkeye a—"
"Colonel Potter, sir?" Radar had sneaked up on the table the way he sometimes did. He was out of breath — BJ would never expect somebody carrying a hoopful of keys at all times to be able to run this furtively. "Telephone for you, sir. It's General Hammond."
"What does he want, now?"
"I don't know, sir, he didn't say. Guess you'll have to ask him yourself."
Potter sighed, folding his paper and reluctantly sidling out of the bench.
"Well, I guess dinnertime's over."
"You're not missing much, Colonel," BJ grimaced, poking at his own slice of meatloaf.
"I'd have to agree with you, Hunnicutt. Evening."
And Potter filed out behind Radar, reducing the table's numbers to two. BJ's one-on-one encounters with Margaret Houlihan had been very limited since he'd arrived. Mostly because any one-on-one encounters he had with anyone had been limited to the professional field, given that he spent most of his free time with Hawkeye. The lull in the conversation was thick and awkward, but BJ knew how to deal with uncomfortable times at the dinner table. He gave Margaret a polite smile, put his head down, and employed himself at trying to eat.
"What did the patient call him? Pierce?"
BJ looked up. Margaret had put down her fork, her arms crossed on the table. BJ hesitated. Hawkeye had told him that he couldn't quite figure out what someone like her saw in someone like Frank; he thought it was the Regular Army in her (Hawkeye always pronounced these words with the amount of disgust he thought they deserved, something that both amused and comforted BJ in his own opinion of the institution.) BJ could tell she wasn't all bad, but he didn't know if she knew that. Could she be trusted to know that being called a pansy had set Hawkeye off? BJ figured it would set anybody off, but Hawkeye wasn't just anybody. He thought back on their first meeting, Hawkeye's openness, his shamelessness, his....inconceivable boldness. Surely most would say he invited these kinds of comments, but BJ couldn't help but feel it was unfair to him.
"Well, you know," he said, tentatively. "What would you call a man who wears his hair long on purpose, Major?"
"Unkempt. Careless." Margaret offered, her eyes searching up and sideways for epithets. "A slob."
BJ half-smiled, out of respect for the effort. If he’d thought this were a joke he might have laughed. But Margaret sounded teased-out enough to be at least partly serious — no doubt the matter was a long-standing grudge on top of her usual antipathy towards Hawkeye Pierce. A part of BJ, the one with Peggy's voice, told him that she wasn't unwarranted in her animosity in the slightest. Another part, that long-buried one that Hawkeye had seemingly started pulling out of him when they'd met, told him that anyone that stuck-up deserved some kind of ribbing for it.
"A classical music fan?" he mimicked her. "Margaret. You know what I mean."
Margaret's gaze slid back down to her food.
"Yes. I do."
She sighed.
"You know he got written up for that hair once. It must have been a few months in. He'd refused to go to the barber since he got here.”
"I don't think he even goes now. Cuts his hair himself with Metzenbaums." He'd seen Hawkeye trim his bangs in the mirror before. They were getting in the way.
Margaret gave him a heavy look; she parted her lips like she was about to say something, but then seemed to recant.
"Right. There was a brigadier general visiting and he got very cagey when he saw Pierce’s hair. It was a lot longer than it is now, actually. Of course Pierce sensed that immediately, you know how he gets, he smells a weakness and he goes right for it. He made one of his jokes..." BJ knew the ones. The 'I'm too pretty for you anyway's and the 'stop pulling on my braids, just be a man and tell me you like me's. "McIntyre and Jones had to hold the general back while he called Pierce every name under the sun. He would have gone home on a blue discharge had it not been for Colonel Blake talking I-Corps down."
For a second, BJ's train of thought stalled. He stared. He imagined some army brass calling Hawkeye what Ballantine had called him — calling him worse.
"What do you mean?"
"An undesirable discharge, Hunnicutt. One with a big H on it."
"That's ridiculous. For a joke? For a hairstyle?"
"Lots of people here turn a blind eye to Pierce's behavior, Captain, as inappropriate as it may be. But that's not standard in the U.S. Army. The wrong person getting the wrong idea is enough. Why do you think I try to keep this camp in check for visits and inspections?"
"Come on, how could Hawkeye have anything to fear?" BJ protested. Margaret cocked her head just so, picking at her potatoes as if in measured disapproval. "Well it's not true, isn't it? I know a lot of nurses who can vouch for that."
"Whether it's true or not hardly matters, Hunnicutt. It's a matter of morals, and principle. In the Army's eyes, if someone inspires a degradation of good values it is a danger to the cohesion and good health of the unit, whether that inspiration is rooted in something real or just... well, kidding around! Which is all Pierce ever does, in between indecent advances to my nurses."
She planted her fork into her meatloaf with such vigor BJ could only imagine that she was picturing Hawkeye on her tray in the place of a barely-recognizable meat product.
"In the Army's eyes, Margaret... But not in yours?"
He raised his eyebrows at her, expectantly, but she didn't meet his gaze. She had that blank, distant look on her face that he'd noticed she got when she talked about serious things.
"I am an officer of this army, Hunnicutt, and unlike you and Pierce, I take that position very seriously." As far as noncommittal responses went, BJ felt this was pretty high up on the scale.
Margaret sighed again and shook her head slowly.
"Why does he keep doing that?" she said, softer, to no one in particular. "Doesn't he realize what could happen to him? He's so reckless. Pierce is an insubordinate, childish idiot, but he's an outstanding surgeon, and I hate to say it—" she paused, her face twisting in considerable reluctance, "Behind all the sleaze he's got a good heart. I would feel rotten if one of his silly antics ruined his life."
"I don't think he knows how to stop, Margaret." As far as BJ knew, this was who Hawkeye was: reckless in his sincerity, in his refusal to obey or conform.
"And the hair! What's the big deal about keeping his hair smart?" she continued, ignoring his intervention. "It would do wonders for goodwill. If anything, he might get away with even more of the nonsense you two pass off as jokes around here, and that's to say nothing of the all procedural overstepping and medical cowboy hijinks."
"You might have to call Sidney Freedman back in to get an answer on that. I guess it's just another part of him refusing the uniform. A cause with which I happen to sympathize."
"Only he's a lot touchier about his hair."
"Who isn't." He combed his fingers through the receding blond waves on top of his head, compulsively. He hadn't trimmed them since he'd come here. He was pretty sure he'd forgotten what he even looked like when he arrived — how it felt to be tidy and presentable and well-groomed. Then a realization came over him. "Wait, so you mean he came here with short hair? Now what did that look like?"
Margaret snorted into her cup of coffee.
"I'm not giving you an opportunity to feed Pierce's ego. He looked fine. Different. Younger." She turned towards BJ, and looked him in the eye. "Scared."
He thought of Hawkeye’s face in post-op earlier, the look in his eyes when his patient had started barking. He knew what that look meant.
“Huh.” He said, lowering his gaze down to his untouched food. “No kidding.”
OCTOBER 10, 1957 — THAT APARTMENT NEAR POLK GULCH, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
BJ tore a page out of a beat-up mimeographed chapbook shoved into his hands by a beatnik on Broadway and slipped it into an envelope headed for an apartment in New York City that was always full of deviant med students and piles of filthy magazines. Against the bright sun tearing at the last remains of the morning fog, the typewritten words showed through the thin paper.
I know a man's supposed to have his hair cut short,
but I have beautiful hair.
I like to let it grow into a long bronze mane.In my boots. In my blue wool shirt.
With my rifle slung over my shoulder...
The last few lines of the poem echoed in his head for hours as he walked around his ward, checking on former open fractures and sewn-up stab wounds, thinking of dark locks worried with gray, of the snip-snip of scissors as they'd covered the top of his beat-up army boots. A damp green towel. A sunburnt neck. The smell of beer.
Months and months go by before they can
worry about my hairdoand the breeze
is so cool.