M*A*S*H Goes To Maine

by Richard Hooker

  Martha Hobbs came to teach in Crabapple Cove’s one-room, eight-grade schoolhouse while I was in Port Waldo High. Martha was tall, pretty and smart. She liked to dance and in those days, particularly during the summer, there was a dance somewhere at least two nights a week. Everyone wanted to dance with. Martha. Jonas Lord was always in the two-, three- or four-man band playing his fiddle. When Martha danced, Moose followed her every move with his big, gentle, vacant, twinkling eyes.

  The Moose was the Moose and he lived in his shack on Indian Island and he was there because he was supposed to be there. He was a special gift to the children of Crabapple Cove. Any change in status was unthinkable. But time changes things, even in Crabapple Cove.

  One day in May of my freshman year at Androscoggin College, Big Benjy appeared at the fraternity house demanding to see me. He’d come to bring me home because the Moose and Martha Hobbs were getting married in the Cove church that night. Benjy was going to be best man, and I was to be an usher and hand out the refreshments afterward.

  I remember that wedding as though it were yesterday. The altar with candles burning. My old man in a black suit resurrected from heaven knows where. The guests, some of them in rubber boots. The Moose, with his happy smile and his eyes like saucers as he looked in wonder at his bride. Martha, happy, proud, sure she had the man she wanted.

  Jonas, Jr. appeared a year or so later and was followed by four more children in the next decade. I was in college, medical school, internship, surgical residency or the army during and after this period. My visits home were infrequent, but I never hit the Cove without calling on Moose, Martha, and their kids. They still lived on Indian Island. Three more rooms were tacked on to the original shack. The children were blond, bright, and well-behaved. They called me Uncle Hawkeye or Dr. Hawkeye. That’s my name hereabouts because the only book Big Benjy read before I was born, or since, was The Last of the Mohicans.

  Eventually I became the chest surgeon at Spruce Harbor and built a new house near my parents’ farm in Crabapple Cove. I’d always wanted to come home to live, but there was something I had overlooked. People in the Cove are geared to a certain pace and economy. Inevitably, I had become geared to another style of life. Nobody in the Cove except me is ever in a hurry. I salute old Mends with a preoccupied wave when, by local custom, I should stop and pass the time of day.

  When I first came home I called on Moose and Martha occasionally, but the visits dwindled as I got busier. By May of last year I hadn’t seen the Moose to talk to for six months although I’d occasionally passed him on the road and waved. Big Benjy mentioned in April that Jonas wasn’t feeling well. I said, “Well, tell him to see one of the local doctors, and if it’s anything in my line, he can come over to the hospital.”

  A few weeks later I got a message to call Dr. Ralph Young in Port Waldo, who said, “Hawkeye, I want you to see the Moose. Can I send him right up?”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He can’t breathe.”

  “Send him. I’ll be here.”

  I happened to be looking out a window an hour later when Moose, Martha and Jonas, Jr. pulled up in front of the Spruce Harbor General Hospital in their old rattletrap. Moose’s big shoulders were slumped.

  His walk was unsteady. Martha and young Jonas helped him. I thought to myself: whatever it is, it isn’t good.

  As I walked toward the entrance I had a clear realization: here is a guy who’s practically been a second father. I live within a mile of him. I’ve known be’s been sick and I haven’t been to see him in six months.

  Finding a wheelchair, I met them at the door. Moose grinned at me. His eyes twinkled. He put his arms around me and gave me a hug. He sat down in the chair and asked, “How they goin’, Hawkeye?” The Sound of the Moose had changed. It was a husky, croaking voice, hardly a voice at all.

  I saw the lump in his neck. This, the stertorous breathing and the hoarseness meant trouble. I make my living from tragedy. I try do do my best and view it philosophically. I can’t allow emotion to interfere with surgical thinking or performance, but when I heard the Moose’s voice and felt the lump in his neck I had a moment of panic.

  I wheeled him to the operating room and announced that I wanted to look into his windpipe and bronchial tubes under local anesthesia. The diagnosis was easy.

  A biopsy showed he had carcinoma of the windpipe, with spread of the cancer to the right side of his neck.

  One can practice thoracic surgery for a lifetime and never see a carcinoma of the trachea. I had to find one in Moose Lord. After the bronchoscopy I wandered aimlessly for a few minutes. Moose, Martha and their oldest boy were in my office waiting for the word. I entered, sat down and said, “Moose, how long has this been going on?”

  “A year or so, Hawkeye.”

  “Why didn’t you let me know?”

  “Didn’t think nawthin’ of it at first.”

  “Why didn’t you go to a doctor?”

  “I did a couple months ago. He gimme some medicine, but it didn’t help me none.”

  The Moose kept right on having a smile on his big face and a twinkle, or something, in his large, confused eyes.

  I tapped my knuckles on the desk, summoning courage, and finally I said, “Moose, you’re in trouble. You have cancer of your windpipe and it’s already spread to your neck. It is unlikely that anything can be done about it. If anybody can do anything, it’s going to Involve extensive surgery with little chance of a

  The grin drooped a little and the twinkle lost some of its glint. I looked at Martha. She was looking at Jonas.

  Moose, in his croaking voice, said, ‘Take a crack at her, Hawk. Ain’t nobody goin’ to blame you if she don’t work out.’”

  “This is a rare kind of cancer, Moose. No one has much experience with it. I have none. You'd be better off in Boston where a few people know something about it You'll need X-ray treatments, too. In Boston they have X-ray equipment we don’t have.”

  “I want you, Hawkeye.”

  “Moose, I’m going to admit you to the hospital. You and Martha talk it over. I think you oughta go to Boston or maybe New York.”

  After Jonas was admitted I headed for Crabapple Cove, driving too fast, like a little boy scurrying home to where it’s safe. Crabapple Cove was aIways safe for little boys because Moose Lord was there. But now he wasn’t there. I went directly to my parents’ house. Stalking into the kitchen and shoving aside nieces and nephews, I identified one of the assembled muititude as a younger brother.

  “Where’s the old man?” I demanded.

  “Around.”

  “Find him!”

  Big Benjy was summoned from the barn. “Gawd,” he said, "it’s Hawkeye.” Leaving the kitchen, he yelled to my mother, “Woman, put on your best dressl A famous surgeon has come to visit us.”

  I have to take a certain amount of guff from Benjy. He is my senior by only nineteen years and he’s never been out of shape.

  “Dad, I want to talk to you and Mother.”

  He moved the crowd out, and Mother joined us.

  What’s the trouble, Hawk?” my father asked.

  “It’s the Moose. He has cancer of the windpipe. Barring an act of God, he’s going to die, soon and hard.”

  Mother broke the silence. "Can’t you help him, Hawkeye?”

  “I doubt it, Ma.”

  “He’s had trouble for a long time. I told you about it,’ said Benjy.

  “I know, but if he was in trouble why didn’t he come to me?”

  “You’ve gotten to be a pretty hard man to find, boy.

  People around here don’t fool free to come to you.”

  “People around here don’t get the idea, but Jonas Lord should know better.”

  “Maybe us folks in Crabapple Cove figure you’ve lost track of us a little,” Benjy said, but don’t blame yourself for the Moose. Martha and we and your mother have been after him. He wouldn’t come to you back along. He knew he was in trouble, but he wouldn’t face it
. Now he’s so sick he has to, and I know you'll do your best for him.”

  I drove home, mixed a drink, went into the study and thought. I consulted my surgical journals and read everything of significance that had been printed about carcinoma of the trachea in the last five years. It didn’t take long because not much had been written.

  Mary brought in a cold lobster, a pot of coffee and didn’t ask questions. After finishing the reading, the lobster and the coffee, I called Maxie Neville in New York.

  His secretary answered: “Who’s calling, please?”

  “Omit the evasive technique and lenune talk to the boss.”

  “It’s the clamdigger,” I heard her say.

  The famous surgeon came to the phone. “Hi, boy. How are things in the boondocks?”

  “I need help,” I said.

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  “What do you do for carcinoma of the trachea?”

  After a brief pause the answer came: “You unload it. You can’t win. It’s grief. There isn’t much more to say.”

  “My very own thoughts. Will you take it?”

  “If you want me to. Tell me more.”

  “Max, you remember Moose Lord, whom we visited when you came to Crabapple Cove? The guy on the island? He’s the patient.”

  Another pause: “Boy, you really are in trouble. Play it any way you like, but I’ll tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “You’re stuck with this one. Moose won’t want to go to Boston or New York or to any other surgeon. It would take a miracle to fix him, and in this kind of deal you have as food a chance as anyone else.”

  He went on to give me a few suggestions. When he was through I’d accepted the fact that it had to be me and the Moose, all the way.

  Martha Lord arrived.

  “Jonas and I have talked it over, Hawkeye,” she said. “He doesn’t want to go away. He wants you to take care of him.”

  She looked as though she were going to cry. I hoped she wouldn’t.

  “I’ll do my best for him, Martha,” I said, “but it won’t be good enough.”

  “Hawkeye, I know you’ll do your best.”

  Martha and Mary started on coffee while I wandered into the warm moonlit spring night. There’s a creek about fifty yards behind my house, and May is the month when smelts run up the tidal creeks. I walked down to see if they were running, but the tide was too low, so I lay on the bank, looked at the moon and thought like a surgeon and made some plans. We’d do a right radical neck dissection, remove the larynx and as much of the trachea as we had to. Win or lose, we’d give it a go.

  The next day I discussed the case with Joe Berry, the new ear, nose and throat man, who agreed to help. Me Lay Marston and his anesthesia service threw in a few good ideas. The blood bank was alerted to the probability of great need and Moose was put on the schedule for Monday morning.

  I sat down with Moose and told him what to expect.

  While I talked he looked at me and smiled his bland smile. The big eyes were inscrutable. I couldn’t read them and didn’t want to.

  Talking was an effort. He put his big arm around my shoulder, gasped for air and croaked, “Don’t you worry none, Hawkeye.”

  I left quickly, half in panic again. Here was the Moose telling me not to worry. I was sure he knew he’d had the course. He would let me chop him up if it would give him a little more time to watch his kids grow and because everybody would be unhappy if he just went ahead and died.

  The interval before the operation demonstrated clearly that Jonas Lord was an important man in my part of the world. He had no money and few material assets, but lie certainly had friends. Usually the interest people show in someone else’s operation is morbid curiosity. Secretly they are hoping for the worst. Not so this time. Few asked questions. They smiled and waved. The password seemed to be: Good luck on Monday.

  On Sunday I played golf and went to a clambake afterward without having a very good time. I had the butterflies, like before a football game. In the evening I read more articles on carcinoma of the trachea and went to bed early.

  I usually eat breakfast at Wink’s Diner in Port Waldo. Wink’s early-morning customers nearly always include people I went to school with, played ball with or ran around with at some time in the past. As a rule, breakfast is accompanied by good-natured banter, betting on ball games, and so forth.

  When I entered Wink’s on my way to operate on the Moose, no one said more than “good morning.” A few nodded and smiled. I ate ham and eggs and perused the sports section of the paper. The Sox had dropped a double-header. Vaguely I wished that time had not run out on Theodore Samuel Williams. The waitress was my cousin Eunice Pierce. Cousin Eunice and I have never been very close, but she is not so poorly acquainted as to call me “Doctor.” When I paid my check, however, she said, “Good luck today, Doctor.” Walking toward the door, I was halted by a familiar voice saying, “Hey, Hawkeye.”

  It was an old and good friend. “We’ll all be praying for the Moose and you today,” he said and turned quickly back to his coffee.

  On the way to Spruce Harbor I decided that this was an unusual situation. People were thinking of the patient, and they were thinking of the doctor, too. I was glad they were. Other thoughts drifted into my mind. I remembered the Moose and my old man yelling at me during football games. I remembered the only time Moose ever left the State of Maine. He and Big Benjy rode a truckful of lobsters to New York to see me graduate from medical school.

  Halfway to Spruce Harbor I almost aimed the car for Canada, but I didn’t. I settled down. The butterflies drowned in my stomach and my brain started to function.

  We had quite a morning. Early in the operation we discovered that the cancer was even more extensive than we’d thought.

  “You’ve had it, Hawkeye. We’d better quit,” advised Joe Berry.

  “Not today. Today I’m swinging for the fences. I’m going to get this thing out or cool him trying. I’m not going to send him back to the ward and watch him choke to death. At least, Idon’t want to.”

  When we’d finished, most of the trachea had been removed, the larynx was out and the right side of the neck had been dissected. The Moose’s blood pressure and pulse never wavered. He’d had four pints of blood. There was no visible or palpable cancer left behind.

  Leaving the operating room after five hours of hard labor I was limp and unrealistically optimistic. I’d been in the business too long to think I was God’s gift to surgery. I knew perfectly well the thing had to show up again somewhere. Still, once in a blue moon you get real lucky and a wild hope began to grab me. Maybe we had a win. At the very least, Moose would be able to breathe and he would be around a while longer. A reprieve is better than nothing. I felt like I’d pitched a no-hitter in the World Series.

  By evening Moose was awake. He looked at me and gave me his big damn foolish grin again. “We did it, Moose,” I said. “You’re gonna be home in two weeks.” His eyes laughed at me.

  I talked to Martha and young Jonas. We had a temporary victory, I told them. How long it would last was impossible to know. Statistically the chance of permanent cure was slight.

  Moose was in unbelievably good shape the next day. He even got out of bed and walked. For the first time in months he could breathe freely and easily, but the first of many problems presented itself. Moose could no longer talk because I’d removed his talking equipment. Usually such a patient communicates by writing notes until he learns esophageal speech. Writing was out for the Moose because his writing was worse than his reading. He could scribble notes, but I couldn’t read them. I brought in people who had learned esophageal speech. They tried to teach him and he made progress, but not much.

  Otherwise he did well. I got the impression that he wasn’t fond of his present situation and figured it was too good to last, if that makes sense. At least he was breathing, eating and walking, which was more than he could do before surgery.

  Two weeks after surgery, Moose and
I left the hospital together and headed for Crabapple Cove. There is a system of communication around the Cove which I’ve never understood. Everyone knew Moose was coming home, To say that the streets were crowded with well-wishers would be an exaggeration because there are no streets and the houses are three hundred yards apart, even where they’re bunched in together. Nevertheless, a group waited in front of each house to say hello to Moose, and I had to stop. He shook hands and smiled at everybody. I met more of my neighbors than. I had in years. The tide was high when we reached the shore opposite Indian Island. Young Jonas met us in the lobster boat and took his father home.

  The magic held through the summer. Moose gained strength, even learned to talk again in a crude sort of way and hauled a few lobsters. The smile never left, nor did it regain its former radiance. The time was borrowed and Moose seemed to know it. I knew it but hoped anyhow. Whenever I could I went to see him. Sometimes I told him the stories he’d told me twenty-five years before. His eyes would light up and the grin almost made a comeback. Occasionally, when the tide was high in the evening, Moose and I and our kids would dangle lines off the rocks and catch torn cod and cunners. Despite my concern for him I had a good summer, and, I hope, so did he.

  I kept thinking he should have a neck dissection on the left side. Every time I saw him I felt his neck. In early October the lump appeared.

  He knew it was there.

  “We gotta stick the knife to you again, Moose,” I told him.

  He sucked in wind and tried to make words.. They came out spasmodically. “The hell with it.”

  “I know how you feel, Moose, but we’re going right down the line. We’re in too deep to back out now.”

  A week later Joe Berry and I set out to do a left radical neck dissection. Before we started I examined the right side of his neck where we’d operated previously. There was a lump that I hadn’t felt before. A biopsy confirmed the obvious. There was recurrent cancer on the right side.

  We were licked. I sent Moose home to ride it out as best he could. I decided, for a while, to forego X-ray treatment. I wanted him to be home as long as possible.