In November an epidemic of flu struck Crabapple Cove. Moose caught it, coughed, wheezed and became short of breath. I gave him this and that, none of which helped. He began to form crusts in his tracheostorny, where we’d sewed the short stump of windpipe to the skin—where he breathed. Too many crusts, too little air.
I carry a bronchoscope in my car. Two or three nights a week I’d go to Indian Island, find Moose struggling for air, stick the scope down and pull out the crusts. He’d breathe clearly then, look at me gratefully, grin a little and shake his head. Three days before Thanksgiving he almost suffocated before I arrived. I pulled out another big crust and insisted that he return to the hospital. On Thanksgiving morning I cleaned out his windpipe as thoroughly as possible before taking him home to Indian Island for the day. He didn’t eat much turkey. The lumps in his neck were getting bigger and swallowing was difficult.
The next morning I picked up Moose on the shore opposite Indian Island. Before he boarded the car for Spruce Harbor, he stood for a moment and looked. He looked at his island and then out across the bay. He looked at all the little islands and the places, where the lobsters live. The last look. We both knew it.
From there on Moose did it the hard way. The cancer in his neck got larger. X-ray treatments were no help. New drugs which halt some cancers did nothing to this one. The crusts kept forming in his remaining stump of windpipe, despite fog tents and anything else I could think of. Jonas became more and more confused. He’d get out of the fog tent. He’d manage to mess up anything that might help to keep his airway open. Fortunately he had only a few moments of real awareness.
I put him in a private room and left a bronchoscope at the bedside along with forceps to pull out the crusts.
Sometimes, between us, Joe Berry and I scoped him five or six times a day. Once, after I cleaned him out, Moose woke up and looked at me. No sound came, but his lips made the words: “Let me go, Hawk.”
“I’d like to, Moose, but I can’t,” was my painful, stupid answer.
As Christmas approached there was slow but definite improvement. The crusts didn’t form as often. Jonas had longer periods of consciousness. I spent as much time with him as I could. The only question he asked, or tried to ask, was, “When is Christmas?”
It was ten days, then five days, and finally one day until Christmas. Before I went home that afternoon, Moose issued his daily statement. With a smile, he gulped and grunted, “I’m going to make it to Christmas!”
We trimmed our tree on Christmas Eve and put the kids to bed. Mary and I had presents for Moose’s family. So did Mother and Big Benjy. At nine o’clock Benjy arrived in his boat and we went to Indian Island. Somehow, Martha and her children were managing to achieve a very real, if subdued, feeling of happiness and thankfulness on Christmas Eve.
Big Benjy and I stayed a while, had coffee, left our presents and took off. I got up at five o’clock Christmas morning so that I could go to Spruce Harbor, see Moose and get back in time to open presents. When I entered the hospital, the night supervisor said, “Good morning, Dr. Pierce. Mr. Lord is wide awake and waiting for you.”
I hurried to his room and found Moose sitting on the side of the bed. He gave me a grin reminiscent of better days. He indicated that I should sit down beside him. He was alert, breathing clearly and talking better than he had in two months.
“Merry Christmas, Hawk.”
“Same to you, Moose.”
“The family’s coming up after church.”
“I know it, Moose. Benjy and I were out to the island last night.”
“Hawk, it won’t be much longer.”
I started to say something or other. He put his big hand on my shoulder.
“Don’t kid me, Hawk. I’m happy. I don’t mind. rye had a good life.”
All this with grunts and gasps or just movements of his lips, but with the smile shining through as it hadn’t for so long.
“Okay, Moose.” All I could do was put my arm around him.
“Hawkeye, will you keep an eye on Martha and the kids?”
“Moose, you know it.”
His smile got bigger. “You go home to your family, Hawk.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Moose.”
The eyes laughed at me again. He shook his head. “Good-bye, Hawk. You been a good friend,” he whispered, holding out his hand.
I shook hands, said, “So long, Moose,” and started to go. I turned, went back and sat beside him again.
“Moose,” I said, “have a good trip. Before you leave, I ought to say something about how much you’ve meant to me, but you know it, so I don’t have to.”
His arm, no longer big and strong, circled my shoulder and gave me a squeeze.
“Go home, Hawk,” said the silent lips.
Toward the end of the ride home I achieved a degree of tranquillity. We’d fought a good fight. Moose was happy. He was going to enjoy Christmas. I’d try to.
After the presents were opened, Mary and the kids went to the Crabapple Cove Church. They didn’t invite me, but after they left I decided to go too. I joined my family in the back row. The stares of the congregation reminded me that the last time I was in church was when Moose Lord married Martha Hobbs. Three rows in front of me and my family sat Martha Lord and her five children.
The phone beside my bed rang at three A.M., on the day after Christmas.
“Dr. Pierce.”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Lord has just expired.”
“Thank you.”
I dressed and looked out the window. The tide was high. I drove to my parents’ house and banged on the door.
Big Benjy appeared.
“Moose?” he asked.
“Yeah. How about taking me out to the island?”
The temperature was three above. The moon was full, and the night was clear. The lobster boat crashed through a skim of ice around the dock and in a few minutes we were at Indian Island.
Martha and her children heard our motor and met us at the dock.
“Martha, Jonas died an hour ago.”
She paused a moment before saying, “Thank you, Hawkeye. Thank you so much for everything. You and Benjy come in and have some coffee.”
“I don’t want no coffee,” my old man growled. “Martha, what do you want us to do? You tell us, we’ll do it.”
“Everything’s taken care of for now, Benjy,” she assured him. “We’ll need some help in the next few days, and we’ll let you know.”
“Thanks, Hawkeye,” said Jonas, Jr.
Big Benjy and I got back in the boat. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and the bay was bathed in moonlight. Only our motor broke the silence as Benjy headed for the open sea.
“Where you going?” I asked.
“Nowhere.”
About half a mile out he cut the motor and opened a pint of Old Bantam whiskey. We drifted. I identified Wreck Island a little way south. We didn’t talk, just nipped at the pint and smoked.
After a while I thought I heard something. Big Benjy perked up his ears. He’d heard it too, and looked kind of scared.
I climbed out of the cabin and looked down a beam of moonlight which made a path from the boat right back to Indian Island. At the end of the moonbeam I saw Martha and her children standing on the rocks in front of their house. They were singing Moose Lord’s favorite hymn:
Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river,
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God.
Quietly, slowly, reverently, Big Benjy Pierce said, “Boy, everything’s all right. The Sound of the Moose is still heard on the sea.”
9
FOUR months before the opening of the clinic and the completion of the new Spruce Harbor General, Trapper John McIntyre arrived. He had left the city forever and would, he said, devote himself to supervising the construction and outfitting of the cardiovascular unit.
Three days after Trapper�
��s arrival Lucinda Lively, Dr. Pierce’s secretary, submitted her resignation.
“Trapper works fast, I guess,” said Hawkeye with an attempt at cheerfulness.
“I like him a lot and I’m going to be with him and work for him and have fun.”
“Vaya con Dios, babe. Trapper got a place to live?”
“Oh yes,” chirped Lucinda. “We’re going to live in a tent on Thief Island.”
“That should be fun for the summer,” said Hawkeye. “You’ll he sort of tented up, I take it.”
“Oh, very funny. And it’s not just for the summer. Trapper says he’s going to get a stove like you guys had in Korea and a wooden floor and something to cook on and a refrigerator and this and that and we’re going to live there the year around.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that, Dr. Pierce,” said Lucinda, who kissed him and walked out without looking back.
Hawkeye Pierce had been working hard and it would take a while to find a new secretary so he declared himself on vacation. He left word that Trapper John would cover him for necessary chest surgery and that he was going to spend a month at home, on the golf course and on his boat.
Two weeks into vacation, Hawkeye heard that Trapper was growing a beard and frequently appeared at the hospital barefoot and clad only in the briefest of swimming trunks. Furthermore, the word was that Trapper’s companion, Lucinda Lively, now wore only a bikini.
One morning Sue Taylor, the OR supervisor, called Dr. Pierce’s home and proclaimed, “You’ve gotta do something about that boy of yours. I won’t have him coming into my OR in swimming trunks and I won’t have him training that floozy as a scrub nurse, either.”
“Sue, baby,” purred Hawkeye, “you haven’t been watching the scoreboard. It’s not your OR anymore. Duke, Trapper, Spearchucker and Hawkeye have bought you out. We got it going for us so you and everybody else are going to play our rules. It doesn’t matter how Trapper dresses. All that matters is how he works and if he wants to train Lucinda as a scrub nurse it’s none of your goddamn business.”
“I’ll resign,” proclaimed Sue.
“No, you won’t. Why don’t you get a bikini? If you look good in it, I’ll give you a try.”
“You’re disgusting. He smells like a haddock. That damn fool Wooden Leg is teaching him to fillet fish. He could at least wash the scales off before he comes to the hospital.”
“I think you may have a point there, Sue. You tell Trapper I say to take a shower before’ doing surgery, or I’ll burn down his tent.”
Sue Taylor had the bit in her teeth. An impulsive, determined, capable, well-meaning, somewhat unexposed forty-year-old product of Tedium Cove, she could not cope easily with change. “Do you know what Dr. McIntyre and that blond are doing when they’re not working or cutting fish or making love in that little cranberry patch on Thief Island?” she asked, continued and persisted.
“No. What?”
“They’re peddling fish. Wooden Leg bought a new truck and they’re going around to all the summer places. Leg says everybody wants to get a look at them and to look at them they gotta buy fish. He thinks maybe you oughta get a new heart surgeon and let Trapper just peddle fish.”
“What’s this about the cranberry patch?”
“You’ll hear about it,” said Sue. “I’m not one to gossip.”
“Of course,” said Hawkeye. “Relax, babe. Everything’ll be okay.” He knew of Thief Island’s cranberry patch, guessed what was happening there and grinned.
Fog in June on the coast of Maine is as inevitable as the tasteless lumps of batter called fried clams in a hundred greasy spoons along U.S. Route 1. Fog is here, it’s there, it’s everywhere. The Flying Passage between Hungry Island and Long Island may be socked in like black bean soup while the sun sheds its morning glory on everything three hundered yards to the east or west. At six A.M. on the morning of June 10, Wrong Way Napolitano, the Italian kamikaze pilot, the owner and only pilot of the Spruce Harbor and Inter-Island Air Service, arrived at his hangar. Mr. Napolitano made wrong moves, now and then, but he usually could find his hangar, which was small, unobtrusive and well away from the action at Spruce Harbor International Airport. The airport acquired its international designation two weeks after the glorious day when an Icelandic Airways DC-3 on affight from Copenhagen via Reykjavik to New York landed and disgorged a mother who had not expected a premature Viking.
Wrong Way Napolitano started the Spruce Harbor and Inter-Island Air Service in 1953. This was just after his discharge from the air force, which, having discovered several of his major problems, had made him a flying instructor. Wrong Way had visions of glory like an earlier Maine hero, Miniver Cheevy of Tilbury Town, almost fifty miles away, who’d dreamt of Thebes and Camelot and Priam’s neighbors. Wrong Way had never heard of Miniver Cheevy, but he had read somewhere of Qantas, the Australian airline, which started as the Queensland and Northern Territories Air Service. Wrong Way, as he flew over Penobscot Bay spotting schools of fish for his brothers, uncles and cousins, dreamed of the Spruce Harbor and Inter-Island Air Service becoming an international airline with lots of big jets. But he could never figure out how to pronounce SHAIIAS, so he just dreamed.
Wrong Way Napolitano, long before this sunny, foggy morning, had earned his name and fame as an Italian kamikaze pilot for three quite good reasons.
One: he was Italian, two: he often flew in the wrong direction, and three: he was even money to run into something. Such as the Eagle Head Lighthouse, the Pexnaquid Point Lighthouse, the mast on The Maria and Luigi, a well-known gillnetter owned by Maria and Luigi, and the steeple of the Spruce Harbor Congregational Church.
The fact that Wrong Way Napolitano was still alive intrigued many observers but could be explained with clarity and insight by Wooden Leg Wilcox who, when asked for his opinion, said: “The dumb guinea can’t hit anything square.”
Wrong Way, in rebuttal, declared that his precarious longevity was owing to “a great set of reflexes.” This declaration was usually made in the Bay View Café and united the customers in a feeling of togetherness which no other declaration, on any subject, by any man, could bring to pass. As one voice, they chorused:
“Bullshit.”
At six o’clock on the morning of June 10 the Spruce Harbor International Airport was shrouded in fog. Whether Wrong Way knew this or not was questionable but, undaunted, he took off in his new Piper Tri-Pacer and, finding the sun, flew toward it and, as luck would have it, found himself where he was supposed to be. Below him he saw Matinicus Island and the early-morning blue-green calm of Penobscot Bay. Left behind was the fog which obscured the mainland. He proceeded, from a thousand feet up, to look for schools of fish. The idea was that, if he saw any, he would report their whereabouts by radio to his relatives in the trawlers below.
By nine fifteen the fog had redistributed itself so that Wrong Way could see neither schools of fish nor Matinicus Island. An uncle on the radio said: “Time to go home, Wrong Way. Which way you headin’ in?”
“Guess I’ll aim her for Eagle Head Light and from there I can pick my way in over Thief island.”
“Finestkind, Wrong Way,” said the voice on the radio. “We know you can find the light. The question is can you get past it?”
“Go to hell,” replied Wrong Way. “Over.”
Another voice chimed in: “Hey, Wrong Way, if you don’t run into Eagle Head Light within seven minutes, keep your eyes peeled for the Eiffel Tower.”
Wrong Way Napolitano uttered a crude suggestion and headed for home. At this approximate time, on Thief Island, Trapper John McIntyre and Lucinda Lively finished breakfast and luxuriated in the warmth of the sun, which had begun to penetrate the fog. On all sides there was gloom, but Thief Island was blessed with an ethereal sunlit haze which, like almost everything, turned the highly suggestible mind of Trapper John to thoughts of love. He and Lucinda had discovered a tiny cranberry bog in one corner of the island’s central clearing. In June a cranber
ry bog is no good for cranberries, but when a blanket is placed upon it it does provide a soft, secluded area in which to express one’s most tender sentiments.
Trapper John preferred indirection in these matters, so instead of saying. “Let’s go over to the cranberry patch and get laid,” he said, “How about a swim?”
Lucinda countered with: “Cranberry patch first, hon. Then a swim.”
Fifteen seconds before consummating their most tender sentiments, the lovers heard a sound which became a noise and then an all-consuming roar. Wrong Way Napolitano, flying at fifty feet, spotted Thief Island, breathed a deep sigh of relief, skimmed the treetops on the south shore, looked down, saw the action in the cranberry bog and reacted instinctively. Wrong Way’s instinct often takes over when the call is for judgment. In this case, one must suppose that he instinctively wanted to participate rather than watch. Convulsively, he pushed forward on the controls, took dead aim for the cranberry bog, missed it, but sheared off the top of a scrub pine twenty feet beyond. Somehow (great reflexes?) he regained control and headed for Spruce Harbor International in his scarred but still functional aircraft.
As Lucinda told Hawkeye later, she and Trapper were somewhat shaken by this experience. They lay, confused, scared and apart, looking up into the fog. “What happened?” Lucinda asked hesitantly, fearful of the answer.
“I’m not sure,” replied Trapper. “Does the Church of the Nazarene have an air force?”
“I don’t think so,” mused Lucinda, regaining her composure. “That was Wrong Way Napolitano. I guess he must have seen us and had a muscle spasm, or something. Let’s not worry.”
“Speak to me of Wrong Way Napolitano,” urged Trapper. “I know of him vaguely, but fill me in.”
“Well, Hawkeye fixed a hernia for him a few months back and I got to know him. He’s sort of a legend around here. He’s really a very intelligent guy.”
“That sounds like something Hawkeye told you.”
“Well, yes. Hawk calls him a flaky dreamer, but everyone else laughs at him. They think of him as just a guy who runs a dinky little air service and spots schools of fish and flies people around the islands.
M*A*S*H Goes To Maine Page 10
