3 From:  Dickey Chapelle At: Sat Jul 14 19:40:22 1952

To : Hawkeye

Subject: Mail Call

A nice fat envelope for Hawkeye, for once, wonder of wonders, not
from Maine, but from New York City.  A letter is wrapped around
some cuttings, and a photograph. The cuttings are a series of
articles about the war in Korea, with pictures; the last cutting
is a report of a couple of lone senators speaking out against the
'police action', citing the articles previous as reasons why the
US should withdraw.

The photograph is of Dickey, looking intently through the lense of
her camera, a tank in the background. She's wearing small
diamond-stud earrings, and her glasses are perched firmly on the
bridge of her nose.

Dear doc Hawkeye,

Well, I said I'd write, and here I am. Back in Noo Yawk, home of a
thousand lights and ten times as many pieces of broken glass. I
told the guys I flew in with that they should really send in the
Marines to do something to make the area safer for all god-fearing
Americans - they told me, "No ma'am, that's too dangerous.
Especially down in Times Square."

So anyway, as you can tell if you're reading this, I made it to
the front and back just fine. I won't fill this too much with what
I saw there - you guys already see enough of that, where you're
at, so it's nothing new to you. And besides, you'll be able to
fill in the blanks with the articles I've enclosed.

We made the drop after dark, in a patch of mud and grass which
will have to remain nameless, mainly because all I know is that it
had a hell of a lot of snipers in the area, but not much else. It
always amazes me, no matter how many times I see it, how people
can completely hide themselves in almost nothing at all. We didn't
lose anybody in the drop, which in itself was nothing short of
miraculous - one guy sprained his ankle, if that counts.

We made it the objective, and we spent the next three weeks camped
out in a series of mudpits, each one wetter and muddier than the
last. We made good headway though, and I parted from the guys at
the final objective. They said I brought 'em luck, some sort of
guardian angel in disguise - casualties really were kept low while
I was with 'em, so maybe what I said about protecting 'em wasn't
so far off. They took and held their hill the entire time I was
there.

Anyway, now I'm back in the city - sold all the articles, and most
of the pictures which were worth half a damn. Waiting for the damn
military board to give me my clearances to go back in. If I get
back in and I'm assigned near you, I'll see if I can't drop by; if
they don't let me, well, I'll probably go to Japan and hire a boat
to take me across to Ulsan; I've got contacts there who'll be
willing to drive me from there to Taegu, and from there it's a
riverboat trip up to the front.

How's the camp doing where you're at? I tried to twist a
quartermaster's arm about the juniper berries - he said he'll do
his best, but he might not be able to. If not, what you do, use
the news clippings I've included - I soaked 'em in a juniper
extract for fifteen minutes, then let 'em dry, which is why the
newsprint's a little blurry in places. It just might work, right?

Give my love to BJ and say hi to Major Remington for me, too, will
ya? And when you get back over here, if you're ever around when
I'm in the country, feel free to give me a call, I'm in the book.
I'll take you out to dinner - I owe you that, at least, for
turning BJ's mustache grey with worrying over me. All my best,

	Dickey Chapelle
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------

It's raining. Steady, relentless, warm, suffocating rain. Nothing
is dry. Welcome to July in Korea. Having slogged around half the
camp looking for Klinger, then all the way back again trying to
keep the mail dry, it's a very wet and irritated Hawkeye who
enters the Swamp and deliberately dumps his soaked poncho on
Charles' bunk. *That* is for being Bostonian! Ha. "BJ! How much do
you love me?" He hides the mail behind his back, expression all
innocence.

He has something behind his back. He has to, he looks so innocent
and his hands are behind his back. BJ eyes Hawkeye suspiciously
for a second, then answers cautiously. "If you're going to make me
get up, I don't love you at all. I spent last night digging a rain
trench." A beat. "Otherwise, me love you longtime!" Big cheesy
grin.

"Well in *that* case." Hawkeye drops the game, tossing a pair of
envelopes underhand to BJ. "But you still better respect me in the
morning." He drops onto his own bunk and goes right into the
letter from home, even though there's another, bigger, padded
envelope waiting for attention. Priorities.

"Ooh!" Yes, he can squeak like a little kid. BJ tears into the
letter from Peg, setting the other on his knee. "Oh wow, look,
Erin's learned to write 'Erin'!" Squinting for a second, he holds
it all about a foot and a half from his face. "Yeah, that says
Erin. Wow!" And then he immediately goes back to reading Pegwrit.

"She's a pre-school genius, Beej." Hawkeye skimreads, looking for
danger signs. Dear Ben, hope you're well, yadda yadda, blah blah,
oh my lord. "It says here it's so hot the sidewalk on Main Street
cracked and almost tipped a *car* over." That's Crabapple Cove's
equivalent of the Titanic sinking.

BJ Hunnicutt looks up slowly, and eyes Hawkeye. "How can the
sidewalk tip a car over if it cracks?" That makes *no* sense at
all. "Who's got any business parking model cars on sidewalks?"
Then his arm lowers, and he grins. "And I thought you said Maine
was cold."

"Well see the car parks with two wheels up on-- it's cold in the
*winter*, Beej." Hawkeye puts aside the letter from Dad. "We have
these things called seasons, you might have heard of them, some
guy called Vivaldi was very big on them in the old days."

Crossing his arms and looking entirely unimpressed, Beej says
dryly, "We have seasons. In summer it gets up around a hundred
degrees a lot of the time. And in the winter, this one time? It
dropped to almost fifty-five!" He gets all reminiscent, looking
off into the distant wall of the tent. "I remember that - everyone
bundled up."

That gets BJ a long stare. He better be joking. "How do you not
shatter into a million pieces here in the winter?" Hawkeye finally
picks up the second envelope. "Hey, New York."

Funny thing is, he's not. "Many layers make a warm Hunnicutt,"
replies BJ, looking back down at his letter, going on to the
second page. "New York? What, another one from that Yossarian guy?
Oh hey, Peg says she's taking Erin for swimming lessons. And...she
got a new swimsuit." A beat, and his eyes widen. "She sent a
picture." A longer pause. "She's going OUTSIDE in that? Where
people can SEE her?!"

"Let me see!" Hawkeye all-but bounces across the tent, New York
letter still held in one hand.

"Whaaat? I'm not gonna let you see *my wife* wearing *that
little*!" BJ's eyes are practically bugged out, and he's hugging
letter and picture to his chest in a deathgrip, horrified look on
his face.

Cue puppyeyes. "Aw, come on!" Hawkeye crouches beside BJ's bunk
and attempts to prise the letter away. He's kidding! Mostly. "Half
of Southern California's probably seen it by now, what does it
matter?"

BJ Hunnicutt lets out a wail that would wake the dead. "You're
right!" He collapses backwards onto his cot, letting go of the
picture and the letter both, knuckling his eyes and trying not to
think of all the men ogling his beautiful Peg. "They have! Oh my
god, they're all looking at...and they can see...and...I have to
go home!"

Fulfilling his role of Not Helping The Situation One Bit, Hawkeye
gets ahold of the picture. There is a pause. "...wow. No, come on,
what? She looks nice!"

"No -kidding- she looks nice! She looks more than nice, she's
drop-dead kidneypunch *gorgeous*, Hawk!" BJ suddenly comes to his
senses and makes a grab for the photo. "*Give* me that!"

Aw, nuts. Hawkeye relinquishes the photo without a fight, falling
back to sit on the floor and clutching the New York letter to his
chest. "Oh, Beej. I think I'm in love. Don't show that to
Charles."

"As if it wasn't bad enough I have to think about half of SoCal
looking at-- watching-- oh, god..." Beej loses that train,
covering his face with one hand and clutching the picture
desperately to his chest. "As if *that* wasn't bad enough, I gotta
worry about *you* thinking about...oh, *god*!"

He can't help but laugh, just a little. Hawkeye is amused. "Come
on, BJ, she's gorgeous. She must have been when you met her, but
she married you, didn't she? Relax. It's - hey, it's from Dickey!"
She sent me a letter!

"She did. But I'm not around," mourns BJ, hand still over his
face. He's going to mope about this, isn't he. "Dickey, huh?
What'd she say?"

"Looks like you're not the only one who got sent a photo. Being as
I'm not insanely jealous, I'll let you take a look at it." Hawkeye
passes over the photograph, which is of the lady herself looking
intently through the lens of her camera. In the background, a jeep
- on her ears, diamond-studs. "She got home fine."

BJ Hunnicutt gives Hawkeye a *look*. My _wife_! I'm not, um,
insanely jealous...no! Just, well, reasonably jealous. Under the
circumstances. He reluctantly gets up from his dramatic sulk and
takes a look at the picture. "Heh! Yeah. So you two really made up
pretty well, huh?" He passes it back.

"*Astoundingly* well." Hawkeye doesn't leer only because he is too
busy reading. "She says she'll try and drop by if she's in the
area again."

"Yeah, probably out of a plane," mutters BJ, staring at his own
picture again. "What else does she say? Or is most of it not fit
for mixed company?"

Sifting through the various clippings enclosed in the envelope,
Hawkeye is paused by a paragraph of the letter. He grins and looks
up. "Oh, Beej. I think I'm in love."

BJ -still- looks unconvinced. "You're in love every other week.
What makes this time any different?" He pulls out his wallet and
sticks the snapshot in a not-so-secret secret compartment.

Brandishing the clippings, Hawkeye scrambles to his feet. "She
soaked them in juniper extract! She's a genius." He's genuinely
rather moved.

BJ Hunnicutt blinks, sitting up straight. "We don't have to
pretend our sake is gin anymore?" Letter from Peg carefully
refolded and placed back in the envelope with the 'note' from
Erin, he practically falls over, getting to the still. "Here,
here! Put 'em in, put 'em in!"

"I haven't read em yet," Hawkeye protests, but it's half-hearted.
He doesn't really want to read them, he already knows what it's
like out here. The clippings are passed to BJ, who seems equally
enthused. "She says to give you her love, here. See, you left an
impression. And so did your moustache." He elbows BJ, amused.

"What? What'd she say about my moustache?" BJ's already in the
process of inserting the clippings into the still, burning his
fingers in the process. "Ow! Ow. Dammit..."

"Oh, you don't want to hear about that part, it's boring -- " He's
hurt himself. Hawkeye frowns. "Someday we'll find an activity
which you can participate in without hurting yourself, Beej."

"Oh, -you- try moving a lit sterno tin without burning yourself,
Mister Grace And Agility," surls BJ, sucking on his fingertips,
moving the tin with a pencil. He carefully disconnects the big
bubbly bit to drop the clippings in. "Tell me what she said about
my moustache!"

"All right, all right." Ahem. "She says, 'Give my love to BJ and
say hi to Major Remington for me, will you?'." Hawkeye breaks off
to grin a rather schoolboyish grin. "Major Remington, that's
great."

"She didn't say -anything- about my moustache!" A beat, and Beej
stands up straight in satisfaction. He did it. Carefully screwing
the bits back in place, he moves the sterno can back underneath,
and turns back, grinning. "Let's call him Major Remington."

"Well I'm not *done* yet, Beej." Hawkeye retreats to his bunk
again. "Um, you don't want to hear this bit, and she says: 'I owe
you that, at least, for turning BJ's moustache grey with worrying
over me'." Sigh. BJ Hunnicutt looks horrified. "My moustache is
grey?" He goes and stands in front of the mirror, staring. "No
it's not. Is it? Oh man, it is. No, it's just the light. Is it?
Oh, jeez," he mumbles all in a row, then looks past the tent pole
at Hawkeye. "You told her I was worried about her?"

"*You* should worry," says Hawkeye ruefully. "I was dark when I
got here...what? No. Well. Maybe. Weren't you?" Cue slightly
guilty expression.

"I was *kinda* worried, that maybe she'd leave angry," says BJ
slowly, with a glance back at the mirror. "You're still mostly
dark. But a lot less dark than when I got here. Huh. No, you
really can't tell. I have light hair anyway." I am not going grey.
I am not going home grey to a beautiful young wife in a two-piece
swimsuit.

"You're not going grey, BJ." Hawkeye rolls over to lie down on his
back and links his fingers comfortably behind his head. His boots
hang deliberately off the end, still dripping rainwater. "And
you're also not instilling me with a whole lot of confidence. You
know there are worse things that could happen, you could be going
bald."

Oh, that gets a glare. It's, um, not receding *much*. "You know
what? I lied - that shirt *does* make you look fat. Like three of
Charles put together." Grump. *I* still have a letter left. "What
else does she say?" Weak, Beej, weak. Hawkeye grins. "Hm? Nothing
much. She's fine and she wanted me - us, wanted us to know that."

Yeah, so. BJ's still a little shaken. He'll be back on his feet
once he has a good sulk, a good bout of drunken misery, and
probably a decent cry. Every damn time he gets a letter he goes
through this. He's used to it. Hopefully, so is Hawkeye. "Well,
good. Glad to hear it. The more people that make it back home in
one piece, the better."

"Well I have to make it home now. I have a date." Hawkeye looks
sideways at BJ for a moment. Hm. "You going out?" To Rosie's, to
get hammered?

"Yeah. You wanna come along? I might get drunk enough to show you
the picture again." Well, at least there's some self-deprecation
in there. BJ puts both his letters - opened and unopened - in his
shirt pocket and starts looking for his poncho.

Oo, hey. There's a reason to get back on your feet. "Yeah."
Hawkeye carefully stores his own letters, plus Dickey's photo,
under what is laughingly called the mattress. "Next time, could
you ask her to just send two, so we don't have to fight like
this?"

<OOC> BJ Hunnicutt gets a mental image of the
freezeframe-before-credits of BJ snarling and Hawkeye laughing his
ass off. Go away! Go away! :)