It's not raining. It's not hotter than hell. It's not colder than
a New England winter. It is, in fact, rather a nice day, and the
casualties have been light recently. And as such, everyone and
their C.O. has made a play for some leave. Hawkeye remains
optimistic, though, jogging to the motor pool. He's got a 24-hour
pass and he wants a jeep. "Aaaaaaack-seeeentchooate the positive,
eeeeeliiiminate the negative..." Oh please let there be a jeep
free.

There's a jeep at the motorpool. It may even be free. The closest
thing it has to a passenger is a pair of olive drab legs sticking
out from beneath its front end. No sound of work comes from
beneath, though there is a noise like the grinding of a bad
engine. A moment's thought will probably determine that it is, in
fact, snoring.

And there's the sound of another jeep approaching, puttering kind
of, sounding as though it needs a hell of a lot more than a
tune-up. Only one guy in it. One very smug-looking guy. Darkish
features, blackish hair, reasonably large frame, smirk. One star
on his rank insignia, pilot's wings. Did we mention the smirk?

The sound of the struggling engine gets a glance. Hawkeye blinks,
and decides he's better off sticking to known channels. He strolls
to the unmoving vehicle and raps briskly three times on the hood.
"This is your oh-nine-hundred alarm call!" Wake up, I want to run
off with our last jeep.

"Hnhgh! I never stole no catfish!" Bang. "Ohhhh. That hurts like I
don't know." The legs wake up enough to pull Rizzo out from under
the jeep, squinting at Hawkeye in the bright light of the morn--
aftern-- uh, day. "Aw, sir, why'd you have to go and do that? Went
and bashed my head on the drive shaft." Grumbling, Rizzo rubs a
smear of grease across his brow. Apparently, he even sleeps with a
cigar butt in his mouth.

The man in the approaching jeep parks said jeep right next to the
one with the headbanging cigar man and the antsy-looking doctor,
smugly, and smugly opens the door, and gets out of the jeep,
smugly. He either knows something, or he has something. Or he just
got laid. Or all three. Or all three plus something else. Stuffing
his hands in his pockets, he comes around the front of the vehicle
and leans in conspiratorially - and this close, it's easy to see
how incredibly, well, unkempt he seems. Especially for a brigadier
general of the air force, riding alone in a broken-down jeep. His
shirt's wrinkled and stained in a few places, and untucked, and
buttoned one button off; his thick black hair desperately needs a
comb; his sleeves are rolled up; there's something off-kilter
about his eyes. "Hey! Hey, this is 4077, right? Potter around? If
he's not, that's okay. Is he?"

Father Mulcahy about this time begins meandering across the square
with a slightly absent, almost abstracted expression on his face.
He's wearing his usual fatigues, with symbols of office visibly
displayed. Spotting Hawkeye, he changes course and begins making a
beeline for the taller man, saying in his gentle voice, "Oh, there
you are, Captain Pierce. I was wondering if you might have a
moment or two?"

Hawkeye is not antsy-looking! He just wants to get off the base
for a day, that's all. "Rizzo, I require this vehicle for a
top-secret mission to -" We'll never know what he was about to
say. The doctor notably does not salute, even less inclined than
usual in his currently fairly cheerful mood. "Yeah, he's - " What
is going on today? "Actually, Father, I was just on my way out, so
- "

The grumbling rubbing of forehead transmutes itself smoothly into
a salute to the newly-arrived Air Force mucky muck, however
horizontal the saluter may be. Seeing that said mucky muck
requires nothing particularly military of him, Rizzo drops the
salute and sets about trying to relight his stub of a cigar while
lying down. He decides to wait for Hawkeye to finish dealing with
the father and the flyboy before giving him the bad news.

Yossarian makes some kinda impatient gestures at Rizzo after he
notices that the guy saluted. Rarr. He looks down at his shirt,
notices the star, then takes it off and shoves it in his back
pocket. "Oh," he says, okay, Potter's around. "Well, see, I've got
this trunk full of Jameson's that this guy I know, you probably
don't know him, but he's kind of a big deal for mess halls, I
don't know. He bought all this Jameson's, but it was too much, so
I bought the lot of it off him with this jeep," he indicates the
vehicle he arrived in, "oh, but you don't care." Why's he have the
jeep if he sold it for a trunkful of good Irish whiskey? And why,
damn it, why does he look so smug? "So I'm sort of making a
delivery." In a *jeep*. That isn't his. Of whiskey. Why is he
telling these guys this?

Father Mulcahy's expression is vaguely befuddled as he listens to
the man with the booze. "I, oh dear." he's derailed. "I know
there's something I should be saying, but - I don't suppose you
get any job lots of sacramental wine?" Oh, how the holy have
fallen. Well, not really - and it's all for the cause of God. He
blinks, recalling himself to himself. "Hawkeye, there's a young
man with two broken arms and a broken jaw - he wants a letter
written to his mother. I was hoping perhaps you could help."

Jeep + whiskey = Good! Hawkeye stares at the pilot for a moment.
"You have an entire carload of Irish whiskey and you've brought it
*here*?" Are you completely out of your - you are not making any
friends here, Father. "Oh, he- heck, Father, I was about to leave,
Rizzo, can I take this jeep? In about an hour?" That's gotta be
long enough for the kid to write a letter, surely.

Yossarian finally grins this big bear-ish grin at Hawkeye,
stuffing his hands in his pockets. "Yup! Listen, stick around,
I'll be right back." He heads over to the jeep, pulls the keys
back out of his pocket, opens the trunk in the back of it, pulls
three bottles out, and *leaves it open*. And he heads off,
whistling, in entirely the wrong direction. Then he pauses and
looks back. "Where's Potter, again?" When he gets his
(forthcoming) answer, he heads in the proper direction.

Jameson's? Like *Jameson's* Jameson's? Rizzo licks his lips, cigar
wedged between two greasy fingers. Jeep? Hour? What? Hawkeye has
just been put on the bottom of Rizzo's list of Things To Give A
Damn About. He instead speaks hurriedly to Yossarian. "Sir, that
jeep don't sound good. Not at all. You just let me have a look at
it, fix it up good as new." He doesn't even waste time getting up.
Careful manoeuvering of the roller board he's lying on sends him
eagerly toward the undercarriage of the booze-laden vee-hickle.

The guy has just...wandered off. Wandered off and left an entire
trunkload of actual real Irish whiskey sitting out in the open
where anyone can get their hands on it and - Hawkeye really wants
to get off the base. It is not to happen. "This guy must have a
hole in his marblebag." He gives chase, skipping past the
skateboarding motor mechanic and slamming the trunk shut. It's
Moral Dilemma moment. "This belongs to Colonel Potter," he says.
Not implying anything about the correctness or not of taking it,
just laying out a fact.

The greasemonkey, now underneath the jeep, answers in his most
innocent gravelly voice. "I dunno what yer talkin' about, sir, I'm
just havin' a look at this vee-hickle." It must be true; he can be
heard working away at the undercarriage of the jeep. Specifically,
the area under the trunk.

Hawkeye rests a hand on the jeep and leans down to take a look.
"What about the *other* jeep?" I want to go to Seoul dammit. "I
know you can hear me, your cigar is twitching."

The ratcheting of tools falls silent for a moment as the heavy
thump of an auto-part being set aside is heard. Rizzo doesn't look
up to notice Hawkeye peeking in on him, instead reaching a hand
out from beneath the jeep to wave his cigar dismissively. "It's
a-ok, sir. Just be gentle with her, huh?" Oh yeah, and the brakes
sorta don't work. Go away! I'm stealing booze!

But the booze. But the jeep! But the booze. But the 24-hour pass
you had to beg to get!...Hawkeye is briefly torn. "You know that
pilot's bound to know how many bottles were in there." Convince me
otherwise!

"I betcha he'll know how many Captains were snoopin' around his
trunk too, sir." Rizzo continues his swift disassembly of
everything that stands between him and that whiskey. He can work
quickly and competently when properly motivated.

That's an incredibly good point. "Good luck, then, soldier. Do it
for Old Glory." Hawkeye abandons the vee-hickle in question and
trots back to the other, hopping into the driver's seat. Let the
guy find his booze missing, I'll be long gone.

Father Mulcahy returns, looking slightly put out. "Hawkeye!" He
trots, trying to catch up to the captain, who no doubt is now
hoping reincarnation is viable so that he can step on the priest
in his next life. "Listen, Hawk, I really do think you should come
take a look at this. That new korean orderly boy is reading 'cc'
to mean cups of coffee, and his input-output on the charts is
quite alarming."

There's a prying sound beneath the jeep, followed by a gravelly
cry of "Yoo-reeka!" Immediately following is the sound of many
bottles falling through a hole in the floor of the trunk. Thank
god none of them break. They've all got Rizzo's head to cushion
them. A couple roll out into plain view of both Hawkeye and the
Father.

Engaged in starting the jeep, Hawkeye doesn't pause to look at the
priest. "Get Winchester to talk to him. Or BJ." The engine growls
smoothly into life and the doctor smiles at Mulcahy. "It's playing
my song." And that's when Rizzo achieves his goal. I should
probably do something about that, Hawkeye thinks vaguely. "Rizzo,
are you okay?" Better be, grumble mutter.

Father Mulcahy looks down at the bottles rolling. Now, while he
might often be vague due to his many pressing duties, the good
father is -not- stupid. "Oh, dear," he sighs mildly. "Gentlemen,
is this something I am officially going to have to put a stop to?"

"Ohhhhhhh. My head." Rizzo crawls out from beneath the jeep and
stumbles to his feet. "Ohhhh." He adds for good measure. Clutching
his stomach, he groans, "I think I'd better go lie down, sir. That
old jeep came apart on me, dropped something on my head." No idea
what was in the trunk. Honest.

And - oh dear - from the direction of Potter's office comes back
the bizarre-looking flyboy, distinctly *more* smug than he'd been
when he started over there. Hands in his pockets again, whistling
some Italian folk song, just grinning. It looks like it's
definitely his day. Then he stops, blinking, looking at the
rolling bottles. "Er." He looks at the closed trunk, and the
crawling Rizzo. "You know," he points out, "I left it open so you
could get them out of the *top*."

"Father," says Hawkeye earnestly, "did I do something wrong in a
past life and this is God's way of punishing me?" Sigh.
Hippocratic Oath, blah. He hops out of the jeep again and heads
for Rizzo. "Let me look at your eyes." Concussed by stolen
whiskey. What a day.

The greasemonkey clutches his stomach more tightly. More guiltily.
"Uhh, no sir! I'll be just fine! Just need a little nap and I'll
be happy as a catfish! Don't you worry, sir!" Rizzo begins to back
quickly away, ready to bolt at a moment's notice.

Father Mulcahy looks from the bottles, to Rizzo, to Hawkeye, to
the flyboy, and murmurs, "Hawk, I know you don't think highly of
religion, but still, there's no need for that." Prim. He looks at
Rizzo, sighs. "Rizzo, I'll expect to see you in confession on
Tuesday, and please be on time this time, and don't leave your ...
magazines behind in the confessional." Turning finally to the
flyboy, he asks mildly, "Are those bottles yours, sir?"

Yossarian's eyes widen as he looks at Father Mulcahy. A *collar*,
the man's got a clerical collar! "Father," he says reverently - he
finally noticed, did he? - "Father, you're 4077's chaplain? I
haven't met a chaplain in *years*! D'you want a drink?"

...heeeey. Just a second. Hawkeye pauses in the act of reaching
hands for Rizzo's head, and looks down. And looks up again. I get
it. "Okay, but make sure you keep back enough of that headache for
everyone, understand?"

Rizzo salutes Hawkeye smartly, almost dropping his headache in the
process. "Yessir! Thankyousir! Gonnagoliedownnowsir!" With that he
turns and does what might be the world's fastest 100-metre limp.

Father Mulcahy sighs quietly, shaking his head. He /knows/ these
men. He politely overlooks Rizzo's theft, counting the beads of
his rosary for the occasion - a sin on his own head, no doubt -
and turns to Yossarian. "Yes, my son, I am a priest. Err, while I
appreciate the offer, I do try not to imbibe too heavily. Can I
help you?"

Yossarian's face falls. "Well...no, not really. I'm not Catholic,"
he says apologetically, "Father." He seems to like saying
'father'. But then he claps a very big - none of this is fat, you
understand, just -big-, like it's not quite in the same scale -
arm around Father Mulcahy's shoulder. "But I want to help *you*.
It would be all right if I helped you, right? I should if I could,
and I think I can, so if you'll let me, I will. I want to help you
by giving you a bottle of this fine Jameson's that these fine
medical personnel are doing a very bad job of trying to steal."

Watching Rizzo leave, Hawkeye shakes his head, amused, and heads
back for his brakeless jeep. "I want you to have him home by
midnight, sir." Yossarian gets a stern look.

Father Mulcahy has a slightly stunned look on his face. "Why,
uh... Hawk? Were you two -stealing- that whiskey?" As if he didn't
know. But, being medical chaplain here, he has to turn a slightly
blind eye at times... until it's pointed out and spelled out for
him. He turns to Yossarian. "Excuse me, I really should take care
of this. But if you can get a line on sacramental wine, I should
be delighted to pay any price within reason."

Talk about delighted, Yossarian looks delighted. The chaplain is
happy! "I'll have to introduce you to Milo, he's that friend I was
talking about." Then he turns and eyes Hawkeye, "Don't call me
sir. I'm driving around in a stolen jeep with a trunk full of
whiskey in the back. If I were your superior, I'd be a horrible
influence and I'd probably get demoted, especially when they found
out about the jeep. But you don't see any insignia, now do you?"
he asks reasonably. "No, you don't. For all you know, I could be a
noncom. You can have some whiskey too. Lots of it. I'd've given
that guy who banged his head some, but he did okay stealing it."
He seems to be a giving kinda guy. He has a jeep whose brakes
work, too.

"Father, I was nowhere near it," says Hawkeye. Telling the
absolute truth rather than being strictly honest. He wants to go
to Seoul! And...it sounds like this flyboy is his kind of person.
"I'll take you up on that, but I have a twenty-four hour pass so
you'll have to finish the party without me." The highly-dangerous
jeep is abandoned and the doctor offers his hand. "I'm Hawkeye,"
what the hell, he wants informal he can have it, "that's Father
Mulcahy."

Father Mulcahy is looking increasingly dazed and appalled all at
the same time, looking from Yossarian to Hawkeye and back. "Uh,
er, /stolen/? Oh, dear. You know, I really do have a lot of
inventorying to be done... and that young man with the broken arms
and jaw does need someone to at least try to write a letter for
him... plus, Mako does need someone to explain to him about
ccs..." Excuses, excuses, as he tries to gently and deferentially
remove himself from the big man's grasp.

Yossarian grins! and shakes Hawkeye's hand with his free one.
"Good to meet you, Hawkeye," he says, "always good to meet doctors
with names worse than mine." It's not meant offensively - it's not
even meant seriously. What's this? The chaplain is...is leaving
him?! "Oh - oh, no, yes, it's stolen...oh, Father, I'm sorry. Yes,
no, the thing is, I bought the whiskey with the jeep, remember?
And then I borrowed the jeep to take the whiskey, but I doubt
it'll make it from here to Seoul to the base, which is where it's
gonna go, but really it's worth about two bottles of Jameson's
it's in such rotten shape, so I'll give Milo three bottles of
Jameson's to pay him back for the jeep I'll have abandoned by
then, and he'll turn a profit." A beat. "Don't ask me how it
works." He drags the chaplain bodily over to his jeep, opens the
trunk again and fishes out a bottle, then presses it reverently
onto the holy man. "Please. Please take it."

"Well, it's.." The guy is apparently fixated on the chaplain.
Hawkeye blinks, amused. "And you told me I was the only one," is
the very, very quiet murmur. The surgeon makes for the jeep again.

Father Mulcahy clutches at the bottle and stares at it like he's
not sure it mightn't be a sniper after all, or worse. "Err, well,
thank you," he says feebly. "As long as you're sure." He's
thoroughly distracted from Hawkeye, except to ask Yossarian, "Err.
Are you sure you can get back again?"

Yossarian lets go of the priest, finally, and claps him on the
back. "I'll be fine! I can buy my way back from Seoul with
whiskey. God love it, it's won-- oh, no, I'm sorry...I took the
name of the Lord in vain in front of you, you'll forgive me, won't
you?" He looks honestly chagrined, but then he's looking at
Hawkeye again, eyebrows up. "Don't go in that one, I'll drive you.
You got a day pass, you said? You're...ah, come on, let me drive
you, I'm a good driver..." Especially when he drinks. This'll be
fun.

***

The Jeep doesn't sound quite as bad when you're *in* it. In fact,
the transistor radio Yossarian's got playing backwards out of the
vehicle, playing - what else? Radio Seoul - manages to cover just
about everything up, filling in the gutters of the engine with
static and badly-retranslated rhythm and blues. And yes,
Yossarian's driving. And yes, he's gone through a quarter of the
current bottle of Jameson's himself. But there's no one else on
the road, and he's doing fairly well keeping them on the road.
"That jeep that guy was under. That the one you stole?" he asks
out of absolutely nowhere. "Don't look shocked," he says without
looking, grinning, "story's all over Korea."

Oh, joy, all over Korea. "Just like your whiskey. How convenient."
Hawkeye tips the bottle in a casual salute to Yossarian, whom he
likes more every minute. This could have something to do with the
amount of alcohol he's putting away every minute, of course.
"Actually, no, it isn't, but then they all look the same to me."

"My whiskey," says Yossarian, his head falling back a little as he
takes a deep breath, "isn't my whiskey. Well, it is right now.
Because I have it. And no one outta all those guys trying to kill
me is gonna get it. But it's not all over Korea, the story of your
jeep is. Not that it's your jeep any more than this is my jeep."
Oh, such an ungodly lot of sense he's sure he makes. He glances
over at Hawkeye, eyebrows up, definitely not paying attention to
the road. "Anyone ever try and kill you? People try and kill me
all the time, but I'm too smart for them. I don't fly."

The thought 'hey, he should really watch the road' occurs, but
Hawkeye opts to ignore it in favour of a much better thought,
which involves whiskey and how it's somewhere it shouldn't be.
Namely in the bottle, rather than down his throat. He takes a gulp
and offers the Jamesons over. "Well, I try not to take it
personally."

Yossarian takes the bottle back, glancing at the road to make sure
he's still on it (which is a good thing, because he was about to
head off it), then taking a hefty swig of the bottle and handing
it back to Hawkeye. "But what difference does it make," he
insists, "if it's personal or not? You'll still end up dead, and
it'll still be someone that killed you. It's *your* life in
danger, so why not take it personally? I've had about enough of
this war." He squints a little at the road, trying to remember
what it is he seems to be missing, then ohs and digs in his shirt
pocket and comes up with a half-crushed Lucky Strike. Somehow he
manages to drunkenly steer and light his cigarette without
crashing or setting anything aflame. "Most of 'em. I was in
Pianosa in the last one, coast of Italy. Finally I just went to
Sweden. Thinking of going again. Good ol' Sweden."

Hawkeye accepts the bottle back, and frowns briefly. Had about
enough of the war, hah. "Sweden from Italy?" Huh. "It'd be tricky
to row back to Maine from here, y'know." At least he's dropped the
'sir'. Didn't exactly take a whole lot of persuading. "They're
trying to kill soldiers. They're not trying to kill *people*."

The jeep rocks slightly as it goes over a couple of
inconveniently-placed potholes. "'Zat so?" asks Yossarian
dubiously, eyeing Hawkeye like he's crazy. "Soldiers're people
too. You think the guys that got drafted really wanna be here
getting shot at? You drafted? I was drafted. Both times. Dunno
what they think they're thinkin' bringin' me back. Crazy homicidal
bastards." A beat. "An 'sides, you can't tell me you've never got
bombed! You guys got shelled a couple times, didn'tcha?"

And that was nearly the whiskey bottle. Hawkeye fumbles, recovers,
and blinks at Yossarian for a moment. He's not sure what the guy's
point is. "That's *not* what I meant," he says, rather sharply.
"And...yeah, we did. Couple of times. Just like every other MASH
unit."

Yossarian blinks again, almost diving for the whiskey too, then
remembering just in time he's supposed to be driving, and veers
back onto the road. "No no I know! That's not what I meant either.
We kill their guys, who are people, they kill our guys. They're
trying to kill *me* is all I mean. And you too. You got bombed,
they're trying to kill you. You really want to die here? At least
you get to go home if you don't die. I think. Do you?"

"Yeah, I do, and of *course* I don't wanna die here." What the
hell does he mean by that, exactly? "They're not - they're not
trying to kill *me*, they're trying to kill anybody." If only
Hawkeye knew.

"But you're included in anybody. You'll be dead either way if they
kill you, don't you understand? You'll be dead! So what's it
matter if they're trying to kill you in specific, or you as just
this guy in the place they're bombing when they're out to kill
everybody in the place they're bombing?" reasons Yossarian,
reaching for the whiskey bottle and swerving around a rabbit in
the road. "I had this friend Nately, he was nineteen. Great pilot.
Had this wonderful whore in Rome who tried to kill me. Wanted to
marry her. Had this great kid sister. And Nately, he thought he'd
take this whore back home with him, but he got killed. By friendly
fire! It's not just the other side trying to kill us, Hawkeye -
it's everyone!"

The bottle is relinquished. "No, no, no, no, no, come on, we've
all known people who've been killed, it's not *people* trying to
kill us, it's the war." Hawkeye is not in need of any more
paranoia, but this guy's logic is relentless, especially when
already half-hammered. "The war's killing everybody. You can't
take it personally." The swerve of the jeep isn't even noticed.

Yossarian shakes his head firmly, which does bad things to his
vision, and he looks a little ill for a moment, but solves the
problem with another few really big shots of Jameson's. They'll
probably have to park outside Seoul and walk in; neither of them
is in any shape to city-drive. "*All* my pals, they got all my
pals from Pianosa. They almost got me a couple times. But then I
stopped flyin' and rowed to Sweden. And doncha think it's kinda
crazy that you're okay about pals a' yours gettin' killed? That
it's just part of the war? That's a load of horseshit. The best
thing you can do when people are trying to kill you - and believe
me, they ARE - is not let 'em. They're all trying to get us, each
and every last one of us."

"I am not OKAY about it!" Too indignant to be angry, Hawkeye
almost loses his seat and has to grab hold of the side of the
jeep. "*Okay* about it?!"

"Nuh-uh, you told me come on, Hawkeye, like I'm the crazy one
here, trying to tell you they're out to get us. That we've all
known people who got killed, right? So what if we all do? That
just means that they're better at it than anyone ever thought!
They have *that* much more of a chance to kill *us*, they're
s'darn good at it. You gotta care about it and *take* it
personally, otherwise you're okay about it, and that can get you
killed. Makes ya not look where you're going, and then *BAM* some
crazy motherfucker comes out of the sky and shells you and you
wake up dead," Yossarian says sadly, passing the bottle back, now
definitely weaving all over the road. He hiccoughs.

"I am...I am *not* okay about it." Hawkeye accepts the bottle,
eyes it for a moment, then abruptly leans over to grab the wheel
with one hand. "Stop the jeep, I'm getting out." Yossarian's
steamroller logic is bothering him immensely.

"It's halfway to Seoul and we're in the middle of nowhere,"
complains Yossarian, wrenching the wheel back out of Hawkeye's
grip, but slowing down anyway, "and it's goddamn hot out!
Listen...listen, I'm just trying to save your life, Hawkeye. You
see like a decent enough guy. I don't wanna see you get killed. I
*like* you. I want you to listen, but *Christ*, you don't have to.
If you're gonna go and let them kill you, that's no skin off my
back, but you listen to me, don't let them kill your chaplain."

Well damn it. "Father Mulcahy?" Just what is the deal with this
guy, anyway. "Look," Hawkeye wants to make Yossarian see his
point, "I'm not a soldier, I'm a doctor, I'm not out here to fight
the war. If I get killed...well then I guess I'll get killed, but
I'm not *letting* them do it." He takes another deep drink of
whiskey, and regards the mostly-empty bottle sourly. "What do you
want me to do about it, anyway?"

Pleadingly, Yossarian stops the jeep. Pleadingly, he turns to
Hawkeye. Pleadingly, he makes his case. "Yes! Father Mulcahy! Your
chaplain. He's terrific. You can't let chaplains get killed,
they're terrific." He sighs and glances back at the trunk full of
lots more whiskey, but decides against it. "I know you're a
doctor. But as long as you're in the war you're also in the army,
and the army's fair game to get killed. Which isn't fair at all,
now is it?" He sighs again, looking very weary, and much older
than his thirty-two years. But then the guy brightens quite
unexpectedly. "And you should come with me to Sweden! And convince
as many people as you can to come with us! If *everyone* goes to
Sweden, we'd be damned fools to be the only ones left *here*,
wouldn't we? If you don't want to, I understand, but the offer's
open. 'Cause you're a great guy." Ah, whiskey. Takes the newest
impressions and turns them into these heartfelt declarations.

"You mean desert?" Hawkeye fixes Yossarian with a long,
scrutinizing stare which is only slightly let down by being out of
focus. There is a pause. Eventually the surgeon shakes his head.
"I couldn't do that. Certainly not to Sweden, I don't like
blondes."

Yossarian eyes Hawkeye, then starts the Jeep's engine again. "If
you're not gonna drink that, give it here," he says quietly. "How
long've you been here? And how long did they promise you you'd be
here when they got you here? Tell me that."

The bottle is handed over without a word. Hawkeye shifts in his
seat to face Yossarian, frowning uneasily. Things are Getting
Serious and he doesn't have a reflexive wisecrack when it comes to
this. "Almost three years." Good God. "And...look, you
just...there are people here who depend on me."

"Almost three years. And how long were you supposed to be here?"
Yossarian insists gently, then finishes off the little bit left in
the bottom of the bottle; one of those weird, uncontrollable
shudders runs through him from the aftertaste. "There are *other
doctors*, Hawkeye. But are they getting transferred in? They're
not playing you fair. What they did to *us* was keep raising the
number of missions so we could -never- go home. We were good, and
they didn't feel like training anyone new, so they just made us
stay."

That has struck a nerve. Hawkeye falls extremely quiet, staring at
Yossarian for several seconds before turning back to the road
again. There is another long, long silence. "That's not how it is
here," he says eventually, in that soft tone that means he's not
sure he believes it.

"All right," says Yossarian agreeably, tossing the empty bottle in
the back, squinting at the road - which is moving around a lot
more than roads are supposed to. He glances at the speedometer -
and they're going about fifteen MPH. He wrinkles his nose and
steps on the gas, and the jeep lurches forward in a burst of
speed.

Once again having to grab hold of the side of the vehicle in order
to not lose his seat, Hawkeye remains darkly silent for a while
longer. Then he takes fuzzy note of the way the jeep is meandering
around the road. "Maybe you should slow down," he suggests,
raising his voice over the engine.

Yossarian gestures vaguely at the speedometer. "We're only going
goin' forty-five..." But he obliges, slowing down about ten miles
per. "Gonna take longer t'get t'Soouuuuul. You wanna try drivin'?"
He's offering in all seriousness. He needs to throw up. "Needta
find a...um...stretch of road..."

Driving?...heck, why not. "Yeah, sure. Pull it over." Hawkeye
gives a musing squint to the surrounding terrain. Not that he
could see a sniper in this situation if he was *sober*, never mind
right now. "Or just stop. How about you get out and push?"

Yossarian just stops. But he doesn't get out. He leans over the
side and ralphs up a good lot of that Jameson's. After a second of
heavy breathing, he straightens, wiping his mouth off and making a
face. "How 'bout I fall over inna back?"

What a waste of good whiskey. Hawkeye occupies himself exiting the
jeep on his side to walk around. "You'll have a hard time pushing
from there. Come on, slide over."

Didn't Potter say something of the sort, once? All that good
whiskey, shot to hell. Plenty left, though. Yossarian's not in
much of a position to answer, but he *can* make it to the other
side of the jeep. He picks himself up somewhat, reeling a little,
and -- there's a sharp report from somewhere on the left side of
the road. The airman collapses silently into the passenger's side
seat.

Not even on the jeep yet when the gunshot sounds, Hawkeye ducks,
dropping into a crouch on the driver's side of the jeep. Oh,
*shit*, he thinks, feeling the horribly familiar, helpless panic
that sets in at moments like this. "Yossarian!" he hisses,
desperately, keeping low out of a simple desire not to get shot.
"Talk to me here. Yossarian!"

Yossarian isn't making any sounds. On purpose, anyway. There's
this not-particularly-healthy gurgling sound, though. Oh, shit,
and he's sloshed, too. Thin, thin blood. Blood that's not going to
want to coagulate. Finally, there's a rather strangled, "Not -
fucking - cold."

Well, he's alive, that's good. But he's hit, and that's bad. Very
bad, because this is not a 4077th jeep and it does not contain a
medical bag. Hawkeye closes his eyes and, very briefly, prays that
the sniper is gone. Then he reaches up to open the driver's side
door and crawl in, keeping as low as he can. "Yossarian, come on,
you don't get to pass out now, the party hasn't even started." He
reaches for the airman, looking for the wound.

And they're in the middle of nowhere, halfway between M.A.S.H.
4077 and Seoul, but they can probably get to either place
relatively quickly if they step on the gas. Provided the battered
jeep doesn't protest and break down on the way out of spite.
Yossarian's eyes fall closed, and then he squints, clearly not
entirely on the consciousness wagon - though whether that's from
the alcohol or the wound, it's difficult to say. "Where are the
Snowdens of yesteryear?" he asks softly, with something
frighteningly liquid to the sound of it. The side of his shirt
sports a growing red stain and a small hole - and a rhythmic
hissing sound. At least the Jameson's has him numb, right? Shit.

"Where are the what?" Hawkeye is encouraged by the fact that he
hasn't been shot and scrambles to sit up. "Yossarian, where are
the what? Talk to me." Oh, holy God in heaven. *Shit*. The surgeon
clambers over into the back seat and scrabbles around looking for
something approximating a dressing.

Yossarian is breathing funny and bleeding all over the seat. And
though this jeep wouldn't have as thoroughly useful a medical bag
as a 4077th jeep would, it *does* have a standard army-issue first
aid kit with sanitized bandages and tape and rubbing alcohol and
morphine and things like that in. "Snowden. Over Avignon. He
showed me his secret..."

Back into the driver's seat again, Hawkeye rummages through the
medical kit, some of the franticness ebbing away as mere
professional panic takes over. "Avignon? That's in Italy, right?
You were stationed in Italy?" He finds some scissors and begins
the fairly unpleasant task of getting into Yossarian's clothing so
he can get at the wound. "Don't get any ideas, here, I'm happily
unmarried."

"S-southern France," replies Yossarian, squeezing his eyes shut.
"We went to Avignon. To bomb it. They said I d-didn't have to bomb
anymore...god, where is it? I told you they were trying to kill
me." He's not spilling all over, he thinks, he'll be okay. And the
best time to get shot is when you're with a doctor. Even if the
doctor's drunk.

"Right, France. I've never been to France myself, guess I'll get
around to it someday." Hawkeye's mouth runs independently of his
brain, which is good, because the adrenalin kick is wearing off
and the fuzziness is coming back in. He finally manages to expose
the wound and winces. "Yeah, you did. Next time you say something
like that I guess I'll listen." Rubbing alcohol isn't the most
pleasant stuff in the world. The surgeon upends the bottle so that
it washes over the wound. "Good thing he wasn't aiming a little to
the left, he would've hit me, and *then* you'd have been in
trouble."

That makes Yossarian laugh, which is good, but bad, because it
makes his diaphragm move, and that's got a foreign object in it,
and it hurts. And he keeps bleeding. "*You'd'a* been in trouble,
Hawkeye, 'cos I lost Snowden an'...issa long way back, issit?
We're half there...oh, shit, your day pass..." God, he's
incoherent.

"I can get another day pass any time, Klinger still owes me from
the time I didn't tell Potter about that incident with Sophie."
Hawkeye cuts a square of bandage, unhappily aware of how unsteady
his hands are, and presses it firmly over the wound. "Can you hold
that there? And I realise I'm a genius but try not to laugh too
much. I'll accept cash later instead."

Yossarian ows very quietly. But does as he's asked, mostly able to
because his arm is so incredibly heavy. He moves it and then it
doesn't want to move anymore. "How 'bout a couple bottla whiskey?
Got more o' that than cash..." he says, voice drifting. "Ow."

"Hey, no sleeping yet. I'm not done. You don't want to make me mad
here." Hawkeye chatters on, pausing only to bite off the tape in
order to secure three sides of the bandage. "You're from New York,
right?" The ability of Maine natives to say 'New York' without any
actual 'r' sounds is undiminished by the army.

"Maybe," allows Yossarian, keeping his eyes shut tight. "But I
know why they're trying to kill me. It's not because of the
Brooklyn Dodgers. It's because I'm Assyrian. But they can't touch
me, because I have a sound mind in a pure body...and am as strong
as an ox." Yeah. They just shot him. "I'm Tarzan, Mandrake, Flash
Gordon. I'm Bill Shakespeare. I'm Cain, Ulysses, the Flying
Dutchman; I'm Lot in Sodom, Dierdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the
nightingales among trees." The bandage is already turning red.
He's got too much alcohol in his blood. "I'm miracle
ingredient...Z-247. I'm *immense*. A real, slam-bang,
honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger." He's completely
babbling now. And he's sweating bullets. "I'm a bona-fide
supraman."

Crap. The wound mustn't be sealed because it's sucking, and the
wound has to be sealed because it's bleeding. Talk about your
Catch-22. "All right, stay with me." Hawkeye finds the morphine
and considers it, but he's drunk himself and his hands are shaking
and he's not at all convinced of his ability to administer a
potentially lethal drug. "Don't you mean superman?" First things
first, kicks up whatever tiny part of the doctor's brain is fenced
off for soldierly considerations. Let's get out of the area where
the snipers are. He abandons the first aid kit briefly to start
the engine.

"Sup/ra/man," corrects Yossarian, and then coughs. Which *REALLY*
hurts. And gets him a nice salty taste in his mouth. "Sometimes I
think Luciana's still in Rome," he says. "Sometimes." His odd
sound of his breathing is drowned out by the sound of the engine,
which thankfully doesn't sound like it's struggling any more than
it was before.

"Luciana? That your girl?" Hawkeye is having trouble turning the
jeep. The road is wide, but the alcohol is stubborn. "Hey, try not
to cough, there's a bullet in there somewhere that'll make a good
souvenir if you don't lose it."

"Luciana was a girl who wouldn't marry me 'cos I was crazy for
wanting to marry her 'cos she wasn't a virgin," explains Yossarian
as lucidly as possible. "And I wouldn't marry her 'cos she was
crazy for thinking I wouldn't marry her 'cos she wasn't a virgin.
Beautiful girl." He tries not to cough. That hurts too.

As Hawkeye completes some semblance of a turn, a new wrinkle in
the day's police action-drama limps its way into sight. Into
Hawkeye's sights, actually, as a fast jeep and slow driver would
probably run him over. Fortunately, where the latter is the case,
the former is not. The wounded American soldier, having used his
standard issue rifle as a crutch to hobble his way out of the
dense flora off to the side of the road, stands on one foot and
holds his arms out in front of him as if to stop the jeep by
force. "Hey, asshole! Watch it! Wounded man!" Indeed, his left
foot is dribbling blood all over the nice clean dirt road.

Out of consideration for his injured passenger, Hawkeye doesn't
simply step on the brake, swerving the jeep slightly and slowing
to a halt just alongside the stranger. "Hey, wounded man! Doctor!"
Damn, look at him bleeding. "Get in, there's a sniper. You're not
Navy, are you? We'd have the set."

"That's another bottle," grimaces Yossarian, putting his hands
over his ears. Wow! All this blood. Blood from Yoss, who's got
more alcohol in him than the red stuff, at this point - yeah
hyperbole, sue me - and blood from the new guy. "Of whiskey," he
clarifies. "I'm not laughing. And I'm not cold. My secret is safe
inside."

"Doctor? Jesus fucking Christ! What do you do, drive around
running down patients so you can treat them?" He's not really an
asshole, he's just, you know, been shot. Adrenaline, testosterone,
all that. Despite his rather loud protestations, Corporal Seth
Ross, USMC, hobbles his way around to the passenger side and
stops, staring wide-eyed at the hitherto unnoticed Assyrian. "Holy
shit, I was only kidding!" Nevertheless, he swings himself
gingerly but awkwardly into the back seat, more or less falling in
as he finally clues in. "Sniper? Where? I didn't hear any
shooting."

"Okay, take it easy," says Hawkeye absently to Yossarian, who is
making no sense but is nonetheless managing to be extremely
creepy. "Yeah, it gets slow around here sometimes." As soon as the
newcomer is on board, the surgeon steps on the accelerator,
producing a pained rattle from the jeep's abused engine and a
less-than-impressive burst of speed. "How could you not hear
shooting? It was from right back there."

"OH MY GOD!" yells Yossarian all of a sudden, rolling into the
footwell and putting his hands over his head. Which hurts more
than anything else so far. And now he's bleeding even more and
he's probably stuck down there but he figures that's the leasy of
his worries. "He's the SNIPER! He's gonna finish what he started!
He's trying to kill me! He's gonna kill us both! Ow! Shit! Ow.
Shiiiit. Ow." A beat. "_Shit_."

"Back there? Don't be stupid! The only shooting back there was
when I shot mys--" He stops short, both because realisation has
dawned and because there's a hysterical bombadier under the
dashboard. Seth surges into indignance. "Hey! I'm not a fucking
sniper! I didn't shoot you!" He pauses to raise his eyebrows and
nod guiltily. "Okay, I did, but I didn't mean to! I shot my foot!"
Speaking of which. "Doc! My foot! Do something about my foot! I'm
fucking bleeding all over the goddamn place!" I fucking swear when
stressed. I fucking swear when stressed.

Dear Dad, I'm not even going to bother telling you about this one,
because you'll never in a million years believe me. Hawkeye brings
the jeep to a reluctant, shuddering halt, and kicks his door open
to turn around and address the minor problem of the airman in the
footwell. "Yossarian! He's not the sniper, it's okay - " And then
the newcomer speaks up and earns himself a Look. You know the one,
it's the one that means 'I did something horrific in a former
life, that's the only possible explanation'. And just as he's
about to say something like 'you ARE the sniper?!' the Marine
plants himself firmly in the doctor's bad books. Hawkeye snaps.
"Put some pressure on it! There's a man here in more trouble than
you, so either get out and push or shut up!"

"He is he is he IS!" blubbers Yossarian, curling up. There's a
not-entirely-healthy sound as he moves in this particular way,
kind of like something tearing in a splorpy way. And then suddenly
there's a lot more blood, and the Assyrian bombadier faints. Too
bad, too, because otherwise he'd really appreciate the
shooting-oneself-in-the-foot. Luckily, the sudden relaxation makes
him unstuck. He *is*, however, a big guy.

Seth is only just becoming aware of how much his foot hurts.
"Pressure?! Shit, it hurts when I *don't* touch it!" Nevertheless,
the Corporal does as the doctor says, reaching down with both
hands, pausing to draw a breath, and then squeezing perhaps harder
and more sharply than he had to. "OWAAAGH!
FuckfuckfuckfuckFUCKfuckfuck!" For the moment he's oblivious to
just about everything. He's forgotten the man in the jeep, he's
forgotten the doctor that he suspects is slightly intoxicated,
he's forgotten the war, and he's forgotten Korea. All that he's
aware of is pain. A world of it.

That sounded bad. And it looks bad, at least from here. Hawkeye
kicks up a gear, fighting the alcoholic haze with everything he's
got, and reaches to try and snag Yossarian under the arms and get
him out where the wound can be looked at. Of course that proves
easier typed than done. "Hey, I need your help here!" he calls to
the Marine, scrambling to get some purchase and try to feel what
damage has been done. What *extra* damage.

The wound, formerly a profusely bleeding yet *small* bullet hole,
has torn open and is now a profusely bleeding gash with a bullet
lodged somewhere deep within. And people could get drunk off the
blood coming out of it. Yossarian just needs some more in his
hands and feet, and he'll be a matched set. Blessings for
everyone. Forget water into wine. He's breathing shallowly and
he's paler than he's ever been before in his life.

Help?! He wants Seth to *help*?! He's been shot! He's bleeding!
His whole life is flashing before his eyes, and he's greatly
disappointed! As the blinding agony of unintentionally inserting
his thumb into the hole in his foot fades, Corporal Ross
begrudgingly acknowledges that yes, he should help. He's a Marine,
right? No pain? Hooyah? Semper fi? Maybe not. But he's an actor,
goddammit, and he can play a Marine. Just a matter of being too
dense to feel the pain. "Okay," he says more to himself than to
Hawkeye. With an ungainly but efficient shifting of weight he's
out of the jeep and standing on his good foot next to Hawkeye.
"What do I do, doc?" He looks down at Yossarian and, if only
because he's overdue for some profanity, says "Shit."

"Oh, God," is Hawkeye's comment. Unfortunately God isn't in Korea,
or at least not in this part of it, and he's stuck with the
Marine's help. "Help me get him out of the jeep, we have to plug
that hole." So saying, the doctor clambers across the seats to
begin manouevering the big airman from the other side. "And be
*careful*, he's in shock."

"Right. Okay." He reaches down and does his best to take a firm
hold of Yossarian while touching him as little as actually
possible. He doesn't really know how people work, and he's not
sure what not to do with a broken one. As he carefully hops
backwards to pull the airman out of the jeep, he asks through
gritted teeth, "He gonna be okay, doc?" He's finally clued into
the fact that his wound is low on the priority scale. As being
shot in the foot goes, he did a terrible job of it, which is good.
Depending on your point of view.

And between them, they manage to get Yossarian laid on the ground.
"He'll never play canasta again, that's for sure." Hawkeye goes
back to the jeep for the depleted medical kit, shaking his head
briskly in an attempt to clear the cobwebs. "Course he never
played it anyway." Digging through the kit with blood-covered
hands, the surgeon tosses all the bandages he can find at the
Marine. "We just need to keep him in one piece, we're about twenty
miles from the four-oh-seven-seventh MASH. Talk to him, his name's
Yossarian."

As if on cue - but not really, no, not on cue, just as if - the
airman moans. In his mind's eye, he sees Dreedle's woman. Who at
the moment, looks an awful lot like a 4077 nurse. Either way,
she's definitely moaning material. Also, Yossarian's side is so
cold it's burning him. Or maybe it's so hot it's freezing. If only
he hadn't had as much to drink as he'd had to drink. Then he
wouldn't be this out of it. Well, maybe he would, he's lost a lot
of blood. Or he wouldn't, because if he hadn't've been drinking,
the blood would've clotted and he'd have stopped bleeding and
wouldn't be incoherent. But then again, it would hurt more. He
moans again.

Despite the blood and the fear and the pain and the war, Seth can
only think of one thing, and it rushes to his lips before tact
tells him it doesn't matter. "What the hell kind of name is that?"
Without waiting for an answer, he awkwardly sinks to his knees and
leans over the wounded man. "Hey, Yossarian, I'm sorry I shot you.
I didn't mean to. The bullet must of riccochet'd after it went
through my foot." Ow. Foot. Keep your mind off it. Talk to the
guy. He takes Yossarian's hand, because that's what you do with
wounded people, and says, "Uh.. so.. Airforce, huh? Bet you've got
it easy. No shooting or dying or bombs or anything, huh?" The
brass is always greener in somebody else's branch of the military.

"Tell me you didn't shoot yourself in the foot," requests Hawkeye,
kneeling on the other side of Yossarian and beginning to do about
the only thing he *can* do - work the bandages together into a
dressing that'll keep the airman's insides on the inside. "Know
how to use a syringe...corporal?" He's not sure of the rank. Took
him long enough to get around to learning Army insignia. Stupid
military.

No shooting or dying or -- jeez. What kinda military *is* this
guy, anyway? "You're crazy," mumbles Yossarian to this Seth guy.
"Crazy. You shot me! Crazy! Lots of dying, that's what you do in
war, gotta be crazy to stay..." All the words are slurred
together, all mumbled. "Maybe I'll get sent home now. You shot me.
Jeez. Hey there's your thing rhymes with orange. You crazy
bastard, you shot Dunbar too, I bet."

"Hey! I didn't mean to! Haven't you ever heard of friendly fire?"
Hawkeye's request earns a sanity-questioning stare. "I didn't!"
That same deferential shrug, "Okay, I did, but not on purpose! The
fucking safety was broken!" Seth sounds as if he were personally
wounded as well. Months in-country, surviving mines and snipers
and grenades, and his own gun shot him. You just can't trust
instruments of indiscriminate death these days. Catching the
question only as an afterthought, Corporal Ross nods hurriedly.
"Sure sure. Stick the guy and squeeze."

The guy shot himself in the foot. By *accident*. Hawkeye abandons
the wistful hope. "Okay, you get over here and keep layering these
bandages on. I'll give him some morphine." I hope I will. The
odour of blood has overcome the odour of whiskey, which is a good
thing because all they need would be the doctor throwing up. He
digs into the medical kit again. "Syringe. Orange." Pause. "In New
York, maybe."

"They rhyme, damn your eyes," mumbles Yossarian, then grimaces.
"Hurts. Don' feel too drunk..." And he wants to tell this Ross guy
off again for shooting him but he's having a little trouble
breathing. Well, there's always the little things in life: "Hey
Sniper - it's Assyrian."

"Oh. Sorry Assyrian." Seth gives Hawkeye a slightly smarmy look.
"He says his name's Assyrian. Try to pay attention, huh?" Man,
some doctor. Can't even remember the names of the guys he's
treating.

For a heartbeat, Hawkeye stares at Seth. "Assyria is a *place*."
Mutter. "Just put your hands on these bandages and try not to
shoot anything for a second, will you?" Getting the morphine into
the syringe proves to require both hands and intense
concentration. Stupid whiskey.

It was good whiskey, though, wasn't it? Very damn good whiskey.
"*Yossarian*," says Yossarian insistently, "Yossarian." Then he
squeezes his eyes shut really tight, and his breath sounds a
little ragged and a little bubbly. "Stings." God, how he wants to
cough it all out. All of it. Especially the whiskey.

"Oh.. right.." Seth sounds a little distant. "I.. uh... shit....
doc..?" And then he keels over. Ain't blood loss a bitch?

Hawkeye is moved to do something he doesn't often do. "*Fuck*."
That out of the way, he abandons the option of pain relief,
leaving syringe and tiny drug bottle to sit on top of the medical
kit. Perhaps later. A glance at Ross decides him that the kid is
probably still breathing. "Don't cough. Yossarian, are you
listening to me? Don't cough." Argh, I wanna go home. "You've got
a haemo- you've got blood in your lungs, don't cough it out. I can
drain it, you'll be good in a second." Whimper.

"Won't," Yossarian manages to croak out. He breathes really
shallowly so he doesn't get a really bad urge to - at least he
knows that much. Well, through instinct. His eyes are open, but he
doesn't look like he's looking at the clouds, or at Hawkeye. What
are his eyes seeing?

Our scene for today: It's 19 miles to the 4077th and 19 miles to
Seoul. The road is not wide and is surrounded by underbrush and,
not far out, trees which make it difficult to see anything and
excellent sniper country. It's a pleasant late afternoon, not too
hot, and the mosquitoes are quiescent. There is a
mostly-broken-down jeep here. There is a passed-out Marine here.
There is an airman with a haemopneumothorax here. There is a
half-hammered and all-frantic surgeon here. It is very dark. You
are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Hawkeye gives Yossarian a brief, tight smile. "Okay, good. This
won't take a second. Hope you'll forgive me if I have to put yet
another hole in you." I can't do this, I can't, I'm alone and
miles from anywhere and my hands are shaking and he's dying, he's
dying and I can't do this alone.

Which means it's -perfect- timing for another jeep to be coming
along, with headlights blazing. There's no way this could belong
to a Korean, even if you ignored the fact that it's a WWII style
jeep with an American flag painted on the side. For one thing,
most jeeps don't have the Glenn Miller band blaring on the radio,
nor are driven by an anglo-looking guy with a craggy face, leather
jacket which has seen much better days, and a battered fedora-like
hat of once-buff coloured material which hasn't seen better days
in a long, long time. The jeep pulls to a halt, and the man calls
out in a midwest accent (just like home!), "Looks like you boys're
having a little bit of trouble, there. I'll wash your back if you
wash mine."

Yossarian doesn't say much. He's thinking, why, I've -always-
wanted to be Swiss cheese! If they think I'm Swiss maybe they'll
send me to Switzerland and then I won't have to put up with any of
this any more. And then I'll get a bank account - those are big
there, right? Bank accounts? And a coupla blondes, and maybe
they'll let me call them Luciana. But he doesn't say any of this.
He concentrates on breathing and not coughing. Feels a little
dizzy, too. He can feel the earth spin.

Jeep! The instant the sound of the engine cuts through Hawkeye's
panicky thoughts he looks up and waves frantically. Thank God, a
jeep that works and someone in it. "Yeah, get over here and help
me!" Whoever the hell you are. "If you're a doctor I'll probably
marry you."

The man pauses on his way out of the jeep. "Well, uh, no offense,
but I'm sort of partial to women. I'm a doctor, but not of
medicine, though." He strolls on over, after first tossing
something from his hip to the front seat of the jeep. "I've picked
up a few trades in my time kicking around this old globe, though,
so maybe I can help. What seems to be the problem?"

Narration doesn't have to stop just because one of the narrators'
viewpoint has lost his voice. No, sir. There's a good lot of
alcohol still in Yossarian - and a good lot in his stomach, even
though he threw up. It's probably -very- good that the bullet
didn't hit a bit lower, or all the whiskey in Yoss' stomach would
be leaking out into the rest of his body. Or maybe not. See, the
only medical doctor here is Hawkeye. Whose vision is probably
blurred. Ahaha. Yossarian closes his eyes, squinching them tight
again. Concentrate on the Glenn Miller, baby, the Glenn Miller.

Oh, boy, where to start. Hawkeye indicates the fallen Corporal
Ross with a tilt of his head. "That guy it's just blood loss,
he'll be fine. It's this guy here I'm worried about, he's got a
haemo-" Not a doctor of medicine. "Sounds like a punctured lung."
The surgeon lowers his voice, leaning a little closer, at which
range the amount of whiskey in his bloodstream becomes rather
noticable on his breath. "He'll drown in his own blood if I don't
put a drain in. Can you finish bandaging up the wound here?" 'The
wound' is a very nasty and deep gash in the airman's abdomen,
partially plugged with an entire medkit's worth of dressings. "And
have you got a pen?" Please have a pen.

The angel-in-a-very-good-disguise hms. "Yeah, I got a pen. Also
got a medkit in the jeep, if you can use it." He jogs back over
and grabs the medkit, along with a sturdy-looking briefcase. He
tosses the medkit to Hawkeye, and presents him gravely with a
ballpoint pen - you know, the kind they gave out at high school
and college graduations twenty years ago? That kind. "Just don't
lose it. My dad'd kill me." Isn't he a little old to worry about
his dad? Apparently not - he goes to his knees next to the airman.
"Ugh. Well, could be worse. I can tell you got lots of snakebite
remedy."

Yossarian has been diligently holding back a massive cough, and -
and - then he can't anymore. But he tries to, so what he ends up
with is a mild convulsion and a lot of swallowing. You know how it
happens, where the violence of a cough is held in but it happens
anyway? And his breathing gets even more shallow, and faster.

Medkit and pen are gratefully received. "I won't lose it," Hawkeye
promises the stranger. The remark about snakebite remedy does not
get a laugh. "Yeah, too bad we don't have any snakes - " And
that's when Yossarian convulses. The surgeon snaps back to his own
personal version of attention, one hand rested to the man's chest
to try and minimize movement while the other digs out his
pocketknife. Why don't field medkits have scalpels in them, he
thinks darkly. "All right, just hang on." The airman's shirt is
ripped out of the way and Hawkeye counts ribs, fighting away
alcoholic cobwebs. "Get those bandages in place," he orders the
newcomer brusquely.

The man obeys silently, but his eyes widen when he realizes what
Hawkeye needs. "Allow me." From the briefcase comes something
which well, it's not a medical-grade scalpel, but it is a scalpel.
He offers it while continuing to work on the bandages with one
hand. "Tools of the trade, you might say." He looks over at
Yossarian and gets to work.

God! Not being really up to talking is such a bitch. There are
*so* many things he wants to say. But no, Yossarian just
concentrates on not coughing again. And giving this new guy a look
as grateful as possible when you're grimacing. Also Hawkeye. He
likes being alive. Boy, will he ever be in debt. He probably won't
be able to desert after this. Damn.

"I *love* you," Hawkeye proclaims, careless with his affection in
this life-or-death situation. The scalpel is gratefully received.
And he wants an X-ray, to find where the fluid is building, and he
wants Charles, who is (whisper it) a superior thoracic surgeon.
"Hold him down," he adds, and makes the incision, small but deep,
cutting through skin and muscle to gain access to the pleural
cavity. He bites his tongue, hard, fighting for the necessary
clarity.

The man simply settles for following Hawkeye's directions,
ignoring declarations of boundless love - he won't mean it in the
morning, anyway. He leans his weight on the wounded man being
operated on in such impromptu fashion. He grunts, "Do what you
need to, doc. Then we can all go home."

Pillow talk, baby. Then OW! DAMMIT! "Guh," says Yossarian with
feeling. Then that guy says something that sticks in Yossarian's
head. Home. Does he get to go home after all? OW. Ow. Ow ow ow ow.
No anaesthesia other than whiskey, because he's suffocating. Good
cause, sure, but christ it hurts. Ow.

It'll hurt more in a second. Hawkeye manages to spin the cap off
the pen with one hand, a feat of manual dexterity that he can
hardly believe himself, and upends it so the inner workings slide
out. On some level he registers the newcomer's words - home, hah -
but mostly, he's concentrating. Lid and nib are bitten out of the
stranger's precious ballpoint and the surgeon blows experimentally
through the tube once or twice. "I'm gonna let the fluid out now,
it should get easier to breathe. Try not to move, okay? You'll be
home in a week." In goes the pen barrel, pointier end first and
tilted downward.

The stranger groans quietly, and mutters to himself. "I took that
pen all the way through Egypt, Algeria, Mexico, and Germany. Heck,
I didn't even lose it in that brothel in Paris when they rolled me
for a drunk." He shakes his head mournfully, still leaning on
Yossarian's chest. "But I stop to be a good Boy Scout, just once,
and..."

Yossarian is now making really horrible sounds, but not on
purpose. They're those kinds of wet sucking sounds that your lungs
make when you're not really breathing through your mouth and nose
anymore. They're those kinds of really disgusting sounds, yep. And
his face is definitely all twisted up now. Hurt. Hurt. Pain. Pain.
Screw Parisian brothels. He's in *pain*! ...Parisian brothels.
Mmmm.

And what a lot of lovely gore is getting all over Yossarian, all
over the ground and all over Hawkeye. Still, though, those
horrible noises are cause for hope and the surgeon sits back on
his heels, sparing the time to cast the newcomer a brief glare. "I
could take it out of him and stick it in *you*," is the offer.

"That's quite all right. If the people chasing me catch up with
them, they're not likely to give you a medal for doing their job
for them," comes the cryptic reply. The stranger doublechecks
Yossarian's bandages in the meantime. "They'd thank you, then
shoot you." How comforting.

True to form, Yossarian's paranoia takes a higher precedence than
his pain, and his eyes widen in panic. MORE? More people trying to
kill us? 'Told you!' he mouths, eyebrows approaching his hairline,
'Told you told you told you!' Ow. Fuck. Ow. He should've listened
to Orr in the first place and stayed in Sweden. Moving his head to
glare at the prone Ross, he suddenly realizes what a bad idea
moving his head was, as the world tilts dramatically and he falls
off it. His eyes close. Yes, he's still breathing, just passed out
again.

Congratulations, Indy. You have earned the wrath of Hawkeye
Pierce. A look of absolute fury is turned on the stranger. "Get.
Away. From my. Patient." Or I will take a drunken swing at you and
end up hurting myself, yeah, see how you like that, smart guy.

"Take it easy, doc. I lost them in Bangkok. I'm pretty sure they
only got two agents in Seoul, and they're currently nursing bumped
heads." He doesn't move, still working on fixing Yossarian's
bandages. "And it seems to me you're not in a position to chase
off any help you can get - even if it's a bum like me." He smiles
briefly up at Hawkeye. "See - I have a jeep /that works/."

Yeah, if you weren't bigger than me and physically in better shape
and sober and if I wasn't a sworn pacifist I would give you *such*
a thump right now, pal. Hawkeye grits his teeth and resolves to
get even later. "Go put a bandage on the other guy's foot, he's
still bleeding."

The stranger-being-pursued nods equably, standing up. "Sure thing,
doc. Got a name? I keep getting this urge to look for a carrot."
He carries his medkit over to the 'other guy' with his bleeding
foot, and settles into a crouch next to him.

Yossarian does this fluttering in-and-out-of-consciousness thing.
The morphine might be a good idea now, at least then his delirium
will be for a reasonable reason. "...gnr..." he says. Ow, he
thinks. Cold, he thinks, and tries to make the thought go away.
Whenever you try not to think of something, it comes back a lot,
like not thinking of elephants. Okay, thinking about elephants is
acceptable. Aarfy was an elephant.

My friends call me Hawkeye but you can call me sir. Ha. "Pierce."
The surgeon checks over the bandages, checks that fluid is still
flowing the right way through the tube, and eyes the abandoned
morphine shot unhappily. He can't administer it. His hands were
shaking *before* the emergency surgery back there, but now he has
to link the fingers to keep his hands still. Not a chance. "I'm
with the four-oh-seven-seventh MASH, twenty miles back down the
road. If you can get us there and fast, he'll live. Unless of
course you need to run off and get dramatically chased over a
cliff or something." The patient speaks. "That's easy for *you* to
say."

The man seems unperturbed for the time being. He's always good in
a crisis - it's noncrises he can't handle. "Jones. And no, though
if there were any cliffs around here, I'm sure someone'd oblige."
He stands up, goes to the jeep, and lifts a wooden crate - with
effort - out of the back. "Oh ye we hardly knew, ye shall be
missed." He puts it in the bushes with the philosophical air of
someone who hopes to get to come back for it, but strongly doubts
he'll be so lucky. "You can sit in the back with the patient and
keep him from bouncing off. This other guy, well, we can prop him
up in front with me. I'll drive."

************

He can talk again. Somewhat. Though he hurts like fuck. But hey!
It means he's alive, right? But at this point it feels so, eh,
grinding. Every time they go over a bump or make a turn, he moves,
and every time he moves, he hurts, until he'd rather *be* dead. Or
at least passed out. But maybe 'cause of the sudden drop in
temperature, it'll get cold enough so he's numb. He's getting
there, he thinks. "Hawkeye," he breathes, bubbling more goop
through the pen, then looks frustrated because his voice just
isn't makin' it over the Glenn Miller. What little voice there is.
So instead he pokes to get attention, then mouths, "Tell Father
Mulcahy I loved him."

Oh for crying out loud. Hawkeye is uncomfortable and nauseous, and
he has the beginnings of what promises to be the mother of all
headaches. He looks down at Yossarian and frowns. "Try not to
talk, you can tell him yourself. But I have to say, I don't think
he'll give up the Church for you."

Yossarian shakes his head very slowly, eyebrows up. "I love them
*all*. You too. Not the ones trying-- no, them too." He looks
beatific. "Every last one of them." He's not really talking,
honest. Just kind of babblingly mouthing words. Really. He's
figured out that multiple holes in his lungs makes for rotten air
pressure.

Uh-oh. This is beginning to sound serious. Deathly serious.
Hawkeye shifts his weight, the better to watch Yossarian, and
lipreads. "That's good. That's good. You're gonna be okay, y'know.
It's not as bad as it feels."

"They came for all my pals and never got me. You tell Sniper he
did good, when he wakes up, yeah? Should get a bonus." He doesn't
want a blanket to make the cold go away, because thank God, the
cold is finally starting to work. Doesn't hurt so much. "Doesn't
feel bad. Cold is good."

Cold? "Cold is *bad*. You've lost way too much blood." Hawkeye
looks intently into Yossarian's eyes for a moment. There's a
distance there he doesn't like. "You know what I said about don't
talk? Forget that. Talk to me. I'll give you something for the
pain. You're a pilot?"

"Pilot and a bombardier," Yossarian tells Hawkeye. His timing is
off. "My timing is off. Help the bombardier! I'm all right." He's
pale and clammy, but he's not shivering. He's in the sunlight.
"All right. It's all inside still."

"Most of it." Hawkeye is worried, deeply worried, but there's not
a hell of a lot he can do now. It's all about getting him back to
the hospital, that's all. "You're not planning on dying on me, are
you? I have a batting average to maintain, you know." The words
are light but the tone is quiet and serious.

Yossarian looks honestly surprised. "Not dead yet? Hey, that's
okay, Doc. It's A-OK." He can't do anything about the fact he's
"Cold. I'm cold, cold. Did Milo take your morphine for my
whiskey?" Hiss, bubble. Drip, drip. On the plus side, he's not
bleeding on the *outside* anymore.

"Not yet, not for years. You're gonna walk out of that hospital or
my name isn't Benjamin Franklin Pierce. Which it is. Unlikely, I
admit." Hawkeye digs into the medkit at his side and finds the
previously abandoned morphine shot. "You're not cold, it's just
shock. You've been in shock before, right?"

"No, I put other people in shock. Like they...never saw a naked
guy in a tree at a funeral before," replies Yossarian, derisive.
"If you get a medal, and your uniform is in the laundry with my
blood on, borrow someone else's..." He looks a little sharper, a
little bit. But he's only making sense a little of the time, and
he's barely audible all of the time, and he's cold or he hurts.
And then he falls silent. Who would send for him? Who would come
see him? They're all already dead.

Naked at a funeral. Huh. "Me, get a medal? Not likely. Unless they
give out medals for most time spent out of uniform. Why did you
sit in a tree, just to pander to my curiosity?" Hawkeye flicks the
syringe with a finger to clear the air bubbles.

"Because I didn't have any crabapples," replies Yossarian with an
unhealthy amount of self-satisfaction. And then he winces a nice
full-body wince. Which hurts because it moves him. Haven't been
any bumps lately, though, which is good. Bubble bubble, breathe
breathe, blink blink.

Hawkeye is surprised. "Crabapples?" Heh. "You oughta drop in on my
hometown when you get back to the States. More crabapples there
than you could shake a stick at." The needle slides home, through
Yossarian's jacket and into his shoulder. The last thing to worry
about at this point is sterility.

Wow. Hm. "Any horse chestnuts?" whispers Yossarian, in more of a
sigh than anything else. Hm. "What a stupid thing. Of all the
stupid ways to d- to get shot. Just proves me right, it doesn't
matter if they mean it or not. Every last one of them, they're all
out to get me. Bet that driving guy is too. Him and the guys from
the brothel." Er. "Don't let him get me?" This would be more
frustrating, trying to talk this way, if he didn't all of a sudden
really not care. And the pen bit is fascinating. Bubble. Eck.

Brothel?...doesn't matter. "I'm not out to get you. Don't get
scared if the breathing seems a little harder, you're not gonna
die or anything." Hawkeye is hesitant, though. The pain might be
the only thing keeping the guy awake. "Do you *have* a first name,
Yossarian?"

"John," says the big Assyrian bombardier. "But my friends call me
Yo-yo." A beat. "Hawkeye is better..." His eyes are entirely
unfocused, eyelids drooping a little. Bubble, bubble. "Doc Daneeka
wouldn't ground me, last time. He was out to get me." Boyola did
he ever want a section eight.

"Two Presidents and an Indian, that's me." Hawkeye listens to the
bubbling. When it stops, then he'll panic. "I'll ground you. Heck,
I'll ground everyone if they'll let me."

"You'll ground me? You'll ground me? I'll marry you! Oh my god,
you'll ground me! Oh my god. You're OK, doc, you're OK. I knew you
were before, I told you before, and let me tell you if I could get
a medal for going twice over Ferrara, you can get a medal for
grounding me, and..." *KAFF* *splpt* but it doesn't hurt, god
bless morphine. Gets another wince, though, because now he's got
blood in his mouth and besides, Hawkeye told him not to cough, and
he's gonna listen to Hawkeye because Hawkeye's gonna ground him.
"Sorry," he whispers, chagrined.

A smile surfaces, but it's lost and alone and it fades fast.
"That's all right. I don't want a medal anyway." He'd turn down a
Purple Heart at this point, he's that disgusted with the whole
thing. "And you can't marry me, what would you tell Father
Mulcahy? Take it easy."

"Ok, ok. Good choice, the medal," whispers Yossarian. "I gave mine
to Luciana. I don't remember her real name...I don't remember. I
hope she's not dead. You're my pal, right? You're my pal and they
didn't get you." If you can be best friends from alcohol, what can
you be from morphine and shock?

It's probably illegal in 1952. "They haven't yet. To tell you the
truth I don't intend ever to die." Hawkeye very carefully takes
Yossarian's hand. "Too many gone that way already." Abyssinia,
Henry. "You gonna find Luciana?"

"Immortal until proven otherwise," whispers Yossarian with a grin,
closing his eyes. He doesn't see the look on Hawkeye's face. He
probably couldn't have interpreted it at this point even if he
did. "Yeah, too many. All of 'em." A beat, his grin falters, then
comes back as a milder smile. "Almost. Yeah. Luciana...my god,
Luciana." What that an 'oh my god! luciana!' or was it a more
subtle statement of direction of worship?

Another smile. This one stays a little longer, but it's still sad
and lonely. All of them. How many of his friends will be alive in
ten years? How much more of this is there to go? "Bring her to New
York? Sit with her in Central Park?" Hawkeye squeezes the man's
hand. Stay awake.

Another ten minutes, ma. No, he's awake. His eyelids are heavy,
though; there's a brief and weak squeeze back. "If I find 'er. I
lost her in Rome. Eight years ago. Maybe I'll find her and stay
there, and shit, Nately's whore's kid sister's twenty now..."

They have to have an exchange of stories sometime. "Doesn't mean
you can't find her. People don't go far from big cities. You'll
find them both in Rome, once you've been back home for a while."
Hawkeye watches the countryside rattle past. What he wouldn't give
for a *proper* mountain. "You *are* going home. They won't draft
you again."

"If they're alive." Yossarian trails off, breathing shallowly and
wetly for a moment, and then he blinks. "Not just grounded! Home?"
Home. Actually going home. He's still getting blood dribbling
places. Petulantly, he thinks it really should stop getting in his
lungs. It has a lot of nerve.

"Yeah, home." Hawkeye steps hard on a surge of jealousy. How come
he gets to go home, he was going to desert anyway...a glance down
at the wounded man silences thoughts in that direction. "Hey, do
me a favour when you get there?"

Jones concentrates on driving in silence. He's in a hurry to get
this damn jeep to the station - not just because of the continued
risk to life and limb, particularly Yossarian's, but also because
he's not entirely comfortable with the thought of those agents he
knocked out in Seoul. So, Glenn Miller stays off, and he tries to
ignore the ugly stains dripping all over his jeep. Ah well. Not
like it's really his, anyway.

"Anything, Hawkeye, anything at all." Except if it's 'let go of my
hand'. If Yossarian knew that this jeep was stolen, too, he'd die
laughing. Oops, said the 'd' word.

No saying the 'd' word on my watch! "Go see my dad in Maine? Tell
him I'm all right? I write but he knows I'm a liar." Hawkeye has
no intention of letting go of Yossarian's hand, and no idea if
Jones is eavesdropping or not. It doesn't matter anyway.

Jones just shakes his head. He's got nothing to say to this - he
concentrates on avoiding the potholes. Not entirely able to do so,
of course - this road isn't exactly a paved three-lane highway.
"You might want to give me some more directions, or is it right on
the road?" He's hitting 55 when he can, but most of the time, it's
not quite as fast as that. Damn potholes. Damn road. Damn war.
Damn world for getting in his way. Next thing it'll be a pit of
snakes. Again.

"Maine. Sure! Gimme an address," he whispers. Yeah. Yeah,
Yossarian'll be all right. When he stops breathing mostly through
a pen, he'll be even better. Then he grins, eyes still closed, and
adds, "Tell 'im I could get there drunk."

"It's pretty much on the road, I'll tell you when." Hawkeye
glances down at Yossarian again, amused despite himself.
"Crabapple Cove. Population thirteen if you count the seagulls.
You'll find him."

The weatherbeaten archeologist-in-hiding nods, speeding up a
little bit. He concentrates on the road, and on the bushes to
either side.

************

Jones sits just outside the edge of post-op, waiting. He's too
polite to just make a delivery and split, so he waits for word on
the patient. Why not? He's probably safer here, amidst military
personnel, than he is on his own, jouncing away from Seoul.

Yossarian is only just coming around, and God he feels sick. In
fact, he feels more like he's dying now than when he actually was.
Luckily, it's just a hangover. And now it's flashback time, isn't
it. "No Texans...!" he says so incredibly gladly. His luck, the
guy next to him probably is.

In absolutely no shape to operate, not even after throwing up
twice on the way back here, Hawkeye has managed to grab a shower
and a change of clothes (that poor blue Hawaiian shirt will never
be the same again) and although he hasn't slept, he has sobered.
Wearing a white coat and his best no-I-am-not-about-to-collapse
demeanour, the surgeon nods to Jones on his way through into
post-op. "Hey, welcome back to the land of the sutured. We had to
take the pen out, it didn't match your shoes."

"It didn't?" A beat, and Yossarian picks up head up and drops it
back on the pillow. "Good christ I'm hungover. Are you hungover?
I'm hungover." Did I almost die? I almost died. I'm trying not to
think about it, thinks Yossarian, but it's like not thinking about
elephants, and now I can't even not think about elephants because
I'm too busy not thinking about the fact I've got stitches on the
inside. Or sutures. Or whatever the hell. "But no headache! Some
mighty painkillers. Am I still on morphine? Talking feels funny."
Another slight pause. "Kind of like biting a numb lip real hard
after getting a filling." And another! "Oh man, your shirt."

"No, it didn't, yes I am, yes you are, and it'll either come out
in the wash or we can adopt it as the company flag." Hawkeye
collects the clipboard from the end of Yossarian's bed and glances
over it. Looks good. He'll have to say something pleasant to
Winchester later in gratitude. Dammit. "The guy who drove us in is
waiting outside. Can he come in?"

Yossarian looks mildly paranoid. "As long as he doesn't bring in
the guys trying to kill him. They might try and kill me, and that
just wouldn't be fair."

"They don't have to. He'll eat the food eventually, after that
it's just a matter of time." Hawkeye wanders back to the door and
sticks his head out. "You can come in now." Don't upset anyone!
Rarr.

Jones rises, brushing off his knees and taking off his hat. Well,
someone raised him well. "Thanks, Doc Pierce." Well - it's better
than 'doc' or 'Pierce'. "How's he doing?" He goes in, to see for
himself.

"I'm doin' okay," answers Yossarian for himself, raising a hand a
little ways, briefly. "Doc Pierce, huh?" he asks Hawkeye, a little
curiously, a little wryly. And then he's looking over at Jones
again, "You guys - and whoever operated on me - you all saved my
life. Usually I'm the one saving my life. So thanks, you did damn
well." At the last phrase, he's looking at Hawkeye again. "Driver
Guy, I didn't ever catch your name. I'm Yossarian - John
Yossarian."

The man grins, face creasing. "Jones. Call me Indy, everybody does
except my dad. Professor of archeology." He reaches down to pat
Yossarian's shoulder lightly before hunkering down next to the
bed. "And I've driven worse cargos, believe me."

Doc Pierce. That's his *dad*. "That's why I'm here," is Hawkeye's
response to Yossarian, though he doesn't meet the injured man's
eyes. He's looking at the chart. See, busy, doctor stuff, chart,
can't look at you right now, sorry.

"Jones, huh?" says Yossarian, voice softer. Entertained, too.
"Doctah Jones. I caught you were a doctor, but not a sawbones." He
absently worries the edge of his sheet with one hand, and watches
'Doctor Pierce'. "Hawkeye, I mean it. Thanks. If you weren't you,
you wouldn't've had to help me so hard, after I messed with you.
But you are. So thanks. For everything." His voice is getting
sleepier and sleepier - he'd like nothing more but to turn over
and go to sleep, but he's too tired for that. So he just sort of
falls asleep, almost midsentence.

Jones looks down at the sleeping Yossarian, and tilts his hat back
onto his head. "Well." He comments it. "Got a place where I can
get some coffee? I should hit the road, but no point driving off
into the sunset if I'm going to fall asleep at the wheel."

"Yeah, you're welcome," says Hawkeye to the rapidly-dozing-off
Yossarian. Jones catches his attention, and the first instinct is
to offer him a drink. But that thought leads only to queasiness.
"Coffee, good idea. If you don't mind drinking it with a knife and
fork."

"That sort, is it." He groans, half-laughing. "Ah, well. I've had
worse. Lead on, Doc. Let me just stop by the jeep and get my
stuff."

"Careful, you can get a pretty high price on the black market for
Stuff." Hawkeye parks the clipboard at the end of the bed and
leads Jones back out into the camp. "What are you doing out here,
anyway? You're not in the services."

The good professor chuckles tiredly. He even refrains from making
comments about Hawkeye's perception. "Nah. I'm a little older'n I
look, Doc. When I was old enough to enlist, we were at war with
the Krauts." And what he was doing then didn't have much to do
with being in uniform, but Indy doesn't mention that. He picks up
his briefcase and his bullwhip from the front seat of the jeep.
"Anyway, show me the way, will you?"

The bullwhip is eyed. Hawkeye Disapproves. "Expecting lions?" See
how much I am not going anywhere until you explain.

"I don't like guns. I try to avoid them if I can. If someone
attacks me, though, I like bein' able to do something about it."
Note, he didn't say he won't pick up a gun and won't shoot. But
hey, at least he tries. Indy shrugs, coiling the whip onto his
shoulder. "Besides, comes in handy when you need a rope."

Okay, pacifism pacified, now back to curiosity. "What do you
*do*?" Hawkeye does get moving again, though. He could use coffee
himself.

Jones grins, following Hawkeye towards the mess tent - or wherever
he's being led. "I told you. I'm a professor of archeology." Talk
about a nonhelpful answer.

Mess tent, yup. Mostly empty at the moment, too, which is always a
bonus. "Dealing with some particularly vicious pottery lately?"
Hawkeye would like to know.

Indy laughs, but there's a wry grimace to the laugh. "No. Leftover
Nazis after an artifact they think'll give them the edge they need
to bring Hitler back from the dead."

Okay, *that's* just a little nuts. Hawkeye comes to a dead stop
and grins, certain this is a weird joke. "*Hitler*?"

The weatherbeaten archeologist shrugs. "I never said they were
-sane- Nazis." He doesn't appear to be joking, though. "I gave up
on trying to make sense of their twisted plots around the time
they chased me and some buddies thinking we were holding onto the
ark." Which Indy was. But Hawkeye really wouldn't believe -that-.

"There are sane Nazis now?" Where'd they start turning *them* out.
Hawkeye collects two mugs of extremely bad Army coffee and offers
one to the other man. "Ark?" Huh. "Why'd they think that, you had
little pairs of animals running around after you?"

Indiana Jones nearly chokes on his coffee. "Wrong ark. Ark of the
covenant, not Noah's ark - box which was built to hold the
original ten commandments." He drinks the coffee without doing
more than making a mild face - he's had worse, yes indeed. "And I
/am/ an archeologist. They thought I might be trying to track it
down, and keep it from them. They .. believed it had mystical
powers which would help their Fuhrer's cause and bring instant
success to the Third Reich. It was considered a weapon."

He knew that really. Humour! Best Care Anywhere. Hawkeye snorts
quietly, and forces down the coffee. "Anything's a weapon if
you're inventive."

Especially when it melts the skin, then the fat and flesh, layer
by layer, from your bones, then pulverizes your bones and lets
your blood and flesh run like liquid down into the floor. But Indy
doesn't say it - bad enough he has to see it when he goes to bed
at nights. He really, really tries not to think about that. "Yeah,
something like that. Anyway, sort of a case of no rest for the
wicked. There's a group of them, they hooked up with the Russkies
and got this nice little inner cabal thing going. Heard they were
after something said to be in an old hidden temple around about up
north a little ways of here. So... here I am, me and my whip out
of retirement."

"Up North a little ways of here is North Korea," Hawkeye points
out, as if Dr Jones hadn't quite noticed. North Korea, as in
opponent, as in will kill you on sight. "You'll get yourself
killed."

"I've had a little practice at not getting killed, Doc." He
chuckles, again wryly. After all, the scars keep him awake when it
gets cold. Indy sips his coffee. "But thanks for the warning.
What, you want to give me a physical before I go get myself shot?
I promise you, I already had my boosters."

Don't tempt me, wiseass. "I just don't want to see you coming back
in here on a chopper, that's all. We're not a revolving door." Not
not not, dammit. Hawkeye eyes the last of his coffee.

Indiana Jones says "Well, if you really want me to come back in
one piece, if anyone comes after me asking after me, tell them I
died en route after being hit by a sniper." He grins in his
boyishly cynical way. "Anything you'd like from the ancient
temple? A souvenier, maybe."

"Ticket home?" Hawkeye is joking. Mostly.

"Don't think they keep those in ancient temples. Anything else?"
Indy knocks back the rest of his coffee, grimacing.

"Holy Ancient Penicillin?" Worth a try.

Indiana Jones chuckles. "Sorry. They tend to be more along the
lines of ancient daggers, scrolls, bottles, dead bodies, and
ancient curses." He rises.

"Nope. Don't need any of those." Hawkeye remains sitting. "Take
care of yourself, if you come back here hurt I'll kill you."

The archeologist laughs again. "I'll keep it in mind, doc. Mind if
I come back for coffee instead?"

"Hey, it's your lower intestine." Poor lower intestine. It doesn't
deserve this stuff.

Indiana Jones heads for the mouth of the tent. "I meant to bring
you some of the real stuff. You never know what you might find, in
ancient temples."

Huh. There's an offer and a half. "No thanks." Well, it's robbing
a church. Father Mulcahy would frown in no uncertain manner.

"Suit yourself. Keep the pen, huh?" He grins one last time, as he
steps out of the tent. Indy always was a smiler. "Dad'll kill me,
but if I tell him you saved someone's life with it, he'll give you
a medal."

Oh, hurray. A medal. My life is complete. Hawkeye nods, smiling
*very* briefly. "Don't get killed."

And he's gone. After a bit, a jeep starts up, then gets quieter in
the background.

*************

It's early evening in Korea. The still in the Swamp is gloriously
full, but it's unlikely that certain residents would enjoy that
fact. BJ is sitting way back in his chair with a martini - avec
olive, no less! - and writing a letter to the sweet sounds of
Radio Seoul. He's about as undressed as he'll ever be, wearing a
bathrobe over his trousers and an undershirt. So there.

Sleep. Sleep is highly underrated by those who have it, and
desperately longed for by those who don't. Having showered a
couple more times today than is strictly warranted, Hawkeye
wanders into the Swamp. "That guy is out of his mind," he
announces. Meaning the just-now-departed Dr Jones. "He enjoyed the
coffee." Which means, hi, I need to talk about something and
intend to be incredibly circumspect about it.

BJ, being as incredibly perceptive as he is, groks that, so to
speak. He was pretty much done with the letter, anyway. With a
couple of exes and ohs, he signs it and folds it up, speaking as
he puts it down. "He actually drank the whole cup," he says, as
though he doesn't believe it. Raising his eyebrows, he finally
grins, "His digestive tract'll probably fall out on the road. Have
you slept yet?"

"He drank *two*. I'm amazed he didn't fall into dust." Hawkeye
sits heavily on the edge of his bunk and regards the still with
the gloomy expression of one who has only just shaken a monstrous
hangover and isn't yet ready to contemplate more booze. He waves a
hand at BJ. "I'll sleep in a minute."

Finally just putting his martini down on the little table next to
his chair, BJ folds his hands over his stomach and drops his head
to the back of the chair, watching his friend. "This really
rattled you, didn't it. It wasn't just the standard baloney that's
not supposed to happen, was it?" The 4077th deals with the absurd
all the time. A guy who shoots himself in the foot and a random
brigadier general in a stolen jeep with a trunkful of whiskey who
gets shot in the side by accident on the way to Seoul, that's
*normal*. But Hawkeye's really offbalance.

For just a second, Hawkeye looks at BJ with that wide-eyed
expression of 'I don't know what you're talking about'. It doesn't
last, and he exhales, looking away and shrugging. "I dunno, I keep
thinking about something he said to me. That if you don't take it
personally, that means you're okay with it." It's bothering him.
*Okay* with it? Hell no!..and yet he's still here.

While BJ is perceptive, he's no mind-reader. Also, the only bits
that circulated around the M.A.S.H. were the funny bits - like the
whiskey and the unkemptness of the muckety-muck, and the fact that
it wasn't a sniper, it was just some schmuck; like the fact that
Hawkeye and Yossarian were driving to Seoul drunk off their asses,
and the guy with the bullwhip showing up...okay, not just funny
bits, amazing coincidences, too. But you know, private
conversations stay that way until one of the conversants spills.
Therefore, all BJ can offer is a mildly confused look and an
apologetic, "Take what personally? Okay with what?"

Oh yeah, BJ wasn't there. "The war." Hawkeye gestures
economically, nonetheless managing to take in all of Korea.
"People dying." You know, the usual.

All right, that's got BJ puzzled. "That guy said you should take
the war personally? That's crazy! You'd have to be mad at the
world. I mean, it's not your fault people are shooting at other
people."

Mad at the world, don't know anybody like that, ahem. "He
said...if they're trying to kill *everyone* that means they're
trying to kill any *one*." Hawkeye is tired and miserable and
still has blood under his fingernails, dammit.

That's gross. And after so many showers, too. Apparently Yossarian
gets under one's skin. BJ leans in, resting his elbows on his
knees, and does that earnest look he's so good at. "You know that
doesn't make sense, right? *They're* trying to kill us, and
*we're*...well, we're saving lives. But our *side* is trying to
kill *them*. That's the way this 'war' thing has worked since the
dawn of time. We just had the rotten luck to be draftable when
this one rolled around."

"No, BJ, it *does* make sense." Yossarian's logic is like a
bulldozer, especially when one is tired. Hawkeye rubs briefly at
his temples with one hand. "I realise I've said this before, but
just how culpable are we? I'm not exactly risking all I've got to
bring the war to an end, here."

BJ shakes his head. "Listen to you. What'd he *say*? Look, he's
probably crazier than Klinger wishes he were. He's not a young
guy, and he's higher ranked than Potter - he's probably been to
hell and back hundreds of times. That does things to a guy." He
sighs and stands up, running a hand through his hair, then goes
over to put water on to boil. "We're doing what we know how to do.
Make people better. And if we can't, then at least make dying a
little less painful than it would be otherwise. Whaddya think we
*should* do, stomp over there and bawl them out for being idiots
and shooting people?" A beat. "They'd shoot us!"

Still sat on the edge of the bunk, Hawkeye gazes bleakly off into
space as his friend speaks. "For evil to triumph it's only
necessary that good men are silent." He can't remember who said
that. "He was trying to convince me to desert."

BJ sighs, going digging for tea. No tea. Time to raid Charles'
stash. He has chamomile. "Deserting for someone in combat would
make sense. I mean, it's their job to hurt people. So if they
desert, or dodge the draft, that's okay." Oho, there it is. In his
footlocker. "But our job is different from his." Dropping a couple
of teabags in the pot, BJ looks back at his friend. "We start out
with an oath, Hawkeye. I like to think that even though the kids
we patch up go back into combat, sometimes, we're keeping that
oath. It's a catch-22 situation - if we don't fix them, we
lose...they're still hurting. If we do fix them, they go out again
and maybe get hurt again, or killed - and we both lose. We do what
we *can*. We try and make life a little bit more bearable for
people who're going through hell."

It all makes sense. BJ is very good at making sense. Hawkeye is
very good at resisting sense. He shifts, half-turning to face the
other surgeon. "But that's what everybody's telling themselves!
Just doing my part, doing what I can, people depend on me, if I'm
not there people get hurt...the whole *war* is telling itself
that. Oh, sorry, *police action*."

Apparently, Hawkeye's good at resisting good sense. He easily
falls prey to paranoid sense. Says a bit about the fellow, hmm? BJ
frowns a little, unable to resist the urge to poke the teabags in
the pot, not quite stirring but not leaving well enough alone. The
smell of chamomile has already begun to permeate the air. "Most of
the people out there telling themselves that are also convinced
that in order to *make* people accept democracy, they have to kill
as many communists as possible. Well, *yeah*. If you kill the
communists, there won't be any. But there'll also be a lot of
really ashamed kids going home to eat mom's apple pie, which is
now safe from the wiles of the red terror." Woah, got a little
sidetracked there. Wrinkling his nose, BJ shakes his head again
and scoops the teabags out - they, as always, look like drowned
mice. "What I mean is, I get your point. But you'd feel worse if
you deserted. You know how often the choppers come in with
wounded. What makes you think you'd forget if you headed off to
Jamaica or wherever?" Now he's fishing for clean cups. "You'd be
sitting there, waiting for the war to be over so you could go
home, fretting over the guys you weren't saving but you *knew*
were there. Maybe dying on the operating table because no one but
you could've helped 'em."

"I'm not gonna *desert*, BJ." Hawkeye flops onto his bunk,
shifting to lie on his back and do some serious staring at the
roof. "I can't do that." There is a pause. "But just by being here
I'm helping the war along. So I can't go and I can't stay."
Claustrophobia twinges. Never has anyone been so effectively
trapped.

"Yeah," agrees BJ, studiously avoiding looking at Hawkeye. He
pours the other man a cup of tea, and sets it down next to him,
then goes back and stands by his chair, arms crossed. You know,
watching his martini to make sure it doesn't pull a fast one.
"Your Catch-22. But what would you do? You can look at it as
choosing the lesser of two evils, staying here and fixing guys up
and sending them back in, or you can look at it as doing your
part," he says, then pauses significantly and looks back at
Hawkeye, "to *right* the evils being done. Yeah, all it takes for
evil to happen is for a good man to do nothing - but you're not
doing nothing. You're a healer; you're healing people. You stop
their bleeding, you sew them up, you take away their pain, and you
make them laugh. You let them remember they're human, and that's
such an incredibly vital thing."

Cog in a war machine. Hawkeye is very tired, and heartsick, and he
wants to go home. But this guy is as relentless in his way as
Yossarian. Faded blue eyes flick to BJ, then back to the roof
again. "It's not enough, is it?" Barely audible.

BJ's voice is low as he answers, "It's never enough. You know
that." He picks his martini up again and takes a sip, then watches
the olive. "But at least you have the satisfaction of going home
at the end knowing you didn't kill anyone, and that a lotta guys
who would've been dead without you are going home, too."

There is a long, dark pause. This is the kind of conversation
Hawkeye has with himself just about every ten minutes on a bad
day. "And this place would be a lot less interesting without me."
Humour as a defense mechanism? Pshaw.

BJ raises his eyebrows. "Well, *I*'d be miserable. Can you imagine
being in here with Winchester and - with my luck - Burns redux?"
Then he grins. "The nurses would get all complacent, too. It'd be
horrible." He finishes off the martini and thoroughly enjoys his
olive. "Now listen up, I'm prescribing. Drink your tea and get
some sleep, and don't call me in the morning."

Winchester and Burns both at once? Doesn't bear thinking about.
"Yes, doctor." Hawkeye nonetheless ignores the first part of that
prescription, for the very simple reason that his eyes are
drifting closed already. "Will you also...also be..." The
witticism trails off into a mumble.

If Yossarian weren't recovering from almost dying, BJ would sock
him one for messing with Hawkeye like that. It's tempting anyway.
He sighs, folds up his letter and sticks it in an envelope,
addresses it, and turns out the light.