M*A*S*H: Marigold Wine 11/? H/T [M/R]

[ficbyaura218]

Title: "Marigold Wine" part 11/?

Author: Aura218

Pairing: Hawkeye/Trapper, Hawkeye/others

Genre: Drama, romance, longfic, postseries, 60s

Summary: In the 60s, Trapper visits his old army buddy at a hippie commune, where Hawkeye has retreated to find peace.

Rating: R/M

Read: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6
| Part 7| Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10

Part 11



Trapper sat on the sofa in front of the fireplace drinking his coffee, watching Hawkeye, lost in thought. Strange, strange morning. On one hand, he was worried about Becky. On the other, he felt like he could sprout wings and fly up to the tops of those swaying oaks out back.

"Did you hear that storm all night?" Hawkeye said.

"Hm?" Trapper said.

Hawkeye sat beside him on the sofa, sending up clouds of ash, and dropped his legs in Trapper's lap. The warmth seemed to spread to improbable square inches from point of contact.

"You all right?" Hawkeye said.

Trapper fanned his face with one of the flatter pillows. Affecting Vivian Leigh, he drawled, "Oh, kind sah, I do believe yuv tahken mah maidenhood!"

"Rat." Hawkeye chuffed him on the side of the neck, lingering fingers stroking his throat.

"Did I mangle your mind?" Trapper grinned at him over his mug.

"Always." Hawkeye sat up so they could kiss.

Hawkeye drank his coffee left-handed while he pulled Trapper closer to him with his right. They took a moment. Trapper was happy. Absurdly so. Happier than he'd been in months, years even, since the divorce and the dark times before. He thought he'd become the kind of guy who couldn't have any relationship that lasted longer than scrambled eggs the morning after. This was a terrible idea, getting swept up from one night of good sex. One long night. They hadn't come back to the cabin to sleep, after all.

Near midnight, when they were spent from each other, they'd smoked a joint and eaten peanut butter and blackberry sandwiches. Trapper told Hawkeye about a guy he'd spent a little too much time with in med school, which Hawkeye had already guessed at in generalities. Trapper had no idea there was any way, back in the fifties for god's sake, that Hawkeye had recognized that Trapper had the potential to go that way. Hawkeye asked him, "So what are you?" and Trapper didn't have a word for what he was calling himself -- gay, bisexual, straight. Those words were like wearing someone else's clothes. He was divorced, he was involved with his best friend, he had a complicated past. He was who he was and anything more would be someone else's ideas, not his own.

While they laid back and listened to the far-off rumbling, Trapper asked Hawkeye when he'd gone off-road exploring himself, in the romantic sense. Hawk was an unsurprisingly advanced youth -- fifteen, with friends he met in New York when he was sent to his Jewish aunts on his mother's side. He spent the summer going to jazz clubs in the Village, flashing his fake ID. He was supposed to be taking classes at The New School, but didn't learn a single thing. ("Except which free clinic would cure your anal warts without a psych eval." "Really?" "Dad was so proud.")

They made love a second time. This time it was slow, soft pillows, rainstorm and shadowy candlelight on Hawkeye's golden skin as Trapper kissed down his spine. Cracks of lightning outlining the raindrops on the sheets and each other as they kissed. Hawkeye's legs cradling Trapper's waist as they rocked together, whispering lovers' nonsense.

Trouble. Hawkeye had a history of disaster. Ever since Missy Mushroom's Geisha House, where Trapper played Go with a male geisha on his lap and stifled the urge to say yes to the propositions the pretty girl with a hard-on was whispering in his ear, while Hawkeye took his 'lady' of the evening into the back rooms.

Trouble tasted like coffee as the morning sun burned the mist from the trees. Trapper kissed a line to the spot behind Hawkeye's ear and sucked. Hawk hissed. There were words in the back of his mind begging to be let to the tip of his tongue. Words he knew were plain stupid to even think right now. Idiotic, schmoopy three little words.

"We need to go," Hawkeye said.

"Hm?" Trapper said into his throat.

"Becca. Lena."

"Never met 'em."

Hawkeye's hands pulled at his hair. Trapper smiled and continued despite duress.

"Darling, as much as your tongue in my ear is tuning my central nervous system like a violin . . ."

Trapper sighed and sat back. Hawkeye didn't look all that keen to leave the sofa, either. Life was happening already.

"She's your daughter. What do you want to do?" Hawkeye said.

Trapper scrubbed at his face. He could use a shave. "Walk out that door? See what happens next?"

Hawkeye held his hand as they did just that.

*

There was a time, Trapper thought, when manipulating the establishment to bend to their will was second nature to he and Hawkeye. They didn't always get their way, but they usually made something happen. A deposed general, a humiliated Frank, a better industrial popcorn popper. What was a bunch of kids looped out on mushrooms compared to the United States Army?

Hawkeye and Trapper set their feets in motion to the last place they saw Bear. If he was keeping something over the women, maybe he could be convinced to order Becky to leave the group, if requested to do so by her father. At least, that was Trapper's best guess. Nothing about this Exin-- Excu -- ECB, let's call them for short -- group made any sense.

"They're like Marines," Hawkeye said abruptly.

Trapper looked up from the sloped path and nearly fell in a muddy hole. "Come again?"

Hawkeye ducked away from a low hanging branch and got spritzed anyway. "The women who go through these 'reparenting' rituals. Y'know, 'one two three four, I love the Marine Corps.'"

"Brainwashed," Trapper said.

"Those guys kill themselves for fun."

"The more they punish themselves, the less they want to leave," Trapper said.

"Boo yah," Hawkeye said without feeling.

"Do you ever go to the veterans' events?" Trapper said.

Hawkeye kicked a rock. They both watched it skitter, knock into other rocks and send them rolling down the hill. "No. Only one -- the first year."

Any soldier's first year home was an event unto itself. They all had narratives about the months in the dead time between landing and their first anniversary, especially the guys who also celebrate their Live Day, the day they didn't die. The adjustments, the allowances others made for them, the hours they spent not sleeping. Do you move past it? Are you a different man after a year? Of course not. You're always you, no matter where you go.

"I had to go to the V.A. for psychiatry," Hawkeye admitted.

Trapper glanced at him. Hawkeye was looking at the road ahead.

"I used to go to the beef and ales on Thursdays just to have someone to talk to," Trapper said. "Louise sometimes went along, but I liked it better when she stayed home. I wanted to see people who were, you know . . ." He waved his arm in the air, trying to talk with gestures.

"Real people."

"Yeah."

Hawkeye reached out and took Trapper's hand. Surprised, Trapper squeezed it. Something zinged between them, down their arms and across their connected hands and up into their hearts and minds. Hawkeye met Trapper's eyes. They stopped walking and stood there a moment. The air smelled like mud and rain. A branch bent under the weight of rainwater and the drips clattered down the forest like shell fragments. Hawkeye twined their fingers together and pulled him close. Trapper kissed him. Hawkeye was trembling against him.

"C'mon," Trapper said.

They kept moving.

*

"We go from camp to camp to swap knowledge and learn what we can from the people we meet, and to teach them our ways," Becca said. "Knowledge is as valuable as food or medicine, you know? We should all be embracing a barter economy if we want to keep our communes going. How many communes have failed because they didn't know how to irrigate their crops, or manage their families?"

Lena nodded as she shook the stones out of a colander of black beans someone had thrust into her hands. It seemed if you stepped into the women's camp, you were put to work.

Becca twisted another tuft of plant fiber around her spindle. "I've only been here a year, but Bear says I really get where it's at. See those tents? I bartered them for a few spools of yarn. Isn't that silly? They needed blankets more than the tents. I also manage the women's group, well, not as a leader, since we're a socialist cooperative. More like a spokeswoman. I tell Bear what goes on here so he can make the best decisions for the whole group."

Becca was a natural saleswoman. Her only failing was that she was so sure of her product, she didn't notice when she was failing to convince her audience as well as she had convinced herself.

"And does he?" Lena said.

Becca looked up, surprised to be interrupted. "Yes. Of course he does."

Lena looked at the other women around the campfire. Two were spinning, a few were braiding a child's hair or minding a baby, one was stirring something in a pot of black water that didn't smell like food. None of them met her eye.

"Always?" Lena asked.

Becca's smile looked fragile. "When he can. He has a lot of responsibilities."

Lena said in her best nonaccusatory tone, "Of course he does. You know, I've heard quite a lot about you from your father," Lena said.

Becca's fingers twitched on her spinning, but her face remained neutral. "How do you know my father?"

"He's my husband's friend. He's very worried about you."

"Who's your husband -- it isn't Hawkeye, is it?

Lena blinked. "I --"

Becca laughed. "It is! Wow, no kidding, old home week. Hawkeye's a blast! I remember him -- when I was a kid, he came to the house. They were like Frick and Frack in the war, did they tell you? God, Korea, it wasn't even like a war, not like our war over in Vietnam."

Lena set down the colander of beans. "He very much wants to speak with you."

Becca couldn't seem to get her next mess of plant fiber started on the spindle hook. Her fingers spun the handle in short, jerky movements. "He's here? What's he doing, following me?"

"Lena?" Bethany appeared at her elbow, holding a Tupperware cake cover upside-down by the handle, half filled with rice and beans. Alera, beside her, toted a terra cotta bowl of the plum sauce.

"Hi." Becca dropped her spinning into her lap. "Do you girls need something?"

Alera pointed to the Coleman tents near the treeline. "Are those the tents where the women in solitary are staying?"

Becca looked them over. "Solitude. They're meditating. Who said?"

Bethany tucked her hair behind her ear. "I dunno, that woman over there? She said there's women who just, um, did some ritual thing? And we could bring them rice and beans?"

Lena watched Becca deliberate a half second while her welcoming smile twitched. "Thanks! Just leave it by the door if they don't answer."

There are times when one can't define the sort of unease they feel about a new person. Sometimes that 'something's wrong' feeling comes on quickly -- as with a man who's undressing one with his eyes -- while other times it takes observation to discern what brand of unpredictable or untrustworthy that person may be. Lena didn't like to criticize confidence in a young woman, but confidence was a world away from arrogance or manipulation. To say nothing of outright lying.

Lena watched Becca watch Alera and Bethany walk to the Coleman tents. "So . . . I met Bear."

Becca smiled. "Isn't he wonderful?"

"He . . . leaves an impression."

Becca rolled her fibers between her palms. "He's taught me so much. I mean, it scares me sometimes how far ahead of me he is, spiritually."

Becca had a crush. Her adoration was effusive as she went on about Bear's intelligence, his years of international study and travel, his connections to well known holy men. Lena could feel her heart sinking as she watched all the tell-tale signs of a young girl sunk deep into a sinkhole of love with a man who couldn't possibly feel half the care she felt for him. The very thought of that . . . that hippie making time with this fresh, bright-eyed kid made Lena want to dress Becca head to toe in a nun's habit and ship her to a mountaintop in France.

"I dropped out of college because Bear says it only teaches you what to think about, not how to think." Becca added, "He doesn't force us to do anything."

"I didn't say he did," Lena said.

Becca didn't mention any baby of her own. Lena didn't know how to ask. She got the distinct impression that Becca and Bear weren't sleeping together, but she couldn't be sure.

Becca was looking past them, at the Coleman tents where Alera was having an intense-looking discussion with a woman who sat just inside the tent.

"Becca, how old are you?" Lena said.

"Twenty-one. Well, okay, I think I can be honest with you because you've been so great. I'm really nineteen, but Bear says I have an old soul."

"Oh?" Lena said.

"I really do. You wouldn't believe all the stuff I've been through."

Lena smiled politely.

She hated children. Not all: overly grown children. She'd rather teach an eight year old who was eager to learn than a nineteen year old who'd seen it all.

"Your people really shouldn't be talking to women in seclusion." Becca was looking at Alera and Bethany.

Lena turned. Bethany was sitting on the rocks beside the unzipped mouth of a tent, in which a woman appeared to be hiding her tears. Lena could call Alera and Bethany over and they would come, despite not being her students. And then her group would return to the women's barn, and Becca's group would go about its daily business.

"Did you hear me?" Becca said, anger growing.

Lena's heart jumped. She gathered that Becca was used to having her preferences given precedent.

"They're not 'my' people," Lena said. "I live with them, not control them."

Becca whirled on Alera and Bethany. "A pip," that was what Hawkeye would call her. Lena had never met a real 'pip', but she gathered that it was noisy and young. The other women at the firepit didn't interfere with Becca. One took her child to another bench to finish her hair. Lena noticed that the woman and child were dissimilar by physical appearance, and wondered if they had a similar relationship that she and Jeremiah had.

Bethany and Alera moved fast when Becca came at them, stomping across the beach and demanding explanations. Becca knew how to be the queen in girl world -- she didn't order, she made other women feel small and stupid, the way a man's world subconsciously made young women feel all the time. Lena would be intimidated by Becca if she was Bethany and Alera's age and thought that a woman's confidence was as difficult to cultivate as flowers from a mountainside.

Lena caught up to her girls as they retreated to the Sitsips buffet line at the other end of the beach.

"What's her problem?" Alera said, angry for being made to feel ashamed of herself.

Lena put her arm around Bethany's shoulder. The girl was hiding her tears behind her long hair. "It's okay. You didn't do anything wrong. She's a very marginalized, frightened young woman, in a very bad situation."

"Does that mean she's allowed to be a b-i-t-c-h?" Bethany said in a soggy voice.

"A little bit," Lena said. "I mean, no, of course not. But it does explain an awful lot."

"Those poor women," Bethany said.

Lena led the girls up the beach, equidistant from the camp and the Sitsips women. She drew them into a clearing in the bushes, where they could sit on someone's long forgotten canoe and talk in relative privacy.

"You girls did good," Lena said. "So what's the deal?" It was a Hawkeye phrase.

"Have you read 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Gilman?" Bethany said.

"No," Lena said. "What's going on?"

"You really should, it --"

"Bethany," Lena said.

"They're supposed to sit in there until they agree to give up their babies," Alera said.

"What?" Lena said, horrified.

"They both just had babies, like, a few months ago," Alera said. "But they're saying the kids don't belong to them, they belong to some god or something, until the god says who the kids' parents are. They're called weaning women, like, they're just there to provide the milk."

"And then they're weaned off?" Lena said."That's what we read."

"No, you don't get it," Bethany said. "Their kids are weaned off of motherhood. Meanwhile the mothers are supposed to just sit in there and go crazy. 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is about how women used to be secluded or 'convalesced' after they had a baby and just lie in bed for months. That's what they're doing. They're all full of postpartum depression and totally manipulatable."

"I think they'd agree if their guru told them to paint themselves purple and light their hair on fire," Alera said.

"So that's how they do it," Lena said.

"Yeah," Alera said. "Highly ritualized gaslighting."

"And look around," Bethany pointed out. "No one is standing up for these girls. It's institutionalized."

"Everyone else here has gone through it," Lena said. "They agree, or . . . no." She looked over the encampment. Women were tired, working hard. None of the children resembled each their mothers. "The baby-making must be ritualized, too. To induct them, don't you think? Join the group, have a baby? And then if they play along, somewhere along they get some baby, eventually."

"The mother said they hoped their kid would be sent away, so they wouldn't have to see someone else raise it," Alera said.

Lena nodded. "I don't know what we can do about this. There's so many of them."

"Call the cops?"

Lena swallowed. "I guess it'll come to that."

"This place gives me the creeps," Bethany said. "Can we go now?"

While the other women reclaimed the dishes, and Bethany and Alera walked together back to the women's barn, Lena returned to Becca. When she thought no one was watching, Becca sat staring at the fire, her spinning slack in her hands. Her eyes looked far away at nothing.

Lena sat beside her on the bench. Becca looked up, shaken from her internal contemplation.

"It takes a lot of work to make a society." Becca's eyes were bright from smoke or emotion. "If you can't live by the rules, you don't have to be here."

Lena lowered another log onto the fire. "Becca, your father is very worried about you. I think it would make him feel a lot better if he just talked to you and saw that you're okay, and you're happy."

Becca poked at the log Lena had just placed. "My father's feelings are no longer my responsibility."

Lena sighed.

Becca whirled a clump of floss into thread in seconds. "However. If Bear wants us to become friendly with your group, I supposed I could make the first step and bridge communications with one of the members."

You mean, Lena thought, you'll only see your father to get closer to your demigod.

"I'll take it," Lena said. "Are you busy right now?"

~*~

Read more of my M*A*S*H fic at my fic journal, ficbyaura218