One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (17 page)

“Yeah,” Cheswick says, scowling around the room, “tomorrow is Friday.”

Harding turns a page of his magazine. “And that will make nearly a week our friend McMurphy has been with us without succeeding in throwing over the government, is that what you’re saying, Cheswickle? Lord, to think of the chasm of apathy in which we have fallen—a shame, a pitiful shame.”

“The hell with that,” McMurphy says. “What Cheswick means is that the first Series game is gonna be played on TV tomorrow, and what are we gonna be doin’? Mopping up this damned nursery again.”

“Yeah,” Cheswick says. “Ol’ Mother Ratched’s Therapeutic Nursery.”

Against the wall of the tub room I get a feeling like a spy; the mop handle in my hands is made of metal instead of wood (metal’s a better conductor) and it’s hollow; there’s plenty of room inside it to hide a miniature microphone. If the Big Nurse is hearing this, she’ll really get Cheswick. I take a hard ball of gum from my pocket and pick some fuzz off it and hold it in my mouth till it softens.

“Let me see again,” McMurphy says. “How many of you birds will vote with me if I bring up that time switch again?”

About half the Acutes nod yes, a lot more than would really vote. He puts his hat back on his head and leans his chin in his hands.

“I tell ya, I can’t figure it out. Harding, what’s wrong with
you
, for crying out loud? You afraid if you raise your hand that old buzzard’ll cut it off.”

Harding lifts one thin eyebrow. “Perhaps I am; perhaps I am afraid she’ll cut it off if I raise it.”

“What about you, Billy? Is that what you’re scared of?” “No. I don’t think she’d d-d-
do
anything, but”—he shrugs and sighs and climbs up on the big panel that controls the nozzles on the shower, perches up there like a monkey”—but I just don’t think a vote wu-wu-would do any good. Not in the l-long run. It’s just no use, M-Mack.”

“Do any
good?
Hooee! It’d do you birds some good just to get the exercise lifting that arm.”

“It’s still a risk, my friend. She always has the capacity to make things worse for us. A baseball game isn’t worth the risk,” Harding says.

“Who the hell says so? Jesus, I haven’t missed a World Series in years. Even when I was in the cooler one September they let us bring in a TV and watch the
Series
, they’d of had a riot on their hands if they hadn’t. I just may have to kick that damned door down and walk to some bar downtown to see the game, just me and my buddy Cheswick.”

“Now there’s a suggestion with a lot of merit,” Harding says, tossing down his magazine. “Why not bring that up for vote in group meeting tomorrow? ‘Miss Ratched, I’d like to move that the ward be transported
en masse
to the Idle Hour for beer and television.’ ”

“I’d second the motion,” Cheswick says. “Damn right.”

“The hell with that in mass business,” McMurphy says. “I’m tired of looking at you bunch of old ladies; when me and Cheswick bust outta here I think by God I’m gonna nail the door shut behind me. You guys better stay behind; your mamma probably wouldn’t let you cross the street.”

“Yeah? Is that it?” Fredrickson has come up behind McMurphy. “You’re just going to raise one of those big he-man boots of yours and
kick
down the door? A real tough guy.”

McMurphy don’t hardly look at Fredrickson; he’s learned that Fredrickson might act hard-boiled now and then, but it’s an act that folds under the slightest scare.

“What about it, he-man,” Fredrickson keeps on, “are you going to kick down that door and show us how tough you are?”

“No, Fred, I guess not I wouldn’t want to scuff up my boot”

“Yeah? Okay, you been talking so big, just how
would
you go about busting out of here?”

McMurphy takes a look around him. “Well, I guess I could knock the mesh outa one of these windows with a chair when and if I took a notion…”

“Yeah? You could, could you? Knock it right out? Okay, let’s see you try. Come on, he-man, I’ll bet you ten dollars you can’t do it.”

“Don’t bother trying, Mack,” Cheswick says. “Fredrickson knows you’ll just break a chair and end up on Disturbed. The first day we arrived over here we were given a demonstration about these screens. They’re specially made. A technician picked up a chair just like that one you’ve got your feet on and beat the screen till the chair was no more than kindling wood. Didn’t hardly dent the screen.”

“Okay then,” McMurphy says, taking a look around him. I can see he’s getting more interested. I hope the Big Nurse isn’t hearing this; he’ll be up on Disturbed in an hour. “We need something heavier. How about a table?”

“Same as the chair. Same wood, same weight.”

“All right, by God, let’s just figure out what I’d have to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you birds don’t think I’d do it if I ever got the urge, then you got another think coming. Okay—something bigger’n a table or a chair… Well, if it was night I might throw that fat coon through it; he’s heavy enough.”

“Much too soft,” Harding says. “He’d hit the screen and it would dice him like an eggplant.”

“How about one of the beds?”

“A bed is too big even if you could lift it. It wouldn’t go through the window.”

“I could lift it all right. Well, hell, right over there you are: that thing Billy’s sittin’ on. That big control panel with all the handles and cranks. That’s hard enough, ain’t it? And it damn well should be heavy enough.”

“Sure,” Fredrickson says. “That’s the same as you kicking your foot through the steel door at the front.”

“What would be wrong with using the panel? It don’t look nailed down.”

“No, it’s not bolted—there’s probably nothing holding it but a few wires—but
look
at it, for Christsakes.”

Everybody looks. The panel is steel and cement, half the size of one of the tables, probably weighs four hundred pounds.

“Okay, I’m looking at it. It don’t look any bigger than hay bales I’ve bucked up onto truck beds.”

“I’m afraid, my friend, that this contrivance will weigh a bit more than your bales of hay.”

“About a quarter-ton more, I’d bet,” Fredrickson says.

“He’s right, Mack,” Cheswick says. “It’d be awful heavy.”

“Hell, are you birds telling me I can’t
lift
that dinky little gizmo?”

“My friend, I don’t recall anything about psychopaths being able to move mountains in addition to their other noteworthy assets.”

“Okay, you say I can’t lift it. Well
by
God…”

McMurphy hops off the table and goes to peeling off his green jacket; the tattoos sticking half out of his T-shirt jump around the muscles on his arms.

“Then who’s willing to lay five bucks? Nobody’s gonna convince me I can’t do something till I try it. Five bucks…”

“McMurphy, this is as foolhardy as your bet about the nurse.”

“Who’s got five bucks they want to lose? You hit or you sit…”

The guys all go to signing liens at once; he’s beat them so many times at poker and blackjack they can’t wait to get back at him, and this is a certain sure thing. I don’t know what he’s driving at; broad and big as he is, it’d take three of him to move that panel, and he knows it. He can just look at it and see he probably couldn’t even tip it, let alone lift it. It’d take a giant to lift it off the ground. But when the Acutes all get their IOUs signed, he steps up to the panel and lifts Billy Bibbit down off it and spits in his big callused palms and slaps them together, rolls his shoulders.

“Okay, stand outa the way. Sometimes when I go to exertin’ myself I use up all the air nearby and grown men faint from suffocation. Stand back. There’s liable to be crackin’ cement and flying steel. Get the women and kids someplace safe. Stand back…”

“By golly, he might do it,” Cheswick mutters.

“Sure, maybe he’ll talk it off the floor,” Fredrickson says.

“More likely he’ll acquire a beautiful hernia,” Harding says. “Come now, McMurphy, quit acting like a fool; there’s no man can lift that thing.”

“Stand back, sissies, you’re using my oxygen.”

McMurphy shifts his feet a few times to get a good stance, and wipes his hands on his thighs again, then leans down and gets hold of the levers on each side of the panel. When he goes to straining, the guys go to hooting and kidding him. He turns loose and straightens up and shifts his feet around again.

“Giving up?” Fredrickson grins.

“Just
limbering
up. Here goes the real effort”—and grabs those levers again.

And suddenly nobody’s hooting at him any more. His arms commence to swell, and the veins squeeze up to the surface. He clinches his eyes, and his lips draw away from his teeth. His head leans back, and tendons stand out like coiled ropes running from his heaving neck down both arms to his hands. His whole body shakes with the strain as he tries to lift something he
knows
he can’t lift, something
everybody
knows he can’t lift.

But, for just a second, when we hear the cement grind at our feet, we think, by golly, he might do it.

Then his breath explodes out of him, and he falls back limp against the wall. There’s blood on the levers where he tore his hands. He pants for a minute against the wall with his eyes shut. There’s no sound but his scraping breath; nobody’s saying a thing.

He opens his eyes and looks around at us. One by one he looks at the guys—even at me—then he fishes in his pockets for all the IOUs he won the last few days at poker. He bends over the table and tries to sort them, but his hands are froze into red claws, and he can’t work the fingers.

Finally he throws the whole bundle on the floor—probably forty or fifty dollars’ worth from each man—and turns to walk out of the tub room. He stops at the door and looks back at everybody standing around.

“But I tried, though,” he says. “Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn’t I?”

And walks out and leaves those stained pieces of paper on the floor for whoever wants to sort through them.

A visiting doctor covered with gray cobwebs on his yellow skull is addressing the resident boys in the staff room.

I come sweeping past him. “Oh, and what’s this here.” He gives me a look like I’m some kind of bug. One of the residents points at his ears, signal that I’m deaf, and the visiting doctor goes on.

I push my broom up face to face with a big picture Public Relation brought in one time when it was fogged so thick I didn’t see him. The picture is a guy fly-fishing somewhere in the mountains, looks like the Ochocos near Paineville—snow on the peaks showing over the pines, long white aspen trunks lining the stream, sheep sorrel growing in sour green patches. The guy is flicking his fly in a pool behind a rock. It’s no place for a fly, it’s a place for a single egg on a number-six hook—he’d do better to drift the fly over those riffles downstream.

There’s a path running down through the aspen, and I push my broom down the path a ways and sit down on a rock and look back out through the frame at that visiting doctor talking with the residents. I can see him stabbing some point in the palm of his hand with his finger, but I can’t hear what he says because of the crash of the cold, frothy stream coming down out of the rocks. I can smell the snow in the wind where it blows down off the peaks. I can see mole burrows humping along under the grass and buffalo weed. It’s a real nice place to stretch your legs and take it easy.

You forget—if you don’t sit down and make the effort to think back—forget how it was at the old hospital. They didn’t have nice places like this on the walls for you to climb into. They didn’t have TV or swimming pools or chicken twice a month. They didn’t have nothing but walls and chairs, confinement jackets it took you hours of hard work to get out of. They’ve learned a lot since then. “Come a long way,” says fat-faced Public Relation. They’ve made life look very pleasant with paint and decorations and chrome bathroom fixtures. “A man that would want to run away from a place as nice as this,” says fat-faced Public Relation, “why, there’d be something wrong with him.”

Out in the staff room the visiting authority is hugging his elbows and shivering like he’s cold while he answers questions the resident boys ask him. He’s thin and meatless, and his clothes flap around his bones. He stands there, hugging his elbows and shivering. Maybe he feels the cold snow wind off the peaks too.

It’s getting hard to locate my bed at night, have to crawl around on my hands and knees feeling underneath the springs till I find my gobs of gum stuck there: Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe. That’s what McMurphy can’t understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we’d be easy to get at.

There’s a shipment of frozen parts come Tin downstairs—hearts and kidneys and brains and the like. I can hear them rumble into cold storage down the coal chute. A guy sitting in the room someplace I can’t see is talking about a guy up on Disturbed killing himself. Old Rawler. Cut both nuts off and bled to death, sitting right on the can in the latrine, half a dozen people in there with him didn’t know it till he fell off to the floor, dead.

What makes people so impatient is what I can’t figure; all the guy had to do was wait.

I know how they work it, the fog machine. We had a whole platoon used to operate fog machines around airfields overseas. Whenever intelligence figured there might be a bombing attack, or if the generals had something secret they wanted to pull-out of sight, hid so good that even the spies on the base couldn’t see what went on—they fogged the field.

It’s a simple rig: you got an ordinary compressor sucks water out of one tank and a special oil out of another tank, and compresses them together, and from the black stem at the end of the machine blooms a white cloud of fog that can cover a whole airfield in ninety seconds. The first thing I saw when I landed in Europe was the fog those machines make. There were some interceptors close after our transport, and soon as it hit ground the fog crew started up the machines. We could look out the transport’s round, scratched windows and watch the jeeps draw the machines up close to the plane and watch the fog boil out till it rolled across the field and stuck against the windows like wet cotton.