One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (19 page)

I’m further off than I’ve ever been. This is what it’s like to be dead. I guess this is what it’s like to be a Vegetable; you lose yourself in the fog. You don’t move. They feed your body till it finally stops eating; then they burn it. It’s not so bad. There’s no pain. I don’t feel much of anything other than a touch of chill I figure will pass in time.

I see my commanding officer pinning notices on the bulletin board, what we’re to wear today. I see the US Department of Interior bearing down on our little tribe with a gravel-crushing machine.

I see Papa come loping out of a draw and slow up to try and take aim at a big six-point buck springing off through the cedars. Shot after shot puffs out of the barrel, knocking dust all around the buck. I come out of the draw behind Papa and bring the buck down with my second shot just as it starts climbing the rimrock. I grin at Papa.

That’s not even happening now. You see? There’s nothing you can do about a happening out of the past like that.

Look there, my man
…

I hear whispers, black boys.

Tha’s right, Chief Broom, tha’s right. You sleep an’ keep outta trouble. Yasss
.

I’m not cold any more. I think I’ve about made it. I’m off to where the cold can’t reach me. I can stay off here for good. I’m not scared any more. They can’t reach me. Just the words reach me, and those’re fading.

That’s that McMurphy. He’s far away. He’s still trying to pull people out of the fog. Why don’t he leave me be?

“…remember that vote we had a day or so back-about the TV time? Well, today’s Friday and I thought I might just bring it up again, just to see if anybody else has picked up a little guts.”

“Mr. McMurphy, the purpose of this meeting is therapy, group therapy, and I’m not certain these petty grievances—”

“Yeah, yeah, the hell with that, we’ve heard it before. Me and some of the rest of the guys decided—”

“One moment, Mr. McMurphy, let me pose a question to the group: do any of you feel that Mr. McMurphy is perhaps imposing his personal desires on some of you too much? I’ve been thinking you might be happier if he were moved to a different ward.”

Nobody says anything for a minute. Then someone says, “Let him vote, why dontcha? Why ya want to ship him to Disturbed just for bringing up a vote? What’s so wrong with changing time?”

“Why, Mr. Scanlon, as I recall, you refused to eat for three days until we allowed you to turn the set on at six instead of six-thirty.”

“A man needs to see the world news, don’t he? God, they coulda bombed Washington and it’d been a week before we’d of heard.”

“Yes? And how do you feel about relinquishing your world news to watch a bunch of men play baseball?”

“We can’t have both, huh? No, I suppose not. Well, what the dickens—I don’t guess they’ll bomb us this week.” “Let’s let him have the vote, Miss Ratched.”

“Very well. But I think this is ample evidence of how much he is upsetting some of you patients. What is it you are proposing, Mr. McMurphy?”

“I’m proposing a revote on watching the TV in the afternoon.”

“You’re certain one more vote will satisfy you? We have more important things—”

“It’ll satisfy me. I just’d kind of like to see which of these birds has any guts and which doesn’t.”

“It’s that kind of talk, Doctor Spivey, that makes me wonder if the patients wouldn’t be more content if Mr. McMurphy were moved.”

“Let him call the vote, why dontcha?”

“Certainly, Mr. Cheswick. A vote is now before the group. Will a show of hands be adequate, Mr. McMurphy, or are you going to insist on a secret ballot?”

“I want to see the hands. I want to see the hands that don’t go up, too.”

“Everyone in favor of changing the television time to the afternoon, raise his hand.”

The first hand that comes up, I can tell, is McMurphy’s, because of the bandage where that control panel cut into him when he tried to lift it. And then off down the slope I see them, other hands coming up out of the fog. It’s like… that big red hand of McMurphy’s is reaching into the fog and dropping down and dragging the men up by their hands, dragging them blinking into the open. First one, then another, then the next. Right on down the line of Acutes, dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching TV, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed, against the way she’s talked and acted and beat them down for years.

Nobody says anything. I can feel how stunned everybody is, the patients as well as the staff. The nurse can’t figure what happened; yesterday, before he tried lifting that panel, there wasn’t but four or five men might of voted. But when she talks she don’t let it show in her voice how surprised she is.

“I count only twenty, Mr. McMurphy.”

“Twenty? Well, why not? Twenty is all of us there—” His voice hangs as he realizes what she means. “Now hold on just a goddamned minute, lady—”

“I’m afraid the vote is defeated.”

“Hold on just one goddamned
minute!”

“There are forty patients on the ward, Mr. McMurphy. Forty patients, and only twenty voted. You must have a majority to change the ward policy. I’m afraid the vote is closed.”

The hands are coming down across the room. The guys know they’re whipped, are trying to slip back into the safety of the fog. McMurphy is on his feet.

“Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch. You mean to tell me that’s how you’re gonna pull it? Count the votes of those old birds over there too?”

“Didn’t you explain the voting procedure to him, Doctor?”

“I’m afraid—a majority
is
called for, McMurphy. She’s right, she’s right.”

“A majority, Mr. McMurphy; it’s in the ward constitution.” “And I suppose the way to change the damned constitution is with a majority vote. Sure. Of all the chicken-shit things I’ve ever seen, this by God takes the
cake!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. McMurphy, but you’ll find it written in the policy if you’d care for me to—”

“So this’s how you work this democratic bullshit—hell’s bells!”

“You seem upset, Mr. McMurphy. Doesn’t he seem upset, Doctor? I want you to note this.”

“Don’t give me that noise, lady. When a guy’s getting screwed he’s got a right to holler. And we’ve been damn well screwed.”

“Perhaps, Doctor, in view of the patient’s condition, we should bring this meeting to a close early today—”

“Wait! Wait a minute, let me talk to some of those old guys.”

“The vote is closed, Mr. McMurphy.”

“Let me talk to ‘em.”

He’s coming across the day room at us. He gets bigger and bigger, and he’s burning red in the face. He reaches into the fog and tries to drag Ruckly to the surface because Ruckly’s the youngest.

“What about you, buddy? You want to watch the World Series? Baseball? Baseball games? Just raise that hand up there—”

“Fffffffuck da wife.”

“All right, forget it. You, partner, how about you? What was your name—Ellis? What do you say, Ellis, to watching a ball game on TV? Just raise your hand…”

Ellis’s hands are nailed to the wall, can’t be counted as a vote.

“I said the voting is closed, Mr. McMurphy. You’re just making a spectacle of yourself.”

He don’t pay any attention to her. He comes on down the line of Chronics. “C’mon, c’mon, just one vote from you birds, just raise a hand. Show her you can still do it.”

“I’m tired,” says Pete and wags his head.

“The night is… the Pacific Ocean.” The Colonel is reading off his hand, can’t be bothered with voting.

“
One
of you guys, for cryin’ out loud! This is where you get the edge, don’t you see that? We have to do this—or we’re
whipped!
Don’t a one of you clucks know what I’m talking about enough to give us a hand? You, Gabriel? George? No? You, Chief, what about you?

He’s standing over me in the mist. Why won’t he leave me be?

“Chief, you’re our last bet.”

The Big Nurse is folding her papers; the other nurses are standing up around her. She finally gets to her feet.

“The meeting is adjourned, then, I hear her say. “And I’d like to see the staff down in the staff room in about an hour. So, if there is nothing el—”

It’s too late to stop it now. McMurphy did something to it that first day, put some kind of hex on it with his hand so it won’t act like I order it. There’s no sense in it, any fool can see; I wouldn’t do it on my own. Just by the way the nurse is staring at me with her mouth empty of words I can see I’m in for trouble, but I can’t stop it. McMurphy’s got hidden wires hooked to it, lifting it slow just to get me out of the fog and into the open where I’m fair game. He’s doing it, wires…

No. That’s not the truth. I lifted it myself.

McMurphy whoops and drags me standing, pounding my back.

“Twenty-one! The Chief’s vote makes it twenty-one! And by God if that ain’t a majority I’ll eat my hat!”

“Yippee,” Cheswick yells. The other Acutes are coming across toward me.

“The meeting was closed,” she says. Her smile is still there, but the back of her neck as she walks out of the day room and into the Nurses’ Station, is red and swelling like she’ll blow apart any second.

But she don’t blow up, not right off, not until about an hour later. Behind the glass her smile is twisted and queer, like we’ve never seen before. She just sits. I can see her shoulders rise and fall as she breathes.

McMurphy looks up at the clock and he says it’s time for the game. He’s over by the drinking fountain with some of the other Acutes, down on his knees scouring off the baseboard. I’m sweeping out the broom closet for the tenth time that day. Scanlon and Harding, they got the buffer going up and down the hall, polishing the new wax into shining figure eights. McMurphy says again that he guesses it must be game time and he stands up, leaves the scouring rag where it lies. Nobody else stops work. McMurphy walks past the window where she’s glaring out at him and grins at her like he knows he’s got her whipped now. When he tips his head back and winks at her she gives that little sideways jerk of her head.

Everybody keeps on at what he’s doing, but they all watch out of the corners of their eyes while he drags his armchair out to in front of the TV set, then switches on the set and sits down. A picture swirls onto the screen of a parrot out on the baseball field singing razor-blade songs. McMurphy gets up and turns up the sound to drown out the music coming down from the speaker in the ceiling, and he drags another chair in front of him and sits down and crosses his feet on the chair and leans back and lights a cigarette. He scratches his belly and yawns.

“Hoo-
weee!
Man, all I need me now is a can of beer and a red-hot.”

We can see the nurse’s face get red and her mouth work as she stares at him. She looks around for a second and sees everybody’s watching what she’s going to do—even the black boys and the little nurses sneaking looks at her, and the residents beginning to drift in for the staff meeting, they’re watching. Her mouth clamps shut. She looks back at McMurphy and waits till the razor-blade song is finished; then she gets up and goes to the steel door where the controls are, and she flips a switch and the TV picture swirls back into the gray. Nothing is left on the screen but a little eye of light beading right down on McMurphy sitting there.

That eye don’t faze him a bit. To tell the truth, he don’t even let on he knows the picture is turned off; he puts his cigarette between his teeth and pushes his cap forward in his red hair till he has to lean back to see out from under the brim.

And sits that way, with his hands crossed behind his head and his feet stuck out in a chair, a smoking cigarette sticking out from under his hatbrim—watching the TV screen.

The nurse stands this as long as she can; then she comes to the door of the Nurses’ Station and calls across to him he’d better help the men with the housework. He ignores her.

“I said, Mr. McMurphy, that you are supposed to be working during these hours.” Her voice has a tight whine like an electric saw ripping through pine. “Mr. McMurphy, I’m
warning
you!”

Everybody’s stopped what he was doing. She looks around her, then takes a step out of the Nurses’ Station toward McMurphy.

“You’re committed, you realize. You are… under the
jurisdiction
of me… the staff.” She’s holding up a fist, all those red-orange fingernails burning into her palm. “Under jurisdiction and
control
–”

Harding shuts off the buffer, and leaves it in the hall, and goes pulls him a chair up alongside McMurphy and sits down and lights him a cigarette too.

“Mr. Harding! You return to your scheduled duties!”

I think how her voice sounds like it hit a nail, and this strikes me so funny I almost laugh.

“Mr. Har-
ding!”

Then Cheswick goes and gets him a chair, and then Billy Bibbit goes, and then Scanlon and then Fredrickson and Sefelt, and then we all put down our mops and brooms and scouring rags and we all go pull us chairs up.

“You
men
–Stop this.
Stop!”