Ken Kesey - One flew over cuckoo's nest

“Takes me to… Chance: ‘You Have Been Elected Chairman of the Board; Pay Every Player—’ Boogered and double boogered!”

“Whose hotel is this here for Christsakes on the Reading Railroad?”

“My friend, that, as anyone can see, is not a hotel; it’s a depot.”

“Now hold it a minute—”

McMurphy surrounds his end of the table, moving cards, rearranging money, evening up his hotels. There’s a hundred dollar bill sticking out of the brim of his cap like a press card; mad money, he calls it.

“Scanlon? I believe it’s your turn, buddy.”

“Gimme those dice. I’ll blow this board to pieces. Here we go. Lebenty Leben, count me over eleven, Martini.”

“Why, all right.”

“Not that one, you crazy bastard; that’s not my piece, that’s my house .”

“It’s the same color.”

“What’s this little house doing on the Electric Company?”

“That’s a power station.”

“Martini, those ain’t the dice you’re shaking—”

“Let him be; what’s the difference?”

“Those are a couple of houses!”

“ Faw . And Martini rolls a big, let me see, a big nineteen. Good goin’, Mart; that puts you — Where’s your piece, buddy?”

“Eh? Why here it is.”

“He had it in his mouth, McMurphy. Excellent. That’s two moves over the second and third bicuspid, four moves to the board, which takes you on to — to Baltic Avenue, Martini. Your own and only property. How fortunate can a man get, friends? Martini has been playing three days and lit on his property practically every time.”

“Shut up and roll, Harding. It’s your turn.”

Harding gathers the dice up with his long fingers, feeling the smooth surfaces with his thumb as if he was blind. The fingers are the same color as the dice and look like they were carved by his other hand. The dice rattle in his hand as he shakes it. They tumble to a stop in front of McMurphy.

“ Faw . Five, six, seven. Tough luck, buddy. That’s another o’ my vast holdin’s. You owe me — oh, two hundred dollars should about cover it.”

Pity.

The game goes round and round, to the rattle of dice and the shuffle of play money.

There’s long spells — three days, years — when you can’t see a thing, know where you are only by the speaker sounding overhead like a bell buoy clanging in the fog. When I can see, the guys are usually moving around as unconcerned as though they didn’t notice so much as a mist in the air. I believe the fog affects their memory some way it doesn’t affect mine.

Even McMurphy doesn’t seem to know he’s been fogged in. If he does, he makes sure not to let on that he’s bothered by it. He’s making sure none of the staff sees him bothered by anything; he knows that there’s no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who’s trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you’re not bothered.

He keeps up his high-class manners around the nurses and the black boys in spite of anything they might say to him, in spite of every trick they pull to get him to lose his temper. A couple of times some stupid rule gets him mad, but he just makes himself act more polite and mannerly than ever till he begins to see how funny the whole thing is — the rules, the disapproving looks they use to enforce the rules, the ways of talking to you like you’re nothing but a three-year-old — and when he sees how funny it is he goes to laughing, and this aggravates them no end. He’s safe as long as he can laugh, he thinks, and it works pretty fair. Just once he loses control and shows he’s mad, and then it’s not because of the black boys or the Big Nurse and something they did, but it’s because of the patients, and something they didn’t do.

It happened at one of the group meetings. He got mad at the guys for acting too cagey — too chicken-shit, he called it. He’d been taking bets from all of them on the World Series coming up Friday. He’d had it in mind that they would get to watch the games on TV, even though they didn’t come on during regulation TV time. During the meeting a few days before he asks if it wouldn’t be okay if they did the cleaning work at night, during TV time, and watched the games during the afternoon. The nurse tells him no, which is about what he expected. She tells him how the schedule has been set up for a delicately balanced reason that would be thrown into turmoil by the switch of routines.

This doesn’t surprise him, coming from the nurse; what does surprise him is how the Acutes act when he asks them what they think of the idea. Nobody says a thing. They’re all sunk back out of sight in little pockets of fog. I can barely see them.

“Now look here,” he tells them, but they don’t look. He’s been waiting for somebody to say something, answer his question. Nobody acts like they’ve heard it. “Look here, damn it,” he says when nobody moves, “there’s at least twelve of you guys I know of myself got a leetle personal interest who wins these games. Don’t you guys care to watch them?”

“I don’t know, Mack,” Scanlon finally says, “I’m pretty used to seeing that six-o’clock news. And if switching times would really mess up the schedule as bad as Miss Ratched says—”

“The hell with the schedule. You can get back to the bloody schedule next week, when the Series is over. What do you say, buddies? Let’s take a vote on watching the TV during the afternoon instead of at night. All those in favor?”

“Ay,” Cheswick calls out and gets to his feet.

“I mean all those in favor raise their hands. Okay, all those in favor?”

Cheswick’s hand comes up. Some of the other guys look around to see if there’s any other fools. McMurphy can’t believe it.

“Come on now, what is this crap? I thought you guys could vote on policy and that sort of thing. Isn’t that the way it is, Doc?”

The doctor nods without looking up.

“Okay then; now who wants to watch those games?”

Cheswick shoves his hand higher and glares around. Scanlon shakes his head and then raises his hand, keeping his elbow on the arm of the chair. And nobody else. McMurphy can’t say a word.

“If that’s settled, then,” the nurse says, “perhaps we should get on with the meeting.”

“Yeah,” he says, slides down in his chair till the brim of his cap nearly touches his chest. “Yeah, perhaps we should get on with the sonofabitchin’ meeting at that.”

“Yeah,” Cheswick says, giving all the guys a hard look and sitting down, “yeah, get on with the godblessed meeting.” He nods stiffly, then settles his chin down on his chest, scowling. He’s pleased to be sitting next to McMurphy, feeling brave like this. It’s the first time Cheswick ever had somebody along with him on his lost causes.

After the meeting McMurphy won’t say a word to any of them, he’s so mad and disgusted. It’s Billy Bibbit who goes up to him.

“Some of us have b-been here for fi-fi-five years, Randle,” Billy says. He’s got a magazine rolled up and is twisting at it with his hands; you can see the cigarette burns on the backs of his hands. “And some of us will b-be here maybe th-that muh-muh-much longer, long after you’re g-g-gone, long after this Wo-world Series is over. And… don’t you see…” He throws down the magazine and walks away. “Oh, what’s the use of it anyway.”

McMurphy stares after him, that puzzled frown knotting his bleached eyebrows together again.

He argues for the rest of the day with some of the other guys about why they didn’t vote, but they don’t want to talk about it, so he seems to give up, doesn’t say anything about it again till the day before the Series starts. “Here it is Thursday,” he says, sadly shaking his head.