Ken Kesey - One flew over cuckoo's nest

“You think not?” Harding says. “Then since you are suddenly so lucid on the problem of mental health, what is this trouble? What is this deep-down hang-up, as you so cleverly put it.”

“I tell you, man, I don’t know. I never seen the beat of it.” He sits still for a minute, listening to the hum from the X-ray room; then he says, “But if it was no more’n you say, if it was, say, just this old nurse and her sex worries, then the solution to all your problems would be to just throw her down and solve her worries, wouldn’t it?”

Scanlon claps his hands. “Hot damn! That’s it. You’re nominated, Mack, you’re just the stud to handle the job.”

“Not me. No sir. You got the wrong boy.”

“Why not? I thought you’s the super-stud with all that whambam.”

“Scanlon, buddy, I plan to stay as clear of that old buzzard as I possibly can.”

“So I’ve been noticing,” Harding says, smiling. “What’s happened between the two of you? You had her on the ropes for a period there; then you let up. A sudden compassion for our angel of mercy?”

“No; I found out a few things, that’s why. Asked around some different places. I found out why you guys all kiss her ass so much and bow and scrape and let her walk all over you. I got wise to what you were using me for.”

“Oh? That’s interesting.”

“You’re blamed right it’s interesting. It’s interesting to me that you bums didn’t tell me what a risk I was running, twisting her tail that way. Just because I don’t like her ain’t a sign I’m gonna bug her into adding another year or so to my sentence. You got to swallow your pride sometimes and keep an eye out for old Number One.”

“Why, friends, you don’t suppose there’s anything to this rumor that our Mr. McMurphy has conformed to policy merely to aid his chances of an early release?”

“You know what I’m talking about, Harding. Why didn’t you tell me she could keep me committed in here till she’s good and ready to turn me loose?”

“Why, I had forgotten you were committed.” Harding’s face folds in the middle over his grin. “Yes. You’re becoming sly. Just like the rest of us.”

“You damn betcha I’m becoming sly. Why should it be me goes to bat at these meetings over these piddling little gripes about keeping the dorm door open and about cigarettes in the Nurses’ Station? I couldn’t figure it at first, why you guys were coming to me like I was some kind of savior. Then I just happened to find out about the way the nurses have the big say as to who gets discharged and who doesn’t. And I got wise awful damned fast. I said, ‘Why, those slippery bastards have conned me, snowed me into holding their bag. If that don’t beat all, conned ol’ R. P. McMurphy.’ “ He tips his head back and grins at the line of us on the bench. “Well, I don’t mean nothing personal, you understand, buddies, but screw that noise. I want out of here just as much as the rest of you. I got just as much to lose hassling that old buzzard as you do.”

He grins and winks down his nose and digs Harding in the ribs with his thumb, like he’s finished with the whole thing but no hard feelings, when Harding says something else.

“No. You’ve got more to lose than I do, my friend.”

Harding’s grinning again, looking with that skitterish sideways look of a jumpy mare, a dipping, rearing motion of the head. Everybody moves down a place. Martini comes away from the X-ray screen, buttoning his shirt and muttering, “I wouldn’t of believed it if I hadn’t saw it,” and Billy Bibbit goes to the black glass to take Martini’s place.

“You have more to lose than I do,” Harding says again. “I’m voluntary. I’m not committed.”

McMurphy doesn’t say a word. He’s got that same puzzled look on his face like there’s something isn’t right, something he can’t put his finger on. He just sits there looking at Harding, and Harding’s rearing smile fades and he goes to fidgeting around from McMurphy staring at him so funny. He swallows and says, “As a matter of fact, there are only a few men on the ward who are committed. Only Scanlon and — well, I guess some of the Chronics. And you. Not many commitments in the whole hospital. No, not many at all.”

Then he stops, his voice dribbling away under McMurphy’s eyes. After a bit of silence McMurphy says softly, “Are you bullshitting me?” Harding shakes his head. He looks frightened. McMurphy stands up in the hall and says, “Are you guys bullshitting me!”

Nobody’ll say anything. McMurphy walks up and down in front of that bench, running his hand around in that thick hair. He walks all the way to the back of the line, then all the way to the front, to the X-ray machine. It hisses and spits at him.

“You, Billy — you must be committed, for Christsakes!”

Billy’s got his back to us, his chin up on the black screen, standing on tiptoe. No, he says into the machinery.

“Then why? Why? You’re just a young guy! You oughta be out running around in a convertible, bird-dogging girls. All of this” — he sweeps his hand around him again—”why do you stand for it?”

Billy doesn’t say anything, and McMurphy turns from him to another couple of guys.

“Tell me why. You gripe, you bitch for weeks on end about how you can’t stand this place, can’t stand the nurse or anything about her, and all the time you ain’t committed. I can understand it with some of those old guys on the ward. They’re nuts . But you, you’re not exactly the everyday man on the street, but you’re not nuts .”

They don’t argue with him. He moves on to Sefelt.

“Sefelt, what about you? There’s nothing wrong with you but you have fits. Hell, I had an uncle who threw conniptions twice as bad as yours and saw visions from the Devil to boot, but he didn’t lock himself in the nuthouse. You could get along outside if you had the guts—”

“Sure!” It’s Billy, turned from the screen, his face boiling tears. “Sure!” he screams again. “If we had the g-guts! I could go outside to-today, if I had the guts. My m-m-mother is a good friend of M-Miss Ratched, and I could get an AMA signed this afternoon, if I had the guts!”

He jerks his shirt up from the bench and tries to pull it on, but he’s shaking too hard. Finally he slings it from him and turns back to McMurphy.

“You think I wuh-wuh-wuh- want to stay in here? You think I wouldn’t like a con-con-vertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you’re so b-big and so tough! Well, I’m not big and tough. Neither is Harding. Neither is F-Fredrickson. Neither is SuhSefelt. Oh — oh, you — you t-talk like we stayed in here because we liked it! Oh — it’s n-no use…”

He’s crying and stuttering too hard to say anything else, and he wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands so he can see. One of the scabs pulls off his hand, and the more he wipes the more he smears blood over his face and in his eyes. Then he starts running blind, bouncing down the hall from side to side with his face a smear of blood, a black boy right after him.

McMurphy turns round to the rest of the guys and opens his mouth to ask something else, and then closes it when he sees how they’re looking at him. He stands there a minute with the row of eyes aimed at him like a row of rivets; then he says, “Hell’s bells,” in a weak sort of way, and he puts his cap back on and pulls it down hard and goes back to his place on the bench. The two technicians come back from coffee and go back in that room across the hall; when the door whooshes open you can smell the acid in the air like when they recharge a battery. McMurphy sits there, looking at that door.