Ken Kesey - One flew over cuckoo's nest

She had to stand there a minute while she looked around to find McMurphy, so everybody got a long look at her. There was a blue smoke hung near the ceiling over her bead; I think apparatus burned out all over the ward trying to adjust to her come busting in like she did — took electronic readings on her and calculated they weren’t built to handle something like this on the ward, and just burned out, like machines committing suicide.

She had on a white T-shirt like McMurphy’s only a lot smaller, white tennis shoes and Levi pants snipped off above her knees to give her feet circulation, and it didn’t look like that was near enough material to go around, considering what it had to cover. She must’ve been seen with lots less by lots more men, but under the circumstances she began to, fidget around self-consciously like a schoolgirl on a stage. Nobody spoke while they looked. Martini did whisper that you could read the dates of the coins in her Levi pockets, they were so tight, but he was closer and could see better’n the rest of us.

Billy Bibbit was the first one to say something out loud, not really a word, just a low, almost painful whistle that described how she looked better than anybody else could have. She laughed and thanked him very much and he blushed so red that she blushed with him and laughed again. This broke things into movement. All the Acutes were coming across the floor trying to talk to her at once. The doctor was pulling on Harding’s coat, asking who is this. McMurphy got up out of his chair and walked through the crowd to her, and when she saw him she threw her arms around him and said, “You damned McMurphy,” and then got embarrassed and blushed again. When she blushed she didn’t look more than sixteen or seventeen, I swear she didn’t.

McMurphy introduced her around and she shook everybody’s hand. When she got to Billy she thanked him again for his whistle. The Big Nurse came sliding out of the station, smiling, and asked McMurphy how he intended to get all ten of us in one car, and he asked could he maybe borrow a staff car and drive a load himself, and the nurse cited a rule forbidding this, just like everyone knew she would. She said unless there was another driver to sign a Responsibility Slip that half of the crew would have to stay behind. McMurphy told her this’d cost him fifty goddam bucks to make up the difference; he’d have to pay the guys back who didn’t get to go.

“Then it may be,” the nurse said, “that the trip will have to be canceled — and all the money refunded.”

“I’ve already rented the boat; the man’s got seventy bucks of mine in his pocket right now!”

“Seventy dollars? So? I thought you told the patients you’d need to collect a hundred dollars plus ten of your own to finance the trip, Mr. McMurphy.”

“I was putting gas in the cars over and back.”

“That wouldn’t amount to thirty dollars, though, would it?”

She smiled so nice at him, waiting. He threw his hands in the air and looked at the ceiling.

“Hoo boy , you don’t miss a chance do you, Miss District Attorney. Sure; I was keepin’ what was left over. I don’t think any of the guys ever thought any different. I figured to make a little for the trouble I took get—”

“But your plans didn’t work out,” she said. She was still smiling at him, so full of sympathy. “Your little financial speculations can’t all be successes, Randle, and, actually, as I think about it now, you’ve had more than your share of victories.” She mused about this, thinking about something I knew we’d hear more about later. “Yes. Every Acute on the ward has written you an IOU for some ‘deal’ of yours at one time or another, so don’t you think you can bear up under this one small defeat?”

Then she stopped. She saw McMurphy wasn’t listening to her any more. He was watching the doctor. And the doctor was eying the blond girl’s T-shirt like nothing else existed. McMurphy’s loose smile spread out on his face as he watched the doctor’s trance, and he pushed his cap to the back of his head and strolled to the doctor’s side, startling him with a hand on the shoulder.

“By God, Doctor Spivey, you ever see a Chinook salmon hit a line? One of the fiercest sights on the seven seas. Say, Candy honeybun, whyn’t you tell the doctor here about deep-sea fishing and all like that. …”

Working together, it didn’t take McMurphy and the girl but two minutes and the little doctor was down locking up his office and coming back up the hall, cramming papers in a brief case.

“Good deal of paper work I can get done on the boat,” he explained to the nurse and went past her so fast she didn’t have a chance to answer, and the rest of the crew followed, slower, grinning at her standing in the door of that Nurses’ Station.

The Acutes who weren’t going gathered at the day-room door, told us don’t bring our catch back till it’s cleaned, and Ellis pulled his hands down off the nails in the wall and squeezed Billy Bibbit’s hand and told him to be a fisher of men.

And Billy, watching the brass brads on that woman’s Levis wink at him as she walked out of the day room, told Ellis to hell with that fisher of men business. He joined us at the door, and the least black boy let us through and locked the door behind us, and we were out, outside.

The sun was prying up the clouds and lighting the brick front of the hospital rose bed. A thin breeze worked at sawing what leaves were left from the oak trees, stacking them neatly against the wire cyclone fence. There was little brown birds occasionally on the fence; when a puff of leaves would hit the fence the birds would fly off with the wind. It looked at first like the leaves were hitting the fence and turning into birds and flying away.

It was a fine woodsmoked autumn day, full of the sound of kids punting footballs and the putter of small airplanes, and everybody should’ve been happy just being outside in it. But we all stood in a silent bunch with our hands in our pockets while the doctor walked to get his car. A silent bunch, watching the townspeople who were driving past on their way to work slow down to gawk at all the loonies in green uniforms. McMurphy saw how uneasy we were and tried to work us into a better mood by joking and teasing the girl, but this made us feel worse somehow. Everybody was thinking how easy it would be to return to the ward, go back and say they decided the nurse had been right; with a wind like this the sea would’ve been just too rough.

The doctor arrived and we loaded up and headed off, me and George and Harding and Billy Bibbit in the car with McMurphy and the girl, Candy; and Fredrickson and Sefelt and Scanlon and Martini and Tadem and Gregory following in the doctor’s car. Everyone was awfully quiet. We pulled into a gas station about a mile from the hospital; the doctor followed. He got out first, and the service-station man came bouncing out, grinning and wiping his hands on a rag. Then he stopped grinning and went past the doctor to see just what was in these cars. He backed off, wiping his hands on the oily rag, frowning. The doctor caught the man’s sleeve nervously and took out a ten-dollar bill and tucked it down in the man’s hands like setting out a tomato plant.

“Ah, would you fill both tanks with regular?” the doctor asked. He was acting just as uneasy about being out of the hospital as the rest of us were. “Ah, would you?”

“Those uniforms,” the service-station man said, “they’re from the hospital back up the road, aren’t they?” He was looking around him to see if there was a wrench or something handy. He finally moved over near a stack of empty pop bottles. “You guys are from that asylum .”