Ken Kesey - One flew over cuckoo's nest

The doctor fumbled for his glasses and looked at us too, like he’d just noticed the uniforms. “Yes. No, I mean. We, they are from the asylum, but they are a work crew, not inmates, of course not. A work crew.”

The man squinted at the doctor and at us and went off to whisper to his partner, who was back among the machinery. They talked a minute, and the second guy hollered and asked the doctor who we were and the doctor repeated that we were a work crew, and both of the guys laughed. I could tell by the laugh that they’d decided to sell us the gas — probably it would be weak and dirty and watered down and cost twice the usual price — but it didn’t make me feel any better. I could see everybody was feeling pretty bad. The doctor’s lying made us feel worse than ever — not because of the lie, so much, but because of the truth.

The second guy came over to the doctor, grinning. “You said you wanted the Soo-preme, sir? You bet. And how about us checking those oil filters and windshield wipes?” He was bigger than his friend. He leaned down on the doctor like he was sharing a secret. “Would you believe it: eighty-eight per cent of the cars show by the figures on the road today that they need new oil filters and windshield wipes?”

His grin was coated with carbon from years of taking out spark plugs with his teeth. He kept leaning down on the doctor, making him squirm with that grin and waiting for him to admit he was over a barrel. “Also, how’s your work crew fixed for sunglasses? We got some good Polaroids.” The doctor knew he had him. But just the instant he opened his mouth, about to give in and say Yes, anything, there was a whirring noise and the top of our car was folding back. McMurphy was fighting and cursing the accordion-pleated top, trying to force it back faster than the machinery could handle it. Everybody could see how mad he was by the way he thrashed and beat at that slowly rising top; when he got it cussed and hammered and wrestled down into place he climbed right out over the girl and over the side of the car and walked up between the doctor and the service-station guy and looked up into the black mouth with one eye.

“Okay now, Hank, we’ll take regular, just like the doctor ordered. Two tanks of regular. That’s all. The hell with that other slum. And we’ll take it at three cents off because we’re a goddamned government-sponsored expedition.”

The guy didn’t budge. “Yeah? I thought the professor here said you weren’t patients?”

“Now Hank, don’t you see that was just a kindly precaution to keep from startlin’ you folks with the truth? The doc wouldn’t lie like that about just any patients, but we ain’t ordinary nuts; we’re every bloody one of us hot off the criminal-insane ward, on our way to San Quentin where they got better facilities to handle us. You see that freckle-faced kid there? Now he might look like he’s right off a Saturday Evening Post cover, but he’s a insane knife artist that killed three men. The man beside him is known as the Bull Goose Loony, unpredictable as a wild hog. You see that big guy? He’s an Indian and he beat six white men to death with a pick handle when they tried to cheat him trading muskrat hides. Stand up where they can get a look at you, Chief.”

Harding goosed me with his thumb, and I stood up on the floor of the car. The guy shaded his eyes and looked up at me and didn’t say anything.

“Oh, it’s a bad group, I admit,” McMurphy said, “but it’s a planned, authorized, legal government-sponsored excursion, and we’re entitled to a legal discount just the same as if we was the FBI.”

The guy looked back at McMurphy, and McMurphy hooked his thumbs in his pockets and rocked back and looked up at him across the scar on his nose. The guy turned to check if his buddy was still stationed at the case of empty pop bottles, then grinned back down on McMurphy.

“Pretty tough customers, is that what you’re saying, Red? So much we better toe the line and do what we’re told, is that what you’re saying? Well, tell me, Red, what is it you’re in for? Trying to assassinate the President?”

“Nobody could prove that, Hank. They got me on a bum rap. I killed a man in the ring, ya see, and sorta got taken with the kick.”

“One of these killers with boxing gloves, is that what you’re telling me, Red?”

“Now I didn’t say that, did I? I never could get used to those pillows you wore. No, this wasn’t no televised main event from the Cow Palace; I’m more what you call a back-lot boxer.”

The guy hooked his thumbs in his pockets to mock McMurphy. “You are more what I call a back-lot bull-thrower.”

“Now I didn’t say that bull-throwing wasn’t also one of my abilities, did I? But I want you to look here.” He put his hands up in the guy’s face, real close, turning them over slowly, palm and knuckle. “You ever see a man get his poor old meathooks so pitiful chewed up from just throwin’ the bull? Did you, Hank?”

He held those hands in the guy’s face a long time, waiting to see if the guy had anything else to say. The guy looked at the hands, and at me, and back at the hands. When it was clear he didn’t have anything else real pressing to say, McMurphy walked away from him to the other guy leaning against the pop cooler and plucked the doctor’s ten-dollar bill out of his fist and started for the grocery store next to the station.

“You boys tally what the gas comes to and send the bill to the hospital,” he called back. “I intend to use the cash to pick up some refreshments for the men. I believe we’ll get that in place of windshield wipes and eighty-eight per cent oil filters.”

By the time he got back everybody was feeling cocky as fighting roosters and calling orders to the service-station guys to check the air in the spare and wipe the windows and scratch that bird dropping off the hood if you please, just like we owned the show. When the big guy didn’t get the windshield to suit Billy, Billy called him right back.

“You didn’t get this sp-spot here where the bug h-h-hit “

“That wasn’t a bug,” the guy said sullenly, scratching at it with his fingernail, “that was a bird.”

Martini called all the way from the other car that it couldn’t of been a bird. “There’d be feathers and bones if it was a bird.”

A man riding a bicycle stopped to ask what was the idea of all the green uniforms; some kind of club? Harding popped right up and answered him

“No, my friend. We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you? No? You must burry on? Ah, he’s gone. Pity.” He turned to McMurphy. “Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power . Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn’t it? Food for thought there.”

Billy punched a beer can for the girl, and she flustered him so with her bright smile and her “Thank you, Billy,” that he took to opening cans for all of us.

While the pigeons fretted up and down the sidewalk with their hands folded behind their backs.

I sat there, feeling whole and good, sipping at a beer; I could hear the beer all the way down me — zzzth zzzth, like that. I had forgotten that there can be good sounds and tastes like the sound and taste of a beer going down. I took another big drink and started looking around me to see what else I had forgotten in twenty years.

“Man!” McMurphy said as he scooted the girl out from under the wheel and tight over against Billy. “Will you just look at the Big Chief slug down on that firewater!” — and slammed the car out into traffic with the doctor squealing behind to keep up.