Ken Kesey - One flew over cuckoo's nest

She looked at the paper again, then put it back in the basket.

“And this recent fishing trip? What do you suppose Mr. McMurphy’s profit was on this venture? As I see it, he was provided with a car of the doctor’s, even with money from the doctor for gasoline, and, I am told, quite a few other benefits — without having paid a nickel. Quite like a fox, I must say.”

She held up her hand to stop Billy from interrupting.

“Please, Billy, understand me: I’m not criticizing this sort of activity as such; I just thought it would be better if we didn’t have any delusions about the man’s motives. But, at any rate, perhaps it isn’t fair to make these accusations without the presence of the man we are speaking of. Let’s return to the problem we were discussing yesterday — what was it?” She went leafing through her basket. “What was it, do you remember, Doctor Spivey?”

The doctor’s head jerked up. “No… wait… I think…”

She pulled a paper from a folder. “Here it is. Mr. Scanlon; his feelings about explosives. Fine. We’ll go into that now, and at some other time when Mr. McMurphy is present we’ll return to him. I do think, however, that you might give what was said today some thought. Now, Mr. Scanlon…”

Later that day there were eight or ten of us grouped together at the canteen door, waiting till the black boy was finished shoplifting hair oil, and some of the guys brought it up again. They said they didn’t agree with what the Big Nurse had been saying, but, hell, the old girl had some good points. And yet, damn it, Mack’s still a good guy… really.

Harding finally brought the conversation into the open.

“My friends, thou protest too much to believe the protesting. You are all believing deep inside your stingy little hearts that our Miss Angel of Mercy Ratched is absolutely correct in every assumption she made today about McMurphy. You know she was, and so do I. But why deny it? Let’s be honest and give this man his due instead of secretly criticizing his capitalistic talent. What’s wrong with him making a little profit? We’ve all certainly got our money’s worth every time he fleeced us, haven’t we? He’s a shrewd character with an eye out for a quick dollar. He doesn’t make any pretense about his motives, does he? Why should we? He has a healthy and honest attitude about his chicanery, and I’m all for him, just as I’m for the dear old capitalistic system of free individual enterprise, comrades, for him and his downright bullheaded gall and the American flag, bless it, and the Lincoln Memorial and the whole bit. Remember the Maine, P. T. Barnum and the Fourth of July. I feel compelled to defend my friend’s honor as a good old red, white, and blue hundred-per-cent American con man. Good guy, my foot. McMurphy would be embarrassed to absolute tears if he were aware of some of the simon-pure motives people had been claiming were behind some of his dealings. He would take it as a direct effrontery to his craft.”

He dipped into his pocket for his cigarettes; when he couldn’t find any he borrowed one from Fredrickson, lit it with a stagey sweep of his match, and went on.

“I’ll admit I was confused by his actions at first. That window-breaking — Lord, I thought, here’s a man that seems to actually want to stay in this hospital, stick with his buddies and all that sort of thing, until I realized that McMurphy was doing it because he didn’t want to lose a good thing. He’s making the most of his time in here. Don’t ever be misled by his back-woodsy ways; he’s a very sharp operator, level-headed as they come. You watch; everything he’s done was done with reason.”

Billy wasn’t about to give in so easy. “Yeah. What about him teaching me to d-dance?” He was clenching his fists at his side; and on the backs of his hands I saw that the cigarette burns had all but healed, and in their place were tattoos he’d drawn by licking an indelible pencil. “What about that, Harding? Where is he making muh-muh-money out of teaching me to dance?”

“Don’t get upset, William,” Harding said. “But don’t get impatient, either. Let’s just sit easy and wait — and see how he works it.”

It seemed like Billy and I were the only two left who believed in McMurphy. And that very night Billy swung over to Harding’s way of looking at things when McMurphy came back from making another phone call and told Billy that the date with Candy was on for certain and added, writing an address down for him, that it might be a good idea to send her a little bread for the trip.

“Bread? Muh-money? How muh-muh-much?” He looked over to where Harding was grinning at him.

“Oh, you know, man — maybe ten bucks for her and ten—”

“Twenty bucks! It doesn’t cost that muh-muh-much for bus fare down here.”

McMurphy looked up from under his hatbrim, gave Billy a slow grin, then rubbed his throat with his hand, running out a dusty tongue. “Boy, oh boy, but I’m terrible dry. Figure to be even drier by a week come Saturday. You wouldn’t begrudge her bringin’ me a little swallow, would you, Billy Boy?”

And gave Billy such an innocent look Billy had to laugh and shake his head, no, and go off to a corner to excitedly talk over the next Saturday’s plans with the man he probably considered a pimp.

I still had my own notions — how McMurphy was a giant come out of the sky to save us from the Combine that was networking the land with copper wire and crystal, how he was too big to be bothered with something as measly as money — but even I came halfway to thinking like the others. What happened was this: He’d helped carry the tables into the tub room before one of the group meetings and was looking at me standing beside the control panel.

“By God, Chief,” he said, “it appears to me you grooved ten inches since that fishing trip. And lordamighty, look at the size of that foot of yours; big as a flatcar!”

I looked down and saw how my foot was bigger than I’d ever remembered it, like McMurphy’s just saying it had blowed it twice its size.

“And that arm! That’s the arm of an ex-football-playing Indian if I ever saw one. You know what I think? I think you oughta give this here panel a leetle heft, just to test how you’re comin’.”

I shook my head and told him no, but he said we’d made a deal and I was obligated to give it a try to see how his growth system was working. I didn’t see any way out of it so I went to the panel just to show him I couldn’t do it. I bent down and took it by the levers.

“That’s the baby, Chief. Now just straighten up. Get those legs under your butt, there… yeah, yeah. Easy now… just straighten up. Hooeee! Now ease ‘er back to the deck.”

I thought he’d be real disappointed, but when I stepped back he was all grins and pointing to where the panel was off its mooring by half a foot. “Better set her back where she came from, buddy, so nobody’ll know. Mustn’t let anybody know yet.”

Then, after the meeting, loafing around the pinochle games, he worked the talk around to strength and gut-power and to the control panel in the tub room. I thought he was going to tell them how he’d helped me get my size back; that would prove he didn’t do everything for money.

But he didn’t mention me. He talked until Harding asked him if he was ready to have another try at lifting it and he said no, but just because he couldn’t lift it was no sign it couldn’t be done. Scanlon said maybe it could be done with a crane, but no man could lift that thing by himself, and McMurphy nodded and said maybe so, maybe so, but you never can tell about such things.

I watched the way he played them, got them to come around to him and say, No , by Jesus, not a man alive could lift it — finally even suggest the bet themselves. I watched how reluctant he looked to bet. He let the odds stack up, sucked them in deeper and deeper till he had five to one on a sure thing from every man of them, some of them betting up to twenty dollars. He never said a thing about seeing me lift it already.