9

All through breakfast McMurphy’s talking and laughing a mile a minute. After this morning he thinks the Big Nurse is going to be a snap. He don’t know he just caught her off guard and, if anything, made her strengthen herself.

He’s being the clown, working at getting some of the guys to laugh. It bothers him that the best they can do is grin weakly and snigger sometimes. He prods at Billy Bib-bit, sitting across the table from him, says in a secret voice, “Hey, Billy boy, you remember that time in Seattle you and me picked up those two twitches? One of the best rolls I ever had.”

Billy’s eyes bob up from his plate. He opens his mouth but can’t say a thing. McMurphy turns to Harding.

“We’d never have brought it off, neither, picking them up on the spur of the moment that way, except that they’d heard tell of Billy Bibbit. Billy ‘Club’ Bibbit, he was known as in them days. Those girls were about to take off when one looked at him and says ‘Are you the renowned Billy Club Bibbit? Of the famous fourteen inches?’ And Billy ducked his head and blushed – like he’s doin’ now – and we were a shoo-in. And I remember, when we got them up to the hotel, there was this woman’s voice from over near Billy’s bed, says, ‘Mister Bibbit, I’m disappointed in you; I heard that you had four – four – for goodness sakes!’ ”

And whoops and slaps his leg and gooses Billy with his thumb till I think Billy will fall in a dead faint from blushing and grinning.

McMurphy says that as a matter of fact a couple of sweet twitches like those two is the only thing this hospital does lack. The bed they give a man here, finest he’s ever slept in, and what a fine table they do spread. He can’t figure why everybody’s so glum about being locked up here.

“Look at me now,” he tells the guys and lifts a glass to the light, “getting my first glass of orange juice in six months. Hooee, that’s good. I ask you, what did I get for breakfast at that work farm? What was I served? Well, I can describe what it looked like, but I sure couldn’t hang a name on it; morning noon and night it was burnt black and had potatoes in it and looked like roofing glue. I know one thing; it wasn’t orange juice. Look at me now: bacon, toast, butter, eggs – coffee the little honey in the kitchen even asks me if I like it black or white thank you – and a great! big! cold glass of orange juice. Why, you couldn’t pay me to leave this place!”

He gets seconds on everything and makes a date with the girl pours coffee in the kitchen for when he gets discharged, and he compliments the Negro cook on sunny-siding the best eggs he ever ate. There’s bananas for the corn flakes, and he gets a handful, tells the black boy that he’ll filch him one ‘cause he looks so starved, and the black boy shifts his eyes to look down the hall to where the nurse is sitting in her glass case, and says it ain’t allowed for the help to eat with the patients.

“Against ward policy?”

“Tha’s right.”

“Tough luck” – and peels three bananas right under the black boy’s nose and eats one after the other, tells the boy that any time you want one snack outa the mess hall for you, Sam, you just give the word.

When McMurphy finishes his last banana he slaps his belly and gets up and heads for the door, and the big black boy blocks the door and tells him the rule that patients sit in the mess hall till they all leave at seven-thirty. McMurphy stares at him like he can’t believe he’s hearing right, then turns and looks at Harding. Harding nods his head, so McMurphy shrugs and goes back to his chair. “I sure don’t want to go against that goddamned policy.”

The clock at the end of the mess hall shows it’s a quarter after seven, lies about how we only been sitting here fifteen minutes when you can tell it’s been at least an hour. Everybody is finished eating and leaned back, watching the big hand to move to seven-thirty. The black boys take away the Vegetables’ splattered trays and wheel the two old men down to get hosed off. In the mess hall about half the guys lay their heads on their arms, figuring to get a little sleep before the black boys get back. There’s nothing else to do, with no cards or magazines or picture puzzles. Just sleep or watch the clock.

But McMurphy can’t keep still for that; he’s got to be up to something. After about two minutes of pushing food scraps around his plate with his spoon, he’s ready for more excitement. He hooks his thumbs in his pockets and tips back and one-eyes that clock up on the wall. Then he rubs his nose.

“You know – that old clock up there puts me in mind of the targets at the target range at Fort Riley. That’s where I got my first medal, a sharpshooter medal. Dead-Eye McMurphy. Who wants to lay me a pore little dollar that I can’t put this dab of butter square in the center of the face of that clock up there, or at least on the face?”

He gets three bets and takes up his butter pat and puts it on his knife, gives it a flip. It sticks a good six inches or so to the left of the clock, and everybody kids him about it until he pays his bets. They’re still riding him about did he mean Dead-Eye or Dead-Eyes when the least black boy gets back from hosing Vegetables and everybody looks into his plate and keeps quiet. The black boy senses something is in the air, but he can’t see what. And he probably never would of known except old Colonel Matterson is gazing around, and he sees the butter stuck up on the wall and this causes him to point up at it and go into one of his lessons, explaining to us all in his patient, rumbling voice, just like what he said made sense.

“The but-ter… is the Re-pub-li-can party…”

The black boy looks where the colonel is pointing, and there that butter is, easing down the wall like a yellow snail. He blinks at it but he doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even bother looking around to make certain who flipped it up there.

McMurphy is whispering and nudging the Acutes sitting around him, and in a minute they all nod, and he lays three dollars on the table and leans back. Everybody turns in his chair and watches that butter sneak on down the wall, starting, hanging still, shooting ahead and leaving a shiny trail behind it on the paint. Nobody says a word. They look at the butter, then at the clock, then back at the butter. The clock’s moving now.

The butter makes it down to the floor about a half a minute before seven-thirty, and McMurphy gets back all the money he lost.

The black boy wakes up and turns away from the greasy stripe on the wall and says we can go, and McMurphy walks out of the mess hall, folding his money in his pocket. He puts his arms around the black boy’s shoulders and half walks, half carries him, down the hall toward the day room. “The day’s half gone, Sam, of buddy, an’ I’m just barely breaking even. I’ll have to hustle to catch up. How about breaking out that deck of cards you got locked securely in that cabinet, and I’ll see if I can make myself heard over that loudspeaker.”

Spends most of that morning hustling to catch up by dealing more blackjack, playing for IOUs now instead of cigarettes. He moves the blackjack table two or three times to try to get out from under the speaker. You can tell it’s getting on his nerves. Finally he goes to the Nurses’ Station and raps on a pane of glass till the Big Nurse swivels in her chair and opens the door, and he asks her how about turning that infernal noise off for a while. She’s calmer than ever now, back in her seat behind her pane of glass; there’s no heathen running around half-naked to unbalance her. Her smile is settled and solid. She closes her eyes and shakes her head and tells McMurphy very pleasantly, No.

“Can’t you even ease down on the volume? It ain’t like the whole state of Oregon needed to hear Lawrence Welk play ‘Tea for Two’ three times every hour, all day long! If it was soft enough to hear a man shout his bets across the table I might get a game of poker going – ”

“You’ve been told, Mr. McMurphy, that it’s against the policy to gamble for money on the ward.”

“Okay, then down soft enough to gamble for matches, for fly buttons – just turn the damn thing down!”

“Mr. McMurphy” – she waits and lets her calm schoolteacher tone sink in before she goes on; she knows every Acute on the ward is listening to them – “do you want to know what I think? I think you are being very selfish. Haven’t you noticed there are others in this hospital besides yourself? There are old men here who couldn’t hear the radio at all if it were lower, old fellows who simply aren’t capable of reading, or working puzzles – or playing cards to win other men’s cigarettes. Old fellows like Matterson and Kittling, that music coming from the loudspeaker is all they have. And you want to take that away from them. We like to hear suggestions and requests whenever we can, but I should think you might at least give some thought to others before you make your requests.”

He turns and looks over at the Chronic side and sees there’s something to what she says. He takes off his cap and runs his hand in his hair, finally turns back to her. He knows as well as she does that all the Acutes are listening to everything they say.

“Okay – I never thought about that.”

“I thought you hadn’t.”

He tugs at that little tuft of red showing out of the neck of his greens, then says. “Well, hey; what do you say to us taking the card game someplace else? Some other room? Like, say, that room you people put the tables in during that meeting. There’s nothing in there all the rest of the day. You could unlock that room and let the card-players go in there, and leave the old men out here with their radio – a good deal all around.”

She smiles and closes her eyes again and shakes her head gently. “Of course, you may take the suggestion up with the rest of the staff at some time, but I’m afraid everyone’s feelings will correspond with mine: we do not have adequate coverage for two day rooms. There isn’t enough personnel. And I wish you wouldn’t lean against the glass there, please; your hands are oily and staining the window. That means extra work for some of the other men.”

He jerks his hand away, and I see he starts to say something and then stops, realizing she didn’t leave him anything else to say, unless he wants to start cussing at her. His face and neck are red. He draws a long breath and concentrates on his will power, the way she did this morning, and tells her that he is very sorry to have bothered her, and goes back to the card table.

Everybody on the ward can feel that it’s started.

At eleven o’clock the doctor comes to the day-room door and calls over to McMurphy that he’d like to have him come down to his office for an interview. “I interview all new admissions on the second day.”

McMurphy lays down his cards and stands up and walks over to the doctor. The doctor asks him how his night was, but McMurphy just mumbles an answer.

“You look deep in thought today, Mr. McMurphy.”

“Oh, I’m a thinker all right,” McMurphy says, and they walk off together down the hall. When they come back what seems like days later, they’re both grinning and talking and happy about something. The doctor is wiping tears off his glasses and looks like he’s actually been laughing, and McMurphy is back as loud and full of brass and swagger as ever. He’s that way all through lunch, and at one o’clock he’s the first one in his seat for the meeting, his eyes blue and ornery from his place in the corner.

The Big Nurse comes into the day room with her covey of student nurses and her basket of notes. She picks the log book up from the table and frowns into it a minute (nobody’s informed on anybody all day long), then goes to her seat beside the door. She picks up some folders from the basket on her lap and riffles through them till she finds the one on Harding.

“As I recall, we were making quite a bit of headway yesterday with Mr. Harding’s problem – ”

“Ah – before we go into that,” the doctor says, “I’d like to interrupt a moment, if I might. Concerning a talk Mr. McMurphy and I had in my office this morning. Reminiscing, actually. Talking over old times. You see Mr. McMurphy and I find we have something in common – we went to the same high school.”

The nurses look at one another and wonder what’s got into this man. The patients glance at McMurphy grinning from his corner and wait for the doctor to go on. He nods his head.

“Yes, the same high school. And in the course of our reminiscing we happened to bring up the carnivals the school used to sponsor – marvelous, noisy, gala occasions. Decorations, crepe streamers, booths, games – it was always one of the prime events of the year. I – as I mentioned to Mc-Murphy – was the chairman of the high-school carnival both my junior and senior years – wonderful carefree years…”

It’s got real quiet in the day room. The doctor raises his head, peers around to see if he’s making a fool of himself. The Big Nurse is giving him a look that shouldn’t leave any doubts about it, but he doesn’t have on his glasses and the look misses him.

“Anyway – to put an end to this maudlin display of nostalgia – in the course of our conversation McMurphy and I wondered what would be the attitude of some of the men toward a carnival here on the ward?”

He puts on his glasses and peers around again. Nobody’s jumping up and down at the idea. Some of us can remember Taber trying to engineer a carnival a few years back, and what happened to it. As the doctor waits, a silence rears up from out of the nurse and looms over everybody, daring anybody to challenge it. I know McMurphy can’t because he was in on the planning of the carnival, and just as I’m thinking that nobody will be fool enough to break that silence, Cheswick, who sits right next to McMurphy, gives a grunt and is on his feet, rubbing his ribs, before he knows what happened.

“Uh – I personally believe, see” – he looks down at McMurphy’s fist on the chair arm beside him, with that big stiff thumb sticking straight up out of it like a cow prod – “that a carnival is a real good idea. Something to break the monotony.”

“That’s right, Charley,” the doctor says, appreciating Cheswick’s support, “and not altogether without therapeutic value.”

“Certainly not,” Cheswick says, looking happier now. “No. Lots of therapeutics in a carnival. You bet.”

“It would b-b-be fun,” Billy Bibbit says.

“Yeah, that too,” Cheswick says. “We could do it, Doctor Spivey, sure we could. Scanlon can do his human bomb act, and I can make a ring toss in Occupational Therapy.”

“I’ll tell fortunes,” Martini says and squints at a spot above his head.

“I’m rather good at diagnosing pathologies from palm reading, myself,” Harding says.

“Good, good,” Cheswick says and claps his hands. He’s never had anybody support anything he said before.

“Myself,” McMurphy drawls, “I’d be honored to work a skillo wheel. Had a little experience…”

“Oh, there are numerous possibilities,” the doctor says, sitting up straight in his chair and really warming to it. “Why, I’ve got a million ideas…”

He talks full steam ahead for another five minutes. You can tell a lot of the ideas are ideas he’s already talked over with McMurphy. He describes games, booths, talks of selling tickets, then stops as suddenly as though the Nurse’s look had hit him right between the eyes. He blinks at her and asks, “What do you think of the idea, Miss Ratched? Of a carnival? Here, on the ward?”

“I agree that it may have a number of therapeutic possibilities,” she says, and waits. She lets that silence rear up from her again. When she’s sure nobody’s going to challenge it, she goes on. “But I also believe that an idea like this should be discussed in staff meeting before a decision is reached. Wasn’t that your idea, Doctor?”

“Of course. I merely thought, understand, I would feel out some of the men first. But certainly, a staff meeting first. Then we’ll continue our plans.”

Everybody knows that’s all there is to the carnival.

The Big Nurse starts to bring things back into hand by rattling the folio she’s holding. “Fine. Then if there is no other new business – and if Mr. Cheswick will be seated – I think we might go right on into the discussion. We have” – she takes her watch from the basket and looks at it – “forty-eight minutes left. So, as I – ”

“Oh. Hey, wait. I remember there is some other new business.” McMurphy has his hand up, fingers snapping. She looks at the hand for a long time before she says anything.

“Yes, Mr. McMurphy?”

“Not me, Doctor Spivey has. Doc, tell ‘em what you come up with about the hard-of-hearing guys and the radio.”

The nurse’s head gives one little jerk, barely enough to see, but my heart is suddenly roaring. She puts the folio back in the basket, turns to the doctor.

“Yes,” says the doctor. “I very nearly forgot.” He leans back and crosses his legs and puts his fingertips together; I can see he’s still in good spirits about his carnival. “You see, McMurphy and I were talking about that age-old problem we have on this ward: the mixed population, the young and the old together. It’s not the most ideal surroundings for our Therapeutic Community, but Administration says there’s no helping it with the Geriatric Building overloaded the way it is. I’ll be the first to admit it’s not an absolutely pleasant situation for anyone concerned. In our talk, however, McMurphy and I did happen to come up with an idea which might make things more pleasant for both age groups. McMurphy mentioned that he had noticed some of the old fellows seemed to have difficulty hearing the radio. He suggested the speaker might be turned up louder so the Chronics with auditory weaknesses could hear it. A very humane suggestion, I think.”

McMurphy gives a modest wave of his hand, and the doctor nods at him and goes on.

“But I told him I had received previous complaints from some of the younger men that the radio is already so loud it hinders conversation and reading. McMurphy said he hadn’t thought of this, but mentioned that it did seem a shame that those who wished to read couldn’t get off by themselves where it was quiet and leave the radio for those who wished to listen. I agreed with him that it did seem a shame and was ready to drop the matter when I happened to think of the old tub room where we store the tables during the ward meeting. We don’t use the room at all otherwise; there’s no longer a need for the hydrotherapy it was designed for, now that we have the new drugs. So how would the group like to have that room as a sort of second day room, a game room, shall we say?”

The group isn’t saying. They know whose play it is next. She folds Harding’s folio back up and puts it on her lap and crosses her hands over it, looking around the room just like somebody might dare have something to say. When it’s clear nobody’s going to talk till she does, her head turns again to the doctor. “It sounds like a fine plan, Doctor Spivey, and I appreciate Mr. McMurphy’s interest in the other patients, but I’m terribly afraid we don’t have the personnel to cover a second day room.”

And is so certain that this should be the end of it she starts to open the folio again. But the doctor has thought this through more than she figured.

“I thought of that too, Miss Ratched. But since it will be largely the Chronic patients who remain here in the day room with the speaker – most of whom are restricted to lounges or wheel chairs – one aide and one nurse in here should easily be able to put down any riots or uprisings that might occur, don’t you think?”

She doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t care much for his joking about riots and uprisings either, but her face doesn’t change. The smile stays.

“So the other two aides and nurses can cover the men in the tub room, perhaps even better than here in a larger area. What do you think, men? Is it a workable idea? I’m rather enthused about it myself, and I say we give it a try, see what it’s like for a few days. If it doesn’t work, well, we’ve still got the key to lock it back up, haven’t we?”

“Right!” Cheswick says, socks his fist into his palm. He’s still standing, like he’s afraid to get near that thumb of McMurphy’s again. “Right, Doctor Spivey, if it don’t work, we’ve still got the key to lock it back up. You bet.”

The doctor looks around the room and sees all the other Acutes nodding and smiling and looking so pleased with what he takes to be him and his idea that he blushes like Billy Bibbit and has to polish his glasses a time or two before he can go on. It tickles me to see the little man so happy with himself. He looks at all the guys nodding, and nods himself and says, “Fine, fine,” and settles his hands on his knees. “Very good. Now. If that’s decided – I seem to have forgotten what we were planning to talk about this morning?”

The nurse’s head gives that one little jerk again, and she bends over her basket, picks up a folio. She fumbles with the papers, and it looks like her hands are shaking. She draws out a paper, but once more, before she can start reading out of it, McMurphy is standing and holding up his hand and shifting from foot to foot, giving a long, thoughtful, “Saaaay,” and her fumbling stops, freezes as though the sound of his voice froze her just like her voice froze that black boy this morning. I get that giddy feeling inside me again when she freezes. I watch her close while McMurphy talks.

“Saaaaay, Doctor, what I been dyin’ to know is what did this dream I dreamt the other night mean? You see, it was like I was me, in the dream, and then again kind of like I wasn’t me – like I was somebody else that looked like me – like – like my daddy! Yeah, that’s who it was. It was my daddy because sometimes when I saw me – him – I saw there was this iron bolt through the jawbone like daddy used to have – ”

“Your father has an iron bolt through his jawbone?”

“Well, not any more, but he did once when I was a kid. He went around for about ten months with this big metal bolt going in here and coming out here! God, he was a regular Frankenstein. He’d been clipped on the jaw with a pole ax when he got into some kinda hassle with this pond man at the logging mill – Hey! Let me tell you how that incident came about…”

Her face is still calm, as though she had a cast made and painted to just the look she wants. Confident, patient, and unruffled. No more little jerk, just that terrible cold face, a calm smile stamped out of red plastic; a clean, smooth forehead, not a line in it to show weakness or worry; flat, wide, painted-on green eyes, painted on with an expression that says I can wait, I might lose a yard now and then but I can wait, and be patient and calm and confident, because I know there’s no real losing for me.

I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped. Maybe I did. But I see now that it don’t make any difference. One by one the patients are sneaking looks at her to see how she’s taking the way McMurphy is dominating the meeting, and they see the same thing. She’s too big to be beaten. She covers one whole side of the room like a Jap statue. There’s no moving her and no help against her. She’s lost a little battle here today, but it’s a minor battle in a big war that she’s been winning and that she’ll go on winning. We mustn’t let McMurphy get our hopes up any different, lure us into making some kind of dumb play. She’ll go on winning, just like the Combine, because she has all the power of the Combine behind her. She don’t lose on her losses, but she wins on ours. To beat her you don’t have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she’s won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.

Right now, she’s got the fog machine switched on, and it’s rolling in so fast I can’t see a thing but her face, rolling in thicker and thicker, and I feel as hopeless and dead as I felt happy a minute ago, when she gave that little jerk – even more hopeless than ever before, on account of I know now there is no real help against her or her Combine. Mc-Murphy can’t help any more than I could. Nobody can help. And the more I think about how nothing can be helped, the faster the fog rolls in.

And I’m glad when it gets thick enough you’re lost in it and can let go, and be safe again.