by Ken Kesey
While his relaxed, good-natured voice doled out his life for us to live, a rollicking past full of kid fun and drinking buddies and loving women and barroom battles over meager honors--for all of us to dream ourselves into.
Part IV
THE BIG NURSE had her next maneuver under way the day after the fishing trip. The idea had come to her when she was talking to McMurphy the day before about how much money he was making off the fishing trip and other little enterprises along that line. She had worked the idea over that night, looking at it from every direction this time until she was dead sure it could not fail, and all the next day she fed hints around to start a rumor and have it breeding good before she actually said anything about it.
She knew that people, being like they are, sooner or later are going to draw back a ways from somebody who seems to be giving a little more than ordinary, from Santa Clauses and missionaries and men donating funds to worthy causes, and begin to wonder: What's in it for them? Grin out of the side of their mouths when the young lawyer, say, brings a sack of pecans to the kids in his district school--just before nominations for state senate, the sly devil--and say to one another, He's nobody's fool.
She knew it wouldn't take too much to get the guys to wondering just what it was, now that you mention it, that made McMurphy spend so much time and energy organizing fishing trips to the coast and arranging Bingo parties and coaching basketball teams. What pushed him to keep up a full head of steam when everybody else on the ward had always been content to drift along playing pinochle and reading last year's magazines? How come this one guy, this Irish rowdy from a work farm where he'd been serving time for gambling and battery, would loop a kerchief around his head, coo like a teenager, and spend two solid hours having every Acute on the ward hoorahing him while he played the girl trying to teach Billy Bibbit to dance? Or how come a seasoned con like this--an old pro, a carnival artist, a dedicated odds-watcher gambling man--would risk doubling his stay in the nuthouse by making more and more an enemy out of the woman who had the say-so as to who got discharged and who didn't?
The nurse got the wondering started by pasting up a statement of the patients' financial doings over the last few months; it must have taken her hours of work digging into records. It showed a steady drain out of the funds of all the Acutes, except one. His funds had risen since the day he came in.
The Acutes took to joking with McMurphy about how it looked like he was taking them down the line, and he was never one to deny it. Not the least bit. In fact, he bragged that if he stayed on at this hospital a year or so he just might be discharged out of it into financial independence, retire to Florida for the rest of his life. They all laughed about that when he was around, but when he was off the ward at ET or OT or PT, or when he was in the Nurses' Station getting bawled out about something, matching her fixed plastic smile with his big ornery grin, they weren't exactly laughing.
They began asking one another why he'd been such a busy bee lately, hustling things for the patients like getting the rule lifted that the men had to be together in therapeutic groups of eight whenever they went somewhere ("Billy here has been talkin' about slicin' his wrists again," he said in a meeting when he was arguing against the group-of-eight rule. "So is there seven of you guys who'd like to join him and make it therapeutic?"), and like the way he maneuvered the doctor, who was much closer to the patients since the fishing trip, into ordering subscriptions to Playboy and Nugget and Man and getting rid of all the old McCall's that bloated-face Public Relation had been bringing from home and leaving in a pile on the ward, articles he thought we might be particularly interested in checked with green ink. McMurphy even had a petition in the mail to somebody back in Washington, asking that they look into the lobotomies and electro-shock that were still going on in government hospitals. I just wonder; the guys were beginning to ask, what's in it for ol' Mack?
After the thought had been going around the ward a week or so, the Big Nurse tried to make her play in group meeting; the first time she tried, McMurphy was there at the meeting and he beat her before she got good and started (she started by telling the group that she was shocked and dismayed by the pathetic state the ward had allowed itself to fall into: Look around, for heaven sakes; actual pornography clipped from those smut books and pinned on the walls--she was planning, incidentally, to see to it that the Main Building made an investigation of the dirt that had been brought into this hospital. She sat back in her chair, getting ready to go on and point out who was to blame and why, sitting on that couple seconds of silence that followed her threat like sitting on a throne, when McMurphy broke her spell into whoops of laughter by telling her to be sure, now, an' remind the Main Building to bring their leetle hand mirrors when they came for the investigation)--so the next time she made her play she made sure he wasn't at the meeting.
He had a long-distance phone call from Portland and was down in the phone lobby with one of the black boys, waiting for the party to call again. When one o'clock came around and we went to moving things, getting the day room ready, the least black boy asked if she wanted him to go down and get McMurphy and Washington for the meeting, but she said no, it was all right, let him stay--besides, some of the men here might like a chance to discuss our Mr. Randle Patrick McMurphy in the absence of his dominating presence.
They started the meeting telling funny stories about him and what he'd done, and talked for a while about what a great guy he was, and she kept still, waiting till they all talked this out of their systems. Then the other questions started coming up. What about McMurphy? What made him go on like he was, do the things he did? Some of the guys wondered if maybe that tale of him faking fights at the work farm to get sent here wasn't just more of his spoofing, and that maybe he was crazier than people thought. The Big Nurse smiled at this and raised her hand.
"Crazy like a fox," she said. "I believe that is what you're trying to say about Mr. McMurphy."
"What do you m-m-mean?" Billy asked. McMurphy was his special friend and hero, and he wasn't too sure he was pleased with the way she'd laced that compliment with things she didn't say out loud. "What do you m-m-mean, 'like a fox'?"
"It's a simple observation, Billy," the nurse answered pleasantly. "Let's see if some of the other men could tell you what it means. What about you, Mr. Scanlon?"
"She means, Billy, that Mack's nobody's fool."
"Nobody said he wuh-wuh-wuh-was!" Billy hit the arm of the chair with his fist to get out the last word. "But Miss Ratched was im-implying--"
"No, Billy, I wasn't implying anything. I was simply observing that Mr. McMurphy isn't one to run a risk without a reason. You would agree to that, wouldn't you? Wouldn't all of you agree to that?"
Nobody said anything.
"And yet," she went on, "he seems to do things without thinking of himself at all, as if he were a martyr or a saint. Would anyone venture that Mr. McMurphy was a saint?"
She knew she was safe to smile around the room, waiting for an answer.
"No, not a saint or a martyr. Here. Shall we examine a cross section of this man's philanthropy?" She took a sheet of yellow paper out of her basket. "Look at some of these gifts, as devoted fans of his might call them. First, there was the gift of the tub room. Was that actually his to give? Did he lose anything by acquiring it as a gambling casino? On the other hand, how much do you suppose he made in the short time he was croupier of his little Monte Carlo here on the ward? How much did you lose, Bruce? Mr. Sefelt? Mr. Scanlon? I think you all have some idea what your personal losses were, but do you know what his total winnings came to, according to deposits he has made at Funds? Almost three hundred dollars."
Scanlon gave a low whistle, but no one else said anything.
"I have various other bets he made listed here, if any of you care to look, including something to do with deliberately trying to upset the staff. And all of this gambling was, is, completely against ward policy and every one of you who dealt with him knew it."
She loo
ked 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 down-right 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 backwoodsy 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 growed 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 no-body'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.
All night I hoped he wouldn't go through with it. And during the meeting the next day, when the nurse said all the men who participated in the fishing trip would have to take special showers because they were suspected of vermin, I kept hoping she'd fix it somehow, make us take our showers right away or something--anything to keep me from having to lift it.
But when the meeting was over he led me and the rest of the guys into the tub room before the black boys could lock it up, and had me take the panel by th
e levers and lift. I didn't want to, but I couldn't help it. I felt like I'd helped him cheat them out of their money. They were all friendly with him as they paid their bets, but I knew how they were feeling inside, how something had been kicked out from under them. As soon as I got the panel back in place, I ran out of the tub room without even looking at McMurphy and went into the latrine. I wanted to be by myself. I caught a look at myself in the mirror. He'd done what he said; my arms were big again, big as they were back in high school, back at the village, and my chest and shoulders were broad and hard. I was standing there looking when he came in. He held out a five-dollar bill.
"Here you go, Chief, chewin'-gum money."
I shook my head and started to walk out of the latrine. He caught me by the arm.
"Chief, I just offered you a token of my appreciation. If you figure you got a bigger cut comin'--"
"No! Keep your money, I won't have it."
He stepped back and put his thumbs in his pockets and tipped his head up at me. He looked me over for a while.
"Okay," he said. "Now what's the story? What's everybody in this place giving me the cold nose about?"
I didn't answer him.
"Didn't I do what I said I would? Make you man-sized again? What's wrong with me around here all of a sudden? You birds act like I'm a traitor to my country."
"You're always ... winning things!"
"Winning things! You damned moose, what are you accusin' me of? All I do is hold up my end of the deal. Now what's so all-fired--"
"We thought it wasn't to be winning things ..."
I could feel my chin jerking up and down the way it does before I start crying, but I didn't start crying. I stood there in front of him with my chin jerking. He opened his mouth to say something, and then stopped. He took his thumbs out of his pockets and reached up and grabbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger, like you see people do whose glasses are too tight between the lenses, and he closed his eyes.
