by Ken Kesey
"Winning, for Christsakes," he said with his eyes closed. "Hoo boy, winning."
So I figure what happened in the shower room that afternoon was more my fault than anybody else's. And that's why the only way I could make any kind of amends was by doing what I did, without thinking about being cagey or safe or what would happen to me--and not worrying about anything else for once but the thing that needed to be done and the doing of it.
Just after we left the latrine the three black boys came around, gathering the bunch of us for our special shower. The least black boy, scrambling along the baseboard with a black, crooked hand cold as a crowbar, prying guys loose leaning there, said it was what the Big Nurse called a cautionary cleansing. In view of the company we'd had on our trip we should get cleaned before we spread anything through the rest of the hospital.
We lined up nude against the tile, and here one black boy came, a black plastic tube in his hand, squirting a stinking salve thick and sticky as egg white. In the hair first, then turn around an' bend over an' spread your cheeks!
The guys complained and kidded and joked about it, trying not to look at one another or those floating slate masks working down the line behind the tubes, like nightmare faces in negative, sighting down soft, squeezy nightmare gunbarrels. They kidded the black boys by saying things like "Hey, Washington, what do you fellas do for fun the other sixteen hours?" "Hey, Williams, can you tell me what I had for breakfast?"
Everybody laughed. The black boys clenched their jaws and didn't answer; this wasn't the way things used to be before that damned red-head came around.
When Fredrickson spread his cheeks there was such a sound I thought the least black boy'd be blown clear off his feet.
"Hark!" Harding said, cupping his hand to his ear. "The lovely voice of an angel."
Everyone was roaring, laughing and kidding one another, until the black boy moved on and stopped in front of the next man, and the room was suddenly absolutely quiet. The next man was George. And in that one second, with the laughing and kidding and complaining stopped, with Fredrickson there next to George straightening up and turning around and a big black boy about to ask George to lean his head down for a squirt of that stinking salve--right at that time all of us had a good idea about everything that was going to happen, and why it had to happen, and why we'd all been wrong about McMurphy.
George never used soap when he showered. He wouldn't even let somebody hand him a towel to dry himself with. The black boys on the evening shift who supervised the usual Tuesday and Thursday evening showers had learned it was easier to leave it go like this, and they didn't force him to do any different. That was the way it'd been for a long time. All the black boys knew it. But now everybody knew--even George, leaning backward, shaking his head, covering himself with big oakleaf hands--that this black boy, with his nose busted and his insides soured and his two buddies standing behind him waiting to see what he would do, couldn't afford to pass up the chance.
"Ahhhh, bend you head down here, Geo'ge...."
The guys were already looking to where McMurphy stood a couple of men down the line.
"Ahhhh, c'mon, Geo'ge...."
Martini and Sefelt were standing in the shower, not moving. The drain at their feet kept choking short little gulps of air and soapy water. George looked at the drain a second, as if it were speaking to him. He watched it gurgle and choke. He looked back at the tube in the black hand before him, slow mucus running out of the little hole at the top of the tube down over the pig-iron knuckles. The black boy moved the tube forward a few inches, and George listed farther back, shaking his head.
"No--none that stoof."
"You gonna have to do it, Rub-a-dub," the black boy said, sounding almost sorry. "You gonna have to. We can't have the place crawlin' with bugs, now, can we? For all I know you got bugs on you a good inch deep!"
"No!" George said.
"Ahhh, Geo'ge, you jes' don't have no idea. These bugs, they very, very teeny--no bigger'n a pinpoint. An', man, what they do is get you by the short hair an' hang on, an' drill, down inside you, Geo'ge."
"No bugs!" George said.
"Ahhh, let me tell you, Geo'ge: I seen cases where these awful bugs achually--"
"Okay, Washington," McMurphy said.
The scar where the black boy's nose had been broken was a twist of neon. The black boy knew who'd spoken to him, but he didn't turn around; the only way we knew he'd even heard was by the way he stopped talking and reached up a long gray finger and drew it across the scar he'd got in that basketball game. He rubbed his nose a second, then shoved his hand out in front of George's face, scrabbling the fingers around. "A crab, Geo'ge, see? See here? Now you know what a crab look like, don't you? Sure now, you get crabs on that fishin' boat. We can't have crabs drillin' down into you, can we, Geo'ge?"
"No crabs!" George yelled. "No!" He stood straight and his brow lifted enough so we could see his eyes. The black boy stepped back a ways. The other two laughed at him. "Somethin' the matter, Washington, my man?" the big one asked. "Somethin' holding up this end of the pro-ceedure, my man?"
He stepped back in close. "Geo'ge, I'm tellin' you: bend down! You either bend down and take this stuff--or I lay my hand on you!" He held it up again; it was big and black as a swamp. "Put this black! filthy! stinkin'! hand all over you!"
"No hand!" George said and lifted a fist above his head as if he would crash the slate skull to bits, splatter cogs and nuts and bolts all over the floor. But the black boy just ran the tube up against George's belly-button and squeezed, and George doubled over with a suck of air. The black boy squirted a load in his whispy white hair, then rubbed it in with his hand, smearing black from his hand all over George's head. George wrapped both arms around his belly and screamed.
"No! No!"
"Now turn around, Geo'ge--"
"I said that's enough, buddy." This time the way his voice sounded made the black boy turn and face him. I saw the black boy was smiling, looking at McMurphy's nakedness--no hat or boots or pockets to hook his thumbs into. The black boy grinned up and down him.
"McMurphy," he said, shaking his head. "Y'know, I was beginnin' to think we might never get down to it."
"You goddamned coon," McMurphy said, somehow sounding more tired than mad. The black boy didn't say anything. McMurphy raised his voice. "Goddamned motherfucking nigger!"
The black boy shook his head and giggled at his two buddies. "What you think Mr. McMurphy is drivin' at with that kind of talk, man? You think he wants me to take the initiative? Heeheehee. Don't he know we trained to take such awful-soundin' insults from these crazies?"
"Cocksucker! Washington, you're nothing but a--"
Washington had turned his back on him, turning to George again. George was still bent over, gasping from the blow of that salve in his belly. The black boy grabbed his arm and swung him facing the wall.
"Tha's right, Geo'ge, now spread those cheeks."
"No-o-o!"
"Washington," McMurphy said. He took a deep breath and stepped across to the black boy, shoving him away from George. "Washington, all right, all right ..."
Everybody could hear the helpless, cornered despair in McMurphy's voice.
"McMurphy, you forcing me to protect myself. Ain't he forcing me, men?" The other two nodded. He carefully laid down the tube on the bench beside George, came back up with his fist swinging all in the same motion and busting McMurphy across the cheek by surprise. McMurphy nearly fell. He staggered backward into the naked line of men, and the guys caught him and pushed him back toward the smiling slate face. He got hit again, in the neck, before he gave up to the idea that it had started, at last, and there wasn't anything now but get what he could out of it. He caught the next swing blacksnaking at him, and held him by the wrist while he shook his head clear.
They swayed a second that way, panting along with the panting drain; then McMurphy shoved the black boy away and went into a crouch, rolling the big shoulders up to guard his chin, his fi
sts on each side of his head, circling the man in front of him.
And that neat, silent line of nude men changed into a yelling circle, limbs and bodies knitting in a ring of flesh.
The black arms stabbed in at the lowered red head and bull neck, chipped blood off the brow and the cheek. The black boy danced away. Taller, arms longer than McMurphy's thick red arms, punches faster and sharper, he was able to chisel at the shoulders and the head without getting in close. McMurphy kept walking forward--trudging, flatfooted steps, face down and squinting up between those tattooed fists on each side of his head--till he got the black boy against the ring of nude men and drove a fist square in the center of the white, starched chest. That slate face cracked pink, ran a tongue the color of strawberry ice cream over the lips. He ducked away from McMurphy's tank charge and got in another couple of licks before that fist laid him another good one. The mouth flew open wider this time, a blotch of sick color.
McMurphy had red marks on the head and shoulders, but he didn't seem to be hurt. He kept coming, taking ten blows for one. It kept on this way, back and forth in the shower room, till the black boy was panting and staggering and working mainly at keeping out of the way of those clubbing red arms. The guys were yelling for McMurphy to lay him out. McMurphy didn't act in any hurry.
The black boy spun away from a blow on his shoulder and looked quick to where the other two were watching. "Williams ... Warren ... damn you!" The other big one pulled the crowd apart and grabbed McMurphy around the arms from behind. McMurphy shook him off like a bull shaking off a monkey, but he was right back.
So I picked him off and threw him in the shower. He was full of tubes; he didn't weigh more'n ten or fifteen pounds.
The least black boy swung his head from side to side, turned, and ran for the door. While I was watching him go, the other one came out of the shower and put a wrestling hold on me--arms up under mine from behind and hands locked behind my neck--and I had to run backward into the shower and mash him against the tile, and while I was lying there in the water trying to watch McMurphy bust some more of Washington's ribs, the one behind me with the wrestling hold went to biting my neck and I had to break the hold. He laid still then, the starch washing from the uniform down the choking drain.
And by the time the least black boy came running back in with straps and cuffs and blankets and four more aides from Disturbed, everybody was getting dressed and shaking my hand and McMurphy's hand and saying they had it coming and what a ripsnorter of a fight it had been, what a tremendous big victory. They kept talking like that, to cheer us up and make us feel better, about what a fight, what a victory--as the Big Nurse helped the aides from Disturbed adjust those soft leather cuffs to fit our arms.
UP ON DISTURBED there's an everlasting high-pitched machine-room clatter, a prison mill stamping out license plates. And time is measured out by the di-dock, di-dock of a Ping-pong table. Men pacing their personal runways get to a wall and dip a shoulder and turn and pace back to another wall, dip a shoulder and turn and back again, fast short steps, wearing crisscrossing ruts in the tile floor, with a look of caged thirst. There's a singed smell of men scared berserk and out of control, and in the corners and under the Ping-pong table there's things crouched gnashing their teeth that the doctors and nurses can't see and the aides can't kill with disinfectant. When the ward door opened I smelled that singed smell and heard that gnash of teeth.
A tall bony old guy, dangling from a wire screwed in between his shoulder blades, met McMurphy and me at the door when the aides brought us in. He looked us over with yellow, scaled eyes and shook his head. "I wash my hands of the whole deal," he told one of the colored aides, and the wire drug him off down the hall.
We followed him down to the day room, and McMurphy stopped at the door and spread his feet and tipped his head back to look things over; he tried to put his thumbs in his pockets, but the cuffs were too tight. "It's a scene," he said out of the side of his mouth. I nodded my head. I'd seen it all before.
A couple of the guys pacing stopped to look at us, and the old bony man came dragging by again, washing his hands of the whole deal. Nobody paid us much mind at first. The aides went off to the Nurses' Station, leaving us standing in the day-room door. McMurphy's eye was puffed to give him a steady wink, and I could tell it hurt his lips to grin. He raised his cuffed hands and stood looking at the clatter of movement and took a deep breath.
"McMurphy's the name, pardners," he said in his drawling cowboy actor's voice, "an' the thing I want to know is who's the peckerwood runs the poker game in this establishment?"
The Ping-pong clock died down in a rapid ticking on the floor.
"I don't deal blackjack so good, hobbled like this, but I maintain I'm a fire-eater in a stud game."
He yawned, hitched a shoulder, bent down and cleared his throat, and spat something at a wastepaper can five feet away; it rattled in with a ting and he straightened up again, grinned, and licked his tongue at the bloody gap in his teeth.
"Had a run-in downstairs. Me an' the Chief here locked horns with two greasemonkeys."
All the stamp-mill racket had stopped by this time, and everybody was looking toward the two of us at the door. McMurphy drew eyes to him like a sideshow barker. Beside him, I found that I was obliged to be looked at too, and with people staring at me I felt I had to stand up straight and tall as I could. That made my back hurt where I'd fallen in the shower with the black boy on me, but I didn't let on. One hungry looker with a head of shaggy black hair came up and held his hand like he figured I had something for him. I tried to ignore him, but he kept running around in front of whichever way I turned, like a little kid, holding that empty hand cupped out to me.
McMurphy talked a while about the fight, and my back got to hurting more and more; I'd hunkered in my chair in the corner for so long that it was hard to stand straight very long. I was glad when a little Jap nurse came to take us into the Nurses' Station and I got a chance to sit and rest.
She asked if we were calm enough for her to take off the cuffs, and McMurphy nodded. He had slumped over with his head hung and his elbows between his knees and looked completely exhausted--it hadn't occurred to me that it was just as hard for him to stand straight as it was for me.
The nurse--about as big as the small end of nothing whittled to a fine point, as McMurphy put it later--undid our cuffs and gave McMurphy a cigarette and gave me a stick of gum. She said she remembered that I chewed gum. I didn't remember her at all. McMurphy smoked while she dipped her little hand full of pink birthday candles into a jar of salve and worked over his cuts, flinching every time he flinched and telling him she was sorry. She picked up one of his hands in both of hers and turned it over and salved his knuckles. "Who was it?" she asked, looking at the knuckles. "Was it Washington or Warren?"
McMurphy looked up at her. "Washington," he said and grinned. "The Chief here took care of Warren."
She put his hand down and turned to me. I could see the little bird bones in her face. "Are you hurt anywhere?" I shook my head.
"What about Warren and Williams?"
McMurphy told her he thought they might be sporting some plaster the next time she saw them. She nodded and looked at her feet. "It's not all like her ward," she said. "A lot of it is, but not all. Army nurses, trying to run an Army hospital. They are a little sick themselves. I sometimes think all single nurses should be fired after they reach thirty-five."
"At least all single Army nurses," McMurphy added. He asked how long we could expect to have the pleasure of her hospitality.
"Not very long, I'm afraid."
"Not very long, you're afraid?" McMurphy asked her.
"Yes. I'd like to keep men here sometimes instead of sending them back, but she has seniority. No, you probably won't be very long--I mean--like you are now."
The beds on Disturbed are all out of tune, too taut or too loose. We were assigned beds next to each other. They didn't tie a sheet across me, though they left a little dim light
on near the bed. Halfway through the night somebody screamed, "I'm starting to spin, Indian! Look me, look me!" I opened my eyes and saw a set of long yellow teeth glowing right in front of my face. It was the hungry-looking guy. "I'm starting to spin! Please look me!"
The aides got him from behind, two of them, dragged him laughing and yelling out of the dorm; "I'm starting to spin, Indian!"--then just laugh. He kept saying it and laughing all the way down the hall till the dorm was quiet again, and I could hear that one other guy saying, "Well ... I wash my hands of the whole deal."
"You had you a buddy for a second there, Chief," McMurphy whispered and rolled over to sleep. I couldn't sleep much the rest of the night and I kept seeing those yellow teeth and that guy's hungry face, asking to Look me! Look me! Or, finally, as I did get to sleep, just asking. That face, just a yellow, starved need, come looming out of the dark in front of me, wanting things ... asking things. I wondered how McMurphy slept, plagued by a hundred faces like that, or two hundred, or a thousand.
They've got an alarm on Disturbed to wake the patients. They don't just turn on the lights like downstairs. This alarm sounds like a gigantic pencil-sharpener grinding up something awful. McMurphy and I both sat bolt upright when we heard it and were about to lie back down when a loudspeaker called for the two of us to come to the Nurses' Station. I got out of bed, and my back had stiffened up overnight to where I could just barely bend; I could tell by the way McMurphy gimped around that he was as stiff as I was.
"What they got on the program for us now, Chief?" he asked. "The boot? The rack? I hope nothing too strenuous, because, man, am I stove up bad!"
I told him it wasn't strenuous, but I didn't tell him anything else, because I wasn't sure myself till I got to the Nurses' Station, and the nurse, a different one, said, "Mr. McMurphy and Mr. Bromden?" then handed us each a little paper cup.
I looked in mine, and there are three of those red capsules.
This tsing whirs in my head I can't stop.
"Hold on," McMurphy says. "These are those knockout pills, aren't they?"
The nurse nods, twists her head to check behind her; there's two guys waiting with ice tongs, hunching forward with their elbows linked.
