One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

  "Yeah? How much bigger?"

  "Bigger than Papa and me together."

  "Just one day took to growin', huh? Well, that's a new one on me: I never heard of an Indian woman doing something like that."

  "She wasn't Indian. She was a town woman from The Dalles."

  "And her name was what? Bromden? Yeah, I see, wait a minute." He thinks for a while and says, "And when a town woman marries an Indian that's marryin' somebody beneath her, ain't it? Yeah, I think I see."

  "No. It wasn't just her that made him little. Everybody worked on him because he was big, and wouldn't give in, and did like he pleased. Everybody worked on him just the way they're working on you."

  "They who, Chief?" he asked in a soft voice, suddenly serious.

  "The Combine. It worked on him for years. He was big enough to fight it for a while. It wanted us to live in inspected houses. It wanted to take the falls. It was even in the tribe, and they worked on him. In the town they beat him up in the alleys and cut his hair short once. Oh, the Combine's big--big. He fought it a long time till my mother made him too little to fight any more and he gave up."

  McMurphy didn't say anything for a long time after that. Then he raised up on his elbow and looked at me again, and asked why they beat him up in the alleys, and I told him that they wanted to make him see what he had in store for him only worse if he didn't sign the papers giving everything to the government.

  "What did they want him to give to the government?"

  "Everything. The tribe, the village, the falls ..."

  "Now I remember; you're talking about the falls where the Indians used to spear salmon--long time ago. Yeah. But the way I remember it the tribe got paid some huge amount."

  "That's what they said to him. He said, What can you pay for the way a man lives? He said, What can you pay for what a man is? They didn't understand. Not even the tribe. They stood out in front of our door all holding those checks and they wanted him to tell them what to do now. They kept asking him to invest for them, or tell them where to go, or to buy a farm. But he was too little anymore. And he was too drunk, too. The Combine had whipped him. It beats ever-body. It'll beat you too. They can't have somebody as big as Papa running around unless he's one of them. You can see that."

  "Yeah, I reckon I can."

  "That's why you shouldn't of broke that window. They see you're big, now. Now they got to bust you."

  "Like bustin' a mustang, huh?"

  "No. No, listen. They don't bust you that way; they work on you ways you can't fight! They put things in! They install things. They start as quick as they see you're gonna be big and go to working and installing their filthy machinery when you're little, and keep on and on and on till you're fixed!"

  "Take 'er easy, buddy; shhhh."

  "And if you fight they lock you someplace and make you stop--"

  "Easy, easy, Chief. Just cool it for a while. They heard you."

  He lay down and kept still. My bed was hot, I noticed. I could hear the squeak of rubber soles as the black boy came in with a flashlight to see what the noise was. We lay still till he left.

  "He finally just drank," I whispered. I didn't seem to be able to stop talking, not till I finished telling what I thought was all of it. "And the last I see him he's blind in the cedars from drinking and every time I see him put the bottle to his mouth he don't suck out of it, it sucks out of him until he's shrunk so wrinkled and yellow even the dogs don't know him, and we had to cart him out of the cedars, in a pickup, to a place in Portland, to die. I'm not saying they kill. They didn't kill him. They did something else."

  I was feeling awfully sleepy. I didn't want to talk any more. I tried to think back on what I'd been saying, and it didn't seem like what I'd wanted to say.

  "I been talking crazy, ain't I?"

  "Yeah, Chief"--he rolled over in his bed--"you been talkin' crazy."

  "It wasn't what I wanted to say. I can't say it all. It don't make sense."

  "I didn't say it didn't make sense, Chief, I just said it was talkin' crazy."

  He didn't say anything after that for so long I thought he'd gone to sleep. I wished I'd told him good night. I looked over at him, and he was turned away from me. His arm wasn't under the covers, and I could just make out the aces and eights tattooed there. It's big, I thought, big as my arms used to be when I played football. I wanted to reach over and touch the place where he was tattooed, to see if he was still alive. He's layin' awful quiet, I told myself, I ought to touch him to see if he's still alive....

  That's a lie. I know he's still alive. That ain't the reason I want to touch him.

  I want to touch him because he's a man.

  That's a lie too. There's other men around. I could touch them.

  I want to touch him because I'm one of these queers!

  But that's a lie too. That's one fear hiding behind another. If I was one of these queers I'd want to do other things with him. I just want to touch him because he's who he is.

  But as I was about to reach over to that arm he said, "Say, Chief," and rolled in bed with a lurch of covers, facing me, "Say, Chief, why don't you come on this fishin' trip with us tomorrow?"

  I didn't answer.

  "Come on, what do ya say? I look for it to be one hell of an occasion. You know these two aunts of mine comin' to pick us up? Why, those ain't aunts, man, no; both those girls are workin' shimmy dancers and hustlers I know from Portland. What do you say to that?"

  I finally told him I was one of the Indigents.

  "You're what?"

  "I'm broke."

  "Oh," he said. "Yeah, I hadn't thought of that."

  He was quiet for a time again, rubbing that scar on his nose with his finger. The finger stopped. He raised up on his elbow and looked at me.

  "Chief," he said slowly, looking me over, "when you were full-sized, when you used to be, let's say, six seven or eight and weighed two eighty or so--were you strong enough to, say, lift something the size of that control panel in the tub room?"

  I thought about that panel. It probably didn't weigh a lot more'n oil drums I'd lifted in the Army. I told him I probably could of at one time.

  "If you got that big again, could you still lift it?"

  I told him I thought so.

  "To hell with what you think; I want to know can you promise to lift it if I get you big as you used to be? You promise me that, and you not only get my special body-buildin' course for nothing but you get yourself a ten-buck fishin' trip, free!" He licked his lips and lay back. "Get me good odds too, I bet."

  He lay there chuckling over some thought of his own. When I asked him how he was going to get me big again he shushed me with a finger to his lips.

  "Man, we can't let a secret like this out. I didn't say I'd tell you how, did I? Hoo boy, blowin' a man back up to full size is a secret you can't share with everybody, be dangerous in the hands of an enemy. You won't even know it's happening most of the time yourself. But I give you my solemn word, you follow my training program, and here's what'll happen."

  He swung his legs out of bed and sat on the edge with his hands on his knees. The dim light coming in over his shoulder from the Nurses' Station caught the shine of his teeth and the one eye glinting down his nose at me. The rollicking auctioneer's voice spun softly through the dorm.

  "There you'll be. It's the Big Chief Bromden, cuttin' down the boulevard--men, women, and kids rockin' back on their heels to peer up at him: 'Well well well, what giant's this here, takin' ten feet at a step and duckin' for telephone wires?' Comes stompin' through town, stops just long enough for virgins, the rest of you twitches might's well not even line up 'less you got tits like muskmelons, nice strong white legs long enough to lock around his mighty back, and a little cup of poozle warm and juicy and sweet as butter an' honey...."

  In the dark there he went on, spinning his tale about how it would be, with all the men scared and all the beautiful young girls panting after me. Then he said he was going out right this very mi
nute and sign my name up as one of his fishing crew. He stood up, got the towel from his bedstand and wrapped it around his hips and put on his cap, and stood over my bed.

  "Oh man, I tell you, I tell you, you'll have women trippin' you and beatin' you to the floor."

  And all of a sudden his hand shot out and with a swing of his arm untied my sheet, cleared my bed of covers, and left me lying there naked.

  "Look there, Chief. Haw. What'd I tell ya? You growed a half a foot already."

  Laughing, he walked down the row of beds to the hall.

  TWO WHORES on their way down from Portland to take us deep-sea fishing in a boat! It made it tough to stay in bed until the dorm lights came on at six-thirty.

  I was the first one up out of the dorm to look at the list posted on the board next to the Nurses' Station, check to see if my name was really signed there. SIGN UP FOR DEEP SEA FISHING was printed in big letters at the top, then McMurphy had signed first and Billy Bibbit was number one, right after McMurphy. Number three was Harding and number four was Fredrickson, and all the way down to number ten where nobody'd signed yet. My name was there, the last put down, across from the number nine. I was actually going out of the hospital with two whores on a fishing boat; I had to keep saying it over and over to myself to believe it.

  The three black boys slipped up in front of me and read the list with gray fingers, found my name there and turned to grin at me.

  "Why, who you s'pose signed Chief Bromden up for this foolishness? Inniuns ain't able to write."

  "What makes you think Inniuns able to read?"

  The starch was still fresh and stiff enough this early that their arms rustled in the white suits when they moved, like paper wings. I acted deaf to them laughing at me, like I didn't even know, but when they stuck a broom out for me to do their work up the hall, I turned around and walked back to the dorm, telling myself, The hell with that. A man goin' fishing with two whores from Portland don't have to take that crap.

  It scared me some, walking off from them like that, because I never went against what the black boys ordered before. I looked back and saw them coming after me with the broom. They'd probably have come right on in the dorm and got me but for McMurphy; he was in there making such a fuss, roaring up and down between the beds, snapping a towel at the guys signed to go this morning, that the black boys decided maybe the dorm wasn't such safe territory to venture into for no more than somebody to sweep a little dab of hallway.

  McMurphy had his motorcycle cap pulled way forward on his red hair to look like a boat captain, and the tattoos showing out from the sleeves of his T-shirt were done in Singapore. He was swaggering around the floor like it was the deck of a ship, whistling in his hand like a bosun's whistle.

  "Hit the deck, mateys, hit the deck or I keelhaul the lot of ye from stock to stern!"

  He rang the bedstand next to Harding's bed with his knuckles.

  "Six bells and all's well. Steady as she goes. Hit the deck. Drop your cocks and grab your socks."

  He noticed me standing just inside the doorway and came rushing over to thump my back like a drum.

  "Look here at the Big Chief; here's an example of a good sailor and fisherman: up before day and out diggin' red worms for bait. The rest of you scurvy bunch o'lubbers'd do well to follow his lead. Hit the deck. Today's the day! Outa the sack and into the sea!"

  The Acutes grumbled and griped at him and his towel, and the Chronics woke up to look around with heads blue from lack of blood cut off by sheets tied too tight across the chest, looking around the dorm till they finally centered on me with weak and watered-down old looks, faces wistful and curious. They lay there there watching me pull on warm clothes for the trip, making me feel uneasy and a little guilty. They could sense I had been singled out as the only Chronic making the trip. They watched me--old guys welded in wheelchairs for years, with catheters down their legs like vines rooting them for the rest of their lives right where they are, they watched me and knew instinctively that I was going. And they could still be a little jealous it wasn't them. They could know because enough of the man in them had been damped out that the old animal instincts had taken over (old Chronics wake up sudden some nights, before anybody else knows a guy's died in the dorm, and throw back their heads and howl), and they could be jealous because there was enough man left to still remember.

  McMurphy went out to look at the list and came back and tried to talk one more Acute into signing, going down the line kicking at the beds still had guys in them with sheets pulled over their heads, telling them what a great thing it was to be out there in the teeth of the gale with a he-man sea crackin' around and a goddam yo-heave-ho and a bottle of rum. "C'mon, loafers, I need one more mate to round out the crew, I need one more goddam volunteer...."

  But he couldn't talk anybody into it. The Big Nurse had the rest scared with her stories of how rough the sea'd been lately and how many boats'd sunk, and it didn't look like we'd get that last crew member till a half-hour later when George Sorensen came up to McMurphy in the breakfast line where we were waiting for the mess hall to be unlocked for breakfast.

  Big toothless knotty old Swede the black boys called Rub-a-dub George, because of his thing about sanitation, came shuffling up the hall, listing well back so his feet went well out in front of his head (sways backward this way to keep his face as far away from the man he's talking to as he can), stopped in front of McMurphy, and mumbled something in his hand. George was very shy. You couldn't see his eyes because they were in so deep under his brow, and he cupped his big palm around most of the rest of his face. His head swayed like a crow's nest on top of his mastlike spine. He mumbled in his hand till McMurphy finally reached up and pulled the hand away so's the words could get out.

  "Now, George, what is it you're say-in'?"

  "Red worms," he was saying. "I joost don't think they do you no good--not for the Chin-nook."

  "Yeah?" McMurphy said. "Red worms? I might agree with you, George, if you let me know what about these red worms you're speaking of."

  "I think joost a while ago I hear you say Mr. Bromden was out digging the red worms for bait."

  "That's right, Pop, I remember."

  "So I joost say you don't have you no good fortune with them worms. This here is the month with one big Chinook run--su-ure. Herring you need. Su-ure. You jig you some herring and use those fellows for bait, then you have some good fortune."

  His voice went up at the end of every sentence--for-chune--like he was asking a question. His big chin, already scrubbed so much this morning he'd worn the hide off it, nodded up and down at McMurphy once or twice, then turned him around to lead him down the hall toward the end of the line. McMurphy called him back.

  "Now, hold 'er a minute, George; you talk like you know something about this fishin' business."

  George turned and shuffled back to McMurphy, listing back so far it looked like his feet had navigated right out from under him.

  "You bet, su-ure. Twenty-five year I work the Chinook trollers, all the way from Half Moon Bay to Puget Sound. Twenty-five year I fish--before I get so dirty." He held out his hands for us to see the dirt on them. Everybody around leaned over and looked. I didn't see the dirt but I did see scars worn deep into the white palms from hauling a thousand miles of fishing line out of the sea. He let us look a minute, then rolled the hands shut and drew them away and hid them in his pajama shirt like we might dirty them looking, and stood grinning at McMurphy with gums like brine-bleached pork.

  "I had a good troller boat, joost forty feet, but she drew twelve feet water and she was solid teak and solid oak." He rocked back and forth in a way to make you doubt that the floor was standing level. "She was one good troller boat, by golly!"

  He started to turn, but McMurphy stopped him again.

  "Hell, George, why didn't you say you were a fisherman? I been talking up this voyage like I was the Old Man of the Sea, but just between you an' me and the wall there, the only boat I been on was the battlesh
ip Missouri and the only thing I know about fish is that I like eatin' 'em better than cleanin' 'em."

  "Cleanin' is easy, somebody show you how."

  "By God, you're gonna be our captain, George; we'll be your crew."

  George tilted back, shaking his head. "Those boats awful dirty any more--everything awful dirty."

  "The hell with that. We got a boat specially sterilized fore and aft, swabbed clean as a hound's tooth. You won't get dirty, George, 'cause you'll be the captain. Won't even have to bait a hook; just be our captain and give orders to us dumb landlubbers--how's that strike you?"

  I could see George was tempted by the way he wrung his hands under his shirt, but he still said he couldn't risk getting dirty. McMurphy did his best to talk him into it, but George was still shaking his head when the Big Nurse's key hit the lock of the mess hall and she came jangling out the door with her wicker bag of surprises, clicked down the line with automatic smile-and-good-morning for each man she passed. McMurphy noticed the way George leaned back from her and scowled. When she'd passed, McMurphy tilted his head and gave George the one bright eye.

  "George, that stuff the nurse has been saying about the bad sea, about how terrible dangerous this trip might be--what about that?"

  "That ocean could be awful bad, sure, awful rough."

  McMurphy looked down at the nurse disappearing into the station, then back at George. George started twisting his hands around in his shirt more than ever, looking around at the silent faces watching him.

  "By golly!" he said suddenly. "You think I let her scare me about that ocean? You think that?"

  "Ah, I guess not, George. I was thinking, though, that if you don't come along with us, and if there is some awful stormy calamity, we're every last one of us liable to be lost at sea, you know that? I said I didn't know nothin' about boating, and I'll tell you something else: these two women coming to get us?, I told the doctor was my two aunts, two widows of fishermen? Well, the only cruisin' either one of them ever did was on solid cement. They won't be no more help in a fix than me. We need you, George." He took a pull on his cigarette and asked, "You got ten bucks, by the way?"

  George shook his head.