One flew over cuckoo's nest

owe me — oh, two hundred dollars should about cover it.”

Pity.

The game goes round and round, to the rattle of dice and the shuffle of play money.

11

There’s long spells — three days, years — when you can’t see a thing, know where you are only by the speaker sounding overhead like a bell buoy clanging in the fog. When I can see, the guys are usually moving around as unconcerned as though they didn’t notice so much as a mist in the air. I believe the fog affects their memory some way it doesn’t affect mine.

Even McMurphy doesn’t seem to know he’s been fogged in. If he does, he makes sure not to let on that he’s bothered by it. He’s making sure none of the staff sees him bothered by anything; he knows that there’s no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who’s trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you’re not bothered.

He keeps up his high-class manners around the nurses and the black boys in spite of anything they might say to him, in spite of every trick they pull to get him to lose his temper. A couple of times some stupid rule gets him mad, but he just makes himself act more polite and mannerly than ever till he begins to see how funny the whole thing is — the rules, the disapproving looks they use to enforce the rules, the ways of talking to you like you’re nothing but a three-year-old — and when he sees how funny it is he goes to laughing, and this aggravates them no end. He’s safe as long as he can laugh, he thinks, and it works pretty fair. Just once he loses control and shows he’s mad, and then it’s not because of the black boys or the Big Nurse and something they did, but it’s because of the patients, and something they didn’t do.

It happened at one of the group meetings. He got mad at the guys for acting too cagey — too chicken-shit, he called it. He’d been taking bets from all of them on the World Series coming up Friday. He’d had it in mind that they would get to watch the games on TV, even though they didn’t come on during regulation TV time. During the meeting a few days before he asks if it wouldn’t be okay if they did the cleaning work at night, during TV time, and watched the games during the afternoon. The nurse tells him no, which is about what he expected. She tells him how the schedule has been set up for a delicately balanced reason that would be thrown into turmoil by the switch of routines.

This doesn’t surprise him, coming from the nurse; what does surprise him is how the Acutes act when he asks them what they think of the idea. Nobody says a thing. They’re all sunk back out of sight in little pockets of fog. I can barely see them.

“Now look here,” he tells them, but they don’t look. He’s been waiting for somebody to say something, answer his question. Nobody acts like they’ve heard it. “Look here, damn it,” he says when nobody moves, “there’s at least twelve of you guys I know of myself got a leetle personal interest who wins these games. Don’t you guys care to watch them?”

“I don’t know, Mack,” Scanlon finally says, “I’m pretty used to seeing that six-o’clock news. And if switching times would really mess up the schedule as bad as Miss Ratched says—”

“The hell with the schedule. You can get back to the bloody schedule next week, when the Series is over. What do you say, buddies? Let’s take a vote on watching the TV during the afternoon instead of at night. All those in favor?”

“Ay,” Cheswick calls out and gets to his feet.

“I mean all those in favor raise their hands. Okay, all those in favor?”

Cheswick’s hand comes up. Some of the other guys look around to see if there’s any other fools. McMurphy can’t believe it.

“Come on now, what is this crap? I thought you guys could vote on policy and that sort of thing. Isn’t that the way it is, Doc?”

The doctor nods without looking up.

“Okay then; now who wants to watch those games?”

Cheswick shoves his hand higher and glares around. Scanlon shakes his head and then raises his hand, keeping his elbow on the arm of the chair. And nobody else. McMurphy can’t say a word.

“If that’s settled, then,” the nurse says, “perhaps we should get on with the meeting.”

“Yeah,” he says, slides down in his chair till the brim of his cap nearly touches his chest. “Yeah, perhaps we should get on with the sonofabitchin’ meeting at that.”

“Yeah,” Cheswick says, giving all the guys a hard look and sitting down, “yeah, get on with the godblessed meeting.” He nods stiffly, then settles his chin down on his chest, scowling. He’s pleased to be sitting next to McMurphy, feeling brave like this. It’s the first time Cheswick ever had somebody along with him on his lost causes.

After the meeting McMurphy won’t say a word to any of them, he’s so mad and disgusted. It’s Billy Bibbit who goes up to him.

“Some of us have b-been here for fi-fi-five years, Randle,” Billy says. He’s got a magazine rolled up and is twisting at it with his hands; you can see the cigarette burns on the backs of his hands. “And some of us will b-be here maybe th-that muh-muh-much longer, long after you’re g-g-gone, long after this Wo-world Series is over. And… don’t you see…” He throws down the magazine and walks away. “Oh, what’s the use of it anyway.”

McMurphy stares after him, that puzzled frown knotting his bleached eyebrows together again.

He argues for the rest of the day with some of the other guys about why they didn’t vote, but they don’t want to talk about it, so he seems to give up, doesn’t say anything about it again till the day before the Series starts. “Here it is Thursday,” he says, sadly shaking his head.

He’s sitting on one of the tables in the tub room with his feet on a chair, trying to spin his cap around one finger. Other Acutes mope around the room and try not to pay any attention to him. Nobody’ll play poker or blackjack with him for money any more — after the patients wouldn’t vote he got mad and skinned them so bad at cards that they’re all so in debt they’re scared to go any deeper — and they can’t play for cigarettes because the nurse has started making the men keep their cartons on the desk in the Nurses’ Station, where she doles them out one pack a day, says it’s for their health, but everybody knows it’s to keep McMurphy from winning them all at cards. With no poker or blackjack, it’s quiet in the tub room, just the sound of the speaker drifting in from the day room. It’s so quiet you can hear that guy upstairs in Disturbed climbing the wall, giving out an occasional signal, loo loo looo, a bored, uninterested sound, like a baby yells to yell itself to sleep.

“Thursday,” McMurphy says again.

“Looooo,” yells that guy upstairs.

“That’s Rawler,” Scanlon says, looking up at the ceiling. He don’t want to pay any attention to McMurphy. “Rawler the Squawler. He came through this ward a few years back. Wouldn’t keep still to suit Miss Ratched, you remember, Billy? Loo loo loo all the time till I thought I’d go nuts. What they should do with that whole bunch of dingbats up there is toss a couple of grenades in the dorm. They’re no use to anybody—”

“And tomorrow is Friday,” McMurphy says. He won’t let Scanlon change the subject.

“Yeah,” Cheswick says, scowling around the room, “tomorrow is Friday.”

Harding turns a page of his magazine. “And that will make nearly a week our friend McMurphy has been with us without succeeding in throwing over the government, is that what you’re saying, Cheswickle? Lord, to think of the chasm of apathy in which we have fallen — a shame, a pitiful shame.”

“The hell with that,” McMurphy says. “What Cheswick means is that the first Series game is gonna be played on TV tomorrow, and what are we gonna be doin’? Mopping up this damned nursery again.”

“Yeah,” Cheswick says. “Ol’ Mother Ratched’s Therapeutic Nursery.”

Against the wall of the tub room I get a feeling like a spy; the mop handle in my hands is made of metal instead of wood (metal’s a better conductor) and it’s hollow; there’s plenty of room inside it to hide a miniature microphone. If the Big Nurse is hearing this, she’ll really get Cheswick. I take a hard ball of gum from my pocket and pick some fuzz off it and hold it in my mouth till it softens.

“Let me see again,” McMurphy says. “How many of you birds will vote with me if I bring up that time switch again?”