One flew over cuckoo's nest

About half the Acutes nod yes, a lot more than would really vote. He puts his hat back on his head and leans his chin in his hands.

“I tell ya, I can’t figure it out. Harding, what’s wrong with you, for crying out loud? You afraid if you raise your hand that old buzzard’ll cut it off.”

Harding lifts one thin eyebrow. “Perhaps I am; perhaps I am afraid she’ll cut it off if I raise it.”

“What about you, Billy? Is that what you’re scared of?” “No. I don’t think she’d d-d- do anything, but” — he shrugs and sighs and climbs up on the big panel that controls the nozzles on the shower, perches up there like a monkey” — but I just don’t think a vote wu-wu-would do any good. Not in the l-long run. It’s just no use, M-Mack.”

“Do any good? Hooee! It’d do you birds some good just to get the exercise lifting that arm.”

“It’s still a risk, my friend. She always has the capacity to make things worse for us. A baseball game isn’t worth the risk,” Harding says.

“Who the hell says so? Jesus, I haven’t missed a World Series in years. Even when I was in the cooler one September they let us bring in a TV and watch the Series, they’d of had a riot on their hands if they hadn’t. I just may have to kick that damned door down and walk to some bar downtown to see the game, just me and my buddy Cheswick.”

“Now there’s a suggestion with a lot of merit,” Harding says, tossing down his magazine. “Why not bring that up for vote in group meeting tomorrow? ‘Miss Ratched, I’d like to move that the ward be transported en masse to the Idle Hour for beer and television.’ ”

“I’d second the motion,” Cheswick says. “Damn right.”

“The hell with that in mass business,” McMurphy says. “I’m tired of looking at you bunch of old ladies; when me and Cheswick bust outta here I think by God I’m gonna nail the door shut behind me. You guys better stay behind; your mamma probably wouldn’t let you cross the street.”

“Yeah? Is that it?” Fredrickson has come up behind McMurphy. “You’re just going to raise one of those big he-man boots of yours and kick down the door? A real tough guy.”

McMurphy don’t hardly look at Fredrickson; he’s learned that Fredrickson might act hard-boiled now and then, but it’s an act that folds under the slightest scare.

“What about it, he-man,” Fredrickson keeps on, “are you going to kick down that door and show us how tough you are?”

“No, Fred, I guess not I wouldn’t want to scuff up my boot”

“Yeah? Okay, you been talking so big, just how would you go about busting out of here?”

McMurphy takes a look around him. “Well, I guess I could knock the mesh outa one of these windows with a chair when and if I took a notion. …”

“Yeah? You could, could you? Knock it right out? Okay, let’s see you try. Come on, he-man, I’ll bet you ten dollars you can’t do it.”

“Don’t bother trying, Mack,” Cheswick says. “Fredrickson knows you’ll just break a chair and end up on Disturbed. The first day we arrived over here we were given a demonstration about these screens. They’re specially made. A technician picked up a chair just like that one you’ve got your feet on and beat the screen till the chair was no more than kindling wood. Didn’t hardly dent the screen.”

“Okay then,” McMurphy says, taking a look around him. I can see he’s getting more interested. I hope the Big Nurse isn’t hearing this; he’ll be up on Disturbed in an hour. “We need something heavier. How about a table?”

“Same as the chair. Same wood, same weight.”

“All right, by God, let’s just figure out what I’d have to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you birds don’t think I’d do it if I ever got the urge, then you got another think coming. Okay — something bigger’n a table or a chair… Well, if it was night I might throw that fat coon through it; he’s heavy enough.”

“Much too soft,” Harding says. “He’d hit the screen and it would dice him like an eggplant.”

“How about one of the beds?”

“A bed is too big even if you could lift it. It wouldn’t go through the window.”

“I could lift it all right. Well, hell, right over there you are: that thing Billy’s sittin’ on. That big control panel with all the handles and cranks. That’s hard enough, ain’t it? And it damn well should be heavy enough.”

“Sure,” Fredrickson says. “That’s the same as you kicking your foot through the steel door at the front.”

“What would be wrong with using the panel? It don’t look nailed down.”

“No, it’s not bolted — there’s probably nothing holding it but a few wires — but look at it, for Christsakes.”

Everybody looks. The panel is steel and cement, half the size of one of the tables, probably weighs four hundred pounds.

“Okay, I’m looking at it. It don’t look any bigger than hay bales I’ve bucked up onto truck beds.”

“I’m afraid, my friend, that this contrivance will weigh a bit more than your bales of hay.”

“About a quarter-ton more, I’d bet,” Fredrickson says.

“He’s right, Mack,” Cheswick says. “It’d be awful heavy.”

“Hell, are you birds telling me I can’t lift that dinky little gizmo?”

“My friend, I don’t recall anything about psychopaths being able to move mountains in addition to their other noteworthy assets.”

“Okay, you say I can’t lift it. Well by God…”

McMurphy hops off the table and goes to peeling off his green jacket; the tattoos sticking half out of his T- shirt jump around the muscles on his arms.

“Then who’s willing to lay five bucks? Nobody’s gonna convince me I can’t do something till I try it. Five bucks…”

“McMurphy, this is as foolhardy as your bet about the nurse.”

“Who’s got five bucks they want to lose? You hit or you sit. …”

The guys all go to signing liens at once; he’s beat them so many times at poker and blackjack they can’t wait to get back at him, and this is a certain sure thing. I don’t know what he’s driving at; broad and big as he is, it’d take three of him to move that panel, and he knows it. He can just look at it and see he probably couldn’t even tip it, let alone lift it. It’d take a giant to lift it off the ground. But when the Acutes all get their IOUs signed, he steps up to the panel and lifts Billy Bibbit down off it and spits in his big callused palms and slaps them together, rolls his shoulders.

“Okay, stand outa the way. Sometimes when I go to exertin’ myself I use up all the air nearby and grown men faint from suffocation. Stand back. There’s liable to be crackin’ cement and flying steel. Get the women and kids someplace safe. Stand back. …”

“By golly, he might do it,” Cheswick mutters.

“Sure, maybe he’ll talk it off the floor,” Fredrickson says.

“More likely he’ll acquire a beautiful hernia,” Harding says. “Come now, McMurphy, quit acting like a fool; there’s no man can lift that thing.”

“Stand back, sissies, you’re using my oxygen.”

McMurphy shifts his feet a few times to get a good stance, and wipes his hands on his thighs again, then leans down and gets hold of the levers on each side of the panel. When he goes to straining, the guys go to hooting and kidding him. He turns loose and straightens up and shifts his feet around again.

“Giving up?” Fredrickson grins.

“Just limbering up. Here goes the real effort” — and grabs those levers again.

And suddenly nobody’s hooting at him any more. His arms commence to swell, and the veins squeeze up to the surface. He clinches his eyes, and his lips draw away from his teeth. His head leans back, and tendons stand out like coiled ropes running from his heaving neck down both arms to his hands. His whole body shakes with the strain as he tries to lift something he knows he can’t lift, something everybody knows he can’t lift.

But, for just a second, when we hear the cement grind at our feet, we think, by golly, he might do it.