didn’t say anything; he had sweated clear through his suit between his shoulders, and his eyes were bright red from going so long without glasses. He kept heaving until the fish appeared on his side of the boat. We watched it near the surface for a few minutes longer, then started getting the rope and gaff ready.
Even with the gaff in it, it took another hour to drag the fish into the back of the boat. We had to hook him with all three other poles, and McMurphy leaned down and got a hand in his gills, and with a heave he slid in, transparent white and flat, and flopped down to the bottom of the boat with the doctor.
“That was something.” The doctor panted from the floor, not enough strength left to push the huge fish off him. “That was… certainly something.”
The boat pitched and cracked all the way back to shore, with McMurphy telling grim tales about shipwrecks and sharks. The waves got bigger as we got closer to shore, and from the crests clots of white foam blew swirling up in the wind to join the gulls. The swells at the mouth of the jetty were combing higher than the boat, and George had us all put on life jackets. I noticed all the other sports boats were in.
We were three jackets short, and there was a fuss as to who’d be the three that braved that bar without jackets. It finally turned out to be Billy Bibbit and Harding and George, who wouldn’t wear one anyway on account of the dirt. Everybody was kind of surprised that Billy had volunteered, took his life jacket off right away when we found we were short, and helped the girl into it, but everybody was even more surprised that McMurphy hadn’t insisted that he be one of the heroes; all during the fuss he’d stood with his back against the cabin, bracing against the pitch of the boat, and watched the guys without saying a word. Just grinning and watching.
We hit the bar and dropped into a canyon of water, the bow of the boat pointing up the hissing crest of the wave going before us, and the rear down in the trough in the shadow of the wave looming behind us, and everybody in the back hanging on the rail and looking from the mountain that chased behind to the streaming black rocks of the jetty forty feet to the left, to George at the wheel. He stood there like a mast. He kept turning his head from the front to the back, gunning the throttle, easing off, gunning again, holding us steady riding the uphill slant of that wave in front. He’d told us before we started the run that if we went over that crest in
Inside the mooring the water calmed to a choppy surface again, and at our dock, by the bait shop, we could see the captain waiting with two cops at the water’s edge. All the loafers were gathered behind them. George headed at them full throttle, booming down on them till the captain went to waving and yelling and the cops headed up the steps with the loafers. Just before the prow of the boat tore out the whole dock, George swung the wheel, threw the prop into reverse, and with a powerful roar snuggled the boat in against the rubber tires like he was easing it into bed. We were already out tying up by the time our wake caught up; it pitched all the boats around and slopped over the dock and whitecapped around the docks like we’d brought the sea home with us.
The captain and the cops and the loafers came tromping back down the steps to us. The doctor carried the fight to them by first off telling the cops they didn’t have any jurisdiction over us, as we were a legal, government- sponsored expedition, and if there was anyone to take the matter up with it would have to be a federal agency. Also, there might be some investigation into the number of life jackets that the boat held if the captain really planned to make trouble. Wasn’t there supposed to be a life jacket for every man on board, according to the law? When the captain didn’t say anything the cops took some names and left, mumbling and confused, and as soon as they were off the pier McMurphy and the captain went to arguing and shoving each other around. McMurphy was drunk enough he was still trying to rock with the roll of the boat and he slipped on the wet wood and fell in the ocean twice before he got his footing sufficient to hit the captain one up alongside of his bald head and settle the fuss. Everybody felt better that that was out of the way, and the captain and McMurphy both went to the bait shop to get more beer while the rest of us worked at hauling our fish out of the hold. The loafers stood on that upper dock, watching and smoking pipes they’d carved themselves. We were waiting for them to say something about the girl again, hoping for it, to tell the truth, but when one of them finally did say something it wasn’t about the girl but about our fish being the biggest halibut he’d ever seen brought in on the Oregon coast. All the rest nodded that that was sure the truth. They came edging down to look it over. They asked George where he learned to dock a boat that way, and we found out George’d not just run fishing boats but he’d also been captain of a PT boat in the Pacific and got the Navy Cross. “Shoulda gone into public office,” one of the loafers said. “Too dirty,” George told him.
They could sense the change that most of us were only suspecting; these weren’t the same bunch of weak- knees from a nuthouse that they’d watched take their insults on the dock this morning. They didn’t exactly apologize to the girl for the things they’d said, but when they asked to see the fish she’d caught they were just as polite as pie. And when McMurphy and the captain came back out of the bait shop we all shared a beer together before we drove away.
It was late when we got back to the hospital.
The girl was sleeping against Billy’s chest, and when she raised up his arm’d gone dead holding her all that way in such an awkward position, and she rubbed it for him. He told her if he had any of his weekends free he’d ask her for a date, and she said she could come to visit in two weeks if he’d tell her what time, and Billy looked at McMurphy for an answer. McMurphy put his arms around both of their shoulders and said, “Let’s make it two o’clock on the nose.”
“Saturday afternoon?” she asked.
He winked at Billy and squeezed the girl’s head in the crook of his arm. “No. Two o’clock Saturday night. Slip up and knock on that same window you was at this morning. I’ll talk the night aide into letting you in.”
She giggled and nodded. “You damned McMurphy,” she said.
Some of the Acutes on the ward were still up, standing around the latrine to see if we’d been drowned or not. They watched us march into the hall, blood-speckled, sunburned, stinking of beer and fish, toting our salmon like we were conquering heroes. The doctor asked if they’d like to come out and look at his halibut in the back of his car, and we all started back out except McMurphy. He said he guessed he was pretty shot and thought he’d hit the hay. When he was gone one of the Acutes who hadn’t made the trip asked how come McMurphy looked so beat and worn out where the rest of us looked redcheeked and still full of excitement. Harding passed it off as nothing more than the loss of his suntan.
“You’ll recall McMurphy came in full steam, from a rigorous life outdoors on a work farm, ruddy of face and abloom with physical health. We’ve simply been witness to the fading of his magnificent psychopathic suntan. That’s all. Today he did spend some exhausting hours — in the dimness of the boat cabin, incidentally — while we were out in the elements, soaking up the Vitamin D. Of course, that may have exhausted him to some extent, those rigors down below, but think of it, friends. As for myself, I believe I could have done with a little less Vitamin D and a little more of his kind of exhaustion. Especially with little Candy as a taskmaster. Am I wrong?”
I didn’t say so, but I was wondering if maybe he wasn’t wrong. I’d noticed McMurphy’s exhaustion earlier, on the trip home, after he’d insisted on driving past the place where he’d lived once. We’d just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just leaning back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing — half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could. I noticed vaguely that I was getting so’s I could see some good in the life around me. McMurphy was teaching me. I was feeling better than I’d remembered feeling since I was a kid, when everything was good and the land was still singing kids’ poetry to me.
We’d drove back inland instead of the coast, to go through this town McMurphy’d lived in the most he’d ever lived in one place. Down the face of the Cascade hill, thinking we were lost till… we came to a town covered a space about twice the size of the hospital ground. A gritty wind had blown out the sun on the street where he stopped. He parked in some reeds and pointed across the road.
“There. That’s the one. Looks like it’s propped up outta the weeds — my misspent youth’s humble abode.”
Out along the dim six-o’clock street, I saw leafless trees standing, striking the sidewalk there like wooden lightning, concrete split apart where they hit, all in a fenced-in ring. An iron line of pickets stuck out of the ground along the front of a tangleweed yard, and on back was a big frame house with a porch, leaning a rickety shoulder hard into the wind so’s not to be sent tumbling away a couple of blocks like an empty cardboard grocery box. The wind was blowing a few drops of rain, and I saw the house had its eyes clenched shut and locks at the door banged
