… man, Man, MAN, MAN… broad and big with a wink like a star.
Ants again oh Jesus and I got ‘em bad this time, prickle-footed bastards. Remember the time we found those ants tasted like dill pickles? Hee? You said it wasn’t dill pickles and I said it was, and your mama kicked the living tar outa me when she heard: Teachin’ a kid to eat
Ugh. Good Injun boy should know how to survive on anything he can eat that won’t eat him first.
We ain’t Indians. We’re civilized and you remember it.
You told me Papa. When I die pin me up against the sky.
Mama’s name was Bromden. Still is Bromden. Papa said he was born with only one name, born smack into it the way a calf drops out in a spread blanket when the cow insists on standing up. Tee Ah Millatoona, the Pine- That-Stands-Tallest-on-the-Mountain, and I’m the biggest by God Injun in the state of Oregon and probly California and Idaho. Born right into it.
You’re the biggest by God fool if you think that a good Christian woman takes on a name like Tee Ah Millatoona. You were born into a name, so okay, I’m born into a name. Bromden. Mary Louise Bromden.
And when we move into town, Papa says, that name makes gettin’ that Social Security card a lot easier.
Guy’s after somebody with a riveter’s hammer, get him too, if he keeps at it. I see those lightning flashes again, colors striking.
Ting. Tingle, tingle, tremble toes, she’s a good fisherman, catches hens, puts ‘em inna pens… wire blier, limber lock, three geese inna flock… one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest… O-U-T spells out… goose swoops down and plucks
My old grandma chanted this, a game we played by the hours, sitting by the fish racks scaring flies. A game called Tingle Tingle Tangle Toes. Counting each finger on my two outspread hands, one finger to a syllable as she chants.
Tingle, ting-le, tang-le toes (seven fingers) she’s a good fisherman, catches hens (sixteen fingers, tapping a finger on each beat with her black crab hand, each of my fingernails looking up at her like a little face asking to be the
I like the game and I like Grandma. I don’t like Mrs. Tingle Tangle Toes, catching hens. I don’t like her. I do like that goose flying over the cuckoo’s nest. I like him, and I like Grandma, dust in her wrinkles.
Next time I saw her she was stone cold dead, right in the middle of The Dalles on the sidewalk, colored shirts standing around, some Indians, some cattlemen, some wheatmen. They cart her down to the city burying ground, roll red clay into her eyes.
I remember hot, still electric-storm afternoons when jackrabbits ran under Diesel truck wheels.
Joey Fish-in-a-Barrel has twenty thousand dollars and three Cadillacs since the contract. And he can’t drive none of ‘em.
I see a dice.
I see it from the inside, me at the bottom. I’m the weight, loading the dice to throw that number one up there above me. They got the dice loaded to throw a snake eyes, and I’m the load, six lumps around me like white pillows is the other side of the dice, the number six that will always be down when he throws. What’s the other dice loaded for? I bet it’s loaded to throw one too. Snake eyes. They’re shooting with crookies against him, and I’m the load.
Look out, here comes a toss. Ay, lady, the smokehouse is empty and baby needs a new pair of opera pumps. Comin’ at ya.
Crapped out.
Water. I’m lying in a puddle.
Snake eyes. Caught him again. I see that number one up above me: he can’t whip frozen dice behind the feedstore in an alley — in Portland.
The alley is a tunnel it’s cold because the sun is late afternoon. Let me… go see Grandma. Please, Mama.
What was it he said when he winked?
One flew east one flew west.
Don’t stand in my way.
Damn it, nurse, don’t stand in my way Way WAY!
My roll.
The schoolteacher tell me you got a good head, boy, be something. …
Be what, Papa? A rug-weaver like Uncle R & J Wolf? A basket-weaver? Or another drunken Indian?
I say, attendant, you’re an Indian, aren’t you?
Yeah, that’s right.
Well, I must say, you speak the language quite well.
Yeah.
Well… three dollars of regular.
They wouldn’t be so cocky if they knew what me and the
Snake eyes again. Hoo boy, these dice are
After Grandma’s funeral me and Papa and Uncle Runningand-Jumping Wolf dug her up. Mama wouldn’t go with us; she never heard of such a thing. Hanging a corpse in a
Uncle R & J Wolf and Papa spent twenty days in the drunk tank at The Dalles jail, playing rummy, for Violation of the Dead.
But she’s our goddanged mother!
It doesn’t make the slightest difference, boys. You shoulda left her buried. I don’t know when you blamed Indians will learn. Now, where is she? you’d better tell.
Ah go fuck yourself, paleface, Uncle R & J said, rolling himself a cigarette. I’ll never tell.
High high high in the hills, high in a pine tree bed, she’s tracing the wind with that old hand, counting the clouds with that old chant: … three geese in a flock…
What did you say to me when you winked?
Band playing. Look — the
Dice at rest.
They got to me with the machine again… I wonder…
What did he say?
… wonder how McMurphy made me big again.
He said Guts ball.
They’re out there. Black boys in white suits peeing under the door on me, come in later and accuse me of soaking all six these pillows I’m lying on! Number six. I thought the room was a dice. The number one, the snake eye up there, the circle, the white
I stand, stood up slowly, feeling numb between the shoulders. The white pillows on the floor of the Seclusion Room were soaked from me peeing on them while I was out. I couldn’t remember all of it yet, but I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and tried to clear my head. I worked at it. I’d never worked at coming out of it before.
I staggered toward the little round chicken-wired window in the door of the room and tapped it with my knuckles. I saw an aide coming up the hall with a tray for me and knew this time I had them beat.
28
There had been times when I’d wandered around in a daze for as long as two weeks after a shock
