by Ken Kesey
"Chief, I'll be damned if I ever saw anything so slow! Ugh, your thumb's bleeding. Did that monster bite you? Somebody fix the Chief's thumb--hurry!"
"Here we go into them again," George yells, and I drop the line off the back of the boat and see the flash of the herring vanish in the dark blue-gray charge of a salmon and the line go sizzling down into the water. The girl wraps both arms around the pole and grits her teeth. "Oh no you don't, dang you! Oh no ...!"
She's on her feet, got the butt of the pole scissored in her crotch and both arms wrapped below the reel and the reel crank knocking against her as the line spins out: "Oh no you don't!" She's still got on Billy's green jacket, but that reel's whipped it open and everybody on board sees the T-shirt she had on is gone--everybody gawking, trying to play his own fish, dodge mine slamming around the boat bottom, with the crank of that reel fluttering her breast at such a speed the nipple's just a red blur!
Billy jumps to help. All he can think to do is reach around from behind and help her squeeze the pole tighter in between her breasts until the reel's finally stopped by nothing more than the pressure of her flesh. By this time she's flexed so taut and her breasts look so firm I think she and Billy could both turn loose with their hands and arms and she'd still keep hold of that pole.
This scramble of action holds for a space, a second there on the sea--the men yammering and struggling and cussing and trying to tend their poles while watching the girl; the bleeding, crashing battle between Scanlon and my fish at everybody's feet; the lines all tangled and shooting every which way with the doctor's glasses-on-a-string tangled and dangling from one line ten feet off the back of the boat, fish striking at the flash of the lens, and the girl cussing for all she's worth and looking now at her bare breasts, one white and one smarting red--and George takes his eye off where he's going and runs the boat into that log and kills the engine.
While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water--laughing at the girl, at the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service-station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girl friend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.
I notice Harding is collapsed beside McMurphy and is laughing too. And Scanlon from the bottom of the boat. At their own selves as well as at the rest of us. And the girl, with her eyes still smarting as she looks from her white breast to her red one, she starts laughing. And Sefelt and the doctor, and all.
It started slow and pumped itself full, swelling the men bigger and bigger. I watched, part of them, laughing with them--and somehow not with them. I was off the boat, blown up off the water and skating the wind with those black birds, high above myself, and I could look down and see myself and the rest of the guys, see the boat rocking there in the middle of those diving birds, see McMurphy surrounded by his dozen people, and watch them, us, swinging a laughter that rang out on the water in ever-widening circles, farther and farther, until it crashed up on beaches all over the coast, on beaches all over all coasts, in wave after wave after wave.
The doctor had hooked something off the bottom on the deep pole, and everybody else on board except George had caught and landed a fish by the time he lifted it up to where we could even see it--just a whitish shape appearing, then diving for the bottom in spite of everything the doctor tried to do to hold it. As soon as he'd get it up near the top again, lifting and reeling at it with tight, stubborn little grunts and refusing any help the guys might offer, it would see the light and down it would go.
George didn't bother starting the boat again, but came down to show us how to clean the fish over the side and rip the gills out so the meat would stay sweeter. McMurphy tied a chunk of meat to each end of a four-foot string, tossed it in the air, and sent two squawking birds wheeling off, "Till death do them part."
The whole back of the boat and most of the people in it were dappled with red and silver. Some of us took our shirts off and dipped them over the side and tried to clean them. We fiddled around this way, fishing a little, drinking the other case of beer, and feeding the birds till afternoon, while the boat rolled lazily around the swells and the doctor worked with his monster from the deep. A wind came up and broke the sea into green and silver chunks, like a field of glass and chrome, and the boat began to rock and pitch about more. George told the doctor he'd have to land his fish or cut it loose because there was a bad sky coming down on us. The doctor didn't answer. He just heaved harder on the pole, bent forward and reeled the slack, and heaved again.
Billy and the girl had climbed around to the bow and were talking and looking down in the water. Billy hollered that he saw something, and we all rushed to that side, and a shape broad and white was becoming solid some ten or fifteen feet down. It was strange watching it rise, first just a light coloring, then a white form like fog under water, becoming solid, alive....
"Jesus God," Scanlon cried, "that's the doc's fish!"
It was on the side opposite the doctor, but we could see by the direction of his line that it led to the shape under the water.
"We'll never get it in the boat," Sefelt said. "And the wind's getting stronger."
"He's a big flounder," George said. "Sometimes they weigh two, three hundred. You got to lift them in with the winch."
"We'll have to cut him loose, Doc," Sefelt said and put his arm across the doctor's shoulders. The doctor 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 front, we'd surfboard out of control as soon as the prop and rudder broke water, and if we slowed down to where that wave behind caught up it would break over the stern and dump ten tons of water into the boat. Nobody joked or said anything funny about the way he kept turning his head back and forth like it was mounted up there on a swivel.
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 ask 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 red-cheeked 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 outa 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 on a chain.
And on the porch, hanging, was one of those things the Japs make out of glass and hang on strings--rings and clangs in the least little blow--with only four pieces of glass left to go. These four swung and whipped and rung little chips off on the wooden porch floor.
McMurphy put the car back in gear.
"Once, I been here--since way the hell gone back in the year we were all gettin' home from that Korea mess. For a visit. My old man and old lady were still alive. It was a good home."
He let out the clutch and started to drive, then stopped instead.
"My God," he said, "look over there, see a dress?" He pointed out back. "In the branch of that tree? A rag, yellow and black?"
I was able to see a thing like a flag, flapping high in the branches over a shed.
"The first girl ever drug me to bed wore that very same dress. I was about ten and she was probably less, and at the time a lay seemed like such a big deal I asked
her if didn't she think, feel, we oughta announce it some way? Like, say, tell our folks, 'Mom, Judy and me got engaged today.' And I meant what I said, I was that big a fool; I thought if you made it, man, you were legally wed, right there on the spot, whether it was something you wanted or not, and that there wasn't any breaking the rule. But this little whore--at the most eight or nine--reached down and got her dress off the floor and said it was mine, said, 'You can hang this up someplace, I'll go home in my drawers, announce it that way--they'll get the idea.' Jesus, nine years old," he said, reached over and pinched Candy's nose, "and knew a lot more than a good many pros."
She bit his hand, laughing, and he studied the mark.
"So, anyhow, after she went home in her pants I waited till dark when I had the chance to throw that damned dress out in the night--but you feel that wind? caught the dress like a kite and whipped it around the house outa sight and the next morning, by God, it was hung up in that tree for the whole town, was how I figured then, to turn out and see."
He sucked his hand, so woebegone that Candy laughed and gave it a kiss.
"So my colors were flown, and from that day to this it seemed I might as well live up to my name--dedicated lover--and it's the God's truth: that little nine-year-old kid out of my youth's the one who's to blame."
The house drifted past. He yawned and winked. "Taught me to love, bless her sweet ass."
Then--as he was talking--a set of tail-lights going past lit up McMurphy's face, and the windshield reflected an expression that was allowed only because he figured it'd be too dark for anybody in the car to see, dreadfully tired and strained and frantic, like there wasn't enough time left for something he had to do....