One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [101]
“Look here at the Big Chief; here’s an example of a good sailor and fisherman: up before day and out diggin’ red worms for bait. The rest of you scurvy bunch o’ lubbers’d do well to follow his lead. Hit the deck. Today’s the day! Outa the sack and into the sea!”
The Acutes grumbled and griped at him and his towel, and the Chronics woke up to look around with heads blue from lack of blood cut off by sheets tied too tight across the chest, looking around the dorm till they finally centered on me with weak and watered-down old looks, faces wistful and curious. They lay there watching me pull on warm clothes for the trip, making me feel uneasy and a little guilty. They could sense I had been singled out as the only Chronic making the trip. They watched me—old guys welded in wheelchairs for years, with catheters down their legs like vines rooting them for the rest of their lives right where they are, they watched me and knew instinctively that I was going. And they could still be a little jealous it wasn’t them. They could know because enough of the man in them had been damped out that the old animal instincts had taken over (old Chronics wake up sudden some nights, before anybody else knows a guy’s died in the dorm, and throw back their heads and howl), and they could be jealous because there was enough man left to still remember.
McMurphy went out to look at the list and came back and tried to talk one more Acute into signing, going down the line kicking at the beds still had guys in them with sheets pulled over their heads, telling them what a great thing it was to be out there in the teeth of the gale with a he-man sea crackin’ around and a goddam yo-heave-ho and a bottle of rum. “C’mon, loafers, I need one more mate to round out the crew, I need one more goddam volunteer….”
But he couldn’t talk anybody into it. The Big Nurse had the rest scared with her stories of how rough the sea’d been lately and how many boats’d sunk, and it didn’t look like we’d get that last crew member till a half-hour later when George Sorensen came up to McMurphy in the breakfast line where we were waiting for the mess hall to be unlocked for breakfast.
Big toothless knotty old Swede the black boys called Rub-a-dub George, because of his thing about sanitation, came shuffling up the hall, listing well back so his feet went well out in front of his head (sways backward this way to keep his face as far away from the man he’s talking to as he can), stopped in front of McMurphy, and mumbled something in his hand. George was very shy. You couldn’t see his eyes because they were in so deep under his brow, and he cupped his big palm around most of the rest of his face. His head swayed like a crow’s nest on top of his mastlike spine. He mumbled in his hand till McMurphy finally reached up and pulled the hand away so’s the words could get out.
“Now, George, what is it you’re sayin’?”
“Red worms,” he was saying. “I joost don’t think they do you no good—not for the Chin-nook.”
“Yeah?” McMurphy said “Red worms? I might agree with you, George, if you let me know what about these red worms you’re speaking of.”
“I think joost a while ago I hear you say Mr. Bromden was out digging the red worms for bait.”
“That’s right, Pop, I remember.”
“So I joost say you don’t have you no good fortune with them worms. This here is the month with one big Chinook run—su-ure. Herring you need. Su-ure. You jig you some herring and use those fellows for bait, then you have some good fortune.”
His voice went up at the end of every sentence—for-chune—like he was asking a question. His big chin, already scrubbed so much this morning he’d worn the hide off it, nodded up and down at McMurphy once or twice, then turned him around to lead him down the hall toward the end of the line. McMurphy called him back.
“Now, hold ’er a minute, George; you talk like you know something about this fishin’ business.”
George turned and shuffled back to McMurphy, listing back so far it looked like his feet had navigated right out from under