One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [102]
“You bet, su-ure. Twenty-five year I work the Chinook trollers, all the way from Half Moon Bay to Puget Sound. Twenty-five year I fish—before I get so dirty.” He held out his hands for us to see the dirt on them. Everybody around leaned over and looked. I didn’t see the dirt but I did see scars worn deep into the white palms from hauling a thousand miles of fishing line out of the sea. He let us look a minute, then rolled the hands shut and drew them away and hid them in his pajama shirt like we might dirty them looking, and stood grinning at McMurphy with gums like brine-bleached pork.
“I had a good troller boat, joost forty feet, but she drew twelve feet water and she was solid teak and solid oak.” He rocked back and forth in a way to make you doubt that the floor was standing level. “She was one good troller boat, by golly!”
He started to turn, but McMurphy stopped him again.
“Hell, George, why didn’t you say you were a fisherman? I been talking up this voyage like I was the Old Man of the Sea, but just between you an’ me an’ the wall there, the only boat I been on was the battleship Missouri and the only thing I know about fish is that I like eatin’ ’em better than cleanin’ ’em.”
“Cleanin’ is easy, somebody show you how.”
“By God, you’re gonna be our captain, George; we’ll be your crew.”
George tilted back, shaking his head. “Those boats awful dirty anymore—everything awful dirty.”
“The hell with that. We got a boat specially sterilized fore and aft, swabbed clean as a hound’s tooth. You won’t get dirty, George, ’cause you’ll be the captain. Won’t even have to bait a hook; just be our captain and give orders to us dumb landlubbers—how’s that strike you?”
I could see George was tempted by the way he wrung his hands under his shirt, but he still said he couldn’t risk getting dirty. McMurphy did his best to talk him into it, but George was still shaking his head when the Big Nurse’s key hit the lock of the mess hall and she came jangling out the door with her wicker bag of surprises, clicked down the line with automatic smile-and-good-morning for each man she passed. McMurphy noticed the way George leaned back from her and scowled. When she’d passed, McMurphy tilted his head and gave George the one bright eye.
“George, that stuff the nurse has been saying about the bad sea, about how terrible dangerous this trip might be—what about that?”
“That ocean could be awful bad, sure, awful rough.”
McMurphy looked down at the nurse disappearing into the station, then back at George. George started twisting his hands around in his shirt more than ever, looking around at the silent faces watching him.
“By golly!” he said suddenly. “You think I let her scare me about that ocean? You think that?”
“Ah, I guess not, George. I was thinking, though, that if you don’t come along with us, and if there is some awful stormy calamity, we’re every last one of us liable to be lost at sea, you know that? I said I didn’t know nothin’ about boating, and I’ll tell you something else: these two women coming to get us, I told the doctor was my two aunts, two widows of fishermen. Well, the only cruisin’ either one of them ever did was on solid cement. They won’t be no more help in a fix than me. We need you, George.” He took a pull on his cigarette and asked, “You got ten bucks, by the way?”
George shook his head.
“No, I wouldn’t suppose so. Well, what the devil, I gave up the idea of comin’ out ahead days ago. Here.” He took a pencil out of the pocket of his green jacket and wiped it clean on his shirttail, held it out to George. “You captain us, and we’ll let you come along for five.”
George looked around at us again, working his big brow over the predicament. Finally his gums showed in a bleached smile and he reached for the pencil. “By golly!” he said and headed off with the pencil to sign the last place on the list. After breakfast, walking down the hall, McMurphy stopped and printed C-A-P-T behind George’s name.
The whores were late. Everybody was beginning to think they weren’t coming at all when McMurphy gave a yell from