One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [113]
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 hole, 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 it in 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