One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [116]
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 taillights 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….
While his relaxed, good-natured voice doled out his life for us to live, a rollicking past full of kid fun and drinking buddies and loving women and barroom battles over meager honors—for all of us to dream ourselves into.
part 4
The Big Nurse had her next maneuver