One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [120]
It seemed like Billy and I were the only two left who believed in McMurphy. And that very night Billy swung over to Harding’s way of looking at things when McMurphy came back from making another phone call and told Billy that the date with Candy was on for certain and added, writing an address down for him, that it might be a good idea to send her a little bread for the trip.
“Bread? Muh-money? How muh-muh-much?” He looked over to where Harding was grinning at him.
“Oh, you know, man—maybe ten bucks for her and ten—”
“Twenty bucks! It doesn’t cost that muh-muh-much for bus fare down here.”
McMurphy looked up from under his hatbrim, gave Billy a slow grin, then rubbed his throat with his hand, running out a dusty tongue. “Boy, oh boy, but I’m terrible dry. Figure to be even drier by a week come Saturday. You wouldn’t begrudge her bringin’ me a little swallow, would you, Billy Boy?”
And gave Billy such an innocent look Billy had to laugh and shake his head, no, and go off to a corner to excitedly talk over the next Saturday’s plans with the man he probably considered a pimp.
I still had my own notions—how McMurphy was a giant come out of the sky to save us from the Combine that was networking the land with copper wire and crystal, how he was too big to be bothered with something as measly as money—but even I came halfway to thinking like the others. What happened was this: He’d helped carry the tables into the tub room before one of the group meetings and was looking at me standing beside the control panel.
“By God, Chief,” he said, “it appears to me you growed ten inches since that fishing trip. And lordamighty, look at the size of that foot of yours; big as a flatcar!”
I looked down and saw how my foot was bigger than I’d ever remembered it, like McMurphy’s just saying it had blowed it twice its size.
“And that arm! That’s the arm of an ex-football-playing Indian if I ever saw one. You know what I think? I think you oughta give this here panel a leetle heft, just to test how you’re comin’.”
I shook my head and told him no, but he said we’d made a deal and I was obligated to give it a try to see how his growth system was working. I didn’t see any way out of it so I went to the panel just to show him I couldn’t do it. I bent down and took it by the levers.
“That’s the baby, Chief. Now just straighten up. Get those legs under your butt, there…yeah, yeah. Easy now…just straighten up. Hooeee! Now ease ’er back to the deck.”
I thought he’d be real disappointed, but when I stepped back he was all grins and pointing to where the panel was off its mooring by half a foot. “Better set her back where she came from, buddy, so nobody’ll know. Mustn’t let anybody know yet.”
Then, after the meeting, loafing around the pinochle games, he worked the talk around to strength and gutpower and to the control panel in the tub room. I thought he was going to tell them how he’d helped me get my size back; that would prove he didn’t do everything for money.
But he didn’t mention me. He talked until Harding asked him if he was ready to have another try at lifting it and he said no, but just because he couldn’t lift it was no sign it couldn’t be done. Scanlon said maybe it could be done with a crane, but no man could lift that thing by himself, and McMurphy nodded and said maybe so, maybe so, but you never can tell about such things.
I watched the way he played them, got them to come around to him and say, No, by Jesus, not a man alive could lift it—finally even suggest the bet themselves. I watched how reluctant he looked to bet. He let the odds stack up, sucked them in deeper and deeper till he had five to one on a sure thing from every man of them, some of them betting up to twenty dollars. He never said a thing about seeing me lift it already.
All night I hoped he wouldn’t go through with it. And during the meeting the next day, when the nurse said all the men who participated in the fishing trip would have to take special showers because they