One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [137]
Harding drank and watched and shook his head. “It isn’t happening. It’s all a collaboration of Kafka and Mark Twain and Martini.”
McMurphy and Turkle got to worrying that there might still be too many lights, so they went up and down the hall turning out everything that glowed, even the little knee-high night lights, till the place was pitch black. Turkle got out flashlights, and we played tag up and down the hall with the wheelchairs from storage, having a big time till we heard one of Sefelt’s convulsion cries and went to find him sprawled twitching beside that big girl, Sandy. She was sitting on the floor brushing at her skirt, looking down at Sefelt. “I never experienced anything like it,” she said with quiet awe.
Fredrickson knelt beside his friend and put a wallet between his teeth to keep him from chewing his tongue, and helped him get his pants buttoned. “You all right, Seef? Seef?”
Sefelt didn’t open his eyes, but he raised a limp hand and picked the wallet out of his mouth. He grinned through his spit. “I’m all right,” he said. “Medicate me and turn me loose again.”
“You really need some medication, Seef?”
“Medication.”
“Medication,” Fredrickson said over his shoulder, still kneeling. “Medication,” Harding repeated and weaved off with his flashlight to the drug room. Sandy watched him go with glazed eyes. She was sitting beside Sefelt, stroking his head in wonderment.
“Maybe you better bring me something too,” she called drunkenly after Harding. “I never experienced anything to come even close to it.”
Down the hall we heard glass crash and Harding came back with a double handful of pills; he sprinkled them over Sefelt and the woman like he was crumbling clods into a grave. He raised his eyes toward the ceiling.
“Most merciful God, accept these two poor sinners into your arms. And keep the doors ajar for the coming of the rest of us, because you are witnessing the end, the absolute, irrevocable, fantastic end. I’ve finally realized what is happening. It is our last fling. We are doomed henceforth. Must screw our courage to the sticking point and face up to our impending fate. We shall be all of us shot at dawn. One hundred cc’s apiece. Miss Ratched shall line us all against the wall, where we’ll face the terrible maw of a muzzle-loading shotgun which she has loaded with Miltowns! Thorazines! Libriums! Stelazines! And with a wave of her sword, blooie! Tranquilize all of us completely out of existence.”
He sagged against the wall and slid to the floor, pills hopping out of his hands in all directions like red and green and orange bugs. “Amen,” he said and closed his eyes.
The girl on the floor smoothed down her skirt over her long hardworking legs and looked at Sefelt still grinning and twitching there under the lights beside her, and said, “Never in my life experienced anything to come even halfway near it.”
Harding’s speech, if it hadn’t actually sobered people, had at least made them realize the seriousness of what we were doing. The night was getting on, and some thought had to be given to the arrival of the staff in the morning. Billy Bibbit and his girl mentioned that it was after four o’clock and, if it was all right, if people didn’t mind, they’d like to have Mr. Turkle unlock the Seclusion Room. They went off under an arch of flashlight beams, and the rest of us went into the day room to see what we could decide about cleaning up. Turkle was all but passed out when he got back from Seclusion, and we had to push him into the day room in a wheelchair.
As I walked after them it came to me as a kind of sudden surprise that I was drunk, actually drunk, glowing and grinning and staggering drunk for the first time since the Army, drunk along with half a dozen other guys and a couple of girls—right on the Big Nurse’s ward! Drunk and running and laughing and carrying on with women square in the center of the Combine’s most powerful stronghold! I thought back on the night, on what we’d been doing, and it was near impossible to believe. I had