One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [138]
Colonel Matterson got up again, bright-eyed and full of lessons, and Scanlon wheeled him back to bed. Sefelt and Martini and Fredrickson said they’d better hit the sack too. McMurphy and I and Harding and the girl and Mr. Turkle stayed up to finish off the cough syrup and decide what we were going to do about the mess the ward was in. Me and Harding acted like we were the only ones really very worried about it; McMurphy and the big girl just sat there and sipped that syrup and grinned at each other and played hand games in the shadows, and Mr. Turkle kept dropping off to sleep. Harding did his best to try to get them concerned.
“All of you fail to compren’ the complexities of the situation,” he said.
“Bull,” McMurphy said.
Harding slapped the table. “McMurphy, Turkle, you fail to realize what has occurred here tonight. On a mental ward. Miss Ratched’s ward! The reekerputions will be…devastating!”
McMurphy bit the girl’s earlobe. Turkle nodded and opened one eye and said, “Tha’s true. She’ll be on tomorrow, too.”
“I, however, have a plan,” Harding said. He got to his feet. He said McMurphy was obviously too far gone to handle the situation himself and someone else would have to take over. As he talked he stood straighter and became more sober. He spoke in an earnest and urgent voice, and his hands shaped what he said. I was glad he was there to take over.
His plan was that we were to tie up Turkle and make it look like McMurphy’d snuck up behind him, tied him up with oh, say, strips of torn sheet, and relieved him of his keys, and after getting the keys had broken into the drug room, scattered drugs around, and raised hell with the files just to spite the nurse—she’d believe that part—then he’d unlocked the screen and made his escape.
McMurphy said it sounded like a television plot and it was so ridiculous it couldn’t help but work, and he complimented Harding on his clearheadedness. Harding said the plan had its merits; it would keep the other guys out of trouble with the nurse, and keep Turkle his job, and get McMurphy off the ward. He said McMurphy could have the girls drive him to Canada or Tiajuana, or even Nevada if he wanted, and be completely safe; the police never press too hard to pick up AWOLs from the hospital because ninety percent of them always show back up in a few days, broke and drunk and looking for that free bed and board. We talked about it for a while and finished the cough syrup. We finally talked it to silence. Harding sat back down.
McMurphy took his arm from around the girl and looked from me to Harding, thinking, that strange, tired expression on his face again. He asked what about us, why didn’t we just up and get our clothes on and make out with him?
“I’m not quite ready yet, Mack,” Harding told him.
“Then what makes you think I am?”
Harding looked at him in silence for a time and smiled, then said, “No, you don’t understand. I’ll be ready in a few weeks. But I want to do it on my own, by myself, right out that front door, with all the traditional red tape and complications. I want my wife to be here in a car at a certain time to pick me up. I want them to know I was able to do it that way.”
McMurphy nodded. “What about you, Chief?”
“I figure I’m all right. Just I don’t know where I want to go yet. And somebody should stay here a few weeks after you’re gone to see that things don’t start sliding back.”
“What about Billy and Sefelt and Fredrickson and the rest?”
“I can’t speak for them,” Harding said. “They’ve still