One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [140]
I’ve given what happened next a good lot of thought, and I’ve come around to thinking that it was bound to be and would have happened in one way or another, at this time or that, even if Mr. Turkle had got McMurphy and the two girls up and off the ward like was planned. The Big Nurse would have found out some way what had gone on, maybe just by the look on Billy’s face, and she’d have done the same as she did whether McMurphy was still around or not. And Billy would have done what he did, and McMurphy would have heard about it and come back.
Would have had to come back, because he could no more have sat around outside the hospital, playing poker in Carson City or Reno or someplace, and let the Big Nurse have the last move and get the last play, than he could have let her get by with it right under his nose. It was like he’d signed on for the whole game and there wasn’t any way of him breaking his contract.
As soon as we started getting out of bed and circulating around the ward, the story of what had taken place was spreading in a brush fire of low talk. “They had a what?” asked the ones who hadn’t been in on it. “A whore? In the dorm? Jesus.” Not only a whore, the others told them, but a drunken blast to boot. McMurphy was planning to sneak her out before the day crew came on but he didn’t wake up. “Now what kind of crock are you giving us?” “No crock. It’s every word gospel. I was in on it.”
Those who had been in on the night started telling about it with a kind of quiet pride and wonder, the way people tell about seeing a big hotel fire or a dam bursting—very solemn and respectful because the casualties aren’t even counted yet—but the longer the telling went on, the less solemn the fellows got. Everytime the Big Nurse and her hustling black boys turned up something new, such as the empty bottle of cough syrup or the fleet of wheelchairs parked at the end of the hall like empty rides in an amusement park, it brought another part of the night back sudden and clear to be told to the guys who weren’t in on it and to be savored by the guys who were. Everybody had been herded into the day room by the black boys, Chronics and Acutes alike, milling together in excited confusion. The two old Vegetables sat sunk in their bedding, snapping their eyes and their gums. Everybody was still in pajamas and slippers except McMurphy and the girl; she was dressed, except for her shoes and the nylon stockings, which now hung over her shoulder, and he was in his black shorts with the white whales. They were sitting together on a sofa, holding hands. The girl had dozed off again, and McMurphy was leaning against her with a satisfied and sleepy grin.
Our solemn worry was giving way, in spite of us, to joy and humor. When the nurse found the pile of pills Harding had sprinkled on Sefelt and the girl, we started to pop and snort to keep from laughing, and by the time they found Mr. Turkle in the linen room and led him out blinking and groaning, tangled in a hundred yards of torn sheet like a mummy with a hangover, we were roaring. The Big Nurse took our good humor without so much as a trace of her little pasted smile; every laugh was being forced right down her throat till it looked as if any minute she’d blow up like a bladder.
McMurphy draped one bare leg over the edge of the sofa and pulled his cap down to keep the light from hurting his reddened eyes, and he kept licking out a tongue that looked like it had been shellacked by that cough syrup. He looked sick and terrifically tired, and he kept pressing the heels of his hands against his temples and yawning, but as bad as he seemed to feel he still held his grin and once or twice went so far as to laugh out loud at some of the things the nurse kept turning up.
When the nurse went in to call the Main Building to report Mr. Turkle’s resignation, Turkle and the girl Sandy took the opportunity to unlock that screen again and wave good-by to all and go loping off across the grounds, stumbling and slipping on the wet, sun-sparkle