One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [141]
“He didn’t lock it back up,” Harding said to McMurphy. “Go on. Go on after them!”
McMurphy groaned and opened one eye bloody as a hatching egg. “You kidding me? I couldn’t even get my head through that window, let alone my whole body.”
“My friend, I don’t believe you fully comprehend—”
“Harding, goddam you and your big words; all I fully comprehend this morning is I’m still half drunk. And sick. Matter of fact, I think you’re still drunk too. Chief, how about you; are you still drunk?”
I said that my nose and cheeks didn’t have any feeling in them yet, if this could be taken to mean anything.
McMurphy nodded once and closed his eyes again; he laced his hands across his chest and slid down in his chair, his chin settling into his collar. He smacked his lips and smiled as if he were napping. “Man,” he said, “everybody is still drunk.”
Harding was still concerned. He kept on about how the best thing for McMurphy to do was get dressed, quickly, while old Angel of Mercy was in there calling the doctor again to report the atrocities she had uncovered, but McMurphy maintained that there wasn’t anything to get so excited about; he wasn’t any worse off than before, was he? “I’ve took their best punch,” he said. Harding threw up his hands and went off, predicting doom.
One of the black boys saw the screen was unlocked and locked it and went into the Nurses’ Station for the big flat ledger, came back out running his finger down the roll and lipping the names he read out loud as he sighted the men that matched up with them. The roll is listed alphabetically backwards to throw people off, so he didn’t get to the Bs till right at the last. He looked around the day room without taking his finger from that last name in the ledger.
“Bibbit. Where’s Billy Bibbit?” His eyes were big. He was thinking Billy’d slipped out right under his nose and would he ever catch it. “Who saw Billy Bibbit go, you damn goons?”
This set people to remembering just where Billy was; there were whispers and laughing again.
The black boy went back into the station, and we saw him telling the nurse. She smashed the phone down in the cradle and came out the door with the black boy hot after her; a lock of her hair had broken loose from beneath her white cap and fell across her face like wet ashes. She was sweating between her eyebrows and under her nose. She demanded we tell her where the Eloper had gone. She was answered with a chorus of laughter, and her eyes went around the men.
“So? He’s not gone, is he? Harding, he’s still here—on the ward, isn’t he? Tell me. Sefelt, tell me!”
She darted the eyes out with every word, stabbing at the men’s faces, but the men were immune to her poison. Their eyes met hers; their grins mocked the old confident smile she had lost.
“Washington! Warren! Come with me for room check.”
We rose and followed as the three of them went along, unlocking the lab, the tub room, the doctor’s office…. Scanlon covered his grin with his knotty hand and whispered, “Hey, ain’t it gonna be some joke on ol’ Billy.” We all nodded. “And Billy’s not the only one it’s gonna be a joke on, now that I think about it; remember who’s in there?”
The nurse reached the door of the Seclusion Room at the end of the hall. We pushed up close to see, crowding and craning to peep over the Big Nurse and the two black boys as she unlocked it and swung it open. It was dark in the windowless room. There was a squeak and a scuffle in the dark, and the nurse reached out, flicked the light down on Billy and the girl where they were blinking up from that mattress on the floor like two owls from a nest. The nurse ignored the howl of laughter behind her.
“William Bibbit!” She tried so hard to sound cold and stern. “William…Bibbit!”
“Good morning, Miss Ratched,” Billy said, not even making any move to get up and button his pajamas. He took the girl’s hand in his and grinned. “This is Candy.”
The nurse’s tongue clucked in her bony throat. “Oh, Billy Billy Billy—I’m so ashamed for you.”
Billy wasn’t awake enough to respond much to her shaming, and the girl