One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [31]
“Look here, Harding,” Cheswick says.
“No, no, Cheswick. Don’t get irate at the truth.”
“Now look here; there’s been times when I’ve said the same things about old lady Ratched that McMurphy has been saying.”
“Yes, but you said them very quietly and took them all back later. You are a rabbit too, don’t try to avoid the truth. That’s why I hold no grudge against you for the questions you asked me during the meeting today. You were only playing your role. If you had been on the carpet, or you, Billy, or you, Fredrickson, I would have attacked you just as cruelly as you attacked me. We mustn’t be ashamed of our behavior; it’s the way we little animals were meant to behave.”
McMurphy turns in his chair and looks the other Acutes up and down. “I ain’t so sure but what they should be ashamed. Personally, I thought it was damned crummy the way they swung in on her side against you. For a minute there I thought I was back in a Red Chinese prison camp…”
“Now by God, McMurphy,” Cheswick says, “you listen here.”
McMurphy turns and listens, but Cheswick doesn’t go on. Cheswick never goes on; he’s one of these guys who’ll make a big fuss like he’s going to lead an attack, holler charge and stomp up and down a minute, take a couple steps, and quit. McMurphy looks at him where he’s been caught off base again after such a tough-sounding start, and says to him, “A hell of a lot like a Chinese prison camp.”
Harding holds up his hands for peace. “Oh, no, no, that isn’t right. You mustn’t condemn us, my friend. No. In fact…”
I see that sly fever come into Harding’s eye again; I think he’s going to start laughing, but instead he takes his cigarette out of his mouth and points it at McMurphy—in his hand it looks like one of his thin, white fingers, smoking at the end.
“…you too, Mr. McMurphy, for all your cowboy bluster and your sideshow swagger, you too, under that crusty surface, are probably just as soft and fuzzy and rabbit-souled as we are.”
“Yeah, you bet I’m a little cottontail. Just what is it makes me a rabbit, Harding? My psychopathic tendencies? Is it my fightin’ tendencies, or my fuckin’ tendencies? Must be the fuckin’, mustn’t it? All that whambam-thank-you-ma’am. Yeah, that whambam, that’s probably what makes me a rabbit—”
“Wait; I’m afraid you’ve raised a point that requires some deliberation. Rabbits are noted for that certain trait, aren’t they? Notorious, in fact, for their whambam. Yes. Um. But in any case, the point you bring up simply indicates that you are a healthy, functioning and adequate rabbit, whereas most of us in here even lack the sexual ability to make the grade as adequate rabbits. Failures, we are—feeble, stunted, weak little creatures in a weak little race. Rabbits, sans whambam; a pathetic notion.”
“Wait a minute; you keep twistin’ what I say—”
“No. You were right. You remember, it was you that drew our attention to the place where the nurse was concentrating her pecking? That was true. There’s not a man here that isn’t afraid he is losing or has already lost his whambam. We comical little creatures can’t even achieve masculinity in the rabbit world, that’s how weak and inadequate we are. Hee. We are—the rabbits, one might say, of the rabbit world!”
He leans forward again, and that strained, squeaking laugh of his that I been expecting begins to rise from his mouth, his hands flipping around, his face twitching.
“Harding! Shut your damned mouth!”
It’s like a slap. Harding is hushed, chopped off cold with his mouth still open in a drawn grin, his hands dangling in a cloud of blue tobacco smoke. He freezes this way a second; then his eyes narrow into sly little holes and he lets them slip over to McMurphy, speaks so soft that I have to push my broom up right next to his chair to hear what he says.
“Friend…you…may be a wolf.”
“Goddammit, I’m no wolf and you