One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [57]
“Now there’s a suggestion with a lot of merit,” Harding says, tossing down his magazine. “Why not bring that up for vote in group meeting tomorrow? ‘Miss Ratched, I’d like to move that the ward be transported en masse to the Idle Hour for beer and television.’”
“I’d second the motion,” Cheswick says. “Damn right.”
“The hell with that in mass business,” McMurphy says. “I’m tired of looking at you bunch of old ladies; when me and Cheswick bust outa here I think by God I’m gonna nail the door shut behind me. You guys better stay behind; your mamma probably wouldn’t let you cross the street.”
“Yeah? Is that it?” Fredrickson has come up behind McMurphy. “You’re just going to raise one of those big he-man boots of yours and kick down the door? A real tough guy.”
McMurphy don’t hardly look at Fredrickson; he’s learned that Fredrickson might act hard-boiled now and then, but it’s an act that folds under the slightest scare.
“What about it, he-man,” Fredrickson keeps on, “are you going to kick down that door and show us how tough you are?”
“No, Fred, I guess not. I wouldn’t want to scuff up my boot.”
“Yeah? Okay, you been talking so big, just how would you go about busting out of here?”
McMurphy takes a look around him. “Well, I guess I could knock the mesh outa one of these windows with a chair when and if I took a notion….”
“Yeah? You could, could you? Knock it right out? Okay, let’s see you try. Come on, he-man, I’ll bet you ten dollars you can’t do it.”
“Don’t bother trying, Mack,” Cheswick says. “Fredrickson knows you’ll just break a chair and end up on Disturbed. The first day we arrived over here we were given a demonstration about these screens. They’re specially made. A technician picked up a chair just like that one you’ve got your feet on and beat the screen till the chair was no more than kindling wood. Didn’t hardly dent the screen.”
“Okay then,” McMurphy says, taking a look around him. I can see he’s getting more interested. I hope the Big Nurse isn’t hearing this; he’ll be up on Disturbed in an hour. “We need something heavier. How about a table?”
“Same as the chair. Same wood, same weight.”
“All right, by God, let’s just figure out what I’d have to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you birds don’t think I’d do it if I ever got the urge, then you got another think coming. Okay—something bigger’n a table or a chair…Well, if it was night I might throw that fat coon through it; he’s heavy enough.”
“Much too soft,” Harding says. “He’d hit the screen and it would dice him like an eggplant.”
“How about one of the beds?”
“A bed is too big even if you could lift it. It wouldn’t go through the window.”
“I could lift it all right. Well, hell, right over there you are: that thing Billy’s sittin’ on. That big control panel with all the handles and cranks. That’s hard enough, ain’t it? And it damn well should be heavy enough.”
“Sure,” Fredrickson says. “That’s the same as you kicking your foot through the steel door at the front.”
“What would be wrong with using the panel? It don’t look nailed down.”
“No, it’s not bolted—there’s probably nothing holding it but a few wires—but look at it, for Christsakes.”
Everybody looks. The panel is steel and cement, half the size of one of the tables, probably weighs four hundred pounds.
“Okay, I’m looking at it. It don’t look any bigger than hay bales I’ve bucked up onto truck beds.”
“I’m afraid, my friend, that this contrivance will weigh a bit more than your bales of hay.”
“About a quarter-ton more, I’d bet,” Fredrickson says.
“He’s right, Mack,” Cheswick says. “It’d be awful heavy.”
“Hell, are you birds telling me I can’t lift that dinky little gizmo?”
“My friend, I don’t recall anything about psychopaths being able to move mountains in addition to their other noteworthy assets.”
“Okay, you say I can’t lift it. Well by God…”
McMurphy hops off the table and goes to peeling off his green jacket; the tattoos sticking half out of his T-shirt