One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [64]
That’s that McMurphy. He’s far away. He’s still trying to pull people out of the fog. Why don’t he leave me be?
“…remember that vote we had a day or so back—about the TV time? Well, today’s Friday and I thought I might just bring it up again, just to see if anybody else has picked up a little guts.”
“Mr. McMurphy, the purpose of this meeting is therapy, group therapy, and I’m not certain these petty grievances—”
“Yeah, yeah, the hell with that, we’ve heard it before. Me and some of the rest of the guys decided—”
“One moment, Mr. McMurphy, let me pose a question to the group: do any of you feel that Mr. McMurphy is perhaps imposing his personal desires on some of you too much? I’ve been thinking you might be happier if he were moved to a different ward.”
Nobody says anything for a minute. Then someone says, “Let him vote, why dontcha? Why ya want to ship him to Disturbed just for bringing up a vote? What’s so wrong with changing time?”
“Why, Mr. Scanlon, as I recall, you refused to eat for three days until we allowed you to turn the set on at six instead of six-thirty.”
“A man needs to see the world news, don’t he? God, they coulda bombed Washington and it’d been a week before we’d of heard.”
“Yes? And how do you feel about relinquishing your world news to watch a bunch of men play baseball?”
“We can’t have both, huh? No, I suppose not. Well, what the dickens—I don’t guess they’ll bomb us this week.”
“Let’s let him have the vote, Miss Ratched.”
“Very well. But I think this is ample evidence of how much he is upsetting some of you patients. What is it you are proposing, Mr. McMurphy?”
“I’m proposing a revote on watching the TV in the afternoon.”
“You’re certain one more vote will satisfy you? We have more important things—”
“It’ll satisfy me. I just’d kind of like to see which of these birds has any guts and which doesn’t.”
“It’s that kind of talk, Doctor Spivey, that makes me wonder if the patients wouldn’t be more content if Mr. McMurphy were moved.”
“Let him call the vote, why dontcha?”
“Certainly, Mr. Cheswick. A vote is now before the group. Will a show of hands be adequate, Mr. McMurphy, or are you going to insist on a secret ballot?”
“I want to see the hands. I want to see the hands that don’t go up, too.”
“Everyone in favor of changing the television time to the afternoon, raise his hand.”
The first hand that comes up, I can tell, is McMurphy’s, because of the bandage where that control panel cut into him when he tried to lift it. And then off down the slope I see them, other hands coming up out of the fog. It’s like…that big red hand of McMurphy’s is reaching into the fog and dropping down and dragging the men up by their hands, dragging them blinking into the open. First one, then another, then the next. Right on down the line of Acutes, dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching TV, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed, against the way she’s talked and acted and beat them down for years.
Nobody says anything. I can feel how stunned everybody is, the patients as well as the staff. The nurse can’t figure what happened; yesterday, before he tried lifting that panel, there wasn’t but four or five men might of voted. But when she talks she don’t let it show in her voice how surprised she is.
“I count only twenty, Mr. McMurphy.”
“Twenty? Well, why not? Twenty is all of us there—” His voice hangs as he realizes what she means. “Now hold on just a goddamned minute, lady—”
“I’m afraid the vote is defeated.”
“Hold on just one goddamned minute!”
“There are forty patients on the ward, Mr. McMurphy. Forty patients, and only twenty voted. You must have a majority to change the ward policy. I’m afraid the vote is closed.”
The hands are coming down across the room. The guys know they’re whipped, are trying to slip back into the safety of the fog. McMurphy is on his feet.
“Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch. You mean to tell me that’s how you’re gonna pull it? Count the votes of those old birds over there too?