One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [8]
(Everybody on the ward is proud of the way the patients cooperate. We got a little brass tablet tacked to a piece of maple wood that has printed on it: CONGRATULATIONS FOR GETTING ALONG WITH THE SMALLEST NUMBER OF PERSONNEL OF ANY WARD IN THE HOSPITAL. It’s a prize for cooperation. It’s hung on the wall right above the log book, right square in the middle between the Chronics and Acutes.)
This new redheaded Admission, McMurphy, knows right away he’s not a Chronic. After he checks the day room over a minute, he sees he’s meant for the Acute side and goes right for it, grinning and shaking hands with everybody he comes to. At first I see that he’s making everybody over there feel uneasy, with all his kidding and joking and with the brassy way he hollers at that black boy who’s still after him with a thermometer, and especially with that big wide-open laugh of his. Dials twitch in the control panel at the sound of it. The Acutes look spooked and uneasy when he laughs, the way kids look in a schoolroom when one ornery kid is raising too much hell with the teacher out of the room and they’re all scared the teacher might pop back in and take it into her head to make them all stay after. They’re fidgeting and twitching, responding to the dials in the control panel; I see McMurphy notices he’s making them uneasy, but he don’t let it slow him down.
“Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don’t look so crazy to me.” He’s trying to get them to loosen up, the way you see an auctioneer spinning jokes to loosen up the crowd before the bidding starts. “Which one of you claims to be the craziest? Which one is the biggest loony? Who runs these card games? It’s my first day, and what I like to do is make a good impression straight off on the right man if he can prove to me he is the right man. Who’s the bull goose loony here?”
He’s saying this directly to Billy Bibbit. He leans down and glares so hard at Billy that Billy feels compelled to stutter out that he isn’t the buh-buh-buh-bull goose loony yet, though he’s next in luh-luh-line for the job.
McMurphy sticks a big hand down in front of Billy, and Billy can’t do a thing but shake it. “Well, buddy,” he says to Billy, “I’m truly glad you’re next in luh-line for the job, but since I’m thinking about taking over this whole show myself, lock, stock, and barrel, maybe I better talk with the top man.” He looks round to where some of the Acutes have stopped their card-playing, covers one of his hands with the other, and cracks all his knuckles at the sight. “I figure, you see, buddy, to be sort of the gambling baron on this ward, deal a wicked game of blackjack. So you better take me to your leader and we’ll get it straightened out who’s gonna be boss around here.”
Nobody’s sure if this barrel-chested man with the scar and the wild grin is playacting or if he’s crazy enough to be just like he talks, or both, but they are all beginning to get a big kick out of going along with him. They watch as he puts that big red hand on Billy’s thin arm, waiting to see what Billy will say. Billy sees how it’s up to him to break the silence, so he looks around and picks out one of the pinochle-players: “Harding,” Billy says, “I guess it would b-b-be you. You’re p-president of Pay-Pay-Patient’s Council. This m-man wants to talk to you.”
The Acutes are grinning now, not so uneasy anymore, and glad that something out of the ordinary’s going on. They all razz Harding, ask him if he’s bull goose loony. He lays down his cards.
Harding is a flat, nervous man with a face that sometimes makes you think you seen him in the movies, like it’s a face too pretty to just be a guy on the street. He’s got wide, thin shoulders and he curves them in around his chest when he’s trying to hide inside himself. He’s got hands so long and white and dainty I think they carved each other out of soap, and sometimes they get loose and glide around in front of him