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By Root 1171 0

could adjust (“It’s the Dilantin!” he finally yells. “Now, Mr. Sefelt, if you’re to be helped, you must be honest,” she says. “But, it’s got to be the Dilantin that does it; don’t it make my gums soft?” She smiles. “Jim, you’re forty-five years old…”) when I happened to catch a look at McMurphy sitting in his corner. He wasn’t fiddling with a deck of cards or dozing into a magazine like he had been during all the meetings the last two weeks. And he wasn’t slouched down. He was sitting up stiff in his chair with a flushed, reckless look on his face as he looked back and forth from Sefelt to the Big Nurse. As I watched, the ringing went higher. His eyes were blue stripes under those white eyebrows, and they shot back and forth just the way he watched cards turning up around a poker table. I was certain that any minute he was going to do some crazy thing to get him up on Disturbed for sure. I’d seen the same look on other guys before they’d climbed all over a black boy. I gripped down on the arm of my chair and waited, scared it would happen, and, I began to realize, just a little scared it wouldn’t.

He kept quiet and watched till they were finished with Sefelt; then he swung half around in his chair and watched while Fredrickson, trying some way to get back at them for the way they had grilled his friend, griped for a few loud minutes about the cigarettes being kept in the Nurses’ Station. Fredrickson talked himself out and finally flushed and apologized like always and sat back down. McMurphy still hadn’t made any kind of move. I eased up where I’d been gripping the arm of the chair, beginning to think I’d been wrong.

There was just a couple of minutes left in the meeting. The Big Nurse folded up her papers and put them in the basket and set the basket off her lap on the floor, then let her eyes swing to McMurphy for just a second like she wanted to check if he was awake and listening. She folded her hands in her lap and looked down at the fingers and drew a deep breath, shaking her head.

“Boys, I’ve given a great deal of thought to what I am about to say. I’ve talked it over with the doctor and with the rest of the staff, and, as much as we regretted it, we all came to the same conclusion—that there should be some manner of punishment meted out for the unspeakable behavior concerning the house duties three weeks ago.” She raised her hand and looked around. “We waited this long to say anything, hoping that you men would take it upon yourselves to apologize for the rebellious way you acted. But not a one of you has shown the slightest sign of remorse.”

Her hand went up again to stop any interruptions that might come—the movement of a tarot-card reader in a glass arcade case.

“Please understand: We do not impose certain rules and restrictions on you without a great deal of thought about their therapeutic value. A good many of you are in here because you could not adjust to the rules of society in the Outside World, because you refused to face up to them, because you tried to circumvent them and avoid them. At some time—perhaps in your childhood—you may have been allowed to get away with flouting the rules of society. When you broke a rule you knew it. You wanted to be dealt with, needed it, but the punishment did not come. That foolish lenience on the part of your parents may have been the germ that grew into your present illness. I tell you this hoping you will understand that it is entirely for your own good that we enforce discipline and order.”

She let her head twist around the room. Regret for the job she has to do was worked into her face. It was quiet except for that high fevered, delirious ringing in my head.

“It’s difficult to enforce discipline in these surroundings. You must be able to see that. What can we do to you? You can’t be arrested. You can’t be put on bread and water. You must see that the staff has a problem; what can we do?”

Ruckly had an idea what they could do, but she didn’t pay any attention to it. The face moved with a ticking noise till the features achieved a different look. She finally