One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [97]
“‘This question’s got me goin’, won’t somebody set me right; does the Spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost over niiiite?’”
He held out that last note and twiddled it down me like a feather. I couldn’t help but start to chuckle, and this made me scared I’d get to laughing and not be able to stop. But just then McMurphy jumped off his bed and went to rustling through his nightstand, and I hushed. I clenched my teeth, wondering what to do now. It’d been a long time since I’d let anyone hear me do anymore than grunt or bellow. I heard him shut the bedstand, and it echoed like a boiler door. I heard him say, “Here,” and something lit on my bed. Little. Just the size of a lizard or a snake…
“Juicy Fruit is the best I can do for you at the moment, Chief. Package I won off Scanlon pitchin’ pennies.” And he got back in bed.
And before I realized what I was doing, I told him Thank you.
He didn’t say anything right off. He was up on his elbow, watching me the way he’d watched the black boy, waiting for me to say something else. I picked up the package of gum from the bedspread and held it in my hand and told him Thank you.
It didn’t sound like much because my throat was rusty and my tongue creaked. He told me I sounded a little out of practice and laughed at that. I tried to laugh with him, but it was a squawking sound, like a pullet trying to crow. It sounded more like crying than laughing.
He told me not to hurry, that he had till six-thirty in the morning to listen if I wanted to practice. He said a man been still long as me probably had a considerable lot to talk about, and he lay back on his pillow and waited. I thought for a minute for something to say to him, but the only thing that came to my mind was the kind of thing one man can’t say to another because it sounds wrong in words. When he saw I couldn’t say anything he crossed his hands behind his head and started talking himself.
“Ya know, Chief, I was just rememberin’ a time down in the Willamette Valley—I was pickin’ beans outside of Eugene and considering myself damn lucky to get the job. It was in the early thirties so there wasn’t many kids able to get jobs. I got the job by proving to the bean boss I could pick just as fast and clean as any of the adults. Anyway, I was the only kid in the rows. Nobody else around me but grown-ups. And after I tried a time or two to talk to them I saw they weren’t for listening to me—scrawny little patchquilt redhead anyhow. So I hushed. I was so peeved at them not listening to me I kept hushed the livelong four weeks I picked that field, workin’ right alongside of them, listening to them prattle on about this uncle or that cousin. Or if somebody didn’t show up for work, gossip about him. Four weeks and not a peep out of me. Till I think by God they forgot I could talk, the mossbacked old bastards. I bided my time. Then, on the last day, I opened up and went to telling them what a petty bunch of farts they were. I told each one just how his buddy had drug him over the coals when he was absent. Hooee, did they listen then! They finally got to arguing with each other and created such a shitstorm I lost my quarter-cent-a-pound bonus I had comin’ for not missin’ a day because I already had a bad reputation around town and the bean boss claimed the disturbance was likely my fault even if he couldn’t prove it. I cussed him out too. My shootin’ off my mouth that time probably cost me twenty dollars or so. Well worth it, too.”
He chuckled a while to himself, remembering, then turned his head on his pillow and looked at me.
“What I was wonderin’, Chief, are you biding your time towards the day you decide to lay into them?”
“No,” I told him. “I couldn’t.”
“Couldn’t tell them off? It’s easier than you think.”
“You’re…lot bigger, tougher’n I am,” I mumbled.
“How’s that? I didn’t get you, Chief.”
I worked some spit down in my throat. “You are bigger and tougher than I am. You can do it.”
“Me? Are you kidding? Criminy, look at you: you stand a head taller’n any man