“Yeah, what?” Cheswick says and glares around at the others.
“She can’t have you whipped. She can’t burn you with hot irons. She can’t tie you to the rack. They got laws about that sort of thing nowadays; this ain’t the Middle Ages. There’s not a thing in the world that she can – ”
“You s-s-saw what she c-can do to us! In the m-m-meeting today.” I see Billy Bibbit has changed back from a rabbit. He leans toward McMurphy, trying to go on, his mouth wet with spit and his face red. Then he turns and walks away. “Ah, it’s n-no use. I should just k-k-kill myself.”
McMurphy calls after him. “Today? What did I see in the meeting today? Hell’s bells, all I saw today was her asking a couple of questions, and nice, easy questions at that. Questions ain’t bonebreakers, they ain’t sticks and stones.”
Billy turns back. “But the wuh-wuh-way she asks them – ”
“You don’t have to answer, do you?”
“If you d-don’t answer she just smiles and m-m-makes a note in her little book and then she – she – oh, hell!”
Scanlon comes up beside Billy. “If you don’t answer her questions, Mack, you admit it just by keeping quiet. It’s the way those bastards in the government get you. You can’t beat it. The only thing to do is blow the whole business off the face of the whole bleeding earth – blow it all up.”
“Well, when she asks one of those questions, why don’t you tell her to up and go to hell?”
“Yeah,” Cheswick says, shaking his fist, “tell her to up and go to hell.”
“So then what, Mack? She’d just come right back with ‘Why do you seem so upset by that par-tik-uler question, Patient McMurphy?’ ”
“So, you tell her to go to hell again. Tell them all to go to hell. They still haven’t hurt you.”
The Acutes are crowding closer around him. Fredrickson answers this time. “Okay, you tell her that and you’re listed as Potential Assaultive and shipped upstairs to the Disturbed ward. I had it happen. Three times. Those poor goofs up there don’t even get off the ward to go to the Saturday afternoon movie. They don’t even have a TV.”
“And, my friend, if you continue to demonstrate such hostile tendencies, such as telling people to go to hell, you get lined up to go to the Shock Shop, perhaps even on to greater things, an operation, an – ”
“Damn it, Harding, I told you I’m not up on this talk.”
“The Shock Shop, Mr. McMurphy, is jargon for the EST machine, the Electro Shock Therapy. A device that might be said to do the work of the sleeping pill, the electric chair, and the torture rack. It’s a clever little procedure, simple, quick, nearly painless it happens so fast, but no one ever wants another one. Ever.”
“What’s this thing do?”
“You are strapped to a table, shaped, ironically, like a cross, with a crown of electric sparks in place of thorns. You are touched on each side of the head with wires. Zap! Five cents’ worth of electricity through the brain and you are jointly administered therapy and a punishment for your hostile go-to-hell behavior, on top of being put out of everyone’s way for six hours to three days, depending on the individual. Even when you do regain consciousness you are in a state of disorientation for days. You are unable to think coherently. You can’t recall things. Enough of these treatments and a man could turn out like Mr. Ellis you see over there against the wall. A drooling, pants-wetting idiot at thirty-five. Or turn into a mindless organism that eats and eliminates and yells ‘fuck the wife,’ like Ruckly. Or look at Chief Broom clutching to his namesake there beside you.”
Harding points his cigarette at me, too late for me to back off. I make like I don’t notice. Go on with my sweeping.
“I’ve heard that the Chief, years ago, received more than two hundred shock treatments when they were really the vogue. Imagine what this could do to a mind that was already slipping. Look at him: a giant janitor. There’s your Vanishing American, a six-foot-eight sweeping machine, scared of its own shadow. That, my friend, is what we can be threatened with.”
McMurphy looks at me a while, then turns back to Harding. “Man, I tell you, how come you stand for it? What about this democratic-ward manure that the doctor was giving me? Why don’t you take a vote?”
Harding smiles at him and takes another slow drag on his cigarette. “Vote what, my friend? Vote that the nurse may not ask any more questions in Group Meeting? Vote that she shall not look at us in a certain way? You tell me, Mr. McMurphy, what do we vote on?”
“Hell, I don’t care. Vote on anything. Don’t you see you have to do something to show you still got some guts? Don’t you see you can’t let her take over completely? Look at you here: you say the Chief is scared of his own shadow, but I never saw a scareder-looking bunch in my life than you guys.”
“Not me!” Cheswick says.
“Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that’s the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn’t anybody laughing. I haven’t heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing. A man go around lettin’ a woman whip him down till he can’t laugh any more, and he loses one of the biggest edges he’s got on his side. First thing you know he’ll begin to think she’s tougher than he is and – ”
“Ah. I believe my friend is catching on, fellow rabbits. Tell me, Mr. McMurphy, bow does one go about showing a woman who’s boss, I mean other than laughing at her? How does he show her who’s king of the mountain? A man like you should be able to tell us that. You don’t slap her around, do you? No, then she calls the law. You don’t lose your temper and shout at her; she’ll win by trying to placate her big ol’ angry boy: ‘Is us little man getting fussy? Ahhhhh?’ Have you ever tried to keep up a noble and angry front in the face of such consolation? So you see, my friend, it is somewhat as you stated: man has but one truly effective weapon against the juggernaut of modern matriarchy, but it certainly is not laughter. One weapon, and with every passing year in this hip, motivationally researched society, more and more people are discovering how to render that weapon useless and conquer those who have hitherto been the conquerors – ”
“Lord, Harding, but you do come on,” McMurphy says.
“ – and do you think, for all your acclaimed psychopathic powers, that you could effectively use your weapon against our champion? Do you think you could use it against Miss Ratched, McMurphy? Ever?”
And sweeps one of his hands toward the glass case. Everybody’s head turns to look. She’s in there, looking out through her window, got a tape recorder hid out of sight somewhere, getting all this down – already planning how to work it into the schedule.
The nurse sees everybody looking at her and she nods and they all turn away. McMurphy takes off his cap and runs his hands into that red hair. Now everybody is looking at him; they’re waiting for him to make an answer and he knows it. He feels he’s been trapped some way. He puts the cap back on and rubs the stitch marks on his nose.
“Why, if you mean do I think I could get a bone up[14] over that old buzzard, no, I don’t believe I could…”
“She’s not all that homely, McMurphy. Her face is quite handsome and well preserved. And in spite of all her attempts to conceal them, in that sexless get-up, you can still make out the evidence of some rather extraordinary breasts. She must have been a rather beautiful young woman. Still – for the sake of argument, could you get it up over her even if she wasn’t old, even if she was young and had the beauty of Helen?”
“I don’t know Helen, but I see what you’re drivin’ at. And you’re by God right. I couldn’t