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It happened at one of the group meetings. He got mad at the guys for acting too cagey- too chicken-shit, he called it. He'd been taking bets from all of them on the World Series coming up Friday. He'd had it in mind that they would get to watch the games on TV, even though they didn't come on during regulation TV time....
<snip>
"Now look here," he tells them, but they don't look. He's been waiting for somebody to say something, answer his question. Nobody acts like they've heard it. "Look here, damn it," he says when nobody moves, "there's at least twelve of you guys I know of myself got a leetle personal INTEREST who wins these games. Don't you guys care to watch them?"
"I don't know, Mack," Scanlon finally says, "I'm pretty used to seeing that six-o'clock news. And if switching times would really mess up the schedule as bad as Miss Ratched says-"
"The hell with the schedule. You can get back to the bloody schedule next week, when the Series is over. What do you say, buddies? Let's take a vote on watching the TV during the afternoon instead of at night. All those in favor?"
<snip>
Cheswick's hand comes up. Some of the other guys look around to see if there's any other fools. McMurphy can't believe it.
"Come on now, what is this crap. I thought you guys could vote on policy and that sort of thing. Isn't that the way it is, Doc?"
The doctor nods without looking up.
"Okay then; now who wants to watch those games?"
Cheswick shoves his hand higher and glares around. Scanlon shakes his head and then raises his hand, keeping his elbow on the arm of the chair. And nobody else. McMurphy can't say a word.
"If that's settled, then," the nurse says, "perhaps we should get on with the meeting."
<snip>
He argues for the rest of the day with some of the other guys about why they didn't vote, but they don't want to talk about it, so he seems to give up, doesn't say anything about it again till the day before the Series starts. "Here it is Thursday," he says, sadly shaking his head.
<snip>
"Let me see again," McMurphy says. "How many of you birds will vote with me if I bring up that time switch again?"
About half the Acutes nod yes, a lot more than would really vote. He puts his hat back on his head and leans his chin in his hands.
"I'll tell ya, I can't figure it out. Harding, what's wrong with you, for crying out loud? You afraid if you raise your hand that old buzzard'll cut it off."
Harding lifts on thin eyebrow. "Perhaps I am; perhaps I AM afraid she'll cut it off if I raise it."
"What about you, Billy? Is that what you're scared of?"
"No. I don't think she'd d-d-do anything, but"- he shrugs and sighs and climbs up on the big panel that controls the nozzles on the shower, perches up there like a monkey- "but I just don't think a vote wu-wu-would do any good. Not in the l-long run. It's just no use, M-Mack."
"Do any GOOD? Hoooee! It'd do you birds some good just to get the exercise lifting that arm." (!!!!!!)
"It's still a risk, my friend. She always has the capacity to make things worse for us. A baseball game isn't worth the risk," Harding says.
"Who the hell says so? Jesus, I haven't missed a World Series in years. Even when I was in the cooler one September they let us bring in a TV and watch the Series; they'd have had a riot on their hands if they hadn't. I just may have to kick that damned door down and walk to some bar downtown to see the game, just me and my buddy Cheswick."
<snip>
"All right, by God, let's just figure out what I'd have to toss through that screen to bust out. And if you birds don't think I'd do it if I ever got the urge, then you got another think coming. Okay- something bigger'n a table or a chair...
<snip>
"That big control panel with all the handles and cranks. That's hard enough, ain't it? And it damn well should be heavy enough."
<snip>
Everybody looks. The panel is steel and cement, half the size of one of those tables, probably weighs four hundred pounds.
"Okay, I'm looking at it. It don't look any bigger than hay bales I've bucked up onto truck beds."
"I'm afraid, my friend, that this contrivance will weigh a bit more than your bales of hay."
<snip>
"Hell, are you birds telling me that I can't lift that dinky little gizmo?"
<snip>
The guys all go to signing liens at once; he's beat them so many times at poker and blackjack they can't wait to get back at him...I don't know what he's driving at; broad and big as he is, it'd take three of him to move that panel, and he knows it. He can just look at it and see he probably couldn't even tip it, let alone lift it. It'd take a giant to lift it off the ground. But when the Acutes all get their IOUs signed, he steps up to the panel and lifts Billy Bibbit down off it and spits in his big calloused palms and slaps them together, rolls his shoulders.
"Okay, stand outa the way. Sometimes when I go to exertin' myself I use up all the air nearby and grown men faint from suffocation. Stand back. There's liable to be crackin' cement and flying steel. Get the women and kids someplace safe. Stand back....."
"By golly, he might just do it," Cheswick mutters.
"Sure, maybe he'll talk it off the floor," Frederickson says.
<snip>
"Stand back, sissies, you're using my oxygen."
<snip>
And suddenly nobody's hooting at him any more. His arms commence to swell, and the veins squeeze up to the surface. He clinches his eyes, and his lips draw away from his teeth. His head leans back, and tendons stand out like coiled ropes running from his heaving neck down both arms to his hands. His whole body shakes with the strain as he tries to lift something he knows he can't life, something everybody knows he can't lift.
But, just for a second, when we hear the cement grind at out feet, we think, by golly, he might do it.
Then his breath explodes out of him, and he falls back limp against the wall. There's blood on the levers where he tore his hands. He pants for a minute against the wall with his eyes shut. There's no sound but his scraping breath; nobody's saying a thing.
He opens his eyes and looks around at us. One by one he looks at the guys- even at me- then he fishes in his pockets for all the IOUs he won the last few days at poker. He bends over the table and tries to sort them, but his hands are froze into red claws, and he can't work the fingers.
Finally he throws the whole bundle on the floor- probably forty or fifty dollars' worth from each man- and turns to walk out of the tub room. He stops at the door and looks back at everybody standing around.
"But I TRIED, though," he says. "Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?"
And walks out and leaves the stained pieces of paper on the floor for whoever wants to sort through them.
-Ken Kesey, from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
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