One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: 50th Anniversary Edition by Ken Kesey Page A

his lap opens for a one-handed cut, then clacks shut with a sound blown up loud by the silence. The nurse’s swinging eyes hang on him for a second. She’s been watching him play poker all morning and though she hasn’t seen any money pass hands she suspects he’s not exactly the type that is going to be happy with the ward rule of gambling for matches only. The deck whispers open and clacks shut again and then disappears somewhere in one of those big palms.
    The nurse looks at her watch again and pulls a slip of paper out of the folder she’s holding, looks at it, and returns it to the folder. She puts the folder down and picks up the log book. Ellis coughs from his place on the wall; she waits until he stops.
    “Now. At the close of Friday’s meeting … we were discussing Mr. Harding’s problem … concerning his young wife. He had stated that his wife was extremely well endowed in the bosom and that this made him uneasy because she drew stares from men on the street.” She starts opening to places in the log book; little slips of paper stick out of the top of the book to mark the pages. “According to the notes listed by various patients in the log, Mr. Harding has been heard to say that she ‘damn well gives the bastards reason to stare.’ He has also been heard to say that he may give
her
reason to seek further sexual attention. He has been heard to say, ‘My dear sweet but illiterate wifethinks any word or gesture that does not smack of brickyard brawn and brutality is a word or gesture of weak dandyism.”’
    She continues reading silently from the book for a while, then closes it.
    “He has also stated that his wife’s ample bosom at times gives him a feeling of inferiority. So. Does anyone care to touch upon this subject further?”
    Harding shuts his eyes, and nobody else says anything. McMurphy looks around at the other guys, waiting to see if anybody is going to answer the nurse, then holds his hand up and snaps his fingers, like a school kid in class; the nurse nods at him.
    “Mr.—ah—McMurry?”
    “Touch upon what?”
    “What? Touch—”
    “You ask, I believe, ‘Does anyone care to touch upon—”’
    “Touch upon the—subject, Mr. McMurry, the subject of Mr. Harding’s problem with his wife.”
    “Oh. I thought you mean touch upon her—something else.”
    “Now what could you—”
    But she stops. She was almost flustered for a second there. Some of the Acutes hide grins, and McMurphy takes a huge stretch, yawns, winks at Harding. Then the nurse, calm as anything, puts the log book back in the basket and takes out another folder and opens it and starts reading.
    “McMurry, Randle Patrick. Committed by the state from the Pendleton Farm for Correction. For diagnosis and possible treatment. Thirty-five years old. Never married. Distinguished Service Cross in Korea, for leading an escape from a Communist prison camp. A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination. Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a series of arrests for Drunkenness, Assault and Battery, Disturbing the Peace, re
peated
gambling, and one arrest—for Rape.”
    “Rape?” The doctor perks up.
    “Statutory, with a girl of—”
    “Whoa. Couldn’t make that stick,” McMurphy says to the doctor. “Girl wouldn’t testify.”
    “With a child of fifteen.”
    “Said she was
seven
teen, Doc, and she was
plenty
willin’.”
    “A court doctor’s examination of the child proved entry, re
peated
entry, the record states—”
    “So willin’, in fact, I took to sewing my pants shut.”
    “The child refused to testify in spite of the doctor’s findings. There seemed to be intimidation. Defendant left town shortly after the trial.”
    “Hoo boy, I
had
to leave. Doc, let me tell you”—he leans forward with an elbow on a knee, lowering his voice to the doctor across the room—“that little hustler would of actually burnt me to a frazzle by the time she reached legal sixteen.