“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, repeated 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 seventeen, Doc, and she was plenty willin’.” “A court doctor’s examination of the child proved entry, repeated 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. She got to where she was tripping me and beating me to the floor.”
The nurse closes up the folder and passes it across the doorway to the doctor. “Our new Admission, Doctor Spivey,” just like she’s got a man folded up inside that yellow paper and can pass him on to be looked over. “I thought I might brief you on his record later today, but as he seems to insist on asserting himself in the Group Meeting, we might as well dispense with him now.”
The doctor fishes his glasses from his coat pocket by pulling on the string, works them on his nose in front of his eyes. They’re tipped a little to the right, but he leans his head to the left and brings them level. He’s smiling a little as he turns through the folder, just as tickled by this new man’s brassy way of talking right up as the rest of us, but, just like the rest of us, he’s careful not to let himself come right out and laugh. The doctor closes the folder when he gets to the end, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. He looks to where McMurphy is still leaned out at him from across the day room.
“You’ve — it seems — no other psychiatric history, Mr. McMurry?”
“McMurphy, Doc.”
“Oh? But I thought — the nurse was saying—”
He opens the folder again, fishes out those glasses, looks the record over for another minute before he closes it, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. “Yes. McMurphy. That is correct. I beg your pardon.”
“It’s okay, Doc. It was the lady there that started it, made the mistake. I’ve known some people inclined to do that. I had this uncle whose name was Hallahan, and he went with a woman once who kept acting like she couldn’t remember his name right and calling him Hooligan just to get his goat. It went on for months before he stopped her. Stopped her good, too.”
“Oh? How did he stop her?” the doctor asks.
McMurphy grins and rubs his nose with his thumb. “Ah-ah, now, I can’t be tellin’ that. I keep Unk Hallahan’s method a strict secret, you see, in case I need to use it myself someday.”
He says it right at the nurse. She smiles right back at him, and he looks over at the doctor. “Now; what was you asking about my record, Doc?”
“Yes. I was wondering if you’ve any previous psychiatric history. Any analysis, any time spent in any other institution?”
“Well, counting state and county coolers—”
“Mental institutions.”
“Ah. No, if that’s the case. This is my first trip. But I am crazy, Doc. I swear I am. Well here — let me show you here. I believe that other doctor at the work farm…”
He gets up, slips the deck of cards in the pocket of his jacket, and comes across the room to lean over the doctor’s shoulder and thumb through the folder in his lap. “Believe he wrote something, back at the back here somewhere…”
“Yes? I missed that. Just a moment.” The doctor fishes his glasses out again and puts them on and looks to where McMurphy is pointing.
“Right here, Doc. The nurse left this part out while she was summarizing my record. Where it says, ‘Mr. McMurphy has evidenced repeated’ — I just want to make sure I’m understood completely, Doc — ‘repeated outbreaks of passion that suggest the possible diagnosis of psychopath.’ He told me that’psychopath’ means I fight and fuh — pardon me, ladies — means I am he put it overzealous in my sexual relations. Doctor, is that real serious?”
He asks it with such a little-boy look of worry and concern all over his broad, tough face that the doctor can’t help bending his head to hide another little snicker in his collar, and his glasses fall from his nose dead center back in his pocket. All of the Acutes are smiling too, now, and even some of the Chronics.
“I mean that overzealousness, Doc, have you ever been troubled by it?”
The doctor wipes his eyes. “No, Mr. McMurphy, I’ll admit I haven’t. I am interested, however, that the doctor at the work farm added this statement: ‘Don’t overlook the possibility that this man might be feigning psychosis to escape the drudgery of the work farm.’ ” He looks up at McMurphy. “And what about that, Mr. McMurphy?”
“Doctor” — he stands up to his full height, wrinkles his forehead, and holds out both arms, open and honest to all the wide world—”do I look like a sane man?”
The doctor is working so hard to keep from giggling again he can’t answer. McMurphy pivots away from the doctor and asks the same thing of the Big Nurse: “Do I?” Instead of answering she stands up and takes the manila folder away from the doctor and puts it back in the basket under her watch. She sits back down.
“Perhaps, Doctor, you should advise Mr. McMurry on the protocol of these Group Meetings.”
“Ma’am,” McMurphy says, “have I told you about my uncle Hallahan and the woman who used to screw up his name?”
She looks at him for a long time without her smile. She has the ability to turn her smile into whatever expression she wants to use on somebody, but the look she turns it into is no different, just a calculated and mechanical expression to serve her purpose. Finally she says, “I beg your pardon, Mack-Murph-y.” She turns back to the doctor. “Now, Doctor, if you would explain…”
The doctor folds his hands and leans back. “Yes. I suppose What I should do is explain the complete theory of our Therapeutic Community, while we’re at it. Though I usually save it until later. Yes. A good idea, Miss Ratched, a fine idea.”
“Certainly the theory too, doctor, but what I had in mind was the rule, that the patients remain seated during the course of the meeting,”
“Yes. Of course. Then I will explain the theory. Mr. McMurphy, one of the first things is that the patients remain seated during the course of the meeting. It’s the only way, you see, for us to maintain order.”