Ken Kesey - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

ALSO BY KEN KESEY

Sometimes a Great Notion

Keseys Garage Sale

Demon Box

Caverns (with O. U. Levon)

The Further Inquiry

Sailor Song

Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear

The Sea Lion

Last Go Round (with Ken Babbs)

Keseys Jail Journal

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published in 2012 by Viking Penguin,

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Ken Kesey, 1962

Copyright renewed Ken Kesey, 1990

All rights reserved

EISBN: 9781101575277

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

To Vik Lowell
who told me dragons did not exist
then led me to their lairs

one flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoos nest

CHILDRENS FOLK RHYME

T HEYRE OUT THERE.

Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.

Theyre mopping when I come out the dorm, all three of them sulky and hating everything, the time of day, the place theyre at here, the people they got to work around. When they hate like this, better if they dont see me. I creep along the wall quiet as dust in my canvas shoes, but they got special sensitive equipment detects my fear and they all look up, all three at once, eyes glittering out of the black faces like the hard glitter of radio tubes out of the back of an old radio.

Heres the Chief. The soo-pah Chief, fellas. Ol Chief Broom. Here you go, Chief Broom.

Stick a mop in my hand and motion to the spot they aim for me to clean today, and I go. One swats the backs of my legs with a broom handle to hurry me past.

Haw, you look at im shag it? Big enough to eat apples off my head an he mine me like a baby.

They laugh and then I hear them mumbling behind me, heads close together. Hum of black machinery, humming hate and death and other hospital secrets. They dont bother not talking out loud about their hate secrets when Im nearby because they think Im deaf and dumb. Everybody think so. Im cagey enough to fool them that much.If my being half Indian ever helped me in any way in this dirty life, it helped me being cagey, helped me all these years.

Im mopping near the ward door when a key hits it from the other side and I know its the Big Nurse by the way the lockworks cleave to the key, soft and swift and familiar she been around locks so long. She slides through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her and I see her fingers trail across the polished steeltip of each finger the same color as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron. Color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you cant tell which.

Shes carrying her woven wicker bag like the ones the Umpqua tribe sells out along the hot August highway, a bag shape of a tool box with a hemp handle. Shes had it all the years I been here. Its a loose weave and I can see inside it; theres no compact or lipstick or woman stuff, shes got that bag full of a thousand parts she aims to use in her duties todaywheels and gears, cogs polished to a hard glitter, tiny pills that gleam like porcelain, needles, forceps, watchmakers pliers, rolls of copper wire

She dips a nod at me as she goes past. I let the mop push me back to the wall and smile and try to foul her equipment up as much as possible by not letting her see my eyesthey cant tell so much about you if you got your eyes closed.

In my dark I hear her rubber heels hit the tile and the stuff in her wicker bag clash with the jar of her walking as she passes me in the hall. She walks stiff. When I open my eyes shes down the hall about to turn into the glass Nurses Station where shell spend the day sitting at her desk and looking out her window and making notes on what goes on out in front of her in the day room during the next eight hours. Her face looks pleased and peaceful with the thought.

Then she sights those black boys. Theyre still down there together, mumbling to one another. They didnt hear her come on the ward. They sense shes glaring down at them now, but its too late. They should of knew bettern to group up and mumble together when she was due on the ward. Their faces bob apart, confused. She goes into a crouch and advances on where theyre trapped in a huddle at the end of the corridor. She knows what they been saying, and I can see shes furious clean out of control. Shes going to tear the black bastards limb from limb, shes so furious. Shes swelling up, swells till her backs splitting out the white uniform and shes let her arms section out long enough to wrap around the three of them five, six times. She looks around her with a swivel of her huge head. Nobody up to see, just old Broom Bromden the half-breed Indian back there hiding behind his mop and cant talk to call for help. So she really lets herself go and her painted smile twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling too big a load. I hold my breath and figure, My God this time theyre gonna do it! This time they let the hate build up too high and overloaded and theyre gonna tear one another to pieces before they realize what theyre doing!

But just as she starts crooking those sectioned arms around the black boys and they go to ripping at her underside with the mop handles, all the patients start coming out of the dorms to check on whats the hullabaloo, and she has to change back before shes caught in the shape of her hideous real self. By the time the patients get their eyes rubbed to where they can halfway see what the rackets about, all they see is the head nurse, smiling and calm and cold as usual, telling the black boys theyd best not stand in a group gossiping when it is Monday morning and there is such a lot to get done on the first morning of the week.

mean old Monday morning, you know, boys

Yeah, Miz Ratched

and we have quite a number of appointments this morning, so perhaps, if your standing here in a group talking isnt