Ive heard that theory of the Therapeutic Community enough times to repeat it forwards and backwards how a guy has to learn to get along in a group before hell be able to function in a normal society; how the group can help the guy by showing him where hes out of place; how society is what decides whos sane and who isnt, so you got to measure up. All that stuff. Every time we get a new patient on the ward the doctor goes into the theory with both feet; its pretty near the only time he takes things over and runs the meeting. He tells how the goal of the Therapeutic Community is a democratic ward, run completely by the patients and their votes, working toward making worth-while citizens to turn back Outside onto the street. Any little gripe, any grievance, anything you want changed, he says, should be brought up before the group and discussed instead of letting it fester inside of you. Also you should feel an ease in your surroundings to the extent you can freely discuss emotional problems in front of patients and staff. Talk, he says, discuss, confess. And if you hear a friend say something during the course of your everyday conversation, then list it in the log book for the staff to see. Its not, as the movies call it, squealing, its helping your fellow. Bring these old sins into the open where they can be washed by the sight of all. And participate in Group Discussion. Help yourself and your friends probe into the secrets of the subconscious. There should be no need for secrets among friends.
Our intention, he usually ends by saying, is to make this as much like your own democratic, free neighborhoods as possible a little world Inside that is a made-to-scale prototype of the big world Outside that you will one day be taking your place in again.
Hes maybe got more to say, but about this point the Big Nurse usually hushes him, and in the lull old Pete stands up and wigwags that battered copper-pot head and tells everybody how tired he is, and the nurse tells somebody to go hush him up too, so the meeting can continue, and Pete is generally hushed and the meeting goes on.
Once, just one time that I can remember, four or five years back, did it go any different. The doctor had finished his spiel, and the nurse had opened right up with, Now. Who will start? Let out those old secrets. And shed put all the Acutes in a trance by sitting there in silence for twenty minutes after the question, quiet as an electric alarm about to go off, waiting for somebody to start telling something about themselves. Her eyes swept back and forth over them as steady as a turning beacon. The day room was clamped silent for twenty long minutes, with all of the patients stunned where they sat. When twenty minutes had passed, she looked at her watch and said, Am I to take it that theres not a man among you that has committed some act that he has never admitted? She reached in the basket for the log book. Must we go over past history?
That triggered something, some acoustic device in the walls, rigged to turn on at just the sound of those words coming from her mouth. The Acutes stiffened. Their mouths opened in unison. Her sweeping eyes stopped on the first man along the wall.
His mouth worked. I robbed a cash register in a service station.
She moved to the next man.
I tried to take my little sister to bed.
Her eyes clicked to the next man; each one jumped like a shooting-gallery target.
I one time wanted to take my brother to bed. I killed my cat when I was six. Oh, God forgive me, I stoned her to death and said my neighbor did it.
I lied about trying. I did take my sister!
So did I! So did I!
And me! And me!
It was better than shed dreamed. They were all shouting to outdo one another, going further and further, no way of stopping, telling things that wouldnt ever let them look one another in the eye again. The nurse nodding at each confession and saying Yes, yes, yes.
Then old Pete was on his feet. Im tired! was what he shouted, a strong, angry copper tone to his voice that no one had ever heard before.
Everyone hushed. They were somehow ashamed. It was as if he had suddenly said something that was real and true and important and it had put all their childish hollering to shame. The Big Nurse was furious. She swiveled and glared at him, the smile dripping over her chin; shed just had it going so good.
Somebody see to poor Mr. Bancini, she said.
Two or three got up. They tried to soothe him, pat him on his shoulder. But Pete wasnt being hushed. Tired! Tired! he kept on.
Finally the nurse sent one of the black boys to take him out of the day room by force. She forgot that the black boys didnt hold any control over people like Pete.
Petes been a Chronic all his life. Even though he didnt come into the hospital till he was better than fifty, hed always been a Chronic. His head has two big dents, one on each side, where the doctor who was with his mother at horning time pinched his skull trying to pull him out. Pete had looked out first and seen all the delivery-room machinery waiting for him and somehow realized what he was being born into, and had grabbed on to everything handy in there to try to stave off being born. The doctor reached in and got him by the head with a set of dulled ice tongs and jerked him loose and figured everything was all right. But Petes head was still too new, and soft as clay, and when it set, those two dents left by the tongs stayed. And this made him simple to where it took all his straining effort and concentration and will power just to do the tasks that came easy to a kid of six.
But one good thing being simple like that put him out of the clutch of the Combine. They werent able to mold him into a slot. So they let him get a simple job on the railroad, where all he had to do was sit in a little clapboard house way out in the sticks on a lonely switch and wave a red lantern at the trains if the switch was one way, and a green one if it was the other, and a yellow one if there was a train someplace up ahead. And he did it, with main force and a gutpower they couldnt mash out of his head, out by himself on that switch. And he never had any controls installed.
Thats why the black boy didnt have any say over him. But the black boy didnt think of that right off any more than the nurse did when she ordered Pete removed from the day room. The black boy walked right up and gave Petes arm a jerk toward the door, just like youd jerk the reins on a plow horse to turn him.
Thas right, Pete. Less go to the dorm. You disturbin everbody.
Pete shook his arm loose. Im tired, he warned.
Cmon, old man, you makin a fuss. Less us go to bed and be still like a good boy.
Tired
I said you goin to the dorm, old man!
The black boy jerked at his arm again, and Pete stopped wigwagging his head. He stood up straight and steady, and his eyes snapped clear. Usually Petes eyes are half shut and all murked up, like theres milk in them, but this time they came clear as blue neon. And the hand on that arm the black boy was holding commenced to swell up. The staff and most of the rest of the patients were talking among themselves, not paying any attention to this old guy and his old song about being tired, figuring hed be quieted down as usual and the meeting would go on. They didnt see the hand on the end of that arm pumping bigger and bigger as he clenched and unclenched it. I was the only one saw it. I saw it swell and clench shut, flow in front of my eyes, become smooth hard. A big rusty iron ball at the end of a chain. I stared at it and waited, while the black boy gave Petes arm another jerk toward the dorm.
Ol man, I say you got
He saw the hand. He tried to edge back away from it, saying, You a good boy, Peter, but he was a shade too late. Pete had that big iron ball swinging all the way from his knees. The black boy whammed flat against the wall and stuck, then slid down to the floor like the wall there was greased. I heard tubes pop and short all over inside that wall, and the plaster cracked just the shape of how he hit.
The other two the least one and the other big one stood stunned. The nurse snapped her fingers, and they sprang into motion. Instant movement, sliding across the floor. The little one beside the other like an image in a reducing mirror. They were almost to Pete when it suddenly struck them what the other boy should of known, that Pete wasnt wired under control like the rest of us, that he wasnt about to mind just because they gave him an order or gave his arm a jerk. If they were to take him theyd have to take him like you take a wild bear or bull, and with one of their number out cold against the baseboards, the other two black boys didnt care for the odds.
This thought got them both at once and they froze, the big one and his tiny image, in exactly the same position, left foot forward, right hand out, halfway between Pete and the Big Nurse. That iron ball swinging in front of them and that snowwhite anger behind them, they shook and smoked and I could hear gears grinding. I could see them twitch with confusion, like machines throttled full ahead and with the brake on.
Pete stood there in the middle of the floor, swinging that ball back and forth at his side, all leaned over to its weight. Everybody was watching him now. He looked from the big black boy to the little one, and when he saw they werent about to come any closer he turned to the patients.
You see its a lotta baloney, he told them, its all a lotta baloney.
The Big Nurse had slid from her chair and was working toward her wicker bag leaning at the door. Yes, yes, Mr. Bancini, she crooned, now if youll just be calm
Thats all it is, nothin but a lotta baloney. His voice lost its copper strength and became strained and urgent like he didnt have much time to finish what he had to say. Ya see, I cant help it, I cant dont ya see. I was born dead. Not you. You wasnt born dead. Ahhhh, its been hard
He started to cry. He couldnt make the words come out right anymore; he opened and closed his mouth to talk but he couldnt sort the words into sentences any more. He shook his head to clear it and blinked at the Acutes:
Ahhhh, I tell ya I tell you.
He began slumping over again, and his iron ball shrank back to a hand. He held it cupped out in front of him like he was offering something to the patients.
I cant help it. I was born a miscarriage. I had so many insults I died. I was born dead. I cant help it. Im tired. Im give out trying. You got chances. I had so many insults I was born dead. You got it easy. I was born dead an life was hard. Im tired. Im tired out talking and standing up. I been dead fifty-five years.
The Big Nurse got him clear across the room, right through his greens. She jumped back without getting the needle pulled out after the shot and it hung there from his pants like a little tail of glass and steel, old Pete slumping farther and farther forward, not from the shot but from the effort; the last couple of minutes had worn him out finally and completely, once and for all you could just look at him and tell he was finished.
So there wasnt really any need for the shot; his head had already commenced to wag back and forth and his eyes were murky. By the time the nurse eased back in to get the needle he was bent so far forward he was crying directly on the floor without wetting his face, tears spotting a wide area as he swung his head back and forth, spatting, spatting, in an even pattern on the day-room floor, like he was sowing them. Ahhhhh, he said. He didnt flinch when she jerked the needle out.
He had come to life for maybe a minute to try to tell us something, something none of us cared to listen to or tried to understand, and the effort had drained him dry. That shot in his hip was as wasted as if shed squirted it in a dead man no heart to pump it, no vein to carry it up to his head, no brain up there for it to mortify with its poison. Shed just as well shot it in a dried-out old cadaver.
Im tired
Now. I think if you two boys are brave enough, Mr. Bancini will go to bed like a good fellow.
aw-ful tired.
And Aide Williams is coming around, Doctor Spivey. See to him, wont you. Here. His watch is broken and hes cut his arm.
Pete never tried anything like that again, and he never will. Now, when he starts acting up during a meeting and they try to hush him, he always hushes. Hell still get up from time to time and wag his head and let us know how tired he is, but its not a complaint or excuse or warning any more hes finished with that; its like an old clock that wont tell time but wont stop neither, with the hands bent out of shape and the face bare of numbers and the alarm bell rusted silent, an old, worthless clock that just keeps ticking and cuckooing without meaning nothing.
* * *The group is still tearing into poor Harding when two oclock rolls around.
At two oclock the doctor begins to squirm around in his chair. The meetings are uncomfortable for the doctor unless hes talking about his theory; hed rather spend his time down in his office, drawing on graphs. He squirms around and finally clears his throat, and the nurse looks at her watch and tells us to bring the tables back in from the tub room and well resume this discussion again at one tomorrow. The Acutes click out of their trance, look for an instant in Hardings direction. Their faces burn with a shame like they have just woke up to the fact they been played for suckers again. Some of them go to the tub room across the hall to get the tables, some wander over to the magazine racks and show a lot of interest in the old McCalls magazines, but what theyre all really doing is avoiding Harding. Theyve been maneuvered again into grilling one of their friends like he was a criminal and they were all prosecutors and judge and jury. For forty-five minutes they been chopping a man to pieces, almost as if they enjoyed it, shooting questions at him: Whats he think is the matter with him that he cant please the little lady; whys he insist she has never had anything to do with another man; hows he expect to get well if he doesnt answer honestly? questions and insinuations till now they feel bad about it and they dont want to be made more uncomfortable by being near him.
McMurphys eyes follow all of this. He doesnt get out of his chair. He looks puzzled again. He sits in his chair for a while, watching the Acutes, scuffing that deck of cards up and down the red stubble on his chin, then finally stands up from his arm chair, yawns and stretches and scratches his belly button with a corner of a card, then puts the deck in his pocket and walks over to where Harding is off by himself, sweated to his chair.
McMurphy looks down at Harding a minute, then laps his big hand over the back of a nearby wooden chair, swings it around so the back is facing Harding, and straddles it like hed straddle a tiny horse. Harding hasnt noticed a thing. McMurphy slaps his pockets till he finds his cigarettes, and takes one out and lights it; he holds it out in front of him and frowns at the tip, licks his thumb and finger, and arranges the fire to suit him.