One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

The palm was callused, and the calluses were cracked, and dirt was worked in the cracks. A road map of his travels up and down the West.

No wife wanting new linoleum. No relatives pulling at him with watery old eyes. No one to care about, which is what makes him free enough to be a good con man.

He’s safe as long as he can laugh, he thinks, and it works pretty fair.

We’d just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just leaning back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing—half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could.

I noticed vaguely that I was getting so’s I could see some good in the life around me. McMurphy was teaching me. I was feeling better than I’d remembered feeling since I was a kid, when everything was good and the land was still singing kids’ poetry to me.

Then—as he was talking—a set of taillights going past lit up McMurphy’s face, and the windshield reflected an expression that was allowed only because he figured it’d be too dark for anybody in the car to see, dreadfully tired and strained and frantic, like there wasn’t enough time left for something he had to do. . . .