Кен Кизи – One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest / Пролетая над гнездом кукушки. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 17)

(I still hear the sound of the falls on the Columbia, always will – always – hear the whoop of Charley Bear Belly stabbed himself a big chinook, hear the slap of fish in the water, laughing naked kids on the bank, the women at the racks… from a long time ago.)

“Do they leave it on all the time, like a waterfall?” McMurphy says.

“Not when we sleep,” Cheswick says, “but all the rest of the time, and that’s the truth.”

“The hell with that. I’ll tell that coon over there to turn it off or get his fat little ass kicked!”

He starts to stand up, and Harding touches his arm. “Friend, that is exactly the kind of statement that gets one branded assaultive. Are you so eager to forfeit the bet?”

McMurphy looks at him. “That’s the way it is, huh? A pressure game? Keep the old pinch on?”

“That’s the way it is.”

He slowly lowers himself back into his seat, saying, “Horse muh-noo-ur.”

Harding looks about at the other Acutes around the card table. “Gentlemen, already I seem to detect in our redheaded challenger a most unheroic decline of his TV-cowboy stoicism.”

He looks at McMurphy across the table, smiling, McMurphy nods at him and tips his head back for the wink and licks his big thumb. “Well sir, of Professor Harding sounds like he’s getting cocky. He wins a couple of splits and he goes to comin’ on like a wise guy. Well well well; there he sits with a deuce showing and here’s a pack of Mar-boros says he backs down.… Whups, he sees me, okeedokee, Perfessor, here’s a trey, he wants another, gets another deuce, try for the big five, Perfessor? Try for that big double pay, or play it safe? Another pack says you won’t. Well well well, the Perfessor sees me, this tells the tale, too bad, another lady and the Perfessor flunks his exams…”

The next song starts up from the speaker, loud and clangy and a lot of accordion. McMurphy takes a look up at the speaker, and his spiel gets louder and louder to match it.

“…hey-ya hey-ya, okay, next, goddammit, you hit or you sit… comin at ya… !”

Right up to the lights out at nine-thirty.

I could of watched McMurphy at that blackjack table all night, the way he dealt and talked and roped them in and led them smack up to the point where they were just about

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