Benjamin James Lancaster

There was nowhere to hide out in the yard, beneath the unflinching gaze of the sun and the guards, so they had to play in the barracks. Of course, the barracks were monitored and inspected with military-like regularity, so finding ways to sneak in a game or three was a challenge. But Randle P. McMurphy was nothing if not sneaky.

​

For a while, after he first came back to the work camp, he was able to persuade the warden that he and the four others on the cleaning crew would be able to do a more thorough job of scrubbing the barracks if they could do so while everyone else was out in the yard, working. There would not be the clutter of many men milling about between the bunks. This made sense enough, until two of the guards walked into the barracks one morning to search a certain prisoner's belongings on a tip that he was hoarding native cigarettes and stiff, yellowing girlie magazines beneath his mattress. And indeed he was, but that's not all McMurphy was hiding. When the guards entered they saw two bunks dragged out from against the wall and set up across from each other in the centre of the barracks, with a footlocker between them as a makeshift table. Against the wall where the beds should have been were standing the mops, buckets and brooms needed to scrub the floors. McMurphy and the rest of his crew sat on the displaced beds, their thick necks stretching out from under the top bunk, their thick shoulders hunched over towards the table, and their thick hands holding five cards and a cigarette each. McMurphy was winning, and grinning.

​

"Read 'em, weep 'em, and allow me to keep 'em. I'm all flushed!"

 

Slapping his dog-eared cards down on the scattering of nickels and smokes in the centre of the table, he sprung from the bottom bunk and was about to start one of his victory jigs when he noticed the guards standing in the doorway.  

 

"Well kiss my tits! You boys want to sit in a few hands? You might learn a thing or two."

 

Beneath his greasy ball cap and the mess of curly red hair that stuck out from the sides like the stuffing of a teddy bear bulging through a split seam, his eyes were wide with wild adrenaline, but not with fear or panic. He was ready for a fight. He wanted a fight. He always wanted a fight. What he got instead was three days in the brig without food or light.

​

After that it was harder to find ways to play a few hands, as the guards started keeping an extra close eye on him. But a resourceful man like Randle P can't be kept from his true calling for long, and his true calling was cards. McMurphy had rambled and gambled his way across the country, never working a legit job for long but instinctively able to sniff out a backroom poker game in nearly every town he stomped through. And if one couldn't be found, it would only take a night or two at the bar, watching ballgames and slamming bottles and slapping backs, before he corralled a foursome for hold 'em. McMurphy wore his heart on his sleeve - well, on his arm, anyway. Tattooed on his left bicep, which was large with muscle but lumpy and ill-defined from years of random labour and booze, was a straight flush. Diamonds to the ten. On the opposite arm, a joker card featuring a naked brunette with a jester's hat and a cane cradled between her thighs. The wild card.

​

Lately, Randle and his cronies had taken to getting up in the middle of the night, after hearing the squeak of the floor and the creak of the closing door which meant the guards had finished their nightly check, and gathering in the shower room to get their fix. Lights would have given them away so they played by the light of the moon and the embers of their smokes, huddled around in a circle like children at camp. The other inmates were aware, of course, but nobody thought of crossing McMurphy. For one, he was too damned affable and exciting a force in this deadening place for anyone to want to rat on him, but more than that they were scared. They were scared of this short, powerful, brick shit-house of a man, scared of his faded tattoos and his flaming hair and his live-wire eyes.

​

Among them was only one other player worth his salt, and that was Cobb. Besides him the players in this ever rotating game of chance were mostly kids, scrawny white teens picked up for drinking and busting things - cars, windows, the noses of their sixteen-year-old girlfriends - or big Indians with bigger demons on their backs named alcohol and no other place in this world where they fit. But always McMurphy. He liked the kids best because they were easy to read and easier still to fool. The Indians took a bit more studying, a bit more poking before he could coax out their tells and habits. But given enough hands he always could. Cobb, though, he was tough. He had traveled a lot of the same roads as Randle, seen a lot of the same smoky back rooms, laid with a lot of the same whores on a Sunday night. He was old, tired, and with more sun and grit in the lines of his face than the others. The zest for the game had been beaten out of him over the years; Cobb played now more out of muscle memory than strategy. But he knew cards and he knew odds and he knew McMurphy's game, which made him dangerous.

​

On this night, Randle was losing. This was unusual for him. Even when he was losing he would normally manage to talk the fellas into just a few more hands until he won at least some of it back. But it wasn't about the actual winnings. There was nowhere to spend the handfuls of nickels he often walked away with in the work camp, save for the cigarette machine in the mess hall, which meant that smokes were plentiful and of little value. No, it wasn't the winnings but the win, the game, the posturing, the bluffs and risks and lies and tells. It was what he was best at, and he knew it.

​

"Another hand, gents? I need to get my balls back."

 

Despite the need for quiet and discretion McMurphy was unable to keep his voice below a guttural growl; there was no softness in his blood.

 

"Your balls and then some. Sure, I'm game for another round. Keep that gravy train rolling."

 

That from Scotty, a young, pimply stick of a boy with a harelip he desperately tried to hide beneath the scraggly hairs of a teenaged mustache. He had won five out of eight hands so far and was in no mood to stop. Which was good news for Randle, who knew that's when men get careless and cocky.

 

"Absotutely, posifrutely, just don't shoot me after you loot me."

 

Laughing a laugh that bordered on maniacal, he was already shuffling the cards, his giant hands impossibly practiced and agile with the weight of a full deck inside them, when Cobb spoke.

 

"I think that'll do for tonight."

 

McMurphy stopped cold. "What? What'll do?"

 

"We're all tapped out. Why don't you let the kid walk away with some winnings in his pocket for once?"

 

Even in the near dark of the shower room, Randle could see Cobb's eyes glaring at him, level and hard.

 

"Ah hell, the boy's already got his pockets full down there, don't ya? Full of twenty inches of piss and vinegar and pussy-pounding manhood, am I right?" Scotty's blush was almost bright enough to illuminate the air between them. "Anyhow, he's the one wants to play some more."

 

Scotty said nothing, sensing the mounting tension in the cold room.

 

"He's a fool. And you're a bully. Leave him be. We're done for tonight." Cobb's words grew harder with each short sentence.

 

"Well now, a bully, am I? For wantin’ to keep the game going? And maybe you're a coward afraid to lose more of his money." He stood, his thumb-like fingers still idly flipping through the deck. The other players tried half-heartedly to shush him. McMurphy's eyes shone like fun-house mirrors in the dark. He was goading Cobb. The only thing he liked as much as cards was a good fight. And he was nearly as good at hitting as he was at dealing.

 

"Call it what you will. I'm calling it a night." Cobb could also sense the electricity amping up in the room. He had taken his share of punches in his time as well, but was in no hurry to scrap with Randle. Crazy fighters were the most dangerous, he knew. Instead he rose, and with him rose the table, Scotty and the rest looking anxiously back and forth between the two veteran gamblers. For a moment they stood in the dark, nostrils flared and eyes fixed, the pulsing glow from the cigarettes in their mouths illuminating just enough of their faces to see the years of hard living embedded there. Then Cobb began walking back to the bunks, giving McMurphy a wide berth as he went. Scotty and the others followed.

 

"Ah shit, you gonna break up the party, just like that? We were just getting into it. You can't get a man all worked up and then just leave him out in the cold. What are ya, a bunch of cock-teasing homosexuals? You're leaving me with my balls as blue as a drowned bloodhound here!"

 

"Shh, Mac. Quiet," Scotty whispered. Heads were starting to rise from pillows in the barracks. "It's fine. Don’t worry about it. We'll go again tomorrow night."

 

"Fuck you, all of you. I wanna play, damnit."

 

Cobb, who was nearly at his bunk, stopped. "You're a goddamned child, you know that?"

 

"Boys will be boys, Cobb. And assholes will be full of shit. At least I'm having fun." McMurphy's voice danced in the dark.

 

"Fun? You're crazy, Randle, not fun. People tolerate you because they're scared of you, not because they like you. I know crazy when I’m crossed with it... and you are bat-shit insane."

 

Cobb couldn't see him coming for the dark, but he felt Randle's speed, felt the air in front of him break apart as Randle charged him, yelling, and tackled him at the waist. They fell with great force, two hard men colliding against the tiled floor. The rest of the inmates leapt up, cheering not so much for one or the other but for the fight itself. Soon the lights were turned violently on and a group of guards, followed by the warden, charged into the long hall brandishing batons. They had to bash their way through the circle of spectators to get to the main event. Once they did, they saw Cobb on the ground, face down, gritting his yellow teeth as McMurphy drove his knees into Cobb's back, facing his feet, and punched him repeatedly and powerfully and squarely in his asshole.

 

"This is how I fuck your ass, Cobb!" McMurphy's smile was as wide as the Mississippi. "I will beat the shit out of you, so help me." He still, somehow, clutched the deck of cards in his other hand. "Who's crazy now, you limp-wristed fuck?"

 

It took three guards to pry him off and another one to help the warden cuff him, which was not unusual. McMurphy wasn't even resisting that strongly; he was just so hard to pin down, a writhing mass of muscle and fire and laughter.

 

"Back to the brig then, warden? Sure you won't join me?" He was looking up at the warden with his hands forced behind his back like a small boy hiding a toy he shouldn’t be playing with.

 

"No brig for you this time Randle. I warned you: lash out again and it'll be the final straw. I’m afraid you'll be having a visit with Nurse Ratched first thing in the morning to… discuss your future."

 

"Nurse Ratched? Well well! I like her already."

 

He was still smiling as they led him out into the night.