Just after we left the latrine the three black boys came around, gathering the bunch of us for our special shower. The least black boy, scrambling along the baseboard with a black, crooked hand cold as a crowbar, prying guys loose leaning there, said it was what the Big Nurse called a cautionary cleansing. In view of the company we’d had on our trip we should get cleaned before we spread anything through the rest of the hospital.

We lined up nude against the tile, and here one black boy came, a black plastic tube in his hand, squirting a stinking salve thick and sticky as egg white. In the hair first, then turn around an’ bend over an’ spread your cheeks!

The guys complained and kidded and joked about it, trying not to look at one another or those floating slate masks working down the line behind the tubes, like nightmare faces in negative, sighting down soft, squeezy nightmare gunbarrels. They kidded the black boys by saying things like “He, Washington, what do you fellas do for fun the other sixteen hours?” “Hey, Williams, can you tell me what I had for breakfast?”

Everybody laughed. The black boys clenched their jaws and didn’t answer; this wasn’t the way things used to be before that damned redhead came around.

When Fredrickson spread his cheeks there was such a sound I thought the least black boy’d be blown clear off his feet.

“Hark!” Harding said, cupping his hand to his ear. “The lovely voice of an angel.”

Everyone was roaring, laughing and kidding one another, until the black boy moved on and stopped in front of the next man, and the room was suddenly absolutely quiet. The next man was George. And in that one second, with the laughing and kidding and complaining stopped, with Fredrickson there next to George straightening up and turning around and a big black boy about to ask George to lean his head down for a squirt of that stinking salve — right at that time all of us had a good idea about everything that was going to happen, and why it had to happen, and why we’d all been wrong about McMurphy.

George never used soap when he showered. He wouldn’t even let somebody hand him a towel to dry himself with. The black boys on the evening shift who supervised the usual Tuesday and Thursday evening showers had learned it was easier to leave it go like this, and they didn’t force him to do any different. That was the way it’d been for a long time. All the black boys knew it. But now everybody knew — even George, leaning backward, shaking his head, covering himself with big oakleaf hands — that this black boy, with his nose busted and his insides soured and his two buddies standing behind him waiting to see what he would do, couldn’t afford to pass up the chance.

“Ahhhh, bend you head down here, Geo’ge. …”

The guys were already looking to where McMurphy stood a couple of men down the line.

“Ahhhh, c’mon, Geo’ge. …”

Martini and Sefelt were standing in the shower, not moving. The drain at their feet kept choking short little gulps of air and soapy water. George looked at the drain a second, as if it were speaking to him. He watched it gurgle and choke. He looked back at the tube in the black hand before him, slow mucus running out of the little hole at the top of the tube down over the pig-iron knuckles. The black boy moved the tube forward a few inches, and George listed farther back, shaking his head.

“No — none that stoof.”

“You gonna have to do it, Rub-a-dub,” the black boy said, sounding almost sorry. “You gonna have to. We can’t have the place crawlin’ with bugs, now, can we? For all I know you got bugs on you a good inch deep!”

“No!” George said.

‘Ahhh, Geo’ge, you jes’ don’t have no idea. These bugs, they very, very teeny — no bigger’n a pinpoint. An’, man, what they do is get you by the short hair an’ hang on, an’ drill, down inside you, Geo’ge.”

“No bugs!” George said.

“Ahhh, let me tell you, Geo’ge: I seen cases where these awful bugs achually—”

“Okay, Washington,” McMurphy said.

The scar where the black boy’s nose had been broken was a twist of neon. The black boy knew who’d spoken to him, but he didn’t turn around; the only way we knew he’d even heard was by the way he stopped talking and reached up a long gray finger and drew it across the scar he’d got in that basketball game. He rubbed his nose a second, then shoved his hand out in front of George’s face, scrabbling the fingers around. “A crab, Geo’ge, see? See here? Now you know what a crab look like, don’t you? Sure now, you get crabs on that fishin’ boat. We can’t have crabs drillin’ down into you, can we, Geo’ge?”

“No crabs!” George yelled. “No!” He stood straight and his brow lifted enough so we could see his eyes. The black boy stepped back a ways. The other two laughed at him. “Somethin’ the matter, Washington, my man?” the big one asked. “Somethin’ holding up this end of the pro-ceedure, my man?”

He stepped back in close. “Geo’ge, I’m tellin’ you: bend down! You either bend down and take this stuff — or I lay my hand on you!” He held it up again; it was big and black as a swamp. “Put this black! filthy! stinkin’! hand all over you!”

“No hand!” George said and lifted a fist above his head as if he would crash the slate skull to bits, splatter cogs and nuts and bolts all over the floor. But the black boy just ran the tube up against George’s belly-button and squeezed, and George doubled over with a suck of air. The black boy squirted a load in his whispy white hair, then rubbed it in with his hand, smearing black from his hand all over George’s head. George wrapped both arms around his belly and screamed.

“No! No!”

“Now turn around, Geo’ge—”

“I said that’s enough, buddy.” This time the way his voice sounded made the black boy turn and face him. I saw the black boy was smiling, looking at McMurphy’s nakedness — no hat or boots or pockets to hook his thumbs into. The black boy grinned up and down him.

“McMurphy,” he said, shaking his head. “Y’know, I was beginnin’ to think we might never get down to it.”

“You goddamned coon,” McMurphy said, somehow sounding more tired than mad. The black boy didn’t say anything. McMurphy raised his voice. “Goddamned motherfucking nigger!”

The black boy shook his head and giggled at his two buddies. “What you think Mr. McMurphy is drivin’ at with that kind of talk, man? You think he wants me to take the initiative? Heeheehee. Don’t he know we trained to take such awful-soundin’ insults from these crazies?”

“Cocksucker! Washington, you’re nothing but a—”

Washington had turned his back on him, turning to George again. George was still bent over, gasping from the blow of that salve in his belly. The black boy grabbed his arm and swung ‘him facing the wall.

“Tha’s right, Geo’ge, now spread those cheeks.”

“No-o-o!”

“Washington,” McMurphy said. He took a deep breath and stepped across to the black boy, shoving him away from George. “Washington, all right, all right…”

Everybody could hear the helpless, cornered despair in McMurphy’s voice.

“McMurphy, you forcing me to protect myself. Ain’t he forcing me, men?” The other two nodded. He carefully laid down the tube on the bench beside George, came back up with his fist swinging all in the same motion and busting McMurphy across the cheek by surprise. McMurphy nearly fell. He staggered backward into the naked line of men, and the guys caught him and pushed him back toward the smiling slate face. He got hit again, in the neck, before he gave up to the idea that it had started, at last, and there wasn’t anything now but get what he could out of it. He caught the next swing blacksnaking at him, and held him by the wrist while he shook his head clear.

They swayed a second that way, panting along with the panting drain; then McMurphy shoved the black boy away and went into a crouch, rolling the big shoulders up to guard his chin, his fists on each side of his head, circling the man in front of him.