Work Text:
‘He was always the Joker of the group. That was something Harding would always remember most about Mack. Of course in such a place as a mental institution there would be need for some joviality and rarely were they provided any until McMurphy came on the scene. It seemed to me that the minute the redhead had come sauntering in the day room that the very air seemed….lighter somehow. As if this new and energetic presence foreshadowed the brief, albeit bright, freedom that for a short time would come our way.
McMurphy, as far as I could see had changed more than just the social atmosphere when he had appeared like an alien in their quiet orderly world. The other men, myself included, were changed in ways that would have never happened otherwise, especially Billy.
The nervous stutter had abated as much as it was going to that was true. But the change that had transformed the young man through dealings with the loud, brash, zestful Mack was a quiet one, much like Billy himself. The shy nervous lad slowly came to be more confident and assertive, if only in areas that were natural to the personality of Billy Bibbit. He stepped up to the plate when Mack, or anyone else was in need of support for any idea they might have. He grew bolder in his dealings with Nurse Ratched, as bold as he was able to be anyway. Billy, because of Mack’s arrival and friendship had an awakening.’
Harding set the pen down and stared out the window of his kitchen, admiring the view of bright blue sky and waving grass on his neighbors’ lawns. He had been journaling for the past hour, bits here and there in spurts, mostly about the institution and the men he’d met there. Mostly his writings began and ended with Randle P. McMurphy.
He never questioned the need to write about what had happened, not really, assuming it was a form of therapy that he’d not indulged in while institutionalized. Harding looked at the rest of the page and pressed his pen down again to write.
‘As for me I didn’t change as much as one would think. I did however, go back to teaching and am living out of Vera’s shadow. My hands still fly about in the air like doves but now…they are free not caged. So how did Mack change me? He taught me to live for more than quiet moments from Vera’s abrasive nature and the solace of dusty books. He taught me, in no small part, how to live for me.’
Harding paused here and after a moment or two of consideration, closed the moleskin book and capped the pen. He knew he would never set completely to rest the ghosts that were Mack and Billy but he didn’t truly want to.
Writing about them as he did kept their memories as alive and fresh as the day he’d met them. Billy he remembered had come in like a lamb, quiet and meek, going where his mother had led him until she left in a cloud of stale perfume and simpering promises to visit.
Mack on the other hand had come striding in powerfully like a lion observing his new territory. Harding could close his eyes and just see the copper curls escaping the black knit cap and the snapping blue eyes so alive with mischief already.
It was a comfort to Harding to reflect about two men he had the pleasure to call friends. It helped ease his soul to know that as long as he and others from the hospital thought and sometimes talked about the dead they would not be forgotten.
And how did Mack himself change? Well, he learned that sometimes you can’t break the wall completely but hit it enough times and cracks will form and let light through. Sunlight pierced through the window in the kitchen, warming the small room. That was what McMurphy was to them, Harding mused as he got up from the scarred kitchen table. He was their light