33. BURIED

We got sick and some people complained and some people tried to leave and some people died. A respiratory infection swept through our home. Almost all of us had doubled both the regularity and amount of Cytoxan. One spoke for me. He said our senses of Self had become inflated after our enacted change from The Notes. He said he could see want and fear in the whites of all of our eyes.

The first things to fall off were chores.

We simply were too sick. All of us. At the same time. There weren’t the checks and balances of staggered stages of chemo. We all extended our arms on the same days. We all prayed for death on the same nights. We expelled poison from every orifice. A lot of us cried. We didn’t wash our sheets. We didn’t switch beds every night. We lay there and were lucky to not soil ourselves. Dishes piled up. Toilets were splattered with dark matter. We blamed one another until we quit caring.

After two weeks of my new edict, I heard shouting. It was Twenty-Nine. He yelled because he didn’t want to be injected and because he was too sick and because he was scared he was going to die. One tried to calm him. He told Twenty-Nine it was selfish fear speaking, not Twenty-Nine. He said that sickness bore Honesty. He said we all loved him.

“Fuck you. Fuck this place.”

We were scared and we were sorry and we didn’t give a shit.

One said that he’d give Twenty-Nine a ride to town. Twenty-Nine told him not to bother, but One insisted.

One came back three hours later. He looked at me. I wanted him to tell me how it went and I wanted him to tell me I hadn’t ruined our family. One’s boots were wet and muddy. And then I was granted a Gift of Understanding—Twenty-Nine’s final destination being buried by the cliffs instead of the Greyhound station—and I wasn’t scared or ashamed and the only word that crossed my mind was good.⁹

9 According to Henry O’Connor, there were nine bodies, or nine different portions of bodies, buried 1.25 miles away from Dr. James Shepard’s Colorado estate. Six men, three women. Five of the bodies could be identified through forensic means. Of those five people, all of them had been reported missing sometime over the three-year period from 2011–2014. The causes of death were indeterminable, except for two of the bodies, which showed blunt force trauma to the cranium.

I know at least one of the blunt force trauma bodies was Thirty-Eight’s.

The other was probably Twenty-Nine’s.

One had told me that his wife had left him after their daughter, Zoe, passed. I didn’t question this because I’d heard of couples disintegrating after dead children. But sitting in CMHIP, poring over the pages of Dr. Sick, I read the chapter “Graveyard” for the first time. O’Connor writes: “Only one of nine bodies buried in Shepard’s backyard contained its teeth. That body belonged to Patti Stein Shepard, Dr. James Shepard’s wife of two decades, who had been missing for six years, ever since a trip to France from which she never returned.”

I talked about this with Dr. Turner.

I was shaken up and told her it was bullshit, O’Connor’s book, the detail about One’s wife.

“Facts are facts, Mason.”

“Facts aren’t facts.”

“I’m afraid I’m not following.”

I wasn’t either. My head hurt or maybe felt congested. There had to be a mistake; there had to be a reason.

“It doesn’t mean One killed her.”

“Please, let us refer to One as Dr. Shepard.”

“This doesn’t prove that One killed her. She could’ve…”

“Yes?”

I was at a loss for words; I was at a loss for self-preserving rationale. It was at this moment when things started to crack. Or maybe they were long-since fractured, and this was when other voices filled those fissures with mold-producing half-truths.

Looking back, I’m not sure why I found it so hard to believe One would’ve killed his wife. I know he killed Thirty-Eight and Twenty-Nine. I saw him kill two DEA agents. I was instructed by him to partake in The Day of Gifts. But that’s not even it. No, I now know how easily life can be taken. I know that small things happen and circumstances warrant reactions and reactions can cost lives. I know because I’ve done it. I was trying to change the world through giving those in need freedom from shame. I was trying to give Two a different life, one with meaning, one that lead to Truth instead of consumerism and the cannibalization of others. And I acted out of Honesty—primal, very-base-of-the-brain-stem Honesty— when I killed those Juggalos, who would’ve done the same to us.

There are no accidents.

Or maybe everything is an accident and life is nothing but creating narratives that force these accidents into meaning.

Dr. Turner always spoke about a loose and broad narrative.

I countered her arguments by saying the only reason a person listens to another person’s story is to see how it relates to him, or at the most to see how he would’ve reacted under the same circumstances.

“You’re a very bright young man, Mason.”

“Thank you.”

“You will be able to do anything you want with your life.”

“Okay.”

“Why hold yourself back with these worldviews? Why continue to be a victim? Why give Dr. Shepard that much power over you, after all that has come forth, after all the damage and heartache he has caused?”

I didn’t have an answer for her. Maybe I still don’t.

Dr. Turner used the momentum of “Graveyard” to systematically attack my view of One through character assassination. She made me highlight every incongruence between what Dr. Shepard had told me and what the “facts” of his life really were. She made me write down the moments when I’d felt certain Dr. Shepard’s actions didn’t match up with what he preached. One afternoon, she thought herself clever, and asked what Dr. Shepard had said about preachers.

“Don’t trust a single word that comes out of their mouths.”

“And what was Dr. Shepard doing?”

“Preaching.”

Dr. Turner asked me how I knew if anything Dr. Shepard had preached was True. I knew the answer, but it wasn’t coming to me because I was ruined with antipsychotics. I shrugged.

“Can you honestly sit here and tell me what you learned in that cult makes sense?”

“No.”

“Let me try it your way,” Dr. Turner said. “Dr. James Shepard said sickness bears Honesty, yet, as we all know, at the time of his apprehension, there wasn’t even a trace of Cytoxan in his system. So we know he wasn’t sick. Therefore, what he said couldn’t be Honest, correct?”

“I don’t know.”

“How can somebody profess the Truth if he isn’t Honest?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“He can’t.”

I went through months of soul searching or maybe trying to forget or maybe listening to other people’s views, trying them on as my own. I didn’t feel as bad about having talked to the Feds because my thirty months were almost up and One was a liar anyway. I started to smile a little more. I even laughed on Friday nights when we were allowed to vote on a movie to watch in the rec room. Dr. Turner promised me that I’d be able to serve the remainder of my sentence in CMHIP. I composed letters to my mother about why I’d run away. I wrote letters to my father about how his actions had devalued my life. I read these to Dr. Turner. We didn’t send them, but she promised it was therapeutic. My hair grew. Dr. Turner asked if maybe I’d read Dr. Sick enough times. I told her it helped me see Dr. Shepard for who he really was. Months passed. I was getting better and I was getting older and I was glad to gain weight and to not throw up and to not hear Elvis.

Two months before my eighteenth birthday, Dr. Turner and I were talking outside. This was a rare privilege. The sun was out. Birds chirped. I noticed these things because I’d been deprived of them for so long. We discussed closure. I was telling her that I was feeling some sense of closure with the events I’d experienced in Marble. She smiled. I wanted her to be my mother or lover or father.

She said, “It’s an amazing feeling, closure.”

“For sure.”

“Everyone deserves it.”

I nodded.

“You’re so close. Right at the precipice.” She paused, as if struck by a thought. She said, “Where are the others buried?”

“What others?”

“The DEA agents Dr. Shepard killed?”

I looked into Dr. Turner’s eyes. They weren’t Honest. The skin connecting her ear was tight with anticipation. I was granted a Gift of Understanding—my first in over two years—and it was her selfishly wanting my recovery for herself, a career case, publication in journals and then a book, and I knew she’d made this her capstone moment, both in real life and in her future book, the moment her reformed Survivor opened up, confessed to murders and locations of federal agents, thus providing closure to the cult, her hard work and brilliance getting me to overcome my past atrocities. I knew nothing over the past year had been Honest. I knew I’d swallowed her bullshit because it was easier than feeling alienated from Truth. I knew I’d embraced selfish wants to crowd out selfish fears.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

“We’re past that, Mason.”

“Don’t call me Mason.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s what my father called me.”

Dr. Turner nodded. She said, “Then what shall I call you?”

“Thirty-Seven.”

“Why can’t you tell me where the DEA agents are buried?”

“Because I don’t know what you’re talking about?”

“Why? You were there, weren’t you?”

“Yes. But not that day.”

“Why?”

“I was sick. The whole day.”

“Mason—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Does it strike you as odd that you were never around in times of violence?”

“There are no accidents.”

“What happened the night you ran away?”

“I found a loving family dedicated to changing the world. I embraced sickness. I started living in Hon—”

“Enough!” Dr. Turner yelled.

Birds flew away. I shook. Dr. Turner closed her eyes. She knew she’d ruined everything. I thought about there being no accidents, only actions revealing hidden, detestable traits. She started to apologize, but I put up my hand. I shook my head. I got off the bench and walked inside.

Three days later, I was transferred back to juvie. I looked for Dr. Turner, but she was nowhere to be found. I wasn’t upset about being transferred, because it confirmed my beliefs about Dr. Turner. It confirmed the notion that a life spent dedicated to Honesty comes with gifts. It confirmed that everything I’d learned in Marble was True.