The forced march brought me to his cabin door in two days’ time. But the cabin was empty. The clothes from his closet were gone, along with the trunk that sat at the foot of his bed.
I don’t remember much of what happened after I got to the cabin. Distraught over the disappearance of my friends, I rushed out, hoping that they had only recently been there. I don’t remember how far I got. The infection from the burns must have overwhelmed me. In the hospital I was told that I was found by hikers. I guess with all that had happened, I went a little out of my head. The doctors had me in a straitjacket and had been injecting me with powerful tranquilizers every six hours.
The next few months are only spotty in my memory. I remember a man, Dr. Lionel, who told me that I was under arrest for setting fires in a national forest. But because of my burns and irrational behavior, I was remanded to the hospital for recuperation and observation.
That conversation was just a small island of clarity. Other times I was in Treaty making love to Addy or fishing with Gerin Reed. Sometimes I was in darkness and Alacrity was calling to me. I wanted to go to her, but my arms were tied and I couldn’t get to my feet.
At one moment I faded into consciousness, finding myself dressed in an ill-fitted tan suit and talking to a middle-aged woman, a judge I believe, about Treaty and blue light and Grey Redstar, who kept Horace LaFontaine in an Attica cell behind his eyes. When I finished the sentence, I could see that the henna-haired woman thought I was crazy. I yelled and leaped at her, but strong men grabbed me by my arms and legs. I was strong enough to throw them off, but before I could get my balance, someone injected me with the tranq. The last thing I saw were the judge’s frightened eyes.
I’ve been at the state mental hospital at Camarillo since then. I came in diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, but they changed that diagnosis to borderline psychotic with a new administration in 1988. I explained to the doctors that I was proof of my own story because I looked like I was twenty but my driver’s license said I was forty-three. After a week or so of that tack, a kindly orderly allowed me to see my reflection in a handheld mirror. My hair had gone completely white and the left side of my face was roughened by small scars left by the fire.
That’s when they started to brainwash me. I don’t mean on purpose like they did to those POWs in North Vietnam. They thought that they were helping me. They just could not believe in blue light.
It was impossible for light to contain consciousness, they said. I looked my age and should be thankful that I was in such good physical health. They threw away my lichen stone while I was out of my head, so I couldn’t prove my claims with the stone liquor.
At least they let me keep my History. When I sit down and read these words, I know that it all must have happened. No one could make up all of that.
After a year I found out that my mother died in 1976. I think that hurt me worst of all. I never got to see her and apologize for all the years that I ignored her letters.
It’s been more than seven years now, and I’m learning how not to use my second sight. All the drugs they give me help dampen the visions. They keep me sedated and in isolation because I’m so strong and I want to get away.
But they let me use a computer, and I have mail privileges to take out materials from state and local libraries. I guess they know that as long as I can work on my book, I won’t get too violent or wild.
My hope now is that they’ll release me, that they’ll find me sane and let me go, so I can go looking for my friends. I am sane but I know more than the fools who keep me here. I know too much. That’s why I’m trying to close my eyes to the history of light and matter. Because if I stop seeing things the way the Blues do, I’ll become less like them and more like regular people.
I’ve almost done it. I’ve almost stopped seeing. The only problem I have now is at dusk, when I’m drawn to the high window of my cell and I search the twilight skies for colored lights that I know to be the teardrops of God.