by Matt Cardin
“Are you sure?” I said after a long pause. I habitually measured my words and actions carefully around other people, but it was difficult to conceal the fact that this unexpected information had ignited a spark of interest in me. I carefully distanced myself from the feeling and kept my eyes steadily upon Bobby.
“Not entirely,” he said. “That’s part of what I want you to find out. Believe me, I know how hard it will be to think of anything new to say. But if there really is a local group, then we’ve got the chance to do something special. You know how private these people are supposed to be.”
And indeed, I did know of their notorious reticence. Even their closest family members didn’t know what they really believed. Everything in the news was just second-hand testimony from friends, family, neighbors, and supposed “experts” whose theories were pure conjecture.
As I considered this, a strange feeling began to creep over me. It was as if a wheel had started to turn in the back of my head. I introspected for a moment and gained the impression of an old waterwheel, slick and wooden, revolving slowly on an unseen axle. The feeling it produced in me was strangely soothing. I was taken aback by this unexpected psychic event, and when I returned my attention to the outside world, I found that my skepticism about the proposed project had completely vanished, leaving me eager to jump on the story.
“So how do you know about this?” I asked.
“Peg told me,” he said. Peg was his wife. She was a registered nurse who worked in the emergency room at the university hospital. The three of us had gone out to dinner a couple of times. “She’s been saying for months now that she suspects something, but she wasn’t sure until just a few days ago. Saturday night some lady brought an old man into the emergency room and said she had nearly run over him when she found him just lying in the middle of the road. He was still unconscious, so Peg checked his I.D. and looked to see if they had any records on him. Turns out he’s been there before. He has cancer of the larynx. Thirteen months ago he started refusing treatment. Nobody ever saw him there again until the other night. When he woke up, he looked around and flew into a rage. He refused to let anybody see about him. His file says he lives alone at a private residence and isn’t under anybody’s supervised care, so they just had to let him go. Peg said he stormed outside and hailed a cab.
“The reason she thinks this means something,” he continued, setting his styrofoam cup down on the desk, “is because more and more people have started refusing medical treatment at the hospital over the past year. Especially in the past two months. It’s only a very small number, just a dozen or so, but these are people with some very serious medical conditions.” He caught me with his eye as he paused. “Plus, the old guy said something as he was leaving.”
“Wait, let me guess,” I said. “He told them, ‘As a foulness shall ye know them.’ Am I right?”
Bobby seemed to stumble. After a moment he said, “Yeah, exactly.” He was looking at me strangely.
I was as surprised as he was. A number of news stories had linked this cryptic saying to the cult, and I had just been spouting off when I said it. I told him this and he relaxed.
“Well, I guess you’re the right guy for the job. You’re almost psychic about it.” He resumed his former easy manner of speaking. “Yeah, he said that weird Sick Seekers thing. Peg said his voice was awful to hear. She didn’t even want to think about how far along his cancer must have advanced by now. From the way she was so spooked, I’m guessing it must be pretty bad.” He glanced at his watch and then back up at me. “Well, I can put two and two together as well as she can, and when she told me what she was thinking, I knew she was right. There’s got to be a cult group right here in Terence.” He rose from his chair and started shuffling things around on his desk in the afternoon ritual I had come to know so well, the one that indicated he was about to be done with work for the day, regardless of how much time might be left on the clock. “What I want you to do,” he said, “is find this group and get a story. With your background in religion, you should be able to talk to these people in a way that other people can’t. Maybe you can make them feel comfortable, express some sort of understanding, get their sympathy. I don’t care how you do it. Just find out something that nobody else has written about them yet.”
“But Bobby,” I said, “I don’t understand them. Yes, I’ve studied up on them, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why anybody would choose to live with terminal intestinal cancer, let alone celebrate it.” I was thinking of a story I had watched just the night before on a weekly television news magazine. A man in Montana had refused to submit to having a large part of his colon removed, and had said things that indicated a link to the Sick and Saved movement. His wife had gone crying to the newspapers. “What am I supposed to do? How do I even find any of these people?”
“I told you,” he said, “they have a file on this old man down at the hospital. Peg got his name: Mitchell Billings.” He spelled it while I wrote it down.
“What else did she get?” I asked with pen poised to write.
“Nothing,” he said. I blinked in surprise. “She’s not going to risk her job over this, Lawrence. She already had her mind made up when she came to me, and I agree with her. It’s not only against the rules, but it’s a crime for her to divulge what’s in those records. You’re going to have to dig for yourself. I’m sure you can think of some way to use your pretty face to get access.” He smiled wickedly, but at the moment I didn’t think it was funny, especially since he was asking me to risk my neck. “By the way,” he continued, “if you’re thinking of going the easy way and looking in the phone book, don’t bother. I checked already. Then I called information and checked the Internet. It’s not that he’s unlisted, he just doesn’t have a phone number.”
“What about the lady who brought him in? What did she have to say? Where did she find him?”
“Odd thing,” Bobby said. “She must have stepped out during the ruckus. Peg couldn’t find her anywhere.”
I was still absorbing this when he reached for his tie, which he always hung on the coat rack in the corner after lunch. “Gonna call it an early day, compadre. Peg and I are going out to dinner and a concert tonight at the performing arts hall.”
“Who’s playing?” I asked without really caring. That wheel was still turning slowly in the back of my head, like an old waterwheel bearing buckets of fresh, cool water out of a silent spring. For the first time in many years, I felt the desire to sit in meditation for an extended period.
“The university symphony orchestra,” he was saying. “Some Mozart piece. Or Bach or Beethoven. I really don’t care. It’s Peg’s idea.” He waved goodbye and walked out still carrying his tie, leaving me sitting there alone in his office, evidence of the trust he had built up for me after eight years of my devoted service.
I sat there for quite awhile watching the cool water being carried up from a spring in the back of my mind. When I got up to leave, I was feeling more alive than I had felt in years. But I was all too experienced at this sort of mood-revolution, and was far too jaded to allow myself to relax into any sort of good feeling, no matter how sweet and refreshing it seemed on the surface. Painful experience had taught me there was always a bottomless chasm of despair waiting on the other side.
2
After such thorough contemplation [of foulness], actual realization will unfailingly follow. If he now sees women, he is no longer dominated by the animal urge of carnal desire, but he sees through it; he sees them as skeletons. Looking ahead he, already now, perceives the flesh, how after death, it will be devoured by worms.
—Going Forth
I decided to go ahead and visit the hospital that very night. No time like the present for breaking the law, I thought. But first I stopped by my apartment to change clothes and freshen up. Bobby hadn’t been kidding about my “pretty face.” I was a strikingly handsome man. I had always been that way, even as a child. For years my mother had harbored fantasies
about my being a professional model. She had taught me all about color coding, how to dress for best effect and fix my hair to look just right for my eyes, skin tone, facial shape, and all that. She was a failed model herself. Sometimes, I think she would have been happier with a daughter.
When I was in college, I found my looks to be a useful tool for getting into bed with just about any girl I liked, but that was as far as I took it. After I started working for the newspaper, I occasionally found that I could exploit my appearance by endearing myself to people who might not otherwise be inclined to talk to me. It even worked with men, for some reason. It wasn’t that I ever engaged in any really tough investigative journalism. Far from it; my assignments were all cushy and soft. As the paper’s religion reporter I got to sit through services at dozens of churches, interview rabbis and priests and preachers, go to funerals and bar mitzvahs, and so on. I even got to talk occasionally with my old professors in the religious studies department at the university, whenever I needed one of their sagacious comments to pad out some minor piece of journalistic fluff with an air of intellectual respectability. But even in those non-threatening situations, I sometimes liked to go for the throat, so to speak. Whenever I found people who were reticent or distracted and wouldn’t give me their full attention, all I had to do was turn on the old charm and let my looks draw them to me like a magnet.
For my trip to the hospital, I chose a solid forest green shirt, black jeans, and black shoes. My hair was exceedingly dark, not quite black but just barely shy of it, and my eyes were a piercing green. I had learned years ago that when I wanted to look my most striking, I should wear dark, solid colors. When I looked in the mirror for a final inspection, my hair was still wet from a quick shower. The curls were soft and gleamed like sable. The shirt drew out the color of my eyes and gave me an appearance of intensity and wisdom. I knew I looked damned good.
Down at the hospital, I searched out the first female employee I could find. Fortunately, she was the one behind the receptionist’s counter. Her name was Lindy, and she was blonde and slightly overweight. We talked for a few minutes about nothing in particular before I explained to her that I was a reporter and needed to see a patient’s file. Of course she told me this would be impossible, but then I turned on the charm and let her know that she was somebody I could really learn to like spending more time with. I had never been so blatantly manipulative with my looks, and I was mildly sickened at myself. But that was easily overcome by an exercise of mental transcendence (a leftover from my spiritual days) wherein I stood back and suspended judgment on everything I was feeling or doing. This never failed to put me in a comfortable place where nothing could touch me, either from the inside or the outside, and I could just watch things happen like a spectator. I padded my lie by telling her that I knew the patient personally, and that I was looking up his information as a favor to him. It was a muddled story, one that didn’t hold together (which wasn’t surprising, considering that I had made it up right there on the spot), but she bought it. She glanced around to make sure nobody was watching, and then she let me behind the counter and took me back to the office where the files were kept.
It was a long room, tall and narrow, filled with rows of gray metal shelves like a library. I thanked her profusely as she searched out Mitchell Billings’s medical file. I thanked her again when she allowed me to stay there alone while she minded the front desk. As she was walking away, I watched the backs of her thighs. The cotton legs of her pants (standard nurse-issue) were stretched tight against her skin, and I found myself thinking that maybe I hadn’t been kidding when I said I would like to get to know her better.
I flipped through the file quickly, standing there in the cramped aisleway between the shelves. The evidence of Mr. Billings’s laryngeal cancer was there, along with his refusal on July 13th of the previous year to be treated. The doctors had wanted to perform a tracheostomy or laryngectomy more than a year ago, but he had declined. The record then skipped ahead to just four nights past, when someone had recorded in blue ink the tale of Billings’s unexpected return to, and belligerent departure from, the university hospital. There was also a scribbled note about the unnamed Good Samaritan who had brought him in.
Before closing the file, I turned back to the cover page and copied down Billings’s address: Route 3, Box 147, Terence, Missouri. I was vaguely familiar with Route 3, more commonly known as Highway M. It ran east out of Terence toward Mountain Glen and was populated mostly by farmer types. As Bobby had already previewed for me, there was no phone number listed, so I knew that my day was planned out for me tomorrow. Apparently, I would have to drive out Highway M and physically track the man down.
Having achieved my goal, I closed the manila-colored file and slid it back into its place on the shelf. Then I slipped out to the reception area (checking first to make sure nobody was around; I truly didn’t want to get Lindy into trouble) and scooted out from behind the counter. On the way past I paused to thank Lindy yet again. She looked a little troubled, as if she were conflicted over her violation of the rules, so I reiterated that I wouldn’t tell a single soul. I also assured her that she had helped Mr. Billings immensely. Her complexion was pale and milky, a nice match for her blond hair, and her cheeks were now colored with a slight flush from the heat of her troubled feelings. She was positively lovely. I found myself wondering as I exited through the automatic doors and emerged back into the humid August night whether I might not find myself back at the hospital soon, this time not under a ruse, but with the honest intention of getting closer to her. I supposed it might not be totally impossible.
The wheel was still turning.
3
What, Ananda, is contemplation of disadvantage? Herein, Ananda, a monk having gone to the forest, or to the foot of a tree, or to a lonely place, contemplates thus: ‘Many are the sufferings, many are the disadvantages of this body since diverse diseases are engendered in this body, such as the following: Eye-disease, ear-disease, nose-disease, tongue-disease, body-disease, headache, mumps, mouth-disease, tooth-ache, cough, asthma, catarrh, heart-burn, fever, stomach ailment, fainting, dysentery, swelling, gripes, leprosy, boils, scrofula, consumption, epilepsy, ringworm, itch, eruption, tetter, pustule, plethora, diabetes, piles, cancer, fistula, and diseases originating from bile, from phlegm, from wind, from conflict of the humors, from changes of weather, from adverse conditions . . . and cold, heat, hunger, thirst, excrement, and urine.’ Thus he dwells contemplating disadvantage in this body. This Ananda, is called contemplation of disadvantage.
—Pirit Potha
The next day I waited until mid-morning to begin my search. It was a hot day, the hottest by far in what had already been a sweltering summer. The old saying about the humidity being worse than the heat was amply realized on that day. I couldn’t seem to get dried off after my shower, and by the time I made it to the ground floor of my apartment building and then out to my car, where I turned on the air conditioner at full blast, I was already dripping with sweat. I was glad I had picked a dark color that would hide the sweat rings already starting to appear under my arms, but I also realized it was quite foolish to be wearing such a heat-absorbing shirt on such a scorching day. My mother’s old adage of “appearance over comfort” played on my mind annoyingly as I pulled out of the parking lot. To help silence it, I dialed the office on my cell phone and asked Susie, the receptionist, to tell Bobby that I had secured the information he mentioned and was headed out to speak with the guy today.
On the east edge of Terence, after the old downtown buildings gave way to densely populated residential subdivisions composed of new houses, which in turn gave way to more sparsely populated neighborhoods with older houses, Highway M turned south off Broadway Avenue, crossed the train tracks, jogged sharply to the left, and rapidly became something that looked more like a country lane than a conventional highway. I knew the road only by name. I had never driven it before, and found it rather odd, and oddly refreshing, to find such a comp
letely rural-looking farm road branching off like an aging artery from the edge of a mid-sized university town like Terence. I took great pleasure in the sight of the oaks and hickory trees that flanked the road and created a latticed canopy of leafy branches overhead. The sun still hung in the eastern sky as I sped across the pavement, and its light rippled through the trees like a burning waterfall, shooting dazzling flashes of golden spray into the corners of my eyes.
I had to drive nearly ten miles to get to Billings’s house. Highway M proved to be one of those typical Missouri country roads that wind and twist and seem to be taking you farther into the heart of nowhere even when you know where you’re going. When you’re bound for parts unknown, the effect is even more pronounced. Time stretches into an endless asphalt carpet ahead of you, and you start thinking you may never reach your destination. By the time I came across the house, I was imagining that I must have crossed some invisible dimensional barrier separating the normal universe with its known laws of physics from a strange realm where distance multiplied and space elongated the farther and faster you traveled.
The house appeared suddenly as I was rounding a sharp curve. It sat off the left side of the road about thirty yards, an old two-story structure built farmhouse style, with a brown slate rock exterior and a rust-colored front porch surmounted by two dormers. Mitchell Billings was sitting in the porch swing. I knew it had to be him as I braked sharply to avoid missing the driveway, which was an unpaved riot of gravel and dirt. My momentum was a bit more than I had expected, and I hit the edge of the dirtline at thirty miles per hour and kicked up a cloud of brown dust. Cursing aloud, I pulled up to the house and sat with my door shut while the cloud settled. Through my closed window and above the roar of the air conditioner, I could hear the screeching and buzzing of tree frogs and cicadas spilling out of the woods to my left. The tree line bordered the driveway, coming to within just a few yards of the house.
