“He says, ‘What do you mean?’ And I started shaking and told him what I just heard in my head. And I asked him if i1 was true: ‘Did I just say to send me to Lima?’ He said yes. Then I started crying, ‘Don’t listen to me. Don’t listen to what I’m saying’.’”

“Is this a new development?”

Billy looked at the writer thoughtfully. “I guess it’s the first sign of co-consciousness without complete fusion.”

“That’s very important.”

“But its scary. I was crying and yelling. Everybody in the room turned and looked at me. I didn’t know what I’d just said, and I’m wondering, ‘Why is everybody looking at me? Then I heard it over again in my head.”

“You’re still the unfused Billy?”

“Yes. I’m Billy-U.”

“Are you the only one who gets this instant replay?”

He nodded. “Because I’m the host, the core, I’m the one developing the co-consciousness.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“It means I’m getting well, but it’s scary. Sometimes 1 wonder: Do I want to get well? Is all this fear, all this shit I’m going through now worth it? Or should I bury myself back here in the brain and forget about it?”

“What’s your answer?”

“I don’t know.”

Billy became quieter when they reached the small cemetery near the Beacon School for the Mentally Retarded. “This is where I come sometimes to try and sort things out. It’s the saddest place you can imagine.”

The writer looked at the little headstones, many of which had fallen over and were overgrown with weeds. “I wonder why they just have numbers,” he said.

“Well, when you don’t have family or a friend in the world,’’ Billy said, “and nobody really gives a damn and you die here, all your records are destroyed. But there’s a list of who’s buried , where in case anybody shows up again. Most of these people died during the fever of 1950, I think it was. But there’s markers over there from 1909 and earlier.”

Billy began to wander among the graves.

“I’d come up here and sit on the bank over there near those pine trees, to be alone. It’s depressing to be in this graveyard and know what it’s about, but it’s also got a kind of peace to it. You notice how that dead tree hovers over it? There’s a kind of grace and dignity about it.”

The writer nodded, not wanting to interrupt.

“What they did when they started to build this graveyard was to make it in a circle. You see how they go around like a big spiral? Then when that big fever came and they started running out of space. They had to start burying them in rows.” “Do they still use this graveyard?”

“If someone dies and they have no family. It’s painful. How would you like to come up here looking for a long-lost relative and find out he or she’s number 41? And there are so many of these stones lying over there on the bank, just thrown in piles. That’s really depressing. No respect for the dead. The good markers haven’t been put up by the state. They’re set up by people who discovered their relatives. They have names on them. People like to chase back and want to know where they’re from. When they find their ancestors and relatives have been planted out here with a number over their heads, it kind of pisses them off. They’ll say, ‘That’s my family. There’s got to be a little more respect than that.’ It doesn’t matter if they were the black sheep or sick or whatever. It’s sad that there are, only a few nice stones out there. I spent a lot of time around here when I was able to roam around—’’ He stopped, chuckled and said, “When I could ‘roam’ around.”