Читать книгу From Eden and Back: The Incredible Misadventures of Billy Barker - John Randolph Price - Страница 6

For more than three years Billy grieved for Lillie and lived in a void, not knowing what to believe while he studied at night and worked for Mayor Rock Stonewall during the day. And then on November 22, 1963, in a news bulletin from Dallas, his faith in treachery and evil was renewed. Enough is enough, Billy thought as he threw his clothes into a duffle bag, withdrew what money he had in the bank, left Mayor Stonewall a thank-you note, and caught a tramp steamer bound for South America. He was leaving the country as a disillusioned nineteen year old man of hardened emotions and a mind focused on nothing but hatred for this world, even if it was the best it could be.

Billy spent a year as a tour guide in the Andes Mountains, and then for five more years mined manganese in Santiago, worked on an oil rig in Comodoro Riva-davia, dug for coal near Paysandu, and herded cattle in Rio de Janeiro. In each city he would read the International Herald Tribune for news and his faith in hell on earth grew stronger. He shook his head at the drug cult and the march toward destruction of America's youth, riots in the streets, retirement villages, funky fads, leisure suits, more assassinations, Israel's Six Day War, a woman in Orlando killing her husband and eating his leg, the Vietnam war. He stopped reading the papers. God was mad, and so was the world.

One night in the tropical rain forest he told God he was ready to be terminated. "I can't do it myself," he said, "but you have countless ways to slaughter and exterminate, so do it the way that pleases you most." With that a bolt of lightning struck a nearby tree. "Missed," Billy said dejectedly, and from the rolling thunder he thought he heard laughter in a deep bass voice.

Two and a half weeks later, on his twenty-fifth birthday, Billy caught a steam ship from Caracas bound for Miami, and during the voyage he met the vacationing Reverend Bobby Joe. When the Reverend asked Billy his vocation, Billy gave him a full biographical sketch, including the time spent in the political arena with Mayor Rock Stonewall.

"So basically, you are a politician," the Reverend said with a gleam in his eye.

"Perhaps," Billy said.

"Then you know the secrets of manipulation. How perfect our meeting here on this huge black ship of Liberian registry giving me the opportunity to recruit you for my crusade."

"A crusade?" Billy asked from the adjacent deck chair.

"Yes!" the Reverend Bobby Joe exclaimed. "It is a holy war as I seek to put God back into our government by eliminating the Supreme Court, Planned Parenthood, humanists, gays, the United Nations, public broadcasting, civil rights, the feminist movement, the ACLU, public education, environmentalists, those in media who do not fully cooperate with me, and all religions except the one on which our country was supposed to be founded."

"A most ambitious project," Billy said, "and it would seem to be one of ideal hostility, which is as it should be to be in favor with the Almighty, or so I have been taught. Yet, Reverend Bobby Joe, I am beginning to doubt that the Almighty lives in a constant state of displeasure, or that he thrives on punishment. Perhaps that is the God we humans have made in our own image."

As the words escaped his mouth a beneath-the-sea volcano suddenly erupted and split the ship in half. Billy and Reverend Bobby Joe slid off the ship in their deck chairs into the steaming waters. Everyone perished in the disaster except Billy and a man who rode a plank with him to the shore of a small island in the Caribbean.

While they were still riding the waves, it occurred to Billy that God purposely made that volcano and caused it to erupt at that precise instant so that most everyone would drown in a particularly dramatic moment of judgment. His faith was returning, which meant that he was not prepared for what he was to hear and learn in the days and weeks ahead, for riding on that salty plank with him was Ned Fiffle, an old rancher from Texas who had been in Argentina buying cattle. Rancher Fiffle would teach Billy what God, life and this world were really all about.