From Eden and Back: The Incredible Misadventures of Billy Barker. John Randolph Price
the hospital in the village, the remaining four journeyed to the red tiled green home of the sisters on the other side of the island where they lived together for a time.
Ned arranged to have his cattle sold at an auction and the money wired to him so that he could buy nice things for Marie to make her more receptive to his advances. Billy was careful to avoid any penetrative encounters with Parie because of the statistical possibility of pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease. He was learning to play the odds to be the best of all possible gamblers. Rancher Fiffie was not so lucky. During the ninth month he consented to marry Marie before the baby came, at which time Billy moved to the Hilton Hotel alone and accepted a job as a dishwasher.
Two weeks later the stove exploded in the hotel kitchen where three men including Billy were working. The other two were badly burned but Billy was not touched. One out of three, he thought as he wrote about the experience in a small black book he now carried with him to jot down the statistical data of his life embracing Lady Luck.
One night Billy was in a car driven in a rainstorm by a local resident known as Big Mon. Big Mon took a curve at high speed, lost control, and the car traveled more than two hundred feet in the air and crashed into a tree. Big Mon was killed but Billy stepped out of the demolished vehicle without a scratch. He pulled out his little black book and wrote: One out of two. The odds are still with me. They weren't for long, however. Three days later a hurricane hit the island as Billy was approaching Ned's and Marie's house, and their red tile roof came crashing down on Billy. Before he lost consciousness Billy was heard to say, "Craps!"
While he was in the hospital with a broken arm, cracked ribs and red tile shrapnel wounds in his head, Billy gave a great deal of thought to the actuary tables and the precise calculation of statistical risks in this world. He decided he didn't want to play the game anymore. Life was a gamble, sure, but he was tired of toss-ups, guessing, speculating and tempting fortune. He would have to find another god, one that offered a better chance of survival in this craziest of all possible worlds. In the meantime, Ned and Marie had another child and Ned went to work selling life insurance to the natives.
Upon discharge from the hospital Billy found a job waiting tables at a French restaurant near the pier. When the cruise ship Lollypop docked and the thousands of tourists descended upon the village, Billy worked a sixteen hour day and had fallen asleep on a bar stool with the patrons yelling at him. He awoke when he felt a warm hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see a tall, dark and handsome thirty-something man who said, "You appear tired and tuckered out, my friend. May I ask what is the cause of this lack of stimulation?"
Billy slid off the stool, offered his hand and said, "I am Billy Barker."
"And that is the reason for your exhaustion?"
"No," Billy replied. "I have been snapped at, admonished, tripped and untipped in attempting to serve the people of the cruise ship Lollypop, and frankly sir, I will be happy to see the last of them."
The stranger smiled. "You simply have not been in control of the situation as the master of your destiny, a pillar of power, a self-imaged warrior of self-created reality."
Billy felt his adrenalin beginning to run. "Who are you?"
"My name is Hap Landing from Buffalo, and I am a psychomentalist."
"And what is that!" Billy asked open mouthed.
"It is one who uses the power of the mind to create the best of all possible worlds."
Uh oh, Billy thought, then asked, "Is this power from God?"
"Oh no," said Hap Landing with a slight frown. "It is from the stimulation of sixteen thousand brain cells that are lying dormant in the average person, which will make you the lord of your world, the ruler of your domain."
Billy massaged his long fingers. "Will you teach me this power?"
"Oh yes, but you must sign a contract to compensate me for my efforts. I require one hundred dollars as a down payment, then one hundred dollars for each brain cell that is awakened, which, by the way, only I will know, for a grand total of one million six hundred thousand dollars."
Billy gasped. "But I don't have that kind of money."
"Oh but you will. Each time a brain cell awakens and your self-image is boosted, you will magnetically attract at least two hundred dollars into your possession. By the time your brain is fully alive you will be a multi-millionaire."
"I can't believe it," Billy said while rubbing the back of his neck.
"That's your problem. Now if you're ready to change your life, take off that silly apron and come on board the cruise ship Lollypop with me. By the time we dock at Nassau in the Bahamas you will be a new man--strong, powerful, rich, successful and ready to conquer your world."
"That soon?"
"Perhaps. Now let me have the hundred dollars."
7
Billy stretched out in the oversized blue leather recliner in Hap Landing's stateroom while his new Mend and mentor poured two glasses of fine champagne. "Here," Hap said, "and may you become the man you've always wanted to be."
They clinked glasses, took a sip of the bubbly, and Billy said, "Please tell me, friend Hap, how are you going to awaken my dormant brain cells?"
Hap reached under his bed and pulled out a large stack of well-worn magazines. "While I take my leisurely stroll on deck I want you to look through these magazines and find someone you can be, whether a military warrior, a statesman, a famous author or whatever. Once you choose your hero I will show you how to become him, and in the magical process of taking on the new identity, your self-image will blossom and function as an alarm to awaken the initial group of sleeping cells, providing you with riches and power."
"I see." Billy moistened his lips as he opened the first magazine in his lap. Hearing the door close Billy quickly turned each page. Finding no one he wanted to be, he discarded the magazine and went to the second one, then continued through the stack. On the ninth page of the ninth magazine he gasped, sat up straight, leaned forward and gripped the magazine with both hands.
There in living color was all he wanted to be--dashing and dapper, bold and brave, sophisticated and sexy. It was a photograph of Scan Connery in his role as secret agent James Bond in an advertisement for the movie Dr. No. Bond was wearing a white dinner jacket, a martini in one hand, a gun in the other, a cigarette dangling from his lips, a beautiful scantily-clad woman hanging on his leg. That's me shouted Billy to himself as he jumped out of the chair.
When Hap Landing returned to the stateroom he noticed that Billy seemed taller, more erect, a sly grin on his face. "It would appear that you have found yourself," Hap said with a wink.
"Yes," said Billy returning the wink. "With a license to kill in the service of her majesty's government, I can now go forth as a daring, dauntless, self-confident man of the world. However I will need to purchase a white dinner jacket at the first opportunity, learn to smoke and drink martinis, and study the art of invincibility."
"And so you shall," Hap said with a crooked grin.
Before the cruise ship Lollypop reached Nassau Billy was curling the smoke from his mouth up into his nose in a French inhale, learning the difference in a shaken and stirred martini, and had been fitted with a summer tuxedo with extra wide shoulder pads and tailored trim at the waist. He and Hap had walked around the ship for hours upon hours, Hap drilling into Billy's mind that nothing could touch him, harm him, as long as he maintained the self-image of an intrepid, invulnerable, incomparable individual. Billy was walking tall, feeling good.
Visiting a casino in Nassau, Billy led the way through the door and his very presence froze the occupants in place, hundreds of eyes fastened on the sparkle in his as he paused to survey the crowd. With his command to "carry on" they suddenly thawed and returned to what they were doing--but a dozen women with bare shoulders and mini-skirts fell in line and followed him to the various gaming tables where he continued to win vast sums of money. A blonde voluptuous woman called Poopie from Peoria held to