bus."
"Oh." Billy stood up. "But precious Lillie?"
"They came into our small home and I hid in a closet. Through the crack in the door I saw her in her sheer black silk robe, the one given to her by her mother on her eighteenth birthday, being ravished by an Abominable. I had to close the door to muffle her cries. When I opened it she was lifeless on the floor near the couch that needed recovering. The Abominable had flagrantly violated her body, and then ended her life by plunging a large kitchen knife into her belly. When he left I hurried to the stables, and then to the bus station."
"She was wearing a sheer black silk robe?"
"Yes, and nothing else. I had cautioned her about this in early conversations about sauciness, ostentation and impropriety."
Billy turned away and thought for a moment. "Sir, Lillie was taken from us because she permitted me to kiss and fondle her, and the Abominables have all been killed in what I presume was a cosmic compliment for the massacre at the Doobie estate. However, I am sad that the Almighty desires to stage such plays as this for his enjoyment. I am not sure that I can continue with your faith that whatever bad will happen because it is good."
Reverend Roberts stepped back startled. "Billy! The universe is constituted for the best situations in accordance with that which is indispensably necessary for punishment of our collective guilt, all for the general good."
Billy noticed that the Reverend was holding out his hand. "Sir, do you need financial assistance, as I have in the past?"
He nodded. "Yes, I am broke, without funds, which is as it should be for the balance of the accounts."
Billy removed the two crisp one dollar bills from his pocket and placed them in the Reverend's hand. "Take this and go with God's blessings."
The Reverend shuddered at the thought as he limped across the street, not seeing the fully loaded cement truck barreling down on him until he felt the left front tire crush him. Billy thought about the two dollars but decided not to make a fuss over the money.
4
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.
5
As they were floating on the barnacled plank toward the small island in the Caribbean, the two men introduced themselves, and Ned Piffle said, "Don't worry, son, we're going to make it. Life has its ups and downs and ins and outs, but the key is to go along for the ride until the dice roll craps."
Billy had a sudden urge to tell Rancher Piffle his life story, including all that had happened since he ran from the Doobie estate. And he did. By the time he had finished telling the story, they had reached land, a powdery white sandy beach with palm trees filled with coconuts.
They rested on the beach for a time in silence. Finally Piffle said, "Well, son, let me tell you about me." And for the next hour he told Billy about being gored by a bull with he was five, trampled in a stampede at age twelve, his girl friend falling into a well on their third date and drowning, his father and mother being killed by rustlers, and how he had built a good life on the losses and crosses of the toil and pain of adversity. "That's all a part of life, son. We win some, we lose some, but somehow it all balances out in the end."
Billy stood and stretched, his wet clothes quickly drying in the hot sun, his hair neatly blow-dried by the warm breeze. "Then you feel that everything is for the best."
The rancher unzipped his pants and urinated on the white sand. "Oh, I don't know about that. I just know that life is what we make it, kind of like walking through a jungle. You might step in quicksand, get bitten by a snake, chased by a tiger, or hit by a poisonous dart from a native's blowgun. On the other
