designer of men's formal wear. Bill consented, with Hap getting his percentage for awakening additional brain cells.
Bill said to Hap while signing the contracts, "Psychomentalism is the ultimate weapon against low self-esteem, melancholia and despondency."
"Yes," said smooth Hap. "I'm thinking about making it a religion."
"Brilliant! It could be Hap Landing's failsafe method of clearing away modesty and meekness in order to be and have all power as I, Bill Barker, now have."
"You are my shining example," Hap said.
"And so I am," Bill said, standing tall, feeling good.
Bill and Hap decided to stay in Nassau until Halloween to allow Bill to film commercial endorsements and win more money at the casinos. He did both, and in mid-October was robbed in an alley by a teenage girl in jeans and a halter. Bill didn't tell Hap and never reported the incident to the police. He would simply work more on his self-image.
Then as he walked out of the casino one night with Debbie from Denver, he was shot twice by a PR man from a rival cereal company, one bullet in the left leg, the other in the right shoulder. He rolled down the steps to the sidewalk groaning. The pedestrians stepped over and around Bill without hardly taking notice; Debbie went back inside to find another companion. It was over an hour before Bill was picked up and taken to the hospital in an appliance service van. When Hap Landing heard of the shooting, he quickly withdrew the money from their joint bank account, washed Bill Barker from his mind and left town. Bill had failed, and Hap didn't want the Barker name associated with the growing cult of psychomentalism.
When Bill regained consciousness the next day he was told by the doctors that his endorsement contracts had been cancelled, his car stolen, the lease on his apartment cancelled, and his bank account emptied and closed. And the hospital wanted fifty thousand dollars immediately as a down payment on healing services because they could not find a health insurance card in his wallet. What was left of Bill Barker's self-esteem quickly plummeted. He wished he could die. Instead he slipped out of the hospital wearing a doctor's white smock and carrying a clipboard.
He limped from street to street, bleeding profusely from the open wounds, until he collapsed at a bus stop where a large black woman named Banibi was sitting on a bench eating popcorn. She quickly finished the bag, called Hugo, her veterinarian husband from the pay phone across the street, then doctored Bill's wounds until her husband arrived in his red BMW. They took Bill to their home and nursed him back to health.
Bill stayed on with Hugo and Bambi as their yard man. He also read the newspapers daily: serial killers and rapists strike again, bombings in cities, cholera epidemics, religious wars, beheadings of thousands, rampant hunger and poverty, mothers and fathers killing their children, children murdering their mothers and fathers. He thought about God again and asked Bambi her opinion of the Almighty.
"Oh, I know he loves us and--"
"What?" Bill shrieked. "God loves us?"
"He sure does, and what he gives he can't take away--and that includes our free will--which means we're free to screw up things any way we want to. But I don't think he holds that against us. He just waits for us to finish up our business and come home to be cuddled by him in his everlasting arms. And in the meantime, sweet Jesus looks after us."
Bill leaned on his rake for a moment. "You make it all sound so simple."
Bambi beamed. "It is, son."
"What about the law of averages and self-esteem?"
"That's all man-made stuff, has nothing to do with God."
"Then what you're saying is that it's not God who's punishing us. It's us punishing ourselves for the guilt we're carrying around for using our free will in strange and hostile ways."
"Reckon so."
Hmmmmm, thought Bill as he continued to rake the yard.
In the meantime, Bill's picture and the story of his heroic rescue of the six children were picked up by the wire services, his exploits detailed in every metropolitan newspaper in America. A so-called elderly woman in Chicago had read the story and was making plans to fly to Nassau in search of Bill Barker. His life was about to be changed forever.
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