What Has He Done Lately?

Continuing the "Backsliding story." So... 

"Have you got such a job for me?” he asked in his kid’s poor knee, "or any other kind of job for that matter to see. Have you got any such thing, even one of those things to offer me, anyone else, or him?" He was musing about this within himself. Again, though, you know what he ended up doing, right? Ten years later on, he was still there doing just that one, the sewing job he’d gotten got, and... yes, and screwing around with fat. You know, like, operating sewing machines and screwing around a round of beer on the center pole beams.

Until tragedy came in a truck and struck him on the but, but, I mean... the Elk then found it necessary to move on. He decided to upgrade his driver’s license to be able to operate one, yeah, man; one of those heavy vehicle things, come on! Again, the word got around and into the ears of this, as well as those other people clown in the “we-group” of his, down-home. Hiss, yes, okay. Now put away the frown and...

The Elk had not bothered to tell us who told them this, this time, it was way too embarrassing for him to twine; I’d suppose so and continued twisting the twine around these fingers of mine, you know. Even now as we’re here looking back at it, over the toast, I can see why. Oh, my lord, suppose… So, this time is going to be different than the others, right? Go on, keep your mouth closed, and shut in while sleeping and dreaming of fools tonight, mi bredren. I mean, my brother.

“That’s not a good profession,” they say. “Truck drivers have a way of dying too often on the roadway. They have to go on long-distance trips sometimes too, some that tend to take them away from their family, and you. “True.” From ‘the church,’ and for long periods in the queue.” And yes, away from you too, Aunt Sue, no? Well, fire up the engine, let’s go, tell. “…And that’s not good at all for you,” so they say. On and on, the rhetoric was to continue along, against this line of work for winning food, and for moms doing good.

As you already know but might not care to say, the Elk had to take note of those things and make a sensible decision to win and show, the way, okay? He was made the church’s Sunday school bus driver not many months later. That was because he was the logical choice there. The only one among them with a heavy vehicle driver’s license, and all the other certifications necessary to drive such vehicles away from them and theirs: the bison. Did that for well over a decade in accumulated years, until…

Until he rubbed them the wrong way yet again. Happened when he got the fabulous idea that he could write books and sell them to make some extra money here and there to spend, among the crooks, among them, even. So, he wrote one, then another. Now he’s up to six and comes face to face with a new challenge on the ladder, sticks, or two, of the brothers. He was having grave difficulty in writing love scenes.

Not so much because he didn’t know about love or seeing such, seen? “Seen.” Or even about writing them well enough to have been able to see things as they were from in between. You know, like, seeing such things often enough from in between the peeping scenes that he would be able to do it. No, it wasn’t that, nor was he in any way unfamiliar with the subject matter of the day. Who’d asked? Oh, you again.

It was more out of fear, out of the fear of what other people may come to think about him, and such as what he thinks on those matters on the string. Particularly, those same kinds of “other people,” and their daughters too, were in the vehicle. Look, isn’t she cute? “Yes.” Secondly, he also wanted to try another style of writing, like, writing in the first person that time, yes; the right thing, as he’d never done before. At the same time, too, there was a competition going on, on your favorite tube. Trying to get new unpublished books published on Amazon Kindle, true.

“Amazon Scout,” was the name as they gave it to us, to go and sell on the way out. The Elk wanted to enter his book into the competition, to try and win Dell, if nothing else to win it from. Fifty thousand words, or more, was what they were after, but he was done telling his story in about thirty-five thousand words and shorter. He wanted to get the book enrolled in the competition, though. So, back to the drawing board he had to go, to fix them and try to win friends. He managed to get to forty-eight thousand plus words, he took a chance at entering the book into the competition just before the door closed.

Yes, before the deadline for entry occurred, they accepted it. He was elated, to say the least. In the meantime, though, as the competition continued down the line, slow. Down towards the drawing of winners after the show. He was to be found doing in-house promotion of the book and preparing the people for the release of the sweet lotion on the nook when that time should come around. He told many of them, very many. Among other things, he was heard telling them that he was going to get kicked out of the church,

“Whenever this new book gets out,” he said, “or worse.” The more he talked about it, the more the interest mounts up the cockpit. Everybody wanted a copy of it. Everybody except a few here and there, of course. The price perhaps? He would have been thinking this because… well, you know the facts. But other revelations were to come to light, bursting out of the darkness one night. Some folks who’d bought copies of the previous works didn’t want to buy any more that night, of course. “Because of what, wasn’t it good?” He’d asked a number of the otherwise good, ones or twos.

Weren’t the others good? Or was it the price? Again, he was asking this because the new book was to cost a bit more than the others before it. Then came the big reveal. “I haven’t even read the first one that I bought from you yet.” Yes, that was the answer he’d gotten get. This he was told by more people than one, Sir. Much more than one. Which got to the inner ear of the Elkhan and the bear man, to get him into thinking again about the reasons. What kind of people do things like that to them, and why? Why would they do that to a rather nice guy?

Go on, laugh as much as you like, this too shall pass, but? The first part of the question was a bit easy to answer the man because everybody knows the answer to that one, and fast. Everybody already knows that; one can and does hide knowledge from this kind of people, in the classroom of the feeble, bowl of porridge, even. This particular kind of people. One can and does hide knowledge from these people in the pages of, (of all things,) books, like that one, even. No less than hanging it on the hooks, and racks, with the weevil feeding. “And why is that you’d asked? It’s because don’t none of them evva read nuttn. I mean, none of us ever read anything. Not even our favorite book of them all from within, the worship hall.

Yeah, man, look, there it is, that book is still hanging beside Freddie Mac’s picture, on the wall. They don’t read it either. They never did bother to read nuttn, not anything Ms. Freda, ever. So, no need for you to worry about reading this one to be clever, or anything else. Nor about writing a little bit a-letta, to a nedda bredda, if you want. Go on out, or come right on in and write your letter, to try and say everything that I have got on my mind to say to Erica. Or something else, anything, they won’t know. Not unless somebody tells them which way to go?

Oh! Wait a minute, no, you will probably need to worry a bit about that part, my friend. That person, the “somebody” person? That somebody is itching right now, this minute even, to go do her favorite thing, and worsens. Yes, the telling thing, you know them. Well, not you-you, this is not about you. You’re some sort of different and special thing to do, you do read a lot, right? Not too big on talking and chit-chatting tonight, but reading is your kind of thing to be needing, right? So, you know very well that we’re just stretching things a bit here, to make a point, out of these imported beers, right?

But you also do know darn well that, as for the rest of our people on the lot tory bell… (foot pants.) Like that, like him, and me, and you. We don’t nevva read nuttn, yeah! I said it. Nothing at all, not even our favorite book of them all. Except on Sunday mornings at the altar call, perhaps. A few verses here and there as we may be asked, so to do, and share, in the morning services too, be aware. But as for the other part of the statement? That too was to be a torment. That’s what got the Elk thinking in Technicolor jogging shoes and felt… Why would anybody, even them, Bobby?

Why would they bother to buy the book if they weren’t going to read it this evening? Look. That question was answered too, really quickly, not long afterward, like, after it bit me. They bought the book just to “support him, and the lord.” It’s a nice thing to do, one might suppose so to say, and wink in accord, (at you.) But if you’d respected yourself, and the value of a dollar bill there in the money till under somebody else’s shelf. Your dollar, even. Respect the effort of the person who’d labored on the task of writing the book, to begin with, and whom you said that you were buying the item from, to provide support? (Sit down, man, sit.)

You wouldn’t have done that, mi scout, like this… Just pay your hard-earned money for it, then take it and throw it in the corner pit where it is likely to stay and rot in …it. You wouldn’t have done that if you were a person who puts value on anything. “Like what, like — “ “Your money, perhaps.” So now, the book is out, yes, the new one, and has reached the hands of the many, nuance, and gone. Running off and after many of those people, and corn. They’re reading it, and calling around the vehicle, to snitch. This one, and yes, that one too, and telling the story of, guess who?
 “Telling the story of Jeezas, right?”
 “No, you Iddie hat, not that, Brice.

Not the story of Jesus, but they were telling each other what’s written in the book, as she always does whenever she’s phoning you, and cooks. The panel discussion got heated up to a fever pitch in no time. Like, while peeling off the skin of the onions and hitching to go finish cooking my favorite dish, well, hers and mine. It’s getting judgmental now, and then, the first call was to come home to the author, from them. “Great book,” said the caller to him, now look, and wink. “Good evening,” he said, while she was leaving the bred feeling, “very good.”

It was a very good report for the author to believe in, he couldn’t have been happier, even after… “Brother,” she’d said, “you hit it out of the park this time, I can’t stop reading these lines.” Then came the chime, “I’m at the seventeenth chapter.” This was said in response to a query from the author’s hand in proper, as to how far along in the book the person had reached since she began to read. Good again, very good, just like preach, as I’d understood, him to be. The only problem with that was, it wasn’t the end of the report, not yet. We were only just getting started, to sweat, of course. Hours later, other calls were to come ringing through the Gator’s gate, sir, and coming home. From folks like ours, some of whom didn’t even bother to… “You know, like to — “ “What, to buy a copy from him and you?”
 “Yeah, you’re right! Who told you?”

They wanted to voice their opinions, though, but not before making sure, and verifying whether the author was a Christian Bro.
 “I’m a man in search of God,” was the reply to them off-chord. “Still searching,” he said, before the continuation of the queries ahead. Are you that type of person too, mi bred? Come along with me, let’s go a-searching then, for some bread. For some answers too, to try and see how to get a monster through to them. More surprises were to come too, like, those coming in from, guess who? Yes, true.

Like, when the very first one who’d called him and her, with nothing but high praise for the book for sure. She who was at the time, well on the way through to the eighteenth chapter and crying. No not for that but, with joy of the high end. Now, she’s heading towards the end, yeah, nearing the outback door to the pasture, and to the “amen.” Now, though, that same person is calling back again to say what she wants the author to know about him, that they didn’t like, like, something that was said in the third chapter one night, near the beginning.

Or perhaps it was in the way how it was said, to improperly clasp her on the ear near the head in the nodding. Could it be so, mi bred? Or could it be that this person was just there to add her voice to the growing chorus? One might have thought so and poured out a cuss. A chorus that was, by then, becoming a mass choir of sorts. Or more like a mob squad of smart? something, (or not.) Voicing their disapproval of that single aspect of the book they were in, to the class, and this particular person just wanted to add her voice also, to the streams of discontent, now hastening on to flow over the waterfall cement, like, just in case? Could it be, could it possibly be so?

Why then did you not have an issue at first, Ms. Flo., like, when you’d read it in the third chapter, and the verse? Now that you are nearing the end of the twenty-eight-chapter book, though, in the pasture too, and on every green grass that grows, over the head and you. After finding out that other folks, some other folks from the in-group, have issues with the book. Or more like that very small passage of the book. Suddenly, you now feel the need to add your voice to the chorus in the nook, to say, yes, me too. I too have got issues with it that way. Yes, I do. Because of what, and who?

Because you don’t want to be seen as the odd person out of the kit bean, like, like the kitty cat? Probably true. “Well, this son of a big-time chicken farmer here,” said Elkhan the Elk to the wild beer. “I am an Elk from the south side of the polish to a shine pole. I don’t have a problem being the odd person out of the fold in this and some other types of situations cold.” So, get out of the way folks, here comes the Elk down the holy smokes, and the good old Saint; Saint Nick himself, doesn’t want anything to do with any part of him this time, on the shelf. But…  

That's it for today, and chapter 3, see you again tomorrow, or sometime thereafter. Don't forget to like, share, and comment. We sure would appreciate it if you would subscribe and follow us somewhere too, thank you. 

@WritingElk