The Writing Machine

Stories by Christian Cloud Abraham

Corbin my Precious Child

On Thursday, the pastor awoke with the sun and trudged through the low-cut grass that was yellow and crunchy beneath his feet. In one hand, he carried a stout wooden stool, in the other, a hand-made tool bin full of plastic letters. The sermon of the eve before had went well and the congregation seemed to have a renewed aura of benevolence about them as they left the church, shaking the pastor’s hand gleefully “whew”ing and “I needed that”ing. The crunching sounds stopped before the humble sign welcoming those who care to come to his humble church, and tipping back his straw hat, the pastor read the black letters that had faded in the sun to a splotchy brownish hue: GOD IS LOVE.

It was early, very early, so only an occasional car hurried by and setting down his stool and letter bin, the pastor took in a deep breath of the cool morning air that melded harmoniously with the scriptures of his sermon still fresh in his mind as he read the sign one last time. GOD IS LOVE. God is love—the thought comforted him. The chattering multitude of birds in a nearby Carob tree could not have agreed more. Nor could have the gentle breeze that rustled the fanning leaves of the palms. In the earliest moments of the morning, God was love.

Pushing his hat back over his forehead, the pastor pulled from the slot in the bin marked K, a folded piece paper with the title for his next sermon scribbled upon it. Checking the letters on the paper with the letters on the sign, (rounding the other side of the marquee, the pastor found that the letters had been switched around to read: DOG IS EVOL. But this only made the pastor laugh and think of how funny the foolishness bound in the heart of a child can be at times) the pastor went around and removed all of the letters that could be used again in his new sermon’s title. When he removed the letters from both sides of the marquee, the pastor used the pencil he kept behind his ear to make a mark on the paper in the appropriate spot. With these letters set aside, the pastor removed the rest of the letters and after collecting them all, took a seat on the stool and put each letter back in its marked slot.

By now, cars were racing by at a faster and more consistent pace, but the morning was still quite tranquil and the pastor began to remove from the slots the other needed letters, marking them on the paper as he went, arranging them in two piles in the order they were to follow each other. When he came to a letter already marked, he sifted through the stack he had set aside and placed those in among the others. Ending this task, the pastor took the first stack and slipped each letter under the clips until his hands were empty. Then he did this again on the other side, chuckling when he remembered DOG IS EVOL, wondering what he might find spelled out of the letters from his new sermon. When all was done, he took a few steps back, tipped his hat and read his handy work: GOD WANTS TO TALK TO YOU. He inspected the other side: GOD WANTS TO TALK TO YOU. Of course, below in permanent lettering were the words: SERMONS BEGIN ON SUNDAYS AT 9 A.M. AND WEDNESDAYS AT 8 P.M. COME HEAR THE BLESSINGS GOD HAS TO OFFER YOU.

The peaceful morning was at its close. Cars were now rushing by with a constant swishing sound and sweat was trickling off the brow of the pastor as he crunched across the yellow lawn with his stool and letter bin in hand, returning to his office while milling through scriptures for Sunday’s sermon in his head.
When Sunday morning came, the pastor was full of fire, elating and enlightening his congregation with messages full of richness and endless wisdom that could be found in the gentle voice of God.

Meanwhile, in a trailer beside the church, an energetic young couple entertained those children under the age of twelve with songs and skits to coincide with the sermon of the pastor’s at a level the children could understand and in a way they would want to want to listen.

First, the man with the eager smile played a guitar and sang a song about God and his love for the children while his wife in the long blonde hair that curled out at the ends, met his notes with harmonies, singing passionately and loudly, with exaggerated smiling expressions, snapping her fingers and swaying from side to side with the motion of her swinging arms. The children all knew the song and sang along with glee. All but Corbin that is. Corbin, Corbin, Corbin, what shall we do about Corbin? While the others sang, Corbin looked round about the ceiling, rapping his fingers on the vinyl covering of his seat, inspecting his shoelaces, fidgeting and squirming. Fidgeting and squirming until a stern tapping on his right knee caught his attention. He looked over, and reaching across the two children beside him that were ignoring the incident, was the long arm (made longer by the wooden spoon, or Rod of Correction, in hand) of Miss Clapp. She scowled a wicked scowl through her magnifying glasses and did not return to her seat in the back until Corbin sang along, his head bopping from side to side and his eyes fixed on the crease where the ceiling met the wall behind the couple strumming so happily. By now the song was winding down and with its diminishment, Corbin returned to his nervous kitten behavior. Oblivious to the new chord being struck by the guitar strumming man with the tightly permed brown hair, Corbin’s head and eyes bounded around the room, grasping for some trivial thing to take his attention, but before this object could be found, a high cracking painfully smacking whacking greeted his right thigh, and once again Corbin found himself looking down the barrel of a loaded expression a bit red now beneath the gray biscuit hairdo of Miss Clapp. And so Corbin repeated his behavior as before and sang absently, flicking his left knee out of time.

Now although the smacking whacking raised quite a din, only the new children’s heads turned to see who the guilty recipient of such a sound could be. Everyone else knew it was Corbin, he always got the spoon, and this demonstration, demonstrated by Miss Clapp several times each Sunday, made the other children especially good natured during songs and skits. The smacking cracking sound of the whacking was enough to make them tremble towards obedience. But Corbin never cried, and rarely let on that he was even in pain, instead he complied briefly and absently, returning to his former state of hyper boredom at his first chance.

After the song, the couple’s faces waxed solemn, it was now time for a season of prayer. Those who wanted to pray could stand up, and when called on, could pray for whatever was troubling their little hearts. Corbin, still flicking his knee when the Tina Johnson began to pray for a new doll house, suddenly began flicking the leg of Tony Allen (who ignored these flickings by sheer will power) on his left. And when Jeremy Crowley started his prayer, a loud clatter and shuffle arose from the back of the room, but no one moved a muscle, nor did Jeremy pause for an instant the prayer for his dog to stop pooping on the carpet so his dad wouldn’t take her to the pound, because they all knew it was Corbin being yanked from his chair in any way Miss Clapp could grab a hold of him to drag his limp body (he used the dead-weight-resistance technique) to the back of the room so he could sit on the floor beside her.

Corbin sat cross-legged and indignant with his chin on his fists and his elbows on his knees, sulking during the rest of the prayer time. Miss Clapp crossed her legs beneath her full-length flower print dress and rested her arms across her chest like an Egyptian, clenching the Rod of Correction while eyeing Corbin steadily, breathing heavy breaths.

When all prayers were through being offered, a refrigerator box, converted into a puppet theater with construction paper and magic markers, was carried from a back corner of the room and placed center stage. The couple slipped behind the box and after a few anxious moments, two, three and sometimes four different colored socks with button eyes and felt tongues played the roles of Moses, David, and Jesus, acting out different tales of God’s voice as heard by them, all in serious comical intonations. The children laughed at times and listened intently at others, but Corbin, as much as he might have liked to have seen the show, simply could not, seeing how he was seated on the floor and the chairs before him blocked his entire view. Eventually, he started to trace the pattern on the bottom of his shoe with a finger, but a smacking whacking deterred that activity abruptly. He discovered a monkey bar callous on his palm that had grown large enough to pick at, and eventually he picked a ridge on it steep enough to chew on—which he did for sometime (Miss Clapp had lost herself in the puppet show)—but one quick glance and the spoon met its mark again and so for the rest of the presentation, Corbin stared at the floor with his fists in his cheeks, moving his puckered lips in circles.

The clapping of the children awoke Corbin from his troubles and craft time was cheerfully announced. Corbin was released from Miss Clapp’s captivity and sent, along with the others, to find a seat at one of the four tables behind him and Miss Clapp.

In the center of each table was a stack of white drawing paper and two jumbo boxes of crayons. When all were seated, the woman with goldy locks instructed the children that today’s craft was to draw a picture of yourself and a picture of God talking to you. The pictures were then to be collected and hung in the lobby area of the church for the whole congregation to view. This public exhibition excited the children and they eagerly took to their task, laughing, talking and fighting over crayons (which Miss Clapp broke up quite efficiently).

Corbin stewed for awhile, resting on his elbow over a blank page, a black crayon in his fingers. When a fight broke out at another table over a midnight blue, a double smacking whacking sound sent Corbin’s attention cracking in the direction of Miss Clapp and he suddenly began to color with the passion of a madman, ignoring the sobs of the two girls, discarding one crayon, replacing it with another, all the time keeping his work covered by his head and forearm. Around him, little praises danced in the air: “Sue, that’s a great alter”, “Timothy, I didn’t know God was a Bulls fan”. But when they came prodding around Corbin’s picture, he put both arms over it and neither the happy couple nor Miss Clapp disturbed him, but instead smiled at each other since for once Corbin was behaving and keeping to himself. Progress at last.

One by one the little folks finished their drawings and stood before the trio of judges, beaming in their compliments: “Nadir, this is a masterpiece”, “What colors Jeremy, this one will definitely stand out.” Paying no attention to these felicitations, Corbin worked faster and faster, turning his paper, scrutinizing his work quickly, changing crayons before resuming his ardent coloring, knowing he was running out of time.

Eventually, Corbin was the last child left at the drawing table, and hearing through the trailer window the congregation sauntering from the church, Corbin slammed down a red crayon and began to march sternly, artwork in hand, atonement on face, towards the front of the trailer where the judges now stood. The three, seeing Corbin approaching so seriously, expressed an excelled amount of bubbly anticipation as he handed the page to the man with the curly head. The tree huddled together. For a short, very short moment, their eyes frolicked the picture amiably, but suddenly goldy locks gasped, curly grimaced, and Miss Clapp broke her spoon in two as they examined before them in the exquisite Crayola style of an eight year old, an intricately drawn cobblestone wall of black and gray equipped with skeletons hanging from chains by their arms and legs and an open iron maiden full of spikes. On the right, a small boy in a green shirt and blue pants wearing a red baseball cap stood defiantly in a yellow beam shooting across the paper, coming from the red eyes of a bearded face wearing a crown on top of his gray hairy biscuit hairdo. The man sat on a golden throne with his legs crossed beneath a full-length flower print dress, one hand resting on the arm of the throne, the other pointing a wooden spoon at the boy angrily speaking from his royal mouth in the form of a bubble, words written and overwritten with black and red crayons that shouted: “YOU BASTARD!”

END
© 2007 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on March 21, 2007 in
Emotion: Subjection, Type: Fiction