The Book of Job Revisited

By G. B. Couper

The Book of Job revisited is a rewrite of a previous G.B. Couper Smashwords publication: A Taxi Romance. Though it is similar, and parts of it are lifted from it, The Book of Job Revisited has been sculpted into a novel that stands on its own merits. A Taxi Romance was inspired by two sources: The Book of Job and Shakespeare’s, The Tempest. This re-visitation is about the common man, a minority below the ninety-nine percent; knocked down financially, emotionally, and creatively after a head injury and the morass of drug and alcohol abuse, he lost everything. Job, by contrast (according to the story in the Bible), is about a one per-center who, by nothing more than a capricious bet in the heavens, lost everything too. Sitting at the city dump, he dove into an ocean of doubt to end with his faith intact and his wealth redoubled along with a new family. He did not do as his wife advised; “Curse God and die.” Max, led by despair to find love his relationship with the Muse, he went to a metaphorical dump of despair by chasing oblivion through, not only drugs and alcohol, but by abandoning any hope of love or restoring his former life. That is, until he met the Fu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G. B. Couper
• Release date: Jul 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310002199

G. B. Couper

George Couper lives in Santa Barbara California and graduated from UCSB with a BFA in 1977. He has worked for the Arts in Corrections program as an Artist/Facilitator at Vacaville's Correctional Medical Facility for the California Department of Corrections bringing into the prison artists, writers, poets, musicians and ceramicists for workshops. He presently volunteers working with homeless addicts and alcoholics. A Time Ago and Then is his first Novel (published on Smashwords: Aug. 9, 2011). His second publication is an illustrated novella, A Taxi Romance, published Nov. 13, 2011 on Smashwords.

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The Book of Job

Revisited

By G.B. Couper

Published by George B. Couper II on Smashwords

Copyright 2014 George B. Couper II

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook is not to be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

The Book of Job Revisited is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locals is entirely incidental.

The Book of Job

Revisited

By G.B. Couper

Table of Contents:

Prologue

Part I

1. Rejection

2. Divorce

3. Vacaville Vacancy

4. The Santa Monica Beach Committee

5. Kuka: The Hard of Darkness

Part II

6. The Ride of the Night

7. Grace and the Fedora

8. The Judgment

9. Tell Us a Story

10. Juan Carlos’ Revenge

11. The Art of Couch Surfing

12. An Angel of GAWD

13. Greyhound Soup

14. A Rude Awakening

15. Sharing Heinlein’s Water

Part III

16. The Beginning of the End

17. The Decent

18. The Bottom

19. A Burning Bush

20 A Cosmic Wager

Epilogue

About the Author

Prologue

A vagrant sat on a bench across the street from an old Victorian house. He appeared to be idle and talking into a pint of white port, speechifying, but the vagrant is from another dimension; he begins, "I’m a watcher. We’ve been watching Max since he came to our attention on a bet. The bet was right out of the Book of Job… you know, the Bible… the one book religious fanatics avoid. We aren’t much for religion beyond the Pearly Gates, but Bible thumpers down on Earth are, and they especially love the cadences and imperial wording of the King James Version in the book of doom. Using its sonorous tone helps them instill fear, scaring the be-Jesus out of non-believers and the lukewarm faithful, with threats from between the pages of Revelations. These types prefer the certainty of blind faith and aren’t drawn to the confession of doubt that is the essence of the Book of Job. For those without a Bible to reference at bedside, this is how it goes:

…and the Lord said to Satan, from whence do you come?

And Satan answered the Lord, and said, from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that fears God, and eschews evil? And still he holds fast his integrity, although you moved against him, to destroy him without cause.

And so on, until this wager:

And the Lord said to Satan, Behold, he is in your hands now; but save his life.

So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to his crown.

…Then said his wife to him, "Do you still retain your integrity? Why don’t you curse God and die?

I apologize for being snide about it, but cursing God and dying seems to us to be perfect legal advice these days. Humankind is getting desperate and is flailing about with no real direction. There are too many of you! It is getting as crazy as it is crowded... But I digress: this is a story, however, of one who floundered and found a way out of his own personal morass; i.e., one out of six and a half billion when this shit went down, seven billion now, and more coming every minute. We watch, but don’t guide. We don’t tug anyone along on a leash. We simply hold up a sign when it is called for, and we held one up several times for this particular one.

Job, as Max, was alone with or without new or old friends. He had a loving family that would have nurtured him but he disappeared from their sight for several years. Like a cat, he went to lick his wounds hoping that everything would be back to normal someday. Someday seemed to always be the day after the one he was in and that reality was one he lived in for almost a decade. He tried to picture what happened to him and his aspirations, how love teased and abandoned him. He searched to discover what in the hell did happen to him on the karmic level?

Heaven… Well, the part of heaven that we’re talking about, looks more like an infinite series of cubicles housing low-level angels stationed at computers; like technical aides from Mumbai. You realize, of course, that heaven, pearly gates and all, is only a configuration of the imagination. Just suppose this scene was imagined… like it was dreamed.

Imagine the sons of God meeting at the Oriental Throne of God way up on high. See a dingy little cubicle, several levels down from the Throne Room, among a near eternity of cubicles stretching out to the horizon, where a lower level bureaucrat angel is sitting at his desk tapping out something on the keys of his antiquated heavenly PC… Perhaps it’s some directives on contemporary changes for venial sins to be stored in other lower level bureaucratic angel’s computers. An Imp, named Lucy, from the Satanic entourage, pops-in to chat with his old pal.

The angel looks up and says, Look what the cat dragged in. What you have been up to old boy? Angel is delighted to see Lucy, The Satanic Majesty’s Ambassador’s aide, because any company, even a visit from a minor imp from Hell, breaks up the eternal tedium of heavenly duties.

Oh, I’ve been tagging along with The Master: Lucifer, Lucy says, pumping up his chest as best he could in his pathetic and scrawny frame. Lucy continues, You know, Numero Uno... the Big ‘L’… to and fro, and all that shit.

Angel looked up at his console, scrolling down the page… sees Max’s name… downloads the file and says, yawningly, "Lookie here. This guy; see through his huge ego, he seems okay, drinks a little too much, but who wouldn’t? Angel takes a sip from a full pint of heavenly nectar and passes it to the Lucy.

Ahhh, thanks, we don’t get much of this stuff in down there… except when one of you guys change sides… Ya know? Lucy downs the whole pint and hands it back empty.

Angel goes on without missing a beat; Tries to cheat on his wife now and then… but he rarely gets lucky on that account. They just split up. But he isn’t such a bad guy. Treats his daughter pretty good and all… Lots of mutual affection… Pays double the going rate for child support… Hmmm…? Did that on his own without a court order... that ought to be good for a point. Has a good job teaching art to, of all people, prison inmates: painting, sculpture, and seems to actually care about the people he works with… pretty sincere… check him out. What do you think?

Oh yeh, he looks like an okay guy, Lucy admits, but, let me see here. He’s been damned lucky. No big problems… has his health and his wits about him. What problems he does have seem to always work out… gifted creativity maybe? Hey, wait one minute; he has some kind of protection goin’ for him. Even when he gets drunk and stoned he hasn’t gotten in trouble since his early twenties… no fights or any bad shit… a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. What would happen if he had that protection lifted a bit?

Have at him, if you’re bored. It might be interesting to see what he is made of. I say he’ll come out smelling like roses. Angel hasn’t much but he has faith.

You’re on. How about a case of Nectar? Lucy’s confidence rises, I’ve seen these types before. They can be moral, good and happy as long as they don’t have to go out of their way too far for it. Let’s say you let me take away his wits and his creative drive and see what happens to that happy-go-lucky chap after I’m done with him? Imp has the power to afflict on a limited scale. He sees Max’s weakness for escapism and this time he is ready to wield the power of addiction. By the time I’m done with this guy he’ll be such a loser that even the Big Kahuna won’t recognize him.

Angel knows something that the imp’s from hell aren’t privy to, or they just can’t accept; that the weakest of your kind have tenacity and the capacity for it when it comes down to plain-ole-suffering. Angel knows Lucy will never pay-off if he loses and wonders after the imp leaves, I’ve seen cases like this before. They can’t get so bad that the Kahuna doesn’t recognize them.

Part I

Chapter 1. Rejection

Of course, Max, like Job, had no idea what the hell was going on in the heavens. These things came about when it seemed he was just plain minding his own business and marking time like the Red Headed Stranger of the Willie Nelson song…. Ridin’ and hidin’ the pain. He sat inside of his tiny shotgun apartment, in that broken down termite infested old house, leaned over the keys of his old portable typewriter and strained to read the monitor screen where the e-mail posted another rejection from a New York agency. The Remington Rand typewriter he leaned over remained his oldest and dearest friend. He’d used this Noiseless Number Seven for well over three decades and, taken out of storage several times, he pounded out drunken rants, sometimes poetry, and, angry letters to editors. He had, in recent years, tried his hand at serious writing. Stacks of pages all beat up, coffee stained, filled with typos and human error cluttered his desk. He tapped them out on a keyboard into manuscripts that have a greater need to be oh so perfectly pristine. Edited, altered, and spell-checked, and by the midnight-light of the consul, before he pressed a finger to the key, with a click, the printer whirred and chucked out chapters from his life. Christ, he hadn’t used white-out since… oh, around 1994.

He put on his glasses to read, Please be assured I have carefully considered your project, Max… said the e-mail, Unfortunately I have to pass on your manuscript. One thing that concerns me is the length of the manuscript; however, I felt the voice was strong. I planned to request more but after reviewing your query and seeing that your protagonist, Mick, had instigated and participated in a rape, I felt I couldn’t invest in him.

Meoooow, Homer stretched out on the top of the old monitor.

Max relit a butt from an overfull ashtray on top of a stack of three hundred pages and, holding a near empty fifth of Jack to his lips like a microphone, he tried to Marconi his voice through the wall all the way to New York City, Hey you… yes, you over there on Agency Island! I’m not the rapist. Mick, my character, is the god damned rapist! You would not have been investing in the friggin Mick. You would have been investing in me, Max!

Then he looked up at Homer to assure the old Buddha and purred, Does she think I’m a rapist?

The phone rang. Homer didn’t answer the question. He gave the phone a nod; and then waited patiently for Max to do something about that damned noise. Max listened for the answering machine to kick in. That was one of only a few concessions he’d made to the twenty-first century: a desk-top computer and digital answering machine. He couldn’t screen calls with voicemail.

Max? Are you there? Hey, pick up the phone… It was the Fu. He took a pull off the pint as she insisted. Max, please, pick up the phone.

Okay, hello. he’s thinking, let her speak, dammit… she is the Fu. He dubbed her that because she calls her golden triangle, the Fou-Fous-nette (Fu-Fu-Net): slang, French slang, which loosely translates as silly-boy trap. Besides that reference, ‘The Fu’ fits her well because loving her has been a martial art of the heart… kung-fu; with feints, jabs and round-house kicks. Besides, he liked to honor the cuteness of it; the name, Fu, and her deadly silly-boy trap.

Max, we need to talk, She sobbed.

Girl, I’m too old for this. he parries. Too often in the past he’d heard this phrase. It was the phrase Celeste employed when she told him she wanted a divorce. It is always bad news, Does talk mean, I listen, while you talk?

It’s not what you think.

Not what I think? Shit, she’d put me in limbo a few times before. Every time we get close I get this call. I get enough rejection from…

Max, listen to me.

Okay, what is it this time?

Nicky saw us. He watched us last night.

Oh?

He said he stood at the door for twenty minutes or more… we were just sleeping…

Ah… He hoped Nick hadn’t seen the action. It’s a big house and but Nick was on the couch in the music room when Max slipped out that morning, Kind of creeps me out, ya know?

I know. I was drunk and… I don’t remember… Did we do anything?

…and so was I… I don’t know. But Max did know. Still combing the cob-webs out of that dark cavern between his ears and behind his eyes: He remembered every sob, caress, and the paean of sweet surrender to each other! My God! He would never forget… No, he couldn’t forget… but she … did she? ... How could she black-out and forget last night?

We can’t do this again… I mean, Nicky and I are through but…

…but what? Max hated to admit it but he’d done something with the Fu that he had not done since Celeste. Max… Max the bottom-feeder, had fallen in love and he’d fallen for a married woman at that. He wasn’t sure what falling in love meant but he had done it and, once it was done, it couldn’t be undone. They call it falling for good reason. You can’t stop a fall until you land on your ass. Max’s patron saint was a Kachina cat and a cat always lands on its feet.

She went on, ignoring the question, My God, I can’t stand looking at him. He sulks around the house with hurt-puppy eyes saying nothing. He is in the living room now with the TV on but he isn’t watching it. If only he would get mad! She spat this out with an air of contempt compounded by the castration that came so natural to her French accent.

Max knew what she meant though. He’d known ole Nicky less time than he knew The Fu. Nick was usually coked up or drunk… in and out of all the Twelve Step programs. Come to think of it… so was Max; well, drunk, but he eschewed the Twelve Step bit. Whatever the case, he thought of Nick as being so much more a shithead than himself.

It began a few years before, when Max was hanging at Mel’s,