WPW: The Proclaimer

The homeless dude who reads the Bible and chapters on female anatomy equally as loud likes to stand on an elevated surface, such as the red overstuffed arm chair in the back, when he does it. His added height allows him to better project as he pronounced, "And the children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah, when Ehud was dead. And Jehovah sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, that reigned in Hazor; the captain of whose host was Sisera, who dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles..."

He stands with one hand holding the book he reads from and the other held out in front of him, as if he were holding a barrel to his chest, to aid in his projection as he reads. On Tuesday, he proclaimed, "The vulva (from Latin "vulva", plural "vulvae" or "vulvas") refers to the external genital organs of the female!"

Last week, he read a section about photosynthesis from a biology book and a passage of the Illiad in the original Greek and never once stumbled on his pronunciation. There seems to be little pattern in his selection. The homeless dude samples from all disciplines and genres equally, with the one exception of westerns, which he refuses to touch.

Needless to say, bookstore staff have begun to make efforts to keep him out of the store. Just yesterday, a male cashier made a running tackle as the homeless dude tried to sneak through the front door. However, he is most persistent and the store staff cannot be every where at once. Today he climbed through a side window, made his selection, and scaled one of the bookshelves.

At that height, he was quite conspicuous and got spotted almost immediately. Three bookstore workers converged on him, but he was too high up and they couldn't reach him before he leapt to the next bookshelf. Today, he selected Emily Dickinson, whose short lines were quite fitting to the occasion.

"I felt a funeral in my brain," the homeless dude said. The bookstore staff reached to grab for his feet and he jumped to the next bookshelf.

"And mourners to and fro..." Leap.

"Kept treading, treading, till it seemed..." Leap.

"That sense was breaking through..." Leap.

They finally caught him in the children's section. The tackler from the other day climbed up on a bookshelf himself and cornered the homeless dude against a wall and wrestled him down. The homeless dude yelled out the last line of the poem before they shoved him out the door, and the customers erupted in applause. You just can't buy entertainment like that. Many of them will be back tomorrow, to be sure, for the matinee.