The Duppy (10 page)

God said He said, Let there be stick. And there was stick.

“Den what after stick?”

Scratching with the stick.

I said, “Oh, first stick, den scratching. Make sense. Den what next?”

He said, Then leaf, for the stick looked scrawny and ugly without a leaf.

“First stick, den leaf?” I asked, making sure I got the sequence right. “When did de light come?”

God said light came later, that He didn’t create the universe from the top down, but from the bottom up, no matter what you read. Stick was first. Light was last.

We were trampling through the bush path as we talked, and I began to feel like I got all that bust-assing over the years for nothing, and I griped to God how come He let me auntie nearly kill me with beating to memorize de Bible when de whole book was wrong? All dat beating over the years, for what? To memorize a stinking lie?

“And you know what else?” I groused. “If I could buck her up now and tell her how it really go—dat You say You created stick first—she’d bust me head and make me repent. Dis is not a fair life, you know, God? Man not supposed to get beating because him don’t memorize a lie.”

God said that I had a point, but He never told my auntie to beat me.

“But she beat me in Your name!” I bawled.

But without proper authorization, He said.

We plodded deeper into the bush, our feet cracking twigs underfoot.

“I should go look her up and thump her down!”

God said, Baps, you wouldn’t do that to you old auntie. You are too much the gentleman.

“Gentleman, me backfoot, God!” I squawked. “Is not one beating she give me over dis damn Bible, you know? Is not two beating! Is not even twenty or thirty beating! Is at least one hundred backside beating! She’d say, ‘And Cain knew his wife and she bore him who?’ and if you didn’t bawl out ‘Enoch’ right away, you’d get a bitch lick. And den she’d say, ‘And Seth live a hundred and five years, and he beget who?’ and if you didn’t bawl out, ‘Enosh, with a
s
,’ buuf! anodder bitch lick! And woe be unto you backside if you ever mix up ‘Enoch’ wid ‘Enosh!’ Buuf! Buuf! Buuf! Buuf! Bitch lick fall like rain!”

God said He knew that bitch lick was painful on earth, but didn’t it feel wonderful in heaven?

I sputtered, “Yes, of course! But is on earth dat aunties love to drop bitch lick on boy pickney! Come up here when dem know a lick sweet, and you think dem goin’ drop even one? Dem woulda dead first!”

I must admit that I was feeling sorehearted about the recollection, but not unhappy, because no heart can feel unhappiness in heaven even when it’s miserable.

The philosopher suddenly stopped in his tracks, dropped on the ground, tore off his right shoe, and popped a nasty wet kiss on his own big toe. “My Lord and my God!” he croaked.

“What now?” I asked suspiciously.

“I must be God! I didn’t realize it until just now! It just hit me! Please leave, so I can worship me.”

“You want me to kick you backside all over dis field?”

God sparkled with laughter and said, Come, Baps, let’s continue on our way.

“But dis damn man say dat he’s God! He need a good lick!”

God just chuckled and continued down the path, and when I turned to look right before we crested a ridge and descended into a wavy lowland pasture, I saw that the philosopher had grabbed a religious fanatic petchary off a nearby limb to fire up as a burnt offering to himself while the zealous bird tweeted with evangelical hysteria, “Singe me backside! Burn me in de righteous fire! Burn me in de righteous fire! Scald me unholy rass in de heavenly pot!”

From that first meeting on, God and me walked the countryside of heaven as close personal friends.

No doubt some readers are asking why Almighty God would develop a friendship with a wretch like me, and to tell the truth, I used to wonder about that myself in the beginning. The only explanation I can give is that I never made a fuss over Him, thinking that over the years He had probably had His bellyful of worship and adoration.

“Baps,” I asked myself that night after our first meeting, as I lay abed listening to a patoo outside my window, “how would you feel if you were God Almighty and de multitudes were forever bawling praise and glory in you name morning, noon, and night?”

I thought long and hard about it in the darkness of the room before whispering a heartfelt reply, “Ole negar bawling hallelujah over me instead of shoplifting? Who could ask for more?”

Thinking deeper on the subject, however, I saw at once that God Almighty must be sick and tired of all the hymning and fussing over Him and probably wanted nothing more than to be treated just like any other customer.

So I never jumped up in His presence like I was at a revival meeting; I never hosannahed; and the nearest I ever came to

Chapter 13

For the next few weeks, God and me gallivanted all over the countryside. We went to cricket match, agricultural fair, and hiked up mountain trails where we would bawl “Moo” to cows grazing on hillside pastures, making them jump while we scampered off, laughing wildly. We trekked down to rivers for a swim in cool bubbling water while janga shrimp peered out suspiciously at us from the shadows of overhanging water reeds. A nicer, more good-natured companion than God a man can never have, and He and I romped during those fun-filled days over the countryside of heaven as carefree as schoolboys on summer holiday.

That was when I began to notice that American tourists were always going out of their way to attack and try to kidnap God.

One day, for example, as we were coming from the river, an American Baptist minister jumped out of the bush and swatted at God with a fishnet. I dropped the wretch with a good thump that made him squeal with ecstasy, and we grappled and rolled down the gorge, fighting and biting and shivering with the joy of thump. We ended up sprawled on the river bank, muddy water trickling over our clothes as we strangled each other, enjoying mutual suffocation while God soared over the fray and sparkled at our delight.

The Baptist jumped up and bellowed crossly that he hated fighting in heaven where a thump felt sweet, he couldn’t stand that shooting and knifing were all wholesome family values, and as far as he was concerned heaven was a demented and unholy land for which God was to blame.

But even as he said this he was chortling, for no man in heaven can be unhappy, and frustration only makes the malcontent happier.

Another time me and God were in the middle of administering a domino six-love in the side yard of my shop when two American Junior Chamber of Commerce leaders rushed though the gate and tried to chop up God with a machete, hacking so wildly that they slashed off the foot of a bystander who loafed nearby criticizing the play.

This being heaven, the severed limb immediately sprang back like a frisky frog and reattached itself, occasioning no bodily harm and tickling the victim.

The rest of us grabbed the brutes and beat them so hard that they begged us not to stop. They swore afterwards that the experience of a Jamaican village beating was more delightful than being hanged last year for spitting on a street in Singapore. From now on, they vowed, as we threw them out onto the street, they would spread the word to their friends about the wonders of a Jamaican lick.

In a third episode, two American Bible students hid themselves in a tree overhanging the footpath leading to the river and tried to drop a grocery bag over God as He flew past. I pulled them off the limb and gave them such a satisfying kick that they immediately bent over and begged a second helping.

When I asked the wretches why Americans were always trying to capture Almighty God, they explained breathlessly that there was a federal bounty on Him, and if they had succeeded in bringing Him back to the authorities, they would have been national heroes.

“We’d even have gotten extra credit in our Homiletics class, too,” one said, looking disappointed. “And a definite ‘A.’”

“Get an ‘A’ by doing you lessons and studying hard,” I scolded, “not by trying to unlawfully capture de Almighty.”

“But God is wanted in every state!” one of the youths protested.

“He’s a fugitive from justice!”

“He’s on the run from the Feds!”

“You still can’t come here and think to capture God without getting a bitch lick from patriotic Jamaicans. Now go ’bout you business and leave de Almighty alone.”

They turned, shuffled partway down the woodland trail, paused, and hurried back looking hopeful.

“Do you think you could drop-kick me again?” one of them asked.

“Me, too,” the other seconded. “That was the most fun.”

“No. I don’t drop-kick tourists. Dat is harassment.”

“We don’t mind being harassed!”

“I said no! Idle brutes! Go ’bout you business!”

Why was Almighty God wanted in America? What law did He break, and how dare the American government encourage its citizens to travel to Jamaica and try to capture the Creator?

I asked God one day after we’d enjoyed a brisk river swim and were sitting on the banks sunning ourselves, but He shrugged and said there were basic differences between Him and the Americans, that they had sent umpteen delegations to Him, arguing that a hell was needed, that common decency demanded celestial pain and suffering.

“Pain and suffering?” I asked, amazed. “Dey want you to put pain and suffering in heaven?”

Yes, God said, and they were quite dogmatic about it, too. They wanted to hang a criminal and make him stay hanged, with a broken neck that hurt like the dickens even in the afterlife. They wanted bombing that would make the bombees bawl bloody murder. They especially hated the three universal laws of heaven.

I asked God please to explain these universal laws.

He numbered them for me, and I write them down in the exact words of the Almighty’s thoughts that flowed into my brain that afternoon on the river bank.

After the Almighty was finished, I asked for clarification of meaning.

“What it mean dat water find its own level?”

God replied that if thou was a wretch, a lowdown thief, a-nasty and unrepentant dog, thou wouldst find other thief and-dog of thy bosom to cleave to and keep thy company in heaven and wouldst not have to consort with well-spoken clerks and sanctimonious churchgoers while pining for the companionship of other dirty-minded thief and dog.

“So dog and thief can walk together and make each odder happy. Hallelujah! Give praise! What law two mean?”

That law, God said, meant that no matter what thou doest in heaven, whether thou shouldst buck thy toe on a rockstone or fall off a mountaintop and break thy neck, thou wouldst find the experience sweet, wouldst feel no pain, ache, injury, hurt, discomfort, or twinge in thy bones, for thou wouldst be always blessedly happy in heaven.

I digested for a moment the meaning of this powerful law, for it explained why even a busted head in heaven was pure bliss and delight.

“And law three?”

That one was easy, said God, for that meant that thou couldst move heaven and earth with thy science and industry, but no matter what thou didst, thou wouldst not be able to capture, lay hands on, extradite, or repatriate the Lord thy God, no matter whether thou tried obeah or butterfly net—thy God was immune to thy perversions of capture.

“God,” I asked, after a long moment of ingestion and digestion, “how come you talking so funny?”

God laughed and asked if He was putting on an American twang. I said no, He didn’t have a twang, but He was “thying”

and “thouing” and “theeing” up the whole place.

He said He was sorry, but whenever He talked religion, “thou” and “thy” and “thee” jumped automatically into His mouth because of all the years of listening to Baptists and Holy Rollers.

“God,” I joked, “thou hast an impressionable heart.”

Baps, God replied chuckling, thy backside!

And the two of us burst out laughing so loud that a bullfrog sitting on the banks of the river gaped at us as if to ask if we took life for a joke.

I decided to further investigate the dispute between God and the Americans.

One afternoon I closed up my shop and took a walk to the village library and looked up back issues of the
Daily Gleaner
for stories about the quarrel with God.

I found out that God had resided in Jamaica for many years and had even become a naturalized citizen; that over the years the Americans had repeatedly pressed for His extradition to face charges of contempt of Congress for maliciously creating and obstinately maintaining an un-American heaven and had even given a deadline for raining down hydrogen bombs on the island if their demands about God continued to be ignored.

I read that Parliament had declared a national holiday on the anticipated day of the nuclear bombardment, with banks and insurance companies shutting down for the long weekend so that staff and their families could fully enjoy the anticipated holocaust. Enterprising vendors had printed T-shirts with colorful logos and designs celebrating the occasion. Schools had closed islandwide for the week as they do during Easter so that pupils and faculty alike could have time off to relish Armageddon. The island’s betting shops had posted odds on which parish would receive the first bomb, which the highest recorded megatonnage, which would suffer the greatest radiation fallout.

I continued to read eagerly.

According to the
Gleaner
, on the day of the anticipated bombardment, all Jamaican public beaches, rivers, and picnic grounds were jammed to capacity with colorful masses of festive people winding up their bodies to the throbbing rhythms of reggae and soca as they eagerly awaited the joys of being blown to bits courtesy of the United States. Bickering and squabbling reportedly broke out among some of the celebrants who were diehard supporters of the Marine Corps and those who were staunch backers of the Air Force about which branch of service could be expected to drop the sweetest bomb. A melee erupted between these rival factions at Dunns River, with rockstones and bottles pelting down on the heads of the teeming throng, busting skulls to the delight of the squealing, carousing revellers.