The Duppy (11 page)
The
Gleaner
issue of that eagerly awaited day when the bombs were expected to fall ran erudite editorials and discussions about whether the hydrogen or the atomic bomb would be zestier to the unknowing Jamaican populace, who were amateurs when it came to appreciating the finer points of bombardment. One columnist grumbled that dropping a hydrogen bomb on a Jamaican was casting pearls before swine, for the brute would be just as happy if you busted his skull with a pickaxe. Various connoisseurs weighed in with opinions that pooh-poohed the other side while stoutly arguing for the superiority of their favorite explosives.
The same
Gleaner
issue also contained full-page ads of appreciation to the Americans for the expected assault, paid for by civic-minded businesses, many of the ads featuring patriotic rhymes about the glories of America written by the winner of an islandwide poetry contest. Only the dreary Seventh Day Adventist churches in Jamaica had refused to participate in the national orgy, the
Gleaner
reported, threatening their members who partook of the bombing jamboree with expulsion.
I read one story after another and trembled, turning the pages as fast as I could read to see what had happened.
I found out that on the day when fire and destruction were expected to rain down on the innocent and fun-loving Jamaican merrymakers, nothing happened: The Republicans in the American Senate mounted a filibuster against the bombardment, claiming that it would only make the federal deficit worse. Not a single drop of a bomb fell.
The frantic Jamaican government, seeing that throngs and hordes at the beaches and picnic grounds would be crushed with disappointment, ordered the Jamaican Defence Force to overfly the crowds and blast them with all available stores of Public Works Department dynamite. Police were ordered to compensate for the lack of entertainment by shooting excursion riders and revellers on sight until ammunition was exhausted, and after that to run over as many as was practicable with their patrol cars. Throughout the island the dismay and disgust at the false alarm was so widespread that the temporary American ambassador was dragged out of his residence by rioters and hanged over and over again, much to his immense pleasure, causing him to telegraph Washington with the request that he be permanently posted to the island. Only the Seventh Day Adventists gloated, rebuking the population about reliance on fly-by-night bombing instead of looking to the biblical promise of flood.
After that day of national disappointment, the
Gleaner
ran stories about the subsequent stormy meetings of Parliament during which the government and opposition took turns blasting the Americans for their selfishness, with one member asking rhetorically, “Mr. Speaker, is this the act of a friend, an ally, to promise a bombing and then, for the sake of saving pennies, disappoint an entire nation?” at which the berobed speaker glowered and looked severe.
When I was done with my reading, I found that I was sweating with such excitement that I had to get some fresh air.
As I was walking out of the building, I stopped off at the reception desk and asked the bespectacled librarian if she had been in heaven during the episode of the bogus bombing, which made her scowl disagreeably and grumble, “Baps, if you please, I don’t want to talk about dat distressing day. I had a picnic lunch packed and me whole Sunday school class with me. De children were all excited ’bout de awaited bombing. Den come to tell, not even a firecracker fall, much less a bomb.”
“Sorry.”
“Well, what was was, and what is is, and what will be will be.
You getting plenty grind, Baps?”
“Oh, yes. Plenty.”
“We’re all good Jamaican Christians, and we must be charitable in our hearts and grind one another regularly. None should lack pum-pum in heaven. If de sisters neglecting you, even though I busy wid me grandchildren, I’ll come grind you tonight.”
“I grind enough already, ma’am.”
“Since Miss B gone back down, I don’t see you again in church. You backsliding?”
“Yes, ma’am. But I am seeking reform.”
“Seek de said reform, Baps. Come back to us! Don’t hang out with rude boy! And stop running around with God in de bush, bawling ‘Boo’ at idle old cow. If dis wasn’t heaven, de poor cow would already dead of heart failure.”
“Yes, ma’am. Good evening.”
“Good evening, Baps! Get grind regular. Uphold standards.
Being in heaven don’t mean dat slackness must triumph.”
“No, ma’am.”
With her kindly pieties still fresh in my ears, I ambled out into the village streets which were shimmering in the loveliness of another beautiful heavenly sunset.
I am a curious man. I like to learn about the world and the people who inhabit it. Before I dropped dead, my hobby was studying geography books, especially memorizing names of mountains and rivers in the Temperate Zone.
So now that I was in heaven, I was eager to travel to other countries and was especially curious to visit the United States and find out why its people were so discontented with God.
One day as I was sitting behind the counter daydreaming about a trip abroad, I glimpsed Hopeton trudging up the hillside with another newly dead Jamaican in tow. I hurried into the back room and got out the official government register and reentered the shop just as the guide and his duppy passenger walked through the front door.
The duppy turned out to be Hector, my thiefing gardener, who had just broken his neck by falling out of my mango tree.
We had a terrible blow-up then and there, for I was still peeved about how he and Mabel had stripped my wallet clean as soon as I was dead.
“Leap year bonus?” I raged at him. “You stinking dog!”
“Is Mabel make me do it, sah!” he whimpered.
Hopeton leaned against the counter and grinned during the whole row, but finally I registered the wretch of a gardener and the guide disappeared down into the bush path.
A lady from the village who had stopped by to pick up some flour offered to break Hector in with a grind of welcome, and the two of them waddled across the street and disappeared down a gully.
A few hours later, the gardener staggered into my shop, did a dance, and chuckled, “Dat nice lady give me seven grind ’pon de gully floor! I shoulda dead fifty year ago.”
An idea was cooking in my brain. While it cooked, I stared up at him long and hard until he flinched. Finally I asked him bluntly, “You want a work?”
He looked me over cagily.
“Work in heaven, sah? Man suppose to work up here? What kind of work?”
What I had in mind was training him to run my business while I went away on my trip. And the techniques of proper shopkeeping were what I intended to teach him—how to run a respectable shop that exerted rulership and discipline over ole negar.
Of course, I knew it wouldn’t be easy, that I would have to slave like a dog to explain my philosophy of business, to demonstrate that we were not just keeping shop and selling goods, we were setting high moral tone and fostering discipline.
“Discipline, sah?” He seemed stunned at this far-reaching concept of shopkeeping. “We not just out to sell saltfish and flour?”
“On one level we selling saltfish and flour. But on anodder level we ruling ole negar.”
He held up his head and wailed, “Lawd, Missah Baps, dis too deep for me poor brain, sah!”
“Dis is heaven, man! If you want a deeper brain, we can fill out a form and get you a deeper brain.”
“I do plan to fill out a form, sah, and make de journey to Kingston for bodily improvement!”
I glared at him. “You want a bigger hood, right?”
He squirmed and looked embarrassed. “Missah Baps, what a way you can see right inna man heart!”
“You not even in heaven a day and already you taking de low road!”
“Dat road not low, Missah Baps! Dat road high, sah! Well high!”
“High? Arrive in heaven today, and right away you looking for bigger hood at government expense. Dat is a high road?”
Our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of a regular customer—a matronly lady who resided in one of the settlements surrounding the village—and I took pains to serve her with every consideration and courtesy so that Hector could observe my philosophy of business in practice.
We exchanged pleasantries about the weather and happenings in the community, and she purchased flour and salt and a pint of red peas, which she declared she intended to use in a soup for her husband’s dinner.
She was gathering her things in a housewifely bustle to depart the premises, when Hector mumbled, “Whoa! I just reach heaven, not three hour gone!”
“Oh, yes?” she replied, beaming hospitably at him. “I hope one of de village ladies gave you a welcoming grind.”
I interrupted gruffly. “Him just get up off de gully ground.”
“Just a tups,” the liar muttered, slumping his shoulders and pretending to be wasting away.
“Dat is not satisfactory,” the woman said decisively, piling her packages firmly atop the counter. “A newcomer deserves more grind dan a tups!”
“Me say de man just get up offa gully ground, Miss Lindsay!
Him get seven grind inna row.”
“Hi, Missah Baps!” Hector whispered frantically. “Have a heart, sah! I only just dead!”
“Now, Baps! Be Christian! Dis is a stranger among us!”
Arm in arm, the two of them trooped out of my shop and headed across the street toward the gully.
An hour later they returned beaming happily, and after the customer had finally left, Hector looked up at the ceiling of my shop and bellowed, “Heaven is one powerful location, sah!”
That week I told God about my plans to visit America, and He said He would like to accompany me.
We had gone on our usual stroll and were sitting in the grassy clearing when I brought up the subject. The American philosopher, who had been dogging our tracks all evening, grumbled that he didn’t particularly wish to travel.
“You not invited,” I told him bluntly.
“But if you go, I’ll have to go, too,” he snapped. “That’s the nuisance about having you both inside my head.”
“Stay home. We’ll manage.”
I frankly advised God against making the trip. I pointed out the dangers of mob violence, military action, impoundment, and kangaroo court, telling him that a nation prepared to reward tourists for attempting capture and extradition of His person would stop at nothing should He attempt a forcible landing on their soil, but the Almighty laughed and said that I was forgetting the law of heaven which reads, “Thou cannot capture the Lord thy God.”
“I don’t forget. But dis is mob rule. Dese people hate your heaven. And dey are born lynchers.”
God said nobody could lynch Him.
“So dey’d lynch
me
, den. For I hear dey don’t like black people either.”
God asked if I wouldn’t appreciate the joy of being lynched, and I replied, yes, a lynching would be a nice treat on my holiday, but still I wondered if it would be worth all the clamor and noise and babble.
God thought about it, sparkling near the limb of a tree under which we sat, and then He said He had an idea—how about if He went with me to America in disguise so that nobody would know who He was and there would be no lynching to contend with, and I said, yes, that wasn’t a bad idea, but how would He disguise Himself and what would He look like, and He asked if He could search my brain for an appropriate identity and become it, for He still had that power.
I invited Him to search to His heart’s content and feel free to use anything He found there as His disguise, and as I sat under the tree, God darted into my earhole and I felt His divine light pierce my skull and wriggle around inside my brain.
“I don’t know why he’s searching your brain, when everything is inside mine,” the philosopher grumbled.
After a few minutes of tingling around inside my brain, God asked what was ole negar.
“Ole negar! No, God! Don’t turn ole negar on me.”
God said, Really, Baps, that is the perfect disguise—the image in your brain is very powerful. He would borrow the blueprint inside my brain and transform Himself into ole negar and that way we wouldn’t have to put up with harassment, public persecution, and patriotic American family-value lynching.
“No, God!” I bawled. “Not ole negar! Please, God!”
But before I could say another word, I heard a loud whoosh, and right before my eyes the spark of light that was God got fuzzy and clumped to form the figure of a muscular black man who stood in front of me, grinning like a nincompoop.
“Wha’ happen, Baps?” He croaked. “You have any white rum?”
“My word!” the philosopher gasped.
The moment Almighty God became a regular ole negar it was worries from start to finish, what with the laziness, carousing, drinking binges, and endless vexations. When I would lose my temper and bark, “God! You going on too bad, you know!” He would belch, scratch His hairy belly, and beg me another lick of white rum.
During His incarnation as ole negar, Almighty God proclaimed that His name was Egbert Adolphus Hackington, and when I asked Him one morning as we sat talking in the tiny drawing room behind the shop why He’d chosen this particular name, He growled, “Lawd, Baps, don’t ask me no fool-fool question, man!” Then He stood up and yawned without covering His mouth, exposing some gruesome cavities, and asked if I’d like to play some domino.
My mother always used to say, “If you can’t say something good about somebody, don’t say anything at all!” But she would also add, for she understood the value of a dirty secret, “But if you know something bad about somebody big, write down the particulars so you won’t forget dem.”
During God’s incarnation as ole negar, I took her advice and carefully recorded His misdeeds in an exercise book, giving names, dates, times, offenses, and places.
Much later, after God had changed back to His peenywally shape, I showed Him these notes and we both read them aloud and laughed, and He praised me for following my mother’s sound advice.
“What is a modder for if not to give advice to a son?” I asked with humility. “And what son would be so ungrateful as not to heed de advice of a wise old modder?”