Authors: Anthony C. Winkler

Tags: #General Fiction

The Duppy (15 page)

BOOK: The Duppy

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I boasted that no harp was ever made that my hand couldn’t tune, and she said that perhaps I would like to fly over to her father’s farm with her and help with the harp-tuning, and I replied, certainly, but before we went why didn’t we sit in the shade of a tree away from the grazing sheep and discuss whys and wherefores of offshore banking.

She agreed and we sat down in the shade of a leafy tree.

What happened next is fuzzy. But I do remember her chucking me off, boxing my ears, and bawling, “Foreign sinner! I am decently caulked!”

“Caulked!” I heard myself scoffing. “Anything American government can caulk, I can uncaulk,” and as I said this I **********Crossed out by barrister**********

As we lay panting after our scuffle, I asked her gruffly, “You sheep caulk, too?”

“My innocent sheep?” she shrieked.

“Who say dem innocent? Dem sheep come like church sister—dem just pretend. Like say, look ’pon dat nice fat ewe over dere **********Crossed out by barrister**********

Later, I rejoined God and flew glumly over the lush prairieland where for miles and miles you saw nothing but ripples in the grass and the occasional pasture cloud on-which a country-boy angel pitched with his harp and rural-sheep.

“Dey caulk everything female on dis whole continent. What is wrong with dese people?” I heard myself muttering to God.

Shouldism
, God replied.

Looking back on this adventure, I realize now that I very nearly became a sheep grinder during our prairie adventure. Many months afterwards, when I had once again been transformed into Baps, I complained bitterly to God about the risk he’d made me run by turning me into ole negar in paradise.

“You hear de argument I put to de woman about her ewe,”

I-griped. “Is a lucky thing I never end up grinding some nasty prairie Wyoming sheep! Is dat why I work so hard on earth to build me up three shops? So I could dead and end up in heaven as a nasty sheep grinder?”

Baps, God said humorously, that would never have happened.

“Why? You stay dere thinking ole negar can’t grind sheep.

You want see what dem do to Jamaican goat. Why you think country people nowadays ’fraid to drink goat milk?”

Baps, I tell you, that would never have happened.

“Why not? Because of fool-fool caulking? Nothing American government can caulk dat Jamaica ole negar can’t uncaulk!”

Baps, you worry too much, God said.

Among the other degenerate acts I attempted to perform during this most trying period of my life were

**********Crossed out by barrister**********

On advice from barrister, this chapter is hereby terminated.

Chapter 21

Given the chance, would Jamaican ole negar—out of the goodness of his heart—risk life and limb to rescue God from capture, experimentation, probe, and assault?

The answer, from the chapter to follow, is
yes
.

Now, before the reader laughs scornfully in my face and flings this book across the room or uses its leaves to wipe batty, please be assured that it is not I, Taddeus Baps, who clings to this wayward opinion. It is Almighty God.

I have tried to convince God that to so willfully interpret the events I am about to relate and insist that an ole negar named Egbert Adolphus Hackington tried to rescue Him could make Him a laughingstock among Jamaica’s congregations and bring back the public worship of Baal.

I have also tried to point out to Him that it is an act of colonialism to venture onto our shores and try to gainsay what we Jamaicans know to be unshakeable truths about the most degenerate members of our population.

Of course, God, having created everything, thinks He’s entitled.

Squeamish readers are strongly advised to skip this chapter.

I was still Egbert Adolphus Hackington—a hardened Jamaican ole negar. I was not Baps.

On my brain I bore the heavy burden of ole negar thoughts and appetites—foremost among them being rum and pum-pum, followed by predial larceny, petty theft, and hopes for a prosperous cock-up-foot-on-veranda retirement after bank embezzlement.

I had been guzzling rum hard that day and had tried my best to get a backslider ewe drunk—for what nasty purpose I cannot even begin to guess. God was putting up with my antics and listening with amusement to my stupid opinions as we flew over the rippling prairie grass in a breeze. Occasionally, I’d swoop down to the ground and try to speechify some shepherd girl I’d spotted roaming the grasslands with her flock, only to learn that she, too, had been patriotically caulked. Then I’d rejoin God and try to explain to him what caused biliousness in Kingstonians, why Chinyman was no good at domino, or why crab louse love to prowl in a full moon, all of which God seemed eager to learn.

Eventually, since it was getting dark, me and God landed on a desolate stretch of prairie and built a campfire. We sat around chatting for an hour or so, or at least I was chatting and God was listening, then I had a snort of white rum and went to sleep.

That night, after sleeping for an hour or so, I woke on the prairie and found myself surrounded by a gang of gunmen leaning down over me and shining bright lights in my face, chattering like street vendors who had backed up a tourist.

“Hey!” I bawled, jumping up.

Out of the blur one of them shot a gun at me. It made a whooshing sound and sprayed a watery light that coiled over my head and around my body like a gummy spider web.

“You got him!” a soldier yelled. “Blast him again with the Godray if he gives trouble.”

I peered at the dim shapes around me in the glare of the lights and recognized among them the shepherd we had met in the field a few days earlier.

“That’s God in disguise!” he bawled.

A burly man in uniform stepped out of the lights and laid a rough hand on my shoulder. He was dressed in a military uniform with a ramgoat embroidered on his khaki shirt.

“In the name of the American government, I place you, God, under arrest,” he said gruffly.

Now, as every logical reader knows, a regular Jamaican ole negar would have bawled, “Who you calling God?” and boxed down the soldier before running off like a thief.

But all the wholesale caulking of female species in Wyoming must have put me under such pressure that I cracked.

This much I immediately knew: The so-called God-ray that they had shot at me was rubbish. I could easily break out of it anytime and thump down the whole bitch lot of them.

I almost did, too, except that I thought, at that instant, that God, who was most likely flying somewhere around the place, was not as rough and tough as me and might not be able to withstand the shot.

I decided then and there to pretend to be helpless before their bogus God-gun to give God the chance to escape back to Jamaica.

And I supposedly did this good deed while I was ole negar incarnate, while I was not myself but Egbert Adolphus Hackington.

My actions, says God, proved the truth of His words when He said unto me,
Yea, Baps, there’s good in the heart of all who walk the
world. Even ole negar
.

The next page is for public thumping. It is left purposefully blank as a convenience to suffering readers who, outraged at-this cock-and-bull story about ole negar’s supposed goodheartedness, now strongly desire to thump down this book.

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The troops bundled me into a truck, and our small convoy rumbled across the prairie. There was no road and the ride over the dark grassland was rough and bumpy.

I was sandwiched in between two soldiers, one of whom, a hefty young man on my right, whispered that he was sorry for helping capture me, but he was only doing his job.

“Doing thy job!” I scorned. “Dost thou not know that I can change thy testicles into naseberry with one flick of my finger?”

“The government took my testicles,” he muttered crossly.

“Fool with thy God and I will replant testicles on thy worthless crotch!”

“Listen, God!” he whispered furtively out of his mouth corner. “Why be so hardheaded? Nobody wants to hurt You.

We know You created us. And we appreciate it. Just last night I said to my wife, ‘You know, I wouldn’t even mind if God joined our softball team.’”

“God plays cricket, idiot!”

“Well, if You played softball, I’d let You join our team. That’s because I appreciate You. But You’ve got to understand, this universe is not up to American standards. It’s got to change.”

“One more word and I smite,” I growled.

“I’ve had my shots. Not even God can smite a patriotic American who’s had his shots.”

We rumbled over the dark prairie the rest of the way in a grim silence.

Our journey ended at midmorning when the convoy pulled-into an underground depot, and I was escorted by the soldiers into a military bunker carved out of the side of a mountain.

They led me down a long underground corridor and put me in a cell whose bars were not made of metal but of spaced light beams shining down from the ceiling.

Two soldiers stood outside the bars of light at rigid attention while I sat on a metal cot and considered my position.

Then a funny thing happened to me, and as I think about it now, I believe God was the cause: I suddenly became aware that I was Baps in Egbert’s body and that I was in jail.

My indoor parson woke up, saw the situation, and bawled, “But wait! How come me inna jail?”

“Shhhh!” I whispered. “We soon break out.”

“Jail break? You going involve me in un-Christian jail break? Rass! Who turn me so black?”

“Hush you mouth! We in disguise as ole negar. We rescuing God.”

“You turn me black to rescue a peenywally?”

“Hush up! Is just for de time being.”

“Nobody turning me into ole negar!”

“So what you going do den?”

“Migrate!”

BOOK: The Duppy

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