The Duppy (17 page)
I don’t blame you, Baps. I’m just saying you can’t make a man who weewee from his head and think with his belly.
Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a shirker or a slacker, that I have a good brain and a sound head for business, that I don’t gripe over every little trouble, and that when I make up my mind to pursue a goal, I never fail to achieve it. That is the way I was raised—to always do my best and to work hard at realizing my ambitions.
So it is not easy for me to admit that as a creator I was a flop.
Of course, I didn’t flop because my designs were faulty or my overall plan for the world was not first rate. To this day, I believe that hood and pum-pum belong on people’s foreheads, and I don’t business what God says, I still maintain that a biting mango is an improvement over the present wishy-washy fruit that permits every thiefing mouth to eat it.
And I still believe that if God had suspended physical law, which He said He could not, and allowed me to create people from scratch, my world would have turned out better than His-earth.
I did get God to make one man with his hood on his forehead, but the poor fellow was obviously not happy with his private parts being hung in public, and as soon as he could draw breath and walk, he hung a doily over his face to hide his hood and said several prayers to me, Baps, begging to have his hood relocated to a more private spot, claiming that bowing down to a toilet gave him a complex.
Sometime after my creation experiment was over, I met him in heaven where he was working as a cultivator on a small farm in St. Elizabeth, and he attacked me with a machete, shrieking, “Put me hood on me headfront and make me look like a rhinoceros, you rass dog you!”
He gave me at least fifty chops, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed, and when he saw that I was relishing his attack, he abruptly stopped it and stormed away grumbling that if he ever met me up on earth in mortal form, he would cut my throat and shove me headfirst down a toilet so I could personally experience the indignity of forehead weeweeing.
“You have to admit dat you were not a hypocrite!” I called after him, as he stormed away.
“How could I be a hypocrite?” he shrieked, beside himself. “I couldn’t even see to walk with me blasted hood drape over me eye!”
One evening me and God flew to a distant dark corner of the universe that was bare of planet and wrapped in night and looked like the kind of hill-and-gully place where celestial cobweb might lurk. God had just nyamed out five novas in the Milky Way, and He was feeling powerful and strong.
All right, Baps, He said. Create a better world.
He created a world as I instructed, and I reigned over it for an aeon. Of course, an aeon to God is not even a flea bite, for time does not exist in His presence, and it all went past in a blink.
I don’t know exactly where God got the people from to put into my world, for that was His business, not mine. I was only interested in ruling over them, no matter if they came from Timbuktu.
It was a world that looked like the one we presently walk on—round and adorned with hills, valleys, rivers, streams, and-oceans—and it was shaped that way not because I-especially wanted it, but because of physical law, which God said He could not ignore.
My personal preference was for a flat world where a family could go for a Sunday drive to the edge and peer into space, but God said that gravity would not support a flat earth, so we had to settle for the typical fool-fool ball spinning through the fluxy heavens like a gig.
Since God would not let me change the form of man and execute the improvements I have already discussed, He made the inhabitants of my world to look much like you and me, with this exception: They had no free will. I also instructed God to make them so that they would know that I, Baps, was their God, so that there was no other God but Baps, so that there would be no doubt in their minds about who Baps was or whether or not they should bow down to Baps, so that they would never question my authority or ponder my nature, so that when I said, “Jump!” every bitch one of them must jump without argument, and He said, All right, Baps, and did maketh my man and woman according to these specifications.
I ruled over them for one hundred years.
I would appear unto them and walk among them and they would fall prostrate on their faces and wail, “Almighty Baps!
You are our Lord and God!”
And to prove it, I instituted a ritual where they would kiss my batty during worship.
And every blessed one of them, from elder to juvenile, worshipped as they were ordered by their Creator and kissed my batty whenever I walked among them.
One time, I remember, as one old woman was getting ready to fervently kiss my batty, I said unto her, “Woman, talk de truth! Wouldst thou rather not bite Baps’s batty?”
“No, Baps!” she cried with horror. “I could never bite thy batty. Thou art God and I love Thee.”
And the whole lot of them continued to love me for one hundred years, no matter what trouble and woe I visited upon them, for they had no free will.
Sometimes a cranky spirit came over me to clap the wretches with a thunderbolt and blow a few of them to smithereens—to test their love and devotion—and without fail, even after their wives and husbands and children were blasted to pieces before their very eyes, verily, they would come rushing up to me to kiss said batty in devout worship, and when I wouldst tempt them and say, “Now, talk de truth! I just dynamited thy family to Kingdom come! Wouldst thou rather not bite my holy batty than kiss it?” The multitude would wail and rend their garments and gnash their teeth and pop oath that they would rather kiss Baps’s batty for worship and never wouldst bite it no matter how Baps might smite them.
After one hundred years of ruling over them, I grew weary of the nasty batty-kissing brutes.
“Dis is no fun,” I complained to God. “Dem come just like robots.”
God said, Yea, Baps, that’s the problem with creating people without free will.
“All right! So give dem a free will.”
God said if that was my desire He would comply, but with that came free choice, and with free choice must come random.
“What?”
Things will happen on their own—some good, some bad. And you, Baps, will have no control over events.
“You mean to say dat a wicked man might live long and prosper and dead in him sleep while a good hardworking man might get lick down by a bus in de flower of youth?”
Exactly.
“Dat is how Your world run now! I want a better world dan Yours! Me not dealing wid no random!”
Baps, you can’t have free will without free choice. If you have choice, it means that nothing can be foreseen or preplanned.
“So according to You, under random a good man could prosper and live a long, happy, fruitful life and die in him sleep with contentment and glory?”
Yes.
“Name one such man,” I dared Him.
Baps, I don’t get into particular cases. That is not my affair.
“You are God! It supposed to be Your affair!”
If I make it my affair, it won’t be random.
I suffered a long pause to pass between us, for verily, I was well vexed with this unrighteous state of affairs.
“All right, God,” I finally said. “I will agree dat random can rule my world. But I need a hell to cleanse de wicked with fire.”
Certainly, Baps. If that’s what you wish.
He had given in so easily that I got suspicious.
“Hold on, now! In my hell, de fire must really burn and make sinners howl with pain.”
God grew silent and saith nothing for a long while, which I found out later was the passing of twenty years.
No, Baps, He finally saith, I can’t change the laws of heaven.
You know law number two is,
Thou shalt feel good no matter
what.
I was upseteth and it showeth plenty, for I paceth up and down in the gardens of my world and gnasheth my teeth as I tried to comprehend the reasoning behind God’s bullheadedness.
Finally, overwrought, I went up to God and we had it out on the spot.
“God,” I told him, “I am a reasonable man.”
Verily, Baps.
“Now, tell me plainly. Why can’t I have a hell to burn a few sinners for a little bit? I don’t want to burn dem for eternity like de Americans. Dat is too patriotic. How about a ten-thousandyear hell? You give me a hell with real fire and real pain, and I get to broil my sinners in it for ten thousand years. But den dem well cook up, anyway. Wha’ you say?”
One hundred years passed.
And God said, No.
“Why?” I asked, kicking a nearby bush in my vexation.
God grew silent for another hundred years.
And God trembled and wept.
I rushed quickly to His side and embraced His light and comforteth Him, and the light of God sobbed in my arms.
“God!” I bawled, giving His light a little shake. “Why dost Thou weep?”
Because, Baps, saith God, I can’t stand pain.
“You can’t stand pain? Who giving You pain? I’ll thump down his rass on de spot!”
You want to give me pain, Baps.
“Me?! Me, poor poor sinner, give You, God Almighty, me best friend in de universe, pain? Bite You tongue, God! Shame on You!”
God saith he hath not a tongue to biteth.
“Well, bite anything! For I would never give You pain. Is sinners I want to burn, not You! You know dat!”
But Baps, saith God, I am the sinners.
“How you mean? You’re de nicest man in de world. You couldn’t even mash a ant!”
Baps, saith God, all things are me, and I am all things. If thou burnest a sinner to suffer real pain, thou burnest me. I hateth the pain of fire, Baps. Don’t burnest me.
“So dat’s why You have nothing but sweetness and joy up here, for if real pain was up here, You’d feel it, too?”
Thou saith it, Baps. And I hateth pain.
“But how come You don’t feel de pain from earth?”
I do, but my small size and the large distance giveth me merciful and needful buffer. However, every now and again I feel a pinprick.
I paceth my world, carrying God in my arms, while I contemplated His truth.
I walked my world for twenty, nay, thirty circumferences.
Then I declared unto God, “God, Thou art too softhearted. You need to come down to earth and keep shop with me sometime and mix up with Jamaican ole negar. Dey will toughen You up.”
I don’t think so, Baps. Ole negar is me, too.
So I gave up on hell and told God that He could give my created subjects free will and loosen random upon them.
And over these wretches I reigned another hundred years as-God.
Under this kingdom of random, all manner of wickedness and viciousness spread among my people. Evildoers prospered; pious men and women drowned or on their way to Sunday service suffered unprovoked bucking down in fields by unruly bulls. Innocent children choked on their food, while vicious liars prospered and grew fat. Plotting, scheming, and backbiting ran amok among the population. Disease struck down the virtuous and the wicked in equal parts. Drive-by shooting developed in the city parts; goat-grinding spread among the country youth.
I had told God that I wanted my world to be simple, that my people could keep a goat or a sheep but were barred from any mechanical invention such as weapons, slingshot, spear, and bow and arrow; that they might keepeth a crook stick and eateth harddough bread and bun and cheese and yam and ackee and saltfish—a hardy fare for a simple life—and God said, Yea, Baps, but with random the simple life might not last long, and I said, “You leave that to me, I’ll show You how to manage a world.”
And at first I checked progress and stemmed wickedness, for as soon as I spotted a wrongdoer, I’d appear unto him or her and bellow, “Ye rass, ye! I saw dat! Take dis, dirty brute!” and blast the wretch with lightning, sending him straight to heaven.
Then one day I was struck by horrible betrayal and blasphemous double cross that taught me a lesson.
I was flying over my creation when I spotted a man and a woman arguing on a country trail, and even as I watched, the man picketh up a rockstone and busteth open the woman’s head. She fell onto the ground, wallowing and bleeding, while the man scrambled for another rockstone, but I appeared unto him and said, “You want bust something, bust dis!” and blasted him with a thunderbolt.
The woman got off the ground, holding her bleeding head, and stood mutely looking down at the smoking charcoal heap that remained of her assailant, and then, approaching, she declared her wish to kiss my Godly batty.
I consented to permit grateful worship and she stooped down and tore a big chunk out of the right cheek of said batty with a vicious bulldog bite.
Now even though the bite felt sweet, for I was still under heavenly conditions, I bawled, “Rass, woman! Thou bitest batty! Ungrateful wretch! Why?”
“To teach you to keep you damn nose out of my blasted business!” she growled, charging me like a wild beast, as if to chunk out flesh from the left cheek, and she wore such a snarling ferocity that I flew up in a tree and pitched on a limb while she roamed beneath, circling the trunk and stoning me as if I were a lowly pea dove.
“I don’t understand dese people,” I grumbled later to God, telling Him about the incident.
God said, Baps, you haven’t seen anything yet.
“You and You random mash dem up. Dere mentality is too rebellious and contrary. You can’t trust dem.”
That’s because they have free will, said God.
“Free will or no free will, nobody biting my batty again,” I groused. “From henceforth, all batty-kissing is banned from worship service. Make de brutes build temple and burn incense.
Days of batty-kissing worship done.”
God said solemnly that He thought that was a good idea.
“You like a fatted calf,” I mumbled defensively, “I like a batty-kiss.”
My populace grew fierce, undisciplined, and unruly. As soon as I smote one for a wickedness, another took his place and committeth an even greater wickedness. I fleweth about my world here and there smiting and clapping on headside and headback with thunderbolt to maintain discipline, civility, and righteousness, but with the people engaged in rampant grinding, they bred like flies and multiplied, formeth sects and cults, held up Baals before me, denied my divinity, and when I would intervene and singe their rass, they would say afterwards that I was not a God but UFO or Bigfoot; that I was earthquake and hurricane and other worldly disturbance; and when I appeared unto their doubting scholars and scribes and declared, “It is I! God Baps!” they would say, “If thou art Baps, submit to analysis and probe,” and when I would bellow indignantly, “Probe where? What you want to probe? Thou shalt not probe the Lord thy God!” they would smirketh amongst themselves and whisper, “This is the bad roast beef we ate for dinner that has travelled to our brains and now giveth us hallucination. This is no God!” and if I caused a thunderbolt to explode among them, they would whimper, “Verily, the gravy was rancid, too!”