The Duppy (2 page)
She returned a few minutes later dragging Hector, the old gardener, into the room, and the two of them approached my dead body cautiously on tiptoe. The gardener bent over and felt for a pulse while Mabel tried vainly to pry open my closed eyelid with a greasy thumb.
“What happen?” she asked in a quaking voice, kneeling beside my body.
“Mr. Baps dead, is what happen,” the gardener replied sourly, lumbering to his feet with much popping of old bone.
“Listen to me!” I urged, trying my best to stay calm. “I can still see and hear you, so it’s not as bad as it looks. Can you hear me? How I look? Do I look dead? I don’t feel dead! I just outta me body! Odderwise, I feel strong. How I look?”
It was obvious that they could neither see nor hear my duppy self, for the two of them ignored my questions and just stood there staring down at my dead body.
Mabel’s face hardened like quarry rockstone. “So because Mr. Baps decide to dead now, I must go look for a new job? You think work easy to find?”
“Oh, no,” the gardener said amiably. “But Mr. Baps clearly dead. And if you think him was tight with money when him was living, now dat him dead you really going see tight.”
“I wasn’t dat tight! Shame on you, talking so ’bout you employer who just dead!”
They moped around in the drawing room staring glumly at my dead body as if uncertain about what to do next.
“Him pay you for de week before him dead?” Mabel asked.
“No,” the gardener replied sullenly.
“So check him wallet! If de police find any money on him, you know dem bound to thief it.”
The gardener eagerly obeyed and found my wallet stuffed full of money, for I had not yet made the weekly bank lodgment.
He counted out his week’s wages and gave Mabel her own and was about to return the wallet when she asked crossly whether he thought it was right for an employer to dead without giving staff proper notice.
“Notice?” the gardener sniffed legalistically, as a thiefing gleam spread across his wrinkled face. “No, dat definitely not right, for de law say two weeks’ notice always must give. No exception.”
“You think man dead like bus run?” I quarrelled with them. “If I had known I was going to drop dead, I would have gladly given de proper notice and saved two weeks’ wages. But how you expect me to know?”
This logical point, however, made no impression whatsoever on the two hardened criminals, who gladly pocketed another helping of my hard-earned money with hoggish snorts of pleasure.
The gardener knelt down and was again about to return my wallet to my back pocket when Mabel scowled and rapped him sharply on the shoulder.
“What about Christmas bonus? Is our fault dat Mr. Baps dead out of season?”
“No,” the gardener said slowly, rubbing his chin as if in deep thought, “clearly is not our fault. I never tell him to dead at dis special time. You tell him to dead?”
“Me? No, sah!”
“So him just willfully make up him mind to dead on him own?”
“Exactly! So why should we lose we rightful bonus just because him decide him mind to drop dead before Christmas?”
This was too much. I shrieked, “I never pay a Christmas bonus in me life! Don’t make me pay one now dat I dead!”
Nevertheless, Christmas bonus money drained out of my wallet into their pockets and no matter how I grabbed at this one and kicked at that, I was powerless to prevent this unlawful transfer of funds. I yelled and screamed and cussed bad words and made a lot of duppy noise but it did no good.
In addition to bonuses for Christmas, Boxing Day, and Easter, the two wretches also found excuse to thief birthday and leap year money (I laughed with scorn at the ignorant brutes who didn’t even know that this wasn’t a leap year!), and when they finally returned my wallet to my back pocket, it was as flabby and limp as a fat fish after gutting.
Whistling, the gardener strolled down the hall to call the police while Mabel settled into an easy chair, cocked up her bare foot on my head, and picked at knuckle skin like she was born mistress of the house.
“Lawd God,” my duppy moaned, “I just dead and already ole negar using me head as dem footstool. What further tribulation can dis terrible day bring, eh?”
In my youth, I was a worthless, good-for-nothing, undisciplined idler. And I might have stayed that way, too, except for a life-changing sermon I heard one Sunday morning on the radio.
It was given by an evangelist who griped that people relied too much on the influence of preachers when what they really needed to better their lives was daily self-preaching. For what was wrong with a sinner preaching to himself? the evangelist asked. Who better understood a dirty lowdown sinner than the dirty lowdown sinner himself? Who knew more about nasty, stinking sin than a nasty, stinking, sinning wretch?
This message made so much sense to me that from that day on I started practicing a stern treatment of self-preaching. And I preached at myself so often that one morning when I was in my late thirties, I awoke convinced that a parson had set up manse and pulpit inside my head.
So on the morning of my death, after the initial shock had passed and I was beginning to feel sorry for myself, I counteracted my downheartedness with this sermon.
“Baps, you lazy, good-for-nothing brute! Woe unto you! Stop-you snivelling! You dead and gone! You maid and garden boy thief out de weekly lodgment money! You turn dirty duppy, Baps!”
After this spontaneous outburst of devout feeling from my indoor parson, I thought to look at the positive side of things and take a moment to count my blessings as a duppy.
It struck me at once that from now on I could observe all crooked money changing at the bank. I could overhear scandal and rumor, eavesdrop on backbiting and tale-telling, as well as witness all unlawful maid grinding taking place between employer and domestic in the corporate area. I could walk through brick, concrete block, wattle and daub, or wooden wall to personally see which government minister had his hand in the cash pan.
To prove that all this was so, I waded through the outside wall and stepped into the unkempt side yard. After that, I sifted back through the solid wall and ended up again in my own drawing room where Mabel still slouched in my favorite chair, picking at her knuckles, her bare foot cocked atop my head.
Suddenly I suffered temptation: If my hand could pass through a wall, couldn’t it also pass through frock and drawers? Indeed, as I scrutinized the luscious shape of Mabel draped across the chair, it occurred to me that the one benefit of being a duppy was that there wasn’t a woman in the world I couldn’t feel up from now on without fear of scandal and prosecution.
To test this newfound duppy power, I ploughed my hand deep into Mabel’s crotch. My duppy fingers glided through dress and drawers and came out wriggling giddily on the other side of her fatty rump.
But her crotch had no feeling to my touch; there was no wholesome grit to the pubic hair, and the pum-pum felt empty and wishy-washy like idle land.
Although I was disappointed with the results, I remembered that it was church sisters who were always complaining about duppy riding them at night. Obviously, if Mabel had been a church sister instead of a stinking thief, things might have turned out differently. What I needed to find was a sleeping church sister I could take on a test ride.
I was pondering this hopeful thought when there was suddenly a sharp rap on the front door. Mabel didn’t move a muscle but continued to peer into space like an old woman listening to her own growling belly. The knocking grew louder.
“Who’s it?” I bellowed, and into the room through the closed door stepped a boy named Hopeton who used to live and work in the neighborhood.
For a moment I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The boy had been dead for years and yet here he was standing before me as solid as a ripe breadfruit. I blinked and squinted and my mouth dropped open. “Hopeton?” I blurted, gaping at him. “Is you dat?”
“Yes, sah,” he grinned.
“But don’t Mr. Byles shoot you dead five years ago when you try to break his house?”
“Yes, sah. Kill me stone dead.”
“So what you doing here, man?”
“I come to escort you across, Mr. Baps,” he said, waving duppy finger in my face.
“Kiss me backside!”
Before the boy could take another step, I raced down the hallway, flew through the side wall and out into the backyard, where I scurried high up into a mango tree and crouched behind a thick clump of leaves.
I was ducking behind the shiny leaves high up in the crown of the mango tree when I heard Hopeton scouring the backyard and bawling out my name.
“Mr. Baps!” he was hollering. “Oyea! Mr. Baps!”
He bawled some more, and when I finally got enough nerve to timidly peek out I saw that he was standing at the root of the tree, squinting up at me with his arms on his hips, looking peevish in the bad light.
“Hopeton!” I cried, ducking behind my leafy cover. “I wasn’t feeling up Mabel! I didn’t even know my hand had passed through her pum-pum and out her batty! I not used to duppy finger!”
“Mr. Baps, come down, sah! I don’t business who you feel up.”
“I wasn’t going to ride no church sister, either! It was just an idle thought! You can’t carry a Jamaican to hell just for thinking! Dis is not Castro’s Cuba! Socialism days done! All I did is feel up one thiefing maid!”
“Mr. Baps,” Hopeton chuckled after a long crack of silence, “dere is no hell, sah! Dere is only one place, and dat is where I come to carry you.”
I didn’t believe him—at least not at first. I stayed up there in the tree while he and I bellowed back and forth between treetop and root-bottom, but after plenty argument I became convinced that he was telling the truth and clambered down the gnarled trunk to stand beside him.
He started walking back toward the house, looking over his shoulder to see if I was following.
Dawn had broken over Kingston and a pulpy morning glow, still damp with the lingering coolness of night, was settling over the neighborhood.
I must admit that I was still suspicious, although I said nothing and quietly trailed him down the bushy side yard.
Even though I was not a religious man, I had never imagined that when I died I would be escorted to heaven by a shot thief. I don’t want to sound stuck-up but I just thought I-deserved a better class duppy guide—a chartered accountant, a barrister, or some other fully qualified professional. I could have even been content with a registered nurse or a university-trained teacher. But if I had to settle for an uneducated duppy guide, then I thought I at least deserved better than one who had departed earth via gunshot administered during the felonious act of housebreaking.
So I felt slighted and had hurt feelings that I counted so little with Almighty God.
As we made our way out from the backyard and into the house, my brain kept harping morbidly on what Hopeton had said about there being no hell.
How could there be no hell? And if there really was no hell, what happened to gunmen when they died? Must decent people be chuck-up in heaven cheek-to-cheek with the ruthless criminal element? Must I spend eternity croaking “Hosanna” in a choir with a butu rabble I would kick off my doorstep?
As we glided through the wall of my former house and into the drawing room, I was going to put some arguments to Hopeton when my chain of thought was interrupted by the sight of two burly policemen kneeling down over my dead body and in the middle of a heated argument with the maid and the gardener.
One policeman was waving my empty wallet about, showing that it contained only a twenty-dollar bill and bellowing that nobody in Jamaica dropped dead with only twenty dollars in his possession, that someone had thiefed government evidence. The gardener was blubbering that he personally knew plenty men who had dropped dead with only a dollar on them, at which allegation the other policeman took out a notepad and sarcastically asked for the names of these alleged deceased paupers.
“Names, sah?” the gardener stammered. “Me no remember exact name, sah. But me know that man dead all de time in Jamaica without money in him pocket.”
“Somebody thief dis man money,” the other policeman growled, standing up and peering hard at the gardener and the maid. “Either dat, or him not really dead.”
And to demonstrate that I was really dead, the policeman rocked my body with a wicked kick, which brought a thunderous howl of grief from Mabel.
“Don’t kick Mr. Baps!” she shrieked, jumping between my dead body and the policeman’s foot, water spurting from her eyes. “Him was de most blessed man dat ever walk dis earth.
Him give ’way him every penny him have to de poor. Nobody ever beg him anything dat him wouldn’t give. Don’t kick dat blessed dead creature. Kick me instead!”
The policeman looked as if he were willing to oblige but the gardener jumped between police foot and bawling maid, with the pretence of trying to calm her down.
“God bless Mr. Baps!” he babbled, his hand roaming over the curves of maid batty that quivered with every bogus sob. “Him was too good for dis world! Him must have give ’way all him money last night just before him dead! Him used to do dat-all de time! Remember last year Easter, Mabel, when him give ’way a thousand dollar to dat beggar boy without foot at Half-Way-Tree?”
“Yes,” Mabel shrieked, “me remember! Me remember!”
“Who de rass dem talking ’bout, eh? I never give a beggar boy a penny in me life!”
“Me know dat, sah,” Hopeton answered gloomily.
“Not to say dat I wasn’t going to reform someday!” I hastened to add.
While the maid spilled eyewater and the gardener told lie after lie about my generosity, the policemen looked confused and unsure of themselves. Finally one of them ordered Mabel to cease and desist with the bawling and cover the dead body with a sheet while the other grumbled that now he’d seen everything—a Jamaican dropping dead with only a twentydollar in his wallet—that this was what happened when you kept changing governments, for he remembered when Labour was in power that even the lowliest beggar on the street who dropped dead had at least a fifty-dollar on his person.