The Duppy (3 page)
Muttering to himself about how the IMF agreement had ruined the Jamaican economy, he went outside, saying he would radio for an ambulance to pick up the dead body.
“Mr. Baps was a saint!” Mabel pealed anew. “A saint!”
“Dey walk amongst us unacknowledged,” the gardener brayed. “Some man just have a heart of gold, and nobody can see it till dem dead.”
“Damn liars!” I bawled.
“I still say somebody thiefed government evidence,” the remaining policeman glowered.
“Come, Mr. Baps,” Hopeton said, nudging me gently by the elbow. “Dis is earthly business. We on our way to heaven.”
“How we going get dere?” I asked eagerly, hurrying after him onto the veranda and out into the front yard. “A chariot of fire?”
“No, sah,” he replied. “A minibus.”
Me and this duppy boy had one beast of a row all the way to the bus stop.
I ranted and raved that it was out of order to expect a decent Jamaican to take a minibus to heaven, that if fiery chariot were not available, the least the appropriate authorities could do was to provide a late-model taxi. With minibus indiscipline running rampant on the Jamaican roadways, it was too much to expect a law-abiding citizen, a former teacher who had always driven his own private vehicle, to ride unruly public transportation to heaven. I raged that there was many a person who, if they knew that the official transport to heaven was a minibus, would outright refuse to dead. For this a man spent a lifetime of Sundays wearing out his kneebone in church? He might as well go carouse and whore up himself in a rum bar.
Hopeton remarked that none of this applied to me since I had never set foot in church.
“Nevertheless,” I grumbled, “you obviously don’t know me or my strong points. For example, you probably don’t know that I am a man who always observe de golden rule. And I could tell you dat if I’d known I’d end up riding to heaven in a minibus, I’d have flouted its backside.”
He said that there was no record of me ever observing any-rule.
“Dat just goes to show how much you know!” I shot back. “De golden rule I observe is, ‘Never thief from a man unless he first thief from you.’ And everybody who ever did business with me knew dat when it came to dis one rule, I was quite the stickler.”
As this telling point struck home we trudged along in silence, for it was obvious that I had stumped the wretch. We continued quite a ways down the road before his brain could cook up even a lame reply. Finally he muttered that if we didn’t ride a minibus, we’d have a long walk to the culvert.
I drew brake in the middle of the road just as a diesel truck roared through my belly button and careened recklessly down the street, nearly fricasséeing a corporeal peel-neck chicken. “Culvert? What culvert?”
He looked pained. “To get to heaven from Jamaica, Mr.-Baps, we have to crawl through a culvert.”
“I not crawling through no damn culvert at my age!” I roared. “I was not a bad Jamaican. I paid taxes. I denounced political tribalism and bogus voting. In forty-seven years of life I grind only five maid who work for me, and I fire only one for saying no. Some Kingston barrister grind five maid a week and fire ten a month over ‘no.’ What I do dat I must ride minibus and crawl like mongoose through a culvert to get to heaven?”
“Mr. Baps,” he announced wearily, “everybody in Jamaica get to heaven through the same culvert. From prime minister to electrician down to rude parson. It is de only way!”
“But what about de bright light and de dark tunnel and de sweet music?”
He mumbled that he didn’t know what I was talking about.
So I told him about a television show I’d once seen featuring people who had died and been revived and how every one of them had testified that they felt themselves sailing through a dark tunnel and soaring toward a soothing white light while sweet music played in the background. Not a one of them had said a word about minibus and culvert.
He heaved a weary sigh and explained that the people I had seen in the television show were Americans, and that the U.S. government had indeed installed an automated portal for use by its deceased citizens. As independent Jamaicans, we had our own gateway to heaven. And it happened to be a special secret culvert.
“You know something,” I barked gruffly, “I not going anywhere with you.”
I stormed across the noisy road and headed back toward my own house. He came racing after me, bawling at me to wait, saying that I didn’t understand.
“Why should I go up dere when I can stay down here?” I snapped over my shoulder, as my duppy body glided through traffic, trees, hedges, fences, barking dog, and all other earthly obstruction and obstacle. He jumped in front of me and asked me what, above all things in the world, I liked doing best of all. I asked him if this was a riddle or a trick and he swore that it was a serious question.
I stopped in the middle of a neighborhood backyard with the dog snarling and barking up a storm and considered my mind.
The truth was that best of all I liked keeping shop for the reason that it gave me the opportunity to impose discipline and fiscal restraint over ole negar. I could cut off the credit of ole negar when they spent too much or dun their backside when they paid too little. I could enforce good posture on my district by banning all leaning and slouching of ole negar youth against my doorway or counter, and every now and again—and this was the sweetest of all—I’d catch a clerk thiefing and get to fire her backside after raising a satisfying stink.
But as I stood there in the strange backyard with a dog trying its best to bite my duppy foot, I felt ashamed to admit that such down-to-earth pursuits were what I loved best. Even when I was alive, if someone had asked me what was my first love in life, I probably wouldn’t have blurted out, “Ruling ole negar.” And now that I was dead and a duppy, I felt that I should aspire to something more highbrow like listening to a Mantovani record or reading a fat book—I don’t know why, I just felt queasy about admitting to a duppy angel that nothing in life sweeted me more than taking the rod of correction to rambunctious ole negar.
However, he must have used his angel brain on me for he grinned and said, “If ruling ole negar is you pleasure, Mr. Baps, we have plenty dat need ruling in heaven, too.”
My ears pricked up instantly.
“Oh, yes?”
“Plenty, sah. All lacking in discipline and fiscal restraint.”
“Plenty who want to trust sugar and saltfish even if dey failed to pay on account last week?”
“Thousands, sah. Hundreds of thousands.”
“So you have shop in heaven, too, eh?”
“Plenty shop, sah. City shop, country shop, supermarket shop, bazaar, emporium, and cold supper shop.”
“But dese country shops, dey not like earthly shops you find in Jamaica?”
“Oh, yes, sah. Down to cockroach and rat.”
“Duppy fly, too?”
“Yes, sah. Plenty, plenty duppy fly.”
Meantime, as we were chatting, the dog was biting at my duppy foot over and over again, and each time his teeth snapped harmlessly though my duppy shinbone, he snarled and got madder.
I looked down at him and asked Hopeton if biting dog abided in heaven, too, and he assured me that some Jamaicans could not relax without the tonic of an occasional dog bite, and if a biting dog was what I wanted to keep me-happy, one would be provided. That was how heaven was: What you wanted you got. What you didn’t want, you didn’t get.
“So come with me, eh, Mr. Baps?” he pleaded. “I promise you, you goin’ love heaven. And if you don’t love it, you can migrate. And if you still don’t love it after migration, you can always crawl back through de culvert and live on earth in de bush as a Jamaican duppy.”
I thought about it while the dog kept gnawing savagely at my foot, all the time keeping up with its rowdy barking.
“Now, for instance,” I asked Hopeton, “if dis was a dog in heaven, could I give him a kick?”
“Oh, certainly, Mr. Baps,” he assured me. “In fact, I going give you a little bonus. Kick dis one before we set off for heaven.”
I don’t know how Hopeton did it, but suddenly my right foot felt as solid as a ram post, and I gave the dog a good kick that sent the brute tumbling across the yard and made him yelp bloody murder.
The mistress of the house and the maid came rushing out of the kitchen to see what was wrong with their mongrel, who was cowering in the corner whining, and while the two of them speculated aloud about what could cause the beast to behave so, Hopeton and I sauntered through a backyard hedge and headed across the road for the bus stop.
“Is duppy kick him, mum!” the maid was wailing behind us.
“Don’t be an ass, Millicent! There’s no such thing as duppy. And if there were, they don’t kick.”
“Duppy kick, mum! And duppy love to kick dog!”
Sometime around midmorning we boarded a minibus crammed to the brim with passengers: Knee and elbow jostled side by side for breathing room; nosehole found itself wedged in dangerous proximity to obnoxious battyhole and unaromatic crotch; arm, head, and limb jutted out the windows and waved like surrender flag; ironed frock and fresh pants crease melted and wrinkled in the stuffy heat from the crush of bodies, while stale exhale and armpit exhaust made the stuffy interior stink like bat manure in a cave.
During the trip we suffered through the expected vehicular indiscipline, with the driver tailgating, weaving recklessly, screeching around corners, and driving like he owned the road.
I kept thinking to myself, “Now imagine, here I am dead and on my way to heaven in a minibus while this man drives recklessly with total disregard for the safety of the motoring public. Next thing you know he’s going to cross Flat Bridge at an unsafe rate of speed and plunge into the river and drown everybody aboard, adding to de ole negar duppy population!”
Because he could see that I disapproved of this reckless driving, Hopeton leaned over from the cramped backseat where he was perched on the lap of a pretty brown woman who smelled of khus-khus perfume and asked if I would like him to administer a dose of duppy discipline to the driver.
I said that would make me very happy.
He reached over the seat and plunged his unwashed duppy hand straight into the driver’s potbelly, twisting and turning with grunts of concentration while he tried to get a good grip on the man’s gut. “Rass man eat too much pork rind,” he griped. “Make him gut slippery.”
Finally, after much maneuvering and squirming, Hopeton managed to pinch the colon, causing the driver to hiss a sudden, “Hi!” through his teeth.
Another tweak of duppy fingers and the driver winced and bellowed, “Whoa! I catch a stitch in my belly!”
Distracted by the stabbing pain in his colon, he slowed down to the speed limit and observed all traffic signs and appropriate cautions for the remainder of the trip. Hopeton withdrew his hand out of the man’s belly and sucked air happily between his duppy teeth.
I thanked him for applying the needful discipline to an unruly driver and we drove on in silence, the roar of the engine blasting in our ears while I thought ruefully about all the money I had wasted during my lifetime on milk of magnesia and Epsom salts.
Yet I could well imagine how people would laugh in my face if I came back and wrote that Jamaican bellyache was caused by duppy gripping you colon, and that the best thing you could do for it was to eat plenty pork rind to make your colon slippery to duppy grip.
They’d laugh so hard they’d pop.
With our driver now practicing motor vehicle courtesy and observing all road signs and applicable speed limits, our minibus ride on the Spanish Town Highway was cramped but uneventful.
As we neared our destination, Hopeton leaned over the front seat and whispered instructions into the ear of the driver, causing him to brake to a halt at the roadside shoulder next to the old Ferry Inn.
Hopeton signalled me to follow him out, which I did, climbing though the kneebones of bewildered passengers who looked around to see why the driver had stopped when none of them had asked to be let out and no one was waiting for a bus.
“Why you stop, driver?” croaked an old woman who was sandwiched miserably between two sweaty men in the backseat.
“I stop ’cause I feel to stop!” the man barked, turning around to glare at the multitudes crammed mutely behind him.
He stuck his head out the window, drew a cantankerous breath of canepiece breeze, smacked his lips, and bawled to the world at large, “Now I driving off ’cause I feel to drive off!”
With that he revved the engine and roared away, but only after giving the appropriate signal with his indicator and looking both ways to ensure that it was safe to merge into the flow of traffic.
Hopeton slid down the embankment and strode off purposefully toward a canefield, warning me over his shoulder to please follow him closely.
It was a hot and dusty midmorning. We pushed into the thick cane growth and glided harmlessly through the sharp leaves. In the distance the Blue Mountain range was crumpled and pleated in purple shadows against the skyline. Overhead a John Crow unwound on a breeze.
I am a man who has always appreciated nature and valued local beautification programs, and even on my way to heaven I took note of my surroundings. Butu, on the other hand, don’t know bauble from bangle and bead.
We plodded past a cane cutter who was panting and sweating in the hot sun as he thinned out the stalks with a machete. Instinctively I said, “Good morning, sah!” which drew an amused chuckle from Hopeton along with a reminder that I was dead.
After walking a good distance we came to a rutted marl road and were about to cross when out of the canepiece oozed a fatty woman dressed in black and trailed by a harassed-looking guide with whom she had evidently been quarrelling. Hopeton yelled to the man, who answered eagerly and trotted over, both of them looking as pleased as higglers meeting up in the Miami airport.
“You catch one!” Hopeton exclaimed, shaking the man’s hand.
“Catch one?” the woman bellowed roughly. “Please do not talk about me as if I’m a fish! Have some respect. I only just dead!”