The Duppy

by Anthony C. Winkler

  With the final burbling gasp of a drowning swimmer, she squinched up her face, closed her eyes, and rippled below the pillowcase.

  “Miss B?” I cried, rubbing the spot where her face had just been afloat.

  Blown on the wind as if from a distance, I heard a sharp slap followed by the shrill wail of a newborn infant and the sleepy grumbling of a midwife, “De pickney don’t to born into dis wicked world!”

  Chapter 9

  “Well, Baps, it look like you catch a heavenly shop!”

  After a refreshing night’s sleep, that was the encouraging thought that popped into my head first thing the next morning.

  For to tell the truth, in spite of Miss B’s violent rebirth, I had slept as soundly as an evangelist who had spent the night wrestling a big-boned church organist against a bedpost. This was not heartlessness, but the nature of heaven where no heart can feel troubled or heavy or lost, and every soul can do exactly what it wants because every wish or whim is cheerfully granted. Only the time or place of rebirth is not under a soul’s control.

  I will give you a case in point.

  In the village there was a youth who, having been killed on earth by a bus, developed such a fondness for the experience that he craved being knocked down weekly by a public passenger vehicle.

  Now as everybody knows, Jamaican buses are willing to knock down a man in his prime of life if he clearly does not desire it. But let that same man request a knocking down for fun and see what he gets: bullheaded road courtesy and fanatical safe driving by every bus driver.

  In heaven, however, the youth’s wish was gladly granted, and every Saturday at noon an overloaded bus punctually careened around a corner and knocked him for a six into a goat pasture, after which he would joyfully leap to his feet and hurl the ripest cuss words at the driver, who sped away laughing.

  That is heaven’s way: no harm, hurt, sorrow, or regret. All is joyful and fun—even being licked down by a bus.

  I washed my face and prepared to open the shop, for now that Miss B was gone, I instinctively knew that I was in charge, that the shop had become my responsibility, and that I had been led here in the first place because of my vast experience in retail management.

  I sat down at a table in the back room and made notes of what I would do with the shop.

  To begin with, I would throw away the charge book. From now on, everybody would pay for goods with cash money on the counter, not by signing a book.

  I would immediately begin keeping two sets of accounts, one showing the right amount of money the shop had taken in every week, the other a bogus book intended for the government showing half the true amount. Being as I was in heaven and not hell, I saw no reason to depart from normal earth practice by keeping honest books and paying full tax.

  So far I had not seen a tax collector and did not know if such a person existed in heaven. But I reasoned that with the government offering public services such as free pum-pum caulking and hood removal for Christians, somebody had to pay for it, and Baps should not be the one to do so with his hard-earned money. If an incoming Christian wanted her pum-pum caulked that was her business, but such a service, in my humble opinion, should be privatized, not funded with taxpayers’ dollars.

  I decided, also, that to be a true Jamaican shop certain shortages and restrictions on the sale of goods had to be put into effect, to be waived at the discretion of the proprietor. What was the fun of owning a shop if the shopkeeper wasn’t in a position to make customers beg him to sell them goods?

  I hand-lettered a sign announcing that no customer would be allowed to buy more than one pound of sugar per day.

  There were other important matters that I needed to know about and on which Miss B had not enlightened me.

  For example, where would I buy goods? I had never seen a wholesale salesman, but obviously such a person must exist or the shelves would soon be bare.

  I decided to take stock, to see what inventory I had on hand.

  I went into the shop and by the dawn light began a careful count of the tinned goods.

  I was done with counting and, out of habit from my days on earth, felt to eat a tin of sardines for breakfast, although I was not hungry, for a heavenly belly always feels contentedly full.

  There were three tins of sardines on the shelf. I removed one and carried it into the back room, intending to eat it at the table where I had been working.

  I opened the tin and went back into the store for some harddough bread to squeegee up the oil on the plate.

  It was then that I noticed that there were exactly three tins of sardines back on the shelf—the same number as before.

  I stopped and looked and asked myself if I had miscounted.

  Puzzled, I took one of the tins off the shelf and left the room with it. When I returned a few minutes later, I discovered that another had materialized in its place.

  No matter how many tins of sardines I took off the shelf, I always had three remaining.

  As I stood there marvelling at this replenishment, I realized that this was why Miss B had been so careless with her stocktaking—because she never could run out of anything! This was why she didn’t care about cash-and-carry—her goods cost her nothing!

  Under the circumstances—controlling the only shop in the village and having no overheads plus an endless supply of free goods—I saw at once that the only sensible business move was to drastically mark up prices and gouge the shopping public.

  It was still early when I threw open the front doors to an empty coil of village street that glistened in the dawn wisps.

  My first customer shuffled in around 8:30 a.m. to buy some sugar, still wearing the slightly frizzy look of a woman who had been lately abed. When she saw the sign announcing the rationing of sugar, she looked puzzled.

  “Sugar short?” she asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Yes,” I replied. “One pound per customer today.”

  “Sugar can’t short in heaven, Mr. Baps. Nothing short up here.”

  “We have to practice shortage. De socialists from the ’70s in Jamaica soon dead, and when dey reach heaven, sugar bound to short.”

  She rubbed her nose and sniffed.

  “Missah Baps, if it wasn’t for you, we up in heaven would forget ’bout de days on earth when sugar was short. We would just go along on our merry way knowing sugar can never short, and forget de times o’ tribulation when sugar used to short.”

  “Mi dear, ma’am!”

  “But you remind us, Missah Baps, dat sugar used to short, even though sugar can never short.”

  “Quite so. Dat is why we must prepare for shortage.”

  “I see you point, Missah Baps. Anyway, beg you to sell me two pound o’ sugar.”

  I studied her long and hard before exercising due discretion.

  “Since is you,” I said, “I will make an exception,” weighing out and wrapping the two pounds of sugar for her.

  “Thank you, Missah Baps.”

  Grabbing hold of my collar and drawing me close to her face, she darted a look around at the empty shop and village street and in a whisper urged me never again to weaken and break the discipline of rationing I was attempting to impose, no matter how much ole negar bawled and wailed about it.

  Then she went away, after duly lamenting that the murderers back on earth always seemed to be slaughtering the same trash week in and week out and wondering why they couldn’t concentrate, once in a blue moon, on posting some of the better class of Jamaicans to heaven where they were sorely needed.

  Happily babbling in this vein, she set off along the empty village street, furrowing a path through the swirling mists.

  During that first day of exercising sole management over the shop, I waged war on and off with the ill-mannered public.

  I kicked out malingering youths, ran the doorpost leaners off my veranda, and expelled all noisy quarrellers from the premises.

  But the big row of the day was over my new policy of cash on the spot, and man a
nd woman customers alike looked stunned when I told them flatly that all purchases must be paid for with real money.

  “Money?” one woman gagged as if the word made her stifle. She shifted uncertainly in her tracks and stared at me like her eyes had never before beheld a cash-and-carry shopkeeper. “What dat mean?”

  “It mean dat from now on all is discipline and fiscal restraint.”

  “No more writing down in de book?”

  “Precisely. Book day done.”

  A long pause pushed between us while she studied me.

  Finally she scowled and said that in that case she’d have to get some money, and she disappeared out of the shop and returned a few minutes later with a handful of crisp twenty-dollar bills.

  Customer after customer did the same thing that long first morning, and I remained perplexed as to why the wretches were so determined to trust goods when they all obviously had bands of money.

  It was only later that afternoon that I found out what was happening.

  A boy had come into the shop to buy a sweetie and after handing me a new twenty-dollar bill, he shambled away nonchalantly.

  “Hey, boy!” I called after him. “Take you change!”

  He shrugged and said, “Oh,” and came back in with his hand outstretched, looking sullen and uncaring.

  “You almost walk off and leave de money!” I scolded. “Money don’t grow on tree, you know.”

  His face lit up with a bright grin. “Money grow on tree, sah,” he blurted with an ill-mannered giggle.

  “Don’t be impertinent, boy! Not because you in heaven I-can’t box you down.”

  “But sah! A money tree right in you backyard!”

  He pointed and headed out the front door toward the rear of my shop. I scurried around the counter and followed him— determined to teach the little wretch not to lie—and he led me to the fenced-off backyard behind my shop and pointed to what I had mistaken for a breadfruit tree.

  Swaying high up in its leafy crown was a middle-aged woman I had just run out of my shop because she had wanted to trust some goods. She was balancing on a branch and reaching out to pick twenty-dollar bills from a bunch that rustled and twirled in the afternoon breeze.

  She clambered down the trunk unsteadily, for she was not dressed for tree climbing, brushed herself off, and disdainfully handed me a bunch of new bills.

  “Dis your idea of fiscal restraint?” I bellowed, stupefied at her gall. “To come pay me for my goods with money you pick off my backyard tree?”

  She dusted off her skirt and said she didn’t know anything about any fiscal restraint, but she had climbed the tree fair and square and picked the money and now please to give her the goods she wanted so she could go about her business.

  “All morning de whole damn lot of you have been climbing my own tree and paying me with my own money!” I raged.

  The youth giggled and gloated, “See! Money grow on tree!”

  and sauntered away with a triumphant swagger.

  I hollered and bawled and raised the dickens and felt like a fool, but then I gave the woman her goods and she walked off in a peevish mood after turning to me and growling spitefully, “One of dese fine days, Baps, I goin’ hold you down and grind you till you headtop drop off.”

  Ignoring her threat, I immediately made another sign that blared, NOTICE TO THE PUBLIC. PRIVATE MONEY TREE! NO CLIMBING. NO FLYING. NO PICKING. BY ORDER. TADDEUS BAPS, ESQ.

  Tacking it to the money tree, I went back into my shop feeling aggrieved that once again ole negar had made me look like a monkey.

  In the villages of heaven, as in earth, what goes down one woman’s ear immediately pops out of another woman’s mouth, with the result that “discipline” and “fiscal restraint” spread quickly among the population like old-time polio. Indeed, that very evening as I was strolling though the peaceful countryside, some urchins playing cricket in a field bawled out as I passed, “Missah Fiscal Restraint!” and, “Busha Discipline!” which gladdened my spirits and made me walk with a brisker step.

  Breathing the fresh scents of the countryside, I wandered over a footpath that wormed through the greenery and encountered the white man whom I had met earlier in the bush. He was squatting gloomily against the trunk of a tree, playing in the dirt.

  “Mr. Philosopher,” I greeted him, “how you do?”

  He shrugged. “To do you must first be.”

  “But you do be,” I countered in a mischievous voice, sitting down nearby on a stump and preparing for bracing argument. “As a matter of fact, you be in the Jamaican countryside. What you doin’ here anyway?”

  He looked puzzled. “I am not in the Jamaican countryside,” he finally said. “If I were, I’d be the first to know it.”

  “But you are here! In the parish of St. Ann. Sitting under a Bombay mango tree.”

  He thought about what I had said. “Let me see what happened. I was sick. I died. I was quite sure that I died. I even heard the doctor say, ‘He’s dead.’ But that was obviously from the fever, for if I were really dead, I’d be dead. Yet I know I am dead. So I can’t be where you say I am. Where’s that, by the-way?”

  “Jamaican bush. St. Ann parish.”

  “I must have flown here. I thought I was flying, saw a nice place to land, and landed. But being dead, of course, I couldn’t have done that. As I said, to do you must first be.”

  “And as I said, you do be.”

  “I do not be. Neither do you. I would be the first to know.”

  “So if you don’t do, and I do not be, how come I’m sitting there talking to you and you’re answering?”

  He looked briefly puzzled before brightening. “Because you are in my head.”

  The brute didn’t know where he was. He didn’t even know how he got where he was but didn’t think he was. Yet he was proposing a line of reasoning that had him, a visitor to my country, philosophically confining me, a Jamaican national, inside his tourist head. This kind of bamboozled thinking made my hackles rise.

  I glared at him long and hard. “Please release me from your head, sah, or I’ll have to tie you up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you might wander away and carry me off with you. So admit I not in your head or I going to tie you to a tree.”

  He rolled his eyes as if he couldn’t understand my logic. Then, with a little gesture, he shrugged and said that every man must follow his own heart.

  I grimly tore some creepers and vines off the ground and proceeded to lash him firmly to the trunk of the mango tree. I was prepared to knock the brute down if he resisted and, having thumped down many a hooligan in my day, I expected no trouble in coping with a puny white man. Fortunately for him, he put up no fight.

  I strapped him to the tree, stepped back, and admired my handiwork.

  “Now, Mr. Philosopher,” I declared smugly, “you are tied to a tree.”

  “I am not tied to anything. A man who is not, cannot be tied.”

  “We’ll soon see whether shopkeeper ‘knot’ stronger dan philosopher ‘not,’” I laughed, strolling back to my shop in a cool and enjoyable evening breeze, leaving the brute tied to the tree like a rambunctious ramgoat.

  Chapter 10

  Two or three weeks had passed, and no man in heaven was more content than I, Taddeus Baps.

  Discipline and fiscal restraint were catching on among the population, and I was even invited by a village parson to come and discuss money management with his congregation that following Sunday. He told me solemnly that just because money grew on trees up here did not mean that fiscal mismanagement must run amok among the baptized community, and he was sick and tired of the everlasting squandering of funds that even decent people carried on with, especially when the five-hundred-dollar trees were in season.

  I was very clearly making my mark in the village. People would occasionally stop me on my evening walks and congratulate me for bringing backbone and discipline to heaven, and not an evening passed when one or two good-neighborly
sisters didn’t visit the shop to inquire whether I might be in need of a healthful bedtime grind.

  So I was definitely earning the respect of the public, even though I was a newcomer to the district, and I took pride in this accomplishment.

  One day I decided to go on my evening stroll into that part of the bush where I had tied up the American philosopher, certain that I would not find him still hanging there, for in heaven even a hardened criminal bound with chains can escape by merely wishing freedom. However, if I did find him there, it would only prove that he was the biggest fool in heaven, and I felt in the mood to match wits with a complete idiot.

  Whistling with joy, I was walking down the footpath to the clearing where I had left the philosopher when I heard the cracking sound of stones being thrown and glimpsed a rowdy band of American youths standing next to an overgrown gully and pelting a towering tree with rocks. Nearby on the grass a village constable was dozing in spite of their noisy clatter.

  Curious, I wandered over and asked one of the youths, who was rummaging the ground for a stone to throw, what they were doing. He panted that they were from a university in America and had come to Jamaica on a field trip.

  At this, he let fly a rockstone at the crown of the tree with all his might.

  “But who you stoning?” I asked, watching the rock whizz into the tree and ricochet with a loud crack off a fat limb.

  “God!”

  “Who?”

  “God!” he barked gruffly, hurling another stone at the tree with a whoosh of effort. “God’s in that tree.”

  After a paralyzing stab of disbelief and shock, I grabbed the youth by the shoulders and pitched him headlong down the gully as he was in the act of throwing.

  “Hey!” he screamed.

  “What’d you do that for, you old Jamaican fart?” another youth screeched, charging me.

  I grabbed the little wretch by the neck, gave it a wring, and tossed him atop the napping constable, who sprang to his feet with an astonished roar, hurling the boy off him.

  A free-for-all followed, with six American youths ganging up on me, and some vicious freewheeling thumping was exchanged.