The Duppy

by Anthony C. Winkler

  Of course, thumping in heaven being sweet both to thumper and thumped, the scuffle only caused all of us to split our sides with delight before the noisy hubbub brought the boys’ professor crashing through the bush and demanding to know who had started the fight.

  “As long as I have strength and breath,” I stormed, “I’ll thump down any man or boy who dare stone my God!”

  A scornful hiss swelled from the milling students, and the professor had to shout to quiet them down.

  “They are angry with God,” he announced calmly, “for destroying Hypsilophodon, exterminating Brontosaurus, wiping out the entire line of Tyrannosaurus Rex.”

  “He didn’t even leave a single Pteranodon behind,” one of the students moaned sorrowfully, as if he was talking about his murdered grandmother.

  In the uneasy silence that settled over the bushland, I turned to the constable and asked him if he knew what these demented foreigners were talking about.

  He muttered that he was sorry, he didn’t know, but these names sounded to him like the street nicknames of certain vicious Kingston gunmen.

  “We’re talking about dinosaurs,” the professor explained in a voice that said he was addressing an idiot. “These were all dinosaur species that God wiped out.”

  “Dinosaurs!” I exploded. “You stone God because He clean de earth of a few nasty lizard?”

  The students roared indignantly in one voice, surging to flail at me, but the professor bellowed above the tumult at them to shut up.

  As the rumble died down, one of the sullen youths muttered, “Ignorant Jamaican,” loud enough for me to hear. I lunged into the crowd and thumped him right on his top lip, causing him to squeal with ecstasy, and the professor had to restrain the others from charging me and inflicting the joys of pummelling on my person.

  “Listen, you, whatever your name is,” the professor cried, his eyes afire, “let’s ask God if what I say isn’t true.” He shouted at the tree growing in the gully, “God, didn’t you make Hypsilophodon extinct?”

  An ominous pause followed as we all waited expectantly and stared at the thicket of the tree. A breeze riffled through the clearing and a musically polite voice answered, It wasn’t that simple.

  For the benefit of those readers who have never conversed with the Almighty, let me add a brief word of explanation about God talk.

  In Hollywood movies, God talks in peals of thunder and bolts of lightning. In heaven, however, God talks only in thoughts. All the religious cavorting that goes on at revival meetings where worshippers will shriek and roll on the ground and babble and claim that God is talking in tongues through them, is never God; it’s duppy encyclopedia salesmen from America, who like to hang around revival tent poles for a joke and babble through the so-called possessed.

  “What d’you mean, ‘It wasn’t that simple’? Under your stewardship, didn’t Diplodocus, Pteranodon, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and all the other dinosaurs become extinct?” the professor asked while barbing me with an accusing stare.

  Again a lofty and breezy pause followed by the same soft voice, I suppose so.

  “Murderer!” yelled one of the students, his face turning red with fury.

  I reached over to box the boy’s nasty mouth but the constable held me back. “Mr. Baps, don’t be so hot-tempered.”

  “We’re anthropology students from Harvard,” the professor explained. “How do you expect us to feel?”

  “I don’t care a damn where you come from,” I raged in his face, “and I don’t care what you feel. Dis is God Almighty you dealing with. Show some respect.”

  “Respect for someone who wiped out a whole animal species?” muttered one of the students darkly.

  The argument raged back and forth in the clearing. I stood my ground and swore that anytime my eye saw a foreigner stoning my God on the soil of Jamaica, all hell would pop, for I would smite jaw and nose and face without mercy, adding that I didn’t understand why Almighty God didn’t just use His everlasting powers and turn the whole lot of them into fish bait.

  At this remark, the youths exploded in uproarious laughter and staggered away down the trail, periodically collapsing against each other with uncontrollable mirth as if they had never before heard a bigger joke. The constable trailed sheepishly after them, mumbling apologetically over his shoulder that American youth were known universally to be unruly.

  After they had gone I asked God if He was all right, and He answered, Yes. I asked Him if His feelings were hurt by the disrespect shown and He said, Not really.

  The conversation languished for a bit as I stared hard at the thick leaves of the tree and tried to spot God.

  “Well,” I said lamely, “I was on me way to debate a philosopher I tied to a tree. So I suppose I better go.”

  I paused, gave the tree another searching look, and was about to head down the trail when I impulsively asked God if He would like to come with me and visit the tied-up philosopher.

  “Dat is,” I added, not wanting to seem as if I were pushing myself up on Him, “if he’s still tied and if you not too busy.”

  He said, No, He was not at all busy, and He would like to come and see for Himself which philosopher I had tied up and find out why.

  Then God flew out of the tree and hovered in the clearing not three feet from where I, Taddeus Baps, stood, stupefied and overjoyed at meeting face to face with my Maker.

  Chapter 11

  God looks like a peenywally.

  He is a tiny bubble of the purest starlight, and when He first darted out of the crown of the tree and hovered near my face, I might have mistaken him for a flickering peenywally—what some people call a firefly or lightning bug—except that His glitter was so blinding. It was a shock at first, to see that God was-so small, for my upbringing had led me to expect a big and-powerful Somebody with meat on the bone and plenty muscle.

  “God, is dat you?” I asked, nervous and uncertain, knowing that I was not good enough in heart and mind to come face to face with the Almighty, for my love of moneymaking and craving for earthly pum-pum had led me over the years to double deal and connive, but that’s another story and will not be disclosed in these pages on the advice of barrister.

  It is enough for me to say that I knew myself to be an unrepentant sinner and unworthy to be in the presence of the Almighty.

  He said, How do you do, Baps?

  I replied that I was well—thank you—adding that I very much liked the runnings of heaven, and He replied that He wished the Americans did, too, but they were always giving Him a hard time and trying to get Him to change up heaven.

  I advised him not to pay them any mind, for they didn’t have any sense.

  He chuckled and said, That is a refreshing attitude to have. He would remember it the next time he was stoned by a class from Harvard.

  “Just call on me, God! I’ll thump down de brutes for You!”

  He said, Thank you very much, Baps, but He didn’t too much relish fisticuffs or pugilism.

  “Den I’ll bring me machete and chop dem up, for dey is out of order to stone Almighty God.”

  He said that he appreciated my willingness to fight on His behalf but He didn’t really care for cleaving, chopping, decapitating, or any other form of butchery.

  “You a hard man to please, sah!” I said jokingly, then apologized quickly, thinking that I had spoken disrespectfully. But God only laughed, and his laughter sounded so sweet that throughout my friendship with Him I was constantly peppering Him with clean jokes just to hear that joyful sound.

  Of course, being a wretch, I know mainly dirty joke, and it was always a serious strain to keep my humor wholesome.

  We had started down the trail, God flying near my right shoulder, a drop of the loveliest light quivering in a sparkling bubble no bigger than a teardrop. As we trekked I exulted to myself, “Baps, you lucky son of a gun! Imagine, you, a humble, dirty-minded, lowdown shopkeeper, and here God is flying beside your earhole and chatting with you as if the two of you were
best friend.”

  My indoor parson, however, grumbled, “Dis peenywally is God? Where de golden throne? Where de cherub? Where de hosts bawling hosanna? Where you see even one angel, one seraph, one principality, even one fool-fool power? Dis peenywally can’t be God!”

  “Hush up your mouth and show respect!” I hissed.

  God asked me if I had said something.

  I said, No, I was talking to my parson.

  What parson? God wondered. Was there a parson lurking in the pathway bush?

  I had never before in my life admitted to anyone that a parson dwelled inside me, but this was God Almighty I was talking to, and thinking that there was no concealing anything from His eyes, I told Him the whole story about how I had come to the longtime habit of self-preaching that had over the years petrified into an indoor parson. I added that the problem with an indoor parson is that you can’t thump him down without also thumping down yourself, as you could an outdoor parson, and He recommended that I try exorcism.

  “Exorcise who?” my parson bellowed angrily. “You don’t exorcise a man o’ de cloth!”

  “Hush up!”

  The bubble of light glittered as merrily as a Christmas sparkler, which meant that the spirit of the Almighty was laughing in the Kingdom of Heaven.

  We trudged the rest of the way to the clearing in silence.

  When we got to the tree I found to my astonishment that the philosopher, looking somewhat bedraggled and bored, still dangled where I had left him.

  Fearing that God would be vexed with me, I hastened to untie the fellow, asking him in a furtive undertone, “Why you didn’t just leave, man?”

  The stubborn wretch looked me up and down and said, “Leave where?”

  “Here, idiot!” I whispered, struggling with my own knots. “You didn’t have to remain tied. You could’ve just walked away!”

  “A man has to be before he can walk.”

  “Shut up ’bout dat same stupid old story! Be thankful you in heaven. And see, here’s God, come to look for you!”

  Swivelling his head and focusing his bleary eyes toward the glittering drop of light hovering next to his shoulder, the philosopher jumped like he had been struck by lightning.

  “It is God!” he yelped.

  “You better tie him up back to de tree,” my parson muttered surlily. “De man is stark raving mad!”

  I really can’t say I was comfortable that first evening I spent in the company of God. Indeed, I sat in the clearing as the evening light sifted through the surrounding grove of trees spattering leafy patterns on the ground and blurted out to God that I was a wretch, a nasty, conniving backbiter who wasn’t worthy to be in His presence.

  “You right ’bout dat!” my parson hissed.

  God wondered why I felt so about myself when from all He could see I was quite a decent chap.

  “Because I loved pum-pum too gluttonously when I was on earth, oh Lord,” I quavered in a craven voice. “I used to chase it all de time, and when a maid wouldn’t give me, sometimes-.-.-.” here my lips trembled with contrition and my voice cracked, “sometimes I would fire her, for I am a wicked, no-good brute.”

  I was going to add that of late some of these maids from the country were meaner with the pum-pum than a dog with a bone and well deserved firing, but I held myself in check by remembering that no earthly excuse could atone for my wanton behavior.

  Perched like a bird on the low-lying branch of a tree, God seemed to digest this candid confession with some gravity.

  Finally he wondered in a bemused voice what was pumpum.

  “What is pum-pum? Lord, it’s what you always blasting in scripture!”

  God said that I must be mistaken, for He had nothing at all against pum-pum, and whether I felt like chasing it or butterfly was my business.

  I had to laugh at this naïveté.

  “Oh, pum-pum much harder to catch dan butterfly, Lord,” I said in worldly explanation, adding, “but to say you have nothing ’gainst pum-pum after everything you write ’bout it-.-.-.”

  I never wrote a word about it, God declared firmly.

  “Den who wrote all those harsh words ’gainst pum-pum?”

  God thought for a brief moment or so and said that he didn’t really know but that a long time ago there was a bearded chap who had been bucked off a horse someplace in the Middle East—He couldn’t exactly remember when or where—and hit his head on a rockstone, and when the fellow woke up he began railing against something similar, although he didn’t call it pum-pum, which must be a Jamaican nickname-.-.-. Hmmm-.-.-. What did he call it again?

  “You talking ’bout St. Paul on de road to Damascus!” my parson bellowed with outrage. “Dat is blasphemy!”

  He remembered now, God recalled dreamily. The fellow who dropped off the horse and hit his head got up screeching against women.

  “Some people call it dat,” I said gloomily.

  The philosopher jumped to his feet and took an erratic spin around the stout trunk of a nearby tree, looking bewildered and lost in thought. A few minutes later he sat back down with a satisfied smirk.

  “What sweet you?” I asked him.

  “The sight of God shook me up and made me question my theory about oblivion after death. But I see now that there’s a simple explanation.”

  “What dat?”

  “God must be in my head, too, along with everything else. Now, if you don’t mind disappearing for a bit, I’m going to take a walk and think this through.”

  With that, he wandered away down the trail, glancing once over his shoulder to see if we were disappearing before he was swallowed up in the bush.

  “If dis peenywally is truly God,” my parson shrieked in his harshest brimstone voice, “why He didn’t smite those rude American students, eh? Why?”

  Chapter 12

  I am not a pushy man: I don’t rub up to big-shot politician just to pepper them with questions on their days off. But I had plenty questions to ask God.

  For example, why was excursion bus and boat and train rammed with ole negar always crashing, sinking, and derailing, resulting in ole negar breaking neck, drowning, and being blown to smithereens by the dozen? Why every time a ferry sank in some woebegone foreign land it was always crammed with pure ole negar? And how come every time I read about a crocodile or a tiger or a lion in some misbegotten country devouring someone, it was always a ole negar being eaten? How come white man never get eaten, too, or does he taste too bad?

  Naturally, I have also always wondered what made woman so hardheaded and tough, but out of respect I didn’t want to clean bowl the Almighty with my opening ball.

  Still, I was hesitant to discuss politics with the Lord, and that first evening in the bush we mainly chatted about current events and sports and all kind of horse dead and cow fat.

  Later, we strolled through the countryside—at least I walked while God flew next to my ear. The evening was lovely with a freshening breeze, and soon the philosopher melted out of the bush and fell in step beside me and demanded of God to know certain truths about the beginning of the universe.

  God said He personally had no beginning, that there was never a day when He didn’t exist, at which point the philosopher asked in a quarrelsome tone how that could be when everything had a beginning.

  God replied that the philosopher had been bamboozled by the clock. Before He created time, God explained, there was no such thing as beginning and end, start and stop, sooner and later, arrive and depart, now and then, and past and present. There was only was was or was was not. He was was. Everything else was was not.

  “So,” I clarified, feeling a little giddy and philosophical myself in the evening breeze, “was was or was was not was all dere was?”

  That’s exactly right, God nodded.

  “So, for instance, dere was no dog, no puss, no rat, and no mongoose?”

  No.

  “No stepladder, no bus, no thief, and no petty cash pan?”

  No.

  “
No domino, no sugar bun, no pum-.-.-. I mean, no pineapple or pomegranate?”

  “This is rubbish!” the philosopher snapped. “Shut up with the endless particulars and let Him talk.”

  “You want me to thump down you backside in de bush right now? Come tell me to shut up like I’m a bwoy! You think you can keep shop and deal with ole negar all dese years and not feel philosophical now and again?”

  God cut in and said that sometimes He wished He’d followed His mind and created a clockless universe where everything happened at once like in the booths at a garden party.

  “Well, God,” I declared, speaking from bitter experience, “is a good thing You didn’t do dat, for knowing de earthly sisters like I do, dere’s no way dey going jump up in church and give out pum-pum at de same time. Whereupon all grinding would therefore cease and de whole population perish.”

  “I still don’t understand why You created the universe,” the philosopher said sourly.

  God tried to explain creation in a way we could understand.

  He said that in this beginning He was an immensity and alone in a warm swirling broth of darkness. There was no sun; there was no world, no moon, no stars; there was nothing but His immensity in an ocean of terrible darkness; and when He shifted or turned, the darkness lapped against and tickled a cranny of His being that, for the sake of argument, we could call His armpits.

  One day, He said, during a moment of monstrous tickling, He got fed up and bawled out in the infinite blackness, “Let there be stick!”

  We swished single-file through the bush in deep silence, digesting this vivid first moment of creation.

  The philosopher broke the awed stillness by barking, “Stick?

  Your first creation was stick?”

  Yes.

  “But God,” I protested, “dis is not what we learn in Bible school. You didn’t say, ‘Let dere be light’?”

  God said, But wait! Baps, you know you Bible!

  “I had a wicked aunt who used to beat de Old Testament into me,” I muttered. “She made me memorize almost de whole o’ it, and she brooked no error or worldly interpretation. One time I make de mistake and say to her, ‘Dese people in de Old Testament were a hard breed o’ people: Either dey knewing one anodder or dey slewing one anodder,’ and she nearly kill me with a tamarind switch. When it come to her Bible, she was a hard woman, God. And she say dat You say, ‘Let dere be light!’ and dere was light.”