“Well, what was was, and what is is, and what will be will be.
You getting plenty grind, Baps?”
“Oh, yes. Plenty.”
“We’re all good Jamaican Christians, and we must be charitable in our hearts and grind one another regularly. None should lack pum-pum in heaven. If de sisters neglecting you, even though I busy wid me grandchildren, I’ll come grind you tonight.”
“I grind enough already, ma’am.”
“Since Miss B gone back down, I don’t see you again in church. You backsliding?”
“Yes, ma’am. But I am seeking reform.”
“Seek de said reform, Baps. Come back to us! Don’t hang out with rude boy! And stop running around with God in de bush, bawling ‘Boo’ at idle old cow. If dis wasn’t heaven, de poor cow would already dead of heart failure.”
“Yes, ma’am. Good evening.”
“Good evening, Baps! Get grind regular. Uphold standards.
Being in heaven don’t mean dat slackness must triumph.”
“No, ma’am.”
With her kindly pieties still fresh in my ears, I ambled out into the village streets which were shimmering in the loveliness of another beautiful heavenly sunset.
Chapter 14
I am a curious man. I like to learn about the world and the people who inhabit it. Before I dropped dead, my hobby was studying geography books, especially memorizing names of mountains and rivers in the Temperate Zone.
So now that I was in heaven, I was eager to travel to other countries and was especially curious to visit the United States and find out why its people were so discontented with God.
One day as I was sitting behind the counter daydreaming about a trip abroad, I glimpsed Hopeton trudging up the hillside with another newly dead Jamaican in tow. I hurried into the back room and got out the official government register and reentered the shop just as the guide and his duppy passenger walked through the front door.
The duppy turned out to be Hector, my thiefing gardener, who had just broken his neck by falling out of my mango tree.
We had a terrible blow-up then and there, for I was still peeved about how he and Mabel had stripped my wallet clean as soon as I was dead.
“Leap year bonus?” I raged at him. “You stinking dog!”
“Is Mabel make me do it, sah!” he whimpered.
Hopeton leaned against the counter and grinned during the whole row, but finally I registered the wretch of a gardener and the guide disappeared down into the bush path.
A lady from the village who had stopped by to pick up some flour offered to break Hector in with a grind of welcome, and the two of them waddled across the street and disappeared down a gully.
A few hours later, the gardener staggered into my shop, did a dance, and chuckled, “Dat nice lady give me seven grind ’pon de gully floor! I shoulda dead fifty year ago.”
An idea was cooking in my brain. While it cooked, I stared up at him long and hard until he flinched. Finally I asked him bluntly, “You want a work?”
He looked me over cagily.
“Work in heaven, sah? Man suppose to work up here? What kind of work?”
What I had in mind was training him to run my business while I went away on my trip. And the techniques of proper shopkeeping were what I intended to teach him—how to run a respectable shop that exerted rulership and discipline over ole negar.
Of course, I knew it wouldn’t be easy, that I would have to slave like a dog to explain my philosophy of business, to demonstrate that we were not just keeping shop and selling goods, we were setting high moral tone and fostering discipline.
“Discipline, sah?” He seemed stunned at this far-reaching concept of shopkeeping. “We not just out to sell saltfish and flour?”
“On one level we selling saltfish and flour. But on anodder level we ruling ole negar.”
He held up his head and wailed, “Lawd, Missah Baps, dis too deep for me poor brain, sah!”
“Dis is heaven, man! If you want a deeper brain, we can fill out a form and get you a deeper brain.”
“I do plan to fill out a form, sah, and make de journey to Kingston for bodily improvement!”
I glared at him. “You want a bigger hood, right?”
He squirmed and looked embarrassed. “Missah Baps, what a way you can see right inna man heart!”
“You not even in heaven a day and already you taking de low road!”
“Dat road not low, Missah Baps! Dat road high, sah! Well high!”
“High? Arrive in heaven today, and right away you looking for bigger hood at government expense. Dat is a high road?”
Our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of a regular customer—a matronly lady who resided in one of the settlements surrounding the village—and I took pains to serve her with every consideration and courtesy so that Hector could observe my philosophy of business in practice.
We exchanged pleasantries about the weather and happenings in the community, and she purchased flour and salt and a pint of red peas, which she declared she intended to use in a soup for her husband’s dinner.
She was gathering her things in a housewifely bustle to depart the premises, when Hector mumbled, “Whoa! I just reach heaven, not three hour gone!”
“Oh, yes?” she replied, beaming hospitably at him. “I hope one of de village ladies gave you a welcoming grind.”
I interrupted gruffly. “Him just get up off de gully ground.”
“Just a tups,” the liar muttered, slumping his shoulders and pretending to be wasting away.
“Dat is not satisfactory,” the woman said decisively, piling her packages firmly atop the counter. “A newcomer deserves more grind dan a tups!”
“Me say de man just get up offa gully ground, Miss Lindsay!
Him get seven grind inna row.”
“Hi, Missah Baps!” Hector whispered frantically. “Have a heart, sah! I only just dead!”
“Now, Baps! Be Christian! Dis is a stranger among us!”
Arm in arm, the two of them trooped out of my shop and headed across the street toward the gully.
An hour later they returned beaming happily, and after the customer had finally left, Hector looked up at the ceiling of my shop and bellowed, “Heaven is one powerful location, sah!”
That week I told God about my plans to visit America, and He said He would like to accompany me.
We had gone on our usual stroll and were sitting in the grassy clearing when I brought up the subject. The American philosopher, who had been dogging our tracks all evening, grumbled that he didn’t particularly wish to travel.
“You not invited,” I told him bluntly.
“But if you go, I’ll have to go, too,” he snapped. “That’s the nuisance about having you both inside my head.”
“Stay home. We’ll manage.”
I frankly advised God against making the trip. I pointed out the dangers of mob violence, military action, impoundment, and kangaroo court, telling him that a nation prepared to reward tourists for attempting capture and extradition of His person would stop at nothing should He attempt a forcible landing on their soil, but the Almighty laughed and said that I was forgetting the law of heaven which reads, “Thou cannot capture the Lord thy God.”
“I don’t forget. But dis is mob rule. Dese people hate your heaven. And dey are born lynchers.”
God said nobody could lynch Him.
“So dey’d lynch me, den. For I hear dey don’t like black people either.”
God asked if I wouldn’t appreciate the joy of being lynched, and I replied, yes, a lynching would be a nice treat on my holiday, but still I wondered if it would be worth all the clamor and noise and babble.
God thought about it, sparkling near the limb of a tree under which we sat, and then He said He had an idea—how about if He went with me to America in disguise so that nobody would know who He was and there would be no lynching to contend with, and I said, yes, that wasn’t a bad idea, but how would He disguise
Himself and what would He look like, and He asked if He could search my brain for an appropriate identity and become it, for He still had that power.
I invited Him to search to His heart’s content and feel free to use anything He found there as His disguise, and as I sat under the tree, God darted into my earhole and I felt His divine light pierce my skull and wriggle around inside my brain.
“I don’t know why he’s searching your brain, when everything is inside mine,” the philosopher grumbled.
After a few minutes of tingling around inside my brain, God asked what was ole negar.
“Ole negar! No, God! Don’t turn ole negar on me.”
God said, Really, Baps, that is the perfect disguise—the image in your brain is very powerful. He would borrow the blueprint inside my brain and transform Himself into ole negar and that way we wouldn’t have to put up with harassment, public persecution, and patriotic American family-value lynching.
“No, God!” I bawled. “Not ole negar! Please, God!”
But before I could say another word, I heard a loud whoosh, and right before my eyes the spark of light that was God got fuzzy and clumped to form the figure of a muscular black man who stood in front of me, grinning like a nincompoop.
“Wha’ happen, Baps?” He croaked. “You have any white rum?”
“My word!” the philosopher gasped.
Chapter 15
The moment Almighty God became a regular ole negar it was worries from start to finish, what with the laziness, carousing, drinking binges, and endless vexations. When I would lose my temper and bark, “God! You going on too bad, you know!” He would belch, scratch His hairy belly, and beg me another lick of white rum.
During His incarnation as ole negar, Almighty God proclaimed that His name was Egbert Adolphus Hackington, and when I asked Him one morning as we sat talking in the tiny drawing room behind the shop why He’d chosen this particular name, He growled, “Lawd, Baps, don’t ask me no fool-fool question, man!” Then He stood up and yawned without covering His mouth, exposing some gruesome cavities, and asked if I’d like to play some domino.
My mother always used to say, “If you can’t say something good about somebody, don’t say anything at all!” But she would also add, for she understood the value of a dirty secret, “But if you know something bad about somebody big, write down the particulars so you won’t forget dem.”
During God’s incarnation as ole negar, I took her advice and carefully recorded His misdeeds in an exercise book, giving names, dates, times, offenses, and places.
Much later, after God had changed back to His peenywally shape, I showed Him these notes and we both read them aloud and laughed, and He praised me for following my mother’s sound advice.
“What is a modder for if not to give advice to a son?” I asked with humility. “And what son would be so ungrateful as not to heed de advice of a wise old modder?”
God shone His lovely light into my eyes and murmured, Baps, you are a saint.
“No, God!” I protested modestly. “I’m no saint. A saint would keep much neater notes dan dis!”
He glanced again at the rough scribbles and unpolished scratches I had haphazardly made in an exercise book and said, True, there was a white man named Saint Augustine who used to raise Cain in Carthage before he gave up woman and who definitely kept neater notes.
“Well, God,” I muttered, my feelings hurt at this implied criticism, “I did de best I could. And unlike dat white saint you mentioned, I never did give up woman. Let it be said dat I loved dem and grind dem faithfully through thick and thin to de bitter end.”
God said, True, nobody in his right mind could ever accuse me of that.
“Because I noticed dat when a Christian repent, de first thing him give up is woman! Even if woman have nothing at all to do with him criminality.”
God said that it was plain to Him that I had never attended Catholic school.
We took an Air Jamaica jet to New York. We could have flown on our own, because all citizens of heaven can fly, but we wanted to travel in style and cock up our foot during the journey.
Plus, we Jamaicans are a funny people. If we didn’t fly on earth we just don’t feel to fly in heaven. It’s like a woman told me up there, she said, “Baps, I not flying. I’m no damn mosquito or John Crow. If you ever see me flying it mean only one thing: Gunman push me off a precipice. When I travel, I take jet plane.”
So we flew to New York by regular heavenly jet.
We landed in New York where we were processed by immigration officials and given visas for two months with the option of lengthening our stay into permanent status so long as we were willing to be dehooded and bleached white.
The man was polite and friendly but he was also firm and made us sign a paper agreeing to the conditions. He explained that visitors to America who retained their hoods were not allowed to exceed a two-month stay, for even a glimpse of earthly privates dangling from a crotch gave heavenly sheep trauma. Unbleached black visitors were also confined to a-limited stay because black skin likewise gave sheep the heebie-jeebies.
While the man was checking us through immigration, the philosopher gaped around with amazement, puzzling no doubt about how all these many and varied wonders could fit inside his poor overcrowded brain.
We were in a cavernous building that shimmered with a moonlit softness, and up near the rafters lolled some white men and women from a harp band who were on a break, squatting on a fleecy white cloud that hovered near the ceiling like an overhead bandstand. In the background wafted an annoying hallelujah like a whine of mosquitoes.
All the officials wore enormous wings complete with a full set of feathers, and all were dressed in billowing white robes that looked as if they had been spun from spiders’ webs.
“Lawd God, what a way de music noisy!” Egbert complained, drawing a stern frown from the immigration official who reminded us that we were now in American heaven and should conduct ourselves in an appropriate way. He was in the middle of this scolding when a fat and fluffy sheep wandered into the cubicle and licked his knee with a friendly baa.
“Rass! Look ’pon dat sheep in de airport building!” Egbert bawled.
“This is my sheep, and I am his shepherd,” the official said, rubbing behind the ears of the animal. “Say ‘Baaa’ for the tourists,” he urged the sheep, and the animal turned toward us and obediently baaed.
“Good heavens!” the philosopher muttered.
“Have a nice eternity,” the official said, handing us our documents and turning back to the sheep that rubbed up against his leg beside a desk.
As we headed out of the terminal we heard him murmuring to the animal, “Did you safely graze today? Come, sit by my side. I will shelter thee from the wolf.”
“Baps!” croaked Egbert, as we shuffl ed down the airport concourse. “I need a white rum bad!”
New York on earth is a sinkhole of human wastes, with towering buildings that make people feel like ants and air so dirty that it curdles in the crowded streets like a fart at a tea party.
But the New York of heaven has no skyscrapers, no cramped and smelly narrow streets with nasty asphalt tongues licking at the foundations of shiny glass buildings.
Centuries ago, I found out later, heaven’s New York used to look just like earth’s. Then, because of Christian objections that the city wasn’t properly biblical, New York was razed, and what we now stood gaping at, built in its place.
Before us sprawled an old-time biblical city you might see in a child’s bedtime tale, with a stone castle here and there squatting among single-story red clay structures interlaced with unpaved streets on which a few white-robed pedestrians carrying shepherd’s crooks quietly trudged. Fluttering above the-streets was a steady flock of winged men and women dressed in fleecy white robes, carrying harps and crook sticks, their flapping wings making a breezy whoosh. The whole city—in fact, as I would find out later, all of heavenly America—looked fuzzy like beaten egg white.
“Baps!” Egbert bawled, covering his head with his hands. “Snow falling.”
“It isn’t snow, Pilgrim,” chuckled an elderly robed gentleman who was walking past, “it’s manna. It’s lunch time.”
Then he opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue as he sauntered away, gulping down the thickly falling flakes.
“Baps,” Egbert wailed, “dis place weird! I want go back to Jamaica!”
The philosopher, meanwhile, was chomping on a mouthful of manna while the flakes piled up in thick drifts on the sidewalk.
“Hey! This is good!” he exclaimed.
We settled that first night in an inn off a quiet, treelined street. Naturally, we could have caroused all night, sleep in heaven being very sweet but not a necessity, except that after reaching new ground the first thing I always do is see how it sleeps. Plus, from what I could see, there was no place to carouse.
So I told Egbert that we should get an inn and catch a sleep, and he said he didn’t mind so long as it was next to a rum bar or a dancehall. I explained to him that such things did not exist in American heaven, as far as I knew, and he grumbled, “So what de backside we doin’ here?”
We slept well because everyone sleeps well in heaven, but all night long we heard a noisy bleating outside our window. The philosopher got up, opened the window, and peered out into what looked like a backyard meadow teeming with a sea of fluffy sheep baying at the moon. Then he muttered that his brain was certainly funny and crawled back into bed.
“Baps,” Egbert whispered in the darkness, “you don’t hear dem sheep?”
“Yes,” I said gruffly, “I hear dem.”
“Baps, why you think dey have so much sheep in American heaven?”
“How would I know? Is you create dis place, not me.”
“I never create nothing, Baps! What you talking ’bout?”
“Don’t make no joke with me, you hear, God,” I said. “Dis is serious. You know why dem have sheep up here.”
The Duppy Page 9
