He stood up unsteadily and peered around at the endless sea of bobbing heads gawking at the passing floats. I could see the gang of glaring patriots still scowling at us. The philosopher ambled over and sniffed.
“I don’t quite know what to make of this,” he confessed, looking bedraggled with confusion. “I was never a religious man.”
“Shut up and help me with Egbert,” I hissed. “Patriots coming to lynch him.”
“Baps,” Egbert mumbled, weaving like he was drunk from too much rum or spectacle, “dis is a funny people. I want to go home to Jamaica.”
The patriots saw that we were slinking off, and one of them shoved his way angrily over to detain us. I gave him a quick kick in his crotch, feeling nothing but an empty spot where hood and balls had once roosted on earth, and he doubled over and gasped, “Ohhh! That was good! Do it again!”
I did as he asked, this time dropping him flat on the sidewalk, where he sprawled against the thick cluster of legs, while we wormed our way through the “ohhing” and “ahhing” of onlookers.
As I shoved Egbert ahead of me I caught a whiff of white rum on his breath.
“You been drinking rum!”
He mumbled that he’d found a bottle of white rum on the pavement and had had a tups.
“Will you kick me again, please!” the patriot begged, catching up to us and grabbing at my shirt.
“No! Brute!” I snapped in his face. “You was going lynch me friend. Go home!”
I had my hands full with Egbert, trying to push him through the crowd, but the patriot continued to chase after us, begging a kick. Finally, I snarled at the philosopher, “Make yourself useful and kick de wretch for me, nuh?”
He said that he’d try his best, and as we eased away I heard a wishy-washy thud followed by an indignant squeal, “You call that a kick?”
Then we were out of earshot and darting across the street between the clattering floats.
I had to laugh. “You know,” I told Egbert, “I can see why dese people vex with you. Taking away pain and suffering ruin deir American way of life.”
“Baps! Make me go drink a rum.”
The crowd exploded into a jubilant cheer and I turned in time to see the Lion’s Club float rumbling past, showing a man wearing a sign that said “Murderer” around his neck. He lay on his back, his naked belly torn open, while a flock of mechanical vultures buried their beaks in his exposed liver, making him laugh like they were pecking his funny bone.
“I don’t understand why you kick so much better than I do when everything is inside my head,” the philosopher grumbled,
Chapter 18
We travelled to Chicago and then to Detroit. Everywhere we went we encountered sheep, backyard cloud, rampant harpplaying, and daily manna drizzle.
We drifted north to Maine, where me and the philosopher had it out one night as we were camping out in a woodland.
It began when I said that the Maine sheep baaed through their nose, while the New York sheep had a throaty baa like a gargling, and the philosopher said that it was the same baa and he should know for all baaing took place inside his head.
Egbert, meanwhile, had propped himself up against the trunk of a pine tree where he was drinking rum and gazing around the campsite like a Boy Scout leader looking to molest a tenderfoot.
“Listen,” I said to the philosopher, losing my temper, “is time you realize dat all baaing not in you head! Not even a single, solitary sheep in you head. Face facts. You dead. You in heaven. I not in you head. Heavenly ram and ewe and lamb not in you head. And that man over there drinking rum is God in disguise. And God is definitely not—” I stopped suddenly in mid-sentence for I had heard a twig-snap. I scanned the ragged fringe of dark woods dancing to the flames of our campfire. “Who dat?”
The philosopher looked up. “What’s the matter?”
“Somebody out dere! You don’t hear dat sound?”
He said he’d heard nothing, but I jumped up and charged a trembling bush.
I hauled a shepherd I found crouching there into the glow of the fire. Two small sheep trotted after him meekly.
“Why you hiding behind dat bush?” I demanded, draping him up like a constable.
“I’m not hiding,” he squirmed. “I was grazing my sheep in the starlight.”
“Don’t tell me no lie, or I’ll thump you down.”
“Oh, would you, please?”
I noticed that he was boring into Egbert with his eyeball, so I shook the brute and asked him what he was looking at.
He mumbled nothing, and begged me to please deliver the promised thump and let him go.
I released him and ordered him out of our camp. As he left, he turned to give Egbert another lingering stare.
With the shepherd gone, we tried to settle down for the night.
The stars were blazing overhead in a clear sky, and there was a nail-clipped moon fastened to the horizon like a hookworm.
I was just beginning to doze off when the philosopher mumbled, “I don’t feel too steady. My head feels woozy. Does it look funny?”
In the light of the campfire, which was chewing on scraps of-darkness, I glanced up and immediately saw that he was crowning, that his headtop was disappearing.
“Backside, man!” I gasped, jumping to my feet. “You getting born again!”
“Rubbish,” he said airily. “Once you’re dead, you’re dead.”
“Feel you headtop! Half of it gone already!”
He groped for his head with his hand, and by then his whole face had been clean shaved off and only a stumpy neck remained that was dropping fast.
“Must be another hallucination,” he mumbled.
“You getting born again, man! Look! Only a small chunk o’ neckbone left!”
“Don’t get so excited. There’s a logical explanation.”
“Rass! Now all you shoulder gone!”
He shifted against the tree as if making himself comfortable for the night.
“I know none of this is happening,” he said in the hollow voice Miss B had used once her own head had disappeared. “This shouldn’t be. Therefore it isn’t.”
I felt like kicking the wretch, but there was hardly anything left to kick, for his waist had melted down and only two thick unattached legs remained that wriggled and squirmed over the grass.
Evenly, smoothly, as if his flesh and bone were being silently siphoned off, the philosopher melted down to anklebone.
“Goodbye, Mr. Philosopher!” I bawled. “Maybe I’ll see you one day down on earth.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he echoed stubbornly.
Another twitch of his stubby, footless toes, and he was gone.
In the dimness I felt for any trace of him. Nothing remained behind but a slight warm dip in the grass where his body had just rested.
“God, look,” I cried, “the philosopher born again!”
“Baps, stop calling me God,” Egbert growled crossly. “It’s very provoking.”
Chapter 19
I must have dozed off for a few hours. When I awoke it was still dark, and God had changed back to His peenywally shape and was flitting about my head like a sliver of summer sun.
“God!” I cried, jumping up. “Why you change back? Mind American patriot see you, you know!”
God said that He felt to eat a star.
I stood up and stretched sleepy neckstring and backbone and asked Him to repeat what He’d said, and He said He wouldn’t be long, He just thought He’d browse in the Orion constellation and gobble down a nova or two. He asked if I’d like to come along or would I like to sleep while He did what He needed to do.
I didn’t understand, but I said I’d come along anyway.
Touch my light, Baps, God commanded.
I reached out and touched the ring of brightness that sparkled from His peenywally body.
We blew into the dark heavens like a blast from a twelve-bore shotgun.
We were past the moon before my first blink, and e
ven before my second blink we had zoomed clear of the flabby yellow rind of the sun.
Swiftly, silently, breezelessly, surrounded by a trillion granulated grains of stars, we soared through the bottomless ocean of darkness, which felt so sweet and cool that I told God I was going to take off my clothes and skinny-dip in the milky glow if He didn’t mind.
God laughed and said, Do what you want, so I shed my clothes and watched them tumble away in cool, raw space while my parson bawled, “Flying naked through heaven! Exposing de purity of starlight to nasty battyhole! What you going do next, grind de universe?”
Pearly starlight brushed my nakedness like cool spring water, and I gloried in the exaltation of winging through the heavens on the shimmering light of God.
We rocketed into a brilliant cluster of stars, and Almighty God dove right into the burning furnace of the brightest nova and began to eat it out like a sugar bun.
Before my eyes, even as I stared, the fiery nova shrivelled up as God sucked out the juice of its starlight, turning it into a wobbly black clot.
“God!” I bawled. “You eat up de star!”
God sparked out of the dark heart of the eaten-up star, blazing with a brightness that dazzled my eyes.
A chunk of jagged rockstone slowly rolled out of the darkness. I grabbed onto it and tumbled through cool space as God ate another star, sucking out its sparkle and leaving a black-pit.
God was now so bright that human eye couldn’t behold Him without burning up. Since I was a duppy I could steal a glance every now and again, but even duppy eye had to watch out for the brightness.
God said He was done and told me to touch His light. On the way back down, I collected my clothes and dressed in the cool fluorescence of starlight.
We zoomed through space and landed on the moon.
There we had a heartfelt man-to-God chat.
You should have seen me, Taddeus Baps, cock up my foot on a cracked rim of the moon while me and God exchanged thoughts about this and that.
From the socket of black space, the blue earth peered at us like an unwinking German eyeball.
I told God about the philosopher and God said that this was the third time he had died and been reborn without knowing it.
“Dis is deep, God,” I muttered. “Dead and reach heaven three times and don’t even know it. What a waste of life!”
God replied that the philosopher was a shouldist and that shouldists were stubborn people.
“Shouldist? What you call a shouldist?”
God said that a shouldist was one who insists on remaking the world as he thinks it should be, rather than accepting it as it is. He said the philosopher thought that there should be no life after death, and when he found out that there was, rather than change his opinion, he clung stubbornly to his should.
God was in a deep mood—right away I could see that.
But I have my deep side, too, even though I usually hide it from ole negar, and God and the moon were drawing depth out of me.
“Look, God,” I said. “Most teacher would tell you that the rule of should is good—that should make you brush you hair in the morning, you teeth at night, take Sunday bath, rinse you frock and iron up you good pants, don’t cuss bad word, and behave yourself in public. Better a shouldist than a hooligan.”
God said, Point, Baps. A little should is fine. But a lot of should leads to principle, and principle leads to murder.
I had to chuckle. “God,” I advised, “draw brake awhile. How principle lead to murder?”
God said, Consider this, Baps, you meet your neighbor on the street one morning, what do you think the neighbor should do?
“Say ‘good morning.’ That is just good manners.”
And suppose your neighbor doesn’t say “good morning,” what do you do?
“I might tell him ’bout his backside or lick him down.”
Why don’t you say “good morning”?
“God,” I tried to be as calm as possible, for it was obvious that He didn’t understand dealings with ill-bred neighbor, “is de principle. If my neighbor come and see me on de street, he should say ‘good morning’ first.”
But suppose, Baps, your neighbor thinks the same about you—that you should bid him “good morning” first?
“Is not dat simple, you know, God. A man must stand for some principle. And it is my neighbor’s bounden duty to say ‘good morning’ if he comes and sees me on the street.”
See, Baps. That’s the poison of shouldism.
I didn’t want to argue with God on the moon, so I changed the subject and asked Him how come He had eaten the stars, if He was hungry or if He just felt like nibbling up some of His universe for a joke, and He explained His everlasting mystery to me, Taddeus Baps.
He said that He needed to eat a star every now and again, that earthly scientists called the eaten-out star scrap a “black hole,” and that if you searched the universe long and hard enough you could tell where He’d had His Last Supper.
He said that everything I beheld around me, the billion rhinestone specks of stars, the rimless darkness of space, the crumbly circumference of the moon, used to be a part of Him.
He explained that He had used Himself as raw material to create the universe. That was why He had become so tiny and powerless—because everything of Himself had gone into His handiwork of creation.
“So every now and again you need to eat part of it back?”
Exactly, God said, especially when He was put under strain or pressure.
“Being ole negar put You under a strain, eh?”
God said, Whew! Baps! That was a celestial pressure!
“Of course is celestial pressure. You think ole negar easy?
You shoulda never created dem.”
God said He didn’t, that I did.
“Hear dis now!” I blared sarcastically. “Poor Baps create all de million of ole negar dat mash up de world! Is Baps tell you to get drunk and carouse and carry on like a hooligan when you was Egbert? Is Baps make you go on so bad?”
God said He had behaved in the image and likeness of ole negar that dwelled within my mind. He had been as I thought ole negar should be.
Even my indoor parson jumped to my defense. He sneered, “Dis stupid, sinful shopkeeper couldn’t even build a chicken coop much less create one ole negar.”
A man is not just flesh and bone, Baps. A man is also an idea. And the idea behind a man is what makes him what he is, good or evil.
“So you saying dere’s good in ole negar?”
Yes, Baps, there’s good in the heart of all who walk the world.
“Boy,” I muttered gloomily, “it look like neighbor and ole negar just not Your strong suit, God.”
God said He could easily prove His point if I agreed to a simple experiment.
“What experiment?”
He said that He’d like to change me into Egbert so I could dwell inside the flesh and bone of my own creation.
“What, me? Become ole negar?”
Yes.
“I, Taddeus Baps, who graduate from de University of de West Indies, former tutor at Excelsior College, must now, at dis advanced stage in my life, dead and reach heaven to turn into ole negar?”
Unless, of course, God said quietly, you’re afraid.
“Listen, God! Don’t make me raise me voice and go on bad on de moon! But learn dis, BAPS NOT ’FRAID OF NO OLE NEGAR!”
So you’ll become one?
“I’ll become a hundred ole negar if You like, to prove de point! I never create dem! I don’t make dem go on bad! I don’t foster deir indiscipline and wayward nature! I don’t make dem worship de idols of rum, dancehall, and canepiece pumpum! Dese are Your creations, not mine! And all You going accomplish when You turn me into ole negar is make me shame me mummy!”
I must admit that I was indignant and vexed as I cocked up my foot on the crust of the moon and mashed brains with God.
But when we came back down to the Maine campfire beside the woodland, God
had assumed my shape and I had become Egbert Adolphus Hackington, one of the worst ole negar to ever walk the face of the earth.
Chapter 20
Notice to the Reading Public: This chapter has been edited by barrister.
Barristeristic editing was necessary to protect myself from criminal proceedings. I have asked barrister to read this chapter and cross out whatever material might blacken my good name and make me liable to lawsuit. Any objectionable material, at barrister’s discretion, is crossed out so:
**********Crossed out by barrister**********
Over the next few days while I was Egbert Adolphus, I experienced serious worries. I craved predial larceny. I thirsted for demon rum. I lusted after pum-pum. I longed to capture idle land. My mentality hungered for socialism, grant-in-aid, scholarship money, and government freeness. I yearned to stone a neighbor’s mango tree. My brain was crammed full of speculations and thoughts about subjects I knew nothing about.
I went on bad in various ways. I admit it now that I look back. I don’t want to get into all the nasty details of my uncouth behavior. Suffice it to say that I was not myself, and barrister assures me that because I had been converted into ole negar through an Act of God, I cannot be held legally liable.
One time, for instance, as we were flying over Wyoming, I spotted a plump shepherd girl tending her flock of sheep on the prairie and, bawling to God that I would come soon, I flew down to put rude arguments to her.
At first she was pleasant and we had a nice conversation about this and that as I softened her up with speechification on popular topics.
She said that she lived on a nearby farm, and that she was tending her father’s flock while he spent the day tuning his harp for a concert that Sunday in church.
I boasted that no harp was ever made that my hand couldn’t tune, and she said that perhaps I would like to fly over to her father’s farm with her and help with the harp-tuning, and I replied, certainly, but before we went why didn’t we sit in the shade of a tree away from the grazing sheep and discuss whys and wherefores of offshore banking.
She agreed and we sat down in the shade of a leafy tree.
The Duppy Page 11
