What happened next is fuzzy. But I do remember her chucking me off, boxing my ears, and bawling, “Foreign sinner! I am decently caulked!”
“Caulked!” I heard myself scoffing. “Anything American government can caulk, I can uncaulk,” and as I said this I **********Crossed out by barrister**********
As we lay panting after our scuffle, I asked her gruffly, “You sheep caulk, too?”
“My innocent sheep?” she shrieked.
“Who say dem innocent? Dem sheep come like church sister—dem just pretend. Like say, look ’pon dat nice fat ewe over dere **********Crossed out by barrister**********
Later, I rejoined God and flew glumly over the lush prairieland where for miles and miles you saw nothing but ripples in the grass and the occasional pasture cloud on-which a country-boy angel pitched with his harp and rural-sheep.
“Dey caulk everything female on dis whole continent. What is wrong with dese people?” I heard myself muttering to God.
Shouldism, God replied.
Looking back on this adventure, I realize now that I very nearly became a sheep grinder during our prairie adventure. Many months afterwards, when I had once again been transformed into Baps, I complained bitterly to God about the risk he’d made me run by turning me into ole negar in paradise.
“You hear de argument I put to de woman about her ewe,”
I-griped. “Is a lucky thing I never end up grinding some nasty prairie Wyoming sheep! Is dat why I work so hard on earth to build me up three shops? So I could dead and end up in heaven as a nasty sheep grinder?”
Baps, God said humorously, that would never have happened.
“Why? You stay dere thinking ole negar can’t grind sheep.
You want see what dem do to Jamaican goat. Why you think country people nowadays ’fraid to drink goat milk?”
Baps, I tell you, that would never have happened.
“Why not? Because of fool-fool caulking? Nothing American government can caulk dat Jamaica ole negar can’t uncaulk!”
Baps, you worry too much, God said.
Among the other degenerate acts I attempted to perform during this most trying period of my life were
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On advice from barrister, this chapter is hereby terminated.
Chapter 21
Given the chance, would Jamaican ole negar—out of the goodness of his heart—risk life and limb to rescue God from capture, experimentation, probe, and assault?
The answer, from the chapter to follow, is yes.
Now, before the reader laughs scornfully in my face and flings this book across the room or uses its leaves to wipe batty, please be assured that it is not I, Taddeus Baps, who clings to this wayward opinion. It is Almighty God.
I have tried to convince God that to so willfully interpret the events I am about to relate and insist that an ole negar named Egbert Adolphus Hackington tried to rescue Him could make Him a laughingstock among Jamaica’s congregations and bring back the public worship of Baal.
I have also tried to point out to Him that it is an act of colonialism to venture onto our shores and try to gainsay what we Jamaicans know to be unshakeable truths about the most degenerate members of our population.
Of course, God, having created everything, thinks He’s entitled.
> Squeamish readers are strongly advised to skip this chapter.
I was still Egbert Adolphus Hackington—a hardened Jamaican ole negar. I was not Baps.
On my brain I bore the heavy burden of ole negar thoughts and appetites—foremost among them being rum and pum-pum, followed by predial larceny, petty theft, and hopes for a prosperous cock-up-foot-on-veranda retirement after bank embezzlement.
I had been guzzling rum hard that day and had tried my best to get a backslider ewe drunk—for what nasty purpose I cannot even begin to guess. God was putting up with my antics and listening with amusement to my stupid opinions as we flew over the rippling prairie grass in a breeze. Occasionally, I’d swoop down to the ground and try to speechify some shepherd girl I’d spotted roaming the grasslands with her flock, only to learn that she, too, had been patriotically caulked. Then I’d rejoin God and try to explain to him what caused biliousness in Kingstonians, why Chinyman was no good at domino, or why crab louse love to prowl in a full moon, all of which God seemed eager to learn.
Eventually, since it was getting dark, me and God landed on a desolate stretch of prairie and built a campfire. We sat around chatting for an hour or so, or at least I was chatting and God was listening, then I had a snort of white rum and went to sleep.
That night, after sleeping for an hour or so, I woke on the prairie and found myself surrounded by a gang of gunmen leaning down over me and shining bright lights in my face, chattering like street vendors who had backed up a tourist.
“Hey!” I bawled, jumping up.
Out of the blur one of them shot a gun at me. It made a whooshing sound and sprayed a watery light that coiled over my head and around my body like a gummy spider web.
“You got him!” a soldier yelled. “Blast him again with the Godray if he gives trouble.”
I peered at the dim shapes around me in the glare of the lights and recognized among them the shepherd we had met in the field a few days earlier.
“That’s God in disguise!” he bawled.
A burly man in uniform stepped out of the lights and laid a rough hand on my shoulder. He was dressed in a military uniform with a ramgoat embroidered on his khaki shirt.
“In the name of the American government, I place you, God, under arrest,” he said gruffly.
Now, as every logical reader knows, a regular Jamaican ole negar would have bawled, “Who you calling God?” and boxed down the soldier before running off like a thief.
But all the wholesale caulking of female species in Wyoming must have put me under such pressure that I cracked.
This much I immediately knew: The so-called God-ray that they had shot at me was rubbish. I could easily break out of it anytime and thump down the whole bitch lot of them.
I almost did, too, except that I thought, at that instant, that God, who was most likely flying somewhere around the place, was not as rough and tough as me and might not be able to withstand the shot.
I decided then and there to pretend to be helpless before their bogus God-gun to give God the chance to escape back to Jamaica.
And I supposedly did this good deed while I was ole negar incarnate, while I was not myself but Egbert Adolphus Hackington.
My actions, says God, proved the truth of His words when He said unto me, Yea, Baps, there’s good in the heart of all who walk the world. Even ole negar.
The next page is for public thumping. It is left purposefully blank as a convenience to suffering readers who, outraged at-this cock-and-bull story about ole negar’s supposed goodheartedness, now strongly desire to thump down this book.
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The troops bundled me into a truck, and our small convoy rumbled across the prairie. There was no road and the ride over the dark grassland was rough and bumpy.
I was sandwiched in between two soldiers, one of whom, a hefty young man on my right, whispered that he was sorry for helping capture me, but he was only doing his job.
“Doing thy job!” I scorned. “Dost thou not know that I can change thy testicles into naseberry with one flick of my finger?”
“The government took my testicles,” he muttered crossly.
“Fool with thy God and I will replant testicles on thy worthless crotch!”
“Listen, God!” he whispered furtively out of his mouth corner. “Why be so hardheaded? Nobody wants to hurt You.
We know You created us. And we appreciate it. Just last night I said to my wife, ‘You know, I wouldn’t even mind if God joined our softball team.’”
“God plays cricket, idiot!”
“Well, if You played softball, I’d let You join our team. That’s because I appreciate You. But You’ve got to understand, this universe is not up to American standards. It’s got to change.”
“One more word and I smite,” I growled.
“I’ve had my shots. Not even God can smite a patriotic American who’s had his shots.”
We rumbled over the dark prairie the rest of the way in a grim silence.
Our journey ended at midmorning when the convoy pulled-into an underground depot, and I was escorted by the soldiers into a military bunker carved out of the side of a mountain.
They led me down a long underground corridor and put me in a cell whose bars were not made of metal but of spaced light beams shining down from the ceiling.
Two soldiers stood outside the bars of light at rigid attention while I sat on a metal cot and considered my position.
Then a funny thing happened to me, and as I think about it now, I believe God was the cause: I suddenly became aware that I was Baps in Egbert’s body and that I was in jail.
My indoor parson woke up, saw the situation, and bawled, “But wait! How come me inna jail?”
“Shhhh!” I whispered. “We soon break out.”
“Jail break? You going involve me in un-Christian jail break? Rass! Who turn me so black?”
“Hush you mouth! We in disguise as ole negar. We rescuing God.”
“You turn me black to rescue a peenywally?”
“Hush up! Is just for de time being.”
“Nobody turning me into ole negar!”
“So what you going do den?”
“Migrate!”
And then, as strange as this sounds, I felt my indoor parson depart just as much as if he’d packed up a suitcase and walked through my earhole and out my brain.
One of my guards suddenly twitched and bawled, “Woe unto fornicators!”
The other chuckled softly. “Feeling patriotic, are we?”
Where was God? Why had he left me looking like Egbert Adolphus Hackington?
I tried to remember what had happened. Most likely God was off gourmandizing stars while abandoning me on the prairie to be gunned down by the American ramgoat army. Probably He hadn’t even noticed that while He was gobbling down stars, I was getting my backside blasted with rays meant for Him. But I notice that’s how the world goes: While the head man is out enjoying life, carousing and gallivanting with the conniving secretary, the little, hardworking clerk is busy absorbing corporate gunshot wound.
I was trying to decide what to do next when I heard feet tramping down the corridor and a detachment of guards carrying loaded ray guns came and marched me down to a laboratory.
They escorted me, side by side, into a room that looked like it belonged in a Frankenstein movie. Scientific equipment was humming all over the place, with lights flashing and screens blipping, and they put me through tests galore ranging from poking me with finger to touching me with electronic probe to aiming instruments at my eyeball and shooting rays at my person.
I put up with it all. I gave no argument and backtalked no technician, except when they took me into a small cubicle.
“You have to take off your pants for this probe,” a technician said gruffly.
“Which part you goin’ probe?”
“You’ll see.”
“Not a rass. No probe. No trousers coming off.”
The guard levelled his ray gun at me
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“Take off your pants,” snapped the technician, “or he’ll shoot!”
“In heaven or on earth, only woman is authorized to pull down my trousers.”
“Shoot him until he obeys,” the technician ordered the guard.
The guard blasted me at point-blank range with the ray gun. I jumped off the table, pushed aside the curtain of the cubicle, ripped the gun from his hands, and flung it across the room.
“Hey!” he yelled, blowing a whistle.
Guards swarmed into the room and tried to drape me up and hold me down, but I thumped right and left, floored three with one right hand and two with one left, and made my way down the corridor with about six of them hanging onto me and trying to prevent my escape.
Of course, it was no use. In heaven you can’t force anyone to do what he doesn’t want to do, and no matter if you bring the might of hosts against him, free will always prevails.
So I walked brazenly down the hallway to the front door even though the whole American ramgoat army tried to block my way.
All the shot they fired at me only tickled, and when one of them blasted me with a bazooka as I walked out the front door and into the bright sunlight, it felt like a puff of Christmas breeze.
Meanwhile, alarms were howling all over the base, and tanks and trucks rumbled out from underground garages to block my escape, while soldiers came pouring out of barracks, blasting me from every side with every manner and kind of gun and cannon.
But I paid them no mind and just fl ew up over the barbwire-fence of the compound with shot and ray-blast whizzing all around while bombs were bursting in air to the rockets’ red-glare.
The soldiers took to wing, too, and several of them fl ew by my side and tried to grab me and weigh me down to make me fall, but I kicked this one, and thumped that one, and kungfued another one, and with all the yelling and screaming and confusion I broke free and fl ew into a cloud with the militia in hot pursuit.
I was breezing through the heavens and wafting my way to Jamaica while the ramgoat American Air Force dive-bombed me and blasted me with all manner of weaponry, when God flew out of a cloud and hovered at my side.
“You see what You get me into?” I bawled, ducking as a shell spun past my head and exploded nearby with a tremendous concussion. “Why You fly ’way and leave me?”
The Duppy Page 12
