God said He felt like a bedtime snack on a nova and he knew I was safe.
“You make de soldiers think I, Taddeus Baps, is a ole negar,”
I grumbled. “Even me parson migrate. You really ask a lot from a friend, You know.”
Meanwhile, the heavens around us were exploding with munitions. A jet screeched out of a cloud and blasted us with another ray-shot that just bounced off and fluttered like a misty fishnet toward the earth.
Of course, the weapons couldn’t harm God, but I was blown to smithereens several times over Wyoming and Nebraska as we travelled southward, and each time after the direct hit from a missile that splattered me all over creation, I reassembled and God fl ew to my side chuckling to ask if I liked that or if I wanted a shield, but I said if He didn’t mind I’d rather enjoy the festive blasting since I was still on holiday.
When it was obvious that neither shells nor rays could hurt us, the gunners below began lobbing live sheep at us, hoping to knock us out of the sky with sheep-shot.
Rams and ewes shot out of cannon screamed past our heads, baaing like mad, but as fast as they went up, they tumbled back down to earth wailing and shrieking in tongues, for pampered American sheep is not used to being live ammunition. I watched some of the sheep fall and splatter on the ground, reassemble, and try to scamper away, but soldiers chased and-grabbed them for ramrodding back into the muzzles of the-guns.
We flew over Alabama and Georgia, with sheep-shot spinning and ripping through the air all around us, baaing hideously. But, of course, all the sheep-shot in the world was useless, and not a one of them hit God.
Over Georgia I took a couple direct hits from sheep-shot but they only knocked me in a loop for a second and made me feel sweet.
So we made our way out to the Caribbean sea. The soldiers eventually gave up their pursuit and we fl ew in peace toward Jamaica, where God changed me back into Baps and I resumed my position as shopkeeper in the heavenly village, having experienced the broadening of knowledge that comes with foreign travel.
Later, God remarked casually that His experiment proved that I was wrong and that there was good, too, in the heart of ole negar.
He didn’t rub my nose in it, for He is God, and God does not rub nose.
However, I didn’t answer Him out of friendship and respect. I just let it drop. Sometimes we Jamaicans just can’t explain to foreigners what we know and how we feel, and we’re better off just shutting up than even trying. Let the foreigner buy property and plant some cocoa and he’ll soon find out for himself about ole negar heart. In fact, I was going to suggest to God that He buy three acres of land that I own in Portland, but I bit my tongue and said sharply to meself, “Hi, Baps! Dis is you friend! You want ole negar thief out Him one crop? Dat is how you treat a friend?”
So I just shut up my mouth and said nothing.
Personally, if it was me reading this book, I’d demand my money back.
Chapter 22
I have a lot of criticisms against this world. I don’t say I hate it, but I can’t truthfully say that I love it, either. The world does not have to be a place of such woe and tribulation, and it does not have to be the stamping ground of rampant hypocrisy and wholesale shenanigans. I think better is possible. Mankind can be better. Manners and morals can be put on a higher plane. All creatures and things in this world can benefit from improvement.
One day after we’d returned from America, me and God went swimming in a river. As we were drying out on the bank in the sun, the subject of the creation came up and I mentioned my opinions about the world.
I didn’t put my point harshly, I just told Him in a kindly way what I have already said—that better was possible.
Baps, God said, would you like to try your hand at creation?
I lay on the bank for a few moments and thought before I finally said, “Listen, God, dis is like two of us playing cricket, with You at bat hitting one run here and one run dere. Now, if I come to bat and on my first stroke I hit a six, how You going feel ’bout it?”
I’ll feel good for you, Baps.
“Dat’s what You say now. But when my six fly over de boundary, You bound to feel downhearted.”
So you think you could do better?
“God! Look! Who is You friend? Who walk and run wid You up here every day? Who take God-shot from de American ramgoat army meant for You? Who lick down Harvard anthropology students when dem stone You in de tree?”
Love pulsed out from God as He caressed my headback with His light. I squirmed and patted His light.
“All right, God. Remember, we is two man. People will talk.”
God chuckled and said He didn’t care what people said, He loved me.
“Lawd God, God! Man no supposed to say dat to man, You know!”
God laughed.
After a few moments, I squirmed and gruffly whispered, “And I love you, too, God. Now, make us drop it. You never know which blackmailing ear listening from behind a bush.”
All right, Baps, God said in a disappointed voice. But I want to give you a hug.
I sighed and lay quietly on the bank for a minute or two and wondered to myself what I was going to do with a God who didn’t realize that man and man not supposed to hug up in private much less in public.
But after a minute’s thought, I jumped up and said, “Back foot and crosses, God! Gimme de blasted hug. I don’t business who de rass see it!”
And me and God hugged up on the riverbank, His light settling over me like a shimmering web. Then laughing with joy, we scampered back into the water for a refreshing swim. God would not get off the creation business. He kept nagging me to try my hand at it, to show what I could do that was better, and although I kept putting Him off with a joke, I began staying up at night in the back room of my shop, writing down my ideas for a better world in an exercise book.
This was hard work. The world is not as easy to create as it looks. But I had in mind certain improvements I would immediately make in my creation.
First and foremost, I would create a fart-free woman. I don’t care what anybody say, a farting woman is a hardship on creation.
On the other hand, I didn’t want to deprive woman of a luscious-looking part she needs for wriggling up on the street and in a dancehall. So my improved woman that I drew up in an exercise book had a fat batty for wiggling, but one that discharged no fart.
I had other improvements in mind as well.
Knowing that in Jamaica predial larceny is a serious problem which is discouraging farmers from planting crops, I designed a mango with a hidden mouth under its peel that, if a thiefing hand touched it, would bawl, “Lemme go, bwoy! I belong to farmer John!” or whatever the name of the said owner of the tree, and if the wretch persisted, the mango would bite the brute on the lip and hold onto him like a bad dog until a district constable could make the arrest.
Banana would likewise bite all predial larceny thief as would pawpaw and orange. (I also designed a sweetsop that was armed with a hidden machete to chop the tongue of all thief as-he opened his mouth to take illegal and unauthorized bite, but I knew that God would object to the violence.)
Some of my other ideas were likewise better than the present stale state of affairs.
For example, because God’s design conceals pum-pum and hood in the hideout of crotch, the slack situation has developed where parson can rant and rave about unrighteous woman while his own hood is stiff in the pulpit.
This is, to my mind, unsatisfactory.
I rectified matters by mounting hood and pum-pum on man and woman’s forehead so that when parson lusted for a sister in the choir, the whole world saw and knew just by glancing at his headfront. When a sister sat in a pew pretending to be biblical while she secretly craved to grind parson, worshippers would see illegal juice dripping down her cheek. Everyone would know exactly who was out to grind who, making hypocrisy impossible.
One evening Hector, who was now helping me out in the shop, stopped by and I showed him my notes and plans af
ter supper.
“Missah Baps,” he objected, rubbing his chin, “is worries you know, sah, to mount hood on a man’s forehead in full and public view. Dere is wisdom behind crotch and zipper.”
“What wisdom?”
“To hide hood from woman, so she don’t know what she getting until it unwrap. If it wasn’t for dat, whole heap o’ man would never get a grind. Woman would grind only de one with de big hood on him headfront.”
“So I’ll make all hood one size.”
“Missah Baps! You don’t understand woman, sah! Woman don’t want socialistic hood. She prefer capitalistic surprise, where she don’t know whether she getting a plantain or a Vienna sausage until she peel a crotch. You can’t change up de whole world just because parson love to grind church sister on de quiet!”
And God had objections, too, when I showed Him my design.
He asked how I expected people to weewee if I put their privates on their forehead.
“Duck down dem head inna de toilet bowl. Teach dem humility.”
He said I didn’t understand. Where would He put kidney and bladder?
“Dat is a detail. Put dem where dey belong.”
He said He couldn’t, because weewee didn’t flow uphill, and if we put hood on a man’s head, we’d have to put his bladder in his brain. And if we did that, where would we put his-brain?
“Where de bladder is?”
Baps, God said patiently, brain is bigger than bladder.
“God, some bladder bigger than some brain. For instance,” I started to add, “I know plenty ole ne—” but I caught myself in time and hushed up my mouth.
God said he couldn’t put a brain inside a belly. He’d have to make a spine that twisted like a hook to connect to the brain. Furthermore, He added, if He put hood on head and bladder inside the brain, where would He park the kidneys?
“Why You must trouble me with technicality, eh?”
Baps, there’s physical law, God said. Physical law must be obeyed.
“All right, den! So put hood back in de crotch. Foster hypocrisy! Encourage holier-than-thou behavior and indiscipline! I give You a drawing dat is a definite improvement and You turn it down. Don’t blame me when You whole world mash up!”
I don’t blame you, Baps. I’m just saying you can’t make a man who weewee from his head and think with his belly.
Chapter 23
Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a shirker or a slacker, that I have a good brain and a sound head for business, that I don’t gripe over every little trouble, and that when I make up my mind to pursue a goal, I never fail to achieve it. That is the way I was raised—to always do my best and to work hard at realizing my ambitions.
So it is not easy for me to admit that as a creator I was a flop.
Of course, I didn’t flop because my designs were faulty or my overall plan for the world was not first rate. To this day, I believe that hood and pum-pum belong on people’s foreheads, and I don’t business what God says, I still maintain that a biting mango is an improvement over the present wishy-washy fruit that permits every thiefing mouth to eat it.
And I still believe that if God had suspended physical law, which He said He could not, and allowed me to create people from scratch, my world would have turned out better than His-earth.
I did get God to make one man with his hood on his forehead, but the poor fellow was obviously not happy with his private parts being hung in public, and as soon as he could draw breath and walk, he hung a doily over his face to hide his hood and said several prayers to me, Baps, begging to have his hood relocated to a more private spot, claiming that bowing down to a toilet gave him a complex.
Sometime after my creation experiment was over, I met him in heaven where he was working as a cultivator on a small farm in St. Elizabeth, and he attacked me with a machete, shrieking, “Put me hood on me headfront and make me look like a rhinoceros, you rass dog you!”
He gave me at least fifty chops, all of which I thoroughly enjoyed, and when he saw that I was relishing his attack, he abruptly stopped it and stormed away grumbling that if he ever met me up on earth in mortal form, he would cut my throat and shove me headfirst down a toilet so I could personally experience the indignity of forehead weeweeing.
“You have to admit dat you were not a hypocrite!” I called after him, as he stormed away.
“How could I be a hypocrite?” he shrieked, beside himself. “I couldn’t even see to walk with me blasted hood drape over me eye!”
One evening me and God flew to a distant dark corner of the universe that was bare of planet and wrapped in night and looked like the kind of hill-and-gully place where celestial cobweb might lurk. God had just nyamed out five novas in the Milky Way, and He was feeling powerful and strong.
All right, Baps, He said. Create a better world.
He created a world as I instructed, and I reigned over it for an aeon. Of course, an aeon to God is not even a flea bite, for time does not exist in His presence, and it all went past in a blink.
I don’t know exactly where God got the people from to put into my world, for that was His business, not mine. I was only interested in ruling over them, no matter if they came from Timbuktu.
It was a world that looked like the one we presently walk on—round and adorned with hills, valleys, rivers, streams, and-oceans—and it was shaped that way not because I-especially wanted it, but because of physical law, which God said He could not ignore.
My personal preference was for a flat world where a family could go for a Sunday drive to the edge and peer into space, but God said that gravity would not support a flat earth, so we had to settle for the typical fool-fool ball spinning through the fluxy heavens like a gig.
Since God would not let me change the form of man and execute the improvements I have already discussed, He made the inhabitants of my world to look much like you and me, with this exception: They had no free will. I also instructed God to make them so that they would know that I, Baps, was their God, so that there was no other God but Baps, so that there would be no doubt in their minds about who Baps was or whether or not they should bow down to Baps, so that they would never question my authority or ponder my nature, so that when I said, “Jump!” every bitch one of them must jump without argument, and He said, All right, Baps, and did maketh my man and woman according to these specifications.
I ruled over them for one hundred years.
I would appear unto them and walk among them and they would fall prostrate on their faces and wail, “Almighty Baps!
You are our Lord and God!”
And to prove it, I instituted a ritual where they would kiss my batty during worship.
And every blessed one of them, from elder to juvenile, worshipped as they were ordered by their Creator and kissed my batty whenever I walked among them.
One time, I remember, as one old woman was getting ready to fervently kiss my batty, I said unto her, “Woman, talk de truth! Wouldst thou rather not bite Baps’s batty?”
“No, Baps!” she cried with horror. “I could never bite thy batty. Thou art God and I love Thee.”
And the whole lot of them continued to love me for one hundred years, no matter what trouble and woe I visited upon them, for they had no free will.
Sometimes a cranky spirit came over me to clap the wretches with a thunderbolt and blow a few of them to smithereens—to test their love and devotion—and without fail, even after their wives and husbands and children were blasted to pieces before their very eyes, verily, they would come rushing up to me to kiss said batty in devout worship, and when I wouldst tempt them and say, “Now, talk de truth! I just dynamited thy family to Kingdom come! Wouldst thou rather not bite my holy batty than kiss it?” The multitude would wail and rend their garments and gnash their teeth and pop oath that they would rather kiss Baps’s batty for worship and never wouldst bite it no matter how Baps might smite them.
After one hundred years of ruling over them, I grew weary of the nasty ba
tty-kissing brutes.
“Dis is no fun,” I complained to God. “Dem come just like robots.”
God said, Yea, Baps, that’s the problem with creating people without free will.
“All right! So give dem a free will.”
God said if that was my desire He would comply, but with that came free choice, and with free choice must come random.
“What?”
Things will happen on their own—some good, some bad. And you, Baps, will have no control over events.
“You mean to say dat a wicked man might live long and prosper and dead in him sleep while a good hardworking man might get lick down by a bus in de flower of youth?”
Exactly.
“Dat is how Your world run now! I want a better world dan Yours! Me not dealing wid no random!”
Baps, you can’t have free will without free choice. If you have choice, it means that nothing can be foreseen or preplanned.
“So according to You, under random a good man could prosper and live a long, happy, fruitful life and die in him sleep with contentment and glory?”
Yes.
“Name one such man,” I dared Him.
Baps, I don’t get into particular cases. That is not my affair.
“You are God! It supposed to be Your affair!”
If I make it my affair, it won’t be random.
I suffered a long pause to pass between us, for verily, I was well vexed with this unrighteous state of affairs.
“All right, God,” I finally said. “I will agree dat random can rule my world. But I need a hell to cleanse de wicked with fire.”
Certainly, Baps. If that’s what you wish.
He had given in so easily that I got suspicious.
“Hold on, now! In my hell, de fire must really burn and make sinners howl with pain.”
God grew silent and saith nothing for a long while, which I found out later was the passing of twenty years.
No, Baps, He finally saith, I can’t change the laws of heaven.
You know law number two is, Thou shalt feel good no matter what.
I was upseteth and it showeth plenty, for I paceth up and down in the gardens of my world and gnasheth my teeth as I tried to comprehend the reasoning behind God’s bullheadedness.
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