This anecdote is from a series of vignettes called "Jamaica Remembered." It recounts a folk tale, known in the island as a "duppy story: because it is about the supernatural.
My mother's aunts and sisters lived together in two houses that shared a hillside. Aunt Helen lived in the big house on the hilltop; Aunt Min's house was about halfway down the hill, overlooking the road into Guy's Hill.
Aunt Helen and Aunt Min were widows. They had married brothers, both of whom had died young.
Aunt Helen took in paying guests, including a lot of well-off people from Kingston, who were traveling in the district on business, or who wanted to spend a quiet vacation in the cool climate.
Their sister, Aunt Wee, lived with Aunt Min, as did my mother's sister, Aunt Pearl.
Aunt Min had a lodger. Parson Sandeford. As far as I can recall, nobody used his Christian name. He had gone to Oxford, as anyone could tell from hearing him speak. And he was retired from active ministering.
With this cast of characters, gathered in the dark, cool mountains — before electric lights or radio or TV, with religious beliefs that precluded going to see the movies that occasionally were shown at the Welfare Center — you can be sure I heard a lot of stories.
Of course, we prayed a lot... family prayers at daybreak, church service nearly every night... And we clustered around the piano, while Parson Sandeford's beefy hands slammed against the keys, and sang hymns...
"There is a green hill far away..."
"Rock of Ages cleft for me..."
"Onward Christian Soldiers..."
But we found time for story-telling. Especially when we had visitors. And that's how I came to hear the funniest duppy story I know. Aunt Beryl, my mother's "couldn't-mash-ants" sister surprised us all with it one night.
It happened to a poor man who barely kept his family fed by growing yams, bananas, sweet potatoes and, of course, corn and peas, which you always plant together.
The man's wife had a new baby, and to celebrate, the man planted a nice head of white yam. As he tamped the wet clay into place, he said, "Yam, I no goin' dig you till me baby birthday."
How was he to know that a drought would come, a drought so severe that everything in his field dried up — except the yam vine?
Hunger drove him to break his promise. But as he dug his machete into the yam hill, he heard a voice say, "I think you say you wasn't goin' dig me till you' baby birthday?"
He looked around to see where the voice was coming from. There was nobody there. Just the empty field and his dog.
Seeing the man's unbelieving expression, the dog said, "True... I did hear you tell 'im that."
Instinctively, the man raised his machete to protect himself from this unnatural dog. But the machete said, "What a hell goin' raise if you make that dog bite me today!"
The man threw down the machete and sped away, his bare feet slapping on the gravel. As he rounded a curve, he saw a friend walking toward him with a bundle of firewood on his head.
"Oh migod! Oh migod!" gasped the fleeing farmer. "I so glad to see you!"
"What's wrong with you?"
"My yam, my dog and my machete all talk to me today!"
"Then that's why you running so?"
That's when the bundle of wood chimed in: "If it was you, you wouldn't run?"
The second man threw down the bundle of wood, and both men took off down the road as fast as their feet could carry them.
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