The Night Mr. Duppy Grabbed Nopsie

The Night Mr. Duppy Grabbed Nopsie

By Shervin Ira Wood

It was past 10 pm by the time that we arrived at the graveyard. The night was dark but we had been riding with our bicycle lights off for some time and our eyes had become used to the darkness. The rock fence of the graveyard was clearly outlined, as were some of the graves and gravestones. The only noise was our tripping over the coca plum bushes as the four of us lifted our bikes and walked towards the beach and leaned them against the rock wall.

Philip unhooked the travel bag from the handlebars of his bike and we made our way back to the road and through the gate of the graveyard. Once inside he bent and unzipped the bag and handed each of us a folded white bed-sheet.

“I have to take them back to the hotel laundry room tomorrow morning so don’t lose them” he informed us. “Cause if they notice them missing they will fire me, and I need the job till the end of the summer holidays”.

Neelon and Bo handed me their sheets and went back out through the gate looking for the three logs that we had hid in the bushes about thirty feet past the graveyard. They found them in the darkness and rolled them to block the road.

To the left by where the logs were, the narrow-road led to town. To the right from where we had come it led to West End where we lived. Across the road the shape of the dark hills and forests could be seen against the moonless sky. In back of the graveyard behind the coco plum trees the coastline and beach stretched parallel to the road. Neelon and Bo came back and got their sheets then hid in the bushes by the logs. Philip and me sat quietly on a grave and put our folded sheets between us. We waited in the darkness.

Nopsie was tall and lanky and very handsome. Everything about him was different from the rest of us on this small Caribbean island. He was twenty and we were sixteen, we were brown and he was white, and we had bad hair and he had good hair. The worst part is the girls in our high school class all wanted him because of the color of his skin and his straight black hair. It did not matter to them that he was kind of retarded and that some people said he was a Mamas boy and a batty-man.

His real name was Norman Poindexter Bush but they just called him Nopsie for short. Norman Poindexter – whoever heard of such a name for an island person?

Rumors abounded about who his father was, but everybody knew it was a white foreigner. My father said that his mother was an old maid who lived alone and she told people that Nopsie's father was a German soldier who landed one night from a submarine during the war. Nobody else knew anything about any of Hitler’s submarines landing on this British colony. My father said that was a Nancy Story that she made up to hide the fact that his father was the rich American married man whose house she cleaned for more than twenty years.

Two lights appeared in the darkness on the long straight marl road.

“Car coming” shouted Bo.

“Move the logs” said Philip as we rushed out to help them. We rolled them back to the edge of the road and hid in the bushes as the car approached.

“Maybe the Police” I said, thinking that maybe they were patrolling in the black Willy’s Jeep that England had recently donated to them. As it got closer I could see that it was not high enough to be a jeep. The car crossed really fast going at least thirty-five miles per hour on the bumpy road and a cloud of dust hit our faces and covered our bodies.

“Put the logs back across the road,” we all said, almost at the same time. We did and went back to our places to wait.

It was me that had planned this. Philip had come to me a week ago crying because Nopsie was making passes at his girl. She seemed to be very excited and quickly dissed poor Philip for him. Now he had started courting her and for two nights on a stretch had rode his bicycle the seven miles from Town to West End to see her.

My plan was simple. We would pretend to be Duppies and cover ourselves in white sheets and make groaning noises to frighten the living daylights out of Nopsie. When his bicycle light shone on the logs in the road he would have to stop and then Bo and Neelon would grab him and drag him into the graveyard where Philip and me would finish frightening him to death before letting him run for his life. That would put an end to Nopsie’s courting of Philip’s girlfriend. We waited in the darkness.

“ It must be near midnight,” I said to Philip.

“Bicycle coming” shouted Bo.

In the distance we saw a flicker of light. It had to be Nopsie. Who else would be riding back to Town this late at night? I felt a rush of excitement. There was not much excitement on this island. The last time there was any real excitement was last year when two Cuban planes landed with bullet holes in them. My father said that was something to do with a revolution that overthrew Batista their dictator. Now they had a new dictator named Doctor Fidel or something.

The bicycle light was getting closer, and I felt excited.

It came closer and I stood up and unfolded the bed-sheet. Philip did the same. We wrapped it around ourselves and held the edges in back of us in our outstretched arms. We looked like angels in the dark. Our outstretched arms covered in the white sheet formed our wings.

The light came closer.

We started a low groan and swayed our wings.

“Oooooooooooooohhhhhhhh”.

“Ooooooooooooohhhhhhhh”.

Instead of speeding up the light slowed. We continued our groaning. When the light was about fifty feet before the graveyard it went out. I knew that he stopped because the bicycle light worked from the generator on the wheel, and when the wheel stopped turning the light went out. I could see the tall man standing in the darkness holding his bicycle and I knew it was Nopsie. We continued swaying our wings and groaning.

“Ooooooooooooohhhhhhhh”.

“If you’re a duppy I am afraid of you”.

“If you’re not a duppy I am not afraid of you” came Nopsie’s stammering voice from the darkness.

“Ooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhh”.

I saw movement in the darkness then the bicycle light went on again shining back in the direction from which it had come.

“He is going back to West End” I whispered to Philip. No movement or sound came from the direction of Neelon and Bo. Then the light went out again about three hundred feet from the graveyard.

“He is going to go through in back by the beach,” I whispered to Philip. We just stood there with our outstretched wings but stopped groaning.

Then there was a whirring noise in the darkness and a black streak crossed at the speed of a bullet. I realized that Nopsie had turned off his light and was trying to make a run for it, and we started groaning again.

"Ooooooooooohhhhhh".

"Ooooooooooooooohhhhh".

But the sound of our groan was drowned out by the loud bang when Nopsie’s bicycle hit the logs in the darkness.

The thud from the clash of metal and wood was followed a split second later by the muffled bump of Nopsie hitting the ground and then a few seconds of silence and he started groaning.

“Noooo Mr. Duppy. Please Mr. Duppy. Ohhh Mr. Duppy".

"Oiy! Oiy! Oiy! Nooooo Mr. Duppy".

Bo and Neelon must have been shocked because they did not move immediately.

Then the two white ghosts rushed towards Nopsie and he started pleading.

“Please Mr. Duppy. Please Mr. Duppy. I didn’t do it Mr. Duppy. Nooo Mr. Duppy".

They grabbed him and dragged him towards the graveyard. He must have become entangled in his bicycle because that was dragging along with him. When they pulled him through the graveyard gate his bicycle made a clunk against the rock wall and dropped free just outside the wall.

He was pleading and crying for his Mama by the time they laid him down on top of a grave.

"Ooh Mama. Ooh Mama. Nooo Mr. Duppy".

We all started groaning and bending over him and swaying our wings from side to side. He just lay there crying low and whimpering and rambling on about he did not do it, and calling for his Mama and begging Mr. Duppy and saying "Oiy! Oiy! Oiy!"

Then all of a sudden he jumped up and shot between us and out through the graveyard gate leaving his broke-up bicycle behind him. He ran limping and bawling and crying in the darkness towards town.

"Oiy! Oiy! Oiy!"

He must have tripped up in the logs and fell down again because we heard another muffled thud and more groaning and whimpering. Then there were footsteps running away from us.

We grabbed our bikes and headed towards West End as fast as we could with our lights turned off.

The next day Daddy told me that the Police were on their way from Town to West End when they hit some logs in the road and mashed up the Willy’s Jeep in the graveyard fence. They crushed a bicycle between the Jeep and the rock fence and people were searching the bushes to try and find the person that they believed had been knocked off of the bicycle. But they could not find him. Some people said that the blow must have knocked whoever it was on the bike into the water behind the graveyard, and maybe the current pulled the body out to sea.

Daddy said that the Police were probably drunk again from drinking too much Jamaican white rum.

I saw Nopsie walking with a limp a few days later and with his elbows all bandaged up. I made a wave at him but did not speak because he might have recognized my voice and started calling me "Mr. Duppy" again.

I quickly turned and looked the other way and thought - poor handsome Nopsie. Lost his bike, lost Philip’s girl, got all skinned up, and now he is going to be afraid of duppies in the dark forever.