The Lunatic

by Anthony C. Winkler

  Indeed, there was something oxlike about Busha’s features. His face bulged with fat bones. A puffy nose swelled over his mouth, his cheekbones rose up in a mother lode of prominent ridges, his chin was rounded and blunt like the end of a club. Busha’s face reminded one that God had molded Adam out of dirt: It resembled a rich and arable mountain land suitable for planting coffee.

  The Busha peered over the edges of the Gleaner at his wife. He saw a capacious forehead, a severely cropped head of hair, the sharp eyes of a mind used to roaming the warrens of balance sheets and triple-columned ledgers.

  “What’s the matter?” Sarah asked, meeting the Busha’s stare.

  “It’s a damn shame,” the Busha said thoughtfully, “what stray animals are doing to the cemetery.”

  “Nothing wrong with the cemetery,” she said decisively.

  “It’s just a shame, that’s all. I’m going to speak to Shubert about it.”

  “Mummy and Daddy don’t mind,” Sarah said.

  She bit indifferently into a piece of toast.

  * * *

  Sarah said goodbye to the Busha, pecked him on the cheek, and drove off to Ocho Rios. Busha lapsed briefly in and out of gloom.

  Gloom came and went with Busha like a summer sprinkle. If for one minute he did brood about an abstract worry, the very next minute he would be thinking about something definite such as butchering a pig. Shaking off his mood with a tremulous heaving of his large frame, Busha drove his Land Rover into the village to see Mr. Shubert.

  He found Mr. Shubert sitting behind the grimy counter of his small shop next to the cemetery, poring over the exercise book in which he kept his accounts.

  So immersed in his exercise book was Mr. Shubert that he did not immediately look up to see who had thumped so loudly across the floor of the shop, scattering swarms of flies over keg, bin, and barrel. Very likely, the shopkeeper surmised, it was someone who owed him money. The mortal and venial sins of borrowing and credit that had been committed against his shop by nearly everyone in the village were all here in the exercise book. No doubt another borrower now stood before his counter ready to mewl for sugar, milk, salt fish, mackerel on credit.

  “Shubert!” the Busha barked. “What are you going to do about those blasted animals in the cemetery?”

  “Animals, Busha?” Shubert started, quailing before the voice of the only man in the village, aside from the lunatic Aloysius, whose name was not in the exercise book. “What animals, Busha?”

  “Those damn animals there, man,” the Busha said irritably. “Look out you window. Look at that blasted cow there in the graveyard.”

  Shubert looked and saw a brindled cow cropping lazily at a hump in the cemetery sward.

  “That’s Mother May, my wife’s mother, that that damn cow is stomping on.”

  “Yes, sah?” Shubert said feebly.

  “That’s right where Mother May is buried. Now cow stomping on her head. Damn disrespectful. Now look what else the damn animal is doing to Mother May!”

  Shubert looked.

  “Is one thing for a damn animal to stomp on the head of a dead woman, Shubert! But good God, man, now de cow is emptying its bowels and bladder on de poor woman’s head! Damn out of order, man!”

  “But Busha, is not my cow dat one, sah!”

  “But you are the sexton of the church, Shubert! You must keep the damn animals out of the graveyard. Who going to do it if you don’t? Dammit to hell, man, every animal in the damn parish use the cemetery as a toilet! Your own mother buried there, Shubert. How’d you like a cow to walk all over her? How’d you like a cow to doo-doo on your mummy?”

  Shubert bristled.

  “I don’t think I would too like it, Busha.”

  “And one day, Shubert, you going lie in there too. Then you’ll see what it feel like for cow to walk ’pon you and use you head as a damn outhouse when you can’t get up and shoo dem away!”

  Shubert chuckled.

  “Me putting fence ’round me grave, Busha.”

  “Fence! What good fence do? Don’t I fence up Daddy and Mummy? I fence up Granddaddy and Grandmummy. They all fence up in there. Go walk down there and look on Daddy graveslab. You know what color Daddy graveslab is? Brown and black. You ever see brown and black concrete graveslab in your born days, Shubert? De damn goats jump over my fence just so they can get a chance to empty their bowels on concrete. Jamaican goat don’t like shit in grass if him can shit on concrete, you know, Shubert. Dey like to hear splash and plop so dey aim for concrete. All de fence in de world not going keep out de goat dat want to shit on your head.”

  “Busha, sah,” Shubert protested, “dem animals is not my own!”

  “Too much damn slackness, man!” Busha scowled. “You are the sexton, it’s your responsibility to drive de damn animals out of the graveyard. That’s the trouble with Jamaica, you know, Shubert! We just don’t care about one another in dis country. Poor Mother May never trouble a soul in her life yet she can’t even rest in peace because of the damn cows! Is a disgrace, man! A crying shame!”

  Silence followed the Busha’s tirade. A few heads peeped into the shop to see who was yelling and popped out just as quickly upon glimpsing the Busha.

  “All right, Busha,” Shubert said in a defeated tone. “I going look after it.”

  “I don’t want see no more cow in de graveyard, Shubert. You understand me? I don’t even want to see puss in dere.”

  “All right, Busha.”

  “Good. I gone.”

  Busha stomped out of the shop. The Land Rover coughed and roared away.

  Shubert bellowed for his shop boy.

  “Richard! Richard, you backside, come to me!”

  From the rear of the shop came a faint shuffling as Richard, a rangy country boy, peeped around a corner.

  “Yes, sah?”

  “Come ya, Richard! Look out de window! What you see?”

  Richard peered diligently out the window.

  “Me no see nothing, sah!”

  “What happen? You eye blind? What you see?”

  “Me only see gravestone, sah, and bush, and tree.”

  “You don’t see cow?”

  Richard chuckled good-naturedly like one who had suddenly got the answer to a riddle.

  “Yes, sah. Me see cow.”

  “What de rass cow doing in graveyard, boy? Tell me dat! What de damn hell business cow have in graveyard?”

  “Is not my cow, sah!”

  “I don’t care whose rass cow dat is, don’t I put you in charge of de graveyard? Don’t I tell you last month you is head man over dat graveyard?”

  “But me no put de cow dere, Mr. Shubert!”

  “De damn cow walk ’pon me mother grave, doo-doo and wee-wee ’pon me mother head in de ground! Damn out of order, man! Dat’s de trouble with you damn country negar, you don’t give a damn ’bout nothing but pum-pum and rum!”

  “But Missah Shubert . . .” Richard bawled.

  “Me no want hear no excuse outta you! Damn slackness in dis country! You don’t have no tradition, no respect for de dead. You make cow and goat and dog use decent people head for a toilet! Out of order! Damn slackness!”

  “But Missah . . .”

  “RUN DE RASS COW OUTTA DE GRAVEYARD INSTEAD O’ ARGUING WID ME!”

  Richard muttered, ducked out of the shop, and a moment later was hurtling across the graveyard flinging sticks, stones, and obscenities at the animal.

  “Cow, you blood! Get offa de people dem head! Move! Blood! Damn nasty negar cow! Move you blood!”

  The animal scurried away from the onslaught of shrieking and stoning.

  Inside the shop, Mr. Shubert lapsed into a vengeful scrutiny of his credit book, looking for someone whose account was overdue and needed dunning. A young girl approached the counter timidly.

  “No credit today!” Mr. Shubert snapped. “Today is cash day!”

  “But Mr. Shubert!” the girl protested.

  “Don’t argue wid me! I don’t want h
ear no argument!”

  “But, sah, me mummy send me to buy a pound o’ sugar, sah. Me have de money.”

  A snarl on his lips, the shopkeeper glared at the little girl, who carefully laid a clammy coin on the counter.

  “Damn pickney in Jamaica don’t have no manners,” Mr. Shubert scowled.

  He weighed the sugar, wrapped it in brown paper, and handed it to the girl.

  “Never mind de money,” he waved airily. “I’ll put it down in me book.”

  “But Mr. Shubert, sah!”

  “I trust you,” Mr. Shubert bellowed. “Go ’bout you business wid you money.”

  The girl pocketed the coin and left the shop. Mr. Shubert settled down behind his counter and neatly entered the amount for the sugar in a column below her mother’s name.

  By the time he had finished writing and adding the amount to the balance, he was whistling.

  “Me drive ’way de cow, sah,” Richard whined, panting from all his running. “But dem might come back.”

  “Don’t bother me mind ’bout cow,” Mr. Shubert said with the abstract air of the hobbyist contentedly at play. “When you dead you dead, and no dead man or woman know de difference whether rain fall or cow wee-wee on dem head.”

  The cemetery was Busha’s bone.

  It ate McIntoshes. It had eaten the first father and the second. It had eaten twelve generations of fathers. It gobbled up McIntoshes like a mongoose eats chickens. Fathers, sons, daughters, wives, husbands, cousins, nephews—generations of McIntoshes had been reduced to ugly lumps in its belly.

  The Busha loathed and despised the cemetery with an unutterable passion. He could not drive past it without a shudder. He could not stand even to glimpse it out of the corner of his eye. Yet every Sunday during services in the stone chapel that stood on its grounds, with the merest flicker of a glance out the window, he would see a lump in the sward and know that the cemetery was digesting another McIntosh. It was enough to drive the Busha insane to think that this same plot of scruffy green would one day be chewing his bones.

  Not that he was afraid of death. Busha was not numbered among those fretful souls who worried about the afterlife. Parsons of every denomination and stripe had assured Busha that there was indeed a heaven and that was enough to satisfy him. Who should know whether or not there was a heaven? A parson, that’s who. Busha did not believe in disputing with experts.

  Yet Busha still had a strong craving for some final resting place other than this country graveyard: His heart was set on a grand sarcophagus in a Kingston cemetery. He couldn’t help himself. God knew that Busha had few vanities, few foibles. He did not drink; he smoked only an occasional cigar; only once in a very rare while did he take a girlfriend on the side. After living for some fifty-four years among women eager to drop their drawers at the first sight of a man, the Busha had bred only two bush babies. Some of his venal relatives had bred fifteen, sixteen. One wretch of a cousin had bred a score or more.

  A sarcophagus was his only weakness. He wanted a sarcophagus like rich Syrian families built for themselves in Kingston; a sarcophagus with pilasters, columns, friezes, a marble angel on the roof blowing a trumpet, the family name scrolled on a pediment above the tomb: a sarcophagus impregnable to cows and goats—that’s what Busha wanted. He did not want to be swallowed by the same scruffy cemetery that had devoured twelve generations of his family.

  But Sarah would have none of it. Her mother and father lay side by side in the cemetery, and already she had picked out a spot for her and the Busha. It was under a lignum vitae tree on a knoll that was always cooled by an afternoon breeze. Beside Mummy and Daddy. Next door, less than an arm’s length away, would be the Busha’s father.

  “A breezy spot!” the Busha said aloud in a voice ringing with contempt.

  He was driving slowly along a winding country road that led toward his slaughterhouse.

  He did not want a breezy spot, he wanted a sarcophagus. And he could easily afford the grandest one in all the island— except that Sarah wanted the breezy spot beside Mummy.

  “If she put me dere, so help me God I going get up and move!” the Busha vowed, grinding his teeth.

  He had made this threat to Sarah during their last argument.

  “You want to move, move,” she had replied in the imperturbable logic that old wives use to bully old husbands. “But I’m resting beside Mummy and Daddy.”

  “How can you rest with a cow jumping up and down on your head?” the Busha had scowled.

  “Don’t be an ass, Hubert!” she had snapped.

  And so the breezy spot won out over the sarcophagus; one day the cemetery would eat the Busha.

  The Busha was shuddering at this horrible, disgusting thought when he spotted the lunatic Aloysius skipping and dancing on the shoulder of the road. Busha braked his Land Rover to a screeching halt and reversed to accost the madman.

  Busha and Aloysius went back a long way. Before his first bout of madness, Aloysius had worked for the Busha, living in a back room in the servants’ quarters, taking care of Busha’s yard and four dogs. The two of them played together on the village cricket team—Aloysius as a spin bowler whose sly delivery fooled opposing batsmen, Busha as a free-whacking batsman who would either hit sixes all morning or be bowled for a duck on the first ball.

  Busha stuck his head out of the window of the car.

  “Aloysius, you mad or sane today?”

  Aloysius skipped over to the Land Rover.

  “Mad, Busha? Me mad, sah? When you ever hear dat me mad, Busha?”

  “Don’t beat around de bush with me, man. Just give me a straight answer! You mad or sane today?”

  “But Busha, me is always sane, sah! When you ever hear dat me mad?”

  “All right, you listen to me now, Mr. Aloysius!” Busha glowered. “Me don’t want you talking to me cows, you hear me, sah?”

  “Talk to cow, Busha? When me ever talk to cow?”

  “I don’t want no argument from you. I just don’t want you talking to me cows in de pasture, you hear! Last time you was living in de bush you talk to me cows day and night and de damn cows stop giving milk. Is you talking to me damn cows in the field that mix dem up. Suddenly cow think him is lawyer or parson and not a cow. I don’t want no talking to me damn cow in de bush, you hear me, Mr. Aloysius?”

  Aloysius sniggered.

  “Busha, which cow tell you me was talking to him, sah?”

  “I heard you with me own ears. Telling me cow story about movie in de bush! Damn fool! Which cow ever go to a movie? What you telling me damn cow movie story for? You ruin de best milch cow I have with you damn talking! Dat’s what’s wrong wid Jamaica today—everybody chat too much. Dey chat their foolishness to every blessed creature, even to cow. Well, I don’t want you holding no conversation with me cows, you hear me, Aloysius? Or I going get de constable and lock up you backside for trespassing!”

  Busha grinded a gear and roared off down the road.

  “De cow tell lie on me, Busha!” Aloysius screeched.

  But it was too late. The Land Rover was already far down the road, billowing out a cloud of dust.

  Aloysius shrugged and went back to his skipping and dancing. No doubt a cow had told a lie about him. He had just woken up and was still groggy and weak from the pum-pum. Sometimes it took him an hour or two after waking to remember where he was and what he had to do. Sometimes when he woke up he could remember only two or three of his thousand names and had to sit very still and recite like a child trying to remember lines from a poem until the names came back to him. Yet the day ahead seemed to him to hold great promise. He would meet the white woman again today and take her on a tour of the parish.

  Busha, meanwhile, roared down the paved road and turned onto a marl track winding into his pasture. He was morosely aware that he had taken out his frustrations about the breezy spot on the lunatic.

  When Busha did an unfair thing he immediately expected the world to do an unfair thing back to him. Life was b
asically simple to Busha: It was like a donkey and its tail. Pull the donkey’s tail and you get a kick in the face. The affairs of men and nations were nothing more complicated than that. One time Busha had even shared this analogy with a local parson and tried to get the man to use it in a sermon cautioning the people of St. Ann not to pull the donkey’s tail. But the parson was too foreign in his thinking to appreciate the truthful simplicity of Busha’s philosophy.

  “You think I go to seminary, Busha, to give sermon ’bout donkey and him tail?” the parson asked indignantly. “Is dat I go to university for?”

  So of course Busha’s message never got to the congregation because it didn’t muddle things up enough. Nowadays everything had to be fuzzy to please a parson.

  In any event, Busha had taken out his anger on Aloysius— he had pulled the donkey’s tail—and now the donkey had the whole day ahead to kick him in the face.

  A few minutes later, Busha parked at his makeshift slaughterhouse where an old Ford Escort sitting under a tree told him that the agricultural inspector, a Mr. Nettleton from St. Ann’s Bay, was waiting.

  “Morning, Mr. Nettleton,” the Busha said, shaking hands with the inspector.

  “How are you today, Busha?” the inspector greeted him genially.

  “Fine, man, fine. Sorry I’m a little late. I had to stop down the road and scold a madman who lives in dese parts.”

  “Yes, sah?”

  “Everytime he goes mad he hold conversation with me cattle. I catch him one day telling me cow about a movie. Imagine that, eh? The poor cow didn’t know whether him was coming or going.”

  “Confusing you cow, eh, Busha?”

  “Damn out of order, man! One time he talk so much to one of me cows that she stop giving milk. Me best cow, too!”

  The inspector chuckled and rattled his inspection form on a clipboard. Busha suddenly grew somber: A form in the hands of a Socialist was as bad as a gun. This inspector was a holdover Socialist from the previous government, a man who took perverse delight in inflicting the intricacies of government documentaries on the lives of innocent citizens. The form would no doubt ask imponderable, insensible questions about everything under the sun—one could never anticipate or tell what a government form might ask—and all because every now and again Busha slaughtered one or two head of cattle on this spot.