Dagger Key and Other Stories

Just you wait, he say. But I tell you this much. The man ain’t born can stand against what’s in those cocoons. You goin to hear the name Arthur Jessup again, son. Mark my words. A few years from now, you be hearin that name mentioned in the same breath with presidents and kings.

I takes that to mean Mister Jessup believe he goin to have some power in the world. He a smart mon…least he do a fine job pretendin he smart. Still, I ain’t too sure I hold with that. Bout half the time he act like somet’ing have power over him. Grinnin like a skull. Sittin and starin for hours, with a blink every now and then to let you know he alive. Pears to me somebody gots they hand on him. A garifuna witch, maybe. Maybe the butterfly duppy.

You want to hear duppy stories, Clifton be your man. When he a boy, he mama cotch sight of the hummingbird duppy hovering in a cashew tree, and ever after there’s hummingbirds all around he house. Whether that a curse or a blessing, I leave for Clifton to say, but…

Oh, yeah. Everyt’ing gots a duppy. Sun gots a duppy. The moon, the wind, the coconut, the ant. Even Yankees gots they duppy. They gots a fierce duppy, a real big shot, but since they never lay eyes on it, it difficult for them to understand they ain’t always in control.

Where you hail from in America, sir?

Florida? I been to Miami twice, and I here to testify that even Florida gots a duppy.

Evenin of the next day and we proceed to the glade. The cocoons, they busted open. There’s gray strings spillin out of dem…remind me of old dried-up fish guts. But there’s nothin to show what else have come forth. It don’t seem to bother Mister Jessup none. He sit down in the weeds and get to playin he flute. He play for a while with no result, but long about twilight, a mon with long black hair slip from the margins of the glade and stand before us. He the palest mon I ever seen, and the prettiest. Prettier than most girls. Not much bigger than a girl, neither. He staring at us with these big gray eyes, and he make a whispery sound with he mouth and step toward me, but Mister Jessup hold up a hand to stay him. Then he goes to pipin on the flute again. Time he done, there three more of them standin in the glade. Two womens and one mon. All with black hair and pale skin. The mon look kind of sickly, and he skin gray in patches. They all of them has gray silky stuff clinging to their bodies, which they washes off once we back home. But you could see everyt’ing there were to see, and watchin that silky stuff slide about on the women’s skin, it give me a tingle even t’ough I not old enough to be interested. And they faces…you live a thousand years, you never come across no faces like them. Little pointy chins and pouty lips and eyes bout to drink you up. Delicate faces. Wise faces. And yet I has the idea they ain’t faces at all, but patterns like you finds on a butterfly’s wing.

Mister Jessup herds them toward the shack at a rapid pace, cause he don’t want nobody else seein them. They talking that whispery talk to one another, cept for the sickly mon. The others glidin along, they have this supple style of walkin, but it all he can do to stagger and stumble. When we reach the shack, he slump down against a wall, while the rest go to pokin around the front room, touchin and liftin pots and glasses, knifes and forks, the cow skull that prop open the window. I seen Japanese tourists do less pokin. Mister Jessup install heself in a chair and he watchin over them like a mon prideful of he children.

Few months in La Ceiba, little spit and polish, he say, and they be ready. What you t’ink, boy? Well, I don’t know what to t’ink, but I allow they some right pretty girls.

Pretty? he say, and chuckle. Oh, yeah. They pretty and a piece more. They pretty like the Hope Diamond, like the Taj Mahal. They pretty all right.

I ask what he goin to do for the sick one and he say, Nothin I can do cept hope he improve. But I doubt he goin to come t’rough.

He had the right of that. Weren’t a half-hour fore the mon slump over dead and straightaway we buries him out in back. There weren’t hardly nothin to him. Judgin by the way Mister Jessup toss him about, he can’t weigh ten pounds, and when I dig he up a few days later, all I finds is some strands of silk.