The Baccoo’s Halloween

Oct 23, 2017 News, https://www.kaieteurnewsonline...baccoos-halloween-2/

By Michael Jordan

The crash of shattered glass woke me. I scrambled up and switched on the bedroom light. A large claybrick slab lay on the floor. A draught of cold breeze came through a gaping hole in my bedroom window.

Grabbing the cutlass from beneath my bed, I navigated through broken glass and peered outside, expecting to see some drunken vagrant, or a gang of fleeing boys. Instead, standing on my bridge, was the shortest man I had ever seen. A small heap of stones lay by his feet. He hefted two other stones in his large hands.

Madman, I thought, and he looks ready to smash another window.
I wasn’t excited about facing him, but I went outside, cutlass in hand. I was just a few feet away from the culprit when I noticed the bunch of ripe bananas near the heap of stones.

I blinked. Short, ugly man…heap of stones…bunch of bananas…

It couldn’t be…

As if reading my mind, the squat man who had disturbed my sleep nodded grimly and said: “Yes is me.”

“You’re a… Baccoo?”

He nodded again. “It least yuh recognise me.”

Before I could blink, another brick went crashing through my window.

Lights came on at the house next door. A window opened and my neighbour peeped outside.

“Everything alright? That man bothering you?”

“Nah,” I said. He was bothering me, but he also had a large brick in his hand. The cutlass didn’t make me feel any safer.

My neighbor retreated inside and I turned to my strange visitor. “What yuh want?” I whispered, not wanting to arouse my neighbour again .

“We want talk wid you.”

“We?”

My visitor gave strange, low whistle. Immediately, a ball of fire appeared and hovered over my head. There was a puff of smoke and a thin, very old, red-eyed woman was suddenly standing before me. I took a step back. Mrs. “Ol Higue?”

She smiled. I took another step backwards when I saw those teeth. But they were not alone. A hallow-cheeked man in a tattered suit and who was dragging a coffin suddenly materialized. Then I heard a splashing in the canal by the Diamond Housing Scheme reserve. A high-cheekboned woman with nice curvy hips, green eyes and a silver comb in her hair stepped across the road and joined them.

“Massacurraman couldn’t come,” she said, addressing my other visitors but staring at me.

“Okay, Fairmaid,” Baccoo said.

I felt goosebumps break out on my arms. I thought of retreating to the safety of my home. Instead, as happens in dreams, I suddenly couldn’t move.

The short stranger smiled, and then I knew that he had cast some sort of spell on me. I wanted to scream. Instead, I found myself saying: “Leh we talk in my yard.”

They followed me to the backyard. Fairmaid sat on the steps, combing her hair.

“Alright,” I said. “What y’all want?”

Baccoo peeled a banana, threw the skin in my yard, then said: “What day is today?”

I looked at my watch. It was a minute past midnight.

“Thursday.”

”What day of the month?”

“October 31.” Then I got it.

“Halloween.”

Then I said something that I thought would pacify them. “Happy Halloween.”

Fairmaid stopped combing her hair and cut her eyes at me. Ol Higue changed into a ball of fire then back to human form. Baccoo stamped and ground his teeth, waving a brick at me threateningly.

“What I do now?” I asked.

“What you do?” Baccoo screamed . “Is what all alyo do. I look at the TV this week. .Ah see witch, ah see Leprechaun, ah see Dracula…ah see Abominable Snowman…ah see ghost—jumbie white cousin—” He stopped, as if too overcome with rage to continue.

I now understood. “But they leave y’all out.”

“YES,” Baccoo screamed. “Where jumbie…where Ol Higue…where fairmaid…where massacurraman..bush dai dai…moon-gazer?”

“Yes…”interjected Jumbie, speaking in a nasal tone as if he had a bad cold.

“Y’all mek the Chinese and Brazilians tek over. Now y’all got the foreign undead tekkin we place.” He stamped a foot, leaving a clod of graveyard dirt on my step. “That gun happen over my dead body.”

I found myself nodding in agreement. For the past week, the television channels had shown us an assortment of vampires and ghouls at scheduled Halloween parties. There had even been a Leprechaun day a month or two ago. But nowhere had I seen a single Guyanese monster.

I looked at my strange visitors. “Why y’all don’t go to the Minister of Culture?”

Baccoo glared at me, then turned to the others. “You think ah should tell he what happen?”

They nodded.

Bacoo took a deep breath to calm himself then said: “Me and Baccoo went by the Minister house about two nights back. We slip past the guards and knock at the front door.

‘Who’s there?’ a voice inside said.

‘Baccoo,’ I say.

‘Back-who?’

“I ain’t answer, because I woudda say something bad. Then he open the door. He look at me, standing with me bricks and bananas. Then he look at Jumbie, with he coffin. He smile, then go inside, and come out back with two paper bags. He gave we the bags.

‘What is dis?’ I ask.

’It’s candy,’ he said, putting on a American accent. ‘You kids not tricking or treating?’ He point to me. ‘Let me guess. You are ‘Leprechaun’…and then he look at Jumbie and said…’and you are…the Boogieman…the one who always in the closet.’

At this point Jumbie took over the tale. “Then the Minister smile and ask me if I still hiding in the closet, and when I gun come out.” He gave a long sigh. “Boy, I did so mad that me heart actually start beating. All I couldda do was take the candy and leave.”

Baccoo gave a wicked grin. “As soon as he shut he door, ah shy two big brick through he Nissan Pathfinder windscreen…and jumbie lef one ah he rotten big toe pun he step.”

Jumbie sighed again. “But he might just think that is a fake toe from some stupid Halloween store.”

Ol Higue, who had turned to a ball of fire and was floating nearby, reverted to her human shape and said: “Nobody believe in us anymore.

The other night I went in a yard in Queenstown. But before I could slip through the front door keyhole a woman come outside and see me. She think I was some poor old woman suffering from Alzheimer’s and wandering in the streets. She call the ambulance and they take me to the Palms. They did preparing a bed fuh me when I turn into a ball of fire and disappear.”

Fairmaid, still combing her hair, sucked her teeth. “I was in the interior the other day. I sitting by the waterside, combing my hair and minding me own business when a pork-knocker come up. He show me two pennyweight and ask me if I doing business. Then a woman with a shotgun come up, lash the pork-knocker, and say she come to rescue me from being a trafficking in persons victim.” She sucked her teeth again. “I try telling she me name.

‘Fair..maid?’ she seh. ‘That sound like a Brazilian name.’ I just cuss them and jump back in the river. The next day, I read in the papers ‘bout some Brazilian girl who drown sheself because she didn’t want to be a human trafficking victim. Is when I read the description of the woman that I realise that is me they talking ‘bout.”

I looked at my disgruntled visitors and tried to comfort them . “But so what if people don’t recognize y’all?”

Baccoo shook his head dispiritedly. “Then we will die.”

“Then you will what?”

“Die,” Jumbie said.

I shook my head. “But-but y’all can’t die. Whoever hear ‘bout a jumbie dying?”

Jumbie rubbed his casket, then said: “Anything that isn’t cherished, nurtured, honoured, acknowledged, celebrated and valued, dies. When last you hear about Baccoo pelting a house, or somebody saying they see

Ol Higue, or Massacurraman turning over a boat? When the stories about us die, we too will be cease to exist.”

There was a moment of gloomy silence. Then I said: “But why y’all come to me?”

Mermaid gave a sad smile. “Because you is one of the few people that still believe in us. You recognize us right away. You still dream of us, you tell our stories.”

It was true. I had been like this since I was small. I remembered the night when, at age seven, I woke in darkness and saw an assortment of monsters in my room. My bigger brother insisted that the monsters were just blankets, towels and other stuff, but I knew better.

I have always believed in mermaids, or ‘fairmaids’ as my grandmother called them. I still do. And I honestly feel the presence of something in that black water whenever I pass by the Lamaha Canal.

I sighed. “So what you want me to do?”

Baccoo smiled. “Keep writing about us…keep our stories alive.”

Ol Higue chimed in. “Yes. Instead of Halloween Night why not have a

‘Jumbie Night,’ and children could dress up like us.”

By this time my entire household had awoken. Ol Higue and fairmaid babysat my grand-daughter. Jumbie entertained the children with some jumbie stories and some jumbie jokes. Baccoo pelted stones at the stray cows that were passing on the Diamond access road, then opened a tin of condensed milk and raided the two banana suckers in my backyard.

They didn’t leave until I had finished this story.