John; the Bludgeon and Joker: a story. Click here for more. The mango was heavy with the heat of the day, a small, golden weight in John Por Favour’s pocket. He sat in the long grass of the Jamaican hills, the year 1695 pressing down on him like the humidity. He looked at the stump where his finger used to be—a jagged memory of the moment he had asked for his copper and received the blade of the Dutch American Mohican Creole instead. In the flickering light of a stolen candle the night before, John had read of the Shrewd Manager in the scriptures. He understood the lesson clearly: when the master is unjust, the servant must settle the accounts himself. The master owed him more than a finger; he owed him the land, the air, and the very life he presided over. ..The mango in John’s pocket was not the only thing he carried. Long before he considered the iron tool or the 3:00 AM strike, John Por Favour had begun to master the art of the hidden ledger. Every morning, when the mist was still thick over the Jamaican coops, John moved among the frantic chickens. He discovered a rhythm that the overseers never noticed: for every twelve eggs he gathered into the master’s basket, three went into the lining of his own tunic. It was a tax he levied against his own suffering—a 25% interest rate on the finger he had lost. By midday, while the rest of the estate labored under the sun, John was at the edge of the market. He sold his three eggs to the travelers and the townspeople, clutching the small coins as if they were pieces of the master’s own heart. He built a silent, invisible economy. If the master would not pay him his daily earnings, John would simply extract them from the land itself, egg by egg. On the night he planned his coup, just before the owner entered his room, John had approached the man he called a father figure. He stood before him, the shadow of the Dutch American Mohican Creole, and asked for a single egg to eat. It was a test. John already had three sold and the coins hidden in the dirt, but he wanted to see if the master would offer even one freely. The man refused. "You eat when the work is done," he had said. He decided that own day his ancestors would take the authority and money any where he could from the whole economy, maybe from the glory navy or from the glory people and put the money in his own pocket to do whatever they would want. They barely have a navy. They barely have any people yet that tremendous resource is available to them; all of the Northern territories in the American colonies except for Mexico in the will of Germany. John had smiled then, a small, cold tuck of the lips. He didn't need the man's permission. He had already taken his share. He realized then that the "Wise Servant" in the book hadn't just settled debts at the end—he had been balancing the books in secret the entire time. The next day when he asked, the man said,"...I suppose because truly you know I owe you..don't know how to pay... Me Sorry since I did not know how to express my fear of you leaving, fear of abandonment...and now you owe me...I need you to just help round here so now.. and just take what you want...not too much but like family. We are still trying to have a farm and family here....so use your rag when you wash and not your hands... because what hands will you use to pick the apples since, because, we have to respect the real Dutch...I don't know what Creole took your finger...here in Jamaica? Which one was it since you can't say it's me; you were blind folded and I had a mask on so which one was it? Do you know Jesus and even if you did, you still have to clean your teeth four times a day if you are good, smart? This is even if you accept the ten commandments is a culture. But it is the most natural thing in or out of a job. Do you trust employees that take the risk of dishonouring their parents and neighbours and who would ever sign to that hoping to get a job? Do you know any dog or cat that would....if they could? It's totally the opposite of life, antithetical so remember. How mong can you stand in between the two opinions, the two currents? You will spin. I am not perfect but there is a natural truth, a God energy and when shall we argue and be outside of our nature? When would a monkey abandon it's own and not feed it's own, not love it's own, care for it's own? The wolf does not leave the wolf pack. The fish do not leave the school of fish. You want to know when does a European culture abandon us here in Jamaica after a shipwreck or when did Africa abandon some of our ancestors, mine and yours, in Gibraltar after shipwreck. Maybe God was abandoning a ship full of Rameses babies since once was enough in Europe; maybe God says. They were soo busy looking at the moon and stars to see just when the fathers would come that they forgot about God above; just the stars and moon now. Rameses was already in Europe. Another father was on the way to teach him..tell him again that it must be only with his wife. What are these sheep skin, plastic things for anyway?" When the owner finally sat on his bed at 3:00 AM and spoke of their shared scars, John looked at the man differently. He didn't just see a master or a father; he saw a man who was losing a fortune three eggs at a time and was too blind to notice.... "Go to America," the man urged, handing him the letter for John Adams. "Find a way to build something." John nodded, feeling the weight of the coins in his hem alongside the bruised mango. He realized that if he could build an economy in the shadows of a Jamaican plantation with nothing but twelve chickens and a missing finger, he could build an empire in the North. He wouldn't just find John Adams; he would show him how to truly settle an account..... John looked around the estate. It was a gallery of the broken. On the porch sat a man with a stump for a leg, his eyes fixed on the horizon. Down by the river, another man was wading through the reeds, his movements quick as he hunted baby alligators, despite having his own scars to show. It was a cycle of maiming, a brutal language they all spoke. *If I strike him at three in the morning,* John thought, his small hand gripping a heavy iron tool, *I become the master. I free them from him, and they will answer to me.* He fell into a shallow, fitful sleep, dreaming of the hour of three. At the stroke of the hour, the door to the shack creaked open. But it wasn't John who moved first. The owner stood over him, a silhouette against the pale moon. "Get up, John," the man said, his voice surprisingly soft. John reached for the iron, but the man sat down on the edge of the dirt floor, holding out his own hand. In the moonlight, John saw it—the man was missing the same finger. "I was young too," the owner whispered. "And when I took yours, you were too blinded by the blood to see I had already paid that price long ago. The man on the porch? The man at the river? They are mirrors of one another. One took the foot, the other lost it. We are a family of the scarred, and any one of us could be the ghost of your father. So now remember that some day, you will be best to dress like the Rabi once you tell the world what pirate you really are and then they will never see you, camouflage. You sill say you can't help yourself. You don't know what is wrong with you. Never own an apple that you cannot define. See the Rabi in my story book. Never, never forget that Abraham has Muslim and Jewish children. But when Jacob got to Egypt, all of his sons would have spoken Arabic; Isaac's mother's tongue. But once you kill one of his sons or my sons like the Lincoln, there will be a Civil war. Lincoln was already dead it seems and shot in the theatre before the war started...because you are an Ass who never learns and never quits...all of you...but I am you and you are me so what am I going to do now? The war happens because of the fear, your pirate fear of reprisal and you..you you keep killing. Look at the Pan Am problem and then you make your play time friend hit another population to obfuscate who was really responsible. Then that population is compensated with open access to life and opportunities in your play time friend's country but, how does this circle of debts really help anyone? How do we communicate our feelings? Your play time friend was hit because of this thing you do to fight the ancient wisdoms. So he was put into an ancient people's game that meant they were asked to say who they think was responsible but they got it wrong and we are tired of them. It was an angry customer who owned a weird newspaper but was a convict and was told he could not fly by Pan Am so he did what he did and wanted Pan Am cut into three different airlines. He now owns all three. He was tired of Thurston Howel, the owner, who was just an American but was a pompous Anglo Saxon American and who is he to tell anyone anything? But know that this is who we are! We are the Mediterranean ship wrecked people with some North Africa and Babylonian DNA, the Dutch, the English, the Amerindian and this West Indian pangea man. Know also that, after you see the children play here, we are the murderous competitive Babylonian orphan and a pirate when one kid shot the other for a checkers game. Piracy did not begin here but in North Africa and the Mediterranean. King Sennacherib is evidence. So now Jesus is a true Rabbi but who are you if everything is broken and who would understand a broken shipping company, sugar company or broken country? You have all the resources to make it work or is it that you are broken and you are telling the world this is how you feel when we wait an hour on the phone for housing and you never communicate the notice of the property to the occupant. This is a problem when you send notice to the property that is in Massachusetts but the occupant is in Illinois. I cut off my wife's finger to have all of her attention but now I am repented. I cut off every second neighbour's finger when I did not want to feel shame. I was wrong. But I made it a culture. So, I owe you..you owe me I suppose and you will take and interrupt me, do what you want I suppose but, we are all owed and nothing is really working. On the day you declare your independence, you will take America back into dependency on Europe with a document of national indenture or a loan since we are the one hugging you( hugging you) the Hugenot. We are all that ship wrecked orphan from the Med. You killed that town with a pot of soup and that was a genocide. Say "Thankomen." Por Favor did not know what he is talking about but tried to understand. He was blinded with anger and vengeance for his missing finger and the world will know how it owes him, must pay him all of it's happiness like Dejardin and Manchester United. Sennacherib around us in the wind agrees and says, "..if you are happy and celebrating your happy life in obedience to the way of civilization as handed down from Egypt, it can't be you but it has to be me even if it's Jamaica or this land I heard of called Manitoba; and I will interrupt you." The man said, "...now you understand me and you will understand you. See my Chinese friend that has come to pray for us. I am learning the mediations since your ego, your greatest enemy, is within. 'Ni hao' my Wu Tang man! Go to America and you will see what will happen!! You will go to America, kill off the puritans first and then get a loan for worth of America. Then many years later, you will say you don't know what you want of the money can be paid to everyone and the natives so you just argue until the whole things blows up and everybody is dead in a civil war. Then you call for more people to come since you are Virago."