Chapter 22. The Belly of the Beast

Clouds gathered over the hilltops as we approached the gate to the complex of the Great Hoss Bozz. A creek ran through the property. Above it, overlooking the creek and road, was a sprawling house with a corrugated tin roof and a couple of out-sheds before it. A taxi was leaving as we entered. We watched the cab crawl down a muddy track from the main house, across a small bridge and stop there as we approached from the road. The driver leaned out the open window grinning, “Hoss Bozz is expectin’ ya.”

I thought I recognized the driver as one of the hustlers at the airport in Montego Bay. Dennis led the way over the bridge and up past an out-shed to the front door. A thin, elegant black man in his forties with close-cropped hair stood glaring at us.

“Lay down your packs, take off your shoes and my girls will take care of dem for you.” After a pause he shouted, “Josephine! Dey is here! Come, bring me a pan. Hurry now. Josephine, please hurry!”

We entered the house and I saw a very large, but well-proportioned blacker than black skinned, woman come toward us with a pan. One of her daughters brought a pitcher of water behind her. Hoss Bozz motioned to me to sit on a chair by the open-door entrance and proceeded to wash my feet. This was a gesture that I was aware of in from stories from the Bible in which Jesus washed the feet of his disciples at the last supper. It was not so surprising to me that it would be a custom on the island.

My eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw that the house, though large, consisted of one main room and a narrow hallway leading to a few other rooms off to the side. The front room had a corner partitioned off by a counter and a couple of tables that contained a kitchen sink, range, and refrigerator. There were a couple young girls in the kitchen area, not counting the one bringing water for Josephine. I noticed a couple others outside taking dry clothes off the line. Hoss Bozz finished washing my feet and toweled them off.

He caught my eyes appraising one of his teen-age girls at the clothes-line. The light cotton calf-length smock covered her body but could hide the silhouette of her ebony skin, as black as the darkest night, as her hips moved underneath the modest dress in an enticing rhythm as she gracefully carried a load of laundry from the creek for the others to hang.

"Off Limits, my friend! Dee girls is off-limits!” Hoss Bozz let out a manic laugh, “I have seven daughters like Job… jess like Job. But I am cursed with no sons, mon.”

We were asked to have a seat on the floor against a wall opposite the kitchen. Josephine and two of the girls brought dishes of curried rice, fried plantains and chicken. Dennis kept the bag of ganja from the day before under his Hawaiian shirt. I thought he might break it out but said nothing. Stan asked him what he planned on doing with it.

Dennis answered, “I want to wait and see what happens to our gear.” He gestured towards the door. “Besides, the host provides in most parts around here.”

Hoss Bozz approached us after we’d eaten and rolled up three spliffs. There was no small talk as he seemed to go into a trance state, rambling… in a trembling voice that grew louder, “I am the Great Hoss Bozz… I smoke de ganja, I take de LSD, I take de STP… I am de Great Hoss Bozz!”

He stopped and looked each of us in the eye. He stood, shuffled around the room and left down the hallway.  He came back with a boom box playing Jimi Hendrix. It was a nightmarish scene: Hoss Bozz ranting, a tinny boom box of a distorted cassette tape wailing away Jimmy Hendrix… Purple Haze interrupted by, “I am dee Great Hoss Bozz…. Deere is no one greater dan me. I am... I am. ... I am Jah. ... Jah! ... Now, Jah! ... Lion of de Tribe of Judah… I am dee spirit of Halle Selassie… Jah! Ganja liberation, ya know!”

He shut off the boom box and sat down in front of me... facing me a mere foot away. No longer in a trance state he spoke slowly and deliberately, “Hey, look here, mon. I have only few rules here. De rains is coming soon. We all sleep when de rain comes. De keetchen is off-limits. It is forbidden to go in dere. Job's daughters is off limits. Off Limits! Do you hear me! Don’t you even try to talk sweet talk to any one of dem!” then shouting at the top of his lungs; “Michael! Come here, you pussy-blood-clot, Michael!”

One of the doors in the hallway opened. A thin, blond, lightly bearded, and effeminate man in his early twenties wearing a white perfectly pressed and starched shirt, came obediently to Hoss Bozz. I had seen eyes like his at airports; at Tony and Sue’s place… that look in Michael’s eyes. They were glazed over… alive but somehow dead. A grin was pasted on his face like a Hari Krishna. His submissiveness bothered me.

“Yes, Hoss Bozz,” Michael submitted and bowed his head as he approached.

“Michael, you stay out here wit dese here boys.” Hoss Bozz spoke affectionately to Michael… patting him on the head and shoulders… and then retired to one of the back rooms with Josephine as the rains began hammering the tin roof.

The rain came down in a solid sheet. The rumble of the rain on the tin roof was deafening. I stood at the door looking out over the grounds of the compound the first half hour. The roar above turned to white noise. I went back to the place my gear was laid out to sleep. My dreams were full of foreboding. Lost in a jungle, I struggled with vines, feet mired in the soggy earth, as a mysterious set of jaguar’s eyes watched me through thickets of the tropical underbrush.

The dark belly of the clouds opened and poured ferociously every afternoon around three. Between the rains Hoss Bozz’s amplified ranting into a microphone of his tape deck boom box tortured the walls for two days and nights. If he had anything else going for him, I couldn't see it. We smoked ganja, slept, listened to Hoss Bozz rant, and ate, for two days and two nights. I had hardly any chance to ask questions or find out anything from Michael about this weird scene. I did, however, have a chance to walk around the compound. I kept my eyes peeled and wondered where our back packs, and boots, were stashed in case we decided to leave in a hurry. Stan wanted to go the first day after two minutes into Hoss Bozz’s rant, but I felt compelled to see what this lunatic was about, as long as we were eating his food and smoking his ganja.

“Stan, where do you think they stashed our gear? I’m kinda nervous to ask,” I queried in a lull from the rantings and the rain on the third day.

Stan answered, “I don’t know but our plane tickets and gear are with our packs. I’m gonna ask where mine is anyway. I wanna get outa here.”

The rain started coming down hard again and we watched Dennis get up.

Dennis heard us talking over the din of the rain and said, “Watch what happens next.”

He strode across the room and went into the taboo kitchen area, opened a few cupboards, and peered into the refrigerator. He was deliberately testing to see where and when the hammer would come down.

Michael got up and shuffled off in his socks to the back rooms.

I shouted through the constant pounding on the tin roof, “What the fuck are you doing Dennis? That Moonie is snitching on you!”

Dennis ignored me, and hollered an offering, “You want a banana?”

“I’ll have one,” yelled Stan. 

The banana arched across the room to be caught by Stan just when the rains stopped.

When the rains stopped Hoss Bozz came roaring out of his room and Josephine stood with her mass blocking the front doorway. I wasn’t so much afraid as I was angry that Dennis had crossed the line with our host. Hoss Bozz sprung toward Dennis like a lion but, surprisingly, Dennis didn’t flinch. Bozz was used to people cowering before him but Dennis was not so inclined. Hoss Bozz raised his fist and railed, “You pussy-blood-clot! You pussy-blood-clot! I told you to stay outa de keetchen, Mon.”

Michael came into the room with two packs. Hoss Bozz grabbed the packs from Michael and threw Dennis’s at his feet. “You must go. You must leave now!”

Dennis opened his pack and searched through it, “Hey, where is my plane ticket?”

Stan stood there before Josephine and, glaring at Hoss Bozz, ordered, “My ticket was here. Get it.”

Josephine nodded and signaled one of the girls to retrieve Dennis’s ticket. Bozz gave her a dirty look but her face showed that she was in charge of the house and common sense. She handed Stan his pack, but he didn’t look inside. She moved away from the door and let Dennis and Stan pass by her.

Hoss Bozz sat on the chair he’d so graciously sat on the other day to wash the feet of his guests.

I wondered where my pack was but, as I passed to get by him and Josephine, Hoss Bozz grabbed my arm and held me, pleading, “I want you to stay.”

“I can’t stay, where is my pack?” I turned to face him.

He put his hand on my shoulder to pull me down, “Please sit. I must tell you how I soffur!”

I backed away holding my gaze on his face, “I can’t stay, and I need my pack and ticket.”

“Stay and abide wit me… My feet feel the fires of hell burning… I am slipping away into the lake of fire!” He fell to his knees before me.

I looked down at Hoss Bozz and tried to imagine the fire. I lifted my eyes, “I need to go with my friends.”

He stood abruptly, shouting out the door at Stan and Dennis, “I curse your friends! I curse them to hell… to burn forever! Dennis … he has no respect!”

 They stood there waiting to see if I was ever going to escape. He went back down on one knee and beseeched me, “Stay and help me, Max. I am damned… I am cursed… de hounds of hell are coming for me! I am... I am... I am sinking... swallowed up into the Belly of the Beast. My feet are already burning in Hell!”

“I need my pack.”

Josephine came forward with one of the girls holding the pack. I could see that it was soaking wet and the extra blue jeans in it were soaked as well. She held back waiting for Hoss Bozz to okay the transaction. “I must go with my friends.” I then imagined the curses that were to follow and the antidote for them came to me in that same moment Hoss Bozz let out a screeching wail.

“Den, I damn you Max! You choose pussy-blood-clot… you go wit deez pussy-blood-clot… you go wit dem to Hell to burn!”

I steeled myself and saw the antidote was faith in that something that was with me on the peyote quest. I saw that the power of love was a higher power… high enough at any rate to defend me against any curse. I wasn’t superstitious. I just felt pity for Hoss Bozz instead of contempt. If anything was to be done about the curse, I realized that whatever I chose, I could not return it. I found the words coming out of my mouth. It was as though they weren’t my words at all, “Hoss Bozz, Jah loves you, but I can’t stay with you in your suffering. I have to go with my friends.”

I turned my back on Hoss Bozz as soon as one of his girls handed me my pack. It was eerily ominous the way that we could hear Hoss Bozz ranting, raving and hurling every possible curse at us as we walked back down the muddy path to the road. Once we got out of sight I checked my sodden bag for my ticket and found only a partial stub left of it. I realized then that this character had no intention of letting me go. My ears burned as I heard the Great Hoss Bozz curse me as I walked away: “I curse you more than the others Mr. Max! You pussy-blood-clot, I curse you with the fires of hell that are at my feet today!”

I started to turn back when Stan grabbed my arm, “Where the fuck you goin’?”

“I’ve got to get my ticket… the mother fucker has my ticket back there.”

“Man, don’t worry about our tickets: Mine is missing too. Do you think those goons at customs won’t let us leave here?”

“Yeh, you’re right. I never thought of that.” I laughed for the first time in three days.

Dennis was walking swiftly in front of us on the road. We passed pristine old-growth bamboo thickets with stalks having a girth of two feet and more. There were banana orchards and an occasional farm house. A cane truck returning from the cane fields loaded with workers stopped and gave us a lift through the winding mountain roads. The truck stopped now and then to let off a few of the cane field workers or take on a hitch-hiker.

Ours were the only white faces to be seen walking on the mountain roads. This caused more than a little curiosity and friendly questions were asked, “Where are you from, mon.

Another joined the questioning, “Have we ever been to Chicago? I have a brother deere.”

A large man with a giant’s hands was chewing on a stick of cane and passed one to us, “Where you going?”

I stuck to our original story we told at customs, “We were doing some fishing.”

“Where are your feeshing poles, mon?”

Oh, my god, I just then realized we left them with Hoss Bozz! So, I lied, “They are being kept by a friend.”

Another was suspicious, “White folks go places like Ocho Rios?”

Stan recued the conversation, “That’s where we’re going now.”

We stayed a night camped out above a place called Dunn’s River Falls of James Bond, Dr. No, fame. It wasn’t much of a tourist stop then… especially at night. We slept close to the falls upstream a little where the mosquitoes weren’t so bad.