All Davindra ever wanted was for everyone to know his name. He was tired of being ignored. He worked as a security guard at one of the oil and gas companies in La Brea, buzzing people in and out of the compound. Every day people would pass him straight. No one bothered to look at his face.  He wondered if anyone knew who he was.

One of his greatest joys was going to the movies. Every fortnight, as soon as he got paid, he would go to the cinema with his friends. Marvel and car racing movies were his favourite – anything with action.

Every time the credits rolled, and the lights turned on, he would turn to one of his friends and say, “I could do that. I could stand in front a camera and make a movie.”

This time, he went with his best friend, Ravi. Tired of Davindra dreaming out loud, he groaned and said, “Oh gorm boy, your face too ugly to be on a screen big big so. Everybody go see up your nose hole.”

“Hear me good,” Davindra said, “One day I go be in front a camera. The whole country go know my name.”

Ravi, unimpressed, gave Davindra a pat on the back, shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh.

Before leaving Cinema City, they stopped at KFC. The drive back to their Siparia home was far. Few food places were open that late.

While eating, Ravi got a call.

“Aye, it’s my gyal. Go get the car. I’m going to be a while.”

“She don’t know you went out?” Davindra asked.

“No, I haven’t talked to her in three days. She real vex.”

Davindra picked up his half-eaten box of chicken and went to fetch the car. As he got closer, he heard a menacing growl.

He could not see the dog, but he knew it was close. It was in the shadows near the driver’s side.

“Here doggie, come puppy. Come from under there,” he said sweetly, trying to calm the dog, but it started to viciously hiss.

The longer Davindra was by the car, the louder the dog growled.

“Come nah doggie, move yuh tail,” he said, charging at the door, but the dog snapped back so ferociously he snagged Davindra’s pants.

Thinking quickly, Davindra got an idea. He picked the drumstick he was saving for a snack and waved it in front of the dog.

“You want this puppy?” Davindra dangled the chicken leg under the car. “Go get it,” he said, pelting the chicken across the car park. Before he could get a good look, a black blob of matted fur ran off behind it. Davindra got in the car and drove off to pick Ravi up.

*

The next day, Davindra found himself having a pretty good day. A beautiful woman passed him and smiled. It was someone’s birthday, and he got a slice of cake. For some odd reason, the people on the plant seemed to be nicer to him. Even the CEO, who never even turned down his window when driving in, walked up to Davindra for help changing his car tire, and then gave him a tip for his labour.

Davindra told himself he would save up that money for a new phone but promptly went to the grocery after work and bought some snacks, hot dogs and beer instead.

He went home, put the food in the fridge and took a shower. When he went looking for the food again, he noticed the hot dog pack was open.

“Ma, you eat my hotdogs?” he yelled out of the kitchen.

“No child. I fasting for your grandmother’s prayers, and you should be too. Stop talking nonsense about hot dogs and come fix my fan. It hot hot hot.”

Davindra sighed, put two hot dogs to boil, and went to help his mother. When he came back, there was only one in the pot.

“But what the jail is this? Denesh, you ate my hot dog?”

“Your brother not home,” his mother yelled. “He gone by his girlfriend and not coming back till later. It’s just the two of we in the house, boy.”

Davindra went to the window and wondered if a monkey got in the house again. For safety, he closed the window and covered the pot after he put another hot dog in.

As he waited, he scrolled through Facebook and found he had more likes on his profile than usual.

“Check thing, people like my memes,” he said, quite pleased with himself.

Davindra felt unusually tired after dinner and decided to go to bed early. When he pulled his cover, he found black fur all over it.

“It must be the same blasted monkey again,” he muttered under his breath as he shut the windows, fed up of the monkey’s nonsense. After dusting off the fur, he crawled into bed and went to sleep.

“Ahhh!” he screamed as he was jolted out of bed. Something bit his toe while he slept.

First, he wondered if it was a dream, but when he reached down to his toe and felt a surge of pain, he knew it was not. “How the hell did that monkey get in my room again?”

He looked over to the window he thought he closed and saw it was wide open. He turned on the light and searched all the crevices of his room to find the monkey in case it was hiding. It wasn’t there. No longer feeling safe in his room, he picked up his pillow and sheet, and went to the living room to sleep, but he was still feeling uneasy. He was unable to calm his nerves, so he went to the kitchen to drink his beer. When he opened the door, the two Caribs he put in the fridge were drunk out. Davindra steupsed and cursed his brother. Exasperated, he went to the couch to sleep.

The next few days were equally eerie. He shared the story about his monkey thief on Facebook. That got shared on a local meme page. Suddenly “bandit monkey” started trending online and everyone was laughing at Davindra’s joke. However, his problems were not going away. Whenever he would make food, he would lose something. The leftover birthday cake went missing in the fridge; packets of Crix he stashed in his bedroom were also pilfered. One Friday his lunch disappeared off his desk. He was annoyed that he had to buy lunch, but at least it was Friday, he told himself. He was grateful for the weekend.

That night, he went to the Cross in San Fernando for burgers and beers. Ravi drove, so he could drink as much as he wanted. The two left there late. The lime was too sweet to end. They eventually went home at 3.00 A.M. The beer started to kick in, and Davindra was drifting off to sleep. He nodded off twice. He was fighting to stay awake. From the corner of his eyes, he noticed a black thing dash across the road. Ravi swerved and crashed head-on with the car in the next lane. An ambulance took them to the San Fernando General Hospital, but Ravi didn’t make it. He died on impact.

Davindra and Ravi were in the papers the next day. “One dead in fatal accident after a night of drinking” was the headline.

Davindra felt ashamed. He should have been up, keeping a keen eye on the road with Ravi, instead of pissed drunk.

Davindra slipped into a deep depression. He was certain bad luck followed him everywhere he went. Hinges on doors became loose and would fall off when he touched them. Appliances broke down while he tried to use them, and when he needed to bathe the water would go. “Blight” and “Maljo” were all people in his village would say when they talked about Davindra.

“You need a bush bath, boy,” a gap-toothed drunk shouted to Davindra one day while walking with his mother to the pharmacy.

“How he know what going on with me?” he complained to his mother.

“Is a small place and everyone fass. Don’t mind he,” his mother said.

At the pharmacy, he bought three chocolates. When he got home, he put the bag of chocolates on the table and went to the kitchen to get some water. In the corner of his eye, he saw something move.

“Finally,” he thought, “I caught that thieving monkey.”

He spun around to look at the animal. There on the table was a gnarled, fur-covered hand pulling chocolates from the bag. The animal was not a monkey. It had the posture of a monkey. It was as big as a pothound, but shaggy, with black fur covering its eyes, nose and hands.

“That’s not a monkey. And that’s not a dog. What the hell is that?” he shouted.

As Davindra stared at him, the animal stared back. Through the fur covering its face, Davindra could see its large, sharp teeth as it growled.

Davindra cautiously backed out of the room and ran away. He called his brother to help get rid of the animal, but when they got to the dining room, it was gone.

Davindra went to his family and told them what he saw. His mother, who had been suspicious for weeks since the calamities started, said, “Boy, that’s a buck. You feed a buck? Is dotish you dotish or what? How you could do something like that?”

“No Ma, I never fed that.”

“It coming here eating we food. What you mean you never fed it? You feeding it right now. Think boy. Was there a time you fed an animal like that?”

The last few weeks were a blur, but his mind went to the dog under his car and he felt chills run up his spine.

“There was a dog at the cinema. I used some chicken to get it away from my car.”

“You fed Singh’s buck!” his mother bellowed. “How you mad so?”

“Ma,” Davindra said after taking a few deep breaths. “Bucks are not real. That was a dog I fed.”

“It look like a dog to you?” she snidely asked.

“I didn’t get a good look at it.”

“A buck crawls out of the shadows. It lives in the space where greed meets desperation. It will give you anything you want once you feed it. You never get to see it unless you feed it. Be careful, eh. A buck’s gift comes with a price,” she warned. “Buck wealth is costly. Mr. Singh made millions off that buck. We have no idea how evil it could be. What you ask the buck for?”

“Nothing, Ma. Bucks aren’t real. All I wanted from that buc…dog was for it to get away from my car.” Starting to doubt what he saw, Davindra said, “It was not a buck but a monkey. A very hairy monkey.”

“If you say so, son. Just be careful. Bucks are ruthless. Stop feeding it.” She patted his shoulder and left the room, walking backward out of the kitchen.

Davindra laughed at his mother’s superstitions and posted the story on Facebook. He teased about her old-fashioned country bookie beliefs. His friends roared with laughter. They made fun of the buck, his mother and the food thief, but one aunty from down the road jumped on the thread and said, “Yuh feed Singh’s buck, boy? Yuh dotish or what? That man rich rich rich. That buck’s belly big.”

After enjoying reading all his friends’ comments, when he saw that one, Davindra put down his phone and thought, “Old people dotish.”

By the end of the week, his post had thousands of reactions. Like his bandit monkey story, someone shared his buck post to the page Trini Memes, and lots of people got a kick out of it.

Days went by and he forgot about his mother’s buck story. One day at work, Davindra tried to open the gate, but it wouldn’t move with the buzzer, so he went out and tried to pull it open. With one strong yank, the gate became unhinged and fell on top of Davindra, trapping his leg. When he was on the ground pinned by the gate, he looked to the side and saw a matted, black furry thing dash by. He could have sworn he heard the creature squeal, “Feed me, yuh mudda cunt!”

Davindra broke his toe in the accident – it was the same toe the buck bit – and was put on leave. He could still walk, but with a little limp. He’d broken protocol by trying to yank open the gate and could have been fired.

After two weeks sitting around on the couch, his mother, exasperated with him, yelled, “Get up yuh fat, loacho, slob. All day you sitting there. Come with me. I need to go to the market.”

As the two walked past the different stalls, Davindra noticed there were a lot of people shoo-shooing about him. He heard two tanties say, “Yuh eh hear how Ravi, Parabatie’s boy, get in an accident coming from the Cross? Ravi dead and Davindra buss he head. Mavis say it was the buck that run in front he car and kill Ravi.”

“Jesus Christ, that is bad luck. But what do you expect when Davindra feed Singh’s buck?”

Davindra, frustrated about being blamed for all his bad luck, turned to his online friends again, venting about the buck. This time it wasn’t funny. He wrote in detail about Ravi, the accident that crushed his toe, the same buck-bitten toe and how his food always disappearing now. He wondered if it was really he who killed Ravi. He ended the post earnestly wanting to know how he could get rid of the buck. After that, Davindra went to bed. He didn’t bother to check his phone or stay up to chat. When he woke up in the morning, the post went viral, with 20,000 people talking about his buck. Various people laughed and teased him about the ridiculous situation. Some wondered if he was mentally ill. In his inbox, there was a message from Kristin Lee Martinez, a reporter from the biggest TV news station in Trinidad. She wanted to interview him about the buck.

That same day, Kristin drove down to Siparia to speak with Davindra. All his family joined him on the couch for the interview.

“Tell me Davindra, what happened when the buck started terrorising you?”

Grief-stricken and frustrated, Davindra wailed on the couch, sobbing with every other word and said, “Miss Martinez, I don’t know what to tell you. I swear I didn’t mean to feed him, but the thing just kept on growling at me. How was I supposed to know that pothound was a buck? It bite my toe, steal my sausages, and drop a gate on my foot. Yuh know when I was pinned under there it tell me to haul my mudda – bleep. I need help. An exorcist, a priest, a jarray, something to get this buck away from me.”

“Mrs. Maharaj,” Kristin asked as she turned to Davindra’s mother, “Can you tell me how you felt about your son’s alleged experience with a buck?”

“Alleged? That thing come in my house and shed all over my stove. That thing as real as you and me,” she shook her head in utter disappointment. “I don’t know how I raised such a dotish child. I blame this internet. It filling they head with a bunch of foreign nonsense and they know nothing about the spirits at home. That’s what you get when you ignore your culture. Yuh toe suck by a demon.” She threw a deadly glare at Davindra, who slouched into the couch and hung his head in shame at that line.

Following the news broadcast, thousands of memes started to circulate around the country about Davindra and his buck. There was a picture of Davindra and his mother on the couch saying, “Toe sucking mammie’s boy.” Another one had a picture of Davindra asking, “Where’s my sausages?”

#KFCbuck started trending online. KFC’s advertising agency saw the memes and thought a decent damage control tactic would be to give Davindra a $200 voucher. They showed up at his house, took pictures and posted it on their Facebook page. The memes started rolling in. People laughed, posting that KFC was the preferred choice of chicken for bucks nationwide, and asked if Davindra was going to share his chicken with the buck. Other people chastised KFC, saying they were taking advantage of a clearly mentally ill man and his family. The backlash did not affect their sales one bit. In fact, sales revenue for popcorn chicken went up by 10 per cent. Davindra bought popcorn chicken, along with a bucket of chicken and fries with the voucher. He shared it with the buck.

No one form the Ministry of Health’s Social Welfare Division checked up on Davindra and his mother. One or two people called the ministry asking them to help, but were told the division was overburdened and if Davindra wanted help, he could make an appointment at the closest health centre. Nobody told Davindra that.

Exorcists, priests and pundits went to Davindra’s house to get rid of the buck, anyone really, who wanted to make a quick buck off Davindra’s bad luck. When they came, more bad things happened to the family. Eventually, he gave up, stopped fighting it, and just decided to feed the buck. To this day, Davindra still buys extra sausages. He can’t ever risk letting his buck starve.

All of Trinidad and Tobago became engrossed with the story of Davindra’s tribulations with the buck. Years later, people were still sharing memes about Davindra and his buck.

There wasn’t a person in Trinidad who did not know his name.

 

∞

Racheal Espinet is a Trinidadian writer and social media content manager. In 2022, she was shortlisted for the Bocas Lit Fest’s Emerging Writers Fellowship and is currently a creative writing student at the University of East Anglia.