Cunny and Bunny

This is a short story about the adventures of two friends.

      Cunny was an ambitious young man from the country. He lived in a district called Hopewell in the parish of Hanover. His real name was Junior, and he considered himself a funny man. Although he was twenty years old, he had grey beard and grey hair, and he said that premature greying ran in the family. Cunny claimed that he could sing well, and he wanted to become a professional singer.

      The strange thing was that nobody in the community had ever heard him sing. Someone told Cunny about a recording studio somewhere in St. Ann, so he decided to go to the studio and speak to the producer. He asked a friend named Bunny to accompany him to St. Ann, and the man agreed to go with him. Bunny told Cunny that he did not have any money to pay for transportation, and Cunny said that he would cover travel expenses.

      Both men departed for St. Ann in the early morning. They arrived in Ocho Rios shortly before ten o’clock, and they found the recording studio. Cunny went into the building and asked the receptionist for the producer. The woman called the producer on the phone, and she told Cunny to wait for a few minutes. Shortly afterwards, the producer came out to see him and they exchanged greetings. “What can I do for you, Sir?” he asked. Cunny told the producer that he was an aspiring singer and that he would like to do an audition. “Did you write any tunes?” the producer asked. “No, Sir,” Cunny replied. “Do you play any instruments?” the producer asked. “I play the guitar. Sir,” Cunny replied. “Okay, go in that room and let me hear what you have,” the producer said.

      Cunny went into the room, stood before the microphone, and started to sing a Reggae song. When the producer heard Cunny’s boring performance, he shook his head in disapproval. “Stop! Stop! You can’t sing, neither can you play the guitar, so I can’t work with you,” he said. Cunny was so disappointed to hear the producer’s critical opinion about his playing and singing. Consequently, he left the recording studio with downheartedness.

      While those things were happening in the studio, Bunny was waiting for Cunny outside, and he was getting himself in big trouble. He did not know anybody from the area, yet he was trying to woo an underage girl at her gateway. The girl’s father saw what was going on, and he came outside and angrily chased away Bunny. “Leave my daughter alone and get away from my gate, you pervert!” the girl’s father shouted. Moreover, he hurled foul language at Bunny. An altercation ensued between the two men, and Bunny threw a big stone at the girl’s father. That was the biggest mistake he had ever made. The man raised an alarm, and other residents came to help him capture Bunny.

      When Bunny realized the seriousness of the situation, he ran for his life. An angry crowd of seemingly illiterate people armed with machetes, long sticks, and stones began to chase after him. Just then, Cunny walked out of the studio. He was completely unaware of what was happening. The hooligans saw him standing on the sidewalk and one of them shouted, “Look! That man is a friend of the mischief-maker; they came here together. So if we can’t catch one, we will catch the other.” Cunny knew that he could not reason with those crazy people, so he did not waste any time to find out anything, he immediately ran off in the same direction that Bunny went.

      The mob stopped, and the men began to orchestrate a plan. “Those men are not from this area, and they don’t know the place. They don’t even know where they are going,” one man said. “The road that they took will lead them to another road over there. So some go that way, the rest of us will go the other way, and we will catch them in no time,” another man said. The event was about to take a dramatic turn.

      Cunny and Bunny were running breathlessly, their feet felt as if they were not touching the ground. They suddenly saw people coming towards them from two directions, and they knew that it was a trap, so they hurriedly climbed over a barbed wire fence and ran into a pasture. When the hostile men who were chasing them got to the pasture, they gave up the chase and turned back. “Let them go, they won’t get halfway across the common before the cows kill them,” one man said. Cunny and Bunny had no idea what caused the men to stop pursuing them, and they continued running desperately.

      The two young men ran out of breath, so they stopped to rest in the green grassy field. Unfortunately, their troubles were not over. A herd of huge Brahmans and other cows seemed to appear out of nowhere, and they were very angry. The bulls began to stomp their feet and blow steam through their nostrils. “So this is why the men didn’t follow us into the pasture,” Cunny said. “They were afraid of the cows,” he added. The angry bulls swiftly ran towards Cunny and Bunny like a stampede. The tired men had to get up and run for their lives. Fortunately, they saw a big Guango Tree a short distance away, and they ran towards it.

      The cows were catching up with them, but they reached the tree just in time to save themselves. Both men quickly climbed the Guango Tree and sat on a limb. The cows surrounded them and lay under the tree. Time was passing, and it was getting late in the evening. “The cows are not leaving, so what are we going to do?” Bunny asked. “I don’t know, we just have to wait and see what will happen,” Cunny replied. “Maybe they will go away tonight,” Bunny said. Unfortunately, that did not happen. The cows stayed under the tree the whole night, so both men had to sleep in the tree until daybreak.

      At dawn the cows got up and went away to graze. Cunny and his friend climbed down from the tree, and they continued westward to the end of the pasture. When they reached the main road, Cunny discovered that he had lost his wallet. “My wallet is gone. It must have fallen out of my pocket when we were running from those men, and we can’t go back to search for it,” he said.

      Bunny had no money, and he was depending on Cunny to pay his bus fare to get back home. “How will we get home?” Bunny asked. Cunny had a clever idea. “We can’t take a bus because we’ll have to pay as we enter so we’ll take a taxi to Montego Bay, and when we get there, we’ll get out of the car and run,” he said. “We’ll do the same thing to travel from Montego Bay to Hopewell,” he added. “That’s a good idea, let’s do it,” Bunny said.

      They waved down a taxi, the driver stopped the car, and they told him where they wanted to go. The driver told them that the fare was five hundred dollars, they agreed to pay him the amount he asked for, and they boarded the taxi. When they arrived in Montego Bay, they quickly alighted from the vehicle and ran away. The driver of the taxi was surprised because he did not expect them to do that. Furthermore, he could not leave his car at that location and chase after them, so he took the loss and drove away slowly.

      Cunny and his friend took another taxi in Montego Bay to go to Hopewell. When they got close to their hometown, Bunny told the driver to set them down at the gas station, the driver stopped, and they got out of the car and ran down the street. “Stop those men, they are getting away with my money!” the driver shouted angrily. Nobody tried to catch Cunny and Bunny, so the driver uttered expletives, and then he sped away in his taxicab. The two men had a good laugh when they reached a safe distance away. Moreover, they were glad that they got home in one piece. Cunny did not give up trying to become a superstar, but sadly, he was unsuccessful.

 

The End

Author's Note

This story is inspired by real events.