A Brief History of Seven Killings

by James, Marlon

  Jamaica Labour Party rule the country in the sixties but the People’s National Party tell the country that better must come and win the election in 1972. Now JLP want the country back and there’s no word named can’t, there’s no word named no. Downtown on lockdown and police already shouting curfew. Some street so quiet that even rat know better than to come out. West Kingston on Fire. People still want to know how JLP lose Kingston when they have Copenhagen City. People reason that it’s Rema, that place between JLP and PNP that vote against JLP because PNP promise corned beef, baking flour and more exercise book for the children to take to school. The man who bring guns to the ghetto bring more guns and say he not going be happy until every man, woman and pickney in Rema bleed. But both party stun when a third P rise up, you, and you come on the TV in the chiney shop saying that your life is not for you and if you can’t help plenty people then you no want it. And you do something else in the ghetto even though you not there. Me not sure how you do it. Maybe it was the bass, something you can’t see but feel and who feels it knows it. But a woman will talk for herself, let her tongue loose in her own backyard, cursing with each wring of the shirt and pant that she washing, saying she tired of the shitstem and the ism and schism and is high time the big tree meet the small axe. But she didn’t say it, she sing it so we know that it’s you. And plenty in the ghetto, in Copenhagen City, in Rema, and for sure in the Eight Lanes sing it too. The two men who bring guns to the ghetto don’t know what to do since when music hit you can’t hit it back.

  Boy like me don’t sing your song. He who feels it knows it, you say, but it’s long time since you feel it. We listen other song that ride the Stalag Rhythm, song from people who can’t pay for no guitar and don’t have a white man to give it to them. And while we listen to people just like we, Josey Wales visit me, and I joke that he is Nicodemus, thief in the night. Thirteen and he give me a present that nearly drop from my fingers because a gun weight is a different kinda weight. Not a heavy weight but a different one, cold, smooth and tough. Gun don’t obey your finger unless your hand prove first that it can handle it. I remember the gun drop from my hand, slip out, and Josey Wales jump. Josey Wales don’t jump. Last time that happen it blow four toe clean off, him say, and pick it up. I want to ask if that was why he limp. Josey Wales remind me that is him teach me how to use gun to shot up a PNP boy if they try anything and it’s soon my time to defend Copenhagen City, especially if the enemy come from home cooking, not outside dessert. Josey Wales never could talk like music, not like Papa-Lo and not like you, so I laugh and he punch me in the cheek. Don’t disrespect the Don, he say. I was about to say you not the Don, but I stay quiet. You ready to be a man? he say. I said I was a man but him gun right up at my left temple before I could finish. Click. I remember squeezing myself hard, thinking please don’t piss, please don’t piss, please don’t look like a five-year-old wanting to go piss.

  Papa-Lo would have killed me so quick and so sure, that it would be like the idea just come to him. But if Papa-Lo kill you on a Friday, he was thinking about it, weighing, measuring, planning from Monday. Josey Wales different. Josey Wales didn’t think, he just shoot. I look at the black O of the gunmouth and know he could kill me right then and tell Papa-Lo anything. Or he wouldn’t. Nobody ever bet on what they think Josey Wales would do. Still holding the gun to my temple he grab my pants at the waist and tug until the button pop off. I have only three brief with no more coming, and never wear any unless me leaving the ghetto. Josey Wales grab my pants then let go and watch it drop. He look up then down then back up, up and up then smile. You not no man yet, but soon, soon. I goin’ make you, he said. You ready to be a man, he ask, and me did think then that he mean it in a politician way, the way Michael Manley would say, You want a better future, comrade? So I nod yes and he walk off and I follow him down a street that nobody drive on anymore because of too much guntalk, with no house but mound of sand and block, for bigger tenement yard that government not going to build because we is JLP.

  I follow him down this street to where it seem to end, on the train line that cut through Kingston from east to west. By the train line, this far south nothing block the view of the sea. Kingston can close in on itself, so much so that you could be right by the sea and forget that you live on the island. That there is a sort of ghetto boy who run to the sea every day just so they can dive into something and forget. I only think of them when I see the sea. The sun was setting but it did still hot and the air taste like fish. Josey Wales turn left, to a small shack, where man long time ago would get up early to close the road so that the train could pass. He never tell me to follow. When I finally go inside he look at me like he was waiting all day.

  Inside night fall already and the floor creak and crack. He light a match and I see the skin first, sweaty and shiny. The funny thing about smelling sweat is that you soon smell piss, not fresh, but soak in the floor, piss from not long ago. The boy did in the corner, belly down on the floor. Josey Wales or somebody tie up him hand, then tie the rope to him foot so that he look like a human bow. Josey Wales point to him clothes on the floor, then point at me with the gun and say pick them up, them might be your size. Now you have four brief he say, I don’t remember telling no man about how much brief I have. I go to pick them up but Josey Wales fire. The bullet buck the floor and both me and the boy jump. Not yet, pussyhole. You no prove you ah man yet. I look at him, tall with a bald head that him woman shave for him every week. Tall and brown and full of muscle, where Papa-Lo black and thick. When he smile Josey Wales look like a chineyman, but he would shoot you if you say so, because chineyman cocky small like a bump, not like black man cocky.

  You see how Rema boy live good? You think you can buy them jeans, yah? Is Fiorucci this you know. You see what thirty pieces of silver can buy a Rema boy? Josey Wales know label. Most of him clothes, him woman get from her job at a factory that make and ship clothes back to America so people could wear them to the disco, which is what people in America do. Everybody know because she tell everybody. You want this, then grow some bombocloth balls. Right now, he say, and shove the gun in my hand. I hear the boy crying. He hail from the Rema and I don’t know anybody from there so. Wouldn’t know anybody from the Eight Lanes either if me see him now. Right now, Josey Wales say again. Gun weight is a different kind of weight. Or maybe it be something else, a feeling that whenever you hold a gun is really the gun holding you. Now, or me deal with the two of you, Josey Wales say. Me walk right over to the boy and smell him sweat and piss and something else and pull the trigger. The boy don’t scream or shout or ungh like when Harry Callahan kill a boy. He just jerk and dead. And the gun jerk my hand hard but the shot didn’t sound like when Harry Callahan fire a shot, where the echo going on so long it don’t end with the movie. The shot was two boards slap together that push against your ears quick then gone like a lick from a hammer.

  When a shot enter a boy you don’t hear anything more than a zup. Me did want to kill that Rema boy. Me did want it more than anything. I don’t know why. Yes I do. And Josey Wales didn’t say a thing. He said shoot him again to make sure, and I did. The body jerk. In the head, fool, he say, and me shoot again. I couldn’t see if blood was running on the floor. The gun was lighter and warmer. Me tell meself that it was starting to like me. It really was nothing to kill a boy. Me did know it would be, maybe it was something ghetto boy just know. It was not the death, but the piss and shit and blood that make me vomit when I drag him down to dump in the sea. Three days later the newspaper have as headline Boy floating in Kingston Harbour: Murder execution style. Josey Wales smile and say me is big man now, so big that me make news and all of Jamaica ’fraid of me. I don’t feel big. I don’t feel nothing. Is more of a big thing that I don’t feel nothing. No, that’s not a big thing neither. He tell me don’t tell Papa-Lo or he going kill me himself.

  Josey Wales

  Weeper taking his own good time as per usual. He and the white men get on real well, real well since one of them
show him how to shoot like a man and not a silly ghetto boy. That’s what Louis Johnson call him first, just like that. White man have balls, as I would say. Weeper jump up and pull a gun, a little pussy .38 right in front of the white man only to feel a bigger gun rubbing against him nuts. Me can kill you still, Weeper say. You got your gun on my brain and I got my gun on yours, Johnson say, which for a Jamaican is like killing you worse, no true dat? Weeper look at him and laugh and shake his hand, even hug and call him mi bredda. And is when you learn to talk like a yardie? What I remember was that he was wearing Wrangler jeans. American trying to look more American when he leave America. That was in this bar, Lady Pink down on Pechon Street, the last street between Downtown Kingston and Ghetto Kingston, which bring in fresh new girls every Thursday, although last week the new girl was the same girl from two years ago who still dance like a shaking banana tree. Things hard and getting more and more crucial by the day when a nursery worker have to skin out onstage. Weeper like to fuck her too.

  Lady Pink open from nine in the morning and only have two things on the jukebox, some nice ska from the sixties and sweet rocksteady, like the Heptones and Ken Lazarus. None of that Rasta reggae fuckery. If I come across one more pussyhole who won’t comb their hair and recognize Jesus as their lord and saviour I might send that little fucker to hell. Take that joke and bank it. The wall is too red for pink and too pink for purple and have gold record all over, which the owner himself spray-paint. Lerlette, the skinny girl, is up onstage, she the one who always want to dance to Ma Baker. One year we provide security when Boney M. come to Jamaica and nobody knew that three woman and one man from the Caribbean could all look like such sodomite. Every time the song end with the chorus, she knew how to die! Lerlette split right down on the ground and hold up her two hands in gun pose like she’s Jimmy Cliff in The Harder They Come. Girl must be putting her pum-pum through all kinda distress. Weeper used to fuck her too.

  When she finish her dance, she pull back on her panty and come over to my booth. Me have a rule with woman. If your titty prettier and your body hotter than my woman, I’ll deal with you. Otherwise fuck off. Ten years and I still never meet that woman. Dog years it take me to find Winifred, a woman who would breed the kind of boy I would want as son, because a man can’t afford to have loose seed around the place. Last week Weeper come around the house with a son from some woman in Jungle, even he can’t remember her name right. The boy was either retarded or start smoke the ganja way too early, drooling and panting like a big dog. In Jamaica you have to make sure that you breed properly. Nice little light browning who not too dry up, so that your child will get good milk and have good hair.

  —Beg you di bone nuh?

  —Dutty gal, move you bombocloth from here so. You no see big man is here?

  —Lawd, yuh hard, eh? A weh Weeper deh?

  —Me look like Weeper’s keeper?

  She doesn’t answer, just walk away, pulling her panty out of her batty. I know for sure her mother drop her on the head when she was a baby. Twice. If it’s one thing I can’t stand is when people chat bad. Worse, when they know better. My mother send me all the way to high school. I didn’t learn a fucking thing, but I listen to plenty. I listen to the TV, to Bill Mason and I Dream of Jeannie, and the radio serial on RJR at ten every morning, even though that was woman business. And I listen to the politicians, not when they’re talking to me and pretending like I’m some backward ghetto naigger, but when they talk to each other, or to the white man from America. Last week my son say, Daddy you want know say di I? I ah go ’pon di base fi check a beef, sight? and I slap that little wretch so hard he nearly cry. Don’t talk to me like you was born behind cow, I say to him.

  Damn boy look at me like I owe him something. That is the problem with these young rudies, they wasn’t around for the fall of Balaclava in 1966, but I done talk about that. Everybody talking like they only know ghetto, especially him. See him on TV couple years ago and was never so shame in my life. To think you have all this money, all these gold record, have lipstick print on your cocky from all sort of white woman, and that is how you talk? If my life is juss fi mi, mi no want it? Then give it up, pussyhole, I coming right ’round there to take it.

  Now Weeper, him different. The first day he come out of prison—not a good day to leave either, he come out right in the middle of war—the man have a big bulge in his back pocket. When he pull it out, there was so much red ink on even the cover that I ask him if he was bleeding from him batty. Turn out to be red ink from the only pen he could thief in prison. I ask if he write another book in the book. No star, he say. Bertrand Russell is the most top of the top ranking, me brethren, me can’t outwrite him. Bertrand Russell is a book I still don’t read yet. Weeper tell me how thanks to Bertrand Russell he don’t believe in no God no more and me have one or two problems with that.

  Waiting on Weeper. Now there’s a title for a song, a hit record too. Last week I tell him, and the youths Bam-Bam, Demus and Heckle, that every Jamaican man is a man searching for father and if one don’t come with the package, he’s going to find another one. That’s why Papa-Lo call himself Papa-Lo, but he can’t be the father of anything anymore. Weeper say the man gone soft, but I say no, you fucking fool, look closer. The man not getting soft, he just reach the age where the person in the mirror is an old man who don’t look like him anymore, and he’s just thirty-nine. But that’s an old age out here, the problem with getting so far is that he don’t know what to do with himself. So he start to act like he no longer like the world he himself help create. You can’t just play God and say I don’t like man no more so make me wipe slate clean with the flood and start again. Papa-Lo start thinking too deep and start thinking that he should be more than what he is. He’s the worst kind of fool, the fool who start believing things can get better. Better will come, but not in the way he think. Already, the Colombians start talking to me, they tired of them loco Cubans who sniff too much of what they should only sell, and the Bahamians who are of no use since they teach themselves how to freebase. The first time they ask me if I want to sample the merchandise, I say no, hermano, but Weeper say yes. Brethren, coke was the only way me could fuck in prison, he say to me, knowing that no man in the ghetto would dare come up to him and call him battyman because of it. That man still send him letters from prison.

  People, even people who should know better, start to think that Papa-Lo getting soft, that he don’t care about enforcing for the party no more. That he going slip and allow PNP man to move in on territory and that Jungle and Rema, always up for grabs, will soon bleach their green shirts and dye them orange. He not getting soft, he thinking deep, which politicians don’t pay him to do. Politicians rise in the east and set in the west and nothing you can change about them. Here is where we go down two different road. He want to forget them. I want to use them. They think he no longer care about the people but the problem is that he starting to care too much and he already dragging the Singer into it.

  They call me first, last year. They call me to a meeting out by Green Bay and the first thing I ask was, where’s Papa? The black one (almost all of them white, brown and red) said Enough of the Papa, Papa time gone, new blood time now, talking like he playing fucking ghetto for Candid Camera. At one point the little pussyhole Louis Johnson hold a note upside down, some bullshit on embassy letterhead about some ambassador’s reception, and pretend that it was some agency memo, reading and smiling at the others as if he con firming some bullshit that he tell them about me. Papa don’t care about the dutty life but what these retarded batty fuckers don’t get is that I don’t care either. Medellín on line two.

  So I let Louis the con man sweet me up with his con-plan. I listen to them tell me with a smile that they don’t think they can trust me and pretend I don’t understand when they say give us a sign, like this is the Bible. I act the fool until they tell me what they want plain. Louis Johnson is the only man from the embassy I meet. He maintain the links with black people. Tall, brown h
air, and dark glasses to hide him eyes. I tell him that he’s in Copenhagen City now, otherwise known as the palm of my hand, and if I feel like it, any minute now I can make a fist. I lift up my shirt and give him the history of 1966. Left chest, bullet almost reaching the heart. Right neck, bullet straight through. Right shoulder, flesh wound. Left thigh, bullet bounce on the bone. Rib cage, bullet rattle the bones. I don’t tell him that I about to set up a man in Miami and one in New York. I don’t tell him that yo tengo suficiente español para conocer que eres la más gran broma en Sudamérica. I chat to him bad like some bush naigger and ask dumb question like, So everybody in America have gun? What kinda bullet American fire? Why you don’t transfer Dirty Harry to the Jamaica branch? Hee hee hee.

  And they tell me the news, that the Singer’s giving money to Papa-Lo and them two thinking big, thinking of some way to eliminate the need for all people like them. I pretend that Papa-Lo didn’t already tell me that from the last time he kill a boy in Jungle and regret when he see that he was heading to high school. And I say to the politicians and the Americans sure, to prove that me is the don of all dons I going do what need to be done. The man say let me be clear that the United States government does not support or condone any illegal or disruptive action of any kind in sovereign territories that are her neighbors. They all act as if I don’t know that they already planning the double cross, already searching for who in my crew they can meet alone like Nicodemus in the night to tell him to take care of me as soon as I deliver. So I’m here waiting on Weeper, to talk things that only him and I can talk about, because tomorrow I going take care of a few people. The next day I goin’ take care of the world.