Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

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.