Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

You are in London. Cut off that toe, cut it off right now, the doctor says without looking you in the face. Stuff those boots with tissue, with cotton, with putty and mum’s the word. The room smells of antiseptic thrown on shit to mask it. And of iron, as if somebody in the next ward is scouring steel pots. But Rasta already think a lame toe is a curse from God, what do you think they’ll make of an amputated one? You are in Miami. The doctor cuts out the spot and grafts skin from the left foot. It’s a success, he says, but not with those words, you can’t remember the words exactly. But he says your cancer is gone, you have no cancer. And every night that you stomp down Babylon from the stage, your right boot fills near the brim with blood.

Something new is blowing. Tony McFerson, the PNP member of Parliament, and his bodyguard are trapped in August Town. Gunmen from the hills but allied with Copenhagen City descend on the two and open fire. They fire back. Gunmen blast holes in the car door, the window, and bullets bounce off the windshield. The gunmen shell heavy, but stay far back behind fence and bush reined in with barbwire. Sirens, police, the gunmen’s footsteps in a mad retreat that fades with each step. Car wheels whip up gravel and spin until they grip the road. Sirens cut off, boots hit the ground, the police are getting closer, louder. Tony McFerson stands up first with a wide smile on his face, a heave and a sigh of relief one could see from four hundred feet away. The third bullet goes through his neck sideways, explodes the medulla and kills everything below the neck before his brain realizes he’s dead.

You are in New York. It’s September 21. Everybody knows you were always the first to wake and the last to go to sleep, especially in the studio. Nobody notices you haven’t done either in a year. You wake up burning, the mattress has sucked two pounds of water from your skin but you can hear the air conditioner humming somewhere near you. You think of the pain on the right side of your head and it’s there. Now you wonder if the pain was just a thought until you thought about it. Or maybe the pain was in you for so long that it became an unseen part of the body, a mole hidden between toes. Or maybe you did speak a curse into being, like the old women up in the hills would say. You do not know it’s September 21, you have no memory of the second show the night before, you have no idea where you are or who is here with you, but at least you know this is New York.

Something new is blowing. Icylda says to Christopher make sure you eat up all your food, you think chicken back cheap? Her boy swallows three bites in one gulp and makes a dash for the door. He halts and grabs the vinyl on the counter, a hot dub pressed that day. You just remember you have work tomorrow, Icylda says, but laughs and shoos him out the door. The cha-cha boys on Gold Street are dressed to impress in gabardine pants and polyester shirts and the sexy gals them hot and ready in tight jeans, halter top and ting. The sound system done playing Tamlins and just drop brand-new wax, the new Michigan & Smiley, but Christopher has something new from Black Uhuru that goin’ murda di dance. Boys and girls press tight, winding up on each other while the bass jumps on the chest and sits there. But who bring firecrackers to the party? Not firecrackers but heavy rain bang bang banging on the zinc. But nobody getting wet, Jacqueline says out loud just as two bullets blow a hole in her right breast. Her scream vanishes in the middle of everybody. She looks back once, shadows coming from the sea, the five-point blast of light when a machine gun fires. The Selecter takes one through the neck and falls. People are running and screaming, and stampeding over fallen girls. Dropping one two three. More men come from the sea but wearing night colours and lights. They fan out and sweep. Jacqueline jumps over the zinc fences slicing behind her knees, she runs down Ladd Lane with screams still following her. She forgets that blood is shooting from her breast, falls in the middle of the lane. Two hands pick her up and drag her away.

Gunfire raining on zinc, Gold Street men have only two guns. More men arrive from the sea, some by land, all three exits closed off. Gunfire like rain wake up the sleeping policemen a few hundred feet away who grab their guns and run to a padlocked door. The Rastafarian has nowhere to run and the men are coming. Behind people fall down in a slow wave. Fat Earl on the ground just bubbling blood. The Rastafarian throws himself on Fat Earl, not yet dead, and rolls all over him to pick up the blood. By the time the gunmen get to him, they think he’s the one really dead and shoot Fat Earl. The gunmen retreat to the sea.

You are jogging around a pond at Central Park South. Different country, same crew, and for a second you feel as if you’re back in Bull Bay before sunrise. A run on the black sand beach, a dip in the waterfalls, maybe some football, working up a healthy appetite for breakfast all cooked by Gilly and waiting for you to get back. But you’re still in New York and humidity is already sweeping in. You lift your left leg high, widening your stride before it hits the dirt but your right leg refuses to move. Your hip swings — is wah kinda fuckery this? — but your right leg just won’t move. Lift it without thinking. That doesn’t work. Lift it with thinking. That doesn’t work either. And now your left won’t move. Both legs stall even after you’ve commanded them to with three bombocloths. Your friend is coming up behind and you turn to call out, but your neck twists about a half inch and locks. No nodding yes, no nodding no. A scream vanishes on the way from your throat to your lips. Your body is leaning and you can’t stop it. No it’s not leaning but toppling and you cannot stretch your arms to break the fall. The ground slams into you, face first.

You wake up in the Essex House. Hands and feet recover but the fear lingers. Too weak to leave the bed, you don’t know they lied to your wife only minutes before and turned her away. You wake up and smell sex, smoke and whiskey. You see and wait but nobody listens, nobody looks, nobody comes. Your ears wake up to friends running up charges to the room, friends snorting foot after foot of white, friends fucking groupies, friends fucking whores, friends fucking friends, Rastaman on freebase raping the sacred chillum pipe. Men in suits, men on the make, businessmen drinking your wine; your room a temple waiting for Jesus to scour. Or some prophet. Or any prophet. But you sink in the bed thankful that at least you can move your neck. Brooklyn boys pass by with guns, Brooklyn boys with dicks, Rasta fire all doused out. You have no strength to stand, no lips to curse so you whisper please close the door . But nobody hears and when Essex House bloats and bursts, the friends spill into 7th Avenue.

Something new is blowing. A reverse evolution. Men, women and children in the Rose Town ghetto start by standing and walking, sometimes running from school to home, home to shop, shop to rum bar. By noon everybody sits, to play dominoes, to eat lunch, to do homework, to gossip about the slut on Hog Shit Lane. By afternoon everybody stoops down on the house floor. By evening they crawl from room to room and eat dinner on the floor like bottom-feeders. By night everybody is flat on the linoleum but nobody is asleep. Children lie on their backs and wait for the burst of bullets on zinc like hail. Bullets in traffic with bullets, zipping through windows, across ceilings, bursting holes in walls, mirrors, overhead lights and any fool that stands up. Meanwhile the man who killed me is on TV; Michael Manley and the PNP need to call the election date now.

You collapse in Pittsburgh. It’s never a good thing hearing doctors talk using a word that ends with oma. The oma has hopped, skipped and jumped from your foot to your liver, lungs and brain. In Manhattan they blast you with radium and your locks drop and scatter. You go to Miami, then Mexico to the clinic that couldn’t save Steve McQueen.