Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Three week now.

Today.

So morning. Foot already on the ground. Sun soon coming one way or another. East north east. Pull this end of the cover and roll him out. Him going fall on the floor but at least that going stop the snoring. Boy wrap up himself tight like is protection, against what? Pull, tug, pull, tug, yank, pull, tug and in all of this the fucking boy didn’t even wake up. Try to remember him face. Brown hair, red beard, scruff. Red scruff all over kid-white chest. Oh you’re a bad boy, huh? he say every time he push in deep. Finally roll him out of the covers and he now on him back. Not even that wake him. Sleep perchance he dead. Yesterday the Strand didn’t have no Bertrand Russell. Not many people know I’m a thinking man. Maybe open a window. Maybe get back in bed and rub him hairy chest and nipples and put my tongue in him navel, move down and suck him awake. Last night he was another mind who find out something new. Don’t think the man getting fucked must be the bitch. I shut him mouth and show him what my hole was for. I love you — I don’t mean that, I said.

Kick him foot and kick him out.

Leave him and he might be here when you get back.

Leave him there and come back to a house so clean empty that he even move off with the cockroach. Kick him foot and kick him out.

Leave him here and share a line when you come back. He didn’t ask for money.

In the sky a pink spot, east north east. Sun definitely coming on now. The spic rolls over on his side then back on his back. Think like a movie. This part you put on your clothes, boy wake up (but boy would be a girl) and one of you say babe, I gotta go. Or stay in bed and do the whatever, the sheet at the man waist but right at the woman breast. Never going to be a movie with a scene like this bedroom ever. Don’ know. Could go back in bed right now, move in under him right arm and stay there for five days. Yes. Do it. Do it now. Today can be the one day that can go by without me. Do it. Is not a boy this, is a man this. In the bed spread out now like he welcoming everything and not worried about nothing. Lookin’ at what just went up in me last night. Bad man don’t take no cock. But me not bad, me worse. Bad man don’t make a man know he fucking him good, because then he will realize a man on the top. Better to stand up or bend over so he come from behind and invade. Moan a little, hiss, say work it harder, fucker, like a white girl getting black cock in a blue movie. But you really want to yell and scream and howl, yes I read Howl , fucking facety white boy you think just ’cause me black and from the ghetto me can’t read? But this is not about ignorant white boy, is about you wanting so bad to howl and bawl but you can’t howl and bawl because to howl and bawl is to give it up and you can’t give it up, not to another man, not a white man, not any man, ever. As long as you don’t bawl out you not the girl. You not born for it.

Come out of prison and say fuck the Bible, a hole is just a hole. Make a deposit or a make withdrawal and leave something in. Either you is the depositor or you is the bank. Either way, in prison you always carrying something in your asshole, and all the battyholes behind bars add up to one trade route. Asshole in the east take goods to asshole in the west, destination: inmate in the south with money or other goods. Bag of cocaine, pack of Wrigley’s, Hershey bar, Snickers, Milky Way, ganja, hashish, beeper, toothpaste, diet pill, Xanax, Percocet, sugar, aspirin, cigarette, lighter, tobacco, golf ball with tobacco or cocaine, rolling paper, matches, Lip Smackers, lubricant, syringe with eraser over the needle, fifteen lottery tickets. Three year in prison and a dick is just another thing to put up your ass. Man lying in the bed he didn’t sound like a Noo Yawker. Don’t think about seeing him again. A cock is just a dick. Rahtid me can’t even remember pussy. Not since Miami and fuck Griselda Blanco. I have to go to the airport.

Six-fifteen. In nine hours Josey on a plane from Jamaica. In twelve to thirteen hours he going be here. We going to a house in Brooklyn that he mark out from in Jamaica. Every block in New York have a crack house and a crack house is a crack house, but he want to see this certain crack house. He want to see up front who buying the rock and who selling it, so he can report personally to Medellín. That is what he say on the phone. I ask him if this was a secure line. He laugh for three minutes and say, Do your work and stop watch TV. New York need to be lock tight like Miami, he say, but he didn’t say that he really don’t believe me can do it. I just want to move in right under this man arm and live there. He said he coming to New York to cool out from Jamaica. But Jamaica need a serious cool-out from Josey Wales. A posse man pass through Brooklyn two week ago and tell me news about what go down in May.

Easter come and gone and Rema, the bump on Copenhagen City backside, acting up as per usual. Nobody know where the Garbagelands end and Rema begin but at least one time per year they puff their chest and declare they want more. More than being Copenhagen City frocktail, and think they can demand and threaten things like go over to the PNP. Garbage to the north and sea to the south but don’t eat any fish them get catch. Saturday night, nine p.m, maybe ten and maybe still hot. Man playing domino, woman washing clothes in the back by the standpipe. Girls and boys playing Dandy Shandy. Six car draw down in the middle of the street and fan out, three to the left, three to the right. Josey and five man jump out of the first car. Fifteen more man jump out of the other five, everybody have M16. Josey and him posse sweep down the road, and man, woman and pickney running and screaming. A man and a woman run to they house but Josey follow close and clip the two right by they door. Man open fire and shoot up all playing domino, two man try to run but got trap in the bullet dance. Woman grabbing pickney and running. The posse run from house to house, fence to fence, sticking they hand over the zinc and ratatatat. Where the men be? Nineteen gunmen run and fire, people running mad like ants. Josey Wales walk, he never run. He see a target, consider it, walk up slow and kill. Posse men mark a pattern in the zinc with bullet. Somebody shoot a pickney. The woman screaming too loud and bawling too long so Josey walk up to her and put the gun right the back of her head. Josey and the posse draw away from Rema, twelve people dead. Police draw down on Copenhagen City and take away two gun, but that is all. Nobody can touch the don.

Josey coming to NYC. Don’t know he if come here before, he never say. Him brethren in the Bronx take charge of uptown. Two peas, one pod, they go back from 1966. The brethren was selling weed from 1977, but branch to cocaine before it become the white wife. He dealing big as fuck: three hundred thousand pound ganja, twenty thousand pound cocaine. Bronx is the base and from the base he get product to Toronto, Philadelphia and Maryland. Don’t know him good and Josey don’t need me working for him. Or maybe he tell Josey don’t send that man up here. When him posse need a beast, he ship man from Kingston, Montego Bay and St. Ann. A loose cannon is what he call me, but not to me, he say it to Josey.

Josey coming to NYC. This is about me. Is not about me and is not about the man in the bed. As soon as a Jamaican come to New York he vanish. He hitch right beside other yard man in the Bronx so they can build a Jamdown between Boston Road and Gun Hill. Not me. Me want to vanish, that’s why me leave Miami for New York. Not coming till night, I don’t have nowhere to go. Three and a half line of coke right there on the coffee table. The man right here in bed on him back. Him hands behind him head and he looking at me. Last week in the East Village, a parking lot behind this apartment building. A white boy sprawl out and boasty on a chaise longue like say the beach was one block over. Brown hair, red beard, red scruff all over white chest, and blue shorts he roll up so high me first think him was wearing a bikini. Sunbathing, he say. I ask him if he mean that lying just so in the sun would make him clean. He pull a cigarette from a pack of Newports and give me one.