Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

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 hair, 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.

S eventeen buses. Ten minibuses, including one calling itself Revlon Flex that already passed twice. Twenty-one taxis. Three hundred and seventy-six cars, I think. And not once did the man step out of his house. Not even to get some air, not to make sure that the guards are doing their job. Not even to tell the sun, later me brethren, I man have some serious work to do. The man on the lime green scooter came back in the evening and they sent him away again, but not before he got off and spoke to the man at the gate for two minutes and seventeen seconds. I timed him. Danny’s watch still works, but it wasn’t until lunch one time at the Terranova when I ran into a former schoolmate, breast droop down like a tired goat, but still a stuck-up bitch, that I found out Timex is the same watch that my daddy gave Hortense last week for fifteen years of meritorious service to the household . Bitch was calling me cheap. I wanted to tell her how happy she must be as a married woman now that she no longer have to bother with looking attractive, but I smiled and said, I hope your little boy can swim because I just saw him running for the pool.

I wish they would invent phones that you can take with you, or I would have called Kimmy and asked if she’s gone to see her poor mother and father yet and what are we going to do about leaving this country before something worse happens. Knowing Kimmy she probably finally showed up in her Ganja University t-shirt and jeans, the one cut off halfway down the backside, calling Mummy her sistren and saying that this is all the plan of Babylon shitstem, and it’s not the robber they should be mad at but the shitstem that robbed them first. That’s what they say at the Twelve Tribes meeting place in that rough-and-tumble neighbourhood called West Kings House, near the home of the Queen’s representative. I really need to get better at this sarcasm business. I might be a snob, but at least I’m not a hypocrite, still coasting around because I have nothing to do now that my life’s dream to fuck and breed for Che Guevara blew up in my face. Nor am I hanging out with rich people in West Kings House who now don’t wash their hair and calling themselves I-man to upset their parents, when everybody knows in two years they’re going right back to their father’s shipping company to take it over, and marry whichever Syrian bitch just win Miss Jamaica.

Car three hundred and sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine, seventy. Seventy-one, seventy-two. I need to go home. But I’m outside here, waiting on him. You ever feel like home is the one place you can’t go back to? It’s like you promise yourself when you got out of bed and combed your hair that this evening, when I get back I’ll be a different woman in a new place. And now you can’t go back because the house expects something from you. A bus stops. I fan it off, trying to tell the driver that I don’t want to get on. But the bus is still squatting there, waiting on me. I step back and look down to the road, pretending that people aren’t in the bus cussing that they have home to get to and plenty pickney to feed so why that damn woman don’t get on the bus. I walk away, far enough for the bus to drive off, but walk right back to the bus stop before the dust settle.

The bass creeps up on me from across the road. It sounds like he’s been playing the same song all day. It sounds like another song about me, but there’s probably two dozen women in Jamaica right now and another two thousand in the world who think the same thing anytime a song of his come on the radio. But “Midnight Ravers” is about me. One day I’m going to tell Kimmy then and she’ll know, won’t she, that just because she’s the prettiest doesn’t mean she get all of them. A white police car with blue stripe going all around parked itself by the gate. I didn’t even see it coming. Jamaican police tend to use their siren all the time, just to get people to clear the street so they can reach Kentucky Fried Chicken quicker. I never had any dealings with the police. That’s not true.

There was that one time when I was on that No. 83 bus to Spanish Town for an interview because that’s 1976 for you, you take a job where you can find it and this was a Bauxite company, when three police cars sirened us down and forced the driver to stop right there on the highway. H’everybody h’evacuate the ve-HI-cle right at this present moment , the first policeman said. Right there on the highway. Nothing but a thin stretch of road with swamp on both sides and everybody had to file out. Most of the women started cussing about having to get to work on time, most of the men stood silent because the police only thought twice about shooting women. Dis h’is a spat searrrrch , the policeman said. We h’are gonna do the proceejah of getting all of unu name .

— And you name what, sweet girl?

— Pardon me?

— You, the hot ting that ah carry the swing. What you name?

— Burgess, Nina Burgess.

— Bond, James Bond. Sound like you h’in movie picture. You carrying a conceal weapon h’under there? Mind me have to search you.

— Mind me have to scream rape.

— And who the r’asscloth going care, eh?

He sent me back over to the other women while another policeman gun-butt one of the men who started to talk about equal rights and justice. Here’s a secret about police that no Jamaican will ever say out loud, that is any Jamaican who ever had to deal with one of these assholes. Whenever one get shot, and plenty do, there’s a part of me, the part before morning coffee, that smiles a little. I shake the thought out. I wonder if the guard over the gate is telling the police, right at this minute, that I’ve been at the bus stop all day watching the house. But instead somebody says something, and the fat policeman, there’s always one, laughs and it echoes all the way over this side. He leaves to get back in his car, but somebody from inside shouts at him. I know it’s you, it has to be you. A car is coming up on my side of the road, ninety feet? I can beat it before it slams into me and I know it’s you, I just know it, the car, now forty feet? Run, run right now, don’t blow your damn horn at me, son of a bitch, deaf like you damn mother I’m in the median too many damn cars driving down the other side of the road and me in the middle marooned like Ben Gunn and I just want you to see me, it’s you, it must be you, remember me, “Midnight Ravers” is about me even though it was after midnight and you might not know what I look like in the day, and I just want a favour, I just need a little help, they robbed my father and raped my mother. No they didn’t rape her, no I don’t know, but the story sounds more urgent when an old woman’s pum-pum get messed with and I know it’s you, and the policeman is waiting, good, good wonderful-good he’s going to come outside — it’s not you. Another guard runs outside to tell him something and the fucking fat policeman laughs again and deposits himself in the car. I’m stuck in the median, traffic blurring past me and lifting up my skirt.