Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

— Hello, I’m here to see—

— No visitor. On-site tours start back next week.

— No, you don’t understand. I’m not here for the tour, I’m here to see… He’s expecting me.

— Ma’am, nobody coming through except immediate family and the band. You him wife?

— What? Of course not. What kind of question—

— You play no instrument?

— I don’t see what that have to do with anything, just tell him Nina Burgess is here to see him and it’s urgent.

— Lady, you could’a name Scooby Doo, nobody coming inna yah.

— But, but… I…

— Lady, step ’way from the gate.

— Me pregnant. And is fi him. Him need fi mind him pickney.

The guard look at me for the first time today. I thought he was going to recognize me until I realize that he really was seeing me for the first time. He looked me up and down too, maybe wanting to see what type of woman it takes to breed for a star like him.

— You know how much woman come here since Monday saying the same damn thing you just say? Some of them even have belly to show me. Me say no visitors but family and the band. Come back next week, me sure the baby not running ’way to Miami by then. If there is a—

— Eddie, shut you r’asscloth mouth and guard di gate.

— Then after the woman don’t want move.

— Then move her.

I step back quick. I don’t want none of these men touching me. They always grab on to ass or crotch first. Behind me a car pulls up and a white man comes out. For just a split second I nearly shout Danny, but this man is only white. His hair brown and long, and a little beard on his chin, the way I used to like it but Danny didn’t. A yellow plain t-shirt and tight, bell-bottom blue jeans. Maybe it’s the hot weather why you can tell that (1) he’s American and (2) American men hate underwear more than American women hate bras.

— Bombocloth. Look here, Taffie, Jesus is risen.

— What? But me no repent yet.

The white man didn’t seem to get the joke. I stepped out of the way, maybe making too much of a show of it.

— Hey buddy, Alex Pierce from Rolling Stone .

— Wait deh now, tight jeans Jesus, Jehovah know say you lie? Two man from Rolling Stone come here already, one name Keith and one named Mick and none of them look like you.

— But them all resemble still, Eddie.

— True that. True that.

— I’m from Rolling Stone magazine. We spoke on the phone.

— You never talk to me on no phone.

— I mean, someone from in the office. His secretary or something I don’t know. I’m from the magazine? From the U.S.? We cover everybody from Led Zeppelin to Elton John. I don’t understand, the secretary said come December 3 at six p.m. when he’s on rehearsal break and here I am.

— Bossman, me don’t name sexetary.

— But—

— Look, we get strict orders. Nobody in or out except family and band.

— Oh. Why does everybody have an automatic weapon? You guys police? You don’t look like the security guard from last time I was here.

— None of your damn business, you want step off now.

— Eddie, the man still bothering you at the gate?

— Him say him magazine is ’bout Lesbian and Elton John.

— No, Led Zeppelin and—

— Tell him to move off.

— How about me making it easy for you.

The white man takes out his wallet — I only need ten minutes, he says. Damn Americans always thinking we’re like them and that everybody is up for sale. Just once I’m glad the guard is such an asshole. But he’s looking at the money, he’s looking at it long. You can’t help it with American money, getting ’round the fact that this piece of paper is more valuable than everything else in your purse. That if you whip out one you change the behaviour of a whole room. It just doesn’t seem right, a piece of paper with no colour but green. Lord knows pretty money isn’t the only pretty thing that’s worthless. The guard takes one last look at the piling bills and walks away, over to the entrance of the house.

I chuckled. When you can’t fight temptation, you have to flee, I say. The white man looks at me, annoyed, and I just chuckle more. Doesn’t happen every day, a Jamaican who doesn’t turn into a yes massa I going do it for you now massa, whenever he sees a white man. Danny used to be appalled by it. Until he started to like it. Hell of a thing when white skin is the ultimate passport. I was a little surprised at how good it felt, me and the white man both being kept outside like beggars. On the same level in that regard at least. You’d think I’d never been around white people, or at least Syrians who think they’re white.

— You fly all the way from America just to do a story on the Singer?

— Well, yeah. He’s the biggest story right now. The number of stars coming out for this concert, you’d think it was Woodstock.

— Oh.

— Woodstock was a—

— I know what Woodstock was.

— Oh. Well, Jamaica is all over the news this year. And this concert. New York Times just did a story that the Jamaican opposition leader was shot at. From the Office of Prime Minister, no less.

— Really? That would be news to the Prime Minister, since the opposition would have no reason to be at his office. Also that’s uptown. On this very road. Nobody firing no bullets here.

— That’s not what the newspaper said.

— Then it must be true then. Guess if you write shit, then you have to believe every shit you read.

— Aw, come on, don’t bust my balls like that. It’s not like I’m some goddamn tourist. I know the real Jamaica.

— Good for you. I’ve lived here all my life and haven’t found the real Jamaica yet.

I walk off but the white man is following me. There’s only one bus stop, I guess. Maybe by now Kimmy has paid a visit to her goddamn parents, who have been robbed and her mother possibly raped. Yet as soon as I cross over to the other side I want to stay. I don’t know. I know I have nothing to go home to, but that’s no different from any other day. I only need to remember every headline about some family getting shot, bulletin about the curfew, news report about some woman who get raped or how crime moving like a wave uptown to scare myself stupid. Or my mother and father trying to act as if the gunmen didn’t take something that was always between him and her and them alone. The whole day I was with them they never touched each other once.

The white man takes the first bus that comes. I don’t and I’m telling myself that it’s because I don’t want to be on the same bus with him. But I know I’ll miss the next one. And the one after that too.

S omebody need to listen to me and it might as well be you. Somewhere, somehow, somebody going judge the quick and the dead. Somebody goin’ write about the judgment of the good and wicked, because I am a sick man and a wicked man and nobody ever wickeder and sicker than me. Somebody, maybe forty years later when God come for all of we, leaving not one. Somebody going write about this, sit down at a table on a Sunday afternoon with wood floor creaking and fridge humming but no ghost around him like they around me all the time and he going write my story. And he won’t know what to write, or how to write it because he didn’t live it, or know what cordite smell like or how blood taste when it stay stubborn in your mouth no matter how much you spit. He never feel it in the one drop. No coolie duppy ever go to sleep on him and fool him with a wet dream while she suck out him life through him mouth even though me grinding my teeth shut and when me wake up my whole face cover in thick mouth juice like somebody just stick me in Jell-O and put me in the fridge. John the Baptist saw them coming. Now the wicked running.