Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

March 1986, my youth.

What I going do? Me no know, go somewhere in Brooklyn where me can get ackee and saltfish.

Haha. As if me can leave Ranking Dons. My life do stay like yours, Pierce. People like me, our life write out before we, without asking we permission. Nothing much we can do ’bout what God decide he want to drop on you. Oh? Is that them call fatalism? I don’t know, brethren, that word seem more connected to fatal than it connected to fate. You know something, maybe you should write this book. I know, I know what I just say, but now me checking things deeper. Maybe somebody should put all of this craziness together, because no Jamaican going do it. No Jamaican can do it, brother, either we too close or somebody going stop we. It don’t even have to get that far, just the fear that somebody going come after we going make we stop. But none of we going see that far. I mean, shit.

Shit.

Damn.

People need to know. They need to know I guess that, that there was this one time when we could’a do it, you know? We could’a really do it. People was just hopeful enough and tired enough and fed up enough and dreaming enough that something could’a really happen. You know, sometimes I see the Jamaica Gleaner in here and the whole thing in black and white with just one or two headline in red. How long you think it going be before we have a picture in colour, three years? Five years? Ten years? None of them, brother, we already did have colour and lose it. That’s kinda like Jamaica. Is not like we never have good times and now have something to look forward to. We did have things going good and then it go to shit. Now is shit for so long that people grow up in shit thinking shit is all they is. But people need to know that. Maybe that too big for you. Maybe that too big for one book, and you should keep things close and narrow. Focused. I mean, to rahtid, watch me asking you to write the whole four-hundred-year reason why my country will always be trying not to fail. You should laugh. If I was you I would laugh. But, man, you did notice it, don’t you? That’s why this peace thing haunt you for as long as it did haunt me. Even people who usually expect the worst did, if for only two or three month, start to think peace a little then a lot, then peace was all they could think about. Is like how before rain reach you can taste it coming in the breeze. Look ’pon me, me not even forty yet and me already seeing only what behind me, like some old man. But hey, this decade only halfway in, right. Things can go either way. Nostalgia they call it? Must be because me in foreign too long. Or maybe you just can’t make new memory in prison. What you think? You should tell me when you have your first sentence. Me would love to know what that would be. Oh, you have it already? No brethren, don’t tell me. I want you to write it down first.

Yeah, you can use my real name. Then whose name you was going use? But yeah, man, write the book. Just do me and yourself one favour. Wait till everybody dead before you publish it, alright?

S till, me have to give your boy Weeper some credit.

Bushwick. I still working my brain on how Jamaicans can come to a ghetto five time as big and with tenement three time as high and think they’re better off. What, nobody know the difference between a good thing and a bigger bad thing? That must be for some other brother to figure out. So far every single block we pass have at least two house burn down. The last have only two standing and nothing else but stray dogs, stray man and rubble. And everywhere, even the good streets, have this stink that hover in the air then rush you.

— Yeah, man, at least him figure out that—

— Why everywhere smell like the back of a butcher shop?

— Bushwick, me boy. All the meat-processing factories still in Bushwick. Well, one or two. Most of them gone and people around here can’t find no work.

— What happen to all the house them?

— Arson, me brethren. Like me say: factory them close. People lose work, property value drop so low that you make more money torching your house for the insurance than trying to sell it. The place so dead that not even a dutty whore would buy a house ’round here.

— Then why set up shop ’round here?

— That is where your friend Weeper smart. As I was saying, this is exactly where you want to set up. Why you think Ranking Dons want it so bad? People who looking for the crack don’t want to be seen looking for the crack so where you go? Somewhere that all New York blind to. Look ’round you, man, this is where you go for people to forget you. And then setting up the base house down the road so they don’t have to go far. I don’t know how me never think ’bout that. If I just buy the crack me no want to wait too long to lick the crack pipe. And me sure as r’ass don’t want to take it back where me coming from. No, man, your brethren have me thinking ’bout setting up some shacks in Queens, no lie.

I spin ’round slow to make a sweep of the place. I have to ask myself what was I expecting. The place look like where business must happen, I mean, what else could Bushwick have look like? But still. You don’t realize until you come here how much everything you know about America come from TV. The street is wide, but lonely. And worse; all I can think of is that out here is just me and Eubie and Eubie’s men.

The van is now two block away and we walking. In front of this house with windows board up, we stop.

— This the place?

— Yeah, man.

— Then make we go in. I goin’—

— Not yet, Josey. You is here to check operations, so make we see how things operate.

He point down the street but I can’t see nothing. Not until two people walk out of the shadow into a streetlight. I can’t tell from here, but one of them must be the spotter. The other hiding his face in a hoodie. The spotter turn and point down the street in our direction. Hoodie keep walking until the second man stop him or at least try to stop him, but Hoodie don’t stop walking. Second man shout something and Hoodie stop and walk over. Further down first man is already talking to somebody new. Hoodie shake hand with second man and stand under the streetlight. Eubie pull me back into the dark. Hoodie cock her hip, a girl. Second man walk about fifteen, maybe twenty feet and shake hand with third man who come out from behind a light post. I pride myself on a sharp eye and even I didn’t see him before. Third and second man break hand, and second go back to Hoodie. She start walking and as she pass second man neither of them stop but their hand touch. Hoodie walk past me and go up the street.

— Where?

— The crack house, Eubie says. We can go check it out.

— No. Call that boy over, I say, and point to the boy who was invisible behind the light post.

Eubie call him over and he step to us with that stroll that I’m noticing these black American youths do, as if hand and leg must swing far in opposite direction when they walk. He walk right up to me and don’t really stand, just hang off.

— Sup.

— What?

— Him mean what’s up, Josey. What’s going on, what’s happeni—

— Me get it.

— So the young people talk these days, I can’t even understand my own boy them, no true?

— How’s business, I say.

— It’s a Friday night, how the fuck you think business is? People got paid and prowling the street for pussy and dick. Crack hos sucking the D for some chump change and they hit me up. Friday night, yo.

— How long now Weeper have you out here?

— Who?

Eubie laugh quiet, but loud enough for me to hear it.

— Weeper, your boss.

— Oh yeah, Michael Jackson. He’s around, at least he was until a couple hours ago. Probably went home to chill, busy day for that motherfucker.