Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

I got a hunch these are not the men you ask to get to the point. They’ve left me on the stool and now I’m in the middle of men circling me like any minute now they’re gonna put a dunce cap on my head. Or pounce or knock me over the head with a baseball bat. At first I thought they were circling like sharks but this is a fucking shitty time for a bad metaphor. Fucking idiot, I’m editing my life even as a bunch of big black men with guns take over my house. And we can rule out robbery, though for once I wish it fucking was. Haven’t heard the name Tony Pavarotti in years, maybe even seven years or so, and I only heard it once, from Tristan Phillips. I don’t think about that day at all. And neither had anybody else since nobody did anything. Even did some checking, as much as I could anyway through microfilm of Jamaican newspapers, and there was nothing. No police report of a murder, or even a body found dead at the hotel. Fuck you, Faulkner, the past really isn’t dead. It’s not even past. I didn’t even know the man’s name until I met Tristan Phillips.

— To the neck, I say.

Silk Suit and Pig Tails both look at me like I interrupted them. Ren-Dog, or at least I think that’s his name, puts the remain ing fruit in the fridge and takes the blender to the sink. I can hear it coming, me telling him not to use the dishwasher for just one blender. But Pig Tails and Silk Suit are still looking at me.

— To the neck’s how I did it.

— Did what? Silk Suit says.

I’m sure he said his name was Eubie, but I can’t seem to retain anything. Right now there could be seven men in total or six, but I just can’t remember.

— Killed him. I mean, stabbed him. I mean, I stabbed him in the neck, probably to the jugular.

— He mean in the neck, boss, Pig Tails says.

Eubie stares him down so hard he winces.

— Which one of we here go to Columbia University? Eh? Which one ah we? You think me don’t know where the jugular vein be? How long before him dead, two minutes?

— Almost five.

— Then you hit the wrong jugular, my youth.

— It’s not like I had expertise in the area.

— Really? With the questions you love ask and the stuff you like write maybe you should think ’bout that little bit. Especially from what I’ve been reading in The New Yorker .

— Everyone’s a critic, I say.

I didn’t see the punch coming. Right in the temple. I blink, trying to get the shock out, and shout fuck.

— This look like a movie to you? I look like I have time for the wisecracking white guy?

— I guess you Jamaicans love to carry a grudge, huh?

— I don’t think I follow you, young man.

— This Tony Pavarotti dude? Your top man. You guys talk about him like he was the baddest motherfucker there was, and yet some fucking skinny journalist drops him with a fucking letter opener. And then you guys show up fifteen years later—

— Sixteen.

— Like I fucking care. Show up to do what, to finish the job? How Godfather Part II of you.

— Boss…

— Is cool, Ren-Dog. Brethren think nobody here watch movie.

I’m rubbing my temple and they’re still circling. He wait till he’s behind me to talk.

— How you think all them man, how Ren-Dog get to be in this room. You think him is here fi make juice?

— Dunno.

— Ren-Dog?

Ren-Dog looks at me and says,

— M60.

— M60. Every man in this posse have to pick a bus and pick a stop. First man or woman off the bus they shoot. Bonus if they dead.

— That supposed to scare me?

— Watch it, boss, look like somebody balls growing in them pants, Pig Tails says.

Me, I’m looking at a man with dreadlocks pig tails, a man in a wife beater making juice and a man in a silk suit that looks like fucking satin with a white handkerchief popping out of the pocket because Momma didn’t teach him how to fold a fucking pocket square and it just hits me how absurd this all is. No, not absurd, fucking ridiculous.

— You getting bold, boy, Ren-Dog says.

— No, I’m scared shitless.

— Look here—

— No, you look. I’m fucking sick and tired of you guys acting all big like you on some fucking sitcom. Fucking coming into my house and making juice and trying to have some conversation like you’re the intelligent criminal, all complicated and shit in some movie, when you’re just a bunch of fucking thugs who shoot women and children. I don’t fucking care that you fucking read. I don’t fucking care how smart you are. I don’t give a shit about your goddamn freshly blended juice. Or how I dropped the baddest gangster you fuckers could produce out of that fucking island. In fact why not just do it, huh? Just do it. The less of your shit I get to hear, the better off I’d be anyways. Just fucking do it, then get out’a my house so the neighbors can call the cops. And take your fucking fruits with you, I don’t even like juice.

— You right, Eubie says. — That wasn’t supposed to scare you. When I want to scare a man I don’t fucking talk. Ren-Dog, deal with this pussyhole.

S o what did Peter Nasser want anyway?

Josey Wales is walking around his cell, without realizing he’s pacing I bet. But every time he goes off into the dark corner, I think he’s going to emerge with a nasty surprise. Maybe not a gun, but maybe a shank he can throw like a dagger straight for one of my eyes. And it happens every time. He walks past the cell bars slow, looking at me until he’s at the corner; turns to head to the back until the slanted shadow sucks him up. Then he goes silent too so you can’t follow even the sound of him in the dark. Not even footsteps. Sometimes he stops and you wonder, What is he doing in there? What is he preparing? And then when he comes out of shadow for a quick second your heart jumps. And it jumps every single time he does it. I can’t remember which one they said was more dangerous, the wounded lion or the caged one.

— A reason to stop shitting himself. Why you care ’bout Peter Nasser all of a sudden? No you just say you don’t see the boy in eleven years? And he’s just the sixth man to pay tribute to me this week. Now everybody want to know what am I going to do if I get send to American prison. Well, they should have done more to keep me out of prison in the first place. And funny how everybody seem to think American court going convict me. But check it — when Yankee justice come knocking first, everybody forget Josey and leave it to me to sort it out. And now when things didn’t sort out all of a sudden everybody trying to sort it out himself.

— Meaning?

— Meaning certain people still trying to find a good way to kill me. I mean, they tried once or twice. Or three times, no four. My men in here deal with the fourth last week and didn’t even tell me until guard find the pussyhole head in the toilet when one of them go in to piss. All now they can’t figure out what an inmate’s head doing in the guard’s toilet. As for the guards, bunch of fucking ’prentices, them boys. The first guard? Shitting through a tube now and by the time the second reach my cell and burst shots into an empty mattress, him already turn into a widower who find out two days later he would have been a father.

— Damn, hombre .

— Some people forget why they’re sitting on top and who the fuck put them up there.

— You say that like somebody owes you something.

— They do owe me. Everybody fucking owe me. I give the country to that fucking government.

— That government ain’t the government no more and nobody owes you shit, Josef. Nobody forced your hand, nobody stopped you from turning into fucking Tony Montana, and everybody was fine looking the other way until you decided to murder some fucking junkies who weren’t worth shit in a fucking crack house for no reason other than maybe somebody stepped on your new shoes, knowing you. You already got what you think you’re owed and more. You fucked this up, you hear me? You fucked this up.