Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

So I’m walking down Corsa to Boston still hoping for my Mary Tyler Moore moment. The dumbest idea ever on a street packed with people not making it, but I still imagine. This is what happens when your life is work, TV and takeout. It’s almost like I’m living like an American, damn it, and screw all of you and your rules. I don’t know. But I do know if I had popped a Xanax I wouldn’t have been thinking so much already. I like to believe that everything in my house, from towels all the same colour, to the coffee machine where I press one button, is there just to make my life simple, but I’m realizing that they are all there to make sure I don’t think. Imagine, my mother thought I could never put my life together.

Boston Jamaica Jerk Chicken. Jamaican Chicken and Food, Hot and Ready. Two rows of orange plastic booths with ketchup, salt and pepper on every table. Eat here? The thought is gone as soon as I think about it. On the counter right beside the cash register, coconut drops are in a cake dish reminding me of country. Never liked going to country — too much coconut drops and pit toilets. Right beside it another cake dish with what looks like potato pudding. I haven’t had potato pudding since 1979—no, longer. The more I look at it the more I want it, and the more it feels like I should think it’s a sign of something deeper, that what I really want is to taste Jamaica and that just sounds like some psychological bullshit. Funnier to think I just want something Jamaican in my mouth that’s not a penis. Damn dirty woman — no, damn dutty gal.

Now me feel like me want chat patois all night, and it’s not because I was hanging around that woman and her gunman boyfriend all afternoon. Maybe it’s because I’m looking at damn coconut drops and feel like asking if they have any dukunnu, asham or jackass corn.

— What I can get you, ma’am?

Didn’t even see him sitting behind the counter, but then I see why he didn’t see me. Cricket on the small black-and-white TV on the plastic chair beside his.

— West Indies versus India. Of course we doing nothing but bare fuckery again, he says.

I nod. Never liked cricket, ever. Dark skin, big belly in between two muscular arms and a white goatee. This might be the first Jamaican man I’m speaking to in weeks and his eyebrows are raised — fed up with me already.

— Can I get a roast chicken no fry chicken yes fry chicken and rice and peas if you have rice and peas and some fry plantain and shredded salad and—

— Woi, lady, slow down. The food nah run nowhere.

He’s laughing at me. Well, more like grinning and I don’t mind except now it making me wonder when last I make a man laugh.

— You have ripe plantain though?

— Yes, lady.

— How ripe?

— Ripe enough.

— Oh.

— Lady, don’t worry, it well ripe. The plantain going just mash up in your mouth.

I resist telling him I really mean it when I say that’s the most delicious description of food I have ever heard ever, and say,

— Three servings please.

— Three?

— Three. Second thought, you have any oxtail or curry goat?

— Oxtail on the weekend. Curry goat just finish.

— Fry chicken is fine. Leg and thigh thank you.

— What you want to drink?

— Is sorrel that on the menu?

— Yes, ma’am.

— I thought you could only get sorrel at Christmas.

— But wait. Is where you deh the last umpteen years, lady? Everything Jamaican boxed up and on sale.

— It taste good?

— It don’t taste bad.

— I’ll take one.

Didn’t feel like taking all this food back to the house. I don’t know but I loved the idea of just sitting in this little restaurant overhearing the announcer on TV get excited over cricket and eating fried chicken. There’s a Jamaica Gleaner and a Star newspaper in the booth right across. Also Jamaica Observer , which I’ve never heard of. The man turns on the big TV mounted from the ceiling, and the first thing that comes on is cricket.

— That JBC? I say.

— Nah, some hurry-come-up Caribbean network, maybe Trinidad, the way everybody sound so sing-songy. Is ’cause of them why Jamaica have carnival now.

— Carnival? With soca music?

— Eehi.

— Since when Jamaicans like soca music?

— Since uptown want reason to dance in them brassiere and panty ’pon the street. Then hi, you no hear ’bout carnival?

— No.

— You must no go back too much. Or you no have no family ’pon the rock. You read the newspaper?

— No.

— Is forget you a try forget.

— What?

— Never mind, me love. I hope you raising your children like Jamaica and none of them American slackness, you know.

— I don’t have — I mean, yes.

— Good. Good. Just like the Bible say. Train a child how he should grow and—

And I’m already tuning out. I’m in a little Jamaican food shop tuning out a man giving me granny wisdom. But damn this is good fry chicken, light brown and almost chunky and soft inside like he fried it then baked it. And rice and peas together, not the separated shit from Popeyes I have to mix together. I’m already a third of the way through this plate of plantains and was this close to anointing sorrel my favourite processed, possibly toxic, chemical lab re-creation of an original drink.

— Bombo pussy r’asscloth.

Couldn’t remember the last time I heard those words coming out a mouth that wasn’t mine.

— Bombo pussy r’asscloth.

— What going on?

— Look, me love. R’ass.

All I’m seeing is bad video of a Jamaican crowd, probably the same stock footage they’ve been using for the past fifteen years whenever anybody does a story on Jamaica. The same black men in t-shirts and tank tops, the same woman jumping up and down, the same placards made out of cardboard from people who can’t spell. The same army jeep moving in and out of camera. Seriously.

— Bombo pussy r’ass—

I’m about to ask him what so special about this report when I read the streamer at the bottom of the screen.

JOSEY WALES FOUND BURNED TO DEATH IN PRISON CELL.

The man turns up the volume yet I’m still not hearing a thing. There only the slab on the screen. Some man naked from the waist up, skin shiny like it was melting from all the heat, chunks of his chest and side blackened, large spots white like only his skin was burned off. Skin peeled off his breast like a suckling pig. I really couldn’t tell if the photo was out of focus or he really did melt.

— Copenhagen City burning down now. And the same day they go bury him son? Lawd a massy.

It’s running across the screen now: JOSEY WALES FOUND BURNED TO DEATH IN PRISON CELL * JOSEY WALES FOUND BURNED TO DEATH IN PRISON CELL * JOSEY WALES FOUND BURNED TO DEATH IN PRISON CELL * JOSEY WALES FOUND BURNED TO DEATH IN PRISON CELL

— No sign of forced entry, no visitors allowed in the cell today, nobody can say how the man get burn up. Maybe him just catch fire ’pon himself. Rahtid me can’t believe—

— They sure is him?

— Who else it going be? Some other man in General Penitentiary name Josey Wales? Shit. Fuck. Excuse me y’hear, lady, a nuff people me have to call now. Me can’t be — Lady, you alright?

I make it through the door just before the vomit burst my lips open and splatters all over the sidewalk. Somebody across the street must be watching me hack fried chicken while my own belly is contracting the life out of me. Nobody is coming but I still left a mess right near his door. I’m trying to stand up straight but my stomach kicks itself again and I bowl over hacking but no vomit. At least the man is back behind the counter. I go inside, pick up my bag and walk out.