Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

He say the point over and over, from one direction then the next, with new words and the same words until he figure they get him point. But as usual, white bwoi think black man stupid. Them get the message from he come through the door. Stop mess with white people.

The man don’t look at nobody while him message sink in but he wait for it to sink. He say something about not wanting to come back here again. Then he say something about all these performance visas sitting on some overworked embassy clerk’s desk. The Singer say nothing. — My Boy Lollipop, now there’s a song. There’s a song, he say and leave through the kitchen door. The room stay quiet for a minute until somebody shout ’bout the bombocloth white bwoi and follow him through the door, but outside he vanish. Poof.

Some people take that as visitation from the devil himself. But this is December 1976 and if Rasta don’t work for the CIA then somebody else do. I ask how the guards let the man in, but them tell him that he just walk past them like he have bigger business than they could overstand. Is not that. Me know and the Singer know. Nobody going be the man, with skin like we, to touch a man with skin like that. The Singer suspicious of everybody from that point, even me I think. My name mix with the JLP and everybody already think that is the JLP that work for the CIA especially when a shipment of don’t-call-them-guns just vanish from the wharf. Poof. But this white bwoi didn’t warn or threaten him to quit the peace concert, and as for the others, who call the phone with heavy breathing, or send telegram, or leave note with the guard or fire shot in the air then they ride past the house on their bikes, the Singer don’t ’fraid of nobody who ’fraid to show him face.

But he don’t say what I also ’fraid to say. That this all come back to me. Me the baddest man in Copenhagen City. But badness don’t mean nothing anymore. Bad can’t compete against scheming. Bad can’t compete against wicked. I see and a watch them putting me out to pasture, because politics is a new game now and take a different kind of man to play it. Politician come in the late night to talk to Josey Wales, not me. I know Josey Wales. I was there in 1966 when they take a big chunk out of Josey soul, but only he know what he put there in it place.

As for other people, the white bwoi from America and the white bwoi in Jamaica who not white but an Arab, who fuck English blonde to make they children full free, now they too sending threat to the Singer. All this because natty want to sing hit songs and speak him mind. Even now, nobody know where the white bwoi come from and nobody see him again, not at the embassy, or the Mayfair, or the Jamaica Club, or the Liguanea Club or the Polo Club or wherever foreign white mix with local white. Maybe he don’t even live here, just fly in for that one mission. Since then, they double the guard at the gate, but one day them guards get replace by the Echo Squad. Any squad better than the police, but I don’t trust no squad from the PNP.

A man who know him have enemy must be on guard at all times. A man who know him have enemy must sleep with one eye open. But when a man have too many enemies he soon flatten them all down to one level, forget how to tell them apart and start to think every enemy is the same enemy. The Singer don’t think ’bout the white bwoi much, but I think ’bout him all the time. I ask him what the white bwoi look like and he draw a blank.

Like a white bwoi, him say.

E ven on a night so hot, near morning now, even with a curfew on because this bogus government can’t control shit, across the road from the Singer house you have a whore working Hope Road. Maybe is not even a whore. Maybe is just another lost woman, plenty of that in Kingston, who think the Singer has something she looking for all her life. I tell you, if birth control is a plot to kill black people, then the Singer must be the plot to breed them back. Even respectable parents from Irish Town, August Town or whichever rich people town now sending down daughter to consort with the Rastaman and breed a rich baby. But this one, the one I see from when I turn on to Hope Road to pick up Bam-Bam, just stand still like a scarecrow. Like she not selling nothing. Maybe she was a ghost. Something tempt me to walk over and ask, So how much for you and is that the Curfew special, but Bam-Bam was with me and I don’t like having him in my car as it is. Stay with him too long and he start to ask questions, like if I did know his father and is whose Clarks shoes that he find in that house he live in. Plus, playing pretty word game is Weeper’s thing not mine.

Weeper is with me. Just as I was about to drive off I realize I was about to send this loose cannon to pop off in my Datsun and shout after him to wait for me. I still let him drive. We drive back to Copenhagen City, right past Papa-Lo’s house with him sitting outside like Uncle Remus. Sooner or later he going to want to talk to me about things, which is usually him going on and on about nothing at all. That man is not the same man since he start to think. Me in the house for two hours now, maybe three. Something tell me that nobody is sleeping this night. I don’t like it. Weeper think everything cool. I don’t like working with pickney, but Weeper think everything fine. Then again, Weeper is kind of a pickney too. Right now he high and fucking some girl from Lady Pink in my car. Yes, the man have me swing ’round the club to pick her up after we lock those boys in the train shack. That same slow brain girl name Lerlette who rumour have it was the only girl at Ardenne High School to get enroll and expel on her first day. Don’t ask how I know, of course Weeper tell me. I tell him that there was no way you taking that whoring gal up in the same house I raise my children. He say, Brethren, me no have problem with car.

So now I’m by the window listening to my Datsun creak. I should be asleep. If I don’t sleep I going to be sleepy tomorrow and bad man can’t afford to be sleepy, especially tomorrow. Between Weeper fucking in my car and Peter Nasser going on like a pussyhole to show off to him skinny wife, too much trouble going on in my head for me to sleep. I should shout out the window for Weeper to stop him fucking coming and come but that would turn me into his big brother, or father, or worse, his mother.

And that pussyhole Peter Nasser. If there’s one thing I can’t stand is when a man think he hot enough already. Think he know everything just because when he talk, certain people in the party listen. But I never join any party. He strut into the ghetto chucking badness because he have no fear of me. I don’t want politician to be afraid, I just want them to recognize that I not playing. The girl in the car screaming out for him to go inna it, nuh baby yeah fuck me nuh work the pussy nuh, like you ah mash potato . This is not going to be the second time in one night that I have to listen to another man fuck. I step away from the window.

Nobody have to touch a man to hurt a man. All these white people who think they can spend time sinning with the devil, then when the time come, slip away without a mark. I remember when Peter Nasser first come to the ghetto wearing shades so that nobody could tell what was going on in the eyes. How he almost chat as bad as naigger, but still sound like he do schooling in America. Still you can never trust a man who look at everybody as replaceable, from wife to gunman enforcer. He already contact Weeper and Tony Pavarotti about replacing me when things get too big, or too heavy, or too sophisticated for a man who didn’t go to secondary school.

This is his constituency and he have the vote and the local woman to prove it. But he starting to confuse representing people with owning them, and soon even he going need a reckoning. Not by me, but by somebody. People like me don’t need secondary school because we graduate already. Before man like Peter Nasser start to visit us late in the night with a car trunk full of gun. Before man like Peter Nasser realize that it better for him that Copenhagen City and the Eight Lanes keep warring than make peace. Make them both burn down in judgment is what I say. By then the house in Miami finish build and man like Peter Nasser start to choke on him own growth.