Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Fucking Weeper. At least he not sending more letter to that damn man in prison. He not telling me who but I’ll soon find out. And when I do,

— Well that was a wheel and come and tumble down… whooo!

— You want a rag to clean up?

— Nah brethren, everything evatoprate, he say, rubbing his smash-up glasses and squinting.

— Evaporate.

— What?

— How the girl getting home?

— Her foot sick?

— You is the Don of all dons, Weeper.

— No star, that is you. You so Don them should call you Donavon.

— Donovan.

— No that me say? Anyway, me did think you was going sleep. Instead you up and whining like Godmother.

— Don’t make no damn sense sleeping now. Too many things to keep me up.

— No damn thing to keep you awake. Keep this up and you soon become like the old man we just drive past sitting on him verandah like house rat.

— You know why I’m not going to sleep? Something don’t sit right about those boys.

— The boys can aim a gun and pull the trigger. Stop being the mother.

— I tell you I don’t like working with so much man I can’t trust.

— You recruit them.

— No, I recruit them and wait for you to nod yes or no. You’re the one that pick nothing but boy. I tell you is no problem to link up TEC-9, to telegram Chinaman in New York.

— No, man.

— Bullman, Tony Pavarotti, Johnny W—

— No, man! Stop chat like a fucking idiot! You can’t control them man. Give them the chance fucking half would run ’way when the time come, the other half try to kill you. And you supposed to be the thinker of Copenhagen City? You can’t control man. You never go to prison yet you still don’t know how to run man. We need boy who when I point left they go left and who when I point right they go right. Boy just do it, man spend too much time thinking about, just like you a do right now. You turn a boy, and you work a boy and you drug a boy until the only thing, the only thing that fucker want to do is anything you say.

— Learn that in prison too? You think I don’t know about the type of boy you talking about? That kinda boy you can use only one time, you hear. One time and them finish.

— Who say we going use them twice? Ah wah? Bam-Bam is you boy now?

— Me no have no r’asscloth boy.

— Make them stew in the shack. Make them sweat it out. Make them crawl in a corner and cry for some white. Yow, when me reach back.

— You want gunman or zombie?

— Make them boy stay. Make them cook. By the time we go back, them boy going shoot God.

— Don’t bloodcloth blaspheme in me fucking house, Weeper!

— Or God will come down ’pon me with lightning and thunder?

— Or me take this bombocloth gun and shoot you meself.

— Whoa. Brethren, just cool. Just cool now. Is joke me a joke.

— Them bloodcloth joke no funny.

— Brethren, put down the gun. Is me this, is Weeper. Brethren, me no like when people pull gun ’pon me, you know, even when them ah make joke.

— Me look like me ah make joke?

— Josey.

— No, tell me. Tell me one fucking joke you ever hear me make.

— Brethren, alright, no more God business in you house. Just cool, man.

— Don’t bring none of that monkey man bullshit in me house.

— Yes, Josey, alright, brethren, alright.

— And don’t think I won’t shoot you and do this meself.

— Yes, brethren.

— Now go sit down and relax youself. Me would a say go to sleep, but me and you know that you not sleeping for at least three day. So cease and settle—

— You look you need to settle too.

— Settle!

Weeper fling himself on the couch and was about to put up him foot until he see my face. He take off his shoes, put his glasses on the side table and then stretch out. He is quiet for a long time. I rub the gun in my hands. Then he start to giggle like a little girl. Then he giggle more. And more. Soon he is laughing out loud.

— What the fuck you take make joke now?

— Then no must you? You is the fucking joke.

I rub the gun in my hands, slipping the index finger behind the trigger.

— You ever notice how bad you chat when you temperature heat up? The hotter you get, the worse you chat. I should draw out you tongue some more, just to find the Josey Wales me grow up with.

He laugh for so long that I start laughing too, even though me and Weeper never grow up together. He roll over into the sofa, back now to me and pants slipping down showing his red brief. Every time he fuck a woman I hope that this is the woman that fix him. Because some disease lick him in prison, something that make him not normal. Then just like that he start snoring, like somebody out of a TV comedy. That son of a bitch who sleeping on my own damn couch call me a fucking idiot. Weeper mad as fuck but everything he say tonight make a crazy sorta sense. This is a messy job, the real work come with the cleanup. Can’t bring in a man like Tony Pavarotti. Man with those skills rare and you have to use them again and again. Some tool make for repeated use. And some tool, you use once then destroy.

S even-fifteen. We’ve been stuck behind a Ford Escort farting black smoke for ten minutes. This car is going nowhere and my oldest son Timmy is humming what sounds like “Layla,” I swear to God. He’s in the front seat singing and mediating an all-out world war between Superman and Batman because the wife told him he could play with his toys all the way up to the school gate but then he would have to leave them in the car. Jesus H Christ, Third World traffic jams are the worst, all these cars and no goddamn road. Daddy, what’s goddamn, my youngest Aiden says from the back, the first time I realize that I’ve been thinking out loud. Read your book, honey, I say. I mean buddy, or would you rather little man? Now I’m just perplexing the kid. Asserting your masculinity shouldn’t seem so complicated at four.

We’re in Barbican, a roundabout there for no reason it seems other than to direct traffic to a supermarket with the unfortunate name Masters. The roads are congested with rich people taking their kids to school, quite a few of them heading in my direction to the Hillel Academy. I make a left turn and pass women selling bananas and mangoes, out of season, and men selling sugarcane. And weed if you know how to ask. Not that I ever ask for it. You have to get to the point where you know how the country works better than the people who live here. Then you leave. The Company suggested I read a book from V. S. Naipaul before coming here, The Middle Passage . It amazed me how he could land in some country, be there for mere days and nail exactly what was wrong with it. I went to that beach he wrote about, Frenchman’s Cove, expecting lazy white women and men in sunglasses and Bermuda shorts, attended to by cabana boys. But even the cove got hit by a wave of democratic socialism.

We turn right. Traffic disappears and we’re going uphill, past huge twoand three-story houses, quite a few of them closed up, not in a left-for-theday way with a few windows open, but as if the owners have all gotten the fuck out’a Dodge, probably waiting out the election elsewhere. Hillel is right at the foot of the mountains. Sooner or later the wife is going to ask again, Why do we live all the way down in New Kingston when our children go to school all the way up in the mountains? She has a point, but it’s too damn early for her to be right. My oldest jumps out of the door the instant the car stops at the gate. At first I’m thinking of course, my car’s not cool enough, but then it hits me. He almost makes it through the gate.

— Timothy Diflorio, you stop right there.