Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

There’s also a McDonald’s farther down Halfway Tree Road. The logo is blue and the people who work there swear Mr. McDonald is in the back room. But I’m at King Burger, Home of the Whamperer. Nobody here has ever heard of Burger King. Inside, the chairs are plastic and yellow, the tables are fiberglass and red and the menu looks like those letters at the cinema that say coming soon . The place is never packed at three p.m., which is of course the reason I come here. People in packs always make me antsy; all you need is the wrong spark and a group turns into a mob. I wonder if that’s why outside is all grilled up. I’ve been in Jamaica since January.

There’s a sign behind the cashier that says if your burger isn’t ready in fifteen minutes it’s free. Two days ago when I touched my watch sixteen minutes later, she said it only applied to cheeseburgers. Yesterday, when my cheeseburger was late, she said it only applied to chicken sandwiches. Poor girl must be running out of burgers to blame. But nobody comes here. One of the things I fucking hate about my fellow Americans: whenever they fly to a foreign country, first thing they do, they try to find as much of America as they can get their hands on, even if it’s food in the shitty cafeteria. Sally, who’s been here since the Johnson administration, has never had ackee and saltfish ever, despite me being probably the two millionth person to say baby, it’s like scrambled eggs but better. My kids love it. My wife, she wished they had Manwich or Ragú, or even Hamburger Helper, but good luck finding that at a supermarket. Good luck finding anything, really.

The first time I had jerk chicken a guy at the intersection of Constant Spring Road and some other road came up to my car and shouted, Boss, you ever have jerk chicken? before I could find that broken-off handle to wind up the window. He was tall and skinny, in a white undershirt, huge Afro, shiny teeth and shiny muscles, too many muscles for one kid, but the man, boy really, smelled like allspice so I got out of the car and followed him back to his shop, a small shack, wood tacked together with a zinc roof and striped in blue, green, yellow, orange and red. The man grabbed the biggest fucking machete I ever saw in my life and sliced off a piece of chicken leg as if he had just cut through warm butter. He handed it to me and as I was about to eat it, he closed his eyes and nodded no. Just like that: firm, peaceful and final. Before I said anything he pointed at a huge jar, kinda translucent like it’s been standing there awhile. Hey, I’m nothing if not adventurous, my wife would say crazy. It was a humongous glass jar of mashed pepper paste. I dipped the chicken in and swallowed the piece whole. You know that part in Road Runner where Wile E. Coyote’s bomb goes off right after he swallows it, and smoke comes out of his ears and nose? Or that dipstick, first time at the sushi bar, thinking damn right I can swallow a teaspoon of wasabi? That was me. I don’t think the man knew that white people could turn so many shades of red. I blinked a teardrop and hiccupped for at least a minute. Somebody had doused my mouth with sugar and gasoline, lit a match and woof. ShitGoddamnmotherfucker-thatfuckingshitisthefuckingblood of life! I remember coughing out.

I asked the cashier at King Burger if they ever thought of a jerk burger. Ghetto food? she said and scoffed in that way Jamaican women do, closed her eyes, lifted her chin and turned away. I’m in here nearly every day and this girl is the same. She says, Can I take your order? A cheeseburger. Would you like a lemonade or a milk shake with your order? No, just a D&G Grape. Does that complete your order? Yes. Whamperer tastes just like a Whopper, minus the taste. Even the lettuce knows it can do better, so wet and bitter on this burger that I order every day for shits, just so I can tell my kids, You know what I had today? Poppa had a Whamperer, and they think their pop has a stammer.

The sun is jumping ship and evening’s coming. But this country needs a good disco. Right now skipping countries every three to five years or so is all that keeps me sane. Though nobody gets to the other end of the Company keeping sane. Some of the craziest bullshit I’ve ever heard was from my former station chief, well before he got a serious case of the conscience. His son is here, came in on American flight DC301 from New York. He’s been here now three days and has no idea I know he’s here. Not that he knows me or anything, Bring Your Child to Work Day was not one of the ideas his daddy bounced around. It’s not like it’s a secret why he’s here, but when the son of the former head of the Company suddenly shows up in Jamaica, even a guy on the inside starts to wonder if there was something he missed.

Word was he’s a filmmaker, or one of those rich kids with enough money to buy their own camera. He came with a bunch of photographers and film people for this peace concert by that reggae guy who’s bigger than sliced bread these days. It’s supposed to be big, and though I’ve only been here since January, even I know the country needs some sort of peace. It’s not going to come from that guy in the Prime Minister’s office, but still. So the big reggae guy is staging a concert which was organized by the Prime Minister’s party, which almost makes big reggae guy a person of interest. The embassy got news that Roberta Flack is flying in and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are already here. The motherfucking Rolling Stones.

No, I don’t listen to big reggae guy. Reggae is monotonous and boring and the drummer must have the laziest job in the world next to King Burger cashier. I prefer ska, I prefer Desmond Dekker. Only yesterday I asked the King Burger cashier if she liked “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” and she looked at me as if I just asked her to hit me up with some smack. Me no know, she said. I said, Then what do you listen to? What’s playing at the jam session? She said Big Youth and Mighty Diamonds. I said yeah, Mighty Diamonds and Big Youth are cool and all, but did either ever get name-checked in a fucking Beatles song, like Desmond Dekker? She said, Please watch your language, sir, this is a law-abiding premises.

How do you construct an accident? Nobody in the Company is indispensable, but sometimes I wonder why don’t they just call somebody else. At least they didn’t have me groundworking Montevideo. What a goddamn mess that turned out to be. But I like having a job I can’t talk about. It makes keeping the other secrets easier. The wife finally came around to the fact that as long as we’re married there are just some things she will never know and she had to get used to what all our wives get used to. Knowing two out of every four facts. Five out of every ten trips. One out of every five deaths. I don’t think she knows exactly what I do. At least that’s the story I’m sticking to this week. I’m in Jamaica and almost everything is moving according to plan. Which is a boneheaded way of saying things are moving so textbook easy that it’s actually rather boring to work here. Not surprised at all, Jamaicans tend to react exactly as you think they would. Maybe that’s refreshing to some, or maybe just a relief.

So back when I mentioned the jerk chicken guy, that was in May and I wasn’t in that area because I suddenly wanted to experience the real Jamaica. I was following a man in a car four cars up. A person of keen interest that a driver picked up at the Constant Spring Hotel. At first I thought I was brought here to shadow him, only to find out that he was shadowing me. He used to work for the Company until he also caught a terminal case of the conscience. This is what happens when top brass still tries to recruit from Ivy League washouts, prep school faggots, American Kim Philbys waiting to come out of the closet if not the cold. By the time I found out that he was in Jamaica he had already found out I was here. I’m not exactly undercover — too late for that. That said, I couldn’t have this man talking up a mess that I would then have to clean up. Pity that I didn’t have clearance to proceed. It’s not even over and I miss the Cold War already.