Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

I going to make it to the east.

No.

So Jah say .

No bombocloth duppy going catch me.

Yes, them going catch you.

So Jah say .

Josey Wales going find me and then he going kill me but he goin’ kill me quick because me know. Or maybe Papa-Lo going find me and he go ing kill me slow so that all bad man would know.

Yes.

So Jah say .

Nobody can kill the Tuff Gong.

So Jah say .

Me take foot. Me walking, me foot moving faster, but you getting louder, louder, louder, and me take a stop and look and you nearer than before. Loosen the line to trick the fish. And then you look at me and me can’t move. And the babies with bat wings and blue flame coming closer, me can’t see them but feel them and me can’t run from them because you looking at me. And you better stop. You hear me? You better stop. Was not my scheme to kill you, I don’t even care if you live or die. Leave me alone, leave me alone, fucking head-lice-infested natty-head Rasta. You looking at me, I know, so Jah say . So many people in the stage that you can’t even move, police chief in khaki, white man with camera, the Prime Minister standing ’pon top of a Volkswagen, black people so plenty and so black they look like shadow wearing clothes and dancing and skanking in the dark. And you singing and your ghost wife singing and everybody singing and the crowd singing and your real voice slip under all that.

I look at you and see your mouth moving, singing one thing but talking something else. Look up here Babylon boy, think you can come ’gainst the livication of His Imperial Majesty King Haile Selassie. His foundation is in the holy mountains. Jah loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things have been spoken of thee, oh city of God. I’ll make mention of Rahab and Babylon to them that know I. Behold Philistia and Tyre and with Ethiopia it shall be said that this man was born there and the highest himself shall establish the earth, Jah! Rastafari. Look up here so boy.

I look. But you not looking at me. You don’t need to look at me for the same reason God don’t look at man. For one look and man eye would burn out of him skull, burn to nothing, not even a speck, not a dot, less than that. That is not me talking, but you. Me not me no more, me don’t sound like me only you and no people deh ’bout, only shadow and no sound dropping through the speaker, only the deep end of the riddim. And you hold the mic up in the air like a torch and cover your eyes again, but you seeing all. They think you dancing but you signifying, your word not mine. My sweat run cold and it won’t stop, it run down my back like a cold finger right down the split between me bottom.

Then you move your hand and you flash your dread and lock your stare on me. Through me, inside me, behind me, you reach straight into my heart and grab it. You say watch the work of Rastafari. Watch him turn lion into hunter and hunter into hunted. You know I lost my gun, the gun that nearly take you. You know that even if I did have the gun I couldn’t shoot. You know that me is nothing, me is a dead man. You know my heartbeat the snake around me feet, you know you can will the crowd to push me down and swallow me up. You in the jungle, the bush, and you step out in the clearing for audience with His Imperial Majesty. You step forward and roll up your sleeve. Babylon try to smite you through the hand, but fail. You pull the first button on your shirt, then the second, then the third, then puff out your chest like Superman. You point to the wound on your arm and the wound in your chest. You do the war dance of victory and you relive the hunt and everybody see but only I know. My sweat cold. You point to your wound like Jesus pointing to his side to show the work of the spear. More people on the stage now and the pretty woman take back the mic but not before the wind blow and the cock crow and you pull two pistol fast from your holster like the Cisco Kid. Like Marty Robbins. Like, like, like the Man With No Name. You throw back your head and laugh so long that the laugh don’t even need a mic. You laugh at me then stop quick and fierce and look straight at me, you eye two fire. I shut my eye tight until I feel you not looking and when I open them you gone. And me know me dead, I can only run when I see that you leave.

But the baby with bat wings flying after me. People shoving, people pushing, and something or somebody hit me straight in the face. Then another hit, straight in the belly, and I think I going vomit but I piss myself. Me not crying. Me not going cry. I can’t stop anything that going to happen to me right now, not even my own piss. It run down me foot and people hitting and slapping and punching and passing and running and running and passing. I make out of the park, before people realize that you gone and not coming back, so the street dark and empty and I don’t know any of the building across the street. I don’t even notice Josey Wales’ man Tony Pavarotti until he right in front of me, until him knuckle charge straight for my face.

M e run all day into the night. Two nights ago I was running down a dream.

A gully so stink with garbage that even the rat them don’t come ’round too much. I run from Duke Street up to South Parade and jump on the first bus leaving. Me can’t remember if me pay the conductor the five cents. Only four people did was on the bus and only one behind me. Me head start to hurt me, not a big hurt but that nagging one, like a buzzing mosquito fly through your earhole and now he moving up to the top of your head. The buzz that make you feel somebody eyes on your back. I turn around and it’s a school boy. Take off the uniform he not older than me, me think. But he not looking at me. Or he only looking at me when I turn my back. I turn around again. I want to walk up to him and cut a telephone mark on him right cheek with my switchblade. I want to smash him head for going to school ’cause me didn’t have no chance to go to no pretty school in any pretty khaki uniform. But he is just one boy. I turn my back again and I hear horsefoot. I hear horsefoot getting louder and louder and I know it’s the ratatatat of this old bus old engine but I hear horses coming. That’s when I jump off the bus in Barbican and climb down from a little bridge down to a gully underneath and stay there.

When me wake up, a hand ’pon me balls. A hand grabbing my pants hard making me jump. All I can see is the hand stretch out from a pile of garbage, a garbage monster made out of newspaper and cloth and plastic bag and spoil food and shit. I yell and kick the monster straight with my foot and it fall back and scream. Some of the newspaper fall away and a woman head pop out. She black like tar with her hair crust up with dirt and paper and two pink hairclip and when she scream again I see only three teeth, one so long and yellow, that she must be vampire covering up herself with newspaper. She still screaming when I look around and find a rockstone and threaten to fling. She jump up quick, I forget how mad people can be fit and bouncy and ready to run, which she do, down the gully screaming until she get so far that she just a blip, a dot, nothing.

I can’t tell the last time me eat food. The last time me bathe. And I was hoping that if me didn’t think about a line me wouldn’t want a line but now me think about it and is all me can do to stop it. But then me hear horse hoof again. Me heart start to beat fast, boom boom boom with the horse foot clap clap clap and me hand and foot feel cold and getting colder. Me head saying run fool run and the gully shake. But is a truck passing over the bridge. I have to stay hungry. If I stay hungry I think about food. If I stay hungry for a line I think about a line. Because if I think about how hungry me be then I never have to think about Josey Wales fucking fool it was almost you, it was you until you sniff Weeper shit . I don’t have to think about this bridge and how me only did want to show the brethren not the Singer to never fuck with Demus. How me sick and fucking tired of man using me, first the brethren, then Josey Wales fucking fool it was almost you, it was you until you sniff Weeper shit , and before that every man in the fucking ghetto who only think about what they want and how to use me to get it. Something must be on my head that say: use him, for him fool enough, and it must be true. Under the gully you just never know how the stink can drive a man mad. How he can think crazy shit and wicked shit and nasty shit, kill a baby shit or fuck a little girl shit or shit in church shit because the stink so stink all you can think is that the stink must be easing into you like water through a strainer and now you must be stink too. And I just want to wash it off, I just want to wash the whole thing off but the water running through the gully stink too. No. Now I have to think straight. I have to think like a thinking man. I have to get out of Kingston. I have to go. I have to go somewhere, somewhere people never talk about, somewhere like Hanover, who the r’asscloth know what going on in Hanover? Hanover so far from the rest of Jamaica that I can bet they don’t even vote in no election. Go to Hanover and take a name like Everton or Courtney or Fitzharold, a name that sound like both mother and father raise me. I hear the horse hoofs again and get up and run. I run in the same direction that the madwoman run me must be mad too hearing horse hoof like me is some naked runaway slave with the mass hot on me trail while me go to the land of Maroons. That must be it, maybe I should run to the maroons — who run to the maroons in 1976? But who going look for me there? This sound like reasoning. It sound like solid reasoning. Like me still have sense. At least me still have sense. It almost make me laugh, me running through the gully, watching it go dark every time me run under a bridge then back into the light when me run out from under it. I run and run and run until the air start to taste salty and me know me soon near the sea. I run and run until the sun reach the top and bake me back, then slide down and down and down until it shock the sky one last time with orange, then sink. And I don’t stop, not even when me see that me don’t have on no shoes and the water me splashing in start to get cleaner.