Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

A line, a gate, a fortress wall of Rastamen, most in white but some in colours hidden by moonlight, all in a line, side by side, with cutlasses and knives in hand, machine guns strapped across backs, as far as anyone can see. Man beside man, and beside him, men all the way across right, all the way across left, stretching so far that the lines disappear around the bends of the hill and continues. A band of men in a circle around a mountain that I know of, but cannot remember. I cannot stop looking at them. I forget about you. I want to run around the hill and see if the line ever breaks but I know it does not. They have sealed the top of the mountain from the country. But they let through the seven Rastas pulling you. Not a single man speaks except for your screaming mumble. They pull you along the path fifty feet then veer off, all of them, like the sudden turn of birds. The bush reaches waist-high, there is no path but they seem to know where to go. I see the tree before you do.

They stop. The man pulling you lets the rope loose while two help you up by the arms. They position you to stand but you see the tree spread out above you and collapse. They grab you before you fall. You wait for them to let you go and try to hop away. They do not follow or even raise alarm, just wait for you to fall. The large one who pulled you all this way grabs you by the belt and you’re in the air. He carries you like a doll. Only one man on this hill has run out of time. He holds you in place. The noose was already there. Already waiting. He tries to put it around your neck but you jerk left to right, north to south, screaming into the gag. You wiggle, you shake, you turn and look at me. Even in the dark I can see you blinking. You’ve been screaming for minutes but I’m the only one who knows that you have been screaming at me. With one hand the big Rastaman holds your neck in place and slips over the noose. Tightens. I thought they would have put you on a drum and kicked your life away. But your neck is in a noose at the end of a rope that shoots up and over a strong branch then down the tree into the grip of two Rastas who wrap it in their hands and tug. I wonder if you find this as obscene as I do that they are so quiet, as if this is work. There will be no last words. I wonder if you are crying now. I wonder if you hope somehow the Singer will hear you begging for mercy.

But you should know this.

The living, they never listen.

E very time I get on the bus there’s this point where I know it’s going to blow up. The thing is I always think it will explode from the rear and because of that I sit up front. As if sitting up front is going to make any difference. Maybe it was because of the bombing of that restaurant in London in February — I stopped watching the news for months then turned on the TV only to see that shit. Chuck says you worry too much, babykins, just don’t take the bus . Jesus Christ I hate babykins, hate it, can’t stand it, pull out a gun and shoot it, which makes him like calling me that all the more. He says it’s because he can see my eyebrow arch before I feel myself arching it. Chuck says then babykins just don’t take the bus if you hate being packed like a sardine. I don’t tell him that is not what I hate.

You know I can feel it, my back getting straighter and straighter as I walk home. Something about it, walking home. I like people seeing me walking to that home, but I don’t like them watching me. They don’t see me as me, but me as a woman walking to that house near the beach that looks like somebody up and plucked it out of Hawaii Five-O . A house that looks like it have no business there and people will wonder why this black woman think she have reason to go deh so with her head held high like she own it. First they will see me as a woman who go there once and have to leave in the morning with whatever was my rate. Then they’ll see me as that woman who go there plenty and must be sweeting that white boy good, or at least being discreet about it. Then they’ll see me as maybe him woman who leave at any hour. Then they will see me leaving and coming and carrying paper shopping bag and think, maybe she have something to do with the house, like the maid. Then they will see that I leave in not good clothes and return, or go on a jog which is the new white people thing in America, and only then start to think maybe she live there for true. She and the white man. No, the white man and she. Afternoon to you too, sir, Mr. Let-me-push-my-handcart-slow-so-that-me-can-spy-into-people-privatebusiness — move on, master. Broke my good heel on this road last week — road my ass, this is a trail, up the hill then down again, to the little cliff near the beach where only people like Chuck would think to live. Or Errol Flynn.

Chuck. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, I said when he came up to me at Mantana’s Bar where all the expatriates and people who work for Alcorp Bauxite go, because it’s the only place where the hamburgers don’t taste like the Jamaicans really believe they are made out of ham. And he took his hat off too like he was some cowboy and said, Howdy I’m Chuck . You’re sure you not Bill from Sales who howdy’d me only three nights ago? I thought but didn’t say. Chuck. It’s like Chip, Pat, Buck or Jack. I just love these one-punch American names, they sound like apple pie and easy money and you utter them once with so little effort and you’re done. You get a yup, a howdy, a what’s shaking lil’ lady and suddenly you feel the need to tell them that no, this is not one of those local ladies who is not wearing a panty underneath her dress for your convenience, but thanks for the scotch which I’m not going to drink. Don’t know which I relive more, counting down hours and reducing them to minutes in Mantana’s waiting for HIM or when Chuck said howdy and I thought, well you’ll do.

Home. Watch it, Miss Kim, you’re calling the place something not even Chuck calls it. I’m going to walk into the living room right now thinking about exploding buses and say, Chuck, and he’s going to say Yep? What’s shakin’ honeybun? and I’ll feel like a rabbit safe in a hole. No I’m not. That’s some stupid shit from a stupid book for God’s sake stop thinking, Kim Clarke. Late day at work, usually he’s home by now. Usually I would have cooked dinner by now, the shit you can get away with when you’re making it up as you go along, damn, babykins, I didn’t know Jamaican rice had pepper in it, he said last night. Look where that thinking shit has gotten you, now gulls are out the window. Now I’m the woman who lives close to seagulls. I hate gulls. Little bitches plopping down their little shitty batties like unwanted guests every afternoon and taking over my own damn terrace saying move bitch is fi we terrace now. I don’t know why they keep coming, there’s no food outside and I sure as shit am never going to feed them. And they’re so damn loud and nasty and only fly away when they see Chuck. They couldn’t care a r’asscloth about me. I know what they’re thinking. They’re thinking we was here first, long before you start shack up with man and we was here before him too. Screaming like they know stuff about me — get away from my window or my American Chuck will pull out his American gun and bang bang Quick Draw McGraw and put a lead one through your head, see? Jesus Christ, when did I start watching cartoons?

Today I will love his hair. I will think about his hair and how it’s brown but never one colour brown and red when it gets near his cheek and how he likes it short like a soldier but now he’s growing it long because I said honey you’d make a nice pirate thinking the sentence would vanish to the same idle place it came from but he loved it so now he’s my sexy pirate — I never called him sexy. Must be because I said honey.