Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Three The Hard Way: Body Guard, Home Guard and Security Guard in Love Triangle. The Star understands… Twins for Miss Jamaica… Our Page 3 Girl Pulchritudinous Pamela, our luscious buxom beauty is training to be an air hostess and loves the long arm of the law… Counter Flour Shortage in Hanover. The Star understands that shopkeepers have been “marrying” Baygon insect spray, insisting that customer purchase one spray for every two pounds of flour. .. Dupply Slaps Graveworker in May Pen Cemetery. Eulalee Legister was minding her business when… Return of Communist Menace Through St. Mary?… Eliminations and sashing of contestants for Miss Jamaica 1979. Shelly Samuda, Miss Marzouca, Arlene Sanguinetty, Miss Bobcat, Jacqueline Parchment, Miss Hunter Security, Bridget Palmer, Miss Sovereign Supermarket, Kim-Marie Burgess, Miss Ammar’s

Kim-Marie Burgess, Miss Ammar’s

Kim-Marie Burgess, Miss Ammar’s

Kim-Marie Burgess, Miss Ammar’s

Stacey Barracat, Miss River Road Cleaners . Beauty Contest is foolishness. Domestic Violence end in wounding with intent. Justice Patrick Shields in a ruling today… Four Killed in Shootout in Jonestown… April 20, Your Birthday Horoscope. You are an Aries on the cusp of Taurus and you will be guided by your emotions … This is what you have been missing for almost two years. Turn the page.

FROM CONCERT TO COMMUNITY BUILDING ONE YEAR LATER

… back from fourteen-month exile after the attempt on his life, December 3, 1976. The concert was opened by HRH Asafa Wosen, the Crown Prince of Ethiopia… this was the reaping of two years of careful workings, said JLP political activist Raymond “Papa-Lo” Clarke. Too much war and tribulation in the street, time for unification. Proceeds from the concert will go towards all sort of projects in the community, first thing first a good public sanitary convenience and a new room for the West Kingston Clinic, said top PNP activist Roland “Shotta Sherrif ” Palmer. Central to the effort was the reggae superstar who flew home to the island after a nearly two-year absence .

Enough. Stop reading, Kim Clarke.

Since the beginning of this year there has been three hundred murders that have been rumoured to be politically motivated.

Stop reading, Kim Clarke.

Photo inset: Political activists shake hands over concert proceeds.

Don’t look, Kim Clarke.

Left to Right: Minister of Youth and Sports Mr._______________, JLP political activist Raymond Papa-Lo Clarke, PNP political activist Roland Shotta Sherrif Palmer . Kim Clarke, stop looking, stop reading, stop searching. Don’t look: Papa-Lo in his white top, his pecs popping like women’s breasts. Don’t look: Shotta Sherrif’s khaki pants, like a student’s, like a soldier’s. A black-and-white photo but you know it’s khaki. Don’t snake your eyes from face to face, to faces looking in the camera, faces looking away and faces looking beyond anything in this damn photo. Beside Papa-Lo is a woman. Beside the woman is a man. Behind the man is another man wearing sunglasses. You know the look, don’t you? He’s not hiding from you, you’re hiding from him. Close the newspaper now, Kim Clarke. There he is at the back not smiling, not looking, not agreeing to no bombocloth peace. He’s not looking at peace, he’s looking at you. Two years on the run and him find you. You is a fool. Him find you.

— Kim, what’s going on?

Kim?

Kim?

Two years of running in a straight line that turns into a circle. Walk up to the gate. Nothing stopping you now. Nothing pushing you but you walk right up to the gate anyway because what else was there to do, not walk forward? Walk up to the gate and rub your belly like you’re pregnant. Ignore the firecrackers even though this is way too early in December for firecrackers. Look at the man, face already going dark in the eight o’clock but coming towards you and you can’t move. He’s looking at you, undressing you, auditioning you. Listen to screams coming from the back and police siren coming from up the road and the gun right in front of your face. Once you started running you never stopped. You packed a purple suitcase and ran away from December 3, 1976, because fuck that day that the Lord had made and everything was terrible in it. You think you’re going to run to America, but the man has already worked out right down to the last rent cheque how he will soon run away from you. And this man, the man in the photo. He walked right up to you from the edge of this newspaper. He has a name — don’t read it.

Silly woman. You never ran from December 3, 1976, you ran right into the middle of it. You’ve never known December 4, you do not know April 20, you only know December 3. That day will never close until he comes to close it. December 3 is coming back for you, this picture is saying. We have unfinished business, this picture is saying. Montego Bay couldn’t stop it and neither can America. I coming for you, Nin — don’t call her by that name, don’t ever call that fucking name. That is a dead name of a dead woman in a dead city. Keep running because she’s dead. Now light the cigarette with his lighter that he wants back and don’t give it back unless he asks. Light the cigarette and take a drag. Cough, cough longer, cough louder. Take another drag. Drag until your heart goes back to beating so slow that if you touch your chest you can count the beats. Now take the cigarette and burn out his head. Stub through to the back page, burn until you flick a flame brilliant with the paper and throw it on the bed.

— Kim, what the hell is going on?

Burn a way through the white man’s knocking and shouting and screaming and rapping and ramming down the door that won’t budge, and the cackling pillows and the hissing silk sheets and the laughing polyester curtains, watch the flame shoot up like under a skirt and expose the screaming window.

Burn a way to safe passage. The only way forward is through.

S hit just blew up in Iran. Well, it blew up back in January, but fallout’s just reaching us now. Shit is blowing up all over the world. Chaos and disorder, disorder and chaos, I say them over and over like they have anything to do with each other, Sodom and Gomorrah, Gomorrah and Sodom. All these family pics go in my bag — not the briefcase, take them out of the briefcase and that folder I should give Sally to shred, but should I take some shots first? Jesus Christ, I think I’ve caught some Nixon fever. I spend so much time telling people that life is not like fucking 007 that I miss the times when it really is. What I really want to do is sit back in this chair, take my shoes and socks off and guess where shit will start flying first. Meanwhile, shit of a totally different kind blew the fuck up in Yugoslavia. And NATO boy didn’t even know. He’s the head of the fucking CIA and he didn’t even know.

Lindon Wolfsbricker. Now there’s a name where you knew the parents spent an awful long time trying to figure out what the fuck can precede Wolfsbricker. Seriously, it sounds like something you’d call a Nazi fetishist. Wolfsbricker the American ambassador to Yugoslavia. Don’t ask me how he got it but somehow Mr. Ambassador comes across a directive from within the Company. A directive from Clandestine Service to station chiefs worldwide to keep all major operations secret from all ambassadors. First thing I thought was, come on. I mean, it really makes sense. Some ambassadors get the gig because the President likes them, and a good gig in a good locale where you make a name for yourself, like say Cyprus, will set you up for senator, governor or vice president. Some get the gig because the President can’t stand the fucker and what better way to get you and your potential threat out of the way than to post you in the Soviet Union or some place nobody gives a fuck about, like Papua New Guinea? Either way, an ambitious jackass on a power trip is not someone who should be kept in the loop about anything ever, because more than anything else, he’s a major pain in the ass. And here is Wolfsbricker, the shit-kicker on the phone, with Admiral Tunney, mad as hell that info is being kept from him, in violation of standing presidential orders going back seventeen years by the way.