Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

— The first concert was for peace. This one was for a toilet.

— Huh?

— You work for a magazine and don’t know nothing at all? Maybe you work for a Jamaican newspaper.

— Still, to come back after two years, after they nearly killed him.

— They who?

— I… I… I don’t know. The assassins.

— Like a Bruce Lee movie.

— The killers.

— Like a Clint Eastwood movie.

— I, I don’t know who they were.

— Ha, Papa-Lo seem to know. I have a question for you about the Singer, maybe only you, being a foreign man, and you educated?

— Yes.

— That only an educated man can answer. You know what they mean by literary device?

— Yes.

— So when the Singer get shot in the chest with a bullet that was meaning for his heart, you think him take that as just a shot in the chest like any other shot, or he take it to mean something more than that? A literary device.

— Device. You mean a symbol?

— Something like that.

— You mean if he thought being nearly shot in the heart might mean…

— All the things that shot in the heart can mean.

— How do you know he was nearly shot in the heart?

— So I hear.

— From who?

— From the natural mystic blowing through the air.

When I told Priest that I spoke to Josey Wales he was standing in the rain and refused to come in. You know how even in the dark you can tell how a person is looking at you?

There’s a man in blue sitting on the edge of my bed. Sid Vicious died two days ago. Nobody knows shit, but word was that his mother just fed the fucker heroin and right after coming out of detox. Rock is sick and dead in New York City. Found him sprawled out naked in bed with a probably also naked actress. Twenty-one. Fuck punk anyway. The only thing we agree on is Two Sevens Clash . My mom would be proud, Lord knows it wasn’t the greatest idea being an audiophile when the band du jour was Hawkwind. But Sid Vicious died two days ago. And months after killing his girlfriend. Dead men, all these dead men. Only four people know the Singer nearly got shot in the heart. The Singer, his manager, his surgeon and me, because I caught him on a lucky day when he didn’t try to kick my ass for following him all over London. Only three people know he was eating quarter of a grapefruit, having cut off half to give to the manager. Only two people know that the Singer said Selassie I Jah Rastafari and I only know because I caught him on a lucky day in London.

There’s a fucking man in fucking blue sitting on the fucking edge of my fucking bed. And I’m starting to feel like I’m the murdered character in the game Live about to tell the murderer to grab his fucking weapon and fucking get on with it already. Just fucking get on with it.

My left leg has gone to sleep. I’m seeing some black men and more black men and they are merging into one black man and no black man at all. There is a bald-headed man in blue sitting on the side of my bed, rubbing his head, rubbing his shiny sweaty light brown head. His shirt is navy blue. Fucking left leg has gone to sleep behind his sinking ass. Stare at the ceiling, Alex Pierce. Count grooves in the stucco, look for Jesus. There’s Jesus. Look for a cross. Look for Italy, look for a shoe, look for a woman’s face. The man on my bed holy shit a gun he has a gun motherfucker has a fucking gun waving it he’s waving it at his temple at me at his temple he’s about to pull a fucking Hemingway why would he sneak into my room to off himself motherfucker I’m not going to be your audience fucking Christ don’t fucking pop off that shit and splat your brain all over my clean sheets dirty sheet fucking scum fuck cum-encrusted pubic-hair-littered sheets but they’re mine and I don’t want your fucking blood and brains all over them oh he’s not going to shoot himself he’s going to shoot me he’s going to shoot me fucking heart stop pumping he’s going to hear, nobody can hear a heart pump yes he can he’s going to hear you oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck he’s spinning it he’s dangling it he’s a cowboy and this is his six-shooter High Noon Liberty Valance Sons of Katie fucking Elder at least I’m gonna die like a true Jamaican that is not funny it’s not fucking funny fuck this I’m not going to die today I’m not going to fucking die today stop spinning the gun like a motherfucking gunslinger like you just picked up the worn-out copy of Gunfighter Ballads that’s in every fucking Jamaican’s house I’m not going to die today my mother is not going to be left standing out at Minneapolis — St. Paul Airport sorting out a fucking coffin box, or worse, putting up posters all over Kingston saying MISSING HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? Coming on Dick Cavett to talk about her poor son and the horrible bureaucracy in Jamaica who won’t assist her and it’s a conspiracy, really it is, or at least a cover-up, maybe it’s just really bad incompetence that took her son and she knows something was up, somebody did something and she’ll move heaven and earth to find out the truth even if the police, the minister, and even the ambassador won’t lift a finger to help, I’ll become a story and she’ll become one of those haggard old women whose other children will desert her (she was the world’s greatest mom before she became obsessed with a ghost) and will have nothing but cigarettes and the mission left, the mission to uncover the truth. She’ll also do 60 Minutes and more Cavett and when everybody starts to forget she’ll… I don’t know what she’ll do.

Jesus Christ, please make him go away. Please let it be that I’ll close my eyes, I’ll close them for as long as you want, and when I open them he’ll be gone. Do you want me to pray? Because I will, I swear to God. Swear to God. Swear to you. Oh fuck this. I will not think what heaven is like. Who the fuck does that? I will not do it. I’ll just say to him that if you kill me now right here I’ll look you in the eye and stain myself in your head for as long as you live. I swear I’d haunt you like a motherfucker so hard that an exorcist would look at you and say goddamn, my son, there’s really no help for you. I’ll come with that crucifix fucker Linda Blair and that sister fucking mass-murdering motherfucker from Amityville and I’ll cut out one chunk of your brain so that all three of us can live there and then we’ll eat you from the inside out, like cancer. I’ll fucking haunt you, motherfucker. I’ll make you scream devil deh ’pon you in church and I’ll make you see blind and fuck your sister and I’ll make you talk to yourself everywhere because only you and I will know you’re talking to me. And I’ll drive you off the causeway into the fucking sea and you still won’t die because I won’t make you die, I’ll make you live a hundred years to haunt you forever and I’ll write my name in the mirror every time you take a shower and one day you will read get ready to suck cocks in hell on the ceiling and I’ll make your bed shake and elbows itch and you’ll scratch so hard everybody will come looking for the heroin and no dog will go anywhere near you because they can sense when a spirit is living rent-free in your head, so you better turn away, you better get up and walk out of this room right now or I swear to God I will. I will. I will.

Phone rings.

He jumps.

I jump.

Gun in mid-spin, gun drops.

He looks at me look at him.

Bends down for gun kick him kick him.

Kicked him in the back and again in the back of the head.

Roll now, climb out of bed — he grabs my foot.

Get the fuck off me get the fuck off he’s climbing.

Punch he catches my hand won’t give it back.

Pulling off the bed screeeeeee — hand around my neck.