Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Squeeze. I’m red I’m red I’m getting redder a fat red goose where are your eyes. Cough cough hand grip my neck squeeze crushing Adam’s apple he don’t care can’t punch can’t kick scratch scratch he’s not even trying to stop me scratch his cheek scratch his face he slaps me away like I’m a bitch a fucking bitch cough he sitting on my chest I can’t breathe I can’t breathe vise grip Jesus Christ Jesus Christ he grabs my right hand like I’m a silly little bitch such a silly bitch such a silly bitch I’m a fucking silly bitch can’t move pinned my neck burning head bursting head light head dark no I need to tell her tell her that I knew she was going to leave from the day I met her fuck this life flashing business any time now relax the feet first, relax the feet first let them find me at least in peace what the fuck the phone is ringing I jump and he jumps not on my neck too slow turns back his hand on my hand slap my hand on his hand slap his hand my face knuckle punch I slap if I’m a girl I’ll be a girl he’s not saying anything my fingers are slippery his hand on my neck not a strangle a pindown he’s looking for it oh fucking shit the gun the gun the gun he looks I look at the lamp the fucking heavy lamp the crochet the Gideon Bible Jesus fucking Christ the letter opener compliments of the hotel on the stationery he turns around back to me back to hand it to me gun? No gun? Can’t see the gun can’t remember when I grabbed it sharp end dark end why won’t he say anything he’s about to squeeze my neck I squeeze the letter opener he in mid-squeeze I’m in mid-swing straight for his neck, my knuckle slam right under his chin feels like a punching, my finger slips off fuck no, it’s gone in deep. He looks at me through high eyebrows eyes wide he’s not touching it, the letter opener in his neck blood trickles then spurts then spurts more like tap just burst his eyes are doing that thing like they can’t believe what the rest of the body is doing. Not speaking, he’s not speaking he’s jerking, he’s rolling off me, he’s on the bed, he’s off the bed, he walking to the door right knee buckles stand up straight right knee buckles he’s on the ground.

I already know: there are three things that should never come back. One is the spoken word. Two I forget in 1966. Three is a secret. But if I was going to add a number four, that would be him. How many bullets need to miss your heart and lodge in your arm before you reason that home is not home anymore? The bullet in the arm no doctor would remove because they know if they touch it you would never play guitar again. I just sit down in the nice chair my woman just polished until the phone ring. How many bullets? Maybe fifty-seven? they say he said, but nobody can tell me when or to who, that for the fifty-six bullets fired at the house, the said culprit shall also die by fifty-six bullets. Now that kind of prophecy need a new sort of reasoning. Is that fifty-six for each man, fifty-six multiply by eight? Or fifty-six divided by eight, which would take long division and I don’t have time to be that smart.

Or maybe he thinking fifty-six for the man behind the plan, the top ranking, the Don Dada. Ask me just how sick and tired I getting from all this witchdoctor Obeahman fortune-teller fuckery. If a man call himself Rasta today, by next week that is him speaking prophecy. He don’t have to be too smart either, just know one or two hellfire and brimstone verse from the Bible. Or just claim it come from Leviticus since nobody ever read Leviticus. This is how you know. Nobody who get to the end of Leviticus can still take that book seriously. Even in a book full of it, that book is mad as shit. Don’t lie with man as with woman, sure I can run with that reasoning. But don’t eat crab? Not even with the nice, soft, sweet roast yam? And why kill a man for that? And trust me, the last thing any man who rape my daughter going get to do is marry her. How, when I slice him up piece by piece, keeping him alive for all of it and have him watch me feed him foot to stray dog?

I remember last year at these peace treaty parties that spring up in West Kingston like head lice, a Rasta trying to give me a reasoning about who is carrying the mark of the beast. Nothing set a Rasta on fire more than talk of “Armagideon.” So the Rasta say,

— Yow me no buy nothing that no fresh, brethren, because everything in package now carry the mark of the beast. You know, them code number in the white box with the black line.

I was trying to watch this man who was checking out my woman, looking warm under the streetlight while people dancing around her, some man from the Eight Lanes who didn’t know that this woman’s ring finger marked. No need to worry — she already know how to deal with that kind of man — she deal with them harder than me. But that’s the thing about Rasta reasoning. Even when you know it’s total fuckery from the start to end, it still have a hook to it.

— Barcode? I say. But barcode have whole heap of different number, and me sure me never see 666 yet.

— You saying you look?

— No, but—

— But is for ram goat, brethren. Check the reasoning. Nobody in Jamaica have the power of the beast. Them just nyam wha the beast feed. You no notice that all the time the number start with zero zero zero? That be some decimal science. Whole number and natural number and double number. That mean all the number on all the code in all the world add up to 666.

I walk away from the man because the worst part of all this was that it was starting to make some kind of sense. And nothing at this peace party was making any damn sense. Not the Twelve Tribes branch of Rastafari, who skin colour was getting lighter every month, not JLP and PNP palavering, Copenhagen City and the Eight Lanes playing domino and hugging and kissing and lovey-doving like I didn’t kill your brother, father and grandfather three years ago. What is peace? Peace is my blowing a little breeze on my daughter forehead when she sweat in her sleep. This don’t name peace, this name stalemate. I learn that word from Doctor Love.

Doctor Love just fly to Miami saying he has a president to get elected. Where I just send Weeper. Who know what those two up to since they both realise that they love book more than woman. Doctor Love say, Hermano them motherfuckers from Medellín are going to test you, yes test you again, what did you expect, muchacho ? Last week they stole a dead baby from the morgue, gut it out like a fish, stuffed the little shit with cocaine and had some girl fly with it to Fort Lauderdale — just a day after her quinceañera . Hardcore like a porno, no? Me, I starting to get just a little tired of testing. They know and I know that December 3 was just a stupid test. I give them a message but they say they want a body. A dead body is a dead body, I don’t care. But I do care about some bombocloth Spanish-speaking pussyhole thinking that this is some little boy ’prentice that they can just test and re-test.

December 1976, the Singer just do the concert in the park and I wasting time at fucking Jamintel Communications because I need to make an international phone call only to hear Doctor Love and some idiot cursing out in Spanish, but not Cuban Spanish so I didn’t understand most of it, but I know he was mad. And I’m thinking who the fuck this pussyhole think he talking to, as if I don’t know what hijo de puta mean? What he think I was going to do, start cry and say I’m so sorry, bossman, next time I’ll do better I promise? Like some whore who need discipline from her pimp? Was about to tell this maricón about him bombocloth when Doctor Love say to me, Just finish the job, muchacho , just finish it. So the Jamaican Syrian, the Cuban and the Colombian all want a body yet none of them realise that I gave them something better than a body. Same week Peter Nasser call me with,