Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Way at the end of the runway, two jeep hang back lazy, Jamaica Defence Force, with four or five soldier positioned behind them, two with binoculars. See them from the second I went out to the waving gallery. Seeing soldiers on the lookout made me think of the Singer coming down from the white man hill. The look on his face when he wake up and see no police. He probably send two or three Rasta brethren ahead to see if the road safe, which mean he and his right-hand man was coming down the hill all alone. With no soldier watching through binoculars. You can always assume one or two things about the police: (1) make a deposit to a bank account or a back pocket and anything can happen and (2) that they always come cheap. But with soldier you never know. They hang back, standing watch maybe, but just as likely that they just waiting. I wonder if the pilot expect them to come over.

— Make sure you take him out before the soldier them drive over.

Pavarotti nod.

6:02. Everybody but the sun waiting for the Singer. For a second it feels like I waiting for a parade, like that grainy newsreel that come on TV every November about Kennedy in Dallas. Everybody waiting on the Singer. Not just me, not just the soldiers, not just Tony Pavarotti or the plane, but Peter Nasser, Doctor Love, and a phone number for the Medellín cartel that I never use myself. But then I wonder. Everybody waiting to see his next move or mine? Who is the real dancing monkey in this episode? Who people watching to see the next move? And if people say jump and you manage to jump high, do they stop telling you to jump, or disrespect you forever because you didn’t act like a man and say, Fuck you, bad man don’t jump for nobody. The problem with proving something is that instead of leaving you alone people never stop giving new things to prove, harder things. Bullshit things until it become a TV comedy. Or just a joke.

Tony Pavarotti tap my shoulder. He is here. He and another Rasta walking to the plane. Nothing moving but the dust they kick up. The airport is still empty and not waking up till seven. They look around while walking, moving slow, stopping one second then moving again. The Singer look to the plane, scanning left and right, with the other Rasta walking backwards making sure nothing behind them. Both of them see the army jeep and stop. The Singer look at the jeep and look at the plane. Nobody move. Tony Pavarotti turning the gun to aim, following them. His finger slip around the trigger. The Singer looking at the soldiers and say something to the Rasta. They start moving again but slower, stopping right in front of the plane. Maybe they waiting for somebody to come out. I re member that Tony Pavarotti don’t need orders from me. I hear a click.

— Stop.

Pavarotti look at me, look at the two of them running to the plane now.

— No bother with it.

They run to the plane and have to close the door themselves.

When I get two phone call the next day I cut both short with the same line. You want him dead so much, you kill him.

Now I’m sitting down in my living room waiting for the phone to ring. This phone better ring soon. Soon as it start ringing I can stop thinking. Time for action, no time for thinking. I wonder if she pay the phone bill? The phone is supposed to ring three times before I go to bed. Not even tomorrow coming before my phone ring. Sitting down, waiting for the phone, the Singer enter my head again and I want to cuss. That man will never know how I come to near finish him twice. How I let him go because I knew that once he board that plane he will never come back. And yet in 1978, coming off the plane and even causing fuss in customs is he. In two years Peter Nasser know better than to come to me like a barking dog and to speak to me like a man. He even take to calling me busha all the time, which make me check if this carbolic soap was bleaching my skin. Me all stop using it, which made my woman very happy since she didn’t feel like she was sleeping in a hospital ward anymore. I don’t know what surprise him more, that the Singer was coming back to do yet another concert or that I know from before and tell him so.

— All this fucking peace treaty business, you have anything to do with this fuckery?

We’re at Lady Pink Go-Go Club, which he is liking just a little too much. None of the whores that Weeper used to deal with seem to be here anymore. Look like they lose interest in fucking Pepsi bottles onstage as soon as he lose interest in them. But the new lot include a light-skinned girl so of course the place packed. The head woman put the two of us in a room upstairs and ask if we want we cocky clean or batty wash. I said not tonight, but Peter Nasser wasn’t going to pass up the chance for a ghetto vacuum, as he himself call it, and look around as if it was going to catch on. He want to talk business even as the whore was sucking him juice out. I say, Brethren, two man can’t have cocky expose in the same room, is what you be? Last thing he want is man to call him battyman, so before he ask, I say I going outside. I said look for me in fifteen minutes but when I come back in eight she already walking out, spitting and cussing ’bout the bloodcloth white man who bust himself in her mouth.

— You know what me tired of? All this shit ’bout the peace treaty. Now Jacob Miller write a song about it? You hear it yet? Want me to sing it?

— No.

— Peace treaty to r’asscloth.

— Next time tell the soldiers don’t shoot.

— Soldiers? What you mean, Green Bay? All of this is because of Green Bay? You no hear the news, no saints were killed in Green Bay.

— Funny thing, eh? Don’t all of them come from your constituency? One of them even tell me that it was some man name Junior Soul who come to your lands telling them they can get free gun.

— I don’t know anything ’bout no Junior Soul.

— But everybody did seem to think I know. I ask people, Who from the ghetto would have a name like that? Sound like some singer out of Motown.

— Is what you know ’bout… never mind.

— Maybe he was something in the air.

— A natural mystic?

— You know that him coming back? Now because of all this peace treaty fuckery he of all people coming back.

— He was just here for this damn peace concert. Wasn’t that enough? Isn’t he a Londoner now? Maybe he want install all those ghetto toilet himself?

— So if you did give the ghetto toilets, he wouldn’t have a reason to come back then.

— Of course Josey Wales, because my party is in power. You seem — busha, what the fuck you finding funny?

“Ma Baker” was playing out on the floor. I could hear it even over the crowd yelling and joking and cussing and screaming for the woman to spread out di meat. I didn’t bother tell him why “Ma Baker” makes me laugh.

— Nothing, busha. You really think the Singer coming back again for a toilet?

— Well, not a toilet exactly but fixtures and fittings, or whatever you call it that ghetto people bawling that they need now. They can continue bawl, who tell them to vote for this bombocloth socialist government. Twice. You have to ask, How far can a cocky go up you battyhole before you realise a battyman is fucking you?

— The Singer not coming to fix no damn toilet.

— So he’s coming again because of this fucking peace business. I hope you know this is making people further up very concerned. Very concerned. You know how many Cubans fly into Jamaica last week? And now that fuckery ambassador Erik Estrada parading around like he own the place.

— The Singer meet with Papa-Lo and Shotta Sherrif the same time.

— Who the r’asscloth don’t know that? Everybody mix-up-mix-up at 56 Hope Road, even your fucking Prime Minister used to act like he work there.