Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

— He says I instead of we.

— I noticed too, hombre .

— That something I should pay attention to?

— Fuck if I know. Just keep on truckin’, man. You guys unpack your box of good-goods yet?

— I think Americans say goodies.

— Do I look like a fucking Yankee?

— How you want me to answer that, Dr. Lee dungarees? Anyway, that box unpack long time.

He’s talking about another shipment, that come the same way that last one come in December 1976. In a big box marked Audio Equipment/Peace Concert, left out on the wharf for me, Weeper, Tony Pavarotti and two more man empty it. Seventy-five of the M16s we keep. Twenty-five we sell to man in Wang Sang Lands who seem to be itching for firepower lately. We keep all the ammunition, Weeper’s idea. Let them make them own bullet, he say.

It look like we planning for war, even though everybody else was planning for peace. Papa-Lo himself bounce back out of that grey cloud he put himself in ever since the Singer get shot. Just like him to put the entire blame on himself, since taking all the blame is just the flip side of taking all the credit. Telling the Singer that is ’cause him was in lockup why things happen or they would never have happened at all. Papa-Lo take a rocket ship and fly off this planet a long time ago, he might as well join Pigs in Space. Trouble is every day more people boarding that flight. Peace treaty fever take over the ghetto so much that the man who kill my cousin come up to me at the end of the first Unity Dance with his arm open like he was expecting a hug. I call him a battyman and walk off.

Peace treaty fever reach as far as Wareika Hill where man like Copper come down for the first time in years, as if he forget that every single policeman in Jamaica have a bullet in the chamber with his name on it. When even Copper come down the hills to eat, drink and make merry, it’s time I start scope out another country.

Papa-Lo even come to my house asking why I not jamming to the new peace riddim, and that is high time black people listen to what Marcus Garvey did plan for us all this time. I didn’t bother ask if he know any fucking thing about Marcus Garvey or if this was reasoning that some damn Rasta from London was feeding him. But then his eyes, when I look at them, was wet. Pleading. And I realize something about this man and what he was doing. He was already seeing far beyond the clouds, far beyond the ghetto, far beyond time and his place in the world. That man was thinking about what would write on his gravestone. What people will say about him long after the last chunk of flesh rotten off his bone. Forget the seven time he go to jail for murder and attempted murder to walk out every time. Forget that before the white man and Doctor Love come along, he was the one who teach every man how to shoot. Forget that both him and Shotta Sherrif operate in boundaries that they mark off. He want his gravestone to say he unite the ghetto.

People think that I have animosity towards Papa-Lo. Me have nothing but love for the man and I would say the same to anybody who ask. But this is ghetto. In the ghetto there is no such thing as peace. There is only this fact. Your power to kill me can only be stop by my power to kill you. You have people living in the ghetto who can only see within it. From me was a young boy all I could see was outside it. I wake up looking out, I go to school and spend the whole day looking out the window, I go up to Maresceaux Road and stand right at the fence that separate Wolmer’s Boys’ School from Mico College, just a zinc fence that most people don’t know separate Kingston from St. Andrew, uptown from downtown, those who have it and those who don’t. People with no plan wait and see. People with a plan see and wait for the right time. The world is not a ghetto and a ghetto is not the world. People in the ghetto suffer because there be people who live for making them suffer. Good time is bad time for somebody too.

That’s why neither the JLP nor the PNP fucking with the peace treaty. Peace can’t happen when too much to gain in war. And who want peace anyway when all that mean is that you still poor? This is what I thought Papa-Lo understand. You can lead a man to peace all you want. You can fly out the Singer and make him sing for money to build a new toilet in the ghetto. You can go wind your waste in Rae Town or in Jungle and par with man who only last year kill your brother. But a man can only move so far before the leash pull him back. Before the master say, Enough of that shit, that’s not where we going. The leash of Babylon, the leash of the police code, the leash of Gun Court, the leash of the twenty-three families that run Jamaica. That leash get pull two weeks ago, when the Syrian pussyhole Peter Nasser try to talk to me in code. That leash get pull one week ago, when the American and the Cuban come with a colouring book to teach me about anarchy.

These three men leave me a busy man. Mr. Clark talk about Cuba like a man who can’t accept that him woman don’t want him no more. And he not letting that happen to Jamaica, whatever he think that might mean. Strange how a man wants to fuck with a country him never live in before. Maybe he should wait a year and then ask himself if this country really worth buying a Valentine’s card for. I tell you, move with these white men long enough and you start to talk like them. Maybe that’s why Peter Nasser now calling me busha. One vulgar politician waiting every day for a phone call from the airport about the coming Rasta apocalypse. One American who answer to an American who answer to an American who just want to step on this country to jump over to Cuba. And one Cuban, living in Venezuela, who want this Jamaican to help the Colombian ship his cocaine to Miami and move it on the street in New York, because the Bahamians was a bunch of battymen who started to freebase off their own supply and selling that shit local. Worse, those little pussies don’t like how blood taste. Three men who want this fourth one, me, to shape 1979 for them. Me, I’m getting tired of doing what men want, including Papa-Lo.

But Papa-Lo energize himself for the mission of justice though. It run through him like a Flintstone vitamin. You’d think he was doing fifty-six acts of penance for the fifty-six bullets fired at Hope Road. Right before the second peace concert, I feed him Leggo Beast. Tell him that Leggo Beast was hiding in his mother cupboard just five house down from him, but didn’t tell him that he was hiding there for two year now. The man take the news by sucking in the air. Couldn’t tell if it was a wince or a sigh. He and Tony Pavarotti and some other man march down to the house like he was Jesus about to clean out the temple. He was going to turn it into a show, for the people, the ghetto and for even the Singer to see that he was taking revenge nobody ask him to take. Drag the boy and his mother out of the house and proceed to beat the poor woman who already past forty right in public.

Say what you want about a boy who try to kill the Singer, but it’s a different story when is a mother trying to keep her only boy alive. But Papa-Lo must have people seeing him do something. Like he making a difference on something that already gone and done and can’t change. He try to make an example out of her, burn down her entire life and kick her out with him own boot, but all he do was make an example out of himself. Like some naigger being extra wicked to impress the massa.

Then Leggo Beast start to scream that is the CIA that make him do it. The CIA and people from Cuba, which don’t make no sense since everybody know that Cubans are communist and would not have any dealings with anybody from America. As if Papa-Lo knew anything more about the CIA than any Jamaican. Then Leggo Beast start to scream how this was my idea. I watch Papa-Lo watching me to see if I blink. Leggo Beast scream it for so long that he started to wonder if he should believe it, after all in Jamaica what don’t go so, go near so. In fact that is exactly what he say to me when he come knocking on my door the day after I tell him where to look, with two youths so young that their gun was sliding down into their brief. I look at the two of them hard and both look away, the one on Papa’s left fidgeting like some nervous girl. The other turn back and try to look. I mark him. Papa-Lo tapping his foot like he already annoyed.