A Brief History of Seven Killings (19 page)

Nobody have to touch a man to hurt a man. All these white people who think they can spend time sinning with the devil, then when the time come, slip away without a mark. I remember when Peter Nasser first come to the ghetto wearing shades so that nobody could tell what was going on in the eyes. How he almost chat as bad as naigger, but still sound like he do schooling in America. Still you can never trust a man who look at everybody as replaceable, from wife to gunman enforcer. He already contact
Weeper and Tony Pavarotti about replacing me when things get too big, or too heavy, or too sophisticated for a man who didn’t go to secondary school.

This is his constituency and he have the vote and the local woman to prove it. But he starting to confuse representing people with owning them, and soon even he going need a reckoning. Not by me, but by somebody. People like me don’t need secondary school because we graduate already. Before man like Peter Nasser start to visit us late in the night with a car trunk full of gun. Before man like Peter Nasser realize that it better for him that Copenhagen City and the Eight Lanes keep warring than make peace. Make them both burn down in judgment is what I say. By then the house in Miami finish build and man like Peter Nasser start to choke on him own growth.

Fucking Weeper. At least he not sending more letter to that damn man in prison. He not telling me who but I’ll soon find out. And when I do,

—Well that was a wheel and come and tumble down . . . whooo!

—You want a rag to clean up?

—Nah brethren, everything evatoprate, he say, rubbing his smash-up glasses and squinting.

—Evaporate.

—What?

—How the girl getting home?

—Her foot sick?

—You is the Don of all dons, Weeper.

—No star, that is you. You so Don them should call you Donavon.

—Donovan.

—No that me say? Anyway, me did think you was going sleep. Instead you up and whining like Godmother.

—Don’t make no damn sense sleeping now. Too many things to keep me up.

—No damn thing to keep you awake. Keep this up and you soon become like the old man we just drive past sitting on him verandah like house rat.

—You know why I’m not going to sleep? Something don’t sit right about those boys.

—The boys can aim a gun and pull the trigger. Stop being the mother.

—I tell you I don’t like working with so much man I can’t trust.

—You recruit them.

—No, I recruit them and wait for you to nod yes or no. You’re the one that pick nothing but boy. I tell you is no problem to link up TEC-9, to telegram Chinaman in New York.

—No, man.

—Bullman, Tony Pavarotti, Johnny W—

—No, man! Stop chat like a fucking idiot! You can’t control them man. Give them the chance fucking half would run ’way when the time come, the other half try to kill you. And you supposed to be the thinker of Copenhagen City? You can’t control man. You never go to prison yet you still don’t know how to run man. We need boy who when I point left they go left and who when I point right they go right. Boy just do it, man spend too much time thinking about, just like you a do right now. You turn a boy, and you work a boy and you drug a boy until the only thing, the only thing that fucker want to do is anything you say.

—Learn that in prison too? You think I don’t know about the type of boy you talking about? That kinda boy you can use only one time, you hear. One time and them finish.

—Who say we going use them twice? Ah wah? Bam-Bam is you boy now?

—Me no have no r’asscloth boy.

—Make them stew in the shack. Make them sweat it out. Make them crawl in a corner and cry for some white. Yow, when me reach back.

—You want gunman or zombie?

—Make them boy stay. Make them cook. By the time we go back, them boy going shoot God.

—Don’t bloodcloth blaspheme in me fucking house, Weeper!

—Or God will come down ’pon me with lightning and thunder?

—Or me take this bombocloth gun and shoot you meself.

—Whoa. Brethren, just cool. Just cool now. Is joke me a joke.

—Them bloodcloth joke no funny.

—Brethren, put down the gun. Is me this, is Weeper. Brethren, me no like when people pull gun ’pon me, you know, even when them ah make joke.

—Me look like me ah make joke?

—Josey.

—No, tell me. Tell me one fucking joke you ever hear me make.

—Brethren, alright, no more God business in you house. Just cool, man.

—Don’t bring none of that monkey man bullshit in me house.

—Yes, Josey, alright, brethren, alright.

—And don’t think I won’t shoot you and do this meself.

—Yes, brethren.

—Now go sit down and relax youself. Me would a say go to sleep, but me and you know that you not sleeping for at least three day. So cease and settle—

—You look you need to settle too.

—Settle!

Weeper fling himself on the couch and was about to put up him foot until he see my face. He take off his shoes, put his glasses on the side table and then stretch out. He is quiet for a long time. I rub the gun in my hands. Then he start to giggle like a little girl. Then he giggle more. And more. Soon he is laughing out loud.

—What the fuck you take make joke now?

—Then no must you? You is the fucking joke.

I rub the gun in my hands, slipping the index finger behind the trigger.

—You ever notice how bad you chat when you temperature heat up? The hotter you get, the worse you chat. I should draw out you tongue some more, just to find the Josey Wales me grow up with.

He laugh for so long that I start laughing too, even though me and Weeper never grow up together. He roll over into the sofa, back now to me and pants slipping down showing his red brief. Every time he fuck a woman
I hope that this is the woman that fix him. Because some disease lick him in prison, something that make him not normal. Then just like that he start snoring, like somebody out of a TV comedy. That son of a bitch who sleeping on my own damn couch call me a fucking idiot. Weeper mad as fuck but everything he say tonight make a crazy sorta sense. This is a messy job, the real work come with the cleanup. Can’t bring in a man like Tony Pavarotti. Man with those skills rare and you have to use them again and again. Some tool make for repeated use. And some tool, you use once then destroy.

Barry Diflorio

S
even-fifteen.
We’ve been stuck behind a Ford Escort farting black smoke for ten minutes. This car is going nowhere and my oldest son Timmy is humming what sounds like “Layla,” I swear to God. He’s in the front seat singing and mediating an all-out world war between Superman and Batman because the wife told him he could play with his toys all the way up to the school gate but then he would have to leave them in the car. Jesus H Christ, Third World traffic jams are the worst, all these cars and no goddamn road. Daddy, what’s goddamn, my youngest Aiden says from the back, the first time I realize that I’ve been thinking out loud. Read your book, honey, I say. I mean buddy, or would you rather little man? Now I’m just perplexing the kid. Asserting your masculinity shouldn’t seem so complicated at four.

We’re in Barbican, a roundabout there for no reason it seems other than to direct traffic to a supermarket with the unfortunate name Masters. The roads are congested with rich people taking their kids to school, quite a few of them heading in my direction to the Hillel Academy. I make a left turn and pass women selling bananas and mangoes, out of season, and men selling sugarcane. And weed if you know how to ask. Not that I ever ask for it. You have to get to the point where you know how the country works better than the people who live here. Then you leave. The Company suggested I read a book from V. S. Naipaul before coming here,
The Middle Passage
. It amazed me how he could land in some country, be there for mere days and nail exactly what was wrong with it. I went to that beach he wrote about, Frenchman’s Cove, expecting lazy white women and men in sunglasses and Bermuda shorts, attended to by cabana boys. But even the cove got hit by a wave of democratic socialism.

We turn right. Traffic disappears and we’re going uphill, past huge twoand three-story houses, quite a few of them closed up, not in a left-for-theday way with a few windows open, but as if the owners have all gotten the fuck out’a Dodge, probably waiting out the election elsewhere. Hillel is right at the foot of the mountains. Sooner or later the wife is going to ask again, Why do we live all the way down in New Kingston when our children go to school all the way up in the mountains? She has a point, but it’s too damn early for her to be right. My oldest jumps out of the door the instant the car stops at the gate. At first I’m thinking of course, my car’s not cool enough, but then it hits me. He almost makes it through the gate.

—Timothy Diflorio, you stop right there.

Busted and he knows it. Here it comes, his
You mean me?
face.

—Wha’appen, Daddy?

—Batman. He’s really lonely here on this seat. Where did Superman go?

—Maybe he fell.

—Hand it over, little man. Or I’ll walk you to your classroom myself. And I’ll hold your hand the entire way.

That did it, the fate worse than death. He looks at his younger brother, who, God bless him, still thinks his pop holding his hand is the greatest idea in the world. Timmy throws Superman in the car.

—Babylon business this.

—Hey!

—I’m sorry, Dad.

—Your mom’s in the car too.

—Sorry, Mom, can I go now?

I wave him off.

—Have a great Christmas party, honey!

The scowl on his face is worth the whole trip. She harrumphs ’round the back. Mrs. Diflorio. I thought she would have said something by now, but she was transfixed by some article in
Vogue Patterns
, some shit that she’ll bring to her crocheting circle so she can add a new collar to the red dress she loves wearing so much. I’m being cruel. It’s a book club, not a
crocheting circle. Except I never see her with a book. She doesn’t bother to come up to the front seat. Instead she says,

—Maybe they’ll have a Santa with red cartridge paper on his head and a pillowcase full of cheap candy, and he’ll just say no problem mon, instead of ho ho ho.

—Well, take a look at Daddy’s little bigot.

—Don’t give me that shit, Barry, I have more black friends than you.

—Don’t know if Nelly Matar would like to know you call her black behind her back.

—You’re missing the point. Last Christmas was supposed to be the last Christmas I spend, we spend, in a foreign country.

—Good Lord, here I thought I had stashed away this broken record.

—I promised Mom we would be in Vermont for Christmas.

—No you didn’t, come off it, Claire. And you forget that your mom likes me a whole lot more than she likes you.

—You bastard, why would you say something like that?

—What is it with you women? You just never know, do you? Ever occur to you that nagging on and on about a point might not be the best way to make it?

—Oh I’m sorry, you must be mistaking me for your Stepford wife. Maybe we can swing back to the house and pick her up.

—Well, we’re headed that way.

—Screw you, Barry.

I think of at least ten ways to respond to this, including mentioning that we had sex only last night. Maybe it would defuse her, or maybe she would accuse me of patronizing, or changing the subject. Mind you, she doesn’t have a fucking subject. It’s December 3 and I have way too much to think about right now for this woman to be coming at me again and again. Every response I can think of I’ve said over a dozen times so I shut up. I already know where this will fucking lead. In silence we drive all the way down to the intersection of Lady Musgrave Road and Hope Road. At the stoplight she gets out and jumps into the front seat. I turn left.

—What’s Aiden doing?

—Nodding off between two pages of
The Lorax
.

—Oh.

—Well?

—Well what? I’m driving, honey.

—You know, Barry, men like you ask a lot of their wives, a whole lot. And we do it. You know why we do it? Because you’ve convinced us that it’s temporary. We even go along when temporary means every two years we have to find new friends just so we don’t die of boredom. We even go along with the poor way of raising children, uprooting them for no reason just at the point when they finally build connections—

—Connections, huh?

—Let me finish. Yes, connections you never had disrupted when you were a kid.

—What are you talking about? My dad moved us all the time.

—Well, no wonder you have no idea what a friend is. I guess I should just be happy that we’re in an English-speaking country for a change. For a while I couldn’t understand my own son.

She can go on and on about the marriage, or the kids, or the job, or Ecuador or this fucking country and I wouldn’t care. It’s stuff like this that pisses me off, makes me really fucking hate her.

—Because you promised an end, you promised us something at the end of it that would be worth it, even if it means more time for your family. But you know what you are, Barry? You’re a liar. Just a big liar to your wife and your children, all for a job that who knows what you do? You’re probably not even good at it since you never seem to get a good desk. You’re just such a fucking liar.

—Please, enough.

—Enough?

—Lay off. I’ve had enough, Claire.

—Enough what, or you’ll what, Barry? Sign us up for more years, in where, Angola this time? Maybe the Balkans, Morocco? I swear to God if we go to Morocco I’ll sunbathe topless.

—Enough, Claire.

—Enough or what?

—Enough or I’ll shove this fucking fist between your two fucking eyes so fast that it’ll burst through the back of your fucking skull and shatter this fucking glass.

She sits there like she’s not looking at me, but not staring out at the road either. It doesn’t happen often, a reminder that maybe her husband has killed for a living so all bets are off. I could leave her like this, at least it would give me some fucking peace. This is punching below the belt, tapping into the fear that every company wife has for her husband. If I were a wife beater she would be suffering in silence for the rest of her life and not even her fucking father would care. But then not only would she be afraid of me but she would teach that fear to my kids. Then I’ll become just like the others, like Louis Johnson, who I hear actually does hit his wife. I give her an in to come back out on top.