A Brief History of Seven Killings (51 page)

—You . . . you . . . you . . .

All this time I’m seeing nothing but a head wrapped in a towel on a person sitting in a couch not facing me. A don, man, with a girl who just sits there and keeps quiet. Where the fuck was his voice coming from?

—You smart mouth run out of fast. Sit down, white boy.

I sit down on the dining chair by the front door.

—They don’t sit in the living room in your country?

I move over to the living room, if that’s what you could call it since it was as small as a doctor’s waiting room. In fact the couch was gray with the clear plastic covering still on it. Not a girl just sitting there, I see the mesh vest first, then the big hands pulling the towel off his head. He rubs his hair a couple more times then tosses it behind him. Maybe he’s got the kind of woman who picks up after him. Josey Wales. He really is a big man, lighter than Papa-Lo, but his eyes are narrower than you expect, almost like a Chinese guy’s eyes. His belly is starting to push against the mesh vest, ghetto youth uniform though I’m guessing he only wears this in the house. When
a Jamaican bad man ascends it’s noticeable in his wardrobe first. Once he steps out of the house he is always in a shirt, I hear, as if at any minute he might end up in court.

—You have your pen ready all the time?

—Yes.

—I know some men who behave like that with a gun. Two of them standing outside my house right now.

—Not you?

—Nothing good ever come out of a gun mouth. You need to improve on that thing about you?

—Say what?

—Move faster. Get better reflexes, I think they call it.

—I don’t understand.

—Just a while ago, just as I was saying that nothing good ever come out of a gun mouth.

—I heard you, Mr. Wales.

—Only the judge calls me Mr. Wales. Josey.

—Okay.

—Just as I was saying nothing good ever come out of a gun mouth—

—I heard you.

—Something sticking you up your asshole, why you keep interrupting me? As I was saying, just as I was saying nothing good ever come out of a gun mouth. Me see you jerk. Your eye blink open wide, like you never expect something like that to come out the don’s mouth.

—I didn’t—

—You did, brethren. But it was only like a second, so fast that most people would miss it. But none of my three names is most people. You probably didn’t even notice it.

—No I didn’t, and it’s my body.

—People like you don’t see much. Always putting down little note in your little book. Before you even step off the plane you already write the story. Now you just looking for any loose shit to add and say, See it there America, this is the Jamaica runnings.

—You know, not everybody, not every journalist is like that.

—You from the
Melody Maker
?

—
Rolling Stone
.

—So what you doing here almost one year now? Black pussy that sweet?

—What? No, no. I’m working on a story.

—You need one year to write on a story on Copper?

—Copper?

—Copper. You don’t even know the name of the man you asking all sorts of questions about. Copper, the man who misread the treaty.

—There’s a document?

—You not the brightest boy
Rolling Stone
send here.

—Well, I’m not stupid.

—Why
Rolling Stone
would send man out here for over a year? Which story could be so hot and ready?

—Ah, they didn’t actually send me.

—True that. In fact, you don’t work for no damn
Rolling Stone
. Or
Melody Maker
or any of them for that matter.
New York Times
, yeah they would station a reporter out here for a year, but not a magazine that love to put batty boys on their cover. I think you just here for the black pussy. How is that Aisha girl? Treating you good? Still have the P U S S Y with the tight needle eye?

—Oh my G—

—Look like I know more about you than you know about me, white boy.

—Aisha, she’s . . . she’s not my girlfriend.

—Of course not. White boy like you, you don’t have black woman for that particular use.

—I don’t have any woman for that particular use.

Josey Wales laughs like a wheeze, like it’s gritting through his teeth. Not like Papa-Lo, who throws his head back and pushes it out from deep within his big belly.

—That answer wicked, my youth. Wicked and wild.

—I’m here all week.

—No, you leaving today.

—It was a joke? I’m here all week? I say something that makes you laugh, you laugh and I say I’ll be here with more jokes all week? It’s from a stand-up . . . never mind.

—Why you going ’round asking about Copper?

—Well, I—

—You even ask that short-ass idiot, Shotta Sherrif.

—He didn’t really say much.

—Why would the man have anything to say? He didn’t even know him that good.

—Were you two friends?

—Josey Wales love everybody.

—I mean Copper, not Shotta Sherrif. He was really involved in the Central Peace Council, wasn’t he?

—Eh, what do you really think you know about the Central Peace Council? I bet you didn’t know that it was a joke. Peace. Only one kind of peace can ever come down the ghetto. It’s really simple, so simple even a retarded man can catch the drift. Even a white man. The second you say peace this and peace that, and let’s talk about peace, is the second gunman put down their guns. But guess what, white boy. As soon as you put down your gun the policeman pull out his gun. Dangerous thing, peace. Peace make you stupid. You forget that not everybody sign peace treaty. Good times bad for somebody.

—Huh. I could have sworn I heard . . . You saying the peace treaty is a bad idea?

—No. You just say that.

—So whatchu saying?

—Copper come from Wareika Hills, almost country. He didn’t understand how Kingston work. So he come down to Copenhagen to his good friend, Papa-Lo, then he walk over to drink rum with his other good friend, Shotta Sherrif, and everything sweet and safe as long as he in JLP or PNP territory.

—But then last May he go to Caymanas Park, which is—

—No man territory.

—Worse, he go by himself.

—Peace vibes turn him into a damn fool. That’s the problem with peace. Peace make you careless.

—How did the police know he was there?

—You think it’s that hard to find a gunman?

—But there was a swarm of them, not just two random dirty cops betting on a fixed race.

—Ambush. You like cowboy movies?

—I usually say fuck ’em, quite frankly. I’m part Sioux.

—Sue?

—Sioux, like Cherokee. Like Apache.

—You an Indian?

—Part.

—Seen.

—You know who set him up? Copper, that is.

—Maybe he set him own self up.

—But some of the men here said that he was Papa-Lo’s number two, maybe even number one, one day.

—A man who didn’t even live in Copenhagen City because him ’fraid of bullet? Who said that?

—People. And with him gone . . .

—By—look at that, the same fucking bullet him was hiding from. So what if him gone? You can replace any man in the ghetto. Even me.

—I see. How do you think the Singer will react to all this?

—Me look like the Singer keeper?

—No, I mean . . . No love lost between you and him?

—Don’t know what you mean by that, but that man gone through plenty. People just need to make him rest. Just ’low him, make him rest.

—He must be dedicated to the cause though, to come back again to do another concert, especially after what happened the last time.

—Haha. Nobody going to make a move on the Singer again.

—I’ll bet nobody thought anybody would have made a move on him the first time.

—The last time friend allow friend to run horse race con in him house. Him not allowing that shit again. Nobody shooting him in the chest this time because nobody stabbing him in the back.

—Hold up, you think they were out for the Singer’s friend? What’s this about a con?

—I don’t have anything to say about the Singer.

—But you were talking about his friend, not the Singer.

—Certain tree get pruned a long time ago.

—Now you sound like Papa-Lo.

—That’s what happen when people fade. They live on in your memory.

—I sometimes sound like my dad.

—I sometimes discipline like my daddy.

—Oh. Really?

—Yes, white boy. Some men in the ghetto actually know their father. Some of them were even married to their mother.

—I wasn’t saying.

—All the important things you saying so far not coming out of your mouth.

—Oh.

—Papa-Lo is the reason why we living fine in the ghetto. Papa-Lo is the reason that when I flush that toilet I never have to look at shit again. You take that for granted, eh, white boy? That once you press a lever you never have to think about your shit again. Yes, thanks to Papa-Lo ghetto people living fine indeed. Papa-Lo and the Singer is the same. Same thing going happen to the Singer.

—Excuse me?

—Excuse yourself.

—Not a fan, I gather.

—Rather check for Dennis Brown.

—He seems to have believed in this truce.

—You ever get locked up in jail, white boy?

—No.

—Good. Because once them put you in jail, police beat everything out
of you. Is not just the beat in the face with the baton or the kick in the back or the punching out two good teeth so you can’t eat good and nearly slice off your own tongue. Is not even when they put two electric cord, one around your balls and the other on your cock-head and plug in the socket. That’s just the first day and not even the worst thing that happen in jail. The worst thing about jail is how they separate your own time, your own date, even your own birthday. Is a hell of a thing when you can no longer tell if it’s Wednesday or Saturday. You lose sense. You lose grip on what really goin’ on outside in the world. You know what happen when you don’t know night any better than day?

—Tell me.

—Black turn into white. Up turn into down. Puss and dog turn friend. You ask yourself, This peace treaty? Was it between two communities or just two man in jail too long?

—What do you think about—

—I not here to think.

—No, I mean about the Singer.

—You keep thinking I supposed to be thinking about the Singer.

—No, I mean the second concert for peace last year. Maybe he thinks he has big stakes in this peace process.

—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.