A Brief History of Seven Killings (52 page)

Jesus Christ, please make him go away. Please let it be that I’ll close my eyes, I’ll close them for as long as you want, and when I open them he’ll be gone. Do you want me to pray? Because I will, I swear to God. Swear to God. Swear to you. Oh fuck this. I will not think what heaven is like. Who the fuck does that? I will not do it. I’ll just say to him that if you kill me now right here I’ll look you in the eye and stain myself in your head for as long as you live. I swear I’d haunt you like a motherfucker so hard that an exorcist would look at you and say goddamn, my son, there’s really no help for you. I’ll come with that crucifix fucker Linda Blair and that sister fucking mass-murdering motherfucker from Amityville and I’ll cut out one chunk of your brain so that all three of us can live there and then we’ll eat you from the inside out, like cancer. I’ll fucking haunt you, motherfucker. I’ll make you scream devil deh ’pon you in church and I’ll make you see blind and fuck your sister and I’ll make you talk to yourself everywhere because only you and I will know you’re talking to me. And I’ll drive you off the causeway into the fucking sea and you still won’t die because I won’t make you die, I’ll make you live a hundred years to haunt you forever and I’ll write my name in the mirror every time you take a shower and one day you will read
get ready to suck cocks in hell
on the ceiling and I’ll make your bed shake and elbows itch and you’ll scratch so hard everybody will come looking for the heroin and no dog will go anywhere near you because they can sense when a spirit is living rent-free in your head, so you better turn away, you better get up and walk out of this room right now or I swear to God I will. I will. I will.

Phone rings.

He jumps.

I jump.

Gun in mid-spin, gun drops.

He looks at me look at him.

Bends down for gun kick him kick him.

Kicked him in the back and again in the back of the head.

Roll now, climb out of bed—he grabs my foot.

Get the fuck off me get the fuck off he’s climbing.

Punch he catches my hand won’t give it back.

Pulling off the bed screeeeeee—hand around my neck.

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.

Josey Wales

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,

—What the bombocloth wrong with the whole of you fucking ghetto people?

—This is not the first time I hear you with “you people.”

—I didn’t say you people, I said you fucking ghetto people. What the bombocloth wrong with you? Nine man?

—Eight.

—Eight man storm into O.K. Corral with, what, fourteen gun? And yet not a single man can shoot straight?

—Man can shoot straight enough.

—How you manage being the first man in history to shoot somebody in the head and not kill them? Answer that, master.

—I don’t know who you mean by you. Or you so fucking fool you think phone can’t tap?

—What? This look like spy movie? Who the r’ass want to tap you?

—Even so I don’t know who you mean by you, but I’m sure him, whoever he is, didn’t aim for anybody head.

—He, whoever him is, didn’t aim for nothing but wall and sky, it look like. No busha, that kind of slackness and poppy-show only happen in comedy. Imagine hundreds of bullet and they couldn’t take out one fucking man. Is a fucking machine gun, how r’asscloth hard can it be to shoot? I thought Louis taught you people how to deal with these things.

—I don’t know no Louis and I sure don’t know no “you people.”

—Don’t draw me tongue, Josey Wales. I told him you know, don’t make sense trying to teach ghetto naiggers anything that will take any kinda intelligence, they bound to fuck it up. My blind grandmother could hit a target better than you. All eight of you. I don’t know why I even bother to call you.

—I don’t know either since none of those people you keep talking ’bout live here.

—Why me even running up me phone bill, eh? Tell me.

—I don’t know why either, busha.

—What? You know who you talking to? You know who you bombocloth talking to, you little—

—Little? You must did drop your pants and look again.

I hang up the phone. It’s a bitch of a thing when you realise that though you are the only one who didn’t go to a top-class school and foreign college, you is the only man in the room with any sense. I really wanted to educate this ignorant, bad-chatting, Syrian shithouse. That it’s bad enough that plenty man and woman have the Singer off as a prophet, but kill him and the man graduate to martyr. This way the whole world know that guess
what, the prophet is just a man like any other man, he can get shot like any other man—and like any other man in this country, not even he safe. I shoot that man off the pedestal and he fall back down to man size. I didn’t tell Peter Nasser any of that. You have to look past a man, below the skin to the real skin to know that for all the whiteness (in the face of a man who don’t go to beach because even a tan looks black), Peter Nasser is just another ignorant as shit naigger. But at least he was calling me busha these days. I must ask my woman when exactly I change into a white man who drink at Mayfair Hotel. Cho bombocloth man, I hate when a man get me so mad that I start to cuss. Only ignorant man cuss.

I say to Doctor Love, who also call me that night, that I done deal with proving things to people from 1966 and if they really think this is prep school where they feel they must test and test, then Medellín can go right back to using those batty boys in Bahamas. But then, to use the Rasta own words, I get hit with another reasoning. If the Singer did turn into a martyr it would be a big problem, for sure, but it would be their problem, not mine. Peter Nasser would be so busy shitting himself trying to kill a legend that he won’t have time to bother me with his fuckery, because truth be told, both he and I know that I long past the days when politician say jump and I say how high. Now when politician say jump, my woman say he can’t come to the phone right now but I will take a message. Talk about fool, what do you think was going to happen once you give a man with a head a gun, that he was going to return it? Even Papa-Lo wasn’t so fool.

So I decide to let my mind work on this new reasoning. December 8, 1976, news just come that he and everybody survive. Too much Babylon at the hospital and besides, by that time I grab Tony Pavarotti, because Weeper was not the man for anything that need that kind of skill. But at the emergency room they already treat him and send him home. Only the manager was still in the hospital and there was not much use to finishing him off. So me and Pavarotti drive down to 56 Hope Road, expecting police. Police mean nothing when all you need is one shot. Besides, I make one phone call and they would disappear in sixty seconds. Except 56 was a ghost town. Empty driveway and darkness in every window. Not a single
police. I laugh and Pavarotti look at me like he was about to ask a question. Meanwhile Peter Nasser getting so sloppy that it look like a TV show on how much mistake one man can make. The stupid piece of dog shit leave a message, a goddamn message with my woman that
if the
sage go onstage it going make the page and he’ll be the rage
. One of the few times in my life I ever hear Tony Pavarotti laugh was when I read that note out loud. My woman didn’t know what the r’asscloth was going on about so she leave the two of us in the living room. With Tony Pavarotti in the room I wonder if I made a mistake picking Weeper, who I send to clean up what we just do. Instead of doing it himself he just call the Rastas like some girl who always afraid. Worse, he did it on my phone. I make a phone call.