A Brief History of Seven Killings (11 page)

—More paranoid than usual these few days.

—That’s because you think tomorrow special. No different from any other day. You know why I pick you, Weeper, you know why? Because if it’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a man who can only tell me what he about to do. That’s why I don’t fucking trust no politician. All he can tell me is what he going to do.

—Never make a politician do you a favour he will want . . . I ever tell you how me run ’pon the Singer?

Ten thousand time but I don’t tell him that. There are things Weeper need to say a dozen, a hundred, a thousand time till he no longer have the need to say it.

—No, you never tell me.

—Three year into the service . . .

He always call the years in prison, the service.

—Three years. Them take us out Port Henderson beach.

—They make prisoner swim? I would escape so fast.

—NO, no, no. Them have we out there ’pon a work, have big man chopping down wood. You right, I should have just swing the cutlass and chop off a guard head. Anyway, brethren, we out there a work and the Singer and him friend come out there. The man look ’pon me and say, We everybody out here a fight for you, seen? And me look at the man and hear him a reason with me, right? And him say him fighting for my rights! Me. Then him laugh and walk off. Hate the pussyhole like poison after that.

He hate the Singer for real. But the real story don’t have nothing to do with Weeper. He think they talking to him and his heart leap up, Weeper
was even about to walk over, despite guards watching. Then he realize the Singer were talking to the man beside him, not him. For some reason, even after cat o’ nine, gun butt and piss in the rice when he get too testy with a guard, this is the thing that hurt him the most. The thing that make him blood boil. And it never even happen, but something in Weeper need it to happen, need it to end this way. I don’t care, this is what drawing him to pull the gun when I need him to.

—Them waiting by the shack right now, time to go, I say. —Everybody but Bam-Bam. Take my car and pick him up. He watching the house all day.

—For real, brethren, for real.

Bam-Bam

I
s a hell of a thing
when a gun come home to live with you. The people who live with you notice it first. The woman I live with talk to me different. Everybody talk to you different when them see a new bulge in you pants. No, is not that at all. When a gun come to live in the house it’s the gun, not even the person who keep it, that have the last word. It come between man and woman talk, not just serious reasoning but even a little thing.

—Dinner ready, she say.

—Me no hungry.

—Okay.

—I going need it warm when me finally hungry.

—Yes sah.

When a gun come to live in the house the woman you live with treat you different, not cold, but now she weigh word, measure it before talking to you. But a gun talk to the owner too, telling him first that you can never own this, that outside is plenty people who don’t have a gun but know you do, and one night they going come like Nicodemus and take it. Nobody ever own a gun. You don’t know that until you own one. If somebody give it to you, that somebody can take it back. Another man can think is for him even when he seeing that is you control it. And he don’t sleep until he get it ’cause he can’t sleep. Gun hunger worse than woman hunger for at least maybe a woman might hungry for you back. At night me don’t sleep. Me stay up in the dark shadow, looking at it, rubbing it, seeing and waiting.

Two days after he leave, we hear that Papa-Lo was in England watching the Singer on tour. Rumour was that Funnyboy was in England the same time, but nobody could say if that was true or untrue since they crucify
the last informer right in the Garbagelands. The man who bring guns to the ghetto tell we of more waiting in the night in a container marked Peace Concert. When we three get to the wharf it empty like Clint Eastwood just ride off. No crane working, no floodlight on, no people, only water slapping the dock. The crate was open and ready. Weeper drive right up in Josey Wales’ Datsun. Me, him and Heckle load the trunk and backseat with so much ammo that neither me nor Heckle could fit in the car when Weeper drive back. He give we money for taxi, but no taxi going to ghetto, worse during curfew, so we take the money and buy Kentucky Fried Chicken, watching the cashier waiting on we to leave so they can lock up but too ’fraid to tell we to leave.

That night the same white man who joke with Frouser teach we how to shoot. Plenty man come from the ghetto and when he see one of them he smile and say, What’s shaking, Tony? But Tony don’t answer. He say to nobody that Tony and him go way back to our little school in Fort Benning, but nobody know about this Tony going to no school. He set up target and ask me to shoot. Then the man who bring guns to the ghetto look at me and smile. Weeper telling the white man that Papa-Lo get soft but the white man don’t understand much of what Weeper saying. He just nod and laugh and say I gotcha! then look at Josey Wales to repeat everything slower but he still laugh too loud at what wasn’t no joke. This make Josey Wales’ face even more cross because everybody know that he proud that he can speak good. The white man say we’re fighting for freedom from totalitarianism, terrorism and tyranny, but nobody know what he mean.

I look at the other boys, two younger than me, five older including Demus and Weeper. We all dark, we all hate to comb our hair. We all wearing khaki or gabardine or jeans pants with the right leg rolled up right under the knee and a rag sticking out of the left back pocket because this look carrying the swing. Some of we wearing tam but some of we don’t because tam is for Rastas and Rastas look like they turning socialist. So cialism is another ism and even the Singer so sick of ism that he write a song about it. Then the white man talk about how some people trying to use smooth talk to win people over and how totalitarianism always happens with
consent and we nod like we understand. He say chaos nine time. He say how the country will thanks us one day and we nod like we understand.

But Josey Wales want something more than this party business. I think of how he always smell kinda off even though him woman dress him. A smell like garlic and sulphur. And after they show us how to shoot again, Josey Wales say we going to Rema because naiggers ’roun’ dere acting a way. You got yourself some uppity niggers, the white man say and laugh as he leave in a jeep. There was Rema again, between JLP and PNP, between capitalist and socialist. Josey Wales tell the white man that he not an ist for anybody, he just smarter than all of them and he will do what they want if they leave him alone in Miami. The white man say he doesn’t know what Josey Wales was yapping about but then smile like he and the devil have a secret. Word was that Rema people were grumbling that JLP put money and corned beef and sewage system in Copenhagen City but don’t do nothing for them and maybe it’s time they join with the PNP for real, and turn the Eight Lanes into Nine Lanes. All this Weeper tell we when we go back to shack by the train line. He still telling we while he mix white C with ether and heat it with a lighter. Then he suck up the coke through him nose and give some to me first.

We coming up to Rema in the Datsun. I grab the door but it feel soft the air peeling through me hair like two hundred woman fingers brushing past my nipples and this must be how woman feel when you suck them titties my head feel lumpy clear gone like I’m walking around without a head and then my head is back but now it’s a balloon and the dark street getting darker the yellow streetlight yellower and that girl in the house across the street make me so horny but the seam won’t pop pop pop in my pants and fuck fuck fuck I have to fuck fuck fuck every woman in the world and I will fuck the shit out of Miss Jamaica and when the baby come out of her pussy I will fuck her too and I going pull this trigger and kill the world. But I want to fuck and it not hard. It not hard! It not hard! Is the freebase. It must be the C. Or maybe H. Me no know. Me don’t bombocloth know and this car need to reach where it going and stop being a snail and I want to swing the car door open and jump out and run all the way and run back and run again
and run so fast that I fly and I want to fuck fuck fuck but it’s not hard! It’s not hard! And the radio in my head playing a killer tune that it never play on the radio right now rhythm hold I, rhythm wild! and the other boys in the car feel it and know it too and I look at Weeper who look at me and know and I could kiss him with tongue and shoot him for being a batty boy and laugh and laugh again and the truck hit a hill and we feel like we going up to heaven no, yes heaven, the Datsun flying and my head turn into a balloon and then I think of Rema and how man who live there must learn a lesson and I want them to learn it so hard that I grab and clutch the M16, but I really want to grab a little boy on the street and wring his neck around and around and around until it pop off and then I’ll scoop up some blood and rub it on my face and say who under heavy manners now pussyhole and I want to fuck fuck fuck but it not getting hard! It not getting hard! and the Datsun screech. And before Weeper say anything we jump out and run down a street and the street is wet and the street is a sea and no, the street is air and I’m flying through it and I can hear my footstep as if it’s somebody’s footstep that clap the pavement like gunshots and then I’m at state theatre with Josey Wales because Harry Callahan is back with
Enforcer
, and the other bad man because boy with gun is man not boy, and every time Clint Eastwood shoot up a boy Josey Wales sing people are you ready? we sing Bow! Oh Lord, and shoot up the screen till all we see is hole and smoke. And everybody would have run out of the theatre but they know they better keep rolling the film or we’ll come up into the screen room and enforce. And before I fire again at the screen I remember me in Rema fields not the movie theatre and we firing up a house and a shop still open and people running and screaming,
Yes, pusssyhole, run run ’cause gunman ah come chil-li-li-boom-boom-eh!
but we not to shoot anybody well not to kill them and this make me really really mad and I still want to fuck fuck fuck and I don’t know why I want to fuck so bad but can’t get no cock-stand so I run down one of the girls and shout I goin’ kill you and a grab her and I want to but Weeper grab me and butt me in the face with him gun and say what the fuck take you? This is warning nothing else and I want to kill him too, but he already signaling that we leave because though Rema man can’t
afford anything, one or two of them have guns too, but who care ’bout Rema pussyhole? Bullet bounce off me like Superman. Me take the S off of Superman chest and the B off Batman belly. We see a boy and chase after him, but he disappear like a mouse in a hole that spring up only for mouse and I shout out for the battyman to come out and die like real man, I want to kill him so bad, I want to kill kill kill then a dog come out and I run after the dog because I want to kill this dog, I need to kill the dog, I going to kill this dog, I kill this dog! Josey Wales and the others running to the truck and they catch a boy and kick him in the back and in the shin and in the batty and say that this be for all Rema pussyhole who think they can switch to PNP just so, you better remember say we have the gun and know where you stand, and they kick the boy again and he run off and I go to shoot him and Weeper look at me and I want to shoot him, I want to shoot him bad and I want to shoot him now now now but Weeper say get you pussycloth backside in the fucking car or every man here going full you up of so much bullet that you goin’ whistle in the breeze and I don’t know because when I want to fuck, I want to fuck fuck fuck and when I want to kill, I want to kill kill kill and now that I don’t want to die, I ’fraid ’fraid ’fraid and I never ’fraid like that ever and my heart beating real real bad. But I jump in the backseat and I think of the shooting and how it feel better than good and how I feel better than good but also how just as I started to think I feel better than good I started to not feel so good. Leaving that fish town without killing somebody make me feel like how some people feel when a person dead and I don’t know why. It’s not something to feel anything about and yet still. And the darkness was never so dark and the drive was never so long even though it wasn’t far and I knew that Weeper was mad at me but I thought he was going to kill me and kill everybody and the entire Copenhagen City grey and rusty and dirty and I hate it and don’t know why since it was all I know and all I can think is that when I smoke that thing everything look good and every road was pretty and every woman I wanted to fuck now and when I fired that gun I could kill anybody and it would be the greatest killing ever and now I didn’t have that greatest killing ever and now red wasn’t the reddest red and blue wasn’t the bluest blue and the rhythm
wasn’t the sweetest rhythm and all these things made me sad but also something that I can’t describe and I want one thing. To feel good again and right now. Right now.

And Papa-Lo come out raging like a madman saying who give Josey Wales and Weeper permission to chuck badness on Rema, who the fuck give it to him and he says a man bigger than you and Papa-Lo looked like he was going to hit Josey Wales but then he see we, he see me and he see the guns and I don’t know what he think but it must be something heavy because he walk away. But not before he said to anybody, everybody and nobody that one day we all goin’ run out of people to kill. Josey Wales hiss and go off to fuck him woman or play with him pickney. The woman I was living with look at me as if she never see me before. She right. She never see nothing like me before.

Nineteen seventy-six come and bring an election with it. The man who bring guns to the ghetto made it clear that there is no way that socialist government should win again. They will bring down hellfire and damnation first. They send us to shoot up two of the Eight Lanes at first but then they send us to do more. At the Coronation Market we walk up to a seller woman and a woman who dress stoosh, as if she come from uptown, and shoot them both. The next day we go to Crossroads, right where downtown rub up against uptown, and break into a Chinese shop and shoot it up. The next day we stop a bus passing through West Kingston on the way to St. Catherine. We stop to rob and scare the people but a woman police shout out Stop, like she is Starsky or Hutch. She couldn’t get her gun out in time so we drag her off the bus and the bus drive off. In the wild bush to the side of the road we shoot her six time while cars pass. Her body do the bullet dance when we shoot her, but is what Josey Wales do before that make me swallow back down me own vomit. Papa-Lo would never allow that. Josey wave him gun in front of us promising judgment if we tell.