A Brief History of Seven Killings

by James, Marlon

  This is what happen on the seventh day. The woman change her mind, say it’s Trench Town man that rape her and didn’t want no prosecution so they let us go. Nobody talk to me in jail and the police never even say sorry. So the first time me back in the Copenhagen City and a policeman come through, firing his revolver and saying he keeping the peace, me make sure me have a gun. What they didn’t know is that in the ghetto me learn to shoot good, like a soldier in The Dirty Dozen. Me watch that movie and watch it and watch it and watch it again. By the time the police give up and run away from Jungle I shoot two of them, one in the head and another in the balls because I want him to live with no use for him cocky for the rest of him life.

  This is where it happen. The Singer brethren, no not him the other one, drop word that we to come to the Singer house. That alone not regular. Natty gone uptown now and only certain man get invite and all of them is big man or top shotter. But this wasn’t the natty, it was the brethren, and he invite Heckle and Heckle say him need five or six other man to come with him. The Singer house was the biggest house me ever see. Me run up and touch the wall just to say me touch it. So much first time in that trip that me can’t even remember most of them. First time me ever go uptown. First time me on Hope Road. First time, me see so much woman in pretty clothes walking up and down the street. First time me see the Singer house. First time me see white woman looking like Rasta. First time me see how people who have things live. But the Singer never did there, only the brethren and a whole bunch of people me never see before, even white people. He say it simple. Horse racing is big something in Jamdown, everybody know that. This is how it must go down. The champion jockey might win the race, him might not win, but if you bet against him, high stakes, and him lose, that is more money than you could ever dream of even if you dream two time. Money enough that every man in the ghetto can buy him woman a good Posturepedic mattress at Sealy.

  Me no care about the mattress. Me just want to bathe inside not outside and me want to see the Statue of Liberty and me want Lee jeans and not idiot jeans that some thief sew on a Lee patch. No that’s not what me want. Me want enough money to stop want money. To bathe outside ’cause me want to fucking bathe outside. To say Sealy mattress is shit, what you don’t have none better? To look ’pon America and don’t go, but make America know me can go anytime me want. Because me tired of people living like they can waste money and looking at me like me is some animal. I want enough money that when me kill them me have cash and don’t give a shit. Kidnap the jockey, reason with him and ting, the brethren say.

  Race day was Saturday. Tuesday, Heckle drive me and two other man to Caymanas Park racetrack. Soon as the champion jockey done practise and head to him car we run up ’pon the man, throw pillow over him head, push him in the car and take him away. We take him to an old warehouse downtown that nobody use no more. Heckle shove the gun in the jockey mouth so far that he start to choke.

  —Pussyhole, this is wha you going do Saturday, him say.

  The jockey lose him three race. Then jump on a plane to Miami and disappear like magic. But then some other people vanish. The four man who collect the money at Caymanas Park, including the brethren. That leave me, Heckle and plenty other man with nothing. Nothing at all. Me think me di vex enough until me see me brethren squeeze a Horlicks bottle so hard it smash and he have to get stitches. By the Saturday we march up to the Singer house ’cause some bloodcloth man was going give we what we have coming. But the Singer on tour. The next time man go up to the Singer house him was there we hear but he already meet with man from Jungle. Nobody tell this to me or Heckle. Man was going samfie we again. Nobody even notice when me and Heckle make one of them boy disappear. But now some people look like them getting money and all now we can’t get no share. Me shouldn’t have tell me woman nothing, ’cause now me just become another thing keeping her down. When me think of the brethren who gone to foreign with the money I want to burn the whole Hope Road house down. This is how they do it, this is how people keep people poor.

  When Josey Wales first find me, he ask if I can use gun. I laugh. Me use gun better than Joe Grind use him cock, me say. Him ask if me have any problem shooting up a boy. I tell him no, but me only shoot Babylon police or man who samfie me. Me shoot three and not stopping till me kill ten. He ask why ten and I say because ten sound like a number even God find heavy. He say soon, soon I will feed you police like how I feed snake rat. I tell him that my leg in pain from the time I was in jail and it don’t stop paining for a year now. Him friend Weeper say, I can cure that right now. After that first time, I was sweet for so quick that I beg him almost like a girl for more cocaine since then. And the pain gone, gone like when me use little weed. But weed slow me down. Cocaine make me quick. I said, But wait, this too good. You going to give me white powder, gun and money to kill people that I would kill for free? Today is April 1? Josey Wales say, no me brethren, we going paint Kingston red with police blood. But I want somebody else blood first.

  This is what I want to say before the writer say it for me. When the pain was so bad that only strong weed could help me, the only other thing that help was the Singer. They never play him on the radio. A girl that check for me give me a cassette. Is not that music take away the pain, but when it play I don’t ride the pain, I ride the rhythm. But when Josey Wales tell me last night who we shooting up I go home and vomit. I wake up in the morning thinking that this must be a stupid and scary dream, until he leave message on me door that me to meet him at the old train shack near the sea. Me is a wicked man, me is a sick man, but me would never join in this if I did know that he want to rub out the Singer. This hurt me brain worse than anything ever hurt me before. All now me don’t sleep, I lie in my room with my eye wide open hearing me girl snore in her sleep.

  When the moon rise and a light cut through the window and slice my chest I know God coming to judge me. Nobody who kill a police going to hell but is something else to kill the Singer. I let Josey Wales tell me that the Singer is a hypocrite, and he playing both sides taking everybody for idiot. I let Josey Wales tell me that he have bigger plans and is high time we done be ghetto stooge for white man who live uptown and don’t care about we until election time. I let Josey Wales tell me that the Singer is a PNP stooge who bow for the Prime Minister. I let Josey Wales tell me to shoot up three more line and I won’t care who. I let Josey tell me that the brethren come back. He living in the house too like a fat house rat just dying for me and only me to show him why you don’ fuck with a Jungle boy. When morning come and I still awake that is what I hold on to. Is enough. I want to shove the gun up him batty and fuck him a bullet.

  I take it through the day sitting in the bed while my girl cuss about nothing around to eat and she going to work because if the PNP win again she won’t be able to get a good job. I wait till she leave before I put on a pants and go outside. I don’t bathe at the standpipe since the police come for me the last time. Outside, the sun not up and center yet so it bright, green and cool. I walk down the lane barefoot, past zinc fence and board fence and zinc roof that people use stone, building block and garbage to hold down. Those who have a job and those who looking for a job all gone, leaving those who can’t find work because this is JLP town and PNP in power. I keep walking. By the time I get to the edge of Jungle, the sun almost noon and I hear music and somebody’s radio. Disco. I hear wet squeaking, a woman washing her clothes with her hands around the back of her house, near the standpipe. It’s like I don’t know nobody or everybody I know gone.

  Josey Wales asked me two question when he meet me. I was walking down the road from Jungle to the Garbagelands and he pull up in a white Datsun and stop. Two other man was in the car, Weeper and a man I still don’t know. He said he hear me was good with a gun and ask how come, since all ghetto man do is shower people with bullet. I said I was good because unlike them I have certain man in particular to kill. Then he said, You good but plenty man good, what I want know is if you hungry. He didn’t have to explai
n it to me. I did know exactly what he mean. That was a week ago. I meet up with him every night at the train shack. One night a white man show up and said that a shipment at the wharf and nobody watching it and it would be a shame if something happen to it, but this is Jamaica, right? Things go missing all the time.

  This is what you need to know. Somebody need to know where me coming from, although that don’t really mean nothing. People who say they don’t have a choice just too coward to choose. Because it’s now six p.m. We go to the Singer house in twenty-four hours.

  Alex Pierce

  Gig like this got its own juice. I’m in Kingston, somewhere between Studio One and Black Ark, thinking there must be a reason why hippies have such a hard-on for this scene. I mean, a poor boy can’t do nothing but sing in a rock and roll band. A rich boy, on the other hand, can stop cutting his hair, call himself a hippie along with some hairy armpit chicks, confuse having the means to tune in and drop out with the conviction to fucking do it and call himself a Rastafarian. Then he goes off to St. Bart’s, or Maui, or Negril and Port Maria, sticking it to the man in between rum punches. Always fucking hated hippies. Worse, now you have rich bitch Jamaicans imitating hippies imitating Rastas, what the fuck. But hey, it’s Jamaica. At least everybody should be pumping some Big Youth and Jimmy Cliff.

  And yet when I get here, first time in a year, the only thing playing on the radio is More More More, How Do You Like It How Do You Like It, and I’m thinking this rep is bogus. I flip to another station and it’s Ma Baker She Knew How to Die! Switch to FM radio and it’s Fly Robin Fly up-up to the Sky! I asked this busboy at the hotel, So where do I hear some Mighty Diamonds or Dillinger? He looks at me like I just asked to suck his dick and then says not every Jamaican sells the collieweed, sir. Even Abba gets more play than reggae here. I’ve heard “Dancing Queen” so much I can feel myself turning fag.

  I’m at the Skyline, the hotel with a commanding view of . . . the hotel in front. In Kingston you go down this street, there’s a black guy and white guy and lots and lots of mixed guys, and they’re all at the same hotel, or at the Singer’s house or just on the street. Even on TV the weather guy is black. You see black people all the time in the States, right, but you don’t really see them, certainly not reading the news. You hear them on the radio all the time, but once the song is over, they vanish. They’re on TV but only when somebody just acted like a jive turkey or somebody just made them say dynomite! Jamaica’s different.

  A Jamaican is on TV. A white woman just won Miss World, but she’s from here. She just said that the Singer is her boyfriend and she can’t wait to go back home to be with him. No shit. Some stone foxes live in this city, and they can all dance. Out the window even the traffic has music to it. That and people telling people about their bombocloth. In the resorts the Americans say bumperclat, and think they’re cooler because they got their head braided by a Girl Friday (not from the movie, this is some Robinson Crusoe black personal slave shit, no kidding, and they looked at me weird when I dropped my drink the first time I heard it) and learned to talk like a real Jamaican, mon.

  People let it all hang out here, they move with a kinda swag, but nobody forgets their place. And if you talk to enough people in the hotel, you get the white tone, people being polite to a fault because that’s how they were trained to talk to you. And because it’s all about race—it fucks up all the time. One time this black guy asked for the busboy to take his bags and the boy just walked off. Guy started shouting that this is some slavery-loving Uncle Tom bullshit right here for them to realize he was American. And even then the boy asked to see his room key. Go out on the street it’s the same thing until you walk far enough and the people get realer.

  Still, it’s Jamaica and this place is kinda ace. Serge Gainsbourg, the ugly French dude who keeps making cheesy records and scoring hot chicks, has a story. So he comes to Jamaica because eez ere to do zee reggae and motherfuckers at the studio just laugh him off, right? Like who the bombocloth this skinny likkle frenchy think he is. Serge says but I am zee biggest pop zinger, they say we don’t fucking know you, the only bombocloth French song we know is “Je T’aime.” Serge says, “Je T’aime,” that iz me. Gainsbourg was a God in Kingston after that, square biz. So I’m at Studio One and ask one of the men here if he could get me a cup of coffee, black no cream, and he says, What? You hand sick? Go get it you bloodcloth self. Classic, man.

  I’m supposed to be on Mick Jagger’s tail but nobody is going to call Black and Blue a misunderstood masterpiece, not in ten years, not in twenty, and I said so in print. Fuck him and Keef anyway and fuck Rolling Stone Random Notes gossip bullshit. I’m this close to getting the skinny on something big. “Armagideon Time,” square biz. The busiest, most vital music scene in the world is about to blow up and not on the charts. The Singer, he’s up to something and it’s not just the peace concert. It took putting in a few years uptown and downtown and some convincing to prove to people that I wasn’t some stupid white boy waiting for the limbo party for people to start talking to me. The fucking Kingston sissy at the front desk doesn’t even know who Don Drummond is, but he keeps telling me that everything I might need is in New Kingston.

  There’s this too, Jamaicans and not just the ones working at the hotel, but brown and white men who are always drinking rum at the restaurant and who, when they see my camera, first ask if I’m from Life magazine, then tell me where not to go. Go where they go and you end up at the Liguanea Club where it’s fucking “Disco Duck” and boring rich bitches who’ve just finished tennis and want to ball. I tell them I’m bailing for the Turntable Club and they look at me in wonder, worse when I don’t bother asking for directions, because I know they wouldn’t know. I asked the concierge just a few hours ago, Where’s the jam session? He says and I quote and kid thee not, “Sir, why would you wanna go mingle wid them element of society?” I was this close to saying dude suck a dick already, it’s cool. But this story, it’s something.

  I’m in the taxi heading to the hotel and the taxi driver asks me if I bet on horses. I’m not a betting man, but he is and who did he see at the tracks a couple weeks ago? The Singer. He was there with two guys, one of them calls himself Papa-Lo. I did some checking around on this Papa-Lo. Racketeering, extortion, five counts of murder, only one reaching trial, acquitted. Runs a shanty town called Copenhagen City. So here is the Singer, along with two hoods from a political party he’s supposed to not support and there they are chummy together like old school pals. The next few days, he’s seen hanging out with Shotta Sherrif, the godfather of the Eight Lanes, controlled by the other party, the other side. Two top goons in one week, two men who pretty much control the fighting halves of downtown Kingston. Maybe he’s just being a peacemaker. I mean, he’s just a singer. Thing is I’m catching the drift that nobody is ever just anything in Jamaica. Something’s cooking and I’m already smelling it. Did I mention there’s an election in two weeks?

  And if white boys from New York are catching a whiff, then the trail is already cold. Coming on the same flight with me was that little asshole Mark Lansing, trying extra hard to not see me. No shit. Crappy filmmaker still using Daddy’s little bucks to make a movie is here in Jamaica to film the peace concert. He said the record label hired him. Maybe, but when a dim motherfucker like him suddenly shows up in Jamaica to film a concert despite no previous experience doing anything of this magnitude, my brain gets a case of the shits.

  My taxi driver is just trying to win enough money so that he can fly out. He thinks that if the People’s National Party wins again, Jamaica might become the next communist republic. I don’t know about that, but I do know that just about everybody has eyes on the Singer, as if a lot of stuff is riding on what he does next. Poor brother probably just wants to release an album of love songs and call it a day. Maybe he feels it too—everybody is feeling it—that Kingston is on boil. Two nights in a row now, the concierge has slept behind the reception desk. He didn’t have to tell me, I could see it in the
bags under his eyes. He’d probably say he was dedicated, but I’m betting he’s just too scared to go home when it gets late.

  In May some guy named William Adler said on local TV that there were eleven CIA operatives working here in the U.S. Embassy. By June seven had left the country. Come on. Meanwhile, the Singer, never one to pull punches, sings Rasta don’t work for no CIA. In Jamaica 2 + 2 = 5, but now it’s adding up to 7. And all these loose strands knotting around the Singer like a noose. You should have seen his house today, security like Fort Knox, nobody being let in or out. Not the police guarding him either, just a posse of goons I found out are called the Echo Squad. Everybody is squad, posse or guard lately. Some poor chick was waiting out there all day, probably claiming she had his kid or something. Does Lansing have a way in? He said he was filming the concert for the label, he must be doing some behind-the-scenes shit. The only problem is to get any info would mean actually being nice to the fucker, and one can’t have that.

  I’m trying to not seem so hungry. Twenty-seven years old and six years out of college my mother keeps asking when I’m going to stop being a pinko on the hustle and get a real job. I’m impressed that she’s heard of pinkos but I think she got “on the hustle” from my little sister. She also thinks I need the love of a good woman, preferably not black. Maybe she’s looking at me and smelling wannabe. I think I’m trying to convince myself that I’m not one of those white boys drifting around trying to find something to belong to, something to fucking mean something because after Nixon and Ford and the Pentagon papers and fucking Carpenters and Tony Orlando and Dawn there’s nothing to believe in anymore, God knows not rock and roll. Rolling into West Kingston, the rudies left me alone because they knew I had nothing to lose. Maybe I’m just a stupid kid bitching about the world. I think I got problems but I ain’t got no problems.