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.
The woman I live with look at how I change but I don’t care about anything as long as I get a smoke. And soon Weeper make it known that what stand between me and one big whiff of smoke was them pussyholes that need to get dead. I need to get rewarded, something anything to stop the downpression. That is what happen now, either you’re smoking or you’re dreaming about smoking and you grieve like somebody dead and not coming back.
News spread in Jamaica that crime is out of control, the country is going to the dogs, not even uptown is safe and PNP is losing control of the country. Is two weeks before the election, and Papa-Lo send us to every house to remind people how to vote. One of the boys say he don’t take orders from Papa-Lo. Josey Wales might hiss and grumble and say something with double meaning but Josey Wales never forget that Papa-Lo became Papa by being the toughest
and most brutal man in the ghetto. Papa-Lo walk right up to the little boy and ask him age. Seventeen, he said. Look like age eighteen lock off, Papa-Lo say and shoot him in the foot. The boy scream and hop and scream again. People getting testy ’round here, he shout. People forgetting who is top ranking ’round here! You! You forget? he say and point him gun at another one of the boys. The boy jump and tremble out no-no-no Papa-Lo you is the don, the don of the dons, and Papa-Lo laugh as the boy start to piss up himself. Lick it up, Papa-Lo say, and the boy look stupid for a second until Papa-Lo fire his gun and say either you clean up the piss or we clean up you blood, and the boy, seeing that Papa-Lo not joking, crouch down and start to lap up his pee-pee like a cat gone crazy.
And so we go into the street and knock on the open door and kick down the locked one and one person, old and almost mad, say he not voting for anybody, so we drag him out of him house and take out all him clothes and burn them and then we strip him naked and burn those clothes too and kick him two time and say he better know how him going vote or we start burning things in the house, and the woman I live with ask if they coming for her too since JLP and PNP is both shit and I say that we might and she didn’t say a word to me again. But when the white man come and when the man who bring guns to the ghetto come, they talk to Josey Wales, not Papa-Lo. Papa not even in the ghetto that much anymore. Spending too much time with the Singer.
Night. December supposed to be cool by now. The Singer in him house. Living and singing and playing. All Jamaica and in the ghetto talking about how he decide to do the Smile Jamaica Peace Concert even though it’s PNP propaganda and night and day that the Echo Squad, bad man on PNP payroll, guarding him house. No police except for one car that stop early in the night. Nobody getting in and few people coming out. I watch car pass by and I watch room light go on and off and on again. I watch the stubby manager go and come and the white man with brown hair. He say one time that him life don’t mean nothing if he couldn’t help plenty people, and he help plenty people but he keep giving people what they need and young people don’t need nothing, they just want everything. We sing other songs, songs from youth who can’t afford to make song so we ride the real rock rhythm and skank because only women dance. And we sing song that we make up in our sleep that if you ride like lightning you going crash like thunder. And the Singer think Johnny was, but Johnny is, Johnny change and Johnny coming to get him. Before this night I see him smoking weed with Papa-Lo, and then give envelope to man who run with Shotta Sherrif and even people bigger than me wondering what the r’asscloth this Natty Dread up to. This Singer think because he come from where we come from that he understand how we live. But he don’t understand nothing. Everybody think the way him think when they leave and come back. That everything was exactly how they leave it. But we different. We harder than him and we don’t care. He flee before you turn into something like we.
And we? We be top-ranking bad man. Heckle mother come out one day when we controlling the street corner and playing domino saying ’bout how she can smell all sort of nastiness in him room so he slap her in the face and say don’t disrespect the bad man when him out’a street. The woman I live with ask if is so I goin’ treat her too but I say nothing. I don’t want to beat no woman. I just want some free C. That is all I want. That is all I need. Two day ago I walk past some woman house and see Weeper walk out naked to the standpipe ’round the back. He pull the condom off him buddy, fling it away and bathe himself. Everybody know that condom and birth control was white man scheme to kill off black people, but he don’t care. I watch him take off him glasses and scrub everywhere with rag and soap as if the standpipe and the tree build for him alone even though it wasn’t even his regular woman house. I didn’t want to fuck him, none of that nasty batty boy business, I just wanted to go inside him like a duppy and move when he move and buck when he buck and wind when he wind and feel myself pull out little by little by little and ram back in hard then soft, fast then slow. Then I wanted to be the woman. I just need to fucking breathe.
Tonight I watching the Singer house alone, but other times I watch with company. The short man with the big mouth that manage him, he thought we was just another set of boys coming looking for either money, weed or a chance to cut a big tune, but he look at we different. And we go back to the ghetto and the white man who seem to know him tell us about every room in him house. That everybody have their price, even the people right under him, and at the right time they will take a nice little break, no a nice long break, a good funky disco nap like funky Kingston I gotcha! That there is only one way in and one way out. That he take a break usually at around nine, nine-fifteen, and go to the kitchen, alone, since the children not there and everybody else still in the studio or about to leave. That the steps leading up to the kitchen give a clear view but we should just shower the place to make sure. That two should drive, two go inside and four case the grounds. We don’t know what he mean, so Josey Wales say he mean take the guns around out of the case, which sound stupid. The American go red again and the man who bring guns to the ghetto says he means surround the place. They show us picture. The Singer in the kitchen, him and the white man who manage the label, him in the studio with eyes bursting out of him head from good weed, him and the new guitarist straight from America, him fucking one girl, him fucking her sister, him leaning against the stove like even the Singer now tired of the Singer. All of Jamaica waiting for the Smile Jamaica Concert. Even some people in the ghetto going because Papa-Lo say we should go for Bob, even though it’s PNP propaganda. All I could think of was one more night and I would stop being hungry. One more night and I was going to take the S off Superman chest and the B off Batman belly.
Alex Pierce
There’s a reason why the story of the ghetto should never come with a photo. The Third World slum is a nightmare that defies beliefs or facts, even the ones staring right at you. A vision of hell that twists and turns on itself and grooves to its own soundtrack. Normal rules do not apply here. Imagination then, dream, fantasy. You visit a ghetto, particularly a ghetto in West Kingston, and it immediately leaves the real to become this sort of grotesque, something out of Dante or the infernal painting of Hieronymus Bosch. It’s a rusty red chamber of hell that cannot be described so I will not try to describe it. It cannot be photographed because some parts of West Kingston, such as Rema, are in the grip of such bleak and unremitting repulsiveness that the inherent beauty of the photographic process will lie to you about just how ugly it really is. Beauty has infinite range but so does wretchedness and the only way to accurately grasp the full, unending vortex of ugly that is Trench Town is to imagine it. You could describe it in colors, red and dead like old blood, brown like dirt, clay or shit, white like soapy water running loose down a too narrow street. Shiny like new zinc holding up a roof or a fence right beside old zinc, the material itself a living history of when last the politician did the ghetto a favor. Zinc in the Eight Lanes shines like nickel. Zinc in Jungle is riddled with bullet holes and rusted the color of Jamaican rural dirt. To understand the ghetto, to make it real, one should forget seeing it. Ghetto is a smell. Sometimes it’s something sweet: baby powder women wear on their chests. Old Spice, English Leather and Brut cologne. The rawness of recently slaughtered goat, the pepper and pimento in goat’s head soup. Sour chemicals in the de tergent, cocoa butter, carbolic acid, lavender in the soap, fermenting pee and aging shit running down the side of the road. Pimento again in jerk chicken. Cordite from a recently fired gun, poop in baby baggies, the iron in blood congealed from street kill, still there after the body has been removed. Smell carries the memory of sound and there’s that as well. Reggae, smooth and sexy but also brutal and spare like super poor and super pure delta blues. From this stew of pimento, gunshot blood, running water and sweet Rhythms comes the Singer, a sound in the air but also a living breathing sufferah who is always where he’s from no matter where he’s at.
Fucking hell. Shit sounds like I’m writing for ladies who lunch o
n Fifth Avenue. Unending vortex of ugly? Holy sensationalism, Batman! Who the fuck am I writing for? I could move in closer, get to the real Singer, but I’ll just fail like every other journalist before me because, shit, there is no real Singer. That’s the clincher there, that’s the real motherfucker right there, that he is something else now that he’s in the Billboard Top Ten. An allegory kinda, he exists when some girl passes by the hotel window singing that she’s sick and tired of the ism and schism. When boys in the street sing them belly full but them hungry, trailing off before the next line and knowing there’s a greater threat in not singing what everybody knows.
Out the window streetlights glow orange all the way to the harbor like these matches popping off, one, two, three. Then just as you notice them, the yellow of some, the white of others, the lights really do pop off, block by block. I blink and my room goes dark. Kingston shuts itself off for the third time since I’ve been here, but the moon is full and for a while the city is silver and blue and the sky is this sweet indigo, as if the town just turned country. The moon hits buildings on the side and walls of shiny gray rise out of the ground. The only lights come from cars.
A Brief History of Seven Killings Page 9
