A Brief History of Seven Killings

by James, Marlon

  I dropped the belt and went outside. As soon as the sunset touch me I started to run. Six o’clock already come and gone. When Mummy called it sounded like an emergency, so I pulled on green track shoes that I hadn’t worn since Danny, who bought them because track shoes is foolishness after all. I haven’t run track since high school so why would I need them? At some point I stopped running from my parents’ house, maybe when I ran out in the road and that first car slammed the brakes and told me about me bombocloth. Or maybe when I kept running in the middle of the road and another car slammed the brakes and said that bitch mad as shad. Or maybe when I got on the bus that took me to Crossroads even though I didn’t want to go to Crossroads and couldn’t remember when I got on the bus.

  The visa is a ticket. That is all it is. I don’t know why I am the only one who sees that. The visa is a ticket out of the hell that this fucking PNP going bring on the country. You have to watch news to know. You don’t have to wait till one of Mummy’s horsemen of apocalypse shows up or whatever the r’asscloth that means. She who love to go to church to hear about signs and wonders and how we’re living in the last days. Ungrateful wretches the two of them, don’t they see this is the . . . this is the . . . shit, I don’t know what this is, or why I’m in Crossroads when I need to be at Hope Road. Shouldn’t talk, I should just show. I should just get the visa and the plane tickets and shove it to them before they have time to talk or have fucking Kimmy convince them out of it, like her parents are supposed to wait and see for when the shitstem supposedly right itself. I get off the fucking bus.

  I left before I heard my father catch a breath. Serve him right. Serve everybody right. I’m getting just a little sick and tired of every man including now my damn father feeling that as soon as they see me, they get license to be on their worst behaviour. Great, now I sound like me mother and kiss my r’ass if that’s who I want to turn out like. My daddy beat me like I was a little girl. Like me was a bloodcloth pickney and is Kimmy fault. No is not her fault. She is just a damn jackass who worth whatever man tell her she worth, including Daddy. No, is the Singer fault. If he didn’t fuck me, me wouldn’t have anything to do with him and if the embassy did just give me the bombopussy r’asscloth visa and don’t tell me no fucking shit ’bout me don’t have no bombocloth ties like me would want to run away to the fucking country where Son of Sam shooting people in the head and big man raping little boys and white people still calling people nigger and trying to stab them with a flagpole in Boston and not caring who take a photo, they have another fucking thing coming.

  Jesus bloodcloth Christ I hate when I chat bad. I also realize that for the entire little rant I was also chatting it aloud and the school girl who just happened to be walking right beside me take foot and run across the street. Pity car never lick you down, I want to say. It reach the tip of my tongue but I don’t say it. Instead I walk east of Crossroad and all the buses and people and school girls in blue uniforms and green uniforms and boys in khaki uniforms growing up too quick, and head for Marescaux Road.

  On the bus my heart is pumping hard again, harder than before when I hit Daddy. And it won’t stop. I’m on the bus with suitcases, handbags, knapsacks, shiny oxford shoes and modest heels. Everybody leaving school and work to go home, but not me. I don’t even have a job. And my damn feet are scratching me because of these damn track shoes. I catch a woman on the left, four seats to the back, looking at me and wonder if something is wrong with me. My hair doesn’t look too mad, I think. And my t-shirt is back in my jeans and I certainly don’t look like I begged a free ride from the bus conductor. I wait for her to look up again from her newspaper and when she does I glare at her. She looks away quick. But the damn woman made me miss my stop. I come off when the bus stops and realize that I was wrong. The woman made me miss plenty stops, at least five or six. That’s when I started walking. I didn’t even think about it, or how long it would take or just how far off I was. Lady Musgrave is one long road.

  My legs must know why I’m doing this because my head doesn’t have a clue. Maybe there’s nothing else to do, maybe there’s nothing else but it. Is this what a job is supposed to do, fill this space that I think I’m feeling now that I need to fill with an it? Such bullshit. I don’t know what I’m talking about. My parents don’t even want to be my parents anymore. Maybe I’ll just stand there, outside his gate, until something moves me or I find something to do. Maybe whether they want to move is beside the point and all that matters is that I get these fucking visas and they can do whatever they want with them. I tried, yes their disgusting Rasta fucking daughter. Maybe I should have asked what irked them more, the Rasta part or the fucking.

  At the intersection I stop. I want to lie down in the grass on the sidewalk and I want to run and keep running. I open my handbag and pull out my compact, but I swear to God I can’t remember when I had a handbag. I know for some woman it’s like an eleventh finger and you don’t even think about it, even if you change every day. But I can’t remember the handbag either. Who can run with a handbag? I must be going crazy. I’m going to the Singer’s house to get money for something for people who don’t want it or me, but I’m going anyway. Because, well because. Somehow I feel as if this is the first time I’m looking at myself today. Seems I’ve been lying to myself about my hair, which is a madwoman mess. It looks like I pulled the rollers out but did nothing after that. One big curl is jutting out of the top left of my head and another big curl is down past my right brow. My lipstick looks like it was put on by a blind baby. Shit. I would run from me.

  I choke up. Damn r’asscloth, I’m not crying right now. You hear me Nina Burgess, I’m not crying right now. But the grass looks so good, I want to just stoop down and bawl, loud enough that people will know to leave the madwoman alone. What kind of a wretched woman I must be, just like my mother thinks. Maybe it’s the walking that’s driving me mad. Who else would be walking anywhere right now? Last night I actually thought I was going to walk home all the way to Havendale, like an idiot. Does any woman my age, any woman I went to school with, have any purpose? Why don’t I have a man? What was I thinking, hoping to move back to America with Danny? He was here to score some local pussy, so mission complete. This message will self-destruct in three years. I really should have beat the shit out of Kimmy. Or at least given her one kick.

  Between the walk and the stopping that’s when evening crept up on me.

  —Excuse me, sir, what time you have?

  —What time you want?

  I look at this fat son of a bitch, clearly walking home even though he’s wearing a tie and say nothing. I just look.

  —Eight-thirty, he says.

  —Thank you.

  —That would be p.m., he says and grins. I put every single bad word and ugly thought I can think of into the stare I give him back. He walks off. I stand there watching, yes, for the first and second time he turns around. You know something? All man is fuckery. Yes every woman know this, but we forget it every day. But leave it to providence, sooner or later in the stretch of a day some man will remind you. My heart is pumping again. Pumping hard. That might be because I can finally see Hope Road. Cars and buses cut across my view, east to west, west to east. I’m running again. Hope Road can’t hit and run me fast enough. I don’t know why, but I just have to run, I have to run now. Maybe his car is driving out, maybe he’s set to go to Buff Bay, maybe somebody coming to see him and will take up his time, maybe he just finished rehearsing “Midnight Ravers” and is finally, finally remembering what I look like. I just have to get there now. That one year running track did not come back and it’s my lungs that feel like it’s going to burst, not my heart. But I can’t stop, I almost run into Hope Road, making a sharp right and going still. Your mother and father won’t want it, another me is saying and it’s slowing me down. Fuck her. She can kiss me r’ass.

  One block away from his gate and the streetlights are all on and traffic is moving smooth, not too fast, not too slow. Two white cars shot
it past the intersecting and race down. The first turns into his gate so fast that I can hear the screech. The second swerve in as well. My feet stop running and start to walk. I hope these aren’t people taking him away from the only chance I’ve got. There’s just this, I’m doing this because that is all I can do now and there is nothing else—this will work, it don’t have to make no sense. Not even Christmas yet, barely December, and somebody is already bursting firecrackers. I run and run and run again, then hop, then walk right up to just ten or so feet from the gate.

  Demus

  This is how bad man wake up. Shaking first, hungry second, scratching and itching third, with you cocky burning to explode. This is what you do: shake off the shake with a head nod, scratch the itch till your black skin turn red and go off into the darkest corner of the shack and pull down you zipper. Others say to you, What the bombocloth you ah do boy? but you don’t listen because right now, to let go that piss is the sweetest thing. But the shaking continue and won’t leave until Weeper come back. In the morning the shack seem bigger, even with six man in it trying to sleep the bad man sleep.

  This is how bad man wake up: never go to sleep. I wasn’t sleeping when Funky Chicken with the heroin shakes start to walk in him sleep saying Leviticus, Leviticus, Leviticus, over and over. Me never did sleep neither when Heckle run over to the window and try to push himself out. Bam-Bam sleeping but he sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall and the whole night he didn’t move. Me dream awake, about the brethren who leave me poor on Caymanas racetrack. Me make the heat rise up in me like a fever then take it back down and make it rise again. You can do that the whole night. Last night Josey take me aside for a second and say the pussyhole come back from Ethiopia two night ago. This is how you can make a thing you lust for keep you awake.

  This is how you know most man in the room too young. Not an hour after they fall asleep they start moaning and mumbling and if you is the fat man from Jungle, you call out a woman name three time. Dorcas or Dora, me can’t remember. Only young man get wet dream. Heckle in the corner sinning with him hand down him pants. Only young man can sleep even with all the burden crushing down on two shoulder like God just get tired of carrying burden and throw it on you.

  I didn’t sleep. I not even sleepy. Flies in the room even at night. Nobody have no watch for me to tell the time, but in what feel like deep night, the skinny man from Jungle try to push him way out the door. Nobody wake up, but me wasn’t asleep. I hear him saying what kind of fuckery this for them to lock up big man like him in pigsty and I want to say you better relax yourself because Josey Wales is man who love to discipline a boy, but I stay in my corner, lying flat on my back, closing my eyes every time somebody look over this way at me.

  But that was hours ago, me think. Now everybody in room going mad and ting. Bam-Bam scream out over and over. Me sight the two man from Jungle pace and pace and every time they run into each other they break out into a fight. Heckle searching every corner, every crevice, every empty juice box and soft drink bottle, the top of the house and the bottom for some cocaine. I know that be what he looking for, even though the last time a man do that, he take industrial-strength rat poison. Funky Chicken can’t take it no more so he go off into the corner where we piss and sit down in it and scratch him chest through the shirt with a tch tch tch. Bullshit this, you hear me, Heckle say. Yow who going help me push down this bloodcloth door? Josey Wales would come after we, another one say, but he say it quiet, like Josey is horseman from the Book of Revelations.

  When me take a stop Bam-Bam screaming like a fucking girl. I say shut up, pussyhole, but he keep screaming like he sleeping with night terror. I kick him like thunder and he jump like lightning. A punch at least would make him feel like a man, but a slap make him feel like a girl. Outside the window gone from grey to yellow and sunlight cut through and land on the floor. There be nothing to do but watch it retreat, from the wall, down to floor, backways across the floor, and then gone like it reverse out the window. No sunray coming in but the room hot like fire. Must be noon.

  Now five man roaming about the room and working up a stinking sweat. Now Funky Chicken screaming. Bam-Bam staring into the wall and Heckle staring at the window like he thinking he can fit through it. I know he thinking that if he back far enough and run with him hand stretch out like Superman, he can fly right through just like that. Or maybe that is what me thinking, because the heat wet and sticky and ting, and me can smell man all around me. Only the two man from Jungle look like they still have sense. They stop walking into each other and start walking together. But one walk past Heckle and brush him foot and Heckle say, Weh di bloodcloth you ah kick me for, star? and jump up and push. The two man from Jungle take set ’pon him double. One grab him right hand, the other grab him left and slam him into the wall making the shack shake. They about to double punch him when Funky Chicken say, You hear a car?

  A car coming but it drive past, vrrrroooOOOOOOMmmm and gone. Funky Chicken start to sing that when the right time come some ah go bawl fi murder. Bam-Bam up and skipping on the spot, saying must be like a soldier, must be like a soldier, which is not what I expect from him at all. The four walls squeezing in and me is the only one that see it. I can smell five man and all of them stink, and all of them hot, and all of them have that fear smell which is to say all of them sour. Me smell piss too. And sulphur. And camphor ball and wet rat and old wood that termite eat out. The room squeezing in and Josey Wales and Weeper take all of the guns so that me can’t shoot no hole in the wall.

  The room getting cooler and first me think it was the sea breeze reach we finally but it was the sun going away. Them going lock we up from night to night. There must be a stick, a column, a pipe, a hammer, a mop, a post, a lamp, a knife, a Coca-Cola bottle, a wrench, a stone, a rock, something to hit them two with when they come back. Something to hit them quick and kill them. Kill anybody. There must be something in this shack to kill whoever walk through that door, because me no care no more, me just want to get out. Heckle in the corner with him hand down him pants. He look ’round the room to see if we looking and take it out and rub it till he make a girl sound and kick the wall. Bam-Bam in him sleep dreaming about Funnyboy and saying over and over, Don’t touch me Clarks.

  This is how you stop a screaming man. Punch him in the face if you want him to feel like a man or slap him across the cheek if you want him to feel like a girl. Josey Wales lift Bam-Bam off the ground with left hand and slap him with the right. Slap east to west then slap west to east and east to west again, like the man is him woman. Me scratch me head because me can’t think about how a wet slap must feel like, for me can’t remember when Josey Wales and Weeper come back. One blink they not here, another blink they appear like magic. Like Obeah. Josey still slapping Bam-Bam, telling him to stop cry like bitch before he really give him something to cry ’bout. The two man from Jungle say go suck your mother, and turn to rush him but Weeper whip out two gun like a cowboy gunslinger and say settle yourself, brethren.

  Josey open a big box and plenty gun come out, most of them M16. Weeper open a little box and plenty white powder come out and Funky Chicken and me swarm the table, with Bam-Bam whimpering me me me. Weeper chop up a pile into umpteen skinny line. So he go first, then Funky Chicken, then me, then Weeper again, which make Josey Wales shout at him that he did say that he going to let go off that fuckery. Weeper say, Everything kriss, my youth, everything kriss. One of the boy from Jungle put him nose down on the table but the other boy say no. Weeper point him gun at the boy face and say don’t think me can’t shoot you and still find use for you body. He point the gun at the boy but the boy didn’t flinch. Weeper pull ’way the gun and laugh. I watch Josey Wales watching the whole thing. Josey Wales don’t take no line.

  Midway through the third line of coke I gone further than where thinking can take me. Dillinger playing on a transistor radio, I didn’t know the shack have a radio but coo deh, a radio, and Dillinger gonna lick the chalice inna Buckingham Palace
and chase Mr. Wallace. The railroad shack hot and stink with piss and ting. I done three line but Weeper keep cutting and the lines so thin that as soon as you sniff it gone. The two man from Jungle laughing loud and crying and singing the tune and waving him gun. And Weeper cut me a line and I sniff it in and it burn but sweet burn like a pepper burn and the shadows starting to jump off the wall and dance. Heckle and Funky Chicken look like fool but not me. I beyond wise and fool.

  Little things can fill up a long hour. So Josey Wales say hold on, Joe, and I say me no name so, but me can’t remember my name so I take the name Joe, and I say just call me Joe, and it’s the sweetest name, sweeter than sweet. Ten minutes pass, fifteen minutes, one hour, one day, five year. I don’t care, whatever time pass too long and Weeper cut me another line, but say I not getting it unless I show him how to handle the gun. I tell him even a dumb pussyhole who come out of a batty can fire gun and he slap me, but I don’t feel anything. And is just so it happen. I don’t feel no slap, no pain and no bullet. I don’t tell Josey Wales. And when the shadows start to dance they tell me that we have to kill him, we have to kill the thiefing friend and him too, for he and the thief is brethren. And that make him just like the thief. I don’t know how much time passed, but the radio in my head sweet like fuck. He ask if me ready and me say how you mean? Nobody can touch me now, and my eyes see so far and so deep that me in Josey Wales’ brain then out and he didn’t even know. I know how they going to tell this story even now. I know which part get keep and which part get lost.