A Brief History of Seven Killings (18 page)

Papa-Lo

O
ne more thing,
ostentatious gentlemens. Never turn your back ’pon a white bwoi. After a hot night with no moon all you can think of is that something out to betray you, maybe God, maybe man, but never turn your back ’pon a white bwoi. Turn your back ’pon a white bwoi who drink your mannish water and blush red from the spice and he go back to America and write about how the natives gave him goat’s head soup to drink, and the flavour come from blood. Turn your back ’pon a white bwoi when he say he come to the ghetto to look for the Rhythm and he go back to En gland with your 45s and him get rich while you stay poor. Turn you back ’pon a white bwoi and he will say that is he that shot the Sherrif, ennit? and make you the deputy then go onstage and say the black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking blah blah blah don’t belong here, we don’t want them here. This is England, this is a white country, because he think naigger boy never going read the
Melody Maker
. The Singer learn this in peculiar fashion only a few weeks ago at the Hope Road house, when he rehearsing for the peace concert.

This was only few weeks ago. Maybe just two. The Singer and the band rehearsing from early morning right into the night. Judy just go call him aside to tell him that that line he singing,
under heavy manners,
is a slogan for the PNP and if he sing it that will mean he siding with the PNP, which too many people already suspect. They running through the song again when there is the white bwoi. He just appear out of nowhere like magic trick—poof!

—A where you come from, boss? say the drummer.

—Outside.

—You with Chris?

—No.

—You the boy from
Rolling Stone
?

—No.

—
Melody Maker
?

—No.

—
New Music Express
?

—No.

—Old massa plantation?

—Huh? No.

—Keef Richards send you with weed? That man get better weed than anybody in Jamdown.

—No.

The Singer go to find out who this white bwoi be that just show up in the studio, not even out in the grounds where white people usually swarm like ants, usually with long hair in imitation dread and sunglasses and tiedie t-shirts and saying you reggae dudes are far out, man, got any gawn-ja? But this white man didn’t dress like he running from something or looking for something else. The Singer go to demand a name but the band didn’t wait and he go right back into rehearsal. The white bwoi fan away ganja smoke like it be a swarm of mosquito, he look like he was holding his breath. Every now and then he nod to the beat, but behind the beat, like most white people. He look like he was waiting for everybody to finish. The band ignore him, but when they finish the song the man gone.

About that time, the Singer go to the kitchen like he always do, to get himself an orange or a grapefruit, and there like he waiting is the white bwoi. He look up but not at the Singer and ask, What’s a Crazy Ballhead? Before he get an answer, he start to sing it, dem crazy, dem crazay, like he have to feel the words to know the words. You heard that stuff Eric Clapton said about you some months ago? Real piece of work, that man, so he gets onstage and says, Keep Britain white. Chase all the wogs out and all the Arabs and all the fucking Jamaicans, can you believe that? He actually said all the fucking Jamaicans! Wow. Didn’t he cover a song of yours? Just goes to show that you never know who your friends are, huh? The Singer tell him
that he always know exactly who is friend and who is enemy, but the white bwoi continue like he talking to himself. Two of the band come into the kitchen and them stunned too that the man appear again, like magic. Yow, brethren, look like the tour bus leave you, one of them say, but he didn’t smile, he didn’t even do that out of breath heh-heh-heh-heh laugh that white people do when them don’t know for sure if you make a joke.

—God. God. God. You know what’s God’s problem, the man say. I mean, Jehovah, Jesus, Yahweh, Allah, Jah, whatever bullshit you want to call him—

—Don’t blaspheme against His Imperial Majesty.

—But the thing about God, is that he needs the fame, you know? Fine, the attention, the notice, the recognition. He said it himself, in all your ways acknowledge me. If you stop paying attention or call his name out he kinda ceases to exist.

—Brethren—

—Now the devil, he doesn’t need acknowledgment, in fact, the more hush-hush the better.

—Bossman, what you—

—Meaning he doesn’t need to be name-checked, identified, or even remembered. The way I see it, the devil could be anyone around you.

—Yow, the last tour bus leave so you going have to go find a taxi. Now.

—I can get around.

—But we rehearsing and . . . hold on. But no tour bus come here today. Where the fuck you come from?

All this time the Singer saying nothing. Is the band that asking questions. The man walking around the kitchen, looking out the window, at the stove, and pick up a grapefruit. He examine it, throw it up in the air two times, then put it back down.

—So what’s this Crazy Baldhead about?

—Brethren, Crazy Baldhead is about Crazy Baldhead. If the man have to explain him song him would’a write explanation, not song.

—Touché.

—What?

—And congo bongo I? “Natty Dread” congo bongo I. I mean, I get “I Shot the Sheriff,” that’s a metaphor, right? Ism and Schism? What I want to know is what happened to the man who sung sweet little songs like “Stir It Up.” Is it because the other two left you? What happened to the love everybody vibes? “Burning and Looting”? Is that like “Dancing in the Street”? You know, angry nigger music.

Black man who live in Jamaica all him life don’t see much trouble in the word nigger. Black man who come from America is a different story. One man say what the fuck, but it trail off into a mumble. It say something that the white bwoi strut like peacock in what is not him territory, without muscle or gun, like he still own it. Like of course nobody going touch him, he is a white bwoi. I know things. I know this come from slavery. Jamaicans love to talk ’bout how they was the most rebellious negroes in the world, but truth be that slave master would go off in the forest with six or twelve man slave, some of who he whip only a few day before, and not one nigger do a damn thing.

—New album looks like it’s heading to number one with a bullet. You’re all booked out, Sweden, Germany, Hammersmith Odeon, New York City. You listen to American radio at all? I mean, I personally got nothing against black people, you know, Jimi Hendrix, right? But you know what? Jimi’s dead and rock and roll right now is rock and roll, Deep Purple, Bachman-Turner Overdrive,
Brain Salad Surgery
. They don’t need anybody coming on masquerading, pretending to be rock stars . . . “My Boy Lollipop,” that was a good song, good song, good beat, that’s what I like, she went in, got herself a hit, then got out. You make my heart giddyup, hah!

By now, the man stepping back ’cause he see they circling him. But he don’t look nervous, he only talking all over the place and nobody understand him. The Singer say nothing.

—America? We’re in a tough time. Really tough time. We have to pull things together. Last thing we need is a rabble-rouser setting off the wrong element. Rock and roll is rock and roll and it has its fans it doesn’t need . . . Look, I’m trying to tell you people this nicely. But rock, well, rock is for real Americans. And you all need to stop trying to cultivate an audience . . .
Mainstream America doesn’t need your kind of message so think real hard about these tours . . . maybe you should stick to the coasts. Stop trying to reach mainstream America.

He say the point over and over, from one direction then the next, with new words and the same words until he figure they get him point. But as usual, white bwoi think black man stupid. Them get the message from he come through the door. Stop mess with white people.

The man don’t look at nobody while him message sink in but he wait for it to sink. He say something about not wanting to come back here again. Then he say something about all these performance visas sitting on some overworked embassy clerk’s desk. The Singer say nothing. —My Boy Lollipop, now there’s a song. There’s a song, he say and leave through the kitchen door. The room stay quiet for a minute until somebody shout ’bout the bombocloth white bwoi and follow him through the door, but outside he vanish. Poof.

Some people take that as visitation from the devil himself. But this is December 1976 and if Rasta don’t work for the CIA then somebody else do. I ask how the guards let the man in, but them tell him that he just walk past them like he have bigger business than they could overstand. Is not that. Me know and the Singer know. Nobody going be the man, with skin like we, to touch a man with skin like that. The Singer suspicious of everybody from that point, even me I think. My name mix with the JLP and everybody already think that is the JLP that work for the CIA especially when a shipment of don’t-call-them-guns just vanish from the wharf. Poof. But this white bwoi didn’t warn or threaten him to quit the peace concert, and as for the others, who call the phone with heavy breathing, or send telegram, or leave note with the guard or fire shot in the air then they ride past the house on their bikes, the Singer don’t ’fraid of nobody who ’fraid to show him face.

But he don’t say what I also ’fraid to say. That this all come back to me. Me the baddest man in Copenhagen City. But badness don’t mean nothing anymore. Bad can’t compete against scheming. Bad can’t compete against wicked. I see and a watch them putting me out to pasture, because politics is a new game now and take a different kind of man to play it. Politician
come in the late night to talk to Josey Wales, not me. I know Josey Wales. I was there in 1966 when they take a big chunk out of Josey soul, but only he know what he put there in it place.

As for other people, the white bwoi from America and the white bwoi in Jamaica who not white but an Arab, who fuck English blonde to make they children full free, now they too sending threat to the Singer. All this because natty want to sing hit songs and speak him mind. Even now, nobody know where the white bwoi come from and nobody see him again, not at the embassy, or the Mayfair, or the Jamaica Club, or the Liguanea Club or the Polo Club or wherever foreign white mix with local white. Maybe he don’t even live here, just fly in for that one mission. Since then, they double the guard at the gate, but one day them guards get replace by the Echo Squad. Any squad better than the police, but I don’t trust no squad from the PNP.

A man who know him have enemy must be on guard at all times. A man who know him have enemy must sleep with one eye open. But when a man have too many enemies he soon flatten them all down to one level, forget how to tell them apart and start to think every enemy is the same enemy. The Singer don’t think ’bout the white bwoi much, but I think ’bout him all the time. I ask him what the white bwoi look like and he draw a blank.

Like a white bwoi, him say.

Josey Wales

E
ven on a night
so hot, near morning now, even with a curfew on because this bogus government can’t control shit, across the road from the Singer house you have a whore working Hope Road. Maybe is not even a whore. Maybe is just another lost woman, plenty of that in Kingston, who think the Singer has something she looking for all her life. I tell you, if birth control is a plot to kill black people, then the Singer must be the plot to breed them back. Even respectable parents from Irish Town, August Town or whichever rich people town now sending down daughter to consort with the Rastaman and breed a rich baby. But this one, the one I see from when I turn on to Hope Road to pick up Bam-Bam, just stand still like a scarecrow. Like she not selling nothing. Maybe she was a ghost. Something tempt me to walk over and ask, So how much for you and is that the Curfew special, but Bam-Bam was with me and I don’t like having him in my car as it is. Stay with him too long and he start to ask questions, like if I did know his father and is whose Clarks shoes that he find in that house he live in. Plus, playing pretty word game is Weeper’s thing not mine.

Weeper is with me. Just as I was about to drive off I realize I was about to send this loose cannon to pop off in my Datsun and shout after him to wait for me. I still let him drive. We drive back to Copenhagen City, right past Papa-Lo’s house with him sitting outside like Uncle Remus. Sooner or later he going to want to talk to me about things, which is usually him going on and on about nothing at all. That man is not the same man since he start to think. Me in the house for two hours now, maybe three. Something tell me that nobody is sleeping this night. I don’t like it. Weeper think
everything cool. I don’t like working with pickney, but Weeper think everything fine. Then again, Weeper is kind of a pickney too. Right now he high and fucking some girl from Lady Pink in my car. Yes, the man have me swing ’round the club to pick her up after we lock those boys in the train shack. That same slow brain girl name Lerlette who rumour have it was the only girl at Ardenne High School to get enroll and expel on her first day. Don’t ask how I know, of course Weeper tell me. I tell him that there was no way you taking that whoring gal up in the same house I raise my children. He say, Brethren, me no have problem with car.

So now I’m by the window listening to my Datsun creak. I should be asleep. If I don’t sleep I going to be sleepy tomorrow and bad man can’t afford to be sleepy, especially tomorrow. Between Weeper fucking in my car and Peter Nasser going on like a pussyhole to show off to him skinny wife, too much trouble going on in my head for me to sleep. I should shout out the window for Weeper to stop him fucking coming and come but that would turn me into his big brother, or father, or worse, his mother.

And that pussyhole Peter Nasser. If there’s one thing I can’t stand is when a man think he hot enough already. Think he know everything just because when he talk, certain people in the party listen. But I never join any party. He strut into the ghetto chucking badness because he have no fear of me. I don’t want politician to be afraid, I just want them to recognize that I not playing. The girl in the car screaming out for him to
go inna it, nuh baby yeah fuck me nuh work the pussy nuh, like you ah mash potato
. This is not going to be the second time in one night that I have to listen to another man fuck. I step away from the window.