A Brief History of Seven Killings (54 page)

—Mind you get an answer you don’t like, I say and watch the eye-only double-take again.

—Bombo pussy r’asscloth. Motherfucking dripping cunt bitch. You mean all now some fucking secret Rasta sect migrating back even when so many people right now flying out? You know how much could be here right now? You did think about that?

—No busha, when thinking need to be done, I leave that to you.

—Shit, shit, fucking shit. Election is only next year. Is only next r’asscloth year. What the bombo r’asscloth. You know how much people I have to call now? Can’t believe you wait a year to tell me this. Me not going forget this, Josey Fucking Wales.

—Good. Because you all love to forget when it suit you. Because of forgetting why Papa-Lo run things in the first place. But that is between you and Papa-Lo.

—Of course, because you all about your little trips to Miami now. You think the ministry don’t have eyes? Well, before you think you too big for people, just remember that you still in an appointed position.

—What that mean?

—You say you want to think? Figure it out.

But I figure it out long before he had to ask me any question. I figure it out from December 8, 1976. I figure it out from before the Singer get on that plane that if he was going to come back, he was going come with new reasoning and new power. Ignorant little-cocky Syrian don’t realise that certain dog sniffing a different master now, and even that master already mistake him for servant.

I look at this hook-nose idiot and realise something I learn from Bible school long ago. This man already receive his reward in full. Nowhere leave for him to go, not even down. Think he can raise voice because some people still think white skin give him the authority to speak to anybody any way he feel like, especially man who don’t know word like authority. Good for
him that right now, I feeling a wave of good Samaritan-ness. Doctor Love tell me a stale thing a year ago, to keep my friends close and my enemies closer. Stale as dog shit, yes, but every time you take a step higher that tip turn fresh. After all, the hunter don’t shoot the bird that fly low.

Peter Nasser pay off three men at the airport to be on the lookout for any cockney-speaking Rastafarian landing at Norman Manley airport, especially at night. For some reason he didn’t think the Rasta revolution would be coming in through Montego Bay. He was even having them run to the one pay phone in the airport to call him every two hours. Then he want me to go, or send my best man to London to find the Singer and do something wherever he was on tour or recording. I ask him if he think this was a James Bond movie and should I also take out the beauty queen he was with, because that would be a shame to take out the most beautiful woman in the world. I laugh over the phone because otherwise I would be cussing that yet again this man wasting my time. Besides, the Singer really was good as gone. Send a man to near death and you do more than almost kill him. You unroot him, tear him from home so that he can never live anywhere in peace again. The only way the Singer was coming back for good was in coffin.

But that was 1978 and I done with 1978. When the old American leave for Argentina in January, a new one come and take the spot. New American song, same old lyrics. He call himself Mr. Clark. Just that, Mr. Clark.
Clark, just ditch the E
. He think it was funny so he say it every time we meet up.
Clark, just ditch the E
. He already know Doctor Love, but then it seem every American who walked around in Kingston in a sweaty white shirt with the tie open know Luis Hernán Rodrigo de las Casas. April 1978 and we’re at Morgan’s Harbour, the hotel for white people over in Port Royal. We’re looking over at Kingston from the almost empty restaurant, well, they were looking. I was watching. Me with two foreigner, who already feeling the pirate spirit taking over them from head to cock. It is a thing to watch, the kind of feeling that take up a white man every time you take him to Port Royal. You wonder if this is the same spirit that leap up in them as soon as they land on any rock. I’m betting it is so, from as far back as Columbus and
slavery. Something about landing from sea that make a white man feel free to say and do as he please.

—Did Blackbeard ever pillage and plunder these parts, matey?

—Me only know ’bout Henry Morgan, sah. Also in Jamaica matey is a woman that a man keep that is not him wife.

—Oh. Oops.

It was the long time since I chat bad on purpose, so much so that Doctor Love have to translate two times. At least this one wasn’t like Louis Johnson, holding that memo upside down and pretending to show white people that naigger can’t read, something I still remember. But then he say,

—You poor, precious people don’t even know that you’re on the very verge of anarchy.

—Me no understand. If we precious how we must be poor? Diamond precious.

—But that’s what you are, my boy, a diamond in the rough. So rough this island. So roughly cut and beautiful. And so precarious. By precarious I mean that you’re teetering on the edge. By that I mean—

—Precarious?

—Yes.
Exactamente. Exactamente
, isn’t that right, Luis? Luis and I go back a ways. Too far back, it seems. A few
estados latinos
before this one, eh?

—You part of that Bay of Pigs flop show too?

—What? Huh? No, no. That was before my time. Way before my time.

—Well maybe one day you people going find a poison that really work on Castro.

—He-he-he-he, you’re a perceptive one, cunning even, eh? Has Luis been feeding you the news?

—No. The news have been feeding me the news.

Hold on now, Josey Wales. Nothing throw these Americans off more than when they realize that they were wrong about you. Remember to say at least one
no problem, mon,
and vibrate the mon like this: mohhhhhnnnn, before he drive away, just so he leave thinking he find the right man. For the
first time I wish I had dreadlocks or know how to break into the jogging on the spot landing on the one foot hop that Rasta do, even when there is no rhythm to dance to. Because I spend the whole time watching Doctor Love nodding at everything this man say, I almost forget that for most of the time he was trying to tell me that Jamaica is at war. A bigger war than 1976 he say, the first time he say 1976.

The Cold War, he say.

—Do you know what we mean by Cold War?

—War don’t have no temperature.

—What? Oh no, son. Cold War is a term, a figure of . . . it’s just a name for what’s happening here. You know what? I’ve got something right here . . . Here, look at this.

The white man take out a colouring book. When you keep playing fool with Americans you learn to expect anything, but this one throw even me off.

—A wha this?

I had it upside down because who need to flip around a cover to read the
Democracy Is for US!
title. The American look at me holding the book wrong and I know exactly what he was thinking.
Look Luis, compadre, I know you know what you’re talking about but you sure we’ve got the right guy?

—It’s a breakdown, that’s what it is. Luis, does he know what . . . I mean . . . look. May I have it for a second? Thanks. Let’s see, let’s see, let’s see . . . Ah! Pages six and seven. See on page six? This is the world in a democracy. See? People in the park. Children running down the ice cream truck, maybe somebody over there is grabbing a Twinkie. Look, see that guy reading a newspaper? And watch that chick, hot, right? Wearing that miniskirt. Who knows what those kids are learning, but they go to school. And every adult in this pic? They can vote. They decide who should leave, I mean lead, the country. Oh yeah, look at the tall buildings. That’s because of progress, markets, freedom. That’s the free market, son. And if anybody in this picture doesn’t like what’s going on they can say so.

—You want me to colour this picture, boss?

—What? No, No. I’ll tell you what. Say I give you a couple dozen for the school you’ve got. We have to get the word out to the young, before these fucking pinko commies recruit them. Fucking freaks, these commies, you know why so many of them are faggots? Because normal people like me and you, we reproduce. Commies? They’re just like homos, they recruit.

Or like any American church that comes here, I think, but don’t say. Instead I say,

—True thing that, boss, true thing.

—Good, good. You’re a good man, Mr. Wales. I feel I can share things with you. I’ll tell you what, this, what you’re about to hear is classified intel. Even Kissinger hasn’t been briefed yet. Even Luis is about to hear this for the first time. Hey Luis, bet you couldn’t guess what is the biggest industry in East Berlin right now? Late-term abortions. Yup, you heard me right, some butcher pulls the baby out of a five, seven, sometimes nine months pregnant chick and slashes its throat just as the neck comes out of her pussy. Can you believe that shit? Things are so bad that a woman will decide to kill her kid rather than let it be born in East Germany. People in East Germany, they line up for everything, just like in the book, Mr. Wales. Line up for fucking soap. You know what they do with the soap? Sell it for food. Poor little bastards can’t even score up a decent cup of coffee so the fucking government mixes that shit with chicory and rye and beet and then calls the whole thing, Michkaffee
.
Sounds like mischief, eh? I thought I heard everything. Boggles the fucking mind, I tell you. Boggles the fucking mind. You drink coffee, Mr. Wales?

—Me is a tea drinker, sah.

—Good for you, my boy, good for you. But this precious little country you see here? It’ll be Cuba, or worse, East Germany in less than two years if that process isn’t reversed right now. I saw it nearly happen in Chile. I saw it nearly happen in Paraguay. And Lord only knows what’s going to happen to the Dominican Republic.

Some of this is in some way true. But they can’t resist it, these men from the CIA. Once they think you believe them it’s like lying turn into a drug. No, not a drug, a sport. Now let’s see how far I can go with this ignorant
naigger. From the corner of my eye I watch him watching me, thinking that I was just the man he expect me to be. By the time Louis Johnson leave he was so impressed that a man who couldn’t read much was so smart. Of course smart in the way a good trained dog was smart, or a good monkey, talking to me about aliens to see if I would, as he say, buy it. But here Mr. Clark get so serious that I look up in the sky to see if it was going to turn grey just to add mood to the story.

—What I’m trying to say is that your country is at a crossroads. The next two years are going to be crucial. Can we count on you?

I don’t know what kind of fuckery answer the man was looking for. What was he expecting me to say, that me coming on board? Maybe I should say aye-aye Cap’n since we’re in Port Royal? Doctor Love shoot me a look, then close his eyes and nod up and down. His way of saying just tell the idiot what he wants to hear,
muchacho
.

—Me on board ship, sah.

—Glad to hear it. Fucking ace.

Mr. Clark get up to leave, saying that his car will take him back to the Mayfair Hotel where he’s crashing until his apartment is ready. He leave ten dollars U.S. on the table and start to walk, but then turn back and bend down right to my left ear.

—By the way. I’ve noticed you’re making a few trips to Miami and Costa Rica lately. Busy little bee, aren’t you? Of course, the U.S. government has no interest in activities between Jamaica and the members of its diaspora. Assist us in any regard and we will honor that arrangement. Translate that for him, will you, Luis?

—Walk good, Mr. Clark.

—Clark, just ditch—

—The E, I say.

—
Hasta la vista!

I look at Doctor Love.

—Him real name Clark?

—My real name Doctor Love?

—He says I instead of we.

—I noticed too,
hombre
.

—That something I should pay attention to?

—Fuck if I know. Just keep on truckin’, man. You guys unpack your box of good-goods yet?

—I think Americans say goodies.

—Do I look like a fucking Yankee?

—How you want me to answer that, Dr. Lee dungarees? Anyway, that box unpack long time.

He’s talking about another shipment, that come the same way that last one come in December 1976. In a big box marked Audio Equipment/Peace Concert, left out on the wharf for me, Weeper, Tony Pavarotti and two more man empty it. Seventy-five of the M16s we keep. Twenty-five we sell to man in Wang Sang Lands who seem to be itching for firepower lately. We keep all the ammunition, Weeper’s idea. Let them make them own bullet, he say.

It look like we planning for war, even though everybody else was planning for peace. Papa-Lo himself bounce back out of that grey cloud he put himself in ever since the Singer get shot. Just like him to put the entire blame on himself, since taking all the blame is just the flip side of taking all the credit. Telling the Singer that is ’cause him was in lockup why things happen or they would never have happened at all. Papa-Lo take a rocket ship and fly off this planet a long time ago, he might as well join Pigs in Space. Trouble is every day more people boarding that flight. Peace treaty fever take over the ghetto so much that the man who kill my cousin come up to me at the end of the first Unity Dance with his arm open like he was expecting a hug. I call him a battyman and walk off.

Peace treaty fever reach as far as Wareika Hill where man like Copper come down for the first time in years, as if he forget that every single policeman in Jamaica have a bullet in the chamber with his name on it. When even Copper come down the hills to eat, drink and make merry, it’s time I start scope out another country.

Papa-Lo even come to my house asking why I not jamming to the new peace riddim, and that is high time black people listen to what Marcus Garvey did plan for us all this time. I didn’t bother ask if he know any fucking
thing about Marcus Garvey or if this was reasoning that some damn Rasta from London was feeding him. But then his eyes, when I look at them, was wet. Pleading. And I realize something about this man and what he was doing. He was already seeing far beyond the clouds, far beyond the ghetto, far beyond time and his place in the world. That man was thinking about what would write on his gravestone. What people will say about him long after the last chunk of flesh rotten off his bone. Forget the seven time he go to jail for murder and attempted murder to walk out every time. Forget that before the white man and Doctor Love come along, he was the one who teach every man how to shoot. Forget that both him and Shotta Sherrif operate in boundaries that they mark off. He want his gravestone to say he unite the ghetto.