A Brief History of Seven Killings (66 page)

—Fine don’t tell me, I don’t need to know.

—Know what?

—I swear, my cousin Larry with Alzheimer’s has a sharper attention span than you.

—Oh, excuse me.

—No, you’re not excused. Now I’m going to have to tell you a joke now.

—Lord, Mr. Ken, not another nigger joke.

—Oh good heavens, no more of those, please. It was about Alzheimer’s. Funny, people with the big A joke about people with the big C, as if there something at least about not remembering you’re sick that makes that disease better.

—So are you the big A or the big C? The big P? D? My family in Jamaica is all about the big D.

—Big D?

—Diabetes.

—Of course, and P for Parkinson’s? Sometimes I wished I had a medieval disease, like consumption, or the bloody flux.

—What do you have?

—Let’s not turn this into a movie of the week so soon, shall we? Because then I’ll feel like I’m living in my daughter’s TV. In fact this whole scene needs to be less
Imitation of Life
and more
Gulliver’s Travels
.

He walks over to the doorway and picks up his cap and scarf.

—Let’s go.

—What? Go where? Lilliput? The pizza man soon come.

—Oh I never eat that shit. They’ll just leave it in the stairway and charge it to our account. Let’s cut this place loose, I’m fucking bored.

The truth is, I really wanted to leave. All the slave-era furniture that you just knew was made only a few years ago was getting on my nerves. Somewhere in this house Miz Colthirst was keeping every single issue of
Victoria
. And probably
Redbook
for anytime she felt like making her own icing.

—Where are we going?

—Who the hell knows, maybe you’ll take me out for dinner in the Bronx. So I take it you’ve read Swift.

—Jamaican schoolers read
Gulliver’s Travels
by the time they’re twelve.

—Oh my. What surprise will she reveal in the next forty minutes? Inquiring minds want to know. Let’s go.

This man wasn’t joking about the Bronx. I’m not sure why I didn’t say anything either when we just jumped out of the cab as soon as it reached Union Square, went to the subway and jumped on the 5, heading right back where we came from. We both sat in a three-seater by the door. I didn’t want to look up to see if anybody was looking at me. The graffiti was inside now too. Until we got to 96th, the car was mostly white people, old men and women who probably had nowhere to go and school children in no rush to get home. Between 110th and 125th most of the white people had come off, leaving the Latinos and some of the blacks. By 145th the car was almost all black. None of the groups could resist looking at us. I wished I had dressed like a nurse and he didn’t look like Lyle Waggoner. Maybe the black men
would think this man must be something special to be able to handle a black woman. Or maybe they were wondering if he’s really traveling this far for a call girl. Worse, since we’re going to 180th I had to sit and wait till the train ran out of people to look at us.

—You live around here?

—No.

—Was just asking.

—You know it’s not safe to be on this train heading to this place this time of day, right?

—What are you talking about? It’s barely five in the afternoon.

—It’s five in afternoon in the Bronx.

—And?

—You own a TV?

—People decide on what they should fear in this world, Dorcas.

—People who live on Park Avenue can decide if they feel like having some fear today. For the rest of us it means don’t go to the Bronx after five.

—So why are we going?

—I’m not going. You’re going. I’m just following you.

—Ha, you’re the one who told me about the jerk chicken on Boston Road, and I told you I haven’t had Jamaican food since 1973.

—And so it goes, every white man must have his own
Heart of Darkness
experience for himself.

—I don’t know what I should be more impressed by, the fact that you’re so well read, or the fact that the farther we get from Fifth Avenue, the bolder your tone gets with me.

—What next, Mr. Ken? You speak English so well? Americans don’t read books in high school? As for tone, since my hiring was a mistake, I think you can rest assured that you won’t be seeing me or anybody from the agency tomorrow.

—Wow, that would be a mistake of disastrous proportions, he said, not to me but to whatever he was looking at out the window. I survey the car to see if anybody was looking at that exchange.

—I think I know what you’re doing, I say.

—Really? Do tell.

—Whatever it is that you have, clearly it’s giving you a death wish. You don’t have to be afraid of anything anymore so you can do whatever you want.

—Maybe. Or maybe, Freud, I just want some fucking jerk pork and yam, and rum punch, and don’t give a fuck about your fucking dime-store pop psychology. You ever fucking thought about that?

Two men look up.

—Sorry. I just get all of that shit from my son and his wife already. Don’t need it, especially from somebody I’m paying for.

Three men and two women look up.

—Well, thanks for letting everybody think that I’m a prostitute, I say.

—What? What are you talking about?

—Everybody heard you.

—Oh. Oh no.

And then he gets up. I open my handbag wide and wonder if my whole head can fit in it.

—Look folks . . . I ah . . . know what you might be thinking.

—Are you serious? They’re not thinking anything. Sit down.

—I just want to say, that Dorcas here, she’s my wife, not some prostitute.

I know that in my mind I screamed. I don’t know if I did it in public but in my mind I sure as hell screamed.

—We’ve been married for what now, four years, honey? And I gotta say, it’s just like the first day, isn’t that so, precious?

I can’t tell if he’s failing badly at protecting my reputation or if he’s really enjoying this. Meanwhile I’m looking very hard at people trying hard not to look. An older woman is covering her mouth and laughing. I want to laugh just to make it clear I’m outside this joke too, but the laugh just won’t come. The funny thing is I’m not even mad at him. He’s holding on to the railing, swinging with the train almost like he’s about to dance. The train stops at Morris Park.

—This is our stop.

—Oh? But this is Morris Park. I thought we were coming off at Gun Hill Road?

—This is the stop.

I jump out as soon as the doors open and don’t wait for him. I don’t even look back. I almost want him to stay on, go the fuck to Gun Hill Road all he wants. But then I hear him breathing behind me.

—God that was fun.

—Embarrassing people is fun?

I stand at the platform, waiting for an apology because I’ve seen movies, this is what you’re supposed to do.

—Maybe you should ask yourself why you’re so easily embarrassed.

—Wah?

—I love it when you talk Jamaican.

—You serious?

—Oh for fuck’s sake, Dorcas. You don’t know a single person on the train, you’ll never see any of them again, and even if you do, you won’t even remember what they look like, so who gives a shit what they thought?

Jesus sweet Lord, I hate when I’m not the one in the room making sense.

—We should wait for the next train.

—Fuck that. Let’s walk.

—You’re going to walk. In the Bronx.

—Yep, that’s what I’m gonna do.

—You know that they find a body in Haffen Park almost every morning.

—You’re gonna talk to a veteran about dead bodies?

—You know crime is not like how you see it on
Police Woman
.

—
Police Woman?
When’s the last time you watched TV?

—We can’t walk just in the Bronx.

—Don’t worry, Dorcas, at worst they’ll just think you’re helping me to score heroin.

—Did you just say heroin?

This was going to be fabulous, me the questionably documented immigrant walking through a Bronx neighbourhood in the evening with a strange
white man clearly out of his element because he’s drinking that I’m-a-whiteman-I’m-invincible juice.

—Then you not going even call your family?

—Fuck ’em. The wrinkle my daughter will get from frowning over this, especially after her face-lift, will be worth it.

Tristan Phillips

O
h, so you can
go back to Jamaica whenever you want to? Ah so? You sound like man who say they can give up smack whenever they want to. Mind you know, Alex Pierce, Jamaica can shoot through your veins and it become like every dark sweet thing that not good for you. But me done with talking in riddle. The thing is, unless you did know where to look for me, there is no way you could have find me. Yeah, yeah, you’re concerned about the fall of the peace process, so tell me something, how you plan to learn anything about it if you not been in the country since 1978? Me surprised you even hear about it, since you never was on the rock when it happen. So you going talk to Lucy? Brethren, you no serious. Lucy is the key. Me and she is the only people from the peace council still alive. You going have to track her down in Jamaica, my youth. You ever wonder how come we two still alive while everybody else dead? Of course not, until right now, you did think it was only one. Remember, you know, on paper me supposed to dead too. Everybody get killed and depending who you talk to, that include the Singer. Tell me something, you ever hear somebody get infected with cancer?

The thing I still can’t understand is why this topic sweat you so much. You making it out like The Day Jamaica Gone to Hataclaps, like the place did have somewhere else to go. So what was your favourite spot in Jamaica? Trench Town? What kind of man pick Trench Town as him favourite spot? You lucky you white, eh? Make me ask you something, you think Trench Town is a favourite spot for anybody living in Trench Town? You think any of them sitting on a stoop saying, Now this is the life? Tourist funny, boy.

Oh, you not a tourist. Don’t tell me: you know the real Jamaica. You did have a little missus down there? Aisha. Nice name, sound like something
you say when you cum. So she a nice girl or she suck your dick? Haha, me no mind, white boy, me is a man of the world. Third World, but still. How much more time we have today? Unlimited? In Rikers? Brethren, is what kinda string you just pull? Still better we get back on topic, no true?

Until the Singer tell me ’bout Josey Wales me never think twice ’bout the boy. But then things and more things happen, and you start to see signs even though you never did like church. I mean, if he did really care about killing the Singer he would have finished the job the very next night. Man must was out to make a different point. I mean, shit, to come straight into the Singer yard two year later like nothing never happen? A man with balls that big? Stay out of him way. Now it easy to say that peace did doom to fail because war is the ghetto man character. Yeah, that sound like something wise, but you have to understand—you know when hope so new and fresh it even have a colour? Like the thing that you save in the back of you head because it never going happen and then all of a sudden it look like it might happen for real? Is like you find out that you can fly for true. We never born behind cow, or naïve as you would put it. None of we was idiot. All of we did know that this peace was a ninety percent chance of fail but, man, ten percent never look so sweet in all we life. You could just grab it. And when Shotta Sherrif say to me that me must chair it this peace council, is like somebody look at me and for the first time see something different from what me even see in meself. I . . .

I . . .

I lost meself again.

And then in a blink: Copper shot, Papa-Lo shot, first me did think that it was just the police settling score now that we guard down. Or worse: political parties which never did want the peace anyway getting rid of it in time for the next election. But we already talk about the intelligence of the police. And even politician wouldn’t want it come out that is them kill peace. You have to look deeper. Police kill bad man because them have vendetta. But other than to have a dead body to parade around downtown they don’t really get no benefit out of killing nobody. You have think. Who in a better place right now than he was before these killings? Only one man.

Josey Bombocloth Wales.

Papa-Lo dead and now he the ranking don of Copenhagen City. Shotta Sherrif dead and PNP’s New York posses scattered ever since, including my owner posse. Every man in New York sniffing, smoking and shooting up the white wife and the Colombian need a man with skill that can get that shit further into the States. And even England now, me hear. Take the peace treaty out of the way, and he just give certain politician a favour so big that they going spend the rest of the life to repay. Kill any movement of Jah people and Americans don’t have no reason to be ’fraid anymore that we going turn into Cuba. Me don’t know nothing for true, but I’d bet that even some people higher up, maybe people who control coast guard, or immigration or customs or some shit, now all turn a blind eye to certain boat and plane and ship because one man give them Jamaica on a plate in 1980.

Brethren, if me did know why people like me end up in prison, people like me wouldn’t end up in prison. Feel free to start your first paragraph that way, call it ghetto wisdom or something, whatever you white people write whenever you get all caught up in shady black people. Yeah, me read too, Alex Pierce, more than you. Man, people like me just excite you, eh? Put a white journalist beside him own “Stagger Lee” and your brain go bananas. Is ’cause you have no story of your own? Right, it’s not about you, you’re here to tell the story, not be the story. And yet still some part of me tell me that this is your story, not mine. You interested in any year after 1978? How ’bout 1981? Plenty things happen, the Singer get to know this place named Heaven and me get to know this place named Attica. What, you think man get to Rikers because them see a brochure? You graduate to Rikers, brethren.

So anyway, even though me know that batty boy Weeper wasn’t going come after me again, that didn’t mean Josey Wales wasn’t going to. By the way, you ever meet that brother? No? You talking about the peace process and you never meet . . . never mind. I really couldn’t know what that man was planning to do, so me start run with the Ranking Dons. It simple: Storm Posse, which is Josey Wales, is Copenhagen City, and Ranking Dons is the
Eight Lanes. And since me was a part of Eight Lanes from the day they bulldoze Balaclava, where else me fi go? No star, political warfare don’t end just because you switch battlefield. I needed the safety in numbers, they needed the brains since the stupid little fuckers couldn’t even keep track of who selling on what street, or which street you was going get shoot up by Eubie Brown and him Storm Posse.