A Brief History of Seven Killings (75 page)

Josey?

Josey?

Is wha this, brethren?

Josey? Is wah this?

Then he don’t even give the gun back to me, just drop it and walk off. Eubie turn to walk off too, but then stop, turn back ’round to me. I can’t see him face.

Dorcas Palmer

I
don’t know
but I’m coming damn close to the conclusion that Heather Locklear’s hair looks better in
T. J. Hooker
than it does in
Dynasty
. Or maybe I just don’t like that the one woman in
Dynasty
who has to struggle for everything is the bitch, and not even a real bitch like Alexis Carrington, since she doesn’t have any money, so she’s really just a bitchlet. This is why her hair just don’t bloodcloth work on that show. Besides she really makes me want to wear a uniform when she’s on
T. J. Hooker.
Maybe become a policewoman for real because trying to wear attractive clothes all day is just too damn expensive, even when you’re not trying to look good. Sometimes you just want a shirt that still makes men know that you have breasts.

He’s still in the bathroom. It’s weird how I have been calling him, he for the past, what, now, fifty-five minutes? I mean, I don’t know who the hell is in my bathroom. The thing is, the more I try to figure it out the less sense it makes, so the best thing is to just not think really. Like that man in
Crime and Punishment
where Dostoyevsky says he was beyond thought or something like that. I swear to God sometimes I wish I was still a book-reading woman lost on some bus going somewhere in the city. At some point it just turned into effort like I was trying, which wasn’t a problem really until I started to wonder what exactly was I trying to do. I guess everything needs a goal after all. I don’t know what the r’ass I’m talking about. Anyway, this man is still in my bathroom like this is
The Shining
, and me out here about to get on like Jack Nicholson. All this time I’m trying to figure what health problem such a strapping man could have and it never occur to me even once that clearly his problem was not physical. It’s amazing how I just have a nose for tribulation. I swear to God. At least if he’s locking himself in
the bathroom he’s not about to turn into an ax murderer. From the look of things, I’m the ax murderer in this story.

I mean, this don’t make no sense. No, that will lead to thinking again. How about this: There is a man inside my bathroom that needs to come out. I can’t get him out so his family is coming to get him. Now I can get some peace from just concentrating on the facts of the situation. I like how that just reduces everything into something I don’t need to care about. I like reduction. Boiling down. Editing out. Leaving behind. Enough with the metaphors now for just cutting unnecessary shit from my life. And right now all the unnecessary shit is locked away in the bathroom.

Two sounds that I know. Window sliding up and back down. But there’s a grill to keep people out plus we’re five floors up, which I guess he didn’t remember. He’s trying to make an escape. How long before he works up some courage to kick down the door and fight? Would he see that it was a woman in the house all alone and leave? Try to beat me up? I don’t know about these ex-soldiers, you know. Everybody in this city look like any minute they might fall apart. You know what? I’m just going to stay sitting on this couch, straighten out the red velvet covering on the arm and watch the end of
T. J. Hooker
. I’m going to sit here and wait until his son or whoever shows up, although given that they called three times to get the address right, who knows when that will be?

Maybe I should ask if he needs anything. That’s what people always ask on these TV shows. I’m certainly not going to ask if he wants to talk about it. Maybe I should clean up my apartment since people coming over. Sure, like they coming over to check the place. They won’t even notice the bathroom rug that their daddy is sitting on. Maybe he’s sitting on the toilet, or maybe the edge of the tub, I don’t know. What is he doing in there? Jesus Christ, he was so normal only a few hours ago, so normal and nice and those words that men are just not worth using anymore, dashing, debonair, something else that begins with D. I mean, he was almost . . . I mean, I did everything to not think of him that way since thinking that way about men never ends well, and here it is, things didn’t end well anyway. Lesbians must be the most satisfied people on the planet. Maybe I should go over to the door
and tell him again that his son is coming, except “fuck you, whoever you are” wasn’t very funny the first time I heard it, and it won’t be any funnier the second time. I’m wondering which of us just woke up from a bad dream.

Wait and see or see and wait? Never thought about flipping that before. Like we’re waiting for action, when more often than not action just seems to make me wait. I seeing the door and waiting for him to come out, maybe armed with my plunger, or hair drier, or curling iron and maybe he will realise I’m a woman and think he can at least beat me up. Funny how the Colthirsts conveniently forgot to mention that I would be dealing with a maniac. Although if I had just said . . .

A knock on the door. There’s Miz Colthirst who’s wearing a scarf on her head that looks like she’s hiding rollers, and a thick camel coat because that makes perfect sense on a summer night. She whispers, For Christ sakes, and walks right past me inside. Since I’m pretty sure I don’t have a job anymore and as such don’t have to be polite to pushy white people, I was just about to tell this over made up bitch to show some r’asscloth manners in me house when the son make it up the stairs and straight to my door.

—I’m so very sorry for all of this, he says. He doesn’t wait for me to invite him in either. Now I feel like the stranger in my house. I’m actually measuring my steps as I walk and hoping I’m not making too much fuss as they gather at my bathroom door.

—Papah, oh Papah, this is just so ridiculous. Get out of there.

—Fuck you, cunt.

—Dad, you know I don’t appreciate you speaking to my wife that way.

—I have a name, Gaston, she says.

—One issue at a time, dear. Pop, can you come out now? This isn’t home, in case you didn’t notice.

—Who the hell put me here?

—Papah, it’s because you won’t take your pills.

—Why does that shrill bitch keep calling me her papa?

—You were at our wedding, Dad, stop acting like you’ve forgotten that too.

The son looks at me and mouths, I’m so sorry for all this.

—Anyway, Dad, we really need to give Mrs. Palmer her apartment. She’s put up with enough as it is.

—How did I get here?

—You weren’t kidnapped, Papah.

—I know I wasn’t kidnapped, you stupid bitch, you think that little black woman could have kidnapped me?

Little?

—Dad, we spoke—Dad? We’ve had this talk about your blackouts, remember?

—Where am I?

—You’re in the Bronx, Papah.

—Who the fuck blacks out and ends up in the Bronx?

—Apparently you do, Papah.

—Could somebody shut that bitch up?

—Okay, that’s really quite enough, Dad. Stop it and come out.

—You’re a joke.

—Okay, Dad. Okay. I’m the joke. Who’s the grown man who just realized that he is in some woman’s john in the middle of the Bronx and has no idea how he got there? I’m the joke? Listen, Pop, I don’t know how you got in this poor woman’s apartment and I don’t really care either, but unless you want her to call the police for them to drag your ass to jail for breaking and entering, if not worse, then get the fuck out of her bathroom so we can fucking go.

—I’m not going—

—Ken, now!

The wife comes over to me. That armchair, is it Danish Modern? she says. I say no, but I really wanted to say it’s so modern it was tossed out on the street only days ago. She’s just like rich women everywhere, including Jamaica. If it wasn’t for the string of pearls they’d never know what to do with their hands. Ken finally comes out, though nobody has to tell me that I don’t get to call him that anymore. He looks the same, except that his hair is not behaving like a movie star’s anymore. Some of it is hanging above his
left eyebrow. He stands up straight and begins to walk out of my house with his hands in front like somebody cuffed him.

—Gail, darling, could you walk Dad to the car?

—Really, darling, I do think I have a few words to give—

—I’m not walking anywhere with this bitch.

—Both of you get the fuck out of this woman’s house and go to the fucking car now.

The wife leaves tugging the pearls and it looks like she’s using the necklace to pull herself. Mr. Colthirst stops to look at me, not the up and down summing up that snobs do, but straight in the eyes. I look away first. I don’t watch him leave. The son sits down.

—I don’t think we’ve met, he says.

—No. You were gone to work.

—Right. And you’re Dorcas, right?

—Yes.

—How did he get here?

I don’t know if I should answer him or take in more of how he looks like Lyle Waggoner too. I wonder if he would be happy or angry if I said they looked like brothers.

—Is he that wanted to leave. It’s not like I could stop him, all I could do was follow him and make sure he didn’t get into trouble.

—But the Bronx. Your house.

—You know I don’t have to answer that. You people called the wrong agency—at least that was how it looked. He was the one who wanted to get food in the Bronx. I didn’t have to follow him.

—Hey, I’m not judging you, ma’am.

—Not a thing happened.

—Miss Dorcas, I really don’t care. So do you know the deal with my pop?

—The Miz never got ’round to explaining anything, but I figured there must be something if you called the agency.

—Every day is a new day for Pop.

—Every day is a new day for everybody.

—Yeah, but everything about it is new for Pop. My father has a condition.

—Not sure I following you.

—He doesn’t remember. He’s not going to remember yesterday, or today. Not meeting you, what he had for breakfast, by noon tomorrow he won’t even remember being in your bathroom.

—That sound like a condition in a movie.

—A very, very long one. He remembers other stuff, like how to tie his tie and shoelaces, where his bank is, his Social Security number, but the president is still Carter.

—And John Lennon is still alive.

—Huh?

—Nothing.

—Doesn’t matter if you tell him, doesn’t matter what you tell him, by the next day he forgets. He can’t remember anything since around April 1980. So he remembers his children, he remembers hating my wife because of an argument they had the same day it happened, but every morning the kids are this surprise we sprung on him. And to him Mom died two years ago, not six. He also doesn’t believe it when you explain all this to him and, I mean, why should he? Who wants to be devastated every morning? At least thank God he doesn’t remember that either. I mean, you saw how he walked right past you, somebody he just spent the whole day with. In the fucking Bronx.

—What happened to him?

—That’s such a long story. Accident, disease. After four years it doesn’t matter at all.

—He never remembers that he forgets.

—Nope.

—Is it getting worse?

—I really don’t know.

I’m thinking that’s not so bad.

—You should know that’s why the last one before you quit.

—Really? That’s not what . . .

—Huh?

—Never mind. She quit?

—Yeah, I guess it got to her after a few weeks, having to introduce herself every day to a cranky old man who doesn’t know why she’s there. And even with that she couldn’t get past not treating him like he was sick, even though that’s what she was there for. You’re pretty much waiting for a bomb to go off every day.

—He’s not old.

—Huh? No . . . I guess he’s not. Anyway, we’ve got to take him home. We’ll call the agency tomorrow and let them know it was no fault of yours that we need a new—

—No.

—Huh?

—Don’t call the agency. I want the job.

—You sure?

—Yes I’m sure. I’ll take it.

John-John K

C
hrist, what a sloppy
motherfucker. Took him out as soon as he stepped through the door. Well, knocked him out. Maybe he should have switched the light on as soon as he came in. Now I have him sitting on his own stool like a school dunce, hands tied behind his back. I thought about roughing him up a little. But I dunno, maybe it was because he just stepped in, or maybe I just wanted to . . . I dunno.

—You Weeper? I say.

—Who the fuck is you? he says.

I screwed the silencer back on.

—Oh, that is who you be. You look like somebody me know. Me know you?

—Nope.

—You sure? Me no forget people. Once a man enter the room me mark him face, just in case him . . .

—Something funny?

—Just in case him have a gun. What kind o’ gun that?

—Nine millimeter.

—Pussyhole gun. That me come to, going get kill with a battyman gun.

—Battyman?

—Samfie business.

—What? Why don’t you stop talking?

—Then why you didn’t gag me if you didn’t want me to talk? I mean, I could bawl out for murder.

—Go ahead, Kitty Genovese.

—Who that?

—Never mind.

—Something you want me to tell you, don’t it?

I pull up a chair in front of him.

—Smoke? I said.

—I man rather lick the collieweed, but put a cigarette in me mouth, nuh?

—I’m gonna take that as a yes.

I stick a cig in my mouth, another in his and light them both.

—You must be the first white enforcer me ever see. And me never see you ’round them place. Though me know me see you. Maybe you come to Jamaica as tourist.

—Nope.

—Me know everybody who work for Griselda and me no know you.

—How did you know Griselda sent me?

—Subtract those with a desire from those who have means.

—Hah. What’s the skinny on you and Griselda?