A Brief History of Seven Killings

I follow him down this street to where it seem to end, on the train line that cut through Kingston from east to west. By the train line, this far south nothing block the view of the sea. Kingston can close in on itself, so much so that you could be right by the sea and forget that you live on the island. That there is a sort of ghetto boy who run to the sea every day just so they can dive into something and forget. I only think of them when I see the sea. The sun was setting but it did still hot and the air taste like fish. Josey Wales turn left, to a small shack, where man long time ago would get up early to close the road so that the train could pass. He never tell me to follow. When I finally go inside he look at me like he was waiting all day.

Inside night fall already and the floor creak and crack. He light a match and I see the skin first, sweaty and shiny. The funny thing about smelling sweat is that you soon smell piss, not fresh, but soak in the floor, piss from not long ago. The boy did in the corner, belly down on the floor. Josey Wales or somebody tie up him hand, then tie the rope to him foot so that he look like a human bow. Josey Wales point to him clothes on the floor, then point at me with the gun and say pick them up, them might be your size. Now you have four brief he say, I don’t remember telling no man about how much brief I have. I go to pick them up but Josey Wales fire. The bullet buck the floor and both me and the boy jump. Not yet, pussyhole. You no prove you ah man yet. I look at him, tall with a bald head that him woman shave for him every week. Tall and brown and full of muscle, where Papa-Lo black and thick. When he smile Josey Wales look like a chineyman, but he would shoot you if you say so, because chineyman cocky small like a bump, not like black man cocky.

You see how Rema boy live good? You think you can buy them jeans, yah? Is Fiorucci this you know. You see what thirty pieces of silver can buy a Rema boy? Josey Wales know label. Most of him clothes, him woman get from her job at a factory that make and ship clothes back to America so people could wear them to the disco, which is what people in America do. Everybody know because she tell everybody. You want this, then grow some bombocloth balls. Right now, he say, and shove the gun in my hand. I hear the boy crying. He hail from the Rema and I don’t know anybody from there so. Wouldn’t know anybody from the Eight Lanes either if me see him now. Right now, Josey Wales say again. Gun weight is a different kind of weight. Or maybe it be something else, a feeling that whenever you hold a gun is really the gun holding you. Now, or me deal with the two of you, Josey Wales say. Me walk right over to the boy and smell him sweat and piss and something else and pull the trigger. The boy don’t scream or shout or ungh like when Harry Callahan kill a boy. He just jerk and dead. And the gun jerk my hand hard but the shot didn’t sound like when Harry Callahan fire a shot, where the echo going on so long it don’t end with the movie. The shot was two boards slap together that push against your ears quick then gone like a lick from a hammer.

When a shot enter a boy you don’t hear anything more than a zup. Me did want to kill that Rema boy. Me did want it more than anything. I don’t know why. Yes I do. And Josey Wales didn’t say a thing. He said shoot him again to make sure, and I did. The body jerk. In the head, fool, he say, and me shoot again. I couldn’t see if blood was running on the floor. The gun was lighter and warmer. Me tell meself that it was starting to like me. It really was nothing to kill a boy. Me did know it would be, maybe it was something ghetto boy just know. It was not the death, but the piss and shit and blood that make me vomit when I drag him down to dump in the sea. Three days later the newspaper have as headline Boy floating in Kingston Harbour: Murder execution style. Josey Wales smile and say me is big man now, so big that me make news and all of Jamaica ’fraid of me. I don’t feel big. I don’t feel nothing. Is more of a big thing that I don’t feel nothing. No, that’s not a big thing neither. He tell me don’t tell Papa-Lo or he going kill me himself.

Josey Wales