A Brief History of Seven Killings (80 page)

—Again, the Josey humour nobody seems to know about.

—Brethren, this already tired. And you and me know this is not your last stop.

—Where else would I be going?

—Right back to the son of a bitch who send you.

—What if nobody sent me?

—Doctor Love don’t even roll over in bed unless it’s for a cheque.

—You know what we are, Josef?

—I know we are chatting total bullshit.

—Relics.

—You hear any fucking thing I just say?

—Something from yesterday. A memento.

—Jesus Christ.

—It means, my friend, that most people will never know. Maybe somebody will find something of value in us, but most of the time we just get thrown out.

—Brethren, if you trying to tell me something with a metaphor you doing a real fuckery job of it.

—Just trying to make merry,
mijo
.

—No. You stalling because you never have to do something close up before. Is a wonder how you ever fuck.

—Phone sex?

—Really?

He laughs.

—It’s the thing now, all the porn guys are ripping out their sets and putting in landlines. Some dumpy, never been married dude calls 1-900-WET-TWAT and a five-hundred-pound bitch with a sexy voice says, Hey sailor. He jerks off and it goes right to the phone bill.

—For real?

—Real deal Holyfield.

—Know I should have been a pimp.

—Dunno, drug dealer worked out pretty good. Until you ended up in this place.

—Wanted a change of scenery.

—Now who’s using a shitty metaphor?

—All these years I don’t hear shit from you. Berlin Wall come down, James Bond run out of story and Doctor Love don’t have nothing to do. What, you settle down and go back to being a real doctor? Hold on, for real? You is a doctor for real now? How you do surgery, me brethren, by blowing the body part off?

—Haha.

—Keeping a body alive for a change just seem to be outside your desire. So tell me now, Doctor Love, how this family quarrel reach you all the way in Miami?

—Who said I was in Miami?

—I can see as far as you.

—Hmm. Josef, you’re a smart man. The smartest man I’ve ever met. Surely you expected that if you keep talking long enough all sorts of people would hear you.

—I talking from two years ago. Why now and why you?

—I’m just observing.

—Bombo r’asscloth. You know what? Make we step it up because this just annoying the shit out o’ me. You know if anything happen to me, certain files going start showing on certain district attorney desk.

—The word on the street—

—You don’t know shit about the street.

—The inspector from the DEA. When did he pay you this visit, last Thursday?

—If you know that the DEA come see me, then you already know the damn day. Jesus Christ, Luis, I wish you was a relic, because no lie—the present version of you is one serious disappointment. How much pounds you put on since me last see you?

—Life has been very agreeable.

—Life turn you into a fat fuck. You sure your trigger finger can even fit?

—You’re looking good.

—You used to be able to bullshit better.

—So did you, asshole. Horseshit about files. Everybody knows you never took notes, Josey. DEA wants what’s in your head, not in some fucking file. Whatever is living with you, dying with you. You’re quiet for once. Nobody gave a shit about you until you decided to clean out that crack house in ’85. Around the same time your new best friends at the DEA started to pay attention. I would ask Weeper if it was one of those rare moments of the don man losing his temper, but he seems to have vanished with ’85 too.

—Not a damn thing mysterious about what happen to Weeper. Man couldn’t keep him hands off him own stash. Was bound to happen sooner or later.

—Injecting himself with pure coke? What kind of dealer makes an accident like that? Even if he’s using.

—Maybe it wasn’t an accident.

—You saying your boy was suicidal?

—Weeper? Him don’t have no reason to kill himself. Just when he start living like how he always want to? You know things bad when before New York the only time he was ever happy was when he was in . . . shit. When he was in here. This very prison.

—Then what are you saying, Josey?

—I not saying a thing. You was the one to bring it up. Fucking Weeper. I knew it was going to happen. Is this what you come for, Luis? Because all you seem to be talking about is shit that long behind me.

—Funny you should talk about people who love to talk. It’s really good to see you, Josey. Circumstances notwithstanding.

—I wouldn’t see you at all if it wasn’t for circumstances.

—Correct. I guess.

—What time you leave?

—Jamaica? No set time.

—What time?

—Tomorrow, six a.m. First flight out.

—Enough time.

—Time for what?

—Time for what you need to do. And to file the news report.

—So you and Mr. DEA talking plea bargain yet?

—Plea bargain? You previous, eh? It have to actually reach court first, Doctor Love.

—Oh, oh really?

—Yes really. You learn plenty when you life revolve around jail and court.

—Speaking about courts, that was fucked up, the appeals court not throwing out the extradition.

—Is a Privy Council, not a court of appeals. And fucked up for who? For me? Way I see it I just making a long overdue visit to America.

—You sound like you’re going to Grandma’s house.

—Me not the one sweating shit over my going to American jail. That would be whoever send you.

—Nobody sent—

—Alright, my boy. Keep up what you feel you need to keep out. Whatever you going to do, do it in my sleep.

—It was a really nice funeral.

—What?

—Really nice. The loudest funeral I ever been to, but really nice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a marching band behind a hearse. With baton twirlers. Sexy baton twirlers in miniskirts. At first I thought it was tacky but they were wearing blue panties to class things up. They did your boy good.

—Don’t talk about my son.

—There’s one thing, though. It was so strange, because, well, I’ve never seen it before.

—Luis.

—When they lowered Benjy in the grave, a bunch of men and women formed two lines, right? On both sides of the grave and then somebody, his woman maybe? She gave the first man the baby and then they kept passing him back and forth, over the grave, all the way down the line to the end. What does that mean, Josey?

—Don’t talk about my boy.

—I mean, I just want to know wh—

—I said don’t talk about me bombocloth boy.

Five

T
hen him no suppose
to wake up by now, nurse? Nurse? Nurse? Him no supposed to wake up?

—Ma’am, technically he’s not asleep. We have to keep him under sedation for now, for his own benefit.

—Ah the doctor a do this? Why unu don’t want him wake up? Ah what unu ah do?

—Ma’am, you’ll have to take it up with the doctor, ma’am.

—Ma’am. What a way you stoosh. Is where you come from, Manor Park?

—The Bronx.

She jumps every time the monitor beeps. I’m near the doorway trying to leave this room for five minutes now. Yeah, I know I’m a nurse, but when you work in a hospital the smell gets to you. Not the smell visitors pick up on and not the ones patients pick up either. Other smells. Like that of a man with a serious injury and a man gone so bad you know, even before it is confirmed, he will never come back. A man like that smells like machinery. Like clean plastic. Scrubbed bedpan. Hand sanitizer. So much cleanliness it makes you sick. This man in the bed has a tube going into both arms and his neck, four in a bundle through his mouth, one to take away his piss and another to take away what would have been shit. Last week he needed a tap because there was too much fluid on his brain. Jamaican man, black man under the white sheets in a night-robe with sprinkles as a pattern. I’m not one of the nurses who have to adjust him every few hours, leaning him slightly left, then slightly right a few hours after that. Not the nurse to check his vitals, she left five minutes ago. Not here to check his IV or his nutrients, or to make sure he’s under satisfactory levels of sedation. I’m not even supposed to be on this floor for the most part, since my hands are always full
in the ER. But here I am, in ICU again, coming so often that this woman, maybe his baby mother—I mean, she is always here with a baby but not today—thinks I’m his nurse. I can’t just say I’m not because then she will wonder what I wonder every day. Why am I here?

I don’t know.

Most of the Jamaicans who showed up at the ER were treated and sent home including a man who will think twice before he takes a shit for a good six weeks. Two didn’t make it out alive, two were dead before they got here. And then here is this man with six gunshot wounds, massive trauma to the head and a cervical spine fracture. Even if he makes it to next week or the one after that, every single thing that made his life a life is probably dead now. I should be hopeful, or pleasantly abstract as they teach you to be with the families of critical patients. But the most I can muster is a kind of indifference, which sooner or later this woman is bound to notice.

I’m gone before she leaves, but most of the time when I visit early she’s already here, sitting by the bed and wiping his forehead. Yesterday I reminded her he’s also carrying an infection so at least use the sanitizer at the door before picking up the baby, and she looked at me like I was insulting her. It’s just a suggestion, ma’am, not hospital policy, I said. I really want to look at him when she’s not here. Telling myself I don’t know why really works if I don’t think about it too much. This man lying in hospital over something that no matter how far a Jamaican can run, it’s always inching up behind you. I don’t want to know why he is here. Nothing about this warring bullshit is of any interest to me. The only reason I’m in the Bronx still is I can’t afford to move to somewhere else, so if Jamaicans want to shoot themselves up over drugs or whatever, it’s really their business. I don’t want to hear that man’s name, not even when they talking about him son. There was a time when hearing it would make me scream. Now when hear it I don’t know what happens until I find myself or somebody finds me, staring out the window of the cafeteria as if I’m lost or something. Damn if I can even remember why that name does what it does to me. Damn if despite knowing I could never kid myself, I always, always try.

—So what you know?

—Excuse me?

I hope she wasn’t talking to me all along. She’s touching his head and not looking at me.

—All unu can talk ’bout is what unu no know. You no the nurse? Him nah improve? You nah go give him no new medicine? Why nobody want chat to me ’bout if him going walk again, I hear ’bout them spine things y’know. Me tired of damn nurse who come in here ah pick up pad and read it, and ah touch him, and ah move him, and doing all sorta thing but can’t say nothing but to speak to the damn doctor. And where the damn doctor deh?

—I’m sure the doctor is coming, ma’am.

—The doctor is already here, ladies.

I hope I didn’t just say shit out loud. Again. Doctor Stephenson doing his doctor strut right into the room, his blond hair slick this time. Maybe he has somewhere to go after this. Tall, pale and handsome in a British sort of way, meaning he hasn’t started using the Bowflex he had shipped to his office two or three months ago but still looks like he just walked out of
Chariots of Fire
. Last week he pulled up his short sleeve to show me his even whiter arm and asked if I thought he could get a tan in Jamaica, because he has failed everywhere else. This damn woman delayed me. I wasn’t supposed to be here, certainly not long enough for a doctor to run into me.

—Fancy running into you here, Nurse Segree. ER having a slow afternoon, or they finally transferred you to ICU?

—Uh . . . Doctor, I was just passing by and looked in—

—Why, was something wrong? Did you alert whoever’s on call?

—No, nothing was wrong. Nothing was . . . I was just passing by.

—Hmm. ER now sending student nurses up to ICU? I swear you must be the only one I know by name, Nurse Segree.

—Well, I need to be on my way, Doctor—

—No, stay a moment. I just might need you.

I was about to say something but he just closed his eyes and nodded yes once, as if that was all that needed to be said on the matter.

—Hello, ma’am.

—Why everybody a chat to me like me is one old woman?

—Huh? Nurse, what is she . . . well, anyway. And this is your husband?

—Doctor Stephenson, I say. I want to say just talk to the damn woman and stop try to figure out her bloodcloth marital status because if she ever set to start explaining commonlaw marriage to you is another month before you understand, but instead I just say,

—She’s listed as the next of kin, Doctor.

—Oh. Well, ma’am, it’s still too early to say. He’s responding . . . well, he’s responding to treatment, but it’s early days yet. He’s still critical at the moment, but he might be stable in a few days. In the meantime we’ll have to run some more tests—

—More test? Test fi wha? You must think him inna school the way unu ah run test. And none of unu test can give me no result.

—Ah . . . uh . . . Millicent?

—Millicent? the woman says. I don’t have to look to know she’s staring at me hard and frowning right now. The doctor pulls me aside but not far enough. I know she will hear everything he says.

—Millicent . . . ah . . . how do I put this? I’m not exactly following what she’s saying. I mean, I think I have the gist but wouldn’t want to put one’s foot in one’s mouth, if you catch my drift. Can you speak to her?

—Ah . . . sure.

—Maybe in your native tongue.

—What?

—You know, that Jamaican lingo. It’s so musical it’s like listening to Burning Spear and drinking coconut juice.

—Coconut water.

—Whatever. It’s so beautiful, good God, I don’t have a goddamn clue what you’re all saying.