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• 1.Aim at“the Singer”

  • It was December, 1976, in Jamaica. The whole country was gripped in an atmosphere of political conflict before the general election. Opposing parties were led by crooked politicians; each political force had its own gangs and these gangs threatened every person in this country, including the gangsters involved. Unintended victims died, women were offended, and kids were trapped in poverty and darkness. For decades in this place, living people took a wait and see approach, because they fooled themselves into thinking that they had time.  Dead people however see and wait; wait for their foes to join the underworld.
    
    Only one man could bring a glean of hope and peace: the Singer. Only one man could be called “the Singer” in Jamaica, it is reggae superstar Bob Marley. He grew up in the Jamaican ghettos and had performed in hopes of helping bring peace to the country. Marley sang his songs about love, pain, peace, and faith of humanity to the whole world, which won him international fame. “One good thing about music—when it hits you, you feel no pain.” It’s his most famous quote.
    
    Some described the Singer as Jesus Christ, the man who was sent by God to save the world from its sins and bring peace, according to the Christian Bible.  In this case, many people believe the Singer had come to save Jamaica from itself and bring peace. To heal the divided nation on the brink of violence, Bob Marley decided to stage the Smile Jamaica Peace Concert in December. Unfortunately, the concert became associated with the People’s National Party（PNP）, one of the two competing sides. It is widely criticized as propaganda by the PNP. Therefore, some men with ulterior motives had gotten anxious.
    
    In a dark corner in Kingston, the capital of Jamaica, a ruthless man was plotting to use the singer's life as a stepping-stone. It was Josey Wales, the want-to-be don of the city. Josey Wales was famous for his cold-bloodedness. In order to make his way up the ladder, Josey was willing to do anything he was asked. One of his first jobs was the arson of a tenement, which killed dozens of people. Josey was so determined the job be done right that he even shot the firemen coming to put out the fire.  He wasn’t always villainous, but during the destruction of his ghetto he was shot multiple times.  When he recovered from his wounds, Josey became a different man.
    
    His ambition grew fat. He said to himself, “Tomorrow I going take care of a few people. The next day I goin’ take care of the world.” Moreover, he didn’t appreciate Marley’s effort to bring peace. In his view, the conciliation didn’t make sense at all. He once said, “What is peace? Peace is my blowing a little breeze on my daughter forehead when she sweats in her sleep. This don’t name peace, this name stalemate.” But he is not a good-natured critic; his way involved gathering a string of young outlaws planning to shoot the Singer to death.

• 2.Killers in A Locked Room

  • Weeks before the concert, Josey gathered his nine killers, Weeper, Demus, Bam-Bam, and another six men in a one-room house by the sea.  Josey trained them and offered them cocaine. The number soon was cut to seven when one killed himself by mistaking rat poisoning for cocaine, and the other  Josey shot when he refused to play a part in the Singer’s death because the Singer had given his family money in the past. Josey left the remaining seven men there. He warned them that anyone who attempted to leave would be shot. The door was locked, keeping the men in.
    
    Weeper was Josey’s main follower. He was also the man who helped Josey recruit the young boys to help with the assassination of the Singer. Weeper wanted to use young boys because they could be used once and then killed.
    
    When he was a teen, Weeper went to high school and was an educated man even though he was a homosexual. On his way to try to get a job as an architect’s apprentice, Weeper was among those caught in a police ambush. Weeper was knocked down, kicked in the head, and later found guilty of robbery and wounding with intent even though he was involved in no crime. He was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary. The police beat him and abused him brutally in prison.  They even hooked up an electrical cord around his penis in a torture process called the Electric Boogie. While in jail, the police also broke the left lens of Weeper’s glasses. Even though he could afford to fix the glasses, Weeper never did because he wanted to be reminded of what the police did to him. Thus, he always wanted to kill police. He didn’t like the Singer as well.  The first time he met the Singer, the Singer had said that he was fighting for the prisoners’ rights, but Marley laughed as if it was funny or ironic, making Weeper hate him.
    
    Demus was another boy that Weeper and Josey recruited to kill the Singer. Before Demus was involved in the murder plan, he had been jailed for rape even though he had not committed the crime. One week after he was imprisoned, the woman changed her story and he was released from jail with no apology. While in jail he sustained a leg injury, the pain from which was soothed only by marijuana or the Singer’s music. When he learned Josey wanted him to shoot the Singer, Demus went home and vomited. He’d never have gotten involved, he said, if he had known the Singer was the target. Josey, however, had made him believe the Singer was responsible for the bad in their country and his life.  Once, a man from the Singer’s house offered Demus money to help kidnap a jockey and order him to lose his races in a horse racing scam, but Demus never got the money. Demus was lured into the plan to shoot the Singer because he believed it was the Singer’s fault that he never got his money from the kidnapping job. Also he believed the Singer was merely a hypocritical rogue no better than others.
    
    Bam-Bam was another ghetto boy whose parents were killed by a member of the gang loyal to PNP. Josey Wales saw something he could use in the boy and took him under his wing when Bam-Bam was only a young teenager. Bam-Bam hated the Singer in a way because it was the PNP men who shot his parents. Bam-Bam also believed the Singer forgot and was out of touch with life in the ghetto even though he still sings about it.
    
    Josey Wales was the mastermind of the group. He used violence, cocaine and delusions to control his young killers. Drugs were like his wand, offering all things he wanted. He intended to find his niche in drug sales, believing this vocation would be what saved the country. However, he didn’t use them at all. Josey realized that if he wanted to be a leader in the drug trade, he couldn’t allow himself to get addicted to the drugs, for this reason he turned down sellers asking if he wanted to sample the merchandise. He wasn't content to be an ordinary ringleader. His goal was to take over the world. In reality, he had planned his rise to fame well. He spent several years hand picking a wife to bear the type of children he wanted to lead his future dynasty. Although he went to strip clubs, he didn’t sleep around and take the chance of having subpar children. He’d studied speech patterns and realized how people judge a man based on how he speaks. At one point Josey berated his son for speaking in Jamaican slang.
    
    Now his opportunity to prosper was close at hand. If he could kill the Singer, smash the so-called peace, he might get appreciation from some of the country's most powerful interest groups.

• 3.Ambush in the Night

  • On the evening of December 2nd, in the locked house by the sea, Demus pretended to be asleep. Around him he noticed, the others mumbling in their sleep, fondling themselves and some trying to get free. As the sun rises, the house gets hot and still the men are locked inside, going crazy. As the sun begins to set, Josey returned. He gave the boys guns and doped them up with white powder. The boys felt the overwhelming urge to kill the Singer. This is how it felt knowing that they could kill God and fuck the devil. They went over the plan three times, but most of them forgot it anyways. Then the men got into a pair of white Datsuns and headed for 56 Hope Road, the Singer’s house.
    
    The scenes of attack were very chaotic, a string of teenage killers, carrying automatic rifles，shot whatever they saw in the Singer’s house. Their thoughts were muddled and they were preoccupied with the effects of the drugs. The singer, his wife and manager were hit in the gunfire. The house was full of blood and debris. The Singer received wounds in the chest and arm, his wife was wounded in head, and the manager received several shots to his stomach. Josey thought they had killed the Singer. Not far away, the police siren was ringing. They drove away quickly as the police arrived.
    
    Weeper drove the escape car. Soon Demus began to realize what trouble they were in as Weeper drove through the Garbagelands, a remote and empty refuse landfill—the boss had decided to kill the participants. Finally, Weeper stopped the car, he and Josey ran out of the car, and started to shoot at Demus and Bam-Bam. Demus and Bam-Bam ran out of the car, too, and then ran away in different directions.
    
    Demus tried to make his way back to the house by the sea, but winded up in someone’s yard. The cocaine made it difficult to tell reality from illusion:
    He heard hoof beats, and suddenly lost his senses. He woke in Garbageland, believing a woman was holding his testicles. She ran when he threatened to throw a rock at her. He was angry with Weeper and Josey for using him. He ran until he reached the sea and a seemingly abandoned area. Suddenly, eight thugs surrounded him. Terrible illusions started to hover in his mind until he was hung to death brutally.
    
    Bam-Bam hid in the Garbagelands. He didn’t know how long he had stayed in a corner. When he thought everyone was asleep, Bam-Bam left the Garbagelands. As he walked, he heard on a radio that the Singer was not dead. Instead, he had been treated and sent home and Bam-Bam knew that they had missed. Because of the drugs, he lost track of his days and suddenly found himself among the people gathered for the concert. Bam-Bam believed the Singer was playing on stage, looking at him and singing about him. He thought Josey would find and kill him. Bam-Bam ran and ran, believing babies with bat wings were chasing him, until he ran right into Josey’s territory.
    
    Bam-Bam tried to scream but he was gagged. His hands and feet were tied together. He felt Weeper and Josey lift him up and drop him into a grave. They shoveled dirt on top of him until he was buried alive.
    
    Thus far, there have been two of the seven killings. Bam-Bam was buried alive by Weeper and Josey, and Demus was hung. The other five men involved in the attempted killing of the Singer would eventually meet their fate. Josey killed them one by one in the years that followed.
    
    Despite this failed job, Josey earned the respect of the people in his gang and soon became the don of the city. Later, Josey colluded with CIA agents, and used his muscle to affect the elections so that the Americans would turn a blind eye towards his drug deliveries to the country. Before long, from Jamaica, Josey built up a drug trade in both Miami and New York.

• 4.The End of History

  • Many years later, when an established Josey went to New York to visit one of his crack houses, he fell from power unexpectedly.  Randomly a druggie shot him in the face with a water pistol filled with urine. Josey couldn’t control his emotions. He released his frustration by shooting up the New York crack house. While his crime might have been overlooked in Jamaica, charges were filed for his arrest in America. It is believed that he died in prison.
    
    Certainly, this attempted killing impacted the Singer, Bob Marley. His manager Taylor and Marley's wife sustained serious injuries, but miraculously made full recoveries. Bob Marley received minor wounds in the chest and arm, yet still appeared in the concert as scheduled. After finished singing, Bob Marley untied his shirt, exposing no sexy chest hair or tattoo, but rather the bloody wounds. Then without a word, he walked away.
    
    The crowd was suddenly silent; the angry silence condemned violence and later produced a shock that affected the politics in Jamaica. The two parties finally settled under the pressure of the public, the country got a brief peace. This story is merely a short paragraph in dirty bloody modern history of Jamaica.

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