The Instructions Read online

  No one was speaking to any one person. All of them were speaking to every single person. Everyone was going on record. I’d performed specific actions on Ronrico and the Janitor, but the hows and the whos didn’t matter to the rest of them. What mattered was something had messed up the arrangement. They wanted a part of that, so they tried to explain it, but didn’t know how, so they made things up, working together, though none of them knew it, like bouncing molecules forming gases.

  “Bleeding doesn’t hurt.” “If your face was bleeding, trust me it would hurt.” “And the Flunky’s not stepping up either, is he? And he’s the Janitor’s very own brother!” “A spring-loaded sap like Maholtz has.” “HCl in a two-dollar squirtgun.” “I’ve cut my lip—didn’t ever hurt.” “Boystar, too.” “Boystar! Tch.” “Co-Captain Baxter, then.” “I’ve never seen him fight.” “I’m saying your nose, getting punched in your nose.” “A punch in the nose would hurt cause the bone. It’s snapping the nosebone’s the pain, not the bleeding.” “Boystar and the Flunky and the Co-Captain together, then. Plus Bam Slokum. And Blonde Lonnie.” “There isn’t any nosebone.” “Five guys is cheap. Especially with Slokum.” “Tell it to my nosebone. He’s standing right here.” “A pointed fucking instrument.” “Slokum’s beside the point.” “Nose is all cartilage.” “Slokum’s the whole point. Slokum’s indestructible.” “What the fuck’s cartilage?” “He’s fucking immortal.” “He fucking jammed a screwdriver in dude’s fucking earhole!”

  Desormie yelled, “Quiet down!” at the ceiling.

  Vincie Portite yelled, “Quiet down!” at Desormie.

  Desormie yelled, “Quiet!” into the floor. To me, he said: “You’ve got trouble coming.”

  I should have said, Bring it. Instead I said, I know.

  Someone said, “A dead kid.” Nakamook shouted, “Ve vill crush you like zeh grape!” “Ve vucken vill crush!” Vincie Portite flaved.

  Asparagus coughed, then started breathing normal. Desormie said “Good” and sat the Janitor next to him. “The office’ll send for you later,” he told them. “For now you go back to the Cage.”

  “Let’s go let’s move,” he said to me.

  After counting to seven, I hoisted my bag.

  On the way to the door, I looked over my shoulder and saw the Janitor eyeing the gooze that was still on his foot, eyeing a t-shirt laying on the bench, about to decide to wipe one with the other. The t-shirt belonged to Leevon Ray. Leevon was the only black kid at school, unless you count halfie Lost Tribesmen—I don’t—and he refused to speak, which is why he was Cage, but we’d sometimes trade snacks and play slapslap at lunch, so I knew we were friends, and to spread word through kids was no form of ratting, but it took me a second of sorting that out before I cued Leevon to safeguard his shirt. It took me a second because of the fight. My chemicals, after fights, often fired weird; during a fight, they were always reliable, tunneling my thinking so I could be simple, but after a fight the opposite happened and sometimes the tunnel would loop til it knotted and wouldn’t untangle until I noticed.

  Your shirt, I told Leevon.

  The Janitor flinched.

  I entered B-Hall behind Desormie. Up at the B-Hall/2-Hall junction, a red-lettered banner that hung from the ceiling read

  JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

  APTAKISIC ^ FOREVER

  They had to jam in the “Junior High School” because of genocide and irony. Most of Aptakisic’s people were gone. Aptakisic was a chief. His tribe was called the Potawatami, but the Aptakisic basketball team was called the Indians. I got called a Jew, but Jews were no longer; we were already Israelites.

  I took a running start and jumped to tear the banner down. I missed the lower edge by three or four feet.

  “Don’t test me, Maccabee,” Desormie said.

  You, kinesiologist, will soon be delivered.

  He said, “What did you say to me?”

  I said, Into my hand, Gym teacher.

  Admissions Record: Gurion Maccabee

  DOB: 6/16/96

  The Solomon Schecter School of Chicago

  Admitted Aug 20, 2001 Kindergarten

  Released May 3, 2006 Grade 4

  Brief Description of Release:

  Expulsion. Physically assaulted Headmaster.

  Northside Hebrew Day School

  Admitted May 8, 2006 Grade 4

  Released June 5, 2006 Grade 6

  Brief Description of Release:

  Double Promotion followed by Expulsion.

  Supplied weapons to students/weapons possession/incitement to use weapons.

  Martin Luther King Middle School

  Admitted Aug 21, 2006 Grade 7

  Released Aug 24, 2006 Grade 7

  Brief Description of Release:

  Expulsion from Evanston Public School System.

  Assaulted student w/ brick.

  Aptakisic Junior High School

  Admitted Sept 5, 2006 Grade 5 (CAGE Program)

  Brief Description of Admission

  Demoted to age-appropriate grade-level. Placed probationally (three weeks) in CAGE Program for observation.

  Update (September 26, 2006)

  Re-promoted to Grade 7.

  Observed to be appropriate for CAGE Program—

  placed indefinitely in CAGE Program.

  The air in Main Hall was blinky that morning. Dust touched light and the particles twitched. Desormie, ahead of me, hummed out a melody with lipfart percussion and aggressively dance-walked and thought it was strutting. I was thinking how dust was mostly made of people, and that a pile of dust from a one-man home should be as easy to mojo as fingernail clippings, which was probably why Hoodoos were vigilant sweepers (self-protection), when a swollen-lipped Ashley, trailed by Bam Slokum, came out of the lunchroom, and Desormie stopped humming.

  “Bammo!” he said.

  I pulled on my hoodstrings.

  “Hey Coach D,” Bam Slokum said. Superhero-shaped and over six feet tall, Bam was Aptakisic Indians Basketball’s goldenboy. I’d never even exchanged as much as a nod with him. He and Benji Nakamook were longtime arch-enemies.

  Desormie said, “You got a hall-pass there, Bammenstein?”

  Bam made the noise “Tch” = “I know you don’t care if I’ve got a hall-pass,” and laced his fingers in front of his chest, then pushed out his hands to pop all his knuckles. A thousand dark veins and knotty tendons raised the taut skin on his forearms.

  “How about you, young lady? Got a pass?”

  “Ashley’s all distraught,” Slokum said to Desormie. “I was helping her out. Process of helping her, we misplaced her pass.”

  “Oh,” Desormie said. “Distraught?”

  “I’m feeling much better now,” the Ashley told him.

  Slokum chinned the air in the direction of A-Hall. The Ashley squeezed his biceps and strode off toward A-Hall.

  “Well alright,” said Desormie. “Alright then,” he said. “We gearing up for a righteous premiere?”

  The opening game of the basketball season was scheduled for 5 p.m. on Friday.

  “Sure, Coach D,” Bam Slokum said.

  “Main Hall Shovers get their new scarves today, boy. Just had Blake Acer in Gym—kid’s amped. Comes up to me, tells me, ‘Listen, Mr. D, our new scarves are gonna be so darn flossy, I’m scared once I see ’em, I’ll just go blind.’ Says, ‘Bam’s gonna crush and the Shovers’ll be there. Watch it, Twin Groves. Just watch out!’”

  “Yeah,” said Bam. “The air’s crackling with pep.”

  “Crackling with pep!” Desormie said. “But like what the heck’s ‘flossy’ though? The heck does that mean, right? Heck did it come from? What happened to killer? Heck, what happened to awesome? When did the Main Hall Shovers turn to funnytalk? Maybe it’s just Acer. Presidents talk weird. Good kid, though, that Acer. Don’t get me wrong. Good kids the lot of them. A tribute to all of us. A boon for the team. All those Shovers. Other teams get pepsquads—pepsquads! What? Wussy little pepsquads waving little flags, fa
ncy-dancing on their twinkle-toes, and, I don’t know, lisping. That, Sir Bam, is what other teams get. The Indians, though? We got Shovers. We got us Shovers, and they don’t wave flags. We got us Shovers and our Shovers wear scarves. Our Shovers wear scarves and they trounce any pepsquad. Right? Am I right? They trounce on the twinkletoed all the dang livelong. So what if their hand-eye’s crappier than ours? So what if sometimes you want to give ’em a wedgie til the tears and the boogers go pouring down their chins? They’re carrying your books. They’re filling the bleachers. They’re loving the Indians. Good kids all of them. A tribute and a boon. It’s how you play the game. All good kids. When they almost fell apart, they could’ve fell apart, except they didn’t fall apart because instead they came together. Overcame differences. All the stronger for it. Intestinal fortitude. Trial by fire. Awesome scarves. No limp flags. Trouncing the lispers. Pep that crackles. How you play the game. Just why the funnytalk from Acer’s what I’m saying.”

  “Yeah,” Bam said. “Shovers,” he said.

  Desormie made the noise “Tch” ≠ anything meaningful. Bam made the noise “Tch” back at him, and then he chinned the air at me and winked his left eye = “We just made accidental eye-contact and I am only doing what is done when that happens, but still I want you to know that we are in this together.” Except for the hallway, there was nothing that Bam and I were in together. Still, I chinned back at him. His chinning made me feel brotherly. Up close to Slokum for the first time ever, acknowledged, I saw there was something I liked about him, which bothered me a lot, and not just because my best friend despised him. There were certain very few guys like Bam who something about them made me not want to harm them when I should have, or should’ve at least been planning how to. I thought it was probably the faces they made. Whatever it was, though, I knew those had to be the kinds of guys who Adonai used to make kings of, when He still made kings. David ben-Jesse was one of those guys, and Solomon, too; but then so was Saul, and even Jeroboam. Hashem had to make kings because the Israelites wouldn’t be led by the judges, even though the judges were tougher than the kings and knew the law better. It was actually because the judges were tougher and knew the law better that they couldn’t lead the Israelites. That spooked me out. I didn’t think it should be that way. It wasn’t up to me, though.

  Neither was starting a fight with Slokum. I’d given my word to Benji that I wouldn’t, as long as Slokum didn’t provoke me. And Slokum, there in Main Hall, wasn’t provoking me. Not even a little. I thought that maybe he didn’t know who I was—most Aptakisic students outside the Cage didn’t—and I wanted to tell him, “I’m Gurion Maccabee, best friend of your number-one enemy, Nakamook,” but before I’d said anything, he was walking away, and before he’d walked away, he’d chinned air at me a second time, and I’d chinned back, without even thinking, and felt just as brotherly and bothered as the first time.

  “Baaaam Slokum,” Desormie said as Slokum turned the corner.

  I made the noise Tch = I am not your audience.

  Desormie made the noise back = “You’re lucky you’re not my son.”

  I said, Hnh = That happens to be true, but not because you say so.

  As soon as we started walking again, My Main Man Scott Mookus fell out of the Office. Aptakisic hallways always seemed picaresque.

  Main Man stumbled toward us, saying, “Hello Gurion! And hello Mr. Desormie! What a shiny whistle you’re wearing around your well-muscled neck. I would like to talk about it with you some time. How negligible of me not to have said so, but it is such beautiful weather that we are having today, don’t you suppose? I would even go so far as to say that the snow is reminiscent of my youth in the heart of the country. Oh isn’t the sky a stage, in a sense, and the snow a sort of spotlight? It is! And what of this rumor being bandied about town surrounding the subject of your tent-pitching acumen? It’s truly fantastic! In all sincerity, I do wish you well. And Gurion! My captain! Captain, my captain, my great brother Gurion, the tomorrow after tomorrow’s tomorrow you will lead us into battle to separate the head from the body of the heathen droves. What does that feel like? I say the silent fall of this snow won’t do, that we pray for a hailstorm to dramatize the atmosphere, the thunder and pattering our background music…”

  Desormie had kept us walking while Mookus stayed in the spot where we’d passed him, speaking louder and faster about weather and End Days. It was the disease. Main Man had Williams Cocktail Party Syndrome. His face looked elfy and his grammar, sometimes, sounded seriously official, but he couldn’t understand himself because he was retarded. For the most part he talked because talking was social, a friendly noise, and he was nice. Almost everything he said, whatever the content = “Talk to me and I’ll talk to you,” and that used to get me sad, but then I figured that almost anything he heard must have also = “Talk to me and I’ll talk to you,” and I wasn’t sad, but I was a little spooked. For a day, I was actually really spooked, and I started to wonder if I was retarded, my parents and friends all secret condescenders for my self-esteem. I even asked my mom. “Retarded?” she said. “You are the smartest and the handsomest.” Exactly what I’d say to my retarded son if I wanted to hide the truth. Are you telling me the truth? I’d said to my mom, and my mom said “Yes,” and I believed her, or at least I believed she didn’t think I was retarded, and that was enough to unspook me.

  Down the hall, I yelled: Mookus, you are my main man!

  “Indeed I am, Gurion! I am indeed!” My Main Man Scott Mookus yelled up the hall back at me.

  I wanted to know what else Scott was saying, but I couldn’t hear him at all anymore. I could hear my jingling pocket and the ticking of the ball in Desormie’s whistle when it swung against his pecs, the clap and squeak of our shoes on the floor, and the buzzing of the panels of light in the ceiling. Everything I could hear was not supposed to get heard. I’d been told by Call-Me-Sandy that this had to do with earlids. Earlids were figurative. They had no flesh. They closed to block out the ambient sounds. People whose A’s were D’d didn’t have earlids, unless they took Ritalin or Adderal or another form of speed for SpEds that stunts growth. I took no spedspeed, but still wasn’t tall. Nakamook took it, but only sometimes. The ones he didn’t want he’d stockpile and sell for a buck a pill to a group of sophomores with hair in their eyes who’d drive to the beach from Stevenson High School to meet him each Friday after detention.

  Behind me, Scott did the Joy of Living Dance. To do the Joy of Living Dance, My Main Man would two-step and roll his shoulders like a warming-up boxer and clear all the gooze from his throat. It meant he was going to sing. His voice was beautiful and he could perfectly sing things he’d only heard once—mostly songs off the mixes Vincie burned for us weekly—and he did requests.

  We took a left into the Office and I never found out what Scott sang that time. It was suck because one day soon My Main Man would never sing again. The Williams made his heart grow wrong: bubbles in his vessels and tears in his atria. These defects shrunk his chambers down. He would outgrow his pump until it would kill him, the sweetest person. He was proof of why it’s flawed to call good people big-hearted. Desormie was more proof—his heart was huge from athletics, probably the biggest heart in school.

  I always thought Adonai should kill him instead of Mookus.

  It wasn’t up to me, though. At least not the instead part.

  In front of the desk of Miss Virginia Pinge, Desormie tried hooking his thick arm around me. The arm was hairless and tanning-bed orange. I almost hit my head on the elbow as I ducked it, but almost didn’t count, so I didn’t get dangerous—as a rule I’d get dangerous when my head got touched.*

  Miss Pinge said to me, “What happened this time?”

  Desormie told her, “Fighting.”

  Miss Pinge said, “You were fighting again?”

  “Socking it out with Ronrico Asparagus and spitting like an animal on the Janitor,” said Desormie. “Probably the Janitor said B.D. to him in a disparaging tone.
That’s his new thing he calls people and to me it’s hilarious and ironic.”

  “The janitor makes fun of your behavioral disorders?” Miss Pinge said. She should have put her hand on the back of her head, where the lizard brain sits and the alarms blasts out from, but she put it on her chest instead, and kept it there.

  “Not Hector with the mop, Miss Pinge, ya big loony toon. That FOB can’t hardly speaky the English. You think he knows what B.D. is? I’m talking about the Flunky’s little brother Mikey Bregman. The neatfreak kid. The Janitor. It’s his nickname. Get it? That’s why it’s so ironic. Cause he’s got the B.D. himself. The Janitor. Tch.”

  “That’s not very funny,” Miss Pinge said. “Where are—”

  “Hey, now, it’s the kid’s nickname,” said Desormie, “and there’s a reason for that and sometimes you gotta do as the Romans and sometimes you gotta let ’em reap what they sow, cause if you’re B.D. and you start saying B.D. in the disparaging tones? Then it’s just like with the n-word. You’re gonna get treated like you’re the n-word because you’re acting like someone who’s the n-word. Law of the jungle. That’s all I’m saying. It’s the facts of life. These Cage students need to cultivate some intestinal fortitude and stop acting like they hate themselves because we know it’s not very mature and it’s probably why they got put in the Cage in the first place, which is also pretty ironic if you ask me, don’t you think?”