The Instructions (111 page)

Jerry exited his booth while, a few feet south of it, Eliyahu picked up speed going north. “Stop!” shouted Jerry.

Eliyahu didn’t stop.

Fakefight loud, I said to Leevon. Now, I said.

Locker-metal clanged. Ben-Wa shouted, “Fight!”

Jerry revolved at the sound of the word. Fighting trumped running. Ben-Wa and Leevon kept it up til he got there.

Eliyahu was safe.

As long as enough of us acted dangerous enough, most of us 1044

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

would be safe.

Through the glass of the front doors I saw Slokum heading away from the school.

A bright white tickle shot across my heart.

‪

‫

‬

‪

‫

‬

‬

My pennygun was in my jacket, my jacket with June.

I stalked Slokum with the sap in my fist, cocked. He stopped walking at the far end of the parking lot, just past where it curved around the building. It made no sense for him to wait for his ride so far from the driveway. He was hiding something.

I ducked behind a dumpster five yards back.

He checked over both shoulders, and then his hands disappeared in front of him. His jacket’s Chief Aptakisic iron-on drew taut across his back. His neck muscles did a rolling thing.

With a running start, a well-timed leap, and the extra few inches by which the sap, when snicked, would extend from my hand, I could tag the base of his skull. Level him. Then stomp.

I got a running start.

When he revolved at the sound of my footfalls, a lit cigarette between his lips, I looked away from his eyes, saw his throat, and sprung. He stepped to the left and I hit the ground ugly. Elbow in the beauty. Windless. Choked sounds. I curled up and gripped the sap’s handle tight, trying to catch my breath, coiled to crush his ankle when he tried to kick me.

1045

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

He didn’t try to kick me. He smoked.

I got my breath back.

I’ve got a weapon here, I said.

“Get up,” Bam said. “You want some help I’ll help you up.”

I popped up.

I said, Try and take my weapon.

“No one’s watching us kid so quit playing pretend with me and calm down,” he said.

I didn’t get H like I usually did when somebody’d tell me to calm down. I even calmed down a little. I told myself to keep my eyes on his throat and have contempt. His throat was a massive target, too large to miss if you could reach to swing on it, but then the chin compensated. Squarish, bristly, and nearly as wide as his neck, it looked bulletproof. He could tuck it. It was made to be tucked during fights, a shield of bone.

I heard kids heading to the buses, but couldn’t see them. The part of my field of vision not blocked by the corner of the school-building was filled with Bam.

“Swing it or pocket it kid I don’t want to take your prize, you like to smoke cigarettes?”

I should have said nothing and swung. Instead I said, Sometimes.

There was no reason to avoid looking at his face anymore. I didn’t have the snat to attack him head-on.

“Sometimes is smart,” Bam said. “All the time gets you killed.”

Why are you talking to me?

1046

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“I like you,” he said. “A lot of kids at Aptakisic are starting to like you, and if I wasn’t talking to you, I suspect you’d do something injudicious and then I’d be getting your blood all over my clothing, and what would I gain by that, I’d gain nothing, certainly not a conversation. So I’m glad, not anywhere inside, but on the surface—it makes me
act glad
—that you’ve decided to quit behaving injudiciously. I enjoy our conversations, Gurion, which is to say that during our conversations I find myself acting as if I am experiencing joy, you’re a rare good audience, someone who listens, and the way you handle yourself publicly is occasionally admirable. Like for instance just a few minutes ago, how you got that sap. I was there, you know. At the back of the crowd. You didn’t know that, did you, but now you know. Anyway that was elegant, how you took what you came to take, spent hardly any energy doing it. Admirable. But beyond that, and maybe more to the point, everyone likes to see the little guy win, and I don’t want to bear them the bad news about how he doesn’t, which is a warning and not a threat so lower the hackles there. Like most small toughguys, you think it’s weak, I know, to cheer for someone just because he’s smaller, and you think it’s backward to base your actions on what people are gonna cheer for, but the fact is smaller’s what they cheer for and, barring few exceptions, what they cheer for’s what I act on, so that’s why it’s a warning and not a threat, and that’s why I’m talking to you instead of wrecking you—I’m somewhat invested in your well-being. Believe.”

1047

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

He held out his cigarette.

“Not a peacepipe, but a cigarette,” he said. “Let us not engage in acts of symbolism, let alone expect others to behave symbolically. I don’t like to interpret things. And it’s not that I don’t understand your dilemma, it’s just it’s got nothing to do with this cigarette.”

I took the proffered cigarette and dragged at it.

I was more curious than I wanted to be.

“You won’t ask, so I’ll just tell you. You like me as much as any of them do but you fear me, too, and anyone you fear you figure you’ve gotta damage. But then anyone you like you figure you’ve gotta protect. I understand all the machinations of that dilemma, and that’s how come I avoid it by playing to the crowd, so long as necessity doesn’t dictate otherwise, see. Like for instance if you swing that sap, which I can see still ain’t in your pocket you know, necessity would dictate I separate the two of you. After that, it’s a safe bet you’d be in some pain. Apart from that, though, it’s a safe bet I act like a friend, an older brother even.”

And if I had no sap, but the crowd wanted you to hurt me? I said.

“Then I’d hurt you.”

I told him, You’d be a hypocrite.

He said, “That’s juvenile, Gurion, hypocrisy’s a juvenile idea, an accusation slaves throw around to gain a false sense of empowerment, it’s beneath you.”

But I’m right, I said. I said, If you liked me, but you hurt me just to please a crowd, you’d be a hypocrite.

1048

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

He beckoned with a sideways peace sign. I hit the cigarette again, handed it back.

“When you say stuff like that, like ‘
just
to please a crowd,’

you indicate your failure to understand the Way of Barnum because what I’m telling you is—”

The way of what? I said.

“I just
said
the Way of Barnum, didn’t I? That’s a little dorky of me, though I hope endearingly so. Sometimes I think of myself in the third person, which is actually a by-product of practicing the Way of Barnum, believe it or not. I can sort of watch myself, from the outside, and it monkeys with my use of language on occasion.”

Your name’s
Barnum
? I said.

“I wouldn’t put too fine a point on it I were you. Follow the bloody trail to that bureaucrat Mohan’s left ear you want to see what happens,” he said.

“Mohan” was Martin Mohan, a yearbook kid with arty hair.

He was always snapping photos of Jennys in the hallways, saying stuff like “Fantastic tableau! Don’t move a muscle!” and extending his bottom lip to loudly blow the pricey bangs off his over-knit brow while reading his light-meter for far longer than it takes to read a light-meter.

“Last year,” Bam said, “I was seeing this girl on yearbook staff and she tells me Mohan, who’s like, some kind of underling editor at that point, she tells me he’s got a photo of me titled ‘Barnum Slokum Dunks.’ Tells me Mohan won’t call it 1049

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

‘Bam Slokum Dunks’ because Barnum’s the name on the copy of Desormie’s roster Mohan’s gonna print on the facing page and something about ‘verbal consistency’ or ‘verbal integrity’ or some nonsense. But you ever seen Desormie’s writing? It’s like a palsied monkey’s if you made it use its left hand. And he can’t spell either. He misspells the word ‘coach.’ And not just occasionally. He regularly spells it C-A-U-T-C-H, like how Mike Ditka would say it. Anyway no one was gonna be able to read the roster anyway. So I found Mohan and I said so, and I told him it was my name, not his and he should respect my wishes.

I was nice about it. I cited relevant precedents. Earvin ‘Magic’

Johnson did not go by Earvin all too often and hardly anyone knows the great bambino was
George
Ruth. But Mohan, he kept saying the word ‘officially’ to me. He said, ‘Bam’s not
officially
your name.
Officially
, your name is Barnum.’ And that’s true.

My name is definitely Barnum. And it’s a family name and I’m fond of it. It’s a strong name. Barnum. But a person’s name loses power on the lips of others. And so the person whose name it is loses power. That’s a long-established fact. ‘That’s my name, don’t wear it out.’ The third commandment. Etcetera. So I don’t like other people saying my name. To say ‘Barnum’ while not simultaneously
being
Barnum is to take my name in vain. And I explained to Mohan that to write my name would urge others to take it in vain, but he couldn’t hear me at first, so I explained some more, until I was all he could hear, and then some more, until he couldn’t hear much of anything for a while.”

1050

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

Bam dragged deeply at the cigarette and squinted at the cherry, exhaling slowly as he spoke.

“Anyway,” he said, “what I was saying before we so fascinat-ingly digressed together was that when you say stuff like ‘
just
to please a crowd,’ you’re missing the point of what I’m trying to tell you, which is this: Except for self-preservation there’s no higher motive than crowd-pleasing, and my situation here at Aptakisic and in the world at large greatly minimizes the chances that acts which are needed to please crowds would ever come into conflict with acts needed to preserve myself. It’s an elegant system. I’m very elegant. There’s no room
for
hypocrisy in an elegant system such as the Way of Barnum because the point is I
wouldn’t
like you if they wanted me to hurt you, and so I’d hurt you, no qualms.

“Today, you know, it looked like you and those other little guys were attacking that B-team Shlomo kid who because he plays basketball everyone expects me to protect him from outsized beatdowns. Truly I couldn’t care less about that kid, but if I stood by and let seven guys hurt him, see, I would be failing to live up to expectations. Same time, there was no call to damage you—just to protect B-team. So there was nothing to be gained by damaging you. So I pulled you out of the fight and let you be. Even after you jumped at me I let you be. And I’m letting you be right now. I’m a simple animal. Consistent, elegant. The proof’s in the pudding. Yet you’re still confounded by my inaction just now when you were making Maholtz your bitch, let’s have another.”

1051

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

He lit a second cigarette off the first, which he then dropped between us. I stepped on it.

“You’re confounded because, once again, you’re not paying attention to what I’m saying. Everyone hates Maholtz, and so I hate Maholtz. The only reason I don’t fuck him up is because he supplies me with a couple things that no one else in this school can get their hands on, and what he supplies is good for the cause of my self-preservation. The fact that he’s on the basketball team excuses me from having to fuck him up—in the eyes of the crowd, see. See, if I did fuck him up, they would be happy about it, but that I don’t fuck him up is readily excusable because of how we’re teammates and teammates aren’t expected to harm each other. Nonetheless, I am in no way obligated to step in to
protect
him from you—or anyone else, except maybe Nakamook—

in any kinda one-on-one deal. Or, in any case, the crowd didn’t want that. What they
wanted
was for you to make Maholtz your bitch. At least until you did so—and with great aplomb, I commend you—at which time they felt like pussies but that’s a spooky train of thought we don’t need to pursue because the only thing I’m getting at is if I’d stepped in against you, they would have been displeased with me. And in the end, it turns out you did me a solid. Listen to them tommorrow and hear it yourself. Listen to what they’ll say. See, since I let Maholtz take his lumps within such close temporal proximity to the incident with B-team, the crowd assumes that I’m a righteous human being. They assume I’m not blindly loyal to basketball players just because they’re 1052

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

basketball players but that I’m filled with some clumsy complicated system of archaic scruples that their parents taught them was good and that these scruples I’m filled with dictate that I protect the B-team kid and let Maholtz suffer a little.”

And really you’re just filled with shit, I said.

It came out of my throat halfhearted, less an accusation than a challenge. “And why halfhearted?” scholars ask. Halfhearted partly because I said it with the future scrutiny of scholars in mind—if I didn’t call bullshit, what would you think of me? Mostly, though, because I was trying to caulk back the snat that trickled from my face at the idea of being dominated by a monologue while I held a deadly weapon in my hand.

I wanted to hear more of what Bam had to say, and I didn’t want to want that, so I pretended I didn’t want it.

He said, “Now see, I got no real issue with us having a conversation wherein you make ineffective—not to mention irrelevant—

attempts to save face by telling me I’m full of shit, but for future reference if you say stuff like that to me when people can hear? I’m gonna have to hurt you pretty bad, cause it’s no good for the cause of my self-preservation to get spoken to that way in public. It happens that no one’s close enough to have heard, so good for you, you’ve made your meaningless little gesture and you continue to survive. In the meantime I’m gonna contest what you said because I’m not full of shit, because what I’m full of is nothing. Behind this face that you keep staring at so weirdly, like it’s gonna speak to you on its own without me knowing, like it’s gonna let you in 1053