The Instructions by Adam Levin
I said, You don’t have to play the dumb one, no one said you have to play the dumb one, and we’re not crucifiedish, I never said that. Even if we were, it still doesn’t make sense to write WE DAMAGE WE that way because WE isn’t crucified on ARRANGEMENT the way you wrote it. WE isn’t even crucified on DAMAGE the way you wrote it—the way you wrote it, the WEs are the arms of DAMAGE.
He said, “People can see it better if it’s shaped like a cross. At least I can. But what do I know, since I play the dumb one, which I’m not asking you if I have to play the dumb one or not—I’m telling you: I play the dumb one. Like, I’ve had a crush on the same girl since kindergarten, and I have a million things to say to her, and I don’t think they’re dumb, but I play the dumb one when I see her. She sees me seeing her, and I know what to say, but instead I play the dumb one. I pretend I wasn’t looking. I squint at fucken nothing. I don’t say fuck-all. I play the fucken dumb one. But I don’t know why I do that and what I’m asking you is why I do that. Why the fuck do I do that?”
What’s the girl’s name? I said.
“I’m not fucken telling you. But see? That’s exactly my fucken point, what just happened—you thought you could catch me off-guard, like if you asked me fast enough, I’d tell you her name, like a tricked fucken dumbass, and you think that because of how I always play the dumb one. And so I’m asking you why I always play the dumb one.”
I said, How should I know why you do what you do?
He said, “You’re the leader of the Side of Damage. If anyone should know—”
Who says I’m the leader? I said.
“Everyone says you’re the leader. Even Asparagus. We were tagging the foursquare court at recess and Main Man saw us, and Asparagus was nervous Main Man was gonna narc him out because of how Main Man’s retarded, so Asparagus told him, ‘Remember we’re all on the same side.’ And Main Man said, ‘Gurion said that.’ And Asparagus was like, ‘That’s what I’m saying. Gurion’s the leader of the Side of Damage.’ And then all afternoon, Mookus kept writing the same note over and over and tossing it to everyone. Look.” Vincie unfolded a square of paper and showed me:
H LLO!
GURION IS TH L AD R OF TH SID OF DAMAG !
—MOOKUS
“And Mookus is only first of all, because then Ben-Wa said you were the leader—he didn’t actually say it, but he asked us to give you that note we gave you. The note asked you if he could join the Side of Damage—it asked you and not us. So we thought: Gurion must be the leader. And thirdly it made sense for other reasons, too, because you lead us. And because who can beat you up? No one can beat you up. Maybe Nakamook could, but he wouldn’t, so no one. So you’re the leader.”
I said, What if I don’t want to be the leader?
“Why wouldn’t you want to be the leader? I’d kill to be the leader.”
Exactly, I said.
“I wouldn’t kill you, Gurion. You’re my friend.”
I’m not everyone’s friend, I said.
He said, “You could be if you wanted. At least in the Cage. Everyone in there wants to be on the Side of Damage now. Nakamook tell you about the carrels yet? I bet he didn’t, cause it fucken tweaked him, but you should see the carrels. All of them are tagged with WE DAMAGE or DAMAGE WE or WE DAMAGE WE. I bet Benji didn’t tell you cause it got him so pissed cause he thought we’d get in trouble even though I told him we wouldn’t get in trouble because you can’t get in trouble for being suspected of vandalism—you have to get caught in the act of vandalism. If you could get in trouble for just being suspected then me and Leevon and him would’ve all gotten in trouble with Brodsky for the scoreboard today, because one thing we were, man, was fucken suspected. By Brodsky himself. And where’s the trouble? Where’s the fucken trouble? There isn’t any trouble. We’re in no fucken trouble. And then Botha himself proved me fucken right cause right before the end of the day he saw one of the tags on scabby-ass Mark Dingle’s desk and he started to yell at Dingle, and Dingle said he didn’t do it, that the tag was there when he arrived that morning. And Botha didn’t believe him, and he tried to make a rat of him because he remembered that Dingle’s boy Salvador had sat at the desk the day before, and he told Salvador he’d be suspended for the vandalism on Dingle’s carrel because he thought it would get Dingle to confess, which is so fucken stupid because Salvador’s weird but he’s no kinda dumbfuck and so he said he didn’t do it, but that he’d noticed the tag was there when he came back from lunch yesterday. Real smart is how he said it: ‘I noticed it for the first time when I got back from lunch,’ he said, meaning, like, ‘It could’ve been there for weeks, for all that I know.’ And everyone was watching, Gurion, because Botha was having such a fucken fit, and since everyone was watching, they all learned the fucken blueprint for how to lie about the tags without ratting anyone out, so when Botha gave up on Dingle and Salvador, and he saw the other tags all over the carrels, he went for Jesse Ritter, who told the same story as Dingle’d told, and when Botha went for Forrest Kenilworth who’d sat in Jesse’s chair the day before, Forrest told the same story as Salvador’d told, and then Botha—Gurion, he fucken gave up. Just sat at his desk and acted all busy til the tone. Anyway, I was right: Benji shouldn’t have been worried that we’d get in trouble, and I told him that, too, but he told me he wasn’t worried we’d get in trouble, and he said I missed the point, that’s not why he was pissed, and when I said, ‘What the fuck’s the point, then? Why the fuck you pissed?’ he was just, like, ‘Tch,’ and I threw him at a locker and he swept me at the knees, and then he picked me back up and we came and got you in Brodsky’s to take you to June. But what I’m saying is this: none of those tags on the carrels were there before lunch, and that means they weren’t there til after everyone heard the scoreboard got totalled—which seriously upped Ben-Wa’s snat by the way—and what I’m getting at is no one told anyone to tag the carrels—at least not me or Benji—we didn’t say anything to anyone, so everyone did it on their own, not from any fucken peer pressure or threat or any kind of fucken bullshit like that, so what I’m saying is I don’t think those kids want to kill you. And even if they did—could they? No way they could. Not with how stealth you are, and then me and Nakamook and Leevon and Asparagus on your side. We could bury all those fuckers, but we wouldn’t even have to is all I’m saying. And probably they’re not fuckers is all I’m saying. Probably they’re our friends if we want them to be, I’m saying. Probably they’re on the Side of Damage and would never even think of trying to kill you.”
I said, No one can kill me, anyway, Vincie.
“That’s all I’m saying,” said Vincie. “So why don’t you want to be the leader?”
I said, I just asked what if I didn’t.
“Why even ask that?” said Vincie. “Why make simple things complicated?”
Why play the dumb one? I said.
He said, “I don’t know—but it’s what I fucking do. Do you wanna go to the back of the bus and wreck Maholtz and that Shlomo kid now, or what?”
I kneeled on my seat and looked at the back of the bus. There they were, Maholtz and Shlomo Cohen, staring out opposite windows.
That’s really strange, I said.
“What’s really strange?” said Vincie.
They haven’t said anything to us, I said. I said, Did they say anything to you before I got here?
Vincie said, “They didn’t say fuck-all to me and it isn’t even a little strange—Slokum isn’t here. They’re not so bold by themselves, those two. Let’s bust the grins off their mugs.”
I said, They’re not grinning.
Vincie said, “They want to be grinning, but they’re scared of us.” He kneeled on his seat and looked back at them. He raised his fists over his head. “You dentists!” he shouted. “You bancers!”
The muscles in their faces tightened, but they kept looking out their windows, like Vincie wasn’t talking to them.
“Vincie!” yelled the busdriver.
“Yeah, yeah,
I did want to fight Maholtz. I wanted him to pull his sap so I could take it justly. But I didn’t want to fight Shlomo Cohen. And I definitely didn’t want Vincie to fight Shlomo Cohen. Shlomo Cohen was still an Israelite.
I said, We’re not fighting them.
“How come?” he said.
I said, Bad timing.
Since bad timing could mean almost anything, it was a certain kind of truth. A low kind.
“What do you mean ‘bad timing’?” said Vincie.
Just trust me, I told him.
And that was even lower.
I said, Let’s play slapslap to thirteen.
Vincie Portite trusted me, and about the time I was up seven-nothing, I was feeling awful. Then I had an idea that I thought could fix everything.
I thought: Make Vincie an Israelite.
But I was immediately struck with the paralysis of God’s No! and I couldn’t fix anything. And on second thought, that move wouldn’t have solved much anyway; an Israelite Vincie fighting Shlomo Cohen would be a little better than a Gentile Vincie fighting Shlomo Cohen, but it wouldn’t by any means be good. Here we’d have my brother hurting my brother, there we’d have an outsider hurting my brother. Either way, a brother would end up hurting, and though brother hurting brother was better than the other way, I was supposed to protect my brother in both cases, even when my brother was a bancer like Shlomo. The problem, ultimately, was that my brother was a bancer. To make Vincie an Israelite wouldn’t solve that problem—it didn’t even address that problem.
So on top of feeling low, I also felt stupid, and the paralysis inflicted by Adonai lasted just long enough to lose me a point.
And I noticed Vincie’s hand, which had gone to his eye each time I’d scored those first seven points, stayed in the air of the aisle when I lost that eighth one. I thought it better not to tell Vincie about it, at least not yet. Then I let him have the next point on purpose, and again the hand failed to rebel against him.
I started switching off—giving him this point, taking that one—til we got to twelve-twelve. Vincie’s hands stayed in the aisle every time he scored.
I thought: If he defeats you, his hand will never rebel again.
I thought: Let him defeat you.
And again, I was paralyzed by a No! from Adonai.
Vincie won the point, and the point the game. It was not the will of God, but it owed to the force of God. The force of God acted in accordance with the will of Gurion, against the will of God, and I saw that it was good. I had not sinned. I had not disobeyed. I’d only been as paralyzed as God forced me to be.
“I won!” Vincie shouted, clapping my shoulders with both hands, leaving them there. “I beat you,” he said. “I’m stealth!”
I said, Flinch!
“Don’t ruin my victory,” he said, shaking me.
I said, Flinch right now!
“No!” said Vincie.
“Oh,” said Vincie.
“Fuck,” he said. “Thank you.” He put his hands out, palms up.
We played slapslap to thirteen til the kids in front sang the rhyme of my bus stop.
A firefly touched down on my ear and Flowers shouted, “Come quick!” from the other side of the Welcome Office door. He was watching the Local 5 News in back. Edison, asleep on Flowers’s outstretched legs, startled when I came inside—he fell, struck the floor nose-first.
“Gift for timing,” Flowers said to one of us about the other.
The cat bolted at me, tripped on lint, laid there.
I set the previous night’s scripture on the music stand.
“You daddy,” said Flowers, pointing at the television.
“…v. the City of Wilmette is nearing its conclusion,” said an offscreen anchor. Onscreen was footage from outside the Drucker trial. The anchor said, “Here we see protesters gathered on the courthouse steps for the tenth consecutive day.” A mob of Israelites stabbed at the clouds with picket signs. Some of the signs said NEVER AGAIN and others showed a photo of Patrick Drucker sieg-heiling that didn’t look doctored. The majority of the signs were protests against my father, though. One kind featured his photo with a large-lettered legend that read ROY COHN FOR DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF COOK COUNTY on one side, and HAMAS, AL QUAEDA, HEZBOLLAH, MACCABEE on the other. Others inverted the arrangement—a photo of Roy Cohn and the legend JUDAH MACCABEE FOR DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF COOK COUNTY; ear-to-ear headshots of bin Laden, Nasrallah, the dead wheelchair guy from Hamas and a black circle with PASTE JUDAH MACCABEE HERE in white letters in its center. Another sign had no photo at all and just said PASTE JUDAH MACCABEE. I’d seen similar signs a few months earlier during Shmidt v. Skokie, but there were more of them for this trial, fifty easy.
The other side’s signs were more varied; unlike the protesting Israelites, who had all come to the courthouse on the same chartered bus, the other side, though smaller, comprised a number of separate factions. The Neo-Nazis’ signs read HEIL DRUCKER! over an American flag with fifty tiny swastikas where the stars should have been. The head Nazi waved an actual flag of that description in the air above his helmet. Another group, much larger, who stood nearly as far from the circle of Nazis as they did from the Israelites, carried signs that read ZIONISM = NAZISM and ADVANCED INSTITUTE FOR THE PUPPETEERING OF AMERICAN CORRUPTION. The graphic on those was an outdated caricature of Ariel Sharon (no longer the prime minister of Israel, he’d been in a coma for ten months by then), with an extra-hooked nose and blood-dripping fangs, his claw-tipped fingers in the loops of strings connected to the limbs of an Uncle Sam marionette who wept while stepping on the neck of a baby in a turban. A third group’s signs were maps of the Middle East, all beige, except for Israel, which was black—one legend read THE UNHOLY LAND and another LAND OF BILK AND MONEY. A lone, clueless man who wore a keffiyeh over his ski-mask carried a sign with a target on it, and WTO was written in the bullseye. There were at least five other small groups, all of them forming different circles and carrying different signs, but the camera didn’t linger long enough for me to make them out.
The anchor said, “Inside the courthouse, however, things weren’t so calm,” and three drawings appeared onscreen for a few seconds each—the first of a group of white-haired audience members on their feet, their mouths open wide, their fists in the air, while my father, in the corner of the drawing, leans on the jurybox, hanging his head (“Here we see an artist’s rendition of Judah Maccabee being shouted down during closing arguments by a group of several elderly Jewish protesters,” narrated the anchor); the second drawing was of the frowning judge banging his gavel (“…our artist’s rendition of the Honorable Michael Hall calling for order”); and the third was of the shouters being led out of the courtroom in zip-tie handcuffs (“…officers arresting the protesters on contempt-of-court charges…”).
The screen switched. It showed a pair of vans, cops holding the doors open.
Flowers said, “Whoah. This not exactly common.”
The anchor was saying, “…live broadcast of the jurors boarding—are we allowed to show this? Well… What you’re seeing is a rare, live broadcast of the jurors boarding the vehicles that will return them to their motel, where they’ll deliberate the fate of Patrick Drucker and his pamphlets.” Approaching the van, the jurors hunched their shoulders and turned their faces from the camera like red-handed felons. “Good luck to them,” said the anchor. “We’ll return with the weather.”
Flowers hit the POWER button just as a used car commercial started jingling.
“You dad gonna win,” he said, “and quickfast.”
I said, Those jurors didn’t look happy.
“You wouldn’t look happy neither, you had to hand down a verdict favor Drucker.”
So why do you look happy? I said. It came out of me like an accusation. I wasn’t pissed at Flowers, but the way I asked the question, it seemed like I was. Who I was pissed at was Adonai fo
So why do you look happy? I said to Flowers. I said, I don’t think Drucker loves black people much, either.
“I’m happy cause you dad an old friend about to win something he been fighting for. And I’m sure Drucker don’t love black people, but that don’t mean he should be outlawed from saying so in Wilmette… click click click… Now, how you said that—that’s bothering me. Drucker don’t love black people either—what’s that? What’s that either? You ain’t black youself the sudden?”
It was the start of a conversation that I didn’t want to have, but it was important to Flowers that we have it every couple weeks.
Only bancers care if I’m black, I said.
“I guess you calling me a bancer then, ever the hell that means.”
I said, You don’t really care about the color of my skin, Flowers. I said, You just think you’re supposed to. I said, I’m your friend Judah’s son who writes and that’s what matters to you. That’s why you’re my friend.
“That don’t change that you black.”
I said, I’m an Israelite.
“You a black Israelite.”
And I’m an Israelite with detached earlobes and I’m an Israelite born in Chicago and I’m an Israelite who usually wears a hoodie and an Israelite who ate chicken last night. An Israelite is an Israelite, I said.
“Black is black,” said Flowers.
I said, Only because you say so.
“A lot of people would say so,” Flowers said. “And from what you tell me, ain’t no shortage of Israelites who’d reduce you to only black.”
You and them—you’re all just people, though, I said.