The Instructions by Adam Levin
Blonde Lonnie knocked him hard into Isadore Momo and slugged him in the gut. Then Blonde Lonnie slugged Momo in the gut.
Beauregard Pate and the other two chubniks threw shoulder-blocks while Momo hugged himself and puked. Lonnie sidestepped the blocks and slapped the chubniks. Beauregard flooded. It looked like Sumo dog-paddling. His swearfinger caught inside of Lonnie’s shirt. The shirt popped a button.
Kids in the hall started pointing at the doorway.
Other kids looked.
Maholtz kicked Beuregard square in the ass, which turned him around.
The first chubnik puked on Momo’s puke.
Maholtz sapped the wall and Beauregard backstepped, foot in the mixture.
Beauregard slipped. Beauregard puked.
“Hermaphradite Homo,” Lonnie said to Momo. He pushed the slapped chubniks into the lunchroom.
Vincie had just shaken free of my grasp. He ran six steps before jumping at Lonnie’s face. His chest smashed Lonnie’s nose; Lonnie’s skull struck the wall. They both hit the floor. Vincie got up first, onto his knees. He headlocked Lonnie, pulled him blindly toward the lunchroom. Lonnie crawled like a baby, but fast to save his spinal cord.
Just outside my striking-range now, Maholtz was poised to kick Vincie in the ribs.
BryGuy! I said.
He took a step back and sapped the jamb.
Vincie straightened up. Arm still locked around Blonde Lonnie’s skull, he palmstruck his mouth with his free hand. The squishy clicking noise the blow made was loud. Lonnie drooled in color.
Momo puked more. Beauregard Pate and the remaining chubnik dragged him inside of the cafeteria.
Vincie dragged Lonnie after them.
In the seconds since those kids started pointing, a crowd had developed around the doorway, drawing attention. It wouldn’t be long before robots showed up. I was currently doing nothing against the rules, but I wanted to do something against the rules. I wanted to be in possession of a deadly weapon, and I didn’t want to get it taken away.
Open my skull, I said to Maholtz.
“In front of all these peenple? I may be crazy, you stupid angshole, but—”
They’ve been waiting to see you use that thing forever, I said. I said, All you do is brandish.
Some kid in the crowd behind me said, “Brandisher.”
You’re just the mantel, I said.
“Mantel!” another kid in the crowd said.
Stuck in Act One, I said.
“Mangtel?” said Maholtz to those gathered behind me. “This guy’s a psycho.” He gave forth a giggle.
I twetched in his eye and he closed it.
Then I closed some space between us.
Now you’re winking at me, I said.
Someone said, “BryGuy.”
Someone said, “Floyd’s coming.”
I closed more space.
And then I took his weapon. I took it one-handed. I grabbed hold of the lead ball, exerted no more downward force than I would on a pen if I were to write scripture with a pen instead of a computer, and the deadly weapon was mine.
No hurrahs arose from the crowd. A couple people said “Winker” and “BryGuy,” but they sounded—even to Maholtz, I was sure—like embarrassed afterthoughts, not provocations. The rest of the crowd booed. Not so much at Maholtz as the implications of the anticlimax he and I had just provided them. To see an oppressor felled without a hint of violent struggle can’t help but tarnish the shine on your victim badge. To see Maholtz made to cower so easily had to make those who would have otherwise cheered wonder how they, for so long, could have cowered so readily before him. They were booing themselves.
As I entered the cafeteria, Blonde Lonnie limped past me into Main Hall, bleeding.
I heard Floyd command him to “Halt it, fella!” and I raced to the northern doorway. Vincie and Big Ending were ducking into the bathroom. I pulled on my hood and walked into Main Hall.
On my way to the front entrance, Ben-Wa and Leevon, playing slapslap by the lockers, paused their contest to show me victory fists. Just as I mirrored the gesture, Co-Captain Baxter whipped past me so fast I didn’t think to trip him.
Eliyahu, at his heels, shouted “Mamzer!” and long-jumped. He axe-chopped the Co-Captain’s shoulder on landing. Baxter said “Ah!” but lost little momentum.
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 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.
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 schoolbuilding 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?
“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, an
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.
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 ‘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.”
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 fascinatingly 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.”
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 ou
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. Half-hearted 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 on some secret, I’ve got but zen and zen and endless zen. I’m a colorless canvas flag atop a mile-high pole and I don’t move a single fucken fiber but for when the wind flaps me see.”
I put out my hand. He gave me the cigarette. I was done caulking. I’d resigned myself to trickling, to acquiescing in the form of open curiosity, telling myself this was no different an approach than most any kid standing before a freakshow cage would take. What, if not a freak, was a superhero-shaped eighth-grader who wanted to flatter and generally act friendly toward a kid who’d just tried to kill him? Even if I wasn’t blameless, I was the next best thing—I was empathetic. Though someone in my place could have conceivably taken action—could have swung the sap at Bam, told him to get bent and meant it, or even just walked away—it was hard to imagine who.