The Instructions (61 page)

“No precedent at all?” my mother soothed, ignoring the introduction. “Would you have me believe,” she said, “that your superiors have failed to establish a protocol for dealing with those who illicitly smoke cigarettes on school grounds?” The cherry was almost down to the letters. Probably three more drags.

“There’s a protocol,” Jerry said, grinding his kicking-toe into the pavement. Then he spoke the largest string of words I’d ever heard from him: “I’ve followed the protocol, but when it comes to what to do about someone who, after you’ve followed the protocol, continues to smoke, there’s just nothing in the manual. If you were a student, I suppose I’d go inside and write you up.”

“That is what you should do, then,” said my mom.

“But that’s just silly,” said Jerry.

“Maybe it is you who are silly, Jerry,” said my mom.

“May
be
!” Jerry said, eyes gone wide and hopeful at the sound of his name on her lips. He choked on something that would have bloomed into laughter if he wasn’t a robot.

“Look at this contraband,” said my mom. Jerry leaned forward.

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“The fire,” she said to him, “is burning the letters. There is more tar under the letters than I am willing to inhale.” She dropped the cigarette and stepped on it.

Then she stepped past Jerry and held the door open for me.

Carved into the door’s pneumatic pushplate was another WE

DAMAGE WE. I ran a finger over it, barely touching it, and the dry topskin of my fingertip perforated whitely from the roughness of the engraving. I wondered what Ronrico had used to make the words so mean—a nail? a key? If you held a guy by the hair on the crown of his skull, I was thinking, and pressed his forehead hard enough against the bar, the words would make the forehead bleed, and the guy would be marked by them. In a mirror, his scab would read WE DAMAGE WE.

“Let’s go,” my mom told me.

Right when we stepped into the Office—I had just got my hand up to wave hello to Miss Pinge—my mom asked, “Where is Leonard Brodsky?”

Brodsky’s door was open, and he was pacing. Hearing his name, he revolved to face us and I pointed at him. My mom entered before Brodsky had a chance to invite her. I wished she had waited, and thought to wait myself—after my Tuesday snakiness, I wanted to at least be polite to him—but followed anyway because she was my mom and he was only my principal.

“Leonard,” my mother said, “I am Tamar Maccabee and I would like you to excuse Gurion’s tardiness. It is my fault that he is late.”

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“Fair enough,” Brodsky said, no hesitation or anything. He said, “Go on ahead to the Cage, Gurion.”

I have ISS, I told him.

“You can serve your ISS tomorrow,” Brodsky said.

My mom said, “I told him he would not have to serve ISS

tomorrow, Leonard.”

“Well, I don’t—”

“Leonard, he spent all of yesterday and this morning mentally preparing himself to be in ISS today. We must take into account his mental preparation.”

The wingnut I’d given Brodsky glinted up from the palm of his half-open fist when he shrugged = “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

My mom could not have known what she was talking about, herself. As a rule, she avoided using the word
mental
—she did not believe the word described anything real. In the introduction to her doctoral dissertation, she wrote, “
Mind
is to the study of human psychology what
the ether
once was to that of pre-Einsteinian physics—a convenient and groundless homuncular hypothesis that obscures exactly that which its proponents insist it describes; an illusion to be dispelled.” At best, she had
mental
preparation
ed at Brodsky the way I’d sometimes
Jew
at Israelites who didn’t know they were
Israelites
. At worst, she was being a sophist. She was about to respond to Brodsky’s shrug when the beginning-of-lunch tone came through the intercom.

As soon as it ended, she said, “The mental preparation is argu-565

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ably the largest part of the ISS punishment.” Sophist. “Beyond that, Leonard,” she continued, “I told him he would not have to serve ISS tomorrow. Will you make a liar of me before my son?”

Brodsky tried to gesture with his shoulders in a way that would have = flabbergasted, but midway through the gesture, the wingnut popped from his hand and bounced off the back of my mother’s.

Brodsky bent to retrieve the wingnut, which interrupted the gesture and made it so the gesture, not only
despite
but also
because of
its failure to signify
flabbergasted
, actually heightened Brodsky’s signification of
flabbergasted
= Brodsky was so flabbergasted, he couldn’t even express
flabbergasted
. It was perfect, and I got a rush because I knew it was perfect, perfect in the exact way that I knew the entire universe would be perfect if I, or someone else, became the messiah. I knew of many outcomes in the universe that were affected either despite
or
because of a given reason—like for instance hatred of the Israelites and the contributions of Israelites: You can say that we are hated
despite
the good things that we have done for the world = the haters don’t care about the good things we’ve done; or you can say that we are hated
because of
the good things we’ve done for the world = the haters are sick of us being the ones who do so many of the good things; but for any given hater, it has to be one
or
the other in order to make sense; either the hater says, “There are no good Israelites, and the ones who seem good are but tricksters,”

or
he says, “The good ones are the exceptions that prove the rule that Israelites are bad”—but Brodsky’s expression of
flabbergasted
was one of the very first outcomes I knew of that came about both 566

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because of
and
despite the same reason. What spooked me out was that the last time I considered that kind of perfect relationship between an outcome and a reason—early on Tuesday, on page 41, when I thought about how it was good to do justice because God will kill you and your family whether or not you do justice—I was also in Brodsky’s office. Brodsky hadn’t intended for me to consider what I considered either of those times, but I felt gratitude toward him anyway, for cueing me in to something perfect, only I could not come up with a way to thank him without sounding like I was making fun of him for accidentally hitting my mom’s hand with a wingnut, so I just smiled at him. He didn’t look at me, though.

He didn’t see it.

Standing again, wingnut retrieved, Brodsky said to my mother, “I’d like to speak to you alone.”

“I would prefer if we could settle about Gurion’s ISS first,” she said.

“He can serve the rest of today and go back to the Cage tomorrow,” Brodsky said. “Go ahead,” he said to me.

He shut the door as I cleared the threshold.

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Name:
Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee

Grade:
5 6 7 8

Homeroom:
The Cage

Date:
9/26/2006

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Complaint Against Student (from Complaint Against Student Sheet) Impersonating the following: Mr. Gerald’s walk, my step 1 warning for the impersonation, Mr. Gerald’s laughter, my step 3 warning for the impersonation. 5th period. 9/21/06. Mr. Botha.

Step 4 Assignment: Write a letter to yourself in which you explain 1) why you are at step 4 (in after-school detention); 2) what you could do in order to avoid step 4 (receiving after-school detention) in the future; 3) what you have learned from being at step 4 (in after-school detention); 4) what you have learned from writing this letter to yourself. Include a Title, an Introduction, a Body, and a Conclusion. This letter will be collected at the end of after-school detention. This letter will be stored in your permanent file.

Title

Underdog

Introduction

The underdog is a story. This is the story: Someone is trying to overcome unlikelihood and therefore that someone is the hero.

Unlikelihood describes size or numbers relative to power.

Body

The underdog in one-on-one combat

When two individuals engage in combat with one another, the underdog is rendered by the storyteller as either a) large but weak, or b) small yet powerful. The larger the underdog, the lesser his 568

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strength; the smaller the underdog, the greater his strength: SUPERPOWERFUL

vs./=

POWERFUL

vs./=

WEAK

The underdog army at war

When armies war, the underdog army is rendered by the storyteller as either a) consisting of few soldiers, all or most of whom are powerful, or b) many soldiers, all or most of whom are weak. The greater the underdog army’s numbers, the weaker its soldiers; the lesser the underdog army’s numbers, the stronger its soldiers: SUPERPOWERFUL

SUPERPOWERFUL

SUPERPOWERFUL

vs./=

POWERFULPOWERFUL

POWERFULPOWERFUL

POWERFULPOWERFUL

POWERFULPOWERFUL

POWERFULPOWERFUL

vs./=

WEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAK

WEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAK

WEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAK

WEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAK

WEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAK

WEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAK

WEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAKWEAK

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Some examples of the large one or the many

who fight the small one or the few

Unionized Workers vs. Factory Owners. Any sweetheart-fatboy vs.

any prettyboy-bully. Fijian Natives vs. Indian Colonists. Russian Peasantry vs. Tzarists. Russian Army vs. Nazi Army. Big Chief vs.

Nurse Ratchett. The U.S. vs. the American Indians. Europeans vs.

Israelites.

To win their battles, these kinds of underdog rely on their own and one another’s ability to absorb violence. They find their might in their nature. They believe victory is assured by their nature, and that as long as they act in accordance with their nature, they will claim it.

Because they are able to fight, they must fight.

Some examples of the small one or the few

who fight the large one or the many

Corleone Family vs. The Five Families. Moses vs. The Egyptians.

Israel vs. The Arab Nations. Samson vs. The Philistines. Yeshua vs. Rome. The Nazi Party vs. The World. McMurphy vs. Hospital Security. The Palestinians vs. The Israelis. Warsaw Ghetto Soldiers vs. The Nazis. Mosada Soldiers vs. Roman Centurions. Al Quaeda vs. The West.

These kinds of underdog rely on stealth, craftiness, or technology to win their battles. They have faith that their might comes from outside of them. They believe their fight is meant to be; that their might, whether it is in the form of stealth or craftiness or technology, is a gift from God that they must use if they wish to claim victory.

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Because they must fight, they are made able to fight.

Conclusion

Had their birth not been thwarted by the decimation of their ancestors, a billion Philistines would today be crying out against David for having cheated in the contest that ended their giant.

Underdog stories are easy to tell. It is best to be suspicious of underdog stories.

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The ISS desk faced the back of the Office to prevent conversation with kids in the waiting chairs. No one was waiting when I came out of Brodsky’s, except for Miss Pinge, who wanted to leave. She handed me my ISS assignment and pardoned herself to the bathroom. Then she went out to her car to smoke.

I reversed my chair to watch Main Hall through the window.

It was already a minute into Lunch/Recess-rush, and my eyes went straight to the the Main Hall Shovers.

The blankspot for Jesus on their scarves was loud, way more prominent than it had seemed the day before, when I’d only seen the scarf get brandished for a second. Not only was it centermost on the scarf’s left leg (beneath it were the symbols that stood for the co-captains; above it, the ones for Lonnie Boyd and the fifth guy, A-teamer X, whose unknown last name, it could now be deduced, began with a letter between B and F), but whereas the other starters’ symbols were thinly embroidered—just scant 571

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white thread-shapes on deep red fabric, the fuzz of which seemed to be trying to suffocate them—Frungeon’s white stripe was dyed bright in the wool.

The Shovers kept touching their scarves on the knots, triple-and quadruple-checking their integrity, but otherwise nothing they were doing was new to me. Their actions in Main Hall, though usually conspicuous and often offensive, were always predictable. If a bandkid was around, they’d call him a bancer and shoulder him sideways at the wall or trip him. If a girl who wasn’t an Ashley or a Jenny was pretty and standing or walking alone, then one or two Shovers would push another into her, the pushed one would sly-grope a tit or some ass, explain real loud how he had to catch his balance, then apologize softly and ask if she was hurt. When an Indian came by, they’d show him their thumbs and say, “Gumm ‘em!” or “Yope!” or “Gumm it up! Yope!” and try to shake his hand, unless he was a starter, or Bryan Maholtz, in which case they’d step to the side so he could pass. Most of the time, though, the Indians ignored them, and the bandkids and pretty non-Jennys and -Ashleys kept enough distance to dodge molestation; most of the time the Shovers only had each other, and their Shover-to-Shover routine went like this: One would toe the heel of the one in front of him, the heel-toed one would shove the one in front of
him
, and the one who’d been shoved would stop short and go rigid so the heel-toed one would walk into his elbows. Sometimes, too, they’d make a Shover sandwich, i.e., the heel-toer would walk into the elbows of the one who had just 572