Adam Levin - The Instructions

Sit down on the back half of your plank.

Remove the two-liter bottle of soda from your plastic grocery sack. Twist the cap off. Put the cap in your pocket. If you don’t have a pocket, put the cap in your sock.

Empty the soda from the two-liter bottle. Empty it into the grass.

Remove the serrated knife from the plastic grocery sack. Hold it in your strong hand.

Lay the bottle sideways on the front part of your cardboard plank. Lay it down so the pouring hole is pointed in the direction of your strong hand. Hold the bottle down at its middle with your weak hand. Hold it firmly.

Be careful with the knife. Do not cut yourself.

Here is the neck, and here is the body. Here, between the neck and the body, is a nameless area that is neither as wide as the body nor as narrow as the neck. Touch the serrated edge of the knife to the place where the body becomes the nameless area.

Press down and saw the bottle in two.

Set the large piece in the grass to the left of your plank. That is garbage. After we’re finished, you’ll throw it in the trash. No two kids should use the same trash bin. That is an invitation to get caught. We are stealth.

Set down the piece that is not garbage so the pouring hole is facing the sky. Notice what you’ve got is a little bit tit-shaped. Laugh. Laughter is good. You are doing something important, though, and I’ve already made the joke, so once you are done laughing at it, don’t keep saying it. It gets less funny every time you say it. Tit-shaped. It is less funny, now. The more you say it, the less funny it will be when, later on, you remember how I said it. Tit-shaped. Booblike. Mammaryish. Finish laughing and pay attention to the instructions.

Remove your four pennies from the plastic sack. Lay your pennies out in a safe place where you can see them. Lay them out so that you won’t knock them into the grass by accident. Lay them out in a row. Any combination of Lincoln-up or Roman-looking-building-up is fine. This is not about symbols.

Remove the rubber balloon from the plastic sack.

Use the fingers of both hands to pull the lip of the rubber balloon back on itself until the lip of the rubber balloon is at the fat part of the rubber balloon.

With the pointer- and swear-fingers of both of your hands, stretch the rubber balloon opening wide.

Fit the stretched rubber balloon opening over the threaded part of the pouring hole. Fit it over the nipple. Nipple.

Make sure that the folded-back lip of the rubber balloon is on the threaded part. If it’s not, then push it down til it is.

Turn the whole thing over and look inside. Make sure that the opening is clear, that it is a perfect circle, that no balloon skin is blocking the passage up.

Now, hold what you have in your weak hand with your thumb and pointer pressed onto the rubber-balloon-covered part of the pouring hole. Hold it so that the balloon-covered end is facing your chest. Hold it so that your weak pointer is on top and your weak thumb is on the bottom. Press hard. Make sure that no meat on your weak thumb or weak pointer is edging past the pouring-hole in the direction of your chest. Make sure that the rest of your weak hand is either above or behind the sawed-off edge.

With the thumb and forefinger of your strong hand, pinch the balloon.

Pull back on the balloon.

Let go.

Look at the pennies you lined up earlier. Understand you hold a gun.

Now you can hurt things far beyond arm’s reach.

In a few more minutes you will all leave my yard. You will conceal your weapons inside your pockets. If you don’t have pockets, you will use your waistbands. You’ll stick the cap and other garbage inside the plastic sack, tie the sack off, and throw the whole thing in a dumpster or bin as you were instructed to earlier. You will keep your planks. You will turn them into targets. Draw bullseyes onto the faces of them, and then draw faces in the bullseyes of them. Lean them against the sides of your homes and fire on your targets with your weapons, your pennyguns. Fire first from a distance of ten feet. Once you hit three bullseyes, move back to fifteen feet. “Hit three bullseyes” does not mean get the penny to lightly graze the bullseye three different times. That will do nothing for you. “Hit three bullseyes” means get the penny to lodge itself in the bullseye portion of the plank or to cut straight through it. You have the power to do that and that is what you should do. Once you hit three bullseyes at a distance of fifteen feet, move back to a distance of twenty feet. Continue to increase the intervals by five feet after every three bullseyes until you are at a distance of thirty-five feet. Thirty-five feet is the farthest distance that you will be able to fire on someone or something from and still be able do it or him any worthwhile kind of damage.

In a couple minutes, I will tell you to leave my yard. I will tell you that I will see you Monday, if not tomorrow, when you will all be stronger than you are today. Before I tell you that though, you need to understand: Hardly anyone in the world knows what you’re holding right now. They have not seen or heard of pennyguns. It is better for us that they don’t know. It is better for us that they have not seen or heard of what you are holding right now. Still, some people do know and some people have heard of and seen and even fired their own versions of what you are holding, so you don’t want to be a show-off. You don’t want to brandish. It could make some people nervous.

Now that you have been delivered these instructions, you will receive an instruction sheet. It is a copy of the sheet I am reading from. Each one of you gets one copy. You will take your copy from beneath the paint-can at the gate. Fold it and put it in your shoe. Guard it closely. Do not guard it with your life, but guard it with your face. It is not worth getting killed over, but it is worth getting a broken face over. Tomorrow, you will make thirteen copies of your copy. You will invite thirteen Israelite boys to come to your backyard after Shabbos, like I invited you, and you will deliver these instructions from a high tree-limb, exactly the same as I have delivered them to you. If you do not have a tree with high limbs in your yard, or if the high-limbed tree you do have is unclimbable, sit on top of a swingset or fence.

Tonight, the first night on which Israelites have received these instructions, is May 27, 2006. Do as you’re told and one week from tonight, 183 Israelite boys will be armed with pennyguns. Two weeks from tonight, 2,380 Israelite boys will be armed. Three weeks from tonight, 30,941 Israelite boys, and four weeks from tonight, just three days beyond the summer solstice, 402,234 Israelite boys will be armed with pennyguns. Well in advance of the start of next school year, all the Israelite boys in North America, if not the world, will be armed with pennyguns. Never again will we cower amidst the masses of the Roman and Canaanite children.

Bless Adonai, who helps us protect us.

Blessed is Elohim, Who blesses our weapons.

Chazak! Chazak! Venischazeik!

Say it.

Now leave my yard. I will see you Monday, if not tomorrow. You will be stronger tomorrow than you are today.

Brodsky had a megaphone on the shelf behind his desk. It was mostly white, but the mouthpiece and the trigger were red to match the jerseys of the Aptakisic Indians. It should have been Main Man’s. If people tried to stop him from singing through it, he could switch on the siren and scare them away, and if they kept on coming, he could blow out their eardrums. He wouldn’t get messed with so much.

“Look at me,” said Brodsky.

I like your soundgun, I said.