Adam Levin - The Instructions

Again he’d set his chin on his good fist and again it slipped, and again he flicked his wounds, made pained noises, and returned to his body, though his eyes this time weren’t as popping. He tried to stand up, and then he stopped trying.

“Okay say that again,” he said. “I didn’t understand.”

I was saying how I know it was hard for you not to retaliate against Berman to begin with, I said, but especially after he insulted Main Man’s singing, and whatever else happened between you guys while I was out front with the firemen — I should have told you what I was doing, taking you here, but I didn’t think you’d be willing to back down any further.

“I don’t— What? What else would I retaliate for?” he said.

What do you mean? I said.

“What do you mean?” he said.

And I saw what he meant — or hadn’t meant: He didn’t know Berman was the one who’d brought him down at the end of the battle. I bit my lip hard, exercised a fantasy of retroactivation.

“‘To begin with,’” he said. “You said ‘to begin with.’ What’d I have to retaliate to begin with for? I mean… I mean what — what’d Berman do before you went out front?”

I said, You should lay down, Benji. Seriously. You’re barely awake.

“You’re fucken doing it again — but you’re doing it… worse. That fuck—” Benji’d made a move as if to flick himself again, but this time I grabbed the offending hand and held it down flat on the table. “Berman shot me, didn’t he? Let go, now. On purpose. Let go of me. He shot me’s what you’re saying, on purpose. I thought that was friendly, like accidental crossfire. He shot me, that fuck on purpose shot me. And then it was him who jumped on me.”

He didn’t know you were with us, I said. He thought you weren’t supposed to be there. You need to lay down.

“No no. No. You said — I heard you. On the megaphone — let go of my hand — you said we’re brothers. Everyone with Damage on his head is brothers. What’s on my head? On my head is Damage. Let go of my hand. You’re the one who wrote it there. I did the same to you. It didn’t wash off. It didn’t sweat off. It didn’t come off.” He struggled to get his hand free of mine, but he didn’t seem to know how to — he kept wiggling his shoulder. “I see it right now,” he said. “Right in front of me, there on your head. Yours didn’t come off, so mine didn’t come off. You said we were brothers.”

He must not have heard me.

“Bull. Shit,” said Benji. “I am so fucked up right now, that lucky fucker. I sound like fucken Vincie I’m so fucked up. And he’s in there with Jelly. I want to see Jelly.”

I’ll tell Jelly to come in here.

“Yeah, you do that, you fucken do that, you tell her you fuck, you fucken liar, Gurion. You’re a fucken liar. Trying to make me feel paranoid… wrong… fucken…”

I said, You can’t be angry at me like this. I said, I’m the one who got him off of you.

“I could’ve done that myself. I would’ve done that myself. You think fucken Berman … Another ten seconds… Another ten seconds, I’d’ve killed that kid. You did him the favor. You saved his ass. Not mine. Even now you fuck with me.” Now Benji was crying. I’d never seen it, only heard of it once — the day before as I laid on my back in the field beneath yud-clouds, ashamed in front of June. I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew he was doing it. There wasn’t any sniffling and there wasn’t any gasping. There wasn’t a glug or whimper. He was about to pass out, face slipping on his fist, his lids nearly shut, but that should have, I thought, had the opposite effect — should have lessened his control over how he cried. Maybe it did. Scholars might wish to suggest that it did. They might wish to suggest that this orderly, dignified way of weeping — even the tears themselves were subdued, crawling from his eyes just one at a time, waterpark-goers in line for a slide, each waiting to climb from the squeeze of the duct til the one just ahead had safely cleared chin — was, in fact, for a soldier like Nakamook, as close to a demonstration of the chaos inside him as could be expressed without his resorting to the usual violence, of which, sedated, he was not capable. Whatever it was, this Nakamookian weeping, a show of strength or a show of weakness, an act of restraint or a loss of restraint, I didn’t like to see it, and I didn’t think that he’d like me to see it, and so I looked away, looked down at my hands, and let Benji finish berating and threatening me, cursing and hurting til he fell asleep, telling myself we’d patch it up later, outside the school. Safe among brothers. Surrounded and protected. The scholars would arrive and all would be well. I looked down at my hands and waited him out.

“Fucken liar,” he said. “What a fucken even now a fucken miserable dissembling fucken liar you are, man. Treat me like you’re Botha. Manage me like I’m just some dumbfuck SpEd to manage. Made a mistake… I’ll fucken… kill that fucker. I’ll fucken burn your… you fucken lie… liar. Like a… God! Fucking SpEd… I’ll fucken burn down both your houses.”

“…to the right of your screen,” the anchor was saying.

The photo to the right was from the fall before. It was cropped from a two-pager in the Schechter yearbook which showed me leading a discussion in Torah Study. In the original, ten scholars sit around an oval table, all of us using our hands to gesticulate, and we appear to be having the best conversation. Magnified, though, and with the others cropped out, I looked psychotic — my eyebrows straining to meet at my nosebridge, my pointer extending from a fist toward the viewer — a darker, beardless Uncle Sam in a yarmulke.

Both TVs were still tuned to NBC, both pictures snowy, both volume levels cranked. One sat in front of the eastern bleachers, which, except for June and Jelly and Brooklyn and the Five, were occupied by all the Israelites in the gym. The other sat in front of the western bleachers where everybody else was but Vincie and Starla, who each pressed an ear to the pushbar door.

I had entered the gym through the central door, and now I was standing before them all, between the TVs, where the noise was most blurred. Few of the soldiers seemed to notice my entrance. Some were crying, others shaking their heads, most leaning forward and hugging themselves or stretching their arms, balling their fists, blinking hard, jaw muscles bulging.

June and Jelly and Eliyahu approached to my left, and Berman was descending from the bleachers to my right, the ex-Shover Cory Goldman trailing just behind him. I couldn’t hear anything.

I sirened the megaphone and held the trigger til the TVs were muted by Googy and Main Man, who held the remotes. June, by my side now, whispered, “Be careful,” and Jelly said, “Where’s—”

I said, Go to Nurse Clyde’s.

Jelly cut out.

“Where’s she going?” said Berman.

“They were saying on the news,” Eliyahu said, “that hundreds of scholars from your former schools got emails from you with directions to Aptakisic, and then they were saying they were spotted on trains, and now they’re saying hundreds more scholars from other Israelite schools in the suburbs and the city are missing as well.”

I strained to keep the relief off my face: I was supposed to have been certain all along that the scholars would show.

So why’s it so somber in here? I said.

“Because they’re also saying,” said Berman, “that cops have blocked the roads off to stop your friends before they get here.”