Adam Levin - The Instructions

And beyond that, I wasn’t scared. Not of being raided. Not of the cops attacking the scholars outside. Not anymore. I wasn’t. They wouldn’t. At least I didn’t think they would. At least not just yet. And if I was my generation’s potential messiah, then to act scared when I wasn’t scared, to give up before I wanted to give up, before I thought I had to give up, let alone to lie about being scared — no messiah would do that, and any potential messiah who did that would, no doubt about it, be squandering his potential. What was bad for me was bad for the Israelites.

At least potentially. In the ideal.

“Come on,” Ally said. “What do you say? You just say you got scared and we’ll say you did all of this. Same outcome as if we wait, but less risky. It’s elegant,” he said. “There’s no room to screw up.”

No, I said.

“Why not?” said Berman.

I brushed past him and Cory and Ally, out of the gap. June was waiting there for me. I went to the TV in front of the Israelites and muted it, and Main Man muted the Side’s TV.

All whispering stopped.

There weren’t any new arguments left to make; they’d all been made, I’d made them all. So I made them again, only louder this time, and with more gesticulations, as if I were inspired anew by the truth; as if, as they had, I’d forgotten the truth, and the truth remembered — the truth itself — would somehow unite us, would somehow protect us, save us.

This is what I said: Earlier, you thought I was wrong, and I was right. I’m still right. The cops haven’t got you, and they’ll never get you. The scholars are coming and they always were. We will wait for them as we always have been, and they will arrive, as they were always meant to. I am, as always, on the side of the Israelites. I am, as always, on the Side of Damage. I have fought, as always, on both of our sides, and both of our sides will always fight for each other. The Israelites will always protect the Side of Damage, and the Side of Damage will always protect the Israelites.

And I stood there before them, meeting their stares, grabbing hold of June’s hand, and here’s what’s crazy, this is what haunts me even today: By the time I’d gotten two sentences in, I was inspired anew. My gesticulations weren’t forced. By the time I’d finished speaking, I was so intoxicated by my own verbosity, I expected a defeaning group amen. And when, instead of that deafening amen, the last thing I wanted to hear got spoken, it took me whole seconds to understand.

“Israelites like her?” someone said. The question came from among the ex-Shovers, and wasn’t a question at all.

Who’s her ? I thought.

She was squeezing my hand.

Who said that? I said.

No one would say.

“Doesn’t matter,” June said.

Berman, I said, tell me who said that.

“Said what?” Berman said.

“It’s okay,” June said.

Who said it? I said.

“I didn’t see,” said Berman. “I don’t know who said it.”

Said what then? I said.

“I don’t know!” said Berman.

I spun to my right and dumped the TV. It didn’t explode, so I lifted the cart, started hacking away, and at last there came a flash and a pop, and some glass shot high and cut me on the cheek, just beneath the eye, the tiniest sting. It wasn’t enough, though. I didn’t feel better. I wanted the cart in pieces now, too. And I whaled on the floor, and I whaled on the scaffold, but the cart was steel and it barely bent, and Eliyahu touched my shoulder, and June grabbed my other one. I let the cart go and stood up straight. A busted-off casterwheel did clumsy, humming circles and came to a stop at my heel with a buzz. I slipped the glass sliver from my flesh and dropped it. The Israelites stared, watching my face bleed.

I stared back and bled, the opposite of speechless — I just didn’t know where to start. There is damage? There is snat and there’s face? You’ll be stronger tomorrow than you are today? A thin kid wearing tzitzit and a black fedora? To strap down a chicken and pluck it while it’s living? A potential messiah’s born once a generation? Verbosity is like the iniquity of idolatry? We damage we, a kid who tells, Benji Nakamook thought we should, I pray that we are just, they all called her June, Adonai will kill you and your family anyway?

Leevon yelled, “Look!” Mookus pointed the remote. The Aptakisic Israelites craned their necks westward and June and Eliyahu led me toward the Side. The celly buzzed my thigh as Rick Stevens gabbed. Ben-Wa was calling. Black hats on the high hill, pennyguns forward. I knew. I could see now. All of us saw.

Emmanuel stayed on the high hill’s summit, the front row of scholars two steps behind him, hidden below the knees by the rise. I pulled out a celly, tossed it to Shpritzy, said, Call your boy Feingold — find out where he is.

“Why’d they stop?” said an Israelite. “Why are they just standing there?”

I told them I’d meet them in the two-hill-field, I said.

“You can’t, though.” “They can see that.” “The blockade’s bigger—”

They’ve been travelling since 8:00 and haven’t seen a TV. They don’t know what’s happening. They’re waiting for me to do what I said I would.

The Israelites grumbled some more and whispered. Let them, I thought. They’re with me or they’re not.

Botha’s celly buzzed. I didn’t check the screen, assumed it was Persphere.

What? I said.

“Two cops dressed in black just rushed at the side door.” It was Cody von Braker.

How close did they get?

“Fifteen, twenty steps? But we smacked up Maholtz like you told us we should, and they all fell back.”

How far? I said.

“Back to the perimeter,” Cody said. “Now they’re talking to each other, with all these hand-movements. They’re pointing this way, pointing that way, making fists — shit like that. They want us to see them.”

You think so? I said.

“Yeah,” Cody said. “But I don’t know why. Forrest says he thinks they’re just trying to scare us by making it seem like they have a plan, but I’m thinking what if they do have a plan, and they’re trying to distract us from what the real plan is?”

You’re doing good, I said. You’re doing everything right. Stay in touch. Keep Maholtz visible and don’t knock him out.

Four hundred still kids in hats on a hillside does not for great television imagery make, so the anchor, offscreen, as breathlessly as possible, kept saying “new development” and “possible outcomes” and “powderkeg” and “spark” to ramp up the tension, while the helicopter camera zoomed in and out and panned at high speed so the facts on the ground would appear more kinetic. The anchor’s voice softened and the camera got steady as soon as two cops left the parking lot cordon and crossed Rand Road to parley with Emmanuel. Reporters and cameramen followed ten steps behind them, waving white handkerchiefs and foam-topped mikes. When the cops got halfway up the slope of the high hill, the scholars at the front of the columns stepped forward, pulled back on their balloons, and the cops stopped coming. The newsmen caught up. A cop spoke to the scholars. The camera-feed switched as Emmanuel responded.

“We’re staying where we are,” he said to the cops. “Come no closer, and keep off our backs.”

“Why?” said a newsguy.

“Cause we’re armed and we said so,” said Samuel Diamond.

“I meant why are you staying where you are?” said the newsguy.

“We’re armed and we say so,” Samuel said.

“We’ve seen emails that speak of a sudden holiday. Could you say something about that? You’re live on TV.”