Adam Levin - The Instructions

The morning after the election, during announcements, Blake reiterated, for all of Aptakisic, the details of the scarf-redesign plan. “Over the summer, I had a creative revelation, and the creative revelation that I had was this: However smartly colored and intelligently organized and totally perfect on the right leg our scarves are, they’d be even better without English on the left. This creative revelation was what got me elected, so that’s why we’re getting rid of all the English and replacing the names of our starters with symbols: symbols the starters will choose for themselves; symbols that really mean something to them, like the symbols the guys in Led Zeppelin chose to represent their souls on the cover of IV ; really deep symbols that mean more than words, that mean more than names; symbols that capture the spirit of each starter as a person as well as a player. Thank you!”

Co-Captain Baxter, at lunch that day, stood on a table and shouted for attention, then raising his can of protein drink, said, “Bam and I were sitting here, talking to the Indians, and we all agree that this moment’s historic, and we all agree this year’s Indians are historic, and this school is historic, and, on behalf of all the school and especially basketball, Bam and I want to thank the Shovers for voting for Acer, who’s really got a vision here that’s also historic. Even though it can only happen for five of us, none of us can wait to see our symbols on the scarves, but especially not Bam and I, who are both looking forward to this chance to be creative, and know that the opportunity to be creative will motivate our teammates to seize the opportunity: it’s just one more reason to work hard to make starter, and bring home the victory and the glory and so on, so thumbs up to Acer and his Main Hall Shovers. We value all of you, and not just as the army of goodguys you are, but each and every one of all sixty-however-many of you, on a first-name-type individual basis. We don’t listen to Led Zeppelin, me and Bam and the Indians, but you can bet we’re gonna start to this very afternoon. Right after practice, y’all, right after practice. Three cheers for Acer and his Main Hall Shovers. Three cheers for Acer. Three cheers for the Shovers.”

Acknowledged and praised, their three cheers resounding and rifts all healed, the Shovers bore Blake like a casket or champ on their shoulders to recess, feeling like brothers and knocking down bandkids, smashing the fast ones against walls and lockers.

The rosters were posted twenty days later, and the varsity starters gave Acer their glyphs. Blonde Lonnie Boyd chose the cap of a jester, Co-Captain Baxter a tomahawk. Bam Slokum, for reasons no one could or would say, chose peace symbols flanking a bigtop tent, and the starter whose name no one ever got straight — the one whose replacement was himself replaced twice in the weeks leading up to the opening game — chose a bow and arrow surrounded by a garland. The last of the starters to turn in his glyph was Gary “The Quiet Indian” Frungeon, who Main Man attended weekly Pentecostal mass with, a kind-eyed niceguy who liked to shake hands, who no one at school — not even Benji Nakamook — had ever even wished to bring any damage.

Frungeon gave Acer a red-on-white ichthys.

Shovers who were Israelites remembered they were Israelites.

An emergency meeting by the dumpsters was held.

The Israelites stated that wearing an ichthys was against their religion, like wearing a cross.

Yet, argued Acer with all due respect, the ichthys was the symbol Frungeon chose to express the depths of his soul creatively with, and who were they to suggest that the Shovers had the right to stifle the creative expression of a soul, let alone that of the soul of an Indian?

Jews, they said. They were Jews, they said. They were Jews who couldn’t wear an ichthys.

So then they couldn’t wear an ichthys, Acer told them, so what? Maybe they could get themselves a different kind of scarf, or cover the ichthys on their scarf with marker, though on second thought marker would be disrespectful, and on third thought another kind of scarf would be, also — anyone would see they were singling out Frungeon, then — but what about another item of apparel? A smaller item that didn’t feature starters, an item on which five symbols couldn’t fit? Something like a hat, but not exactly a hat because you couldn’t wear a hat in the classroom; maybe a wristband or headband or handkerchief? Maybe a patch they could sew on their outerwear?

No, said the Israelites, that didn’t make sense: without the scarf you were other than a Shover.

But weren’t they saying they were other than Shovers? If no Jewish Shovers could wear the ichthys, but all of the non-Jewish Shovers could, then didn’t that make them different from the others?

If being a Shover meant wearing Christian symbols, then yes, said the Israelites, but that’s not what it meant, so no.

The Shovers don’t wear Christian symbols, Blake explained: the Shovers wear symbols of the starters’ souls, one of which only happens to be Christian.

The atheist Shover, Trent Vander, weighed in then: One thousand pounds of this, said Vander, and half a ton of that. Vander told them Jesus was used to make war and do evil and kill the environment, so Vander wasn’t crazy for the ichthys either, but Vander knew God wouldn’t punish the Jews for wearing a symbol that meant nothing to them, not if God was full of total love, which didn’t matter anyway because there was no God, so why not decide the ichthys wasn’t a Jesusfish? Call it two meaningless arcs intersecting because that’s what it was, and that’s what he was doing, was being open-minded, and so should they.

The Israelite Shovers demanded a plebiscite.

Acer scheduled the vote for the next official meeting.

Then some of the Israelites, led by Josh Berman, went to see Brodsky. If I was among them, I’d have told them not to, but I didn’t tell them anything: I wasn’t among them. I’d only read of them, and after the fact. Before I fell in love with June and met Eliyahu, my only Israelite friend at Aptakisic was Jelly, who told me they teased her for being in the Cage — not just the ones who were Shovers either, but all of the Israelites, or nearly all of them, none of whom I knew. I’d decided when I started at Aptakisic that I wouldn’t talk to Israelites who didn’t approach me. They were secular there, and they likely hadn’t heard of me, but still they might have, which meant that their parents might have barred them from being my friends, and their being secular didn’t make it okay for me to risk leading them toward breaking the fifth commandment. Still, of course, I’d hoped they’d approach me and tell me their parents didn’t know who I was, but then after Jelly told me they teased her, I began to hope that they wouldn’t approach me. After I’d read about the nonsense with the scarves, the latter hope only got stronger and stronger.

They were right about one thing: Adonai would get pissed if they wore the ichthys. But that was whole miles beside the point. The majority of Shovers clearly wanted the ichthys, regardless of how the Israelites felt. And Adonai doesn’t care if Gentiles wear ichthii any more than He cares if they eat pork or have foreskins. And no one, let alone Adonai, ever told anyone he had to be a Shover. And so, if the Shovers didn’t care about the Israelites, or just didn’t care enough to honor Israelite laws — and why should they care? the laws weren’t theirs, and, Vander aside, the ichthys was — why would an Israelite even want to be a Shover? If I’d been a Shover… but I’d never be a Shover, maybe that was the difference… If, though, I had been, I’d’ve just walked out.