The Instructions (154 page)

“But what if they do?”

Then we’ll bleed and we’ll cry.

“And we’ll lose, Gurion. Is what I’m saying. I know you’re angry at us, but we’re still your brothers, right? And wouldn’t it be better if as few of your brothers as possible suffered? What I’m saying is that it doesn’t seem like you need all of us outside for your hostage-terrorist scheme to work. It seems like maybe you need only five, six hostages at most—it seems like if the cops are willing to move on you when you have five hostages, they’ll be willing to move on you with twenty hostages. There’s no greater line to cross with twenty than five—they’re either willing to endanger hostages or they aren’t.”

So you want to stay here, watching the television, until the scholars break through the copline, and when you see it happen, you’ll all rush outside to join us.

“Right,” Berman said.

And if the plan fails, and the cops do attack us, not only will you avoid getting tear-gassed and shot, but you’ll bind yourselves, to the scaffold, say, and when the cops come in, you’ll say you came to understand that following Gurion was wrong, that 1463

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Gurion was a terrorist, and you opened your eyes to it right at the end of the battle, which was crazy, you’ll say, just watch the tapes. The whole school was fighting, you’ll tell the cops, and you lost track of right and wrong—like everyone else—but at the end of the battle, when things calmed down, you came to your senses, and you tried to rise up and overthrow Gurion and turn him in, along with yourselves, but Gurion and the Side of Damage weren’t done yet, and they beat you into submission, bound you to the scaffold, called you cowards, held you hostage.

“Yes,” Berman said.

Not a bad idea, but I might have a better one. Why don’t we just take you all outside like hostages and offer you up as trades?

We can trade you to the cops in return for their opening up their barricade, and you can get out now, and tell the same story.

“But what if you win?”

What do you mean?

“I mean what if you win? We want you to win. It’ll be better for us if everything works out the way you said you want it to. We’ll be more feared. We don’t want to be left out of that,” Berman said.

“It makes the most sense for us to just wait in here to see if you’ll win, cause then if you
do
win, we can win with you.”

You’re right, I said, we’ll do it like that. Do you have a source of fire?

“Fire?” Berman said.

Fire, you know—like a lighter. Do you have a lighter?

None of the Israelites had a lighter.

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I took out the cracktorch I had in my pocket, handed it to Berman.

Take that, I said, and while we’re gone, and you’re waiting to see what happens to us, you can build a fire and melt down your ammo.

“Why should we do that?” Berman said.

“You should stop with the mouth,” Eliyahu said, “and get to work.”

“On what?” Berman said.

“Whatever you want. A calf? A fish? A dog-headed bird?

Sculpt
something
, though, and do it fast, lest your Jewish foolishness become unforgettable by dint of its dull aesthetic’s salience.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“So what else is new?”

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In B-Hall, way back, where no zoom lens or scope could angle to probe, the Side of Damage, the Five, and Big Ending chose roles.

I called up Ben-Wa and told him to be ready to unlock the doors and unchair Boystar as soon as he saw us at the Main Hall junction. I called Cody von Braker and told him the plan. I called the guards in the library and told them the plan. I checked the soundgun. The soundgun still worked. I gave it to June.

Twenty-five soldiers in B-hall, plus us two. Jerry Throop, Salvador, Ansul, the Janitor, Isadore, Mangey, Boshka, and the 1465

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Ashley would each play hostage to a pair of terrorists. Beauregard Pate was the odd man out. He’s who I sent to get Benji and Jelly.

“Now?” he said.

Now, I said. But do it calm. Once you get to the junction, the cops’ll be able to see you through the window. Just act like you’re going to the bathroom or something.

“When should I bring them out?” he said.

I said, Once you get Benji onto his feet, come out to Main Hall and wait with Ben-Wa. He’ll be watching us outside, and as soon as the line breaks he’ll call up Cody and the soldiers in the library, and all of you will head out to join us together.

Pate looked worried.

What? I said.

“His feet?” said Pate.

Whose feet? I said.

“Nakamook’s, Gurion. You said I have to get him onto his feet?”

He’s passed out on drugs.

“And
I’m
supposed to wake him?”

So what? I said.

“What if I say, ‘Benji, wake up,’ and he doesn’t wake up?”

Shake him, I said.

“Shake
Nakamook
?” he said.

You’re right, I said. I said, Don’t shake Nakamook. Have Jelly shake Nakamook. And here, I said.

“Here?” said Pate.

Hold on, I said.

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I was searching my pockets for the mint-tin of pills. I searched three times and couldn’t find it.

I said, Somewhere in the nurse’s, probably on the desk, there’s a mint-tin of pills. The blue ones are spedspeed. If Benji needs shaking, he’ll be really groggy. Crush two with the mint-tin and make him snort the powder.

“Make him?” said Pate.

Tell Jelly I said to make him snort the powder.

Pate went calmly, just like I’d told him, and I turned to the soldiers, ready to go, to lead them out, when Vincie said, “Aren’t you getting behind us?” and suddenly a portion of Berman’s logic, despite its cowardly origins, rang sound:

The cops would endanger hostages or wouldn’t, and though I was all but certain they wouldn’t, on the off-chance they would, it wouldn’t matter how many hostages were present, so there wasn’t any need to bring so many out front. I could knock out Boystar, drop him outside the door, set my foot above his throat as I had done earlier, and raise the soundgun, and call the scholars forward. The Side could wait in B-Hall, west of the junction, til the scholars got close, and Ben-Wa could shout out when the copline broke. There wasn’t any reason to endanger them at all.

I explained the change of plans.

Vincie said, “Fuck that.”

June yanked my hood.

My head jerked back.

Vincie said, “I’ll go—you stay here.”

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They won’t listen to you, I said.

“They might listen to me,” Eliyahu said. “I’m convincing.”

You are, I said, but they’re not gonna listen to anyone else.

Not when there’s that many cops to walk through.

“Listen,” said Vincie. “There’s snipers out there. We saw on TV. They’ve got at least two. If you go out there and the cops decide to shoot you—”

They’re not gonna shoot me live on TV.

“You don’t know that, Gurion. Just please fucken listen.” His volume kept lowering. “I’m not playing the dumb one. You’re the leader, and they know you’re the leader, and they keep on saying ‘the terrorist, Maccabee.’ You’re the one person they can shoot and stay goodguys. Even if it means risking Boystar’s life.”

They haven’t taken a single shot at me yet.

“They might just not have had any clear shots to take.”

I’ve been in front of a million different windows. Not a single shot.

“You haven’t been near a window in at least twenty minutes, and you don’t know you were clear. Anyway, the stakes, like you said, are much higher now. Those kids on the hill change everything. You need us to go out there to flank you at least.”

I can’t die, Vincie.

“No you can’t,” Vincie said, “or we’ll all be fucked.”

That’s not what I meant.

“I know what you meant, and it’s as fucken crazy a thing to say now as it’s always been, so I’m ignoring it like always, for the 1468

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same reason as always, because you’re my friend and it doesn’t matter anyway—You don’t have to die to fuck this up, anyway.

They don’t have to kill you. They just have to—what’s the word?”

“Neutralize,” Starla said—she’d come up next to June.

“Neutralize. Thank you. All they have to do is get you all neutralized. That’s all it’ll take. Shoot you in the leg, and you’re down, and we’re fucked. We go back inside that gym?—Those kids fucken hate us. You heard fucken Berman. They want to be
feared
. They’ll tie us up and say that they overcame us at the last minute or something, all badass heroic and—”

Okay, I said.

“Okay what?”

Okay, you’re right.

And he was. Maybe not about the Israelites waiting in the gym—who knew what they would do if they saw me go down?—

but about the rest. My kidness, to the cops, probably
was
eclipsed by my ringleaderness, my terroristness, and if any one of us could be shot with impunity, that one was me, and the fewer kids available to take a stray bullet, the greater the odds that the cops would shoot. Above all, he was right that I
didn’t need to die in order to fail. My father, June, maybe all the world’s Israelites—I could fail them just fine if I got shot in the leg. Neutralized, I couldn’t deliver the prayer.

I instructed the soldiers to form two lines.

The hostages stood with their hands behind their backs, their wrists tied loosely with shoelaces. Each was held by the hair and 1469

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the shirt by a terrorist behind him, and to each one’s right stood a second terrorist aiming an unloaded gun at his carotid.

The cops will shoot me or they won’t, I told them. If they shoot me, you immediately surrender. You drop your weapons and raise your hands high and sob if you can, smile if you can’t—you act full of gratitude, full of relief. If I don’t get shot, you don’t break formation. Not for anything. The cops might give orders and they might make gestures, but they probably won’t shoot if we stay close together. After the scholars break through the copline, we’ll rush their center and we’ll all head east. I don’t know exactly how far we’ll be going. It might take a while, might start to feel safe. Don’t get bold, though—stay to the center and stay right behind me. Do not stray.

“What about teargas?” Chunkstyle said.

You saw the way the hail was slanting before. It’s windy outside and the parking lot’s packed. Too many civilians in breathing range.

“What about tazers?” Salvador said.

By the time they’d be close enough to use their tazers, the scholars’ll already be on their heels. Someone gets tazed, we pick him up and continue. I’m telling you, though: they’re either gonna shoot me or part for the scholars. Those are the only two moves that make sense.

“What if they shoot and they miss you?” said Boshka.

That’s a good question.

“Thank you,” said Boshka. “What is the answer?”

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It all depends on how close the scholars are, what the copline’s doing, if the shot hits someone else… we’ll have to see. I’ll tell you when it happens, if it happens, so if it does happen, be ready to listen. We ready? I said.

“Do you think that they’ll shoot?” Main Man said.

Do you? I said.

It was Scott I was asking, but they all answered: “No.”

I believe you, I said, cause I don’t either. I think we’ll be safe as long as we’re dangerous. I think God will protect us as long as we’re dangerous. I think we’ll forget that one day when we’re old—the second we forget it, we’ll be old, I said. We might even be right when we’re old, I said, but we can’t know now, and we won’t know then. Do you understand me?

“We might get shot.”

Right, I said.

“But we shouldn’t get shot.”

Right, I said.

And we all went east.

HOS TER HOS TER HOS TER HOS TER GURION HOS TER HOS TER HOS TER HOS TER

TER TER TER TER JUNE TER TER TER TER

We entered Main Hall slow and steady, June and I the center of both of the lines, and as Ben-Wa Wolf unlocked the doors, Boystar was yanked to his feet and held by an Israelite guard at each of his elbows. From over his shoulder, he showed us a 1471

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face no language I know has a word for. The hyper-dilated eyes were full of black wonder, the battered lips twisted as if in disgust, one eyebrow was skeptical, the other determined, and the nostrils were contracted so hard that the nosetip, diagonally gashed by the keys of his mother, bent itself low enough to touch the swollen philtrum. It wasn’t a face that signified anything other than a random set of malfunctions. Maybe he was trying to express some feeling, or maybe he was trying to hide some feeling, or maybe he was feeling contradictory feelings, one of which he was trying to hide beneath an expression that signified the other. But nutmeg, nerve-damage, or the combination had made of him a kind of shadow-world Slokum whose visage, for all that was scrawled on its features, was so illegible it might as well have been blank. Boystar was broken and Boystar was crazy. The rubber robot had popped.

At two steps’ distance, his legs gave out

and, on his knees, still gripped at the elbows, still showing us the face, he said, “Protect me.”

He was talking to June.

She stepped up beside me.

“I love you,” he said.

She looked away.

“I love you,” he said. “Remember?” he said. “I know you,” he said. “I know you and love you.”

She caught him on the chin with the bell of the soundgun, an overhanded blow. He collapsed, knocked out. June got behind me.

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I said, Wake him up. He can’t look dead.

The guards started slapping him. Boystar came to. Botha’s phone buzzed. Persphere’s number. I let it buzz twice, hit TALK, then END.