The Instructions (98 page)

“We’re different.” “It doesn’t work like that.” “We got messed up, but we’re not all messed up by it.” “Not like those other guys.”

How come, though? I said.

“I see what you mean. Do you guys see what this boy means?”

“I think I do see what he means. He means that we just got messed up, but still we’re not all messed up.” “I think what he means is the guys who messed us up didn’t mess us up just because they were messed up by someone else, but because of some other reason.” “I think what he’s saying is that even though the people who mess up other people were probably messed up by different other people, it doesn’t mean they have to mess up the first other people since look at how we just got messed up but we’re not messing anyone else up.” “We’re just sitting here being sad about Shpritzy.” “So if we can get messed up and not be all messed up, 917

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then why can’t those other guys who messed us up not be all messed up?” “He means it’s their fault that they messed us up.”

“He means we shouldn’t be so easy on them.” “We should mess them up ourselves.” “They messed up Shpritzy.” “We should mess them up back, but we can’t.” “But that’s why we were looking for Gurion Maccabee to begin with.” “No, we were looking for Gurion Maccabee to begin with because we wanted protection from getting messed up, not so he would mess up the guys who messed us up.” “We said to each other that it was protection we wanted, but we wanted him to mess up those other guys a little bit.” “We only wanted him to mess them up a little bit?” “No.

We wanted, a little bit, for Gurion to mess them up a lot.” “But we called it protection.” “Right. We called it protection, when really it was mess-up.” “Are you Ronrico Asparagus?”

You’re looking for Asparagus, too? I said.

“Well we know he’s in the Cage.” “And so he knows Gurion.”

“Are you from the Cage?” “Do you know Gurion?”

I said, Sure, but what makes you think he’ll mess these guys up for you?

“Gurion is the Lion Hammer!” “He brings justice.” “And he likes to mess people up.” “And we’re Jews.” “Our God is Adonai.” “Our homeland is Israel.” “Saturday’s our day off.”

“We’re men at thirteen.” “And Gurion protects the Jews from the Canaanites and the Romans.” “And from the Jews who act against the Jews.” “And the righteous from the tyrants.” “And the kind from the wrongus.” “Except he doesn’t say ‘Jews.’” “He 918

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talks about Israelites cause of Hitler.” “Cause Hitler killed Jews.”

“And Nebuchadnezzar did too.” “And Abdul Nasser.” “And Yasser Arafat.” “Haman.” “Saddam Hussein.” “Ismail Haniyeh.”

“Stalin the Russian, in Russia and Poland.” “And lots of peasants everywhere.” “The Israelites became Jews and people kept killing them.” “Like in
Night
.” “And
The Painted Bird
.” “And the Olympics.” “And Tel Aviv and Gilo.” “There’s this Jewish school called Solomon Schecter and Gurion went there til he got kicked out because the principal thought he was the messiah. Then he went to Hebrew Day and got kicked out of there for teaching the Jews they were Israelites. Nathan Feingold told us.” “What he didn’t tell us, though, was that Gurion goes here.” “We only found that out yesterday!” “We think we found it out yesterday, at least.” “Well, we sort of found it out a couple months ago.” “If we found it out yesterday, then we’d already found it out a couple months ago when we heard this rhyme that you probably heard that goes, ‘Next stop Frontier motel, the place where Gurion’s fat black dad who fell dwells.’” “It was this kid Brad Snad who was singing the rhyme.” “And Gurion’s a really uncommon name.”

“So we told Nathan Feingold about it.” “That a boy named Gurion went to our school.” “And we told him the rhyme.” “And Nathan Feingold, he told us, ‘Gurion’s dad’s not the black one. It’s his mom who’s black. And no way Gurion lives at a motel.’” “And that seemed very true.” “Because this Gurion’s dad is a famous lawyer.” “What lawyer lives in a motel?” “Except then about a week later, there was Brad Snad again, talking about Gurion.”

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“He told us about this kid Kyle McElroy getting stomped by Gurion for messing with some retarded kid called Lucas.” “But this time, when Snad told us about Gurion, he also said Gurion’s last name.” “Or at least he tried to.” “We thought he tried to.”

“What Snad said was, ‘That Gurion MacIntyre is something.’”

“And that made us think about how once he called Jerry Seinfeld
Gary Steinfield
.” “Snad did.” “This Snad is a kid who says
lie-berry
for library.” “And William Jeffenface
Clim-
ton and Gustav
Clint
.” “A boy who calls animals
am
-inals.” “Vice President Lon Cheney.” “Last Feb-
you
-ary, he told me that suntanes he gets real lonely on Valen-
time
’s day.” “Stevedore Milosovic.” “So we knew he was a dummkopf who was bad at remembering the sounds of words and names.” “Which is probably a serious blessing if your name is Brad Snad!” “You’re so funny, man! Seriously.” “I’m so glad we’re best buddies.” “Me too.” “And me three.” “Me four.”

“Do you hear this, guys? ‘Me four,’ he says!” “I’m really cheering up here!”

I said, Nathan Fein—

But they had only stopped to take a breath.

“And so we thought that, in the language of Snad, MacIntyre had to be Maccabee.” “And Maccabee is almost as uncommon of a name as Gurion.” “And so the combination of the two already uncommon names Gurion and Maccabee…” “Because that was the Schechter Gurion’s last name, Macca-bee.” “Gurion Maccabee was his name.” “So we told Nathan Feingold.” “And Nathan told us to give it up.” “He said, ‘Give it up. Gurion Maccabee does not go 920

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to your school. He is either in prison or dead, or working for the Mossad who are disinforming people that he’s in prison or dead so he can go deep cover.’” “And that sounded a little crazy.” “About the Mossad doing that.” “And Nathan is our friend, so we believed that he believed it, but that didn’t mean that we had to believe it.”

“So we asked around.” “We asked other Israelites at school.” “We know almost all of them.” “And they all know about Gurion.” “The Gurion who Nathan told us about, that is.” “We asked around to see if any of them had ever seen a boy named Gurion at Aptakisic.”

“And some of them had, and the ones who hadn’t—some of those ones had done the same thing as us.” “They’d asked around.” “And we found out a bunch of stuff from asking around.” “And what we found out made it seem like Nathan might be right, after all.”

“Because first of all, we found out that Gurion was in the Cage.”

“And the Gurion we were looking for was a scholar and why would Mr. Brodsky put a scholar in the Cage?” “The Cage is for retarded people who don’t act right and future killers and con-men.” “No offense, if you’re from the Cage.” “But that’s who it’s for.” “Not scholars.” “And then, from those Aptakisic Israelites who had seen Gurion on the bus or in the halls, we found out that he hung out with Benji Nakamook and Vincie Portite and did not look half-black.” “And the Gurion we were looking for was supposed to be half-black, and Nakamook and Portite are not the kinds of guys Gurion would hang out with.” “Those are mean, scary guys who are not scholars, but please don’t tell them we told you that if you know them.” “The meanest and the scariest.” “They’re not even 921

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friends with Bam Slokum is how mean and scary.” “And then plus, the main point is there’s all these Israelites at Aptakisic.”

“There’s, like, forty or fifty.” “And that’s just the guys.” “And we know all of them, or almost all of them, and none of them had ever even spoken to this Aptakisic Gurion.” “And so we figured that even if Brodsky or whoever
would
put our Gurion in the Cage, and even if, for some reason, our Gurion
would
be friends with guys like Nakamook and Portite, there’s no way Gurion would go to school with all of us Israelites and not, like, lead us.” “Let alone not even talk to any of us.” “And much less allow kids to sing that rhyme about him living at a motel that they’re always singing.

I’m sure you’ve heard it.” “And plus it would be too lucky.” “For us to go to school with Gurion.” “That was really the main thing.”

“We’re good guys, all of us, but we’re not that lucky of guys when it comes to certain things like being strong.” “And basketball.”

“And girls.” “We’re only lucky because of how we’ve got such great best buddies.” “That’s pretty much the only way.” “And cause our parents aren’t alcoholic abuser people.” “That too.” “But the kind of lucky we’d be if we went to school with Gurion is the exact opposite kind of lucky of the lucky we usually are.” “We’ve never been lucky that way.” “So we decided Nathan Feingold must’ve been right after all.” “But then yesterday afternoon, we get this email from who else but Nathan Feingold himself.” “And Nathan Feingold tells us that on Tuesday night, some kid saw Gurion on a train and Gurion talked to the kid and even did something with the kid’s hat, so he wasn’t dead or in prison after all.” “And if he 922

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was in the Mossad, he wasn’t deep cover.” “And Nathan told us that if we heard anything more about this Aptakisic Gurion, we should alert him at once.” “And now, after what just happened to Shpritzy, the timing seems fateful.” “Especially because it was on our way to the computer room that we all stopped to pee.” “We were with Shpritzy, at his locker, right?” “Good old Shpritzy.”

“This was just right before lunch started.” “This was barely half an hour ago.” “We were with Shpritzy at his locker and Brad Snad came over to us and told us that this Aptakisic Gurion just saved that chubnik Isadore Momo from that yutzy Blonde Lonnie who’s always saying how he’s funny.” “But he isn’t funny.” “He isn’t funny at all.” “And he’s got three testicles, but no one ever said so, until Isadore Momo did, which got Lonnie pissed.” “Lonnie was gonna tear Momo to pieces, but Gurion was there and he cooled Lonnie’s jets with a punch to the chest.” “And, clutching his nipples, Lonnie fell in the pool!” “But he didn’t drown, but he almost did, except Desormie gave him the kiss of life, which saved him.”

“But only barely.” “And so as soon as Snad finished telling us all of that, we decided to go to the computer room in the library.”

“To email Nathan, who goes to Hebrew Day.” “We didn’t know for sure, but we thought they probably let you check your email at Lunch at Hebrew Day.” “And we didn’t know when Lunch was over there, but we thought it might be the same time as here, so we wanted to get that team-email out to Nathan Feingold as soon as possible.” “Post-haste.” “But we all stopped to pee on the way to the computer room so we wouldn’t be distracted by the need 923

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to pee if we ended up needing to pee.” “And that’s when that jerk attacked Shpritzy.” “While we peed!” “He said Shpritzy bumped into him, but it wasn’t true so Shpritzy wouldn’t apologize.” “And then the jerk attacked.” “And then we attacked.” “And then we got messed up.” “And the jerk told us, ‘Make sure to say hi to Josh Berman for me. Make sure he knows I think his scarf’s
real
sharp.’ And his jerks friends laughed.” “And I was all, like, ‘What’s Berman’s scarf have to do with us? That’s Shover stuff and it’s not like we’re Shovers. And we’re friends with Berman, yeah, but it’s not like we’re buddies.’” “I was all like that, too.” “We were all all like that.” “But it wasn’t like we said it.” “We couldn’t have said it.” “It was too hard to talk.” “I was choking on spit.” “I was holding my guts.” “I was holding my shoulder.” “I was choking on something.” “And now we’re here.” “And Shpritzy’s a mess.”

“And the email to Nathan has been back-burnered.” “Why do you keep leaning forward with your fists balled up?” “Why does he look so tense?”

They huddled to discuss me, and I saw my moment. I asked the question as fast as I could.

I said, You keep saying Feingold, but you really mean Weinblatt, right? Nathan Weinblatt?

I said that because I thought I knew everyone’s name at Northside Hebrew Day and, though I remembered a Nathan Weinblatt, this was the first time I’d ever heard of a Nathan Feingold. It is true I only went to Northside for a month, but it wasn’t that big of a school.

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“Weinblatt?” “What’s a Weinblatt?” “You think we’re some kind of Snad?” “Nathan. Feingold.”

Are you sure? I said.

“Of course he’s sure,” said a different one than the one I asked.

He said, “And so am I. Nathan’s my friend, too.” “We’re all friends with Nathan.” “He’s not our best buddy, but he’s definitely our buddy.” “A very good buddy.” “Nathan is a great buddy.” “We go to movies with him on weekends. “But not Cubs games.” “We usually go to Cubs games on Saturdays, and Nathan’s Orthodox.”

“Most of the kids at Hebrew Day are Orthodox.” “That’s why none of them can go to Saturday Cubs games.” “And that’s why none of them talk to Gurion anymore.” “Because their parents are scared of him.” “Because they think he’s a bad influence.” “Because they’re the ones who Gurion told them they were Israelites.” “No, not just that. They’re scared because of the other thing he did when he told them they were Israelites.” “That’s true.” “It was that other thing.” “See, when Gurion told them they were Israelites, he also gave them—”

“Wait!” yelled the three who hadn’t just been speaking. Then they asked me if I was an Israelite. I wanted to hear the rest of their story, so I kept playing along like the truth wasn’t mine and I wasn’t me. I told them I was an Israelite, and they told me to prove it and I spoke to them in Hebrew, saying: Listen to me, now. Would an American Gentile who’s my age know Hebrew?

But
they
didn’t know Hebrew, for they weren’t scholars, just non-observant Israelites, looking at me blankly.

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“That’s supposed to be Hebrew? How do we know it’s not nonsense?” one of them said. “Or Farsi or Arabic?” said another.