The moment I was unable to protect them, they cowered, abandoned me.
“‘Here’ or ‘prasent’ is the proper response, Mister Haspaygus.”
Except so had I. I had cowered, was cowering.
“Yeah,” said Ronrico.
“That’s a detantion, Haspaygus. Bashker!”
They had cowered before the same false god that had humbled me, their protector.
“Tut,” said Anna Boshka.
And to see your protector being humbled — what can you do? Can you step in to protect him? Yes, you can. But do you think to? Do you ever think to protect your protector? You should, but you probably don’t. You probably take for granted that what overpowers him will overpower you. And you cower.
“Moykil Braigmin?”
So was that the end of their loyalty, then?
“Yeah,” said the Janitor.
Is loyalty measured by the ends to which you’d go to protect the object of your loyalty, or is it measured by the ends to which you’d hope you’d go to protect him?
“What’s that?” said Botha. “What’s that?”
Maybe, I thought, there is actual loyalty, and that is measured by the ends to which you’d go; and maybe then there is also potential loyalty — measured by the ends to which you’d hope you’d go. Surely the second kind is not as important as the first, but that wouldn’t make it unimportant; all things potential can be made actual — that is what it means to be potential. And apart from Adonai, what in all the universe was actual that wasn’t once potential?
“I said, ‘Yeah,’” said the Janitor.
“That’s so romentic,” said Botha, “to side with your baddy Hespaygus.” Then he fake-coughed. “Lotsa jairms out here,” he said. He fake-coughed again, said, “All that blad from Aye-lie and that Shy-lomo boy on the ground that you’re stendin’ on.”
The Janitor knew he was yards away from where Shlomo and Eliyahu had bled into the grass, but still you could almost see the germs he imagined floating up from near his shoes, their cellwalls slimily marbled hot pink and piss-colored, little barbs protruding from their goozy-shaped bodies, trying to cling to his skin, to crawl into his openings. Though he hesitated, the Janitor was only able to hold his ground for a three-count before succumbing to Botha’s power of suggestion and moving a couple steps back.
Botha, still trickling — doomed, as all caulkers, to trickle forever — said, “It’s in the air by now I’d think, the jairms. Enexcapable, I’d suppose.”
“Leave my brother alone,” said the Flunky.
The Janitor tightened his lips, hoisted the collar of his t-shirt over his nose.
“Your dumb behavior is the dumb behavior of a foog who’s like a fool except I don’t like him,” the Flunky said to Botha.
The sound of more than four consecutive words from the Flunky — let alone words acknowledging his genetic ties to the Janitor — startled all of us, but no one as much as Botha, whose claw, with a click, pinched so hard and suddenly on the drizzle-slick wood of his clipboard that the clipboard shot from his grasp. Reflexively, as if a champion of that shvontzy sport hackeysack, Botha extended a leg and kicked the clipboard, which bounced once then twice off his inner-arch before it hit the ground. He was bent over to retrieve it when he said, “I guess that mains Rachid Braigmin’s present,” but by the time he said, “and I guess Rachid Braigmin wants to serve a detantion with his little brother and his little brother’s little frand Haspaygus — I’ll oblige you that, Rachid Braigmin, I’ll oblige you that,” he was standing up even straighter than before, shoulders thrust back proudly. “Cattis!” he said.
“What did you just say to the Flunky, Mr. Botha? I couldn’t under-stand,” said Salvador Curtis.
“Jest mind yourself, Cattis, and kape your nose to the tesk at hand. Deerfailed!”
I thought: Maybe it’s the duty of loyalty’s object to transform the potential into the actual. Maybe it’s my fault they didn’t protect me. Maybe when they saw me being humiliated, they didn’t believe what they were seeing.
“Present,” said Rick Deerfield.
“Dangow,” said Botha.
“Present,” said Mark Dingle.
Maybe they didn’t believe I could be humiliated.
“Hentsary!” said Botha.
“Present,” said Ansul Entsry.
“Failedburns,” said Botha.
“Here,” said Renee Feldbons.
Maybe they thought, moment to moment, that I would break free of Slokum in the next moment. That was definitely what I thought when it started happening, and by the time I knew otherwise, I didn’t have enough air in my lungs to call for help — but they didn’t know that. My lungs were not their lungs.
“Freudy!”
“Present,” said Jackie Friday.
My lungs were not their lungs, and my humiliation wasn’t their humiliation. It didn’t have to be, at least.
“Glanncow!”
“Here,” said Janie Glencoe.
They didn’t have to be humiliated by my defeat.
“Hyeney!”
“I’m here,” said Chunkstyle.
And they didn’t have to be ashamed for letting me be defeated.
“Kannilwath!”
“Present,” said Forrest Kenilworth.
Yet they were humiliated. And ashamed. I could see it in their faces.
“Layp!” said Botha.
Stevie Loop said, “Here.”
Their faces were blank; I saw shame in their faces, shame in their blankness. And maybe I just wanted to. Maybe I needed to — maybe I wanted, that much, to forgive them; maybe to forgive them I had to see shame that wasn’t really there — but shame’s what I saw.
“Lant!” said Botha.
They wished they’d done more for me, regretted they hadn’t.
“Right here,” said Casper Lunt.
They wanted to do more.
“Make-bee!” said Botha.
They wanted to atone.
“Make-bee!” said Botha.
They wanted to be loyal.
“Make-bee?” said Botha. “Where’s Make-bee?” said Botha.
Someone cleared his throat — Leevon Ray. “Here,” Leevon said.
“Nice to finely hear from you, Layven,” Botha said, “but don’t eff around with me. Where’s Garrion Make-bee?”
“Here!” the Side shouted.
And Leevon Ray spoke: “Word is bond, you prison-colony trick. Outback gimp-ass vegemitebrain. Coyotebugger. Stingraybait. Wallabee-eating marsupialsack. Crocodile ugly walkabout cripple. Bent Australian clawfisted lame inbred Foster’s-pounding bowie knife…”
I came down the hill, damaged and relieved and forgiving as the rest of them.
Mounted behind glass in a wallcase outside the art room was Miss Gleem’s Quarterly Student Themeshow. The theme for the quarter was “Exploring Black & White.” In the center of the display, amid would-be photoreal ink-drawings (moons, penguins, busts of tuxedoed Bruce Wayne types) and construction-paper cameos (all 19th-century-looking except Leevon’s: a spear-cleft Centurion’s helmet), hung the only unsigned piece. According to the little card Miss Gleem had pasted above the upper margin, it was made by June, and titled “Visual Thinker.”
This is exactly what it looked like:
Though the themeshow went up in mid-October, I didn’t get the whole joke til early November, when, returning to ISS after going to the bathroom, I happened to see the piece from thirty paces off.
I pointed as we approached it on our way to the Cage. The Side of Damage looked, and I told them to go closer. All of them did so — and fast — except Benji.