FINE: You don’t know the half, Mr. Stevens. Sandy is a good boy, and he’s been through so much, and done some not so nice things since his parents were divorced, but he always loved his bubbie, which is to say me, and since he’s moved in here we haven’t had an incident, not even one, and then I see your program, and you talk about this Maccabee with the self-hating father who’s apparently too busy making the world safe for antisemites to teach his son not to murder Gym teachers and torture young singers, and I get a sinking feeling that Sandy is involved, for when Sandy lived in Chicago he used to talk of this Maccabee with so much affection, with the affection of a son for his father he spoke of him, and I call up his school and they condescend to so-called remind me, old lady I am, that I called my grandson in sick just two hours earlier. I did no such thing, Mr. Stevens. No such thing. And now? Where is he? On his way to this suburb by train is my guess. In a different state. Likely already he’s gotten off the train and is walking alone through suburban Chicago, and it has been hailing, I see, and by the parkas of the policeman, I can tell it’s very cold there, and here in Kenosha it’s not so bad, an otherwise pleasant autumn morning, and Sandy he left home in a hooded fleece sweatshirt, and his parka is hanging on the coat-tree by the door. My grandson should get pneumonia for this? And you, Mr. Stevens, should question my integrity? I heard what you said. I claim this about alleged that. I’d like to speak to your manager, Mr. Stevens. I told him I couldn’t find my glasses.
STEVENS: Your glasses, Ms. Fine?
FINE: Do not take that tone with me unless you want I hang up and call ABC News instead, and forward them the email when I find my glasses. Where did I put them? When I read the email, I was wearing them… Then. Then I arose, verklempt, from my chair… I paced around the kitchen… I called the police and was put on hold… I had a butterscotch from the cupboard—
STEVENS: Did you leave them in the cupboard?
FINE: You think I haven’t checked the cupboard? Wait! Here they are.
STEVENS: You found them? Where?
FINE: I’d rather not say. What I would like to say is what I called to say to my Sandy: Sandy, if you’re watching, and I sincerely hope you are because that would mean that you’re somewhere inside and warm where you should stay and call us from and we’ll send your uncle to pick you up and feed you and bring you back here, you’re a good boy, a nice boy, a boy who loves his bubbie, and this Gurion Maccabee is bad, Sandy. He’s troubled, I’m sure, I’m sure he’s had his share of troubles, but he’s murdering people, and maybe to you this seems like Cowboys and Indians or Cops and Robbers, but if you behave like he does, you will be considered a terrorist. You should have heard the tone the policeman used when I called to help him. Like we were the criminals. That’s how bad this is. I will love you either way because that is how strong my love is for you, Sandy, but I will be very, very disappointed and even ashamed if you become a terrorist. It’s not nice at all. It’s just not nice.
STEVENS: Any chance you’d be willing to forward us that email now, Ms. Fine?
FINE: Did you broadcast what I said? My message to Sandy?
STEVENS: Yes, Ms. Fine.
FINE: I’ve just put the little arrow on the the SEND button and I clicked.
So far so good: both entrances covered; Benji at my side, soon to go to the nurse’s; June at my side, forever in love with me; seven Israelites behind us because I was their leader; a less-outnumbered Side of Damage in the gym; scholars presumably approaching the school. What else needed doing? Those seven Israelites were standing there, about to start playing slapslap. I could send them back to the gym to watch TV and potentially cause the Side to feel smaller, or, better yet, I could beef up security.
I sent two of the seven to bolster Ben-Wa’s crew, and the last five I took to the library. The library’s east wall had a giant picture window, highly visible to the cops and the media outside. It was just the right spot to display another hostage — a fake one this time. Even if the cops got desperate enough to convince themselves that they could lightning-strike Forrest’s or Ben-Wa’s crew before Maholtz or Boystar could be done deadly harm, this third displayed hostage — too far from either entrance to be gotten to quickly — would keep them in check.
I halted our march just outside of the library, and I said to the smallest, most nervous-looking soldier, who said his name was Fox, though (he told me as quickly as he possibly could) he spelled it Focks when he signed his poems, which were “poems about the difference between language and noise, which all poems are, just not so overtly, not that I’m an expert, I’m really an amateur, but that’s my project, which I can only hope is better than me, something to grow into, something to master before I die, I hope”: You’re the prisoner, Fox. They’ll bring you in with your hands behind your back and sit you in a chair in front of the big window. Keep your hands behind you the entire time, and look as scared as you possibly can.
“What if I itch?”
Tell the others in a crying voice, as if you’re in pain, and they’ll pretend to rough you up, but really they’ll scratch you wherever you itch.
“What if I itch on the wang?”
On the wang?
“The wang,” said Fox.
Try scratching with your thighs.
“That never works.”
I—
“I’m just kidding, Gurion. I can handle a wang-itch. The secret is to picture a nice blue stream full of fishes who are friendly except when there’s heat, which makes them grow fangs and try to eat the hot thing.”
Okay, I said.
“Really,” he said. “Because an itch is heat, so you cool the itch down so the fishes don’t tear off your itchy-hot penis.”
That works?
“Always works.”
I guess that’s smart, then. Why don’t you just scratch, though?
“I thought I was the prisoner.”
I mean in the past — when have you had a wang-itch that you couldn’t just scratch?
“If you scratch and someone sees you, they think you’re playing with yourself.”
Who does?
“Girls?”
I don’t think that’s true. Why do you think that’s true?
Fox blushed.
Anyway, I said, in the future don’t sweat that. Just scratch your wang.
“Okay,” he said. “Are you really the messiah?”
I might be, I said.
“I hope so,” he said, “but if you’re not, then I guess that’s still okay.”
Good, I said. Now—
“Because all these motherfuckers,” Fox continued, “used to laugh off their motherfucking heads at me is why, all because I have the soul of a poet, a delicate soul, even in torment. They’d laugh at me to see the faces I’d make and it made me make faces I didn’t want to make, then they’d laugh even more at those faces when I made them. I don’t think they’ll do that anymore, though,” he said. “I really fucked them up back there, really tore ’em a new one. I broke someone’s nose, I think, fucked him right up, and I’m sure I shot at least two guys down. No one outfoxed me, that’s for certain. If they tried to outfox me I’d fuck them up. And then, near the end, I found Blonde Lonnie, funny Lonnie friend, who he thought he was so funny, fucking with Focks when he focksed around, always laughing his head off on the bus with everyone. I found him and I kicked him in the ear and he wiggled. That’s a good thing, right? I know that it’s good. I feel very good about it. I don’t feel bad.”