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.
In any case, I’d never have ratted to the principal about the ichthys, especially not after demanding the plebiscite. Apart from being wrong, to rat was self-defeating. If the other Shovers found out (which they did), then the passive disregard they already had for the cause of the Israelites would, by many, be replaced with active contempt (which it was), and worse than that, it would give them a cause, make them—the Gentile Shovers — the underdogs, and Brodsky their oppressor, a figure to defy.
And that happened, too.
As soon as he learned of the dispute from the finks, Brodsky announced that nothing religious could appear on any item of school apparel, and thereby banned the ichthys from the scarf.
But Acer said the scarf was not school apparel. He said that the Shovers, being a semi-private club, paid for and ordered and designed it themselves, and now it was they whose creative souls were at stake, so it wasn’t Brodsky who’d make the decision, but the “majority of Shovers who would hold a democrat [sic] vote.”
Yet a club at school with semi-private status was nonetheless a school-sponsored club, Brodsky told them, and the principal of the school had total jurisdiction, so plebiscite narishkeit, referendum dumb pudendum.
Despite Brodsky’s assurance it would be illegitimate, the vote was taken at the next official meeting. The pro-ichthys faction won 48–13.
No one can know what would have happened had Acer and the Shovers followed through on the results. Nor can it be known if, by the time the vote was taken, they’d had any intention of following through. Ruth Rothstein opines, in “Nada y Pues Nada,” that all of the Shovers, including Blake Acer, had been long-since resigned to Brodsky’s decision, their votes meek gestures they’d back with no action, hollow as bird-bones, forty-eight balloted chest-bumps. (Ruth’s heart, Jelly’d told me when I’d first read the article, was once broken by a Shover — this was Berman’s older brother, although, at that time, she hadn’t named names.) If it’s true that the Shovers had been only caulking trickles, then indeed Frungeon saved them many facefulls of snat. If it isn’t true, it’s hard to guess what he saved them — Brodsky talked tough, but what could he do if the Shovers, as Acer suggested in whispers, did order scarves embroidered with ichthii and had them delivered somewhere other than school? Expel them? Who’d stand for it? What about the kids who wore crosses and chais? We weren’t in France or Saudi Arabia. Maybe Brodsky could sue for trademark infringement? the use of the mascot up near the shoulder? Maybe take away the Shovers’ semi-private-club status? But then they’d meet at recess, wholly private, with impunity. Ban scarves in the classroom? What about cold kids? Apart from maybe holding a grudge — and maybe, for a Shover, the threat of that was enough — Brodsky really couldn’t do much to punish them. Whatever might have happened in either case, though, it was Frungeon, to everyone’s surprise, who prevented it.