You Shall Know Our Velocity

by Dave Eggers

  “What’s katabatic?”

  “As a visitor to Greenland, it is important to note the following: The weather can change abruptly, and technical hitches may occur. So it is always advisable to enquire with GreenlandAir the evening before—or at the latest the same day.”

  “Technical hitches. Are they talking about the weather?”

  “I think so.”

  We fell asleep in the living room, Hand on the couch and me on the recliner, and at eight woke with two hours to gather everything and go. We had agreed not to pack before the morning, and this turned out to be easy to honor, the actual packing involving the stuffing in of two shirts, underwear, toiletries and a miniature atlas, which took three minutes. Passports, tickets, the $32,000 in travelers checks, the bandannas. Hand brought some discs, his walk-man, a handful of tapes for the rental cars, some State Department travelers’ advisories, and a sheaf of papers he’d printed from the Center for Disease Control website, almost entirely about ebola. He could talk forever about ebola. I threw in a Churchill biography I was reading, but after swinging the pack over my shoulders and feeling the weight of the 1,200 pages, I unpacked the book, ripped out the first 200 and last 300, and shoved it back in.

  We fell back asleep on the couch. At ten-thirty, with a spasm we woke again—

  TUESDAY, SHIT, LATE ALREADY

  —and left and slept in the cab, each of our heads against a window, out cold; the cabbie woke us when stopped under the awning of O’Hare’s international arm. The airport’s quiet doors opened for us and we trotted to the desk happily, the airport tall and light, Hand whistling John Denver’s relevant song, and at the desk we were told our flight was canceled; the airport in Kangerlussuaq was closed because of winds.

  “It can’t be,” I said.

  “The katabatic winds,” Hand said.

  “Jesus.”

  “We’ve only got one fucking week.”

  The woman said we could go halfway, to Iqaluit, and wait.

  For how long? we asked.

  “Who knows?” she said, not looking at me. She’d been talking to Hand and I realized why. My face. “They’re waiting.” She pointed to a group of people on a bench across the way. They looked like they were going to Greenland, all with parkas, backpacks and beards. We looked like we were going to play softball.

  “We can’t wait,” I said.

  “We have to go,” said Hand.

  So Greenland was out. Katabatic my ass. Fuck Greenland. I looked to Hand. Was that anguish or shock? The GreenlandAir woman suggested we hold onto the tickets and use them tomorrow. Hand looked like he’d burst.

  “We’ve already lost so much time,” he said.

  “It’s only noon,” the woman said.

  “Noon!” he said. I didn’t know why he was so upset. It was my damned idea.

  We walked out of the terminal and paced around in the cold, running through possibilities, Hand babbling. Hand has a way of talking to you, eyes staring through yours, unblinking, jaw moving that suggests either great intensity or plain country madness.

  A Lincoln Towncar pulled up and from it disembarked a black family in bright dashikis. A skycap appeared and helped them with their bags. The African father paid the skycap with two bills, nodding with the placement of each upon the skycap’s palm, and the skycap said, “Thank you, sir.” The family walked in and through the shushing slowly closing automatic doors and I watched them glide, bright fabric swishing, to the Air Afrique desk, a few feet from GreenlandAir. I walked in after them and Hand followed.

  On the small ancient screen their flight was listed in weak green light. Air Afrique, 1:50 P.M. to Dakar.

  “Where’s Dakar?” Hand asked.

  I dug into my backpack and checked my atlas.

  “Senegal.”

  The tickets cost us $1,600 for the pair, one-way, a price I justified by thinking—wrongly—that we’d get a refund on the Greenland two. It was the most money I’d ever spent at once. Even the two cars I’d ever bought were less—$800 and $1,400, both Corollas. We were motherfucking bastards. I buried the shame deep within. I burned it and danced around it, leapt over it. We were going to Senegal and I got the tickets so we’d return to O’Hare from Cairo. That way we’d fly to Dakar, would be able to get across the continent and end up at the Pyramids before flying back—and wouldn’t have to see Dakar twice. Genius.

  We were told to wait for a gate assignment. The floor was now full of Senegalese in dashikis, mostly men, all black, all with glasses, silver-framed, looking like a U.N. delegation or some kind of … some kind of group of men who liked to dress the same. After fifteen minutes an announcement was made. The flight, scheduled to leave at 1:50 P.M., would be late in taking off. We walked to the desk. How late? we asked. It was now scheduled, the woman said with a straight face, for 9 P.M. Hand fell to his knees. He was hammy that way. I waited for him to get up, which he did with a clap as punctuation, and we walked away.

  “This is a joke,” he said.

  “The dashiki guys aren’t mad,” I said, pointing to their group, chatting, milling.

  Hand wanted to try again, to get a refund and fish for anything else. Togo, Franz Josefland. I couldn’t decide. Where were the flights that actually left the ground? All we wanted was another continent, as soon as possible. We asked if they knew anything more about the departure time, the possibilities. Were they sure it would be so late? How could they be so sure?

  The Air Afrique woman had an answer: “Because the plane hasn’t left Dakar yet.”

  The plane from Chicago to Dakar hadn’t left Dakar for Chicago.

  There was a shuttle bus taking the passengers to the Best Western, where we were each given a room. We had six hours. The shuttle bus filled and left and another arrived. We sat next to a young thin man, his head in his hands.

  “Air Afrique. Every time,” he said. He was in a grey pinstriped suit. He looked about twenty-four, probably a student. Silver-framed glasses. Senegalese, we guessed, from the accent.

  “Are they a bad airline?” Hand asked. I wanted to ask why all the men going to Senegal were wearing the same glasses. Were they government-issued to men, as were pointy shoes in Italy?

  “Their safety record is fine,” he said, “but they take their time. Always late. Terrible. They don’t care.”

  Next to us a white man, resembling in every way David Carradine in his latter Kung Fu days, was talking to another man, whom he had seemingly just met. We listened. We couldn’t help but listen—Carradine was loud and they were sitting inches from us. The other man was from Ghana and was visiting Senegal for the first time. Why he was coming through Chicago to do so was unclear but Carradine was the character here, lower teeth small, fishlike and sharp, a headband around his neck, stringy hair greasing his shoulders. We caught phrases, Hand and I leaning to hear the white man speak.

  “Well, God granted me abundant life …”

  His audience, the Ghanian man, was listening respectfully.

  “… I don’t know why he has done this, what I have done to deserve this … other than my being honest and kind …”

  Carradine looked like a guy who would be selling handmade hemp wallets at a flea market. I was surprised Hand wasn’t joining their conversation. This man was the type of guy Hand was inevitably chatting up. Hand had collected so many of these people, had so many stories, and always the stories involved someone he’d just met and instantly befriended—there are people who meet strangers and people, like me, who know only those they’ve known from birth—and usually Hand soon after loaned them money or, in two separate instances, allowed them to live in his garage.

  “Yes, I live like a king,” the white man on the bus was saying, “and can entertain my friends from around the globe…. Of course, I was never good at English. For three years I was in remedial English … my teachers didn’t understand my individual needs for expression …”

  The shuttle stopped at the hotel. Carradine had five bags, which he struggled to lift, on
e over his shoulder, two in his left hand, two in his right. Hand took two for him, and the burdened white man followed us out. We stepped down from the shuttle into the lobby.

  “You been to Senegal before?” he asked Hand.

  Hand said we hadn’t.

  “Well, you’ll see more beggars and cripples there than in your whole life.” He glanced at me. “You’ll feel right at home.”

  We walked into the lobby. Was that a joke about my face? It was, I think. We were in line now, waiting to check in. The white man looked at our shoes, our backpacks, gauging their contents.

  “So,” he said, “you guys planning to do some drumming?”

  And we were still in America. We were in Schaumburg, or Bensenville, wherever this hotel was, and were walking down a quiet hall with purple and yellow crosshatched carpeting, and were not en route to Senegal and I hadn’t—I just realized—packed shorts, and wouldn’t get there until morning and had wasted the day. One of seven gone.

  Passing a middle-aged couple in matching jackets:

  —You two need to change.

  —What? Why? the middle-aged couple said, to my head, in my head.

  —Because you are wearing the same jacket.

  —We bought them while on vacation in Newport.

  —You must be hidden from view.

  —The jackets are nice.

  —They are not nice. Think of the children.

  I argued with strangers constantly, though only in my cloudy skull, while always I adopted this hollow admonishing tone—my grandmother’s, I guess—which even I couldn’t stand. The silent though decisive discussions were a hobby of my mind, debating people I knew or passed on the road while driving:

  —You, driving the Lexus.

  —Me?

  —Yes, you. You paid too much.

  —What?

  —You paid too much and your soul is soiled.

  —You are right. I have failed but will repent.

  It helped me work through problems, solving things, reaching conclusions final, edifying and even, occasionally, mutually agreeable.

  —You, on the motorcycle.

  —Yes.

  —It’s only a matter of time.

  —I know.

  It would be fun, I suppose, if it wasn’t constant and so loud. It was unavoidable and now, to tell you the truth, after many years of enjoying the debates, I wanted them to end. I wanted the voices silenced and I wanted less of my head generally. I didn’t want the arguments, and I didn’t want the voice that followed, the one that apologized, also silently, to the people I’d debated and dressed down.

  —Sorry! this last voice would say, jogging after the first like a handler after a candidate. Won’t happen again! Here’s a little something for your trouble!

  I wanted agreement now, I wanted synthesis and the plain truth—without the formalities of debate. There was nothing left to debate, no heated discussion that seemed to progress toward any healing solution. I wanted only truth, as simple as you could serve it, straight down the middle, not the product of dialectic but sui generis: Truth! We all knew the truth but we insisted on distorting things to make it seem like we were all, with each other, in such profound disagreement about everything—that first and foremost there are two sides to everything, when of course there were not; there was one side only, one side always: Just as this earth is round, the truth is round, not two-sided but round and—

  Hand and I got our own rooms. On the mattress over the covers I closed my eyes and attempted sleep but instead met my head as it floated above my bed with its many nervous eyes, and my head was in a belligerent mood. Kill the fuckers. Kill the fuckers. Kill the fuckers. Here I was again. I shunned argument but felt close to the battle. Every day I had hours when I wanted to direct a machine gun, somewhere, anywhere, feel the falling shells tapping my instep—hours when every conflict in the world felt familiar to me—

  I sat up and called my mom. I hadn’t told her about the trip—I’d planned to call from Greenland—and now my reasons for waiting were confirmed.

  “You’re using your new money?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Cathy say about that?”

  “She had nothing to say about it.”

  I knew she was livid, more at Cathy than me.

  “Will, this just sounds silly.”

  “Well …”

  “You’re just acting out, honey.”

  “Well, thank you for that piece of—”

  “You’ve had a rough year, I know, but—”

  “Listen—”

  “And frankly,” she said, “I’m confused.”

  I looked across the bed, into a mirror, and saw a face so angry and wretched I turned away.

  “Tell me,” I said, with a level of patience that impressed even me, “why. Mom. You are confused.”

  “Well, wasn’t it you who didn’t care about traveling? You used to raise such a fit when I wanted to take you on trips, even up to Phelps or something.”

  “That was different.”

  “It was you. It was you who sat right there, on that stool in the kitchen, in the first house, and said that you didn’t need to travel anywhere, ever. I wanted us to go somewhere exotic and you said you could do all the traveling and thinking you’d ever need without ever leaving the backyard.”

  I sighed as loudly and ferociously as I could.

  “Yes indeedy!” she went on, “Hand was the one with the plans, who wanted to be in space and all, but you said travel was a distraction for the unimaginative. It was all very moving, your speech. I wish I had it taped.”

  I wondered how loudly I could hang up. Maybe this was one of those phones with the actual ringer on the base. That could make quite a sound. I would just throw the thing down and—

  “Will?” she asked.

  “What?” I said.

  “Why don’t you go home and call me tonight and we can talk more about this? I think you two are making a mistake. Think about the money! Let me talk to Hand. Is this Hand’s idea?”

  “It’s too late. We bought the tickets.”

  “To where again?”

  “Senegal.”

  She scoffed. “No one goes to Senegal!”

  “We do.”

  “You’ll get AIDS!”

  I hung up. Did I mention that she might be losing her mind? The last time I visited her new condo in Memphis, she’d been using conditioner on her hands, mistaking it for softsoap. Tommy and I are terrified we’ll have twenty years of angry and groping senility, as we did with Granna, who half the time you wanted to care for, whose long straight grey hair you wanted to brush—but who the other half of the time, with her barking exclamations—Where’s my baby! Where’s my horse! I broke those things because they needed to be broken!—you wanted to suffocate with a pillow.

  I tried to nap, but now my head was alive, was a toddler in a room full of new guests. It jumped and squealed and threw the books off the shelves. Yes I’m one of the slowest talkers you’ll ever meet but my head, when I have it and it’s not asleep or being borrowed, is not slow. My mind, I know, I can prove, hovers on hummingbird wings. It hovers and it churns. And when it’s operating at full thrust, the churning does not stop. The machines do not rest, the systems rarely cool. And while I can forget anything of any importance—this is why people tell me secrets—my mind has an uncanny knack for organization when it comes to pain. Nothing tormenting is lost, never even diminished in color or intensity or quality of sound. These were filed near the front.

  Imagine a desk. The desk is located at the top of a green hill, about two hundred feet above a soft meadow dotted with tulips and something like cotton. Winding through the meadow is a stream, narrow and quick, which rushes with the sound of shushing and sniffing. The desk has a magnificent view, and the air around the desk and on the meadow is about seventy-two degrees. It’s balmy and bright, and the sky is blue but not too blue, and in all it would seem to be the perfect place to have a desk. A desk where you
could observe things and do the work that had to be done. The one catch is that the desk sits above a large structure, the entrance to which is just behind and below the desk. This building extends ten stories, down. The structure has been dug down into the whole of the hill and houses a large staff of humanoid people, oily and pale and without hair—they are moles and look like it, with huge square yellow teeth and mouths of fire—all of whom are in charge of keeping track of and retrieving its contents, a mixture of records, dossiers, quotations, historical documents, timelines, fragments, cultural studies—the most glorious and banal and bloody memories.

  Let’s say that I like having this structure in existence, and that I value its presence, and that I have easy access to it. If I want something, a file on something, all I need to do is summon it and one of the library’s staffers, who again are all hairless, have ruby-colored eyes and wear white, will bring it to me, usually without any delay. If I’m on the phone with Hand, and he mentions the time we pushed Darren Larson over the sprinkler—we were big kids and bullies—and Darren Larson cut the shit out of his shin, all that milky white showing, and then he hid behind the fence by the lake under the sunsetting sky, mewling—then I can ask the librarian to get me all the information possible on that event, and do it quickly, so I can converse intelligently with Hand. Seconds later an eager staff member, ruby-eyed hairless and in white and with the smell of sulfur barely covered with rancid perfume, is before me, with a neat manila folder containing all the data stored within the library about that day, given that there’s been, over the years, some mismanagement of the library and any number of floods and fires—so much lost but who to blame?

  And as much as I value the efficiency and professional élan of the library staff, I’d begun recently to worry about a new wrinkle in their procedures. For the most part, they’re supposed to act on my requests when I make requests, and to otherwise just keep an orderly file system. Part of the deal, implicitly, is that at no time should the staff members of the library choose for me what information I should be given. But lately I’d be sitting at my desk, trying either to work or to just admire the view and wonder about the stream, what makes it go, if there are fish inside, what their names might be, if any of them are secretly talking fish and if so what they might say—when there will suddenly be a library staff member at my side, and she will have one hand on my back, and the other will be pointing to the contents of a file she’s brought me and has opened on my desk, so that I will follow her finger to where she’s pointing, and when I see what she’s pointing to I will gasp.