Dave Eggers: How We Are Hungry

The squirrels are above and talking.

“Well, looks like she got what she deserved.”

“That’s what you get when you jump.”

“If she were a better jumper this would not have happened.”

Some of them laugh. Franklin is angry. He walks slowly to where they’re sitting; they do not move. He grabs one in his jaws and crushes all its bones. Their voices are always talking but we forget they are so small, their head and bones so tiny. The rest run away. He tosses the squirrel’s broken form into the slow water.

We go home. I jog to the buildings with Susan on my back. We pass the windows flickering blue and the men in the silver van with the jangly music. I take her home and scratch at her door until she is let in. I go home and see the thin twins with their dollhouse and I go to the room with the bed and fall asleep before they come.

The next night I don’t want to go to the woods. I can’t see someone fall, and can’t hear the squirrels, and don’t want Franklin to crush them in his jaws. I stay at home and I play with the twins in their pajamas. They put me on a pillowcase and pull me through the halls. I like the speed and they giggle. We make turns where I run into doorframes and they laugh. I run from them and then toward them and through their legs. They shriek, they love it. I want deeply for these twins and want them to leave and run with me. I stay with them tonight and then stay home for days. I stay away from the windows. It’s warm in the house and I eat more and sit with them as they watch television. It rains for a week.

When I come to the woods again, after ten days away, Susan has lost her leg. The dogs are all there. Susan has three legs, a bandage around her front shoulder. Her smile is a new and more fragile thing. It’s colder out and the wind is mean and searching. Mary says that the rain has made the creek swell and the current too fast. The gap over the drainpipe is wider now so we decide that we will not jump.

I race Franklin. Franklin is still angry about Susan’s leg; neither of us can believe that things like that happen, that she has lost a leg and now when she smiles she looks like she’s asking to die.

When we get to the straightaway I feel so strong that I know I will go. I’m not sure I can make it but I know I can go far, farther than I’ve jumped before, and I know how long it will be that I will be floating cloudlike. I want this. I want this so much, the floating.

I run and see the squirrels and their mouths are already forming the words they will say if I don’t make it across. On the straightaway Franklin stops and yells to me that I should stop but it’s just a few more strides and I’ve never felt so strong so I jump yes jump. I float for a long time and see it all. I see my bed and the faces of my friends and it seems like already they know.

When I hit my head it was obvious. I hit my head and had a moment when I could still see — I saw Susan’s face, her eyes open huge, I saw some criss-crossing branches above me and then the current took me out and then I fell under the surface.

After I fell and was out of view the squirrels spoke.

“He should not have jumped that jump.”

“He sure did look silly when he hit his head and slid into the water.”

“He was a fool.”

“Everything he ever did was worthless.”

Franklin was angry and took five or six of them in his mouth, crushing them, tossing them one after the other. The other dogs watched; none of them knew if squirrel-killing made them happy or not.

After I died, so many things happened that I did not expect.

The first was that I was there, inside my body, for a long time. I was at the bottom of the river, stuck in a thicket of sticks and logs, for six days. I was dead, but was still there, and I could see out of my eyes. I could move around inside my body like it was a warm loose bag. I would sleep in the warm loose bag, turn around in it like it was a small home of skin and fur. Every so often I could look through the bag’s eyes to see what was outside, in the river. Through the dirty water I never saw much.

I had been thrown into the river, a different river, when I was young by a man because I would not fight. I was supposed to fight and he kicked me and slapped my head and tried to make me mean. I didn’t know why he was kicking me, slapping. I wanted him to be happy. I wanted the squirrels to jump and be happy as we dogs were. But they were different than we were, and the man who threw me to the river was also different. I thought we were all the same but as I was inside my dead body and looking into the murky river bottom I knew that some are wanting to run and some are afraid to run and maybe they are broken and are angry for it.

I slept in my broken sack of a body at the bottom of the river, and wondered what would happen. It was dark inside, and musty, and the air was hard to draw. I sang to myself.

After the sixth day I woke up and it was bright. I knew I was back. I was no longer inside a loose sack but was now inhabiting a body like my own, from before; I was the same. I stood and was in a wide field of buttercups. I could smell their smell and walked through them, my eyes at the level of the yellow, a wide blur of a line of yellow. I was heavy-headed from the gorgeousness of the yellow all blurry. I loved breathing this way again, and seeing everything.

I should say that it’s very much the same here as there. There are more hills, and more waterfalls, and things are cleaner. I like it. Each day I walk for a long time, and I don’t have to walk back. I can walk and walk, and when I am tired I can sleep. When I wake up, I can keep walking and I never miss where I started and have no home.

I haven’t seen anyone yet. I don’t miss the cement like sandpaper on my feet, or the buildings with the sleeping men reaching. I sometimes miss the other dogs and the running.

The one big surprise is that as it turns out, God is the sun. It makes sense, if you think about it. Why we didn’t see it sooner I cannot say. Every day the sun was right there burning, our and other planets hovering around it, always apologizing, and we didn’t think it was God. Why would there be a God and also a sun? Of course God is the sun.

Everyone in the life before was cranky, I think, because they just wanted to know.

DAVE EGGERS

HOW WE ARE HUNGRY

Dave Eggers and his wife live in northern California. He edits a magazine, McSweeney’s , and teaches at 826 Valencia in San Francisco.

www.mcsweeneys.net