Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

"Bonjour!" one of them yelled, the word sailing to us through the thin late-afternoon air with the strong voice of a girl of eight or nine. Then another one, "Bonjour!" this time from a boy. Then they both said it as they skipped toward us: "Bonjour!"

Hand yelled back: "Bonjour!"

"Hello!" I yelled.

It had to be those kids. Only the most blessed of little people yells hello across an empty field to strangers with dirty clothes.

"We have to give them some," I said. A man emerged from another nearby hut and faced us. "Shit," Hand said. We only wanted the kids. This man would be suspicious.

"I liked it better when it was just the kids," I said.

"Who cares?"

"Look at him. He's carrying a scythe or something."

Hand squinted. "You're right."

"I am?" The man was standing now, hand shielding his eyes, and the kids had gone inside.

"We'll come back," Hand said. "We'll swim and come back."

We walked toward the ocean; we knew it wasn't far. We'd been watching the ocean peek between towns and trees the whole drive down. We tramped through a growing thicket and toward the weakening sun.

"Fuck," said Hand.

"What?"

"Mosquitos. That's how we get malaria."

He was right.

"You bring block?" he asked.

"No."

"Fuck. This is stupid. I don't want malaria."

"I wouldn't mind it," I said. I had a distant and untested fascination with sickness like that, that would bring you to the brink but not over, if you were strong.

We debated. Continuing on meant an unknown risk – the place could be swarmed with mosquitos any second – but going back to the car meant that we'd truly done nothing, and we would never do anything. If we couldn't pull off the road and walk through a field to the ocean then we were worth nothing.

We walked on. The ground was hard and brown and dotted with seashells. There were shells all the way back to the highway, the road lined with them, white and broken.

"You see all the shells?" Hand asked.

"I know."

"This whole area was underwater."

After a few minutes we could see the ocean. It was the lightest blue, a dry and sun-faded blue. We walked closer, a few hundred yards from the shore, and saw a group of small houses, all of the same design and standing in formation – some kind of development, between us and the water. About fifteen of them, cottage-sized and neatly arrayed, on a sort of plateau, separated from us and from the beach beyond by a moat, sixteen feet down and filled with what seemed to be -

"Sewage," I said.

"I know."

"Brutal."

The builders had run out of money. It was a resort-to-be, but without any sign of recent work. There were no vehicles or trailers. Only these small homes, well-built, windowless and sturdy. Each one big enough for one bedroom, a sitting room and a small porch. We got as close as we could before the moat asserted itself without solution. The water in the moat was too deep and dirty to wade through, and too wide to jump.

"There is no reason for this moat," said Hand. "Someone built this moat and even they don't know why."

There was a man. He walked into view on the other side of the moat, among the houses. He was Senegalese, bone-thin and holding in his hand some kind of electric device, black and with a long antenna. He stared our way.

"Security," Hand said. "They've got someone guarding the whole place."

"We should leave."

"No."

We were watching the man and he was watching us.

"Let's pretend we're leaving and see if he leaves," I said.

"Fine," Hand said.

We turned and shuffled away. Was he armed? He could shoot us if he wanted to and no one would ever know. We sat behind a pair of thick shrubs.

"Pilar looked thin," I said.

"She did?" Hand said, trying to balance a thin stick between his nose and upper lip. "I thought she looked normal."

"You're blind."

I dug a small hole and put a scallop-shaped shell inside, and buried it. Then I retrieved it, and set it back in the exact spot I'd found it.

"This is slower than I thought it would be," I said.

"It's good though," Hand said.

"We're still wasting time," I said. "We still have $1,400 or something."

"You're the one who's got to decide what he wants to do. I'm along to help, but for example what are we doing here?"

"I know what I want to do."

"Well which is it? What is this, for example? This isn't helping with the money thing. There's no one out here. And we've already been swimming today so -"

"We saw the water and wanted to walk. And now there's this moat and we have to – you know."

"I guess," he said.

Under the shadow of Hand's back, ants walking in a loose capillary line. Hand got up quickly, convinced they were red.

"I just like it out here," I said.

I did. I pictured myself in one of those half-built homes, squatting and on the water. I could have a car, park it behind the warehouse and live here, for free, under this sun and with this water, protected by this moat -

I stood and the man was gone.

"Let's go," Hand said.

We walked alongside the moat, hoping to find a narrow place to cross, to get closer to the homes and then to the beach beyond. We soon saw a clothesline threaded between one porch and its adjacent tree. Shirts and pants hung from it, and on the porch towels and an Indiana University umbrella.

"Jesus," I said. "Someone's living here."

"Makes sense."

"But why does the security guy let them?"

"We could plant some money in there," Hand said. "Put it in a pair of pants."

"Yeah, on the clothesline. That'd be good."

We went around the entire moat and at the far right end found an area where we could get down the bluff, about fifty feet, and over the water. There was a rocky sort of path sloping right and after taking off our shoes in case we landed somehow in the moat, we descended, sliding and jumping, and soon found ourselves jogging slightly, as if descending stairs in a hurry. The path was now dotted with large flat rocks, like overturned dinner plates, and we were jumping from rock to rock, and doing so at a speed that I should have found alarming but somehow didn't, and we were barefoot, which might have increased the alarm but instead made it easier, because the rocks were smooth, and cool, and my bare feet would land on the rock and kind of wrap around it, simian-like, in a way that a shoe or sneaker or sandal couldn't. I swear my toes were grabbing for me, and that my skin was attaching to the rock surface in a way that only meant collusion between natural things – in this case, feet and smooth green-grey rocks. There was no time to think, which was plenty of time – I had a few fractions of a second in mid-air, between rocks, to calculate the location of the next rock-landing options, the stability of each, the flattest surface among them. My brain and legs and feet all working at top speed, at the height of their respective games – it was thrilling and I was proud for them, for us. I had the thought, while running, without breaking stride, that I would like to be doing this forever, that thought occurring while I almost landed on a very sharp rock but adjusted quickly enough to avoid it in favor of a nearby and more rounded rock, and while I was congratulating myself on having made such a perfect rock-landing choice, I was also rethinking my thought about jumping on rocks forever, because that would probably not be all that fun after a while, involving as it did a certain amount of stress, probably too much – and then, I thought, how odd it was to be thinking about running forever along the rounded gray rocks of this corner of Senegal – was this Popenguine? Mbour? – while I was in fact running along them, and how strange it was that not only could I be calculating the placement of my feet in midrun, but also be thinking of my future as a career or eternal rock-runner, and noting the thinking about that at the same time. Then the rocks ended and the sand began and I jumped into the sand with a shhhht and my feet were thankful and I stood, watching the water and waiting for Hand.