Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

Today we would do it.

"Okay," he said.

Hand would jump from our rental car to the back of the cart, while we were moving, and then give the driver the money we had remaining. We would pull our car alongside, doing maybe 15 mph, and Hand would jump from his window onto the cart, a big enough target, as big as the bed of a large pickup truck. Easy.

"Maybe too easy," Hand said.

We drove up and down the airport road seven times, trying to time it with a series of different carts. Here's one:

They were all perfectly shaped and traveling slowly enough, but every time we were close, something went awry. A cop behind us or coming from the opposite way; a man on a scooter pulling up and asking if we needed directions; another man on a scooter offering hashish. Kids on bikes looking too curious. The road was too crowded. Where were they all going? They were like extras, paid to drive to and fro -

Hand was sitting on the door, his torso out the window.

"This won't work," he said, ducking his head into the car.

He got back inside. I asked why it wouldn't work.

"Torque," he said.

I pulled over. I stared forward. I wasn't going to ask him what torque had to do with jumping on a horse-drawn cart.

"Let's switch," I said.

"You can't do it. You can barely walk."

"Let's go. I'll do it."

– I have to follow through, Hand.

– We've already followed through.

– We have to follow through every time.

Hand drove and I sat on the doorframe and we turned around to catch up with a man in a cart. We found one near the entrance to the airport. This would work; I'd jump, give him the money, then jump off, onto the road, and we'd fly off to Moscow.

We pulled alongside the same cart. Was it the same cart? It was the same cart as above. Hand slowed the car to match the cart's speed, about 12 mph. The man, at first not paying us any mind, suddenly turned his head and watched us, confused, concerned. We were looking at each other, he and I. I was trying to see a way that I could get myself onto his cart and he seemed to know this. I looked at the back of his cart, and then at him, and at his donkey, then back at him. He didn't want me jumping on his cart. With a Hah! directed to his donkey, he sped up his cart.

This was stupid. This would be great if you made it work. Stupid. Completely spectacular! I set one foot on the armrest on the inside of the door. With my right hand I grabbed a ridge between the door and the car roof. It was only three or four feet to the cart. This is an easy one. Shut the fuck up. A breeze.

"Get back in here, idiot," Hand said.

"This is easy," I said, though too quietly for him to hear.

"We'll get arrested," Hand yelled.

My foot was on the doorframe and I jumped. The cart came at me and I could see the grain of the wood of the side panels. I could see the asparagus, or whatever it was. The shoulder and elbow of the man. Then a gap in his cargo, a gap where I would land, grey wooden planks. I felt them, my hands smacked against them, my hest, but my legs were below. My chin hit the wood and then I saw the quick swirl of sky then wailed backward and my back struck the pavement and I saw the sun and was still.

I'd missed. Or I had hit it, but hadn't jumped far enough. I didn't have enough thrust. Torque. It's not torque. It could be torque. My spine was a tunnel and there was crushed glass shooting through. I could see the underside of the cart and the legs of the donkey. The donkey's legs were patchy with stiff steel-blue hair, resembling a threadbare stuffed toy. The light down here was forgiving and soft. It was cool in the shadow of the cart, a perfect temperature. I had the immediate sensation of comfort and contentment. The cart's dark undercarriage reminded me of a barn. I knew a barn once. We had parties in a barn in Phelps, full of bats but in decent shape for one so old and abandoned – Tommy and I and the other kids who spent summers up there. That's where I first put my fingers into -

"Speak!" It was Hand. "Speak, dumbshit."

"What?" I mumbled.

The cart driver was now bent over me, too. These two faces. They were so different. The cart driver's face was crooked. His jaw jutted to the right. His teeth were headed in so many directions.

The pain in my spine began to know parameters. Soon it would dull again. I sat up.

"That looked fucking awful," Hand said.

The man next to him, crouched down now, said nothing. He looked at me like I was a neighborhood child who no one understood but had to be dealt with daily, the kid who chased cats and spied on elderly women.

"Does it hurt somewhere in particular?" Hand asked.

I got my legs under me and stood. The man was short and now looked up to me. I closed my eyes and stumbled a few steps to my left. I was losing equilibrium. Was I? I didn't know. The damage at this point could be anywhere. Nothing would surprise me.

"You want to get in or stay here?" Hand said. "You fell like a bag of sand."

"Sorry," I said. My lungs hurt. "I thought that was a sure thing." I noticed that the donkey was watching me, too. Of the driver, Hand and himself, he seemed to be the most sympathetic.

Hand and I stood, he waiting for me to walk or fall, me waiting for a sign. The man from the cart started toward his donkey.

"Wait," said Hand. Then to me: "We might as well."

I got the bills from my sock and gave them to Hand, who delivered them to the man. The man shook his head, bewildered, but took the money. He climbed back onto his cart and urged his donkey on, before we could change our minds. My back was raw, dented by a hundred pieces of gravel. We got back in the car.

"We should stay and see a doctor," Hand said.

"In Morocco? No."

"Those Congolese people were coming here to study. You look around this city? There's money here. They must be good."

"Let's make the flight."

Hand sighed and started the car.

"I don't want this on me," he said.

"You won't. I'm good."

"You're a fucking wreck."

We returned the car and and saw the currency exchange bastard, who refused my right to change my signature, who threw himself in our path. We changed the money we needed to change – the nicker did so without incident, and we walked away, walked backwards, glaring, shaking our fingers silently. I was done with the man. Hand was not. When I was at the door, Hand strode quickly back to his window.

"You are bad man!" he yelled.

The man watched Hand, unmoved.

"We are here giving your people money and you try to stop us! You are the wall! Everywhere there are people like you! People who get in the way. You are a constipation! A constipation!"

Everyone was staring.

"You see what you do to my friend?" He was pointing at me. "You make him fall off cart! All is your fault! All in world is fault of people like you!"

The man registered no emotion whatsoever. This sent Hand over the edge.

"You know what they do to you in Bible? They throw you out! You are lost in the flood of Noah! You are cast out of the temple! Cast out! You read the Bible, rude man? Do you?"

I was grabbing him now. I yanked his shirt from behind and he turned to walk with me.

"Cast out of the Bible!" he yelled one more time, as we left the room and stepped out into the light.

The inflight magazine offered an article about a man who was building a single-person commuter plane.

"Holy crap," I said to Hand. "You see this?"

"I'm reading it at the same time." He had his own copy.

The plane would be small, affordable and able to take anyone anywhere. A plane for one person, fit to travel to any destination in the world, more or less – some details needed sorting. It seemed to be the solution to really every problem there was, especially mine. There would be no real restrictions, and no one to wait for, no one on whom to rely. I thought I might swoon. The only issue was the timeline. The inventor had been working on the plane for about twenty years and now he had a prototype – it was ravishing; they had a picture and everything – but, they said, it would likely be twenty years longer, best case scenario, before the planes would be available to civilians, another ten years before they'd be the least bit common. I'd be in my late forties or more likely dead. And the plane, like any perfect idea, any perfect idea dreamed and built by one person acting alone, had its legion of doubters. Why, they wondered, would someone design a perfect machine that could travel anywhere to anywhere, but build it to accommodate only one?