Dave Eggers - You Shall Know Our Velocity

– I have had visions of that cow for ten years now, twelve. I see its eye, I see it just burning and its eye seemed awake, alive for so long. That black liquid eye.

– Stop.

– Hand, it's what we did to that cow.

– Will. It's not the cow.

– Hand we burned that cow alive.

– The cow was dying.

– We poured gasoline on that cow and we burned it.

– We were young. We don't talk about the cow.

– We knew this was an affront to the world.

– The cow would be eaten. We were thirteen and we had to react violently to the world. We'd seen its rules and the demons it allows to live among us. We killed the cow to express our outrage.

– Jack didn't want to do it but didn't want to leave us.

– He stayed because he wanted to.

– We walked from the dance through the golf course and into that one small farm with the six cows. We went into the shed by the barn and we found gasoline and we burned that cow. We didn't doubt what we were doing, not for a second. We didn't doubt it for so many years afterward, right? It felt right at the time, to pour gasoline on a cow and set it aflame.

– We're allowed to grow up.

– We are not allowed this reaction. Only some are allowed to pollute the world. We were sober and we planned it. We hated that cow. We three rode by that cow every weekend on our bikes and we planned to kill it. I had a vision of a cow on fire and we decided we had to make that vision real. We had no right.

– Doesn't matter.

– The cow didn't move as we doused it. Then it felt the burn as the gasoline soaked into its hide. It rolled on the ground. And then we threw the match. We had no right.

– We did it and it was done.

– We had no right. This was the same year we first wanted to kiss all the girls. We were darkhearted boys. We should have been jailed or drugged or killed. I remember watching that cow burn with total detachment. It barely made a sound, that cow. It was all so quiet, and the night was so bright, so clear and the stars were in brilliant clumps, and we stood by the fence, leaning on it afterward, watching, the flames blue and red, and the body beneath darkening from white to grey to black.

– Fucking stop it. Now you're just dredging for the sake of dredging. There's no point.

– This is my head, asshole! This is how it works. It jumps from one wretched episode to the next.

– Leave me out of it.

– We polluted Jack, Hand. All the bad ideas were our ideas. And we had no right. We were given things others have not been given. We had a clean 7-11 within walking distance – we had – this is the reason they took Jack. And why my face is mangled. This is simple and deserved retribution.

– From whom?

– I don't know.

– From God?

– From whomever settles scores. Someone settles scores. Someone keeps the balance.

– No one keeps the balance, Will.

– Balance is at the foundation of the world.

– If there was balance, Will, we wouldn't be here. If there's balance, there's logic, and if there's logic, you're not on a light-bulb package and we're not here.

– There's balance enough.

– Don't flatter yourself to think this is your doing. Your problem is that you think things have happened for the first time to you, and that you're the fulcrum from which all people and the current world pivot.

– But still there will be retribution. I have had mine. And we all are punished. It happens first within our minds and then in the physical world.

– No. There is no balance, and no retribution, and no rules. The rules and balances you blather about are hopeful creations of a man fearing death.

– There is so much more. I have seen this and you will see it when they have beaten you in your own head. I sat and read from our past and they beat me near death. This is our punishment for our hubris, for our brutality.

– Don't bring me into this. I am no victim of anything.

– If there were no limitations we would be able to make real our visions. But we cannot.

– We can. Champagne Snowball.

– Oh lord no.

– Yes. It was one of few perfect instances where every impulse was followed through, every desire fulfilled. We showed up at the dance and our pants were bursting with confusion but we were clear in our desires. There were all those thighs in tight corduroy and nothing looks better on full thighs than tight corduroy, and all we wanted was to hold those people, and sway with them, and then open our mouths to them. We wanted to feel their heaving and we did. We wanted their mouths upon ours and we wanted to see their lights within and we did.

– And that was fourteen years ago. Junior high, stupid. Everything else has been chaos.

– Well now you're contradicting yourself. With balance there cannot be chaos. With randomness there can be no punishment. You're pleading for punishment in hopes that you'll see your God. Without punishment there is no God. If there is balance then there is your Lord. If balance then afterlife.

– I have thought of leaving you.

– When? Why?

– I have thought in my dimmest moments of leaving you as you left me. As you left me in Oconomowoc. When we were in Marrakesh and being followed through the labyrinth one of my first thoughts was Wow, this would be something. I could leave him out here. I thought of Kingpin - -

– You were thinking of Kingpin when we were almost dead in those alleys?

– I cannot tell you how quickly my head moves.

– Fine.

– I thought of Bill Murray tricking Woody into getting out of the car when the bowling alley guys wanted to kill them, and then Murray drives off, leaving Woody alone and -

– What's your point?

– There were times these past weeks when I wanted it to have been you.

– What? What to be me? The beating? I wanted it to be me, too, asshole! I've told you that a thousand times! I would take that beating and ten more for you, dipshit.

– I wanted Jack to have been you.

– Jack wouldn't have come here with you. Jack was too cautious. Jack -

– No, no. Before this.

– Not the truck.

– I had the blackest thoughts, Hand. Those days after Oconomowoc. I slept and when awake I boiled. I didn't want to be awake. The librarians swarmed. They catalogued and duplicated. They filed everything carefully in deep storage, while keeping copies at hand. I didn't know if I should keep my eyes open or closed. Closed I was at their mercy; they had no competition for my attention. Open I saw my face, my body. I kept them open and watched TV. I didn't answer the phone. I wanted another day to make sure it had happened. How much had happened? I charted the pain but wouldn't check everything. I didn't want all the answers yet. I was full. I'd swallowed a dozen grenades. My spine smoldered. I could stand, but had to hunch over to walk. My jaw wasn't broken and felt better than I'd expected, but was blue on the right side and growing blacker, with a small bruise of green expanding.

– I know all this.

– My eyes were getting darker, the left one at least would go blue. There was a scratch, thick as a pencil, on the bridge of my nose, and I couldn't remember when I'd gotten it. My left temple was cut and looked to be dented. I took a bath and the water quickly went grey then pink. I couldn't raise myself from the tub and had to slither over the side and crawl to the toilet, which I used to hoist myself up. I drank all the beer in my fridge, seven bottles. I lay on the couch and went in and out of a shallow sleep. I needed the voices and laughter from the TV.

– Will.

– I found myself watching some cable-access comedy improv show and loving it. It was ten in the morning then four in the afternoon, and five beers later – warm from the pantry – it was eleven. I watched people walk their dogs outside and wanted them to come to me and share their animal with me. I wanted Mo and Thor there to complain about everything, to play catch with my old records. Seven more cans now, from my neighbor's stash in the basement – and it was almost six in the morning and then I'd know if this was real. My right hand was fractured somewhere; I couldn't make a fist and this more than anything enraged me.