You Shall Know Our Velocity (43 page)

—

—Jack I never told you this but for so long I’ve wanted something like that, I wanted to have some kind of boundary, and this part you will hate but before you were gone and even after, I daydreamed about car crashes. I wanted so many times while driving to flip, to skid and flip and fall from the car and have something happen. I wanted to land on my head and lose half of it, or land on
my legs and lose one or both—I wanted something to happen so my choices would be fewer, so my map would have a route straight through, in red. I wanted limitations, boundaries, to ease the burden, because the agony, Jack, when we were up there in the dark, was in the silence! All I ever wanted was to know what to do. In these last months I’ve had no clue, I’ve been paralyzed by the quiet, and for a moment something spoke to me, and we came here, or came to Africa, and intermittently there were answers, intermittently there was a chorus and they sang to us and pointing, and were watching and approving but just as often there was silence, and we stood blinking under the sun, or under the black sky, and we had to think of what to do next.

—

—Jesus, Jack, there would have to be a fucking reason that woman in London, that beautiful information woman, sent us here, right? When we were there it seemed random and we thought ha ha, we’re in control, yes ha ha, we have a week and here we are why not—but then when we were on the plane, and landing in Tallinn, I had that feeling you always get when you’ve arrived somewhere unconscionable: you wonder what went wrong in the world to allow you to be there. You want to go back. You want to have never left home. You’ve made a mistake. Everyone’s made a mistake. It’s a nightmare. You want to have never left. You want to throw yourself back into your bed and then later spend the money on CDs. But you also hope that quickly you’ll be told or reminded why you’re there in the first place. At an airport I guess it would be if your relatives were waiting or something, your mother, your cousins, an aunt or uncle, nieces—you would see them, maybe your chubby little cousins, and they’d show you their homework or something and you’d know why you’d come. But I never had that kind of thing, you know that, and when we landed in Estonia, or any of those places, there was nothing, of course, no one waiting,
and no one wanting us there, no one needing us. There wasn’t one thread connecting us to anyone and we had to start threading, I guess, or else it would be just us, without any trail or web and if it was just us, ghosts, irrelevant and unbound, not people but only eyes, then there was something wrong. Something would feel wrong. I don’t want it be just my eyes, do I, Jack?

—

—But I mean, $32,000? What kind of shit is that? What could that possibly mean? Jack at different times of my life I’ve wanted to be eyes only but I don’t want to be eyes only. I want that knife at my throat, Jack, or holding the purses of the Moroccan girls so everyone can dance. And the $32,000—I know you would think I was a fucking jackass, I know you would stare at me for a full minute, cleaning your teeth with your tongue in a way that threw my stupidity back at me but I do think it’s worked, is starting to work. Intermittently it works.

—

—Jack at the top of the mountain we heard nothing, and there was no order. There wasn’t even a line in the middle of the road. There were no homes, no animals even. But within the streets below, chasing and being chased, following and being followed, there was such order! Brilliant order! Not a doubt about any one moment—all was scripted, all was action. Reason! Purpose! A love born of caring that we were there! Even if their intent was to rob or maim or kill, they cared enough to give chase! There was reason to the butchers pushing their bloody carts under the windows of the homes within which young boys heard the knives, still sharp after quartering so many calves, and they knew their future. There was reason! And I wanted to be that boy in that room. I wanted to be in that room, safe, enclosed, thinking of a girl in a burqa walking on the outer streets of Marrakesh with her mother, smiling at strangers in a car. Smiling at strangers in a car from behind her
burqa good God can you imagine! That was it, Jack, holy fuck! I want to be in that room, Jack, thinking of one day knowing a Charlotte—Fuck, Jack, when we were young did you ever think we could know a Charlotte, a Charlotte with the hair to there and flesh abundant everywhere, a Charlotte who could kill us with one low meaningful laugh? In that room over the streets full of knives there would be life because you were never far from the touch of a blade or the hot breath of your mother, her breath on your back, half-asleep behind you as you watched the painting of the sailboat on sawhorses and dreamed of a home on Saturn—See, there was order there in those narrow streets! There was a task at hand! There were people to touch and fight! People to touch and fight! Fuck, even fighting is better than that quiet up there—I want only to speed more through that narrow path, feeling squeezed, chasing and chased—every turn was our only option and that felt so good!—but as we climbed up the mountains there was nothing like that—we couldn’t even see where we were, how high, how far it would be to fall.

And so we came back down. And so soon we were back in the warmth of that labyrinth, looking for anything—for a cop to stop us, to ask us about Chicago, for people giving Hand notes of the gentlest affection after we taught them the shopping cart … Shit, Jack, I don’t know what that was, all that dancing—what we’re allowed to do when we’re looking for things we’re required to do. What are we allowed to do when we’re looking for things we’re required to do?

—

—Jack I’m sorry. But we’re not going up there again, to that mountain, or maybe any mountain, again.

“Help me up here.” Hand clasped his fingers together, making a stirrup, and hoisted my foot. I caught the lowest branch of a sturdy
fir tree and pulled myself up. I stood on the branch, this one the thickness of my leg and extended perpendicularly from the trunk. I was about nine feet up.

“Just jump from there,” Hand said, looking up at me. “I’ll catch you here. It’ll be great.”

“I’m serious. I’m going up.”

“Don’t.”

“You know you’ve always wanted to do this.”

“So? I’m me, you’re you. You’re a wreck.”

I took the next few branches quickly. They were spaced conveniently, and in a minute I was about eighteen feet above ground. It was brighter here, closer to the moon, but my visibility was still low. I wasn’t really sure where I’d jump to. I had another vision, this one involving Hand jumping at the same time, to my tree. I shared the idea with him.

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

In a few minutes Hand was at eye level with me, about twelve feet away. I could make out his form, though not the details of his face. We were picking out branches on the opposite trees—him to mine, mine to his—to lunge toward and grab. The idea was to leap and, like a gymnast would an uneven bar, grab a branch, one below our present level, and once secure, purposely and carefully fall the last twelve or so feet.

“You got a branch?” I asked.

“I think so. The one right below you.”

I hoped it was a strong branch. “Wait,” I said, trying to inspect the limb below me. It was about twelve inches around. It looked strong. “Looks good,” I said. “Is mine good?”

He did the same. “It looks strong,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m freezing. You ready?”

“No. Wait a sec,” he said, blowing into his hands. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Shit,” he said.

“I know.”

“This is gonna hurt if we fall,” he said.

“There’s nothing sharp down there. All we can do is break bones.”

“Don’t land on your head, that’ll be key.”

“I know.”

“You’ll drag me out of here if I break something?” Hand asked.

“C’mon.”

“Really.”

“Sure.”

“Good. Okay. Shit.”

“Okay—”

“Man, this is like the helium,” Hand said.

“What?”

“The helium. Didn’t I tell you about that?”

“No. Let’s go. Stop stalling.”

“About Raymond and the helium and stuff?”

“No.” He was maddening like this.

“We were in Senegal. I started telling you about it at one point. The day after.”

“Can it wait? We should do this before our hands are too cold to grip.”

“That’s the point of the story.”

“I know.”

“No. I mean—Okay, forget it.”

“On ten,” I said, “we jump.”

“We’ve wanted to do this since we were eight. You remember that?”

“That was from my roof to the tree, not tree to tree,” I said. “Now shut up. Ten.”

—Hand you need to do this.

“Nine.”

—You fucking bastard this is for me.

“Eight,” I said, my head humming. Could we get far enough across? We hadn’t talked seriously about falling yet, the possibility of falling.

“Seven,” I said.

—Hand: last chance.

“Six,” he said.

Maybe it wasn’t all that far. We felt safe.

“Five,” I said.

—Hand if you jump I’ll know I can leave.

“Four,” he said.

It was an easy jump. It wasn’t an easy jump. We were eighteen feet up and were jumping fourteen feet laterally. If we didn’t hit or catch a branch to break our fall, we would break a leg or worse, for sure.
Can’t land on your head
. I know, I know.

“Three,” I said.

“Two,” he said.

“One,” I said. “Go.”

“Now?”

“Go, Hand!”

He leapt toward me and I leapt toward him. We passed in the air. The air was black and all I saw were his eyes, his hands like huge white claws and then my own branch bisecting my vision, thrumming toward me. It hit my forearms and I fell until my hands caught it—I’d caught it!—and I stopped. My legs swung in front of me, and then back behind me, the weight straining my shoulders—but holy shit, I’d done it. I whooped. Hand whooped. I turned around and saw Hand’s back to me, he too hanging by his arms, looking back at me, over his shoulder.

“Holy shit,” he said.

“I know.”

After a few seconds, we fell at the same time, the last twelve feet, collapsed on the loud dry forest floor.

“Oh man,” Hand said.

“I know.”

“I feel like I could catch anything.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, any building. I could jump between any buildings. I always wanted to do that, too. How did we get to twenty-seven without ever trying that? Jumping between buildings? Everyone wants to do that.”

It was not as cold on the floor, so low. My feet were bent below me, together and to the side, in a broken-looking way, but they were fine, and we were good.

Back in the car we warmed and picked sticks and leaves off our sweatshirts, out of our hair, while recounting the jump fifteen, twenty times, the best moments, the true feeling of flying while headed from one branch to the other, the incredible pull on our shoulders once we’d caught the branch, like a shark yanking our legs down from below—

“How much left? To Riga,” I asked.

“About an hour.”

“So the helium.”

“Sure I never told you this?”

“Yes. Let’s drive.”

Hand pulled the car into drive and we left the forest.

“The Chilean helium thing, Raymond’s story?”

“You didn’t tell me,” I said. “What story?”

“I thought I told you this. That last night after you fell asleep I went back to his room for the Scotch. We had a drink and he went into this long thing about his ancestors. We talked forever. I never told you any of this?”

“Shit.”

“What?”

“Look.”

Ahead of us, coming at us from the opposite direction, a police car fulminating. Soon it was stopped and the driver, arm out his window, was flagging us down. We stopped. The man in the passenger seat was out of the car and, in a ski suit, appeared at our window. He said something in Latvian. I lifted my hands and did a confused clown face. He barked through the window again and, guessing at his question, Hand passed me the rental car papers, which I handed through the window, with my license. He opened my door and beckoned me to follow. Hand opened his door and we were all standing. The officer, red-faced and with a blond crew cut, motioned Hand to get back inside. He did. I followed the officer to his car, where a larger officer, also in a ski suit, sat inside.

“Too fast,” the first one said.

I told him I was sorry. I was, he said, going 123 in a 90 kph zone. I almost smiled.

“Oh,” I said. We’d been going 135 a few minutes earlier.

“Too fast!” he yelled. He’d become suddenly angrier.

We hadn’t really figured out the relationship between kilometers and miles per hour. Now I guessed I’d been speeding.

The cop was really angry.

“You pay fine,” he said.

“Okay.”

He didn’t say how much.

“How much?” I asked.

He took out a calculator, just like the Moroccan two days before, and pressed 4-0-0.

“You take Estonian money?” I asked.

He sighed extravagantly. He didn’t take Estonian money. He said something to his partner. They seemed flummoxed, then pissed off. They argued.

“That’s all I have,” I said. I showed him my wallet, full of Estonian money, with some marks and pounds mixed in. He returned to the calculator and tapped it. He and his cohort spoke quickly to each other.
(Ask for more!
How much?
Did you see that wad he had?
Grab it!)

He showed me the calculator. 2-0-0. I gave him 200 kroon and he waved me away.

Back in the car, Hand was playing with the stereo.

“I have a question,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Is there any country where we haven’t been stopped?”

“No.”

“Not one.”

“Wait. Estonia.”

“We’ve been pulled over four times in five days.”

This was true.

There is a corner of the sea that is deep but not so deep that it’s black. It’s the blue of a blueberry, violet in its heart, though this blue allows light through its million unseeable pores. The hue is evenly painted but electric, a klieg light pushing through a gel of cyan. But invading this blue are clouds of inky purple, billowing clouds curling in small waves, and they grow from below, splitting the sea between light above and dark growing from below.