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– That's all you know of him.
– That's all.
– This is about him. All this. Your rage.
– It's not, fucker! Not everything is about something else. This is about retribution! This is about balance!
– For Jack.
– Yes for Jack.
– You want a head for Jack.
– Yes. For Jack I wanted a head. I wanted the trucker's head. I knew the trucker's face, his long snaking hair. My red-eyed librarians brought me his picture on the hour and on him I imagined revenge in a thousand ways. But not necessarily death. I would remove things – one leg, three fingers, an ear – I would do it slowly while reciting laws of traffic and manslaughter but I know how long I had him with me, how long it took for his face to fade and my fists to uncurl. I know how long it takes! And now I am here again. I have years of this ahead of me and I ca
– You're confusing these fuckers with -
– I'm confusing nothing.
– Will, I understand your rage but this is all about Jack. But it'll be years before we get any kind of grip on this and -
– Fuck your head. You don't need your head. Remove your head from its casing and throw it to the world.
– I want that.
– Throw your head to the world!
– I want that.
– Then throw! Throw your head to the world!
– Lord I tremble before you my lord – look what they have done to me, the thoughts that ride with me down the canals toward sleep, that walk with me as I walk each day – if I could I would raise their bodies to you, my Lord, for your wrath or mercy. Please pick wrath!
– Who are you talking to?
– Never before have I wanted such harm rent upon another, but here I am and this is what I want. Oh grant me this! I know forever they will be in my house, the rooms of my mind, I know this and have accepted this but while I know they will be there I want them dead there. I ca
I opened my eyes. I could hear Hand's even breathing. Outside humidity and crickets, the shikka shikka of sprinklers shooting through hedges and ferns.
FRIDAY
I woke up angry at Hand, though he couldn't know why.
"I can't do another night like that," I said.
"What? The disco? Why?"
"I don't know what to do."
"What are you talking about?"
"Let's go."
"We're going. Look at us. We're going."
He was shoving his stuff in his backpack. He zipped it and stood ready.
"We have to go," I said.
Hand paused. He looked at me like a father would, when a father knows his son needs a mother.
"We'll keep moving," he said as we crossed the white gravel parking lot. "I'll make sure. Let's go."
"I can't go to bed tonight," I said.
We threw our bags in the backseat.
"Fine. We'll stay awake, find something to do."
"Good."
"We won't sleep," he said. "That's the plan. We shouldn't be sleeping anyway."
We had to get out of Dakar by noon. It was our second day. We'd left Chicago thirty-six hours ago. The road was clear for us and Hand swung the radio volume right and we were delirious. The air soothed me and we bought oranges from a boy on the roadside, and pastries in Mbuu, afraid we'd see Denis's brother. We didn't. We ate and my hands were sticky from all the juice.
"I have a surprise," Hand said.
We were on the coast and he turned off at one of the beaches loaded with garbage. We parked by the road, among a group of young men, all wearing light shirts and jeans.
"What is this?" I asked.
"Hold on," Hand said, jumping from the car.
He spoke to the group for a second, and one man directed him down the beach to an older man, painting a large white sign protruding from the beach. They discussed something, and Hand walked back to the car.
"We're going for a ride," he said. "Quick, but it'll be nice."
Hand had contracted this man, Thione, to take us up and down the coast for half an hour. We had to see things from this side, he said, and there was no speed, he said, like water speed.
We set off from the beach, helping with two other men to push the boat off a narrow sandbar near the shore. I sat at the front, Hand in the middle. A teenager jumped on just before we took off. He was the navigator.
We were in a small white motorboat-watertaxi steered by an older man and guided by a teenager who stood on the bow as the boat bounced, holding a rope tied to the point, standing as if riding a white and featherheaded circus horse. At our feet, the water sloshing to and fro. I leaned over the boat's edge, watched the same point as the froth blurred by, white and blue – and I wanted to have my arm in the water. To have it lazily ru
The sea was not smooth, the ride was thunderous, as if the boat had been thrown and was skipping along the surface. Tick-tick-tick-whap! When the boat jumped and its flat bottom struck the hard water, my spine compressed, briefly, between expectations of flight and the boat's great desire to come down and pound the surface, to slap it like you slap a shoe on a summit table – WHACK! -- and it rose and struck again, and the water blurred by and I saw it all, the white beaches, the small cottages along the shore, the miles of rocky beach, and then I knew that all I wanted evermore was whap! whap! The boat was skipping and then there would be a larger wave, or we would hit a regular wave a certain way, and the pause between when we became airborne
and WHACK! when we landed we landed like a ca