Plot Summary
Will has surprisingly come into a large amount of money, around $80,000. His photograph screwing in a lightbulb has been made a silhouette and is being used as a picture for the company's lightbulb boxes. He is uncomfortable having this money, as he feels he did nothing to earn it, and is left with a sense of guilt and purposelessness. Shortly after receiving the sum, Will and Hand's mutual childhood friend, Jack, was involved in a car accident. The pair had delusional ambitions to use the money to save his life, but to no avail. After Jack's death, Will and Hand are asked to help go through Jack's possessions in a storage facility, where Hand decides to wander around and leaves Will.
During Hand's absence, Will is brutally beaten by three men. Will and Hand agree that it is best not to go to the hospital, in case the attackers attempt to track them. As a result of his confusion due to a conglomerate of issues such as the large sum of money, Jack's death, and the beating, and other personal issues, Will and Hand plan to travel around the world visiting obscure countries and giving away all the money, bit by bit, to people who they arbitrarily decide are most deserving. According to Hand, they gave to people for the benefit of both parties, as a sacrament with the purpose of restoring a faith in humanity.
The two come up with many creative ways of distributing the unwanted money. One plan involves taping money to a donkey in a graph paper pouch that reads "HERE I AM ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE", and another creating a treasure map for Estonian children. While on the journey the two friends do many wild and spontaneous things including practicing rolling over cars and jumping from tree to tree while twenty feet in the air. However without a solid set of criteria, or a definitive direction in their plan, this proves surprisingly difficult, and they experience much awkward confusion and moral uncertainty. They often fear being robbed and killed. Will becomes unstable and begins to lose his composure. The plot is both a log of the journey, but more so a look into the mind of the narrator, Will.
A pseudo-sequel entitled '"The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water" follows Hand and the minor character Pilar in Central America. This short story is featured in the collection How We Are Hungry: Stories.
Read more about this topic: You Shall Know Our Velocity
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