Read Online What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng by Dave Eggers - Free Book Online

his shoulders and stomach and brings tears to the corners of his eyes. Deng Arou can find humor in a flood, people say, and they mean this with great affection. His calm and balanced perspective is one of the reasons, people assume, he is so successful. Not for nothing is he the owner of five hundred head of cattle and three shops.
    He reaches to his highest shelf and hands me a small plastic jerry can with a cap atop it. —That should hold everything you need, son. Amath will be very pleased, I bet. Now remember—
    I hear nothing else. I am running again through the market, past the goats penned at the edge of the market road, past the old women and their chickens, and onward to the river. I fly by the boys playing soccer, past my Aunt Akol’s compound—I can’t even look her way to see if she is outside—and sprint down the deeply pitted path, the path of hard dirt walled in with the highest grasses.
    I make it to the river quicker than I ever have before, and once on the low bluff, I leap past the boys fishing and the women doing their wash, and into the deep middle of the narrow stream.
    The women and the boys all look at me like I’ve lost my mind. Have I? Soaked, I smile back at them and immerse my jerry can in the milky brown water. I fill the container, but am not satisfied with the amount of sediment inside. I have to filter it, but I need two containers for that task.
    —Can I borrow your bowl please? I ask one of the washing women. I am amazed at my own courage. I had never spoken to this woman before, who soon I recognize as the wife of the main teacher in the upper school, a man named Dut Majok I know only by reputation. I have heard the wife of Dut Majok was, like him, educated and very quick with her tongue; she could be cruel. She smiles at me, removes the shirts she is washing, and hands the bowl to me. She seems, more than anything else, curious to see what I—this tiny boy, far smaller than you, TV Boy—want with the bowl, my eyes desperate and my jerry can full of the brown river water.
    I know my task and go about it deliberately. I pour the jerry can’s contents through my shirt and into the bowl, then, carefully, pour the water back into the jerry can. Having done this once successfully, I can’t decide how clean to make the water; what’s more crucial, I wonder: to bring the water quickly, or to deliver it in as pure a form as possible? In the end, I filter it three times, screw the cap back onto the jerry can, and return the bowl to the woman, my gratitude whispered through heavy breaths as I climb the bank.
    At the top of the riverbank, in the rough grass, I set off again. I am tired, I realize, and now I run around the path’s many holes, rather than leaping over them. My breathing becomes loud and labored and I curse my loud breathing. I do not want to bring the water to Amath while running slowly or walking or out of breath. I need to be running with as much speed and agility as I had when I set off. I forbid my breath to pass through my mouth, sending it through my nostrils instead, and pick up my pace as I get closer to the center of town.
    This time my aunt sees me as I pass her home.
    —Is that Achak? she sings.
    —Yes, yes! I say, but then find I don’t have enough breath to explain why I’m racing by, unable to stop. Perhaps she, like my father, will guess. I had been momentarily ashamed when my father assumed that my task involved Amath, but quickly I didn’t care who knew, because Amath was so uncommon and appreciated by all that I was proud to call her friend and to be caught on any errand for her, this beautiful madam who refers to me as young man and gentleman and with her closed-mouthed smile and happy walk is the best girl in Marial Bai.
    I pass the school and once in the clear, I can see Amath, still sitting in the spot where I left her. Ah! She is watching me, too! Her smile is visible this far away and she doesn’t stop smiling as I fly closer and closer, my bare