Dave Eggers - The Wild Things

The beasts cheered.

Max took another torch and threw it. He was aiming for another roof but it went too far; it sailed up into a tree, where it caught fire. The whole tree exploded into triumphant flame, as if soaked in kerosene.

The creatures cheered louder.

Max was aghast at the flaming tree but couldn’t do anything to extinguish it, or the enthusiasm of the creatures. They’d taken Max’s cue and now were throwing torches onto everything — roofs, trees, themselves.

One creature, the rooster-looking one named Douglas, was suddenly on fire. He wailed until he jumped into a nearby stream, dousing himself and then giggling wildly.

Whoosh! Another tree went up in flames. And another. Soon Carol was climbing one of the trees, as the flames went higher. He shook the low boughs and sent sparks showering down on them all.

The heat was incredible, and it made Max feel stronger than he’d ever felt. Max danced below the flames, thrilled with the chaos.

“Burn them all!” Carol said. “Burn the trees!”

And soon there were dozens on fire. The whole forest was on fire.

For a moment Max panicked, worried that he had started a fire that would consume the whole island. But after some examination, he could see that the forest was not endless. It ran alongside a stream on one side and abutted a treeless hill on the other. The fire would burn through this small forest and end, he hoped.

In the meantime, the scene was spectacular. The sky was orange. Fire rained down. Birds left their nests and rose from the flames like embers, twisting and leaping into the sky. And Max had started it all.

“Yes!” Carol yelled. “Yes, yes! Knock them all down!” he said, and then ran headlong into one of the remaining nests. It popped open like a jack-in-the-box. Carol emerged grinning, and found Max grinning back at him.

Together they picked up a long log and ran together at another nest, laying waste to it. Max had never destroyed so much so well and so quickly. He followed Carol to one of the last nests and he and Carol both lifted large sticks over their heads, about to crush it with simultaneous blows.

“Hey new guy!” Judith snapped. “Don’t touch that one.”

Max hesitated.

“What?” Carol took exception to this command and shook his head at Max, dismissing the warning. “No, keep going. Knock it down.”

Judith turned to Max with a look of great severity: “Don’t you dare.”

Max stood between the two of them, unsure who to obey, who to defy.

“Don’t lay a finger on it,” she warned.

With a laugh, Carol kicked his immense foot into the structure, reducing it to splinters. “There,” he said. “Not a finger.”

Max had to laugh. That was pretty good. He watched as Carol, his comrade-in-arms, ran over to the other side of the clearing, looking for anything left standing.

Max looked too. But as far as he could see, there was nothing left to destroy. The trees, the few that still stood, were charred and their branches had been stripped or brought down. Max stood in the middle of a desolate grey plain. The nests were no more. He started to walk toward Carol, to congratulate him on the completeness of their wreckage, when Douglas appeared in front of Max, blocking his path.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“What? I’m just helping,” Max said.

“Then why are you burning and smashing our houses?”

“These are your houses?” This was news to Max. He’d assumed they were destroying some enemy encampment. “Why are you smashing them?”

“ I’m not, actually. You’re not very observant for someone swinging that big stick around.”

Max dropped the stick.

“Wait,” Alexander said, standing in the wreckage, alone and teary-eyed, like a child lost at the mall. “Where will we sleep tonight?”

Suddenly there seemed to be a realization spreading throughout the beasts.

“I was trying to tell you all that,” Douglas said.

“Well don’t blame me,” Judith said.

“Why not?” Douglas said, “you were wrecking as much as anyone else. You wrecked everything but your own nest.”

“Sure, but I didn’t enjoy it,” she said. “And anyway, it wasn’t my fault.”

Douglas was shaking his head. “Then whose fault is it?”

Judith looked around for a moment and settled, rather happily, on Max.

“The new guy!” she said. “He’s the one who got everyone riled up. And the fire was his thing, too.”

Douglas paused thoughtfully, then nodded, acknowledging the truth in this. Judith, feeling empowered, pointed more forcefully.

“And you know what I say you do with a problem? Eat it!” she said, and started toward Max.

“Yeah,” Alexander said, “he’s the problem!”

Now Judith and Alexander were making their way to Max. Ira hadn’t been paying attention.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked.

“Oh, we were just gonna eat that,” Judith said, pointing to Max, as if picking out a lobster at a restaurant.

“Okay,” Ira said, shrugging and beginning to drool.

Max was very quickly in the shadow of the three of them, and soon Douglas and the bull had joined the throng, and it was very dark and warm with beast-sweat. Max backed up until he found himself against a mess of sticks and mud where a home used to be. There was no escape. The beasts seemed to notice this, too, and were grinning. Max looked from one to the other, as the four of them grew closer.

“He looks tasty,” Ira said.

“Does he?” Judith said, “I don’t know. I’m thinking gamey.”

“Gamey?” Douglas mused. “Really? I say succulent.”

“Succulent?” Judith said. “I don’t know. I’ll give you tasty, but not succulent .”

Alexander chimed in: “All I know is I’m getting hungrier just looking at him.”

“He’s an ugly bugger, though, isn’t he?” Judith said.

“Close your eyes then. I’ll feed him to you,” Ira said.

“Oh, that’s so romantic!” she said.

“Hold on!” a voice yelled from across the camp. It was Carol. Max felt some relief, and yet the creatures were still closing in on Max. It was too late to stop them. Max could feel their hot wet breath on his face, he could see their enormous teeth, each incisor as big as his foot. They could kill him long before Carol would have time to intervene.

Again the big one sent his voice from afar. “Wait!”

Ira licked his lips. The bull snorted, his hands reaching.

Max knew Carol couldn’t save him in time. He had to save himself — somehow. He arched his back and with a voice far louder and more commanding than he ever expected, he roared, “Be still!”

The beasts stopped. They stopped moving, stopped talking, stopping raising their arms to claw Max to death, stopped salivating profusely. Max couldn’t believe it. He didn’t know what to do next.

“Why?” said Judith. “Why should we stop?”

This was a tricky question, Max knew. If he were about to bite into, say, a strawberry, and it told him to stop, he too would want a good explanation.

“Because … Uh … Because …” he mumbled. The beasts stared, waiting, blowing roughly through their nostrils. Max knew he had to come up with something immediately, and to his surprise, he did. “Because,” he said, “I heard about this one time that they weren’t still and they …”

“Who?” said Judith. “Who wasn’t still?”

Now Carol arrived, standing behind the others. He had been impressed with Max before, but now he seemed in awe of this small creature’s presence and power.

“Um … The hammers,” Max explained, making it up as he went along, “they were huge ones and they didn’t know how to be still. They were crazy . They were always shaking and running around and they never stopped to see what was right in front of them. So this one time the hammers were storming down the mountainside and they couldn’t even see that someone was coming up to help them. And you know what happened?”