Dave Eggers - The Wild Things

“Well,” Max mumbled, but he hadn’t a clue how to reconcile the two states of mind. “We don’t have to build it. It was just an idea.”

“And why would you build it without me? I’m the one here who knows how to build things.”

“I wasn’t going to build it without you,” Max said. “I was just telling everyone about it. We were all going to build it together. Everyone was.”

“But it doesn’t seem like you want to be together. Otherwise you wouldn’t have gone your different route with Katherine. What’s so great about her route anyway?”

Max had to think. This was getting too complicated too quickly. He felt his brain splitting and hiding. If only he could get Carol into the water and playing Marco Polo, he wouldn’t be upset about these little things.

“Let’s just swim,” Max said. “Please?”

“You guys go ahead,” Carol said, and then went off to a dark corner of the lagoon to stew. Max watched him sit down, throw his chin into his hands, and glower. He was tempted to go and talk to him, but he knew that time would heal this wound, which he assumed was small, superficial even. He hoped that Carol’s fiery mood would be cooled by the sight of merriment all around him.

“C’mon everyone, let’s swim!” Max said.

He ran from the grass, up a small embankment, and did a cannonball into the water.

No one followed.

“Okay everyone, do what I did,” he yelled. “Who can do the best cannonball? Katherine?”

She shook her head. “I don’t really do stuff like that,” she said. “I’m fine here.”

“Douglas?” Max said.

Douglas seemed flattered to have been singled out, and so got ready to follow Max into the water.

“Hold on!” Carol said.

Douglas stopped. Max turned. Carol was on his knees at the edge of the lagoon, his ear to the mossy ground. “What is it?” Max said.

Carol held his hand up in a wait-a-second gesture. He closed his eyes, listening intently to the earth for what seemed like a full minute, and then got up. “It’s probably nothing,” he said, knowing he had everyone’s rapt attention.

“What was it?” Max asked.

Carol didn’t answer.

“You don’t think it’s anything?” Ira asked.

The other beasts were frozen, their eyes huge with concern. Carol stood for a moment, a look of great thoughtfulness on his face.

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” Carol said, in a way clearly meant to cause more concern. “Have fun. I’ll tell you if we need to worry.”

Max wasn’t ready to give up on the lagoon, on Marco Polo and the prospect of finishing the parade the way it needed to be finished.

“Okay, get in now!” Max yelled. He began splashing Douglas and Ira, but now no one wanted to go in the water. They were still watching Carol, who periodically got on his knees to listen to the ground.

“I order you to swim!” Max said.

No one moved.

Finally Max had to get out and do the job himself. He grabbed each potential swimmer by the hand, dragged them to the water, and pushed them in. He was pleasantly surprised by how well they all floated — they were like buoys, resting atop the surface with incredible ease.

Soon he had them all in the water, and was trying to get them to listen to the rules of Marco Polo. “Okay, so you have to close your eyes. Wait, I close my eyes. Then I swim around after you say Marco. No, I say Marco, and then you say Polo. And when you say Polo I try to catch whoever said it. Or I can hear you when you say that, so I go toward the sound—”

The mention of sound only got the creatures thinking again about whatever Carol was hearing in the ground, so they focused their attention on him. And he seemed to take the task very seriously. His mouth was moving silently, as if he were repeating whatever horrible things the ground was telling him.

Max, though, was determined to make the lagoon a success. If he could only get everyone in the water, he knew that they would love Marco Polo, and would forget the chatter and whatever else was on their minds.

“Hey Carol,” Max said, “you think it’d be good if someone went down the waterfall?”

Carol shrugged.

“Ira, go down the waterfall,” Max ordered.

Ira sat for a moment, then, resigned, stood and slowly climbed up the cliff wall. At the top, where the water looked downward and fell, he sat down, and with absolutely no joy or inspiration at all, he allowed himself to be taken over. But he wasn’t positioned correctly. He descended in a morose kind of belly-flop form, and Max knew that he would land with a huge and painful slap.

And so he did. The sound, like a wet shirt thrown against cement, was almost as painful to the ears as it no doubt felt to Ira.

It seemed like minutes before he emerged from the water, shuddering. He floated on his back for some time, moaning, weeping, sniffling and then moaning some more. The beasts all gave Max terrible looks.

The lagoon was not a success, and Max was quickly running out of ideas to create any kind of diversion or happiness in the lives of his subjects.

“Psst.” Max looked up to find Katherine up above him. She was hanging from a low bough of a tree. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

Max was so happy to see her, and was so ready to leave with her, to be free, even momentarily, of the obligations of pleasing everyone. He lifted his arms to allow her to raise him to the trees when—

“Wait!” Carol said, dropping to his knees. “Listen!” He rested his ear against the earth.

Everyone went quiet and rigid.

The look on Carol’s face grew grave.

“What? What is it?” Judith asked.

“It doesn’t sound good,” Carol answered.

The others scampered around Carol, with Douglas and Judith almost trampling Max to get there.

“What is it? Vibrations?” Douglas asked.

“Whispering?” Judith added. “Chatter?”

Carol lowered his head and nodded. “Vibrations, chatter, and whispering, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Oh no,” Ira moaned. “Not again.”

“Does it sound close?” Alexander whined.

Carol gave them an expression that seemed to say, “I don’t know for sure, but it very well might be right underneath us, ready to devour all of us at once.”

“Then what are we still doing here?” Judith wailed.

“Run!” Douglas yelled.

And so they ran.

The beasts took off in seven different directions. Then, one by one, they turned to see where Carol was running, and they changed directions to follow him. Even Katherine dropped from the branches above to run and to follow Carol. Max did too.

“Carol!” he yelled. Max was running faster than he’d ever run and could barely speak, but he needed to know what was happening. “Why are we running?” he managed to say, heaving and holding his side.

Carol didn’t answer him. He didn’t even look his way.

“Carol!” he yelled. Carol was going thirty miles an hour, Max figured. Max couldn’t hope to keep up. Just as Carol disappeared down a ravine, Max spotted Ira following him.

“Ira!” Max yelled. Ira was slower, but still far faster than he looked. Heaving and crying, he almost ran over Max, seeming not to have seen him at all. He didn’t say a word as he sped by.

Not one of the beasts seemed concerned about leaving their king behind. They were barreling into anything, knocking any and all in-the-way foliage flat. They were huffing and moaning, their eyes tearing and their arms grabbing at the air in front of them. They were crazed. All Max could do was follow the wide swath their stampede cut through the trees and underbrush.

Max ran until he was ready to throw up. Leaning against a tree and catching his breath, he finally spotted them beyond the woods, all six beasts, in a many-colored meadow. The grass there was long, soft, and arrayed in a patchwork of clashing colors — ochre and black and violet and fuchsia. The beasts were all gathered in the middle, in a loose circle, heaving. A few had collapsed on the ground. As Max approached, they seemed to take little or no notice of him.