Dave Eggers - The Wild Things

All Max had to do, then, was to make sure that he didn’t upset Carol by spending time alone with Katherine, or upset Katherine by being alone with Carol, and he had to make sure Judith was being entertained and that Ira was being kept from the void. He wasn’t sure what the Bull wanted, but he knew for his own safety he needed to steer clear of Alexander, who’d had a very personal problem with Max from the start. Was that everything he needed to think about?

Oh, food. There was food to think about. Could it be that he hadn’t eaten since he’d left home? He really hadn’t. Nothing the beasts had eaten so far was edible for Max, and on his own he had no idea where to get food, or how to recognize it. And he couldn’t go into the woods looking for it, because it was getting dark quickly, and he’d seen snakes in the trees, and spiders the size of his fist, and knew there were countless other dangers unseen.

He felt reasonably safe in the middle of the meadow, though, and he realized that to remain safe all he needed to do was stay awake until the dawn. Easy. And while waiting for the sun, he only needed to solve the problem of the sounds in the ground that Carol heard whenever he was worried about something else.

Not expecting to hear anything, Max put his ear to the grass. Indeed, he heard nothing. There was no sound at all. But Carol knew this island far better than he did, and Carol’s ears might be better than his — and anyway, whether Max heard the sound or not, he needed to find it and kill it, or at least get the beasts to stop thinking about it.

He had faced similar challenges at home, with his mom, a dozen times. She would come home drained, collapsing on the couch or sometimes even the floor, and Max would find a way to entertain her or soothe her or somehow bring her to a different, happier, place. Sometimes he brought her a piece or two of his Halloween candy. Sometimes he would put the candy in the music box on the mantel. He’d get it down and turn the crank and present it to her, so when she opened the top the music started and the candy was there, always something she liked, like Bit o’ Honey. Sometimes he drew her something — a dragon getting its head cut off by a knight or a whale with arms and a mustache. There were a bunch of ways, he was sure, to lead someone out of a dark corridor of the mind.

Just then a sound came from the encircling woods. It was a high-pitched sound, something like a hyena’s laugh crossed with a woodpecker’s knocking. It was terrifying and arrhythmic, and growing louder. At any moment Max expected some animal to burst from the woods and bee-line toward him.

He knew he wouldn’t sleep this night. He would wait until first light and then go looking for Carol or Katherine, or anyone, really. And then he would have to set down some rules about leaving him, the king, alone in the middle of a meadow all night. He had to do so without implying that he was afraid of the dark, which he wasn’t, but that instead it was for their own good. They needed to be together, all of them, for together they were safer and happier. Or he hoped they would be.

He sat up in the meadow, scanning the forest for movement. Just then another sound came from the opposite woods. This one was a rough, zig-zagging call, trilling upward before ending with a loud sigh, like a truck at rest. It was just as threatening and eerie as the other sound, and soon the first sound and the second were trading calls, as if in a heated conversation full of threats and recriminations. Max had to spin back and forth, following the sounds, looking for anything moving. The fighting, if that’s what it was, seemed to be happening far away and didn’t involve him, but then again, how could he be sure? He might be the cause of it and very well might be its victim. And so he had to stay alert.

It was exhausting, but he knew the argument going on was useful in that it would certainly keep him awake — he couldn’t possibly think of resting while it was all going on. And that’s how he got the idea that he got. He smiled to himself, laughing even, knowing he’d come up with the best solution possible to the problem of the underground whispering plaguing the consciences of the beasts. He couldn’t wait till morning to announce the plan and put it into action. It was so good he found himself cackling all night, in sudden and helpless bursts. It was the best plan, the only plan.

Max woke up before dawn, cold and wet with dew. He had somehow fallen asleep, and now he was hungry and thirsty and, he realized with a shudder, he hadn’t moved his bowels since he’d left home. His fur smelled terrible and now had a green tint to it — the lagoon water had been full of algae and had gifted Max its thick stench.

And there was no sign of anyone.

But he knew, at least, that he would make everyone happy this day. He had a plan and only had to find the beasts to enact it.

In the pre-dawn light Max could see the tracks they’d made, and could clearly make out Carol’s huge footprints, leading out of the meadow and toward the cliff. He followed them across the meadow, through a narrow stand of trees, and into a clearing covered with a strange moss, black and yellow, alternating like a checkerboard. Beyond it, the ocean was a frenzy of white. Max scanned the electric blue horizon until he saw what seemed to be a figure sitting on the edge of the cliff, the same cliff where they had howled together on Max’s first night.

He ran toward the figure, and when he got close he knew it was Carol, sitting forward, seeming tense.

“Carol!” Max yelled as he approached.

Without turning around, Carol raised his hand, demanding silence. Max stopped about twenty feet away, not knowing what to do next.

Carol remained staring out at the ocean, as if looking for a sign in the ripening sky. As it grew lighter, a crescent-shaped band of orange appeared above the line of the sea. Carol leaned forward, getting dangerously close to the very edge of the cliff.

And then, finally, when the liquid yellow of the sun at last broke through, Carol’s body relaxed, and then shook in waves, as if he were laughing or crying. Max couldn’t tell. But the spell, whatever it had been, was broken.

Carol turned around.

“Hey Max! You were wrong about the sun dying. Look, it’s right here.”

Max didn’t know how to explain.

“Don’t scare me like that again, okay buddy?” Carol said. He spoke cheerfully, as if the distant, rigid Carol of moments before had been illusory, that here was the real Carol, the one who loved Max’s brain and who knew how things were supposed to feel, who wanted only the right things to happen.

“How are you, King Max?” Carol asked, putting his hand on Max’s shoulder. “What happened to your fur? It’s kind of green.”

“Algae maybe? I don’t know,” Max said distractedly. He couldn’t worry about his fur at that moment. He wanted to know where all the others were.

“Well, Douglas is over there,” Carol said, pointing to a lump in the near distance. Max had walked right past him, thinking his body was an outcropping. “But I don’t know where anyone else is. Why do you want to know?”

“I have a plan,” Max said.

Everyone was gathered around Max. Carol had woken up Douglas and Douglas had raised back his head and had made a bizarre and screeching sound of summoning. The beasts had arrived within minutes from all corners of the island. Everyone, that is, but Katherine. Max decided to proceed without her.

“Okay,” he said, “I have the perfect plan. What does everyone here want?” he asked, though the question, for him, was rhetorical.

“We don’t have homes,” Douglas said. “We’ve been sleeping outside because you wrecked them.”