Dave Eggers - The Wild Things

Maybe, he thought, he should go home. He wasn’t sure that sailing home was even possible, because the continent he’d come from seemed to have disappeared altogether a few hours after he’d left its shore, but he certainly could try. And if he didn’t make it there, there were surely other islands, with other animals or people he could lord over.

But even if he could make it home, he was sure his family had forgotten him. He’d been gone for days, and by now they would assume he was dead and gone, and they would likely be happy for it. Maybe the house had fallen in on itself from all the damage he’d done to it. Maybe his mother and sister had been crushed under the weight of the beams he’d weakened with all that water. No, no, he convinced himself. They were alive, but happy to be rid of an animal like him.

He thought again of going where he’d meant to go in the first place, to his dad’s apartment in the city. He could still do it. If he sailed south-southwest, he would have to get there eventually. And once he got there, he could live there, and he knew how happy his dad would be to have him.

The first problem would be the bed. His dad only had the one bed, and it wasn’t so big, so Max usually slept on the fold-out in the den, and the mattress was thin and the joints of the couch-bed creaked. The room was cold and the sounds of the street were loud and unpredictable. All night there were bursts from the never-sleeping city: sirens and arguments, cackling laughter, bottles shattering in Dumpsters, the hissing of trucks. And when his dad had company over, there were other sounds, too.

Her name was Pamela.

She was pretty in a loud way, with big green eyes and a wide glossy mouth. She worked at a restaurant or owned it or something and they had eaten there, the first time Max had ever sat at a table at a place like that, with a candle in the middle and the whole place amber-colored and dim. It was so boring he wanted to scream.

Pamela had ordered food for all of them, a succession of small dishes, greasy and mud-colored, and Max had ended up eating little but bread. Max’s dad had given him imploring looks, but Max knew he wouldn’t yell at him for not eating, not in front of Pamela.

Afterward she took them down to a basement full of bottles and finally Max was intrigued. He wanted to own that place. Not for the bottles, but for all the wooden shelves, the cubbies, the arched doorways and dark corners. It was like a castle, a dungeon, the labyrinth underneath an ancient kingdom. But for Pamela it was just a place to keep wine. She pulled two dark bottles from the wall and they went up the stairs.

After dinner the three of them took a taxi back to his dad’s building. At the front door, she had said goodbye to Max and Max’s dad, but then there had been some whispering, a quick giggle, and she’d walked off, around the corner, a bottle in each hand.

Max was put to bed, but couldn’t sleep. He lay awake, thinking about the labyrinth under the restaurant, how safe he felt there within its stone walls, its cool dark solidity, until he heard the door squeal open and the drop of two shoes. The sound of bottles clinking together, followed by a volley of shushes. Then footsteps shrinking down the hallway and the closing of his father’s door.

Max couldn’t go to his father’s apartment. He couldn’t sail there, he couldn’t sail home, and the probability of finding and becoming king of another island seemed remote. He had to try to make this one work. How hard could it be to tame this place and please everyone at all times?

Max awoke in the night, his shoulders shaking. He had fallen asleep before feeding the fire properly, and now it was gone. The snow had stopped and the night was black. He couldn’t see a thing in any direction, just vague patches of grey where snow had gathered. He put a handful in his mouth to quench his thirst but he knew he was in trouble. With the temperature dropping and no way to make or find fire, he could easily freeze this night. If he walked in any direction he would be eaten or stung or fall down some interminable hole. He couldn’t go anywhere.

And finally he cried. When the tears came, they felt so good. His chest shook, and the hot tears warmed his face, and he laughed at how good it all felt. They kept coming, so many tears, one for every frustration and fear he’d known since he left home. Oh man, he thought, this feels so good. He loved the hot tears, the release of it all. He loved that he could do it here, alone, in the blackness, unseen by anyone. He could cry as much as he wanted and no one would ever know.

He cried for what felt like hours but the crying and shaking and slurping up great amounts of mucus served to somehow keep him warm as the early hours grew colder, and the tears and the cold and everything he’d been thinking about combined to form in his mind something like an idea. And the idea told him to get a stick, and his hand began to move the stick around the dirt and ash, and before long he had drawn up a notion that had a chance to do everything that needed to be done for him and every other beast of the island: it would fill the void, it would eliminate the chatter, it would connect everything and everyone that had been unconnected, and it would, best of all, ensure that never again would he sleep in the snow, without a fire, alone on an island in the middle of the sea.

Much of the snow that fell the night before had now melted. Max’s vision was blurry as he woke up amid the pre-dawn light. His wolf suit was filthy. But he was so excited he had spent most of the night awake, waiting for the first blue light so he could find Carol and announce to him and the rest of the beasts that he knew how to change everything, once and for all.

When it was light enough for him to navigate his way to Carol’s perch on the high dunes, Max picked his crown from the ashes of the fire and put it on. It was still hot, and he flinched from the heat, but he steeled himself and headed to the sea.

When the forest gave way to the beach, Max could see that all the beasts were there, on the snow-dusted sand, and that they had slept there. It was probably the coldest place on the island that anyone might have chosen to spend the night.

Max found Carol sitting alone, on his high dune, facing the horizon. Max ran toward him.

“Carol!”

This woke up Judith and Ira, each of them wearing a thin blanket of snow. They watched Max pass by.

“Carol!” Max yelled.

Carol was still facing away, staring intensely at the sea. And just like the previous morning, just as the wet orange sun rose from the horizon, he heaved a great sigh of relief and turned around.

“Oh hey. Hi Max,” he said.

“Carol, I have an idea. I know what we’re going to do.”

“Good, good, Max. What’s the plan?”

Carol gathered everyone around and they found a good flat spot on the sand for Max to draw his plans. With a stick he recreated the sketch he’d worked on throughout the night. When he was done, it looked just like he’d envisioned and, though a bit crude, it was grand enough to convince anyone, he thought.

“What is that?” Judith asked. Ira was laying below her, chewing on her calf and drooling profusely.

“It’s a fort,” Max said.

“What’s a fort?” she asked. “And why is a fort better than, say, me eating your head?”

“It’s way better than that,” Max said. “It’ll be the ultimate fort of all time. It’ll be part castle, part mountain, and part ship …” He glanced at Carol and corrected himself. “Except it won’t sail, because it’s stationary. It’s definitely stationary.

“Yeah,” Max went on, “it’s gonna be as tall as twelve of you and six of me. It’ll be big enough to fit everyone inside. We’ll be able to sleep in a big pile like we did the first night.”