The Wild Things

CHAPTER XVII

Sort of. That is, he saw what he saw but couldn’t believe any of it. He saw animals. Animals? Creatures of some kind. Huge and fast. He thought they might be an oversized kind of human covered in fur but they were bigger than that, hairier than that. They were ten or twelve feet tall, four hundred pounds each or more. Max knew his animal kingdom, but he had no name for these beasts. From behind they resembled bears, but they were larger than bears, their heads far bigger, and they were quicker than bears or anything so large. Their movements were nimble, deft — they had the quickness of deer or small monkeys. And they all looked different, as humans do — one had a long broken horn on its nose; another had a wide flat face, stringy hair, and pleading eyes; another seemed like a cross between a boy and a goat. And another—

It had been a giant rooster. This was the weirdest one by far. Max slapped himself, making sure he was awake. He was awake, and there was a giant rooster before him, no more than twenty yards away, in the full glow of the raging fire. It was at once comical — it looked like a giant man in a rooster suit, standing upright — and powerful and menacing.

The rooster creature seemed frustrated, staring at another creature, this one of similar height and heft, but with a different shape. This one had a mop of reddish hair and a leonine face, with a large rhino-like horn extending from its nose. It looked female, if that was possible for such an ugly thing. She was in the middle of destroying something, beating a large nest with a log. In her enthusiasm and abandon, she looked like a kid destroying a sand castle.

And this seemed to be greatly upsetting the rooster.

Soon Max could see a pattern to what the beasts were doing. It looked like they’d come upon some kind of settlement, full of great round nests — each made of huge sticks and logs and every one of them bigger than a car — and they had decided to destroy them. They were systematically wrecking them all. They ripped the nests open, they jumped from trees into them, they tossed each other into the nest-walls which collapsed instantly from the force.

Max was about to turn and run the other way — there didn’t seem to be much point in staying so close to such destructive, borderline maniacal beasts — when he heard (could it be?) a word.

There was, he was almost sure, a word: “Go!”

He would have never expected them to speak, but he was sure he’d heard the word Go. And just as he was repeating the sound in his mind, turning it over, analyzing it, the creature closest to him spoke a full sentence:

“Is it twisted?”

This one was standing, showing his back to another, who was sitting at his feet. They seemed to have fallen through the wall of one of the huts, and the first was asking for help, assessing possible injuries to his spine.

“Yeah, it’s kind of twisted,” said the second.

The two gathered themselves up and ran off.

Max squatted down again, determined to watch a bit longer, to try and parse what was happening and why.

One creature seemed to be leading the melee. He had a big round face, sharp horns like a viking’s and dark bags under his eyes. He was getting ready to run toward one of the nests when the rooster-looking creature approached him and put his hand — it wasn’t a wing; he seemed to have hands and claws — on his shoulder.

“Carol, can I speak to you for a second?”

Max was astounded. Had that sentence just been uttered? It was said with such casual sophistication that his conception of the creatures was exploded. They weren’t just grunting monsters: they spoke like people.

“Not now, Douglas,” the big one, Carol, said, and moved the rooster to one side. Then Carol got a running start and barreled into the side of one of the nests, knocking it to splinters.

Meanwhile, a giant bull-like creature was running into various walls at even greater speed. He seemed disconnected, though, not seeking out anyone’s approval or interacting in any meaningful way.

“Good job,” Max said to him.

The bull stared at Max, but said nothing. Then he turned away, moving like a ship, and lumbered off.

Max could now see that a smaller creature was upset about all the activity. This one resembled a goat, standing upright and with white-grey fur. He was the shortest and thinnest of the creatures by far, closer to Max’s size than the others. He was yelling “Stop!” and “Why are you doing this?” and in between whimpering in a way Max thought kind of unappealing. He was pointedly ignored by the rest of the beasts.

Max watched and listened until he had a sense of all of their names and how they fit into what he had begun to understand was some kind of family.

There was the rooster. His name was Douglas. He seemed logical and even-tempered, and didn’t appreciate the way that Carol was trying to amuse himself and the others.

Carol, the main instigator and heartiest of the destroyers, was the biggest, the strongest, the loudest. His fur bore horizontal stripes on his torso like some kind of sweater, and his claws were huge and cleaver-sharp.

There was the female one with the horn and the red mop of hair. Her name was Judith, and she had a sharp, pokey voice and a harsh cackle for a laugh.

Max was having trouble keeping them straight, so using his Kodiak-drawing skills, he started sketching in the dirt under him, attaching names to his crude renderings.

Ira was the bulb-nosed one, and he seemed to be always close to Judith. Max guessed they might even be a couple, though a strange one. He had a sad sort of aura and poor posture.

There was the goat-shaped one, Alexander, with a snarl for a face and pin-thin legs. He was just a little bigger than Max.

And then there was the bull. He was gigantic, maybe thirteen feet high, and seemed built entirely of muscle and stone. He hadn’t said a word yet.

That made six. Six of the beasts overall. Wait. No, seven. There was one who didn’t seem to be participating in the destruction. She had a melancholy face and was sitting off by herself, on a boulder overlooking the chaos. With long straw-brown hair and little ears poking through, she had sweet, gentle eyes and fangs that despite their size (about as big as Max’s hands) seemed kind of cute.

Now Carol, the biggest one, was tossing Alexander, the goat, high into the air. He would toss him twenty or thirty feet, then catch him and toss him higher. It looked dangerous and crazy and Max very much wanted to be the goat. He wanted to be thrown, he wanted to fly, he wanted to knock things down.

After the fourth toss, Carol threw Alexander straight into one of the nests. Alexander emerged from the wreckage laughing what seemed to be a fake laugh, as if he hadn’t enjoyed it at all but wanted to seem up for anything.

Max was more intrigued every moment. The beasts jumped from trees into the nests, they tossed each other into piles, they rolled boulders into the remains of the structures. It was just about the best mayhem Max had ever seen.

But soon there was a lull in the action. One by one the beasts seemed to have quit their destruction. They sat down, scratching themselves and nursing small wounds.

“I’m bored,” one of them said.

“Me too,” said another.

The leader, the one named Carol, wasn’t happy to let it die. “C’mon!” he roared. “Let’s finish this!”

There was no answer from the rest of them. The bulb-nosed one sat down. Carol jogged over to him — they really were agile things, these creatures.

“Ira,” he said to the bulb-nosed one, “we’re not done yet. The job isn’t complete.”

“But I’m so tired!” Ira said. “And uninspired.”

“Hey, don’t think you can rhyme your way out of this. Uninspired? How’s that possible?” Carol turned to address the rest of the creatures. “C’mon, isn’t this fun? Who’s gonna really go crazy with me?”

No one responded. Carol jumped from beast to beast, trying to create some excitement. When he approached Douglas, Douglas questioned the entire endeavor. “Carol, why are we doing this in the first place?” he asked.

A quick cloud came over Carol’s face. His teeth — a hundred of them, each as big as Max’s hand — were bared in something between a smile and a show of force.

“Douglas, I don’t have to tell you, do I? We all know why they need to go. They weren’t good enough. You heard Katherine. She said it was time—”

“That’s not what I meant,” someone said. It was the almost-cute beast on the rock. This must be Katherine, Max thought.

“We all heard what you said,” Carol growled. “You said it was all wrong, that everything we’d made was cruddy and needed to be torn down.”

Katherine sighed, exasperated. “I said nothing of the sort. You mangle everything I say.”

Carol decided to ignore her. “All I need to know now is if there’s anyone on this island who’s brave and creative and wild enough to help finish this job. Is there anyone up to it?”

No one responded.

“Anyone?”