The Wild Things

CHAPTER XIV

But the city seemed to be getting farther away, not closer. For hours Max held the rudder steady, and the sail had a constant belly full of wind, but as the hours passed, the city grew smaller. According to the compass, Max was sailing directly for it, due north-northwest, and yet the city lights were growing smaller, dimmer.

There was little Max could do. He knew he was sailing straight. But it was as if the bay were extending itself in front of him, adding distance between his boat and his destination. He turned around but saw no sign of the bay he’d left, the forest of his lean-to. He saw nothing of his neighborhood at all. There was only a moon overhead and the rough shimmer on the waves. He had no choice but to continue traveling along his present course, for going any other way made no sense at all.

He hoped that somewhere in the night the bay would become rational again and the city would reappear. He would have to tell his father about this strange elastic stretching of the bay! But soon the city was disappearing altogether. For a while it no more than a twinkle of dwindling lights, and shortly thereafter, it was gone. There was no sign of land in any direction. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but some part of Max acknowledged that in all likelihood, he’d left the bay altogether, and was now in the open sea.

Before Max was even tired, the moon had fallen through the water and the sun had risen to replace it. He’d sailed all night without sleep and was too bewildered to think about rest. Max continued sailing north-northwest, but now saw nothing anywhere at all. Not a fish, not a bird. The wind had slackened and the sea grew wider and broader and more interminable and boring. By his rough calculations he had to be at least seven million miles from where he left off.

Finally, as the sun climbed higher, he was tired enough to sleep. He pulled in the sail, tied it to the mast, rigged the rudder so it would remain true, and fell asleep.

When he awoke, it was night again. The same moon he’d left just hours ago was back. Max sailed through the night, falling asleep again not long after. He felt weak; it had been so long since he’d eaten.

With a shock of recognition, Max was finally sure he was in the open ocean. His compass did not seem to be working, and he hadn’t seen any sign of land or life in days. Where was he going? How long could he survive like this? His mind followed a dozen terrible paths until he realized, with some comfort, that there was nothing he could do, really, about his situation. He could only sail straight and hope for the best.

The following morning brought about the longest day Max had ever known. The length of a day! Alone in his boat, the straight line of ocean unbroken on any side, every minute was a day, one hour was longer than any life ever lived.

His mind ran out of things to think about. He thought of everything he’d ever thought of by midday and then could only start over. He counted all the states: CA, CO, NV, OR, WA, ID, SD, ND, WY, NE, IL, IN, IA, MI, WI, KS, MT … He was stumped at twenty-four. Even so, a record for him. He named all of his classmates, dividing them into the ones he knew, the ones he tolerated, the ones he didn’t know and those he would punch in the head if he had the chance. He named the families on his street, on the next street. He named all of his teachers, past and present, and all of the members of that year’s Brazilian Olympic soccer team.

He named all of his uncles and aunts. Uncles Stuart, Grant, Scotty, Wash and Jeff, Aunts Isabelle, Paulina, Lucy, Juliet. The last time he’d seen them all was at that strange reunion. Where had it been? In some log cabin somewhere, in Colorado or near Colorado. It was on a hill, and the cabin was cramped with people, the smell of pine and soup and venison, and so much beer, so much drinking all the time. There was fishing, and there were games of Twister, and runs through the woods, and then, when it rained, long cramped days and nights in the too-small cabin. Sounds coming from all the rooms, tiny tantrums a dozen a day, so many moods and slights and silences and bursts of almost-violence. And because there weren’t enough beds, almost everyone slept in one room, by the stove, limbs overlapping, so many sounds. It had been fun, and then frightening, and then fun, and finally, thankfully, it was over. He’d slept all twelve hours home in the car.

He loosened a nail on the boat’s bench and removed it. He used it to count the hours (as close as he could approximate) as they passed, marking them as a prisoner would. On the outer rim of the boat he carved his name as big as he could, so any fish or whales or passing ships would know who commanded this vessel: MAX, it said, in a way both tidy and slightly menacing.

He tried to draw a map of the world on the boat floor, then drew kodiak bears — all he could draw was a kodiak bear; his father, a decent draftsman, had taught him this one skill — and while he was drawing his third kodiak bear, this one eating his own paw, Max decided to calculate exactly how long it had been since his father left.

The timeline was becoming blurry in his mind. Was it three years ago? That was what he’d been saying when people asked, but had he been saying it so long that it was now four years ago? The order of events was unclear.

He had memories of his father and Gary together. But was that even possible? No, that was impossible. And the man before Gary, the white-haired man named Peter. When did he come and go? Would it have been possible that all these men knew each other?

Now Max was getting confused. Of course it wasn’t possible for them to all know each other. There had been a linear sequence of events. First there was his father. Then his father was gone for a business trip — one month, then two, then it wasn’t a business trip anymore. He was simply gone, and soon had gotten the place in the city. Then there was quiet. Then he was back for that one loud week, then gone again. Then quiet again, for what seemed like a year. Then the white-haired Peter. Who was he again? He was too old. He once brought Max a plant, a fern, for a present. Max put it on the window sill and later made sure it “fell” into the garden below. Then Peter was gone … though he came back that one late night and woke everyone up with his singing and begging. Right? That was Peter.

Then came Gary. But what about the other-other man, the man who came to the door a few times last year? His mother had gone with him in his car, a small convertible the color of ash … Max had asked Claire about that man, but she told Max he was only someone from his mother’s work; they had to go to a working dinner, she told him. Max was sure there was more to it than that, but there were secrets between Claire and his mother. Too many.

Max sailed in and out of days and nights. He endured blustery winds, cruel winds, chattering winds, and warm blanketing breezes. There were waves like dragons and waves like sparrows. There was rain but mostly there was sun, the terribly unimaginative sun, doing the same things day in and day out. There were occasional sightings of birds and fish and flies, but nothing Max could reach or much less eat. He had not had a morsel of anything in what seemed like weeks and it was causing a churning ache within him that felt as if his organs were feeding on each other for sustenance.