The Wild Things

CHAPTER XXVI

Again Max reached into the dark velvet of his brain and found something. Was it a gem? He wasn’t sure.

“How about a parade?” he said.

He got only blank stares. No one knew what a parade was. But Max loved parades, had been in parades every year since he was born, every year but last year, when he had to be at his dad’s apartment, doing nothing all day except missing the parade that he was supposed to be in.

He had been invited to ride on the hood of one of the mini cars, the size of a kayak, driven by the Rotarians. He’d practiced with Mr. Leland, an oval-faced older man who wore a fez not just during parades but at all times. Some people called him Fez, and every time someone called him Fez he pretended to be baffled by the source of the nickname. Then, after a moment of deep thought, he would say, “Oh, because of the hat!” That put the nicknamers in their place every time. Nicknamers are usually the least creative people in the world, he said.

Anyway, the parade landed on one of the days Max was supposed to be with his dad in the city. Since he’d left, his dad had tried to avoid all situations where he would run into one or two or a few hundred of Max’s mom’s friends, so the parade was out.

“A par … What is one of those?” Ira asked.

“A parade?” Max explained that a parade was, first of all, one of the great inventions of mankind. Second, he said, it was the best way to demonstrate to the citizens of any civilization that there was a new king. It would entail Max leading all of his new subjects through the island, stomping very loudly and while singing many songs, and ideally doing so for the benefit of the thousand lesser-animal inhabitants of the island.

“Wow, that sounds pretty good,” Douglas said.

And so they lined up, with Max in the lead, scepter in hand. It was decided that they would parade through the forest, around the gully, across the many-colored meadow — this is where the mini-tornadoes dwelled, Max was told, and he’d see them when he saw them — and then finally finishing at the lagoon, where, Max figured, they would take a swim to wash off the exertion of the parade. His parades at home typically ended at the town pool, and he had come to associate the parade’s end with a massive free-for-all in the main pool, diving off the high dive and playing Marco Polo deep into the evening.

“Everyone ready?” he asked.

Carol was directly behind him, followed by Douglas. Judith was next, and then Ira, Alexander, and the Bull.

“Where’s Katherine?” Max asked.

“We can’t wait for her,” Carol said quickly.

“She wouldn’t want to do this kind of thing anyway,” Douglas noted. “She’s not much of a joiner, King.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

“That would diminish her aura,” Judith said, dressing the word aura in garish sarcasm.

Max didn’t like parading without the full retinue, but a parade like this, all ready to go, couldn’t wait. Max raised his scepter high, straightened his crown and took a deep breath.

“Forward march!” he yelled.

Max marched in the most parade-like and martial way he could manage, pumping his knees and thrusting the scepter over his head with every step.

The rest of the paraders followed suit, and, at Max’s urging, improvised however they saw fit. Carol began marching with both of his arms over his head like a ghoul. Douglas marched with his feet shuffling side-to-side, which seemed much more difficult and tiring than necessary, but Max thought it gave the parade a certain panache. Judith and Ira were marching in a more or less traditional way, forward and high-stepping, though Ira, with his poor balance, was having trouble maintaining a straight line. Max couldn’t see the Bull or Alexander very well, but he trusted that they knew what they were doing and were making the parade proud.

After parading for about an hour, through sparse forest, much of it charred and crushed by the rumpus the previous night, Max was beginning to lament the one conspicuously missing part of the parade: spectators.

Just when he was wondering what could be done about the problem, he caught sight of what appeared to be hundreds of the sort of tiny cat he’d seen on his way through the woods the previous night. Now they were emerging everywhere along the path, sitting and standing atop the fallen trees. All were watching the parade, as if it were the first such demonstration they had ever seen. And, Max thought, it probably was.

When the other paraders noticed the cats watching, they paraded with extra effort, stomping higher and shuffling more intensely. And the extra effort seemed to attract more watchers. There were suddenly thousands of eyes along the route, most of them attached to the cats but also to thin tendrils of what looked like ferns. Max looked closer, guessing them to be some kind of land-dwelling anemones, with hundreds of eyes, each sitting atop a long twisting stalk. Max couldn’t tell if they were able to think, let alone understand the greatness of the parade, but it hardly mattered. As Max paraded forward, all he could see were the eyeballs, all unblinking, all rapt.

They were about halfway to the lagoon, according to Douglas’s estimate, and Max was beginning to tire. He had an idea which seemed to solve his tiredness problem while also remaining true to the parameters of parades.

He climbed up Douglas’s leg and shoulders and rode for a time there, his scepter pointing the way. But after a few minutes there, Max was getting bored, so he decided to jump, like a spider monkey, from one set of shoulders to the next. It was far trickier than spider monkeys made it look, but every time Max would slip, an enormous paw would be there to restore him to his perch. Max was confident he would get better at the jumping in the future, but in any case it would be how he would travel from now on. It was quicker than walking, and he liked the view from up above far more.

As he sat on the Bull’s head, and while the rest of the paraders paraded, his mind spun through the possibilities — all the things he could and should do with seven giant playmates — and the first and most obvious one seemed to be that he and they needed to make a ship of some kind. He jumped over to Ira and began, mid-thought:

“Yeah, it’s gonna be a vampire ship,” Max said, “the biggest and fastest vampire ghost ship ever created. And we’re gonna need lots of trees. We’re gonna need um … twenty … No, more! We’re gonna need a hundred of the biggest tree trunks on the island. Ira, you get the trees.”

“Okay,” Ira said.

“And lots of rope. And some sails.” He jumped onto Douglas. “Douglas, you have to get the sails. The finest sails known to man!”

“Yes, King Max,” Douglas replied, and with his claw made some kind of notation on his arm.

“I’ll be the captain, and Judith, you’ll be in charge of speed. You have to make sure we have good wind.” Judith seemed very pleased to have been asked. “And Ira, you can steer the boat. What’s the person called who steers the boat?”

“The captain?” Ira offered uncertainly.

“Okay, well, I’ll steer the ship. I’m the captain.”

“And I’m in charge of wind?” Judith said. Her eyes seemed to be envisioning this new and vital role.

Max nodded. “Wind and weather, yeah. And speed.”

“What about me?” Alexander asked.

“You can be the lookout,” Max said.

“No, I don’t want to look out,” Alexander said. “Or maybe I would if the ship was different and I was the captain instead of you.”

Max didn’t know how to answer Alexander. He made a note to try to avoid him altogether in the future.

“Psst. Hey King!”

Max turned to see Katherine hiding in the hollow of an enormous tree. She beckoned him over. Relieved to be away from the goat, Max jumped off Douglas’s shoulders and over to her.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“Really?” Max said. “About what?” He didn’t want to leave the parade, so he tried to lure her into talking while walking with the group.

But she didn’t want that.

“We need a little privacy,” she said, pulling him from the path.

Max really didn’t think he should be leaving his own parade, but there was something so intriguing about Katherine. They wouldn’t miss him for a little bit.

“Grab here,” Katherine said, indicating the fur on the back of her neck. “Hold tight.”