The Wild Things

CHAPTER XXXV

All night Max stared into the fire, cold and rattled as the snow continued to fall. He found logs and added them, scooting closer to the flames, trying to stay warm.

Max had to put order to his thoughts, had to straighten out his quail. He started with what he knew, cataloguing what he had learned so far. He knew that Douglas liked having his arm praised as being the best, but he knew that Carol didn’t like hearing that kind of praise directed at someone other than himself, and he certainly didn’t like being told that robots were the best, because presumably, he considered himself the best. He knew that Katherine preferred to be alone with Max. He knew that Judith and Alexander and Ira did not like getting run over by boulders covered in lava and that the possibility of grave injury likely reminded Ira of the void, even the thought of which was to be averted at all costs.

He knew he wanted food. He was nearly delirious with hunger. His head felt light, his stomach jagged. And what he wanted, more than any other food, was soup. Soup would go down easy, would warm and soften everything within him. Any kind of soup would do, but cream of mushroom soup, which his mother made for him when he was feeling sick, would be best.

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.