The Wild Things

CHAPTER XXXVII

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.”

Carol and Douglas nodded respectfully.

Ira now had the whole of Judith’s lower leg in his mouth, but removed it long enough to say, “Hmm.”

“And it’ll make us feel good,” Max added, for Judith’s benefit. “All the time.”

“What will?” Judith said.

“The fort,” Max said.

“No it won’t,” she said. “Why would a fort for you make us happy? What about eating? That makes me happy.”

“Judith. Shh. Listen,” Douglas said.

“It’s not just my fort,” Max said. “We’ll build it together. It’ll be all of us on one team.”

Judith seemed almost impressed. “Oh. That kind of fort.”

“Yeah, and inside we’ll have everything we could ever want. We’ll have our own detective agency, and our own language. Alexander, do you want to be in charge of making up a new language?”

“No,” Alexander said.

“Okay, I’ll work on the language,” Max said, forging ahead. “And outside I want to have lots of ladders. And stained glass. And there’ll be a fake tree outside, but it’s not a tree, it’s a tunnel, and it’ll lead you inside, through a compartment …”

Max drew the tree outside the fort, but the Bull’s toe was on the beach, where the tree needed to be. Max drew half the tree and ran up against the Bull’s toe. He looked up to the Bull, but it was clear the Bull wasn’t going to move. So Max drew around the huge toe, such that the round head of the tree became a half-moon. The half-moon reminded Max of something. The fort needed tunnels. Lots of tunnels.

“Ira, will you be in charge of the tunnels?” Max asked. “They’re like holes, and you can make holes, right?”

“Yeah, I make holes,” he said.

“Okay, these tunnels need to be the longest holes known to man. And while you’re down there digging you can also make a basement, the biggest one of all time, where we’ll have a million games for when it’s raining.”

The beasts all nodded, listening intently, as if looking at a series of specific and reasonable instructions. Douglas made notations on his arm.

“We’ll have a huge turret for the owls,” Max continued. “We have to have lots of owls because they have good eyes and they don’t get scared. And we’ll train them and guide them with remote control. They’ll look out for invaders.”

“I know some owls,” Katherine said.

Everyone looked over to see that Katherine had been there for some time.

“Good, good,” Max said.

“Are these nice owls, or will they be aloof and judgmental?” Carol asked, giving Katherine a look askance.

“They’re not aloof and judgmental,” she answered, quiet but firm. “They’re good owls. They care. They just don’t know how to express it.”

Carol softened. “Okay. We’ll need some good owls.”

An electric current seemed to flow through the group, as everyone, from Max to Douglas to Ira and Judith, recognized that they had just witnessed a silent, unsigned-but-still-significant truce between Carol and Katherine.

“It’ll be us against everyone else,” Max continued, now with extra vigor. “No one that we don’t want in there can get in there.”

“And it’ll keep out the chatter, right Max?” Carol asked, almost rhetorically.

“Of course. How could chatter get in a place like this?” Max said, indicating the incredible size and strength of the fort as drawn with his stick in the sand.

Judith walked around the drawing, still skeptical.

“So what do you think?” Max asked her.

“I don’t really think anything like this ever works,” she said, “But if it did work …” she said, her voice rising to something like hopeful. “I don’t know,” she said, sitting down again. “I don’t know anything. But I do like the tree tunnel.”

“Best of all,” Max said looking to everyone, “we’ll all sleep together in a real pile. Like we did before.”

There was a general murmur of approval for this particular aspect of the proposal.

Now Max turned to Carol. “Will you be in charge of building it?”

Carol was taken aback. “Me? Oh. Huh. Well. I … I just …”

Douglas spoke up: “You should definitely be in charge, Carol. No one else could pull it off.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” Carol said, his pride lifting him. “You’re right …”

“Don’t you think Carol should build it, Katherine?” Max said.

“Yeah,” she said, surprising everyone. “No one else can do it.”

“Okay,” Carol said finally. “Then I’ll do it.”