The Wild Things

by Dave Eggers

  If he wanted to, he could untie the boat and sail out into the bay. It would be better than just living out his days in the forest. He could sail away, as far as he liked. He might make it somewhere new, somewhere better, and if he didn’t — if he drowned in the bay or the ocean beyond — then so be it. His horrible family would have to live forever with the guilt. Either option seemed good.

  He reached back toward shore, untied the boat from the tree, and pushed off.

  He righted the boat and aimed it toward the center of the bay. He unfurled the sail and steadied the boom. The wind was strong; in no time he was chopping through the bay’s small waves, heading due north.

  He had sailed at night only once before, with his father, and even that had been unplanned. They’d gotten stuck out in the bay without wind, and hadn’t brought a paddle. They’d passed the time naming every candy they could remember and playing hangman with a grease marker on the boat’s floor. It occurred to Max at that moment that he didn’t have any of the safety items his father insisted on — a life preserver, a paddle, a flare gun, a bailing vessel. The boat was empty but for Max.

  And he was getting cold. Max was wearing only his wolf suit, and by the time he reached the middle of the bay and the wind began to bite, he realized that it was December, and no more than forty degrees, and it was getting colder the farther out into the lake he ventured. When he’d been running and howling, he hadn’t felt the rip of the winter wind, but now it cut through his fur — and his T-shirt and underwear, for that’s all he was wearing underneath — unimpeded.

  He wouldn’t be able to sail this way for long. He certainly wouldn’t make it through the night; his teeth were already chattering. So he decided to sail not into the ocean but toward the city, to head to his father’s place downtown. This immediately seemed a better idea all around. He would sail downtown, dock with all the yachts, walk through the city until he found his father’s apartment, and ring the bell.

  Wow, he’d be surprised! He knew his father would be proud of him when he arrived. He’d be astounded and impressed and they would live together from then on. All he needed to do was sail north for a few hours and keep his eye on the lights in the distance. He could make out the dim glow of the city on the horizon, and he felt strong again, knowing he would soon be there.

  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 s
eemed 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.

  CHAPTER XV

  But one day he saw something. A green blot on the horizon, no bigger than a caterpillar. Half-crazed and untrusting of his eyes, he thought little of it. He went to sleep again.

  When he awoke, the caterpillar had become an island. It towered above him — a rocky beach beneath massive cliffs, green hills above. The island seemed strangely alive everywhere, vibrating with color and sound.

  By the time he reached the shore, it was night and the island had gone black. It was a good deal less welcoming now, as a silhouette against a gunmetal sky, but there was something high in the hills that beckoned him. An orange glow between the trees high above the shore.

  As soon as he felt he was able, Max jumped out and into the water. He thought it would be at least waist-deep, but it was far deeper than that. His feet could not reach the floor and he was quickly swallowed in the foam, the white. And the cold! The water was colder than he thought possible; it knocked the wind out of him.

  He held the rope that held the boat, and tried to dog-paddle shoreward. He thought for a moment he would have to let go of the rope, lest he drown. But just as his head dropped below the surface and the boat tugged against his grip, his feet found the sand below, and he stood. He would not die this night and he considered this, on balance, a good thing.

  Max stumbled forth, soaked and exhausted. He dragged the boat onto the beach, placed a group of large stones around it, and tied its lead to the biggest tree he could find. When he was finished, he collapsed and lay down, his cheek to the cold sand. When he felt rested, he rose again, but found he could barely stand. He was tired and hungry and leaden; the weight of his fur when wet surprised him. He considered taking off his wolf suit, but he knew if he did he’d be even colder. The wind was bracing and he knew that his only chance at warmth — of survival — would be to climb the cliffs and find his way to the fire he’d seen from the sea.

  So this is what he did.

  The cliffs were jagged but dependable. He climbed to the top in under an hour and rested at the summit. While heaving and looking down — he was easily two hundred feet up — he heard the sounds coming from the island’s interior: crunching and crashing, whooping and howling, the crackle of a gigantic fire. Only in his depleted and desperate state would Max have considered his best option to be to run, stumble, and crawl through the densest and wildest kind of jungle toward the sounds of what seemed to be some kind of riot.

  But this is what he did.

  He walked for hours. He slashed his way through the undergrowth, ducking under grasping, luminescent ferns and slithering between the barbed and crosshatched vines. He waded through narrow creeks — the water strangely hot — and climbed over boulders covered with a red and delicate moss that clung to the stone like embroidery. The landscape was sometimes familiar — there were trees, there was dirt, there were rocks — but then again, very odd: the earth seemed to be striped in brown and yellow, like peanut butter and cinnamon after the first twirl of a mixing spoon. There were holes, perfect holes, cut width-wise in the trunks of most of the trees.

  After some time his fur, at least above his shins, was dry, and he was warmer, but he was so tired he was dreaming on his feet. Again and again he would shudder awake and find that he’d been walking while asleep.

  He was kept going, and on track, by the increasing volume of the chaos in the center of the island. It was such a strange mix of sounds — destruction, calamity, but then what seemed to be laughing.

  CHAPTER XVI

  And then, when he reached the top of a long high hill, he saw the fire, huge and snapping at the black sky. Most of it was obscured by a giant boulder in his line of vision, but the fire’s size was clear: it licked the surrounding trees orange and blotted out the stars above. It was intentional, it had a center and a purpose.

  Then movement. He saw something.

  First there was just a blur. Some kind of creature shooting through the trees, a rushing figure silhouetted by the red fire beyond. It could have been a bear, he thought, but the animal seemed to be running upright, on two feet.

  Max dropped to his knees, holding his breath.

  Again a figure darted between the trees. This one was the same size as the previous creature, but Max would have sworn he’d seen a beak. It seemed to Max’s tired eyes that a giant rooster, twelve feet tall, had just run across his field of vision.

  Max had half a mind to turn and run — for what good could come of engaging beasts of that size near a fire of that strength? — but he couldn’t leave just yet. The warmth of the blaze had awakened him, and he had to know what was happening down there.

  He dropped to his stomach, snaking closer. He only needed to make his way up the boulder between himself and the fire to see what was happening below. He was making his way commando-style, when a cat, a simple orange house cat but for its size — it was only four or five inches high — stepped in front of him and hissed.

  Max had never encountered a four-inch-high cat before, so he had no plan of action. He hissed back at the cat and it stopped, tilted its head, and looked at him quizzically. It then sat on its hind legs, lifted a tiny paw, and began grooming itself.

  Max heard more crashing, the sounds of splintering wood, but he saw nothing. He was sad to leave the tiny cat, but figured he would see more of its kind on the island, and by the time he did, he would have worked out what to do with one.

  So he skulked forward, again toward the fire. He wanted the warmth it promised, and he wanted whatever food might have been roasted on it, and he wanted more than anything else to find out just what was going on.

  A hundred yards more and he knew.

  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 roost
er 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.