The Wild Things (6 page)

Max laughed, knowing that would be the end of that particular neighbor’s complaints. Then he and Mr. Beckmann had eaten ice cream sandwiches.

“So you’re in trouble. So what?” Mr. Beckmann said, his breath visible, cloaking him. “Boys are supposed to get in trouble. Look at you. You’re built for trouble.”

Max smiled. “Yeah, but Gary said—”

“What?” Mr. Beckmann interrupted. “Who the hell’s Gary?”

Max explained who Gary was, or who he thought Gary was. Mr. Beckmann shook his head dismissively.

“Well I don’t like him already. What kind of name is Gary, anyway? Sounds like a carny. Is he a carny?”

Max laughed.

“Gary Schmary,” Mr. Beckmann said. “You want me to sic Achilles on him? He’d swallow Gary Schmary in one bite.”

Max thought this was a pretty good idea, but shook his head. “No, that’s okay.”

They stood in the night. Far off, a dog or wolf howled. Mr. Beckmann was looking up at the broad silver stripe across the dome of the sky.

Mr. Beckmann started down toward his house. “Well, I’ll be seeing you, Maximilian.”

“See you, Mr. Beckmann,” Max said.

Mr. Beckmann stopped, remembering something. “Remember, Achilles is always ready to eat some Gary.”

Max laughed and rode home to eat dinner.

Max knew that a bunk bed was the perfect structure to use when building an indoor fort. First of all, bunk beds have a roof. And a roof was essential if you’re going to have an observation tower. And you need an observation tower if you’re going to spot invading armies before they breach your walls and overtake your kingdom. Anyone without bunks would have a much harder time maintaining a security perimeter, and if you can’t do that, you don’t stand a chance against anyone.

Max had just done a quick survey of the area surrounding his bunk-kingdom and now was down below on the lower bunk, where he could be unseen and unknown. For a while he thought about the sun and whether it would die. He thought about whether he would die someday, too. It was a very strange time in Max’s life. His sister had tried, by proxy, to kill him, and his mother didn’t seem to care about that or the end of the universe. On this evening, the person in the house he seemed to like the most was Gary, and even thinking that sent a shudder through him. He wondered if Mr. Beckmann would allow him to live at his house, and if not, in the barn that he’d threatened his neighbors about.

Max, tired of thinking, decided to think on paper, and so retrieved his journal from under the bed. His father had given him the journal shortly after he left, and had, in white-out, written the words
WANT
JOURNAL
on the cover.
In this book
, his father had written as inscription and directive,
write what you want. Every day, or as often as you can, write what you want. That way, whenever you’re confused or rudderless, you can look to this book, and be reminded where you want to go and what you’re looking for
. His father had written, by hand, three beginnings on every page. Every page started with:

I
WANT

I
WANT

I
WANT

And so Max had periodically written his wants, and he’d written many other things, too. But tonight he wanted to write some more wants, so he found a pen and began.

I
WANT
Gary to fall into some kind of bottomless hole
.

I
WANT
Claire to get her foot caught in a beartrap
.

I
WANT
Claire’s friends to die by flesh-eating tapeworms
.

Then he stopped. His father had reminded him that the journal was for positive wants, not negative wants. When you wanted something
negative
, it didn’t count, he said. A want should be positive, his father had said. A want should improve your life while improving the world, even if just a little bit.

So Max began again:

I
WANT
to get out of here
.

I
WANT
to go to the moon or some other planet
.

I
WANT
to find some unicorn
DNA
and then grow a bunch of them and teach them to stick their horns through Claire’s friends
.

Oh well. He could erase it later. For now just writing it and thinking it felt good. But now he was sick of writing. He wanted to make something. But he didn’t want to set up some whole thing with glue and wood. He didn’t want to have to use tools at all. What did he want to do? This was the central question of this day and most days.

Max wondered how he might actually build a ship. He had designed many dozens of ships on paper over the past year, and now he wondered if it was time for him to build a real one and sail away. His father had taken him sailing five times the previous summer, and had taught him the basics of piloting a small boat. “You’re a natural!” his father had said, even though Max was afraid of the open water, of rogue waves and orcas.

Then Max caught sight of his wolf suit, hanging on the back of the closet door. He hadn’t worn it in weeks. He’d gotten it for Christmas three years before, the last one with both his parents, and he’d immediately put it on, and kept it on for the rest of school break. It had been too big then, but his mom had pinned it and taped it to make it work until he grew into it.

Now he and it were the perfect size and he wore it when he knew he would be alone in the house, and when he could wrestle the dog or jump and growl without anyone watching. And though the house was full, as Max stared at the wolf suit it seemed to be calling to him.
It’s time
, it was saying to Max. He wasn’t sure this was actually the right time to put it on, but then again he’d never disobeyed the suit before. Should he really wear it tonight? He usually felt better when he put on the wolf suit. He felt faster, sleeker, more powerful.

On the other hand, he could stay in bed. He could stay in the fort, the red blanket casting a red light on everything inside. He had stayed inside one whole weekend a few months ago. He couldn’t remember why he’d done this. Or maybe he could remember. Maybe it had to do with Claire and Meika and how they laughed when he had gone into the bathroom with his hand down his pants. They were sitting on Claire’s bed, and it was the morning, and in the morning he had been in the habit of having his hand down his pajama pants. So he had walked into the bathroom to pee and they had laughed for what seemed like hours. And he hadn’t put his hand down his pants since then.

Anyway, he had hid in his bedroom fort for two days after that. Mom had brought his meals to him there and he had played Stratego against himself, and cards against himself, and had pitted his animals and soldiers against each other, and had read two books about medieval wars.

Now he wondered if he wanted to just spend another weekend in his fort. It seemed a good enough idea. He had some thinking to do, about this news about the sun expiring and the resulting void inhaling the earth, and he wanted to steer clear of Claire, who might yet want retribution, and he was angry at his mom, who seemed to forget for hours at a time that he existed. And any time he spent in his room ensured that he didn’t have to talk to Gary.

So he had a choice. Would he stay behind the curtain and think about things, marinate in his own confusion, or would he put on his white fur suit and howl and scratch and make it known who was boss of this house and all of the world known and unknown?

“Arooooooo!”

The howling was a good start. Animals howl, he had been told, to declare their existence. Max, standing in his white wolf suit, stood at the top of the stairs and, using a rolled-up piece of construction paper as a megaphone, howled again, as loud as he could.

“ARRROOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

When he was done, there was a long silence.

“Uh oh,” Gary finally said.

Ha!
Max thought.
Let Gary worry. Let everyone worry
.

Max pounded down the stairs, triumphant. “Who wants to get eaten?” he asked the house and the world.

“Not me,” Claire said.

Aha!
Max decided.
That only puts her higher on the menu!

He strode into the TV room, where Claire was pretending to do her homework. He lifted his claws up, growled and sniffed at the air. He wanted to make sure that Claire and everyone knew this terrible fact: There was a bloodthirsty, brilliant, borderline-insane wolf in their midst.

Claire didn’t look up.

At least she’d spoken to him. It was a window to reconciliation, so Max had an idea. He removed a wooden dowel from a nearby curtain. It was about three feet long and bore magic marker lines across its width. Claire, seeing Max approach with the dowel, rolled her eyes.

“You want to play Wolf and Master?” Max asked.

Claire had already gone back to her book, strenuously ignoring him. She didn’t even need to say No. She could say No a thousand ways without ever uttering the word.

“Why not?” Max said to the back of her head.

“Maybe because your wolf suit smells like butt?”

Max quickly sniffed himself. She was correct. But he
was
a wolf. What else would a wolf smell like?

“You want me to kill something for you?” he asked.

Claire thought a moment, tapping her pencil against her lower teeth. Finally she looked at Max, her eyes bright. “Yeah,” she said, “go kill the little man in the living room.”

This idea had a certain appeal. Max smiled at Claire’s description of Gary as a “little man.”

“Yeah,” Max said, getting excited. “We’ll cut his brains out and make him eat ‘em! He’ll have to think from his stomach!”

Claire gave Max a look she might give a three-headed cat. “Yeah, you go do that,” she said.

Max walked around the corner and found Gary lying on the couch in his work clothes, his frog-eyes closed, his chin entirely receded into his neck. Max gritted his teeth and let out a low, simmering growl.

Gary opened his eyes and rubbed them.

“Uhh, hey Max. I’m baggin’ a few after-work Zs. How goes it?”

Max looked at the floor. This was one of Gary’s typical questions:
Another day, huh? How goes it? No play for the playa, right?
None of his questions had answers. Gary never seemed to say anything that meant anything at all.

“Cool suit,” Gary said. “Maybe I’ll get me one of those. What are you, like a rabbit or something?”

Max was about to leap upon Gary, to show him just what kind of animal he was -- a wolf capable of tearing flesh from bone with a shake of his jaws -- when Max’s mom came into the room. She was carrying two glasses of blood-colored wine, and she handed one to Gary. Gary sat up, smiled his powerless smile, and clinked his glass against hers. It was a disgusting display, and became more so when Gary raised his glass to Max.

“Cheers, little rabbit-dude,” he said.

His mom smiled at Max and then at Gary, thinking it was a wonderfully clever thing that Gary had just said.

“Cheers, Maxie,” she said, then growled playfully at him.

She picked up a dirty plate and hurried back toward the kitchen. “Claire!” she yelled, “I asked you to get your stuff off the table. It’s almost dinner.”

Max entered the kitchen with his arms crossed, marching purposefully, like a general inspecting his troops. He sniffed loudly, assessing the kitchen’s smells and waiting to be noticed.

His mother said nothing, so he brought a chair near the stove and stood on it. Now they were eye to eye.

“What is that? Is that food?” he asked, pointing down to something beige bubbling in a pan.

He got no answer.

“Mom, what is that?” he asked, now grabbing her arm.

“Pate,” she said finally.

Max rolled his eyes and moved on. Pate was a regrettable name for an unfortunate food. It seemed to Max a good idea to get up from the chair and to leap onto the counter. Which he presently did.

Standing on the counter, he towered over everything and everyone. He was eleven feet tall.

“Oh god,” Max’s mom said.

Max squatted down to inspect a package of frozen corn. “Frozen corn? What’s wrong with
real
corn?” he demanded. He dropped the package loudly on the counter, where it made a wonderful clatter.

“Frozen corn
is
real,” Max’s mom said, barely taking notice. “Now get off the counter. And go tell your sister to get her stuff off the dining room table.”

Max didn’t move. “
CLAIRE
GET
YOUR
STUFF
OFF
THE
DINING
ROOM
TABLE!” he yelled, more or less into his mom’s face.

“Don’t yell in my face!” she hissed. “And get off the counter.”

Instead of getting off the counter, Max howled. The acoustics where he was, so close to the ceiling, were not great.

His mom stared at him like he was crazy. Which he was, because wolves are part crazy. “You know what,” she said, “you’re too old to be on the counter, and you’re too old to be wearing that costume.”

Max crossed his arms and stared down at her. “You’re too old to be so short! And your makeup’s smeared!”

“Get
DOWN
from there!” she demanded.

The sting of what she had said about him being too old to wear his wolf suit was just hitting him. He felt his anger focusing. There was a weakness in her voice and he decided to seize on it.

“Woman, feed me!” he yelled. He didn’t know where he’d come up with that phrase, but he liked it immediately.

“Get off the counter, Max!”

Max just stared at her. She was so small!

“I’ll eat you up!” he growled, raising his arms.

“MAX!
GET
DOWN!” she yelled. She could be very loud when she wanted to be. For a second he thought he should get off the counter, take off his suit, and eat his dinner quietly, because the truth was he was very hungry. But then he thought better of it, and howled again.