The Wild Things - By Dave Eggers Page 0,22
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