Seconds later, Max’s mom appeared in the foyer, head tilted, installing an earring.
“Someone yelled upstairs,” she said. “Was that you?”
Max shook his head. Together they looked outside. Gary was folding himself into his old white car, licked everywhere by rust. With a cough of blue smoke, it shook to life and Gary was gone.
CHAPTER VII
“You ready?” his mom asked.
Max didn’t want to be driven to school, but he had no choice. His school had done away with bus service. There were only a handful of kids whose parents had allowed them to ride it in the first place, and so the previous year they’d gotten rid of it entirely. No one complained, no one missed it.
Riding his bike to school was no longer an option. After he’d been biking to school for a month, one of the parents, Mr. Neimenov, had complained. First to Max’s mom, then Max’s dad, and finally to the principal. He thought that Max’s unchaperoned riding was attracting potential child-abductors and child-assaulters. “Just as a liquor store attracts drunks,” he’d written in a note to Max’s mom, “so does an 8-year-old riding alone attract all kinds of unsavory types …”
When Max’s parents hadn’t responded, Mr. Neimenov brought the matter up with the school, and they quickly gave in. It wasn’t even a battle. There wasn’t a bike rack on the grounds in the first place. Max had been the only one who’d been riding to school.
The good thing about Thursdays was that on Thursdays there was gym. Thursdays were the only day, in fact, when gym occurred. And given budget cutbacks and new priorities and bi-weekly all-school testing sessions, there were only twelve gym days a year. So Max knew to savor each one. He ran out to the blacktop — the school had paved over the grass to save money to buy more Scantron forms — and lined up.
“Okay folks,” Mr. Ichythis said to the class, “as you know, we have only one day for each sport, so today’s our day to cover soccer. We use this ball for soccer,” he said, holding up a volleyball, “and the object is to kick it into that net.” He pointed to one of the goals, then seemed suddenly to notice something. “Or that one,” he said, nodding toward the opposite goal. “Either one, I guess.”
With that, he blew his whistle and threw the ball in the air. The kids immediately scattered. Half ran toward the ball, the other half for the sidelines.
There were only a handful of kids emotionally prepared, Max had learned, for team sports. And even some of the seemingly athletic kids were prone to bursts of crying. Wherever there was a ball and a net — soccer, basketball, tennis — crying followed. Even in his weekend soccer league, in every practice and every game, there were kids weeping. They cried when they were touched, they cried when they missed the ball, they cried when the other team scored. They cried when faced with any possible doubt or disappointment. They cried as a default, they cried when they didn’t know what else to do.
But Max knew what to do. He was on the soccer field to kick, chase, survey, run, slide-tackle, and score at will. When he was playing, he felt a sense of self-possession and order that was unparalleled anywhere else in his life. He knew where the ball was going; he knew where the other players were and where they were likely to go; at any given moment he knew exactly what had to be done.
He also had a sense of what needed to be stopped, and when. At that very moment, Dan Cooper was heading down the sidelines, dribbling the ball toward the goal. It would be up to Max to stop this business, so he made himself a torpedo and plugged in Dan’s coordinates. Max was quickly upon him, and when he was within striking distance, and Dan was about to score on the open net — the goalie was hiding behind the goalpost — Max unleashed unto Dan Cooper a slide-tackle of great ferocity and terrible accuracy.
Max was heading the opposite direction, careening upfield with the ball and praying that Dan wouldn’t cry, when the whistle stopped him.
“Foul,” Mr. Ichythis said.
The slide-tackle had been legal but the kids on the sidelines were giving Max disapproving looks. “Savage,” one girl hissed. Dan was indeed crying, silently, deeply, as if lamenting all the sadness and injustice in the world.
“What kind of foul?” Max asked.
“The penalty kind,” Mr. Ichythis said.
“For what?” Max asked.
“For making Dan fall,” Mr. Ichythis said. “Just go to the penalty box and give me a break, okay?”
There was no such thing as a penalty box in this sport, but Max didn’t feel like explaining it all to him. To a chorus of judgmental frowns from the non-participating girls and boys, Max walked off the field and into the school. It was almost lunch anyway.
In science class, Mr. Wisner had just discussed the sad plight of Pluto, the smallest and most remote planet, which had long languished on the periphery of the universe, and now was a planet no more. It was now just some rock in space.
Max was staring up at the model universe dangling from the ceiling when something Mr. Wisner was saying caught his attention.
“Of course,” he was saying, “the sun is the center of our solar system. It’s why all of the planets are here. It creates day and night and the warmth of its sunlight is what makes our planet inhabitable. Of course, the sun won’t always be here to warm us. Like all things, the sun will die. When it does, it’ll first expand, and will envelop all the planets around it, including the Earth, which it will consume rapidly …”
Max didn’t like the sound of any of this. He looked around. None of the other students seemed to be listening closely.
Mr. Wisner continued: “The sun, after all, is just fuel, burning ferociously, and when our particular star — a painfully average one, I should say — runs out of fuel, our solar system will go dark, permanently …”
Max had a sick feeling in his stomach. There was something about the words go dark permanently that didn’t sit well with him. This was the very worst lesson Max had ever heard in school, and there were fifteen minutes left on the clock. Mr. Wisner turned and pulled down a map of the world.
“But before that, the human race will likely fall to one of any number of calamities — self-inflicted or not: war, radical climate change, meteors, spectacular floods and earthquakes, superviruses …”
Now he turned back to the students, with a look on his face that was almost cheerful.
“Wow, I sound like a downer, don’t I! Look on the bright side — you and everyone you know will be long gone by then! When the sun is extinguished and the world is swallowed like a grape by the collapsing fabric of space, we’ll be long forgotten in the endless continuum of time. The human race is, after all, just a sigh in the long sonorous sleep of this world and all worlds to come. Okay, that’s the end for today. Have a great weekend.”
CHAPTER VIII
Max was often the last one picked up, but it didn’t matter so much. He was bored most of the time he was at A Spoonful of Lovin’ Afterschool Centre, so it was no big deal to be bored while waiting for his mom to pick him up. He sat on the steps of the porch, listening for his mom’s car to gag and shimmy around the corner.
He’d been going to this center for a year. The previous one he went to had gotten too uptight about money, his mom said, so one day he’d switched to this one, which, she said, had a more humane payment plan.
The man in charge of A Spoonful of Lovin was short and slight and named Perry. He was trying to grow a beard, but he looked like a mangy dog; none of the growth areas on his face connected.
When Max’s mom pulled in, Perry waved and walked to his own car. “Good night, Max.”
Max didn’t run to his mom’s car and didn’t walk slowly, either. In this way the walk seemed to last weeks.
Max got into the car and closed the door. He sat in the front seat because he got the front once a week.
“Hey Maxie,” his mom said, rubbing his knee.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi Mr. Perry,” she said, waving. “That’s gonna cost me twenty dollars,” she said to Max as she
pulled away. Every minute late cost a dollar. That was the rule.
Claire was in the back, her feet propped up on the back of Max’s seat. She didn’t even look Max’s way, so he said nothing to her. It was obvious that neither of them would back down and apologize, and Max guessed it would be like a hundred other fights they’d had: it would be placed, precariously, in the crowded closet of all they’d done to each other, safe behind the door until someone turned the knob again.
Now that they were moving again, she picked up a conversation begun before Max’s arrival.
“You’re really not coming?” Claire said, seeming astonished. They were talking about some kind of talent show that she was going to be in.
“I can’t, Claire,” Max’s mom said, “I can’t take the after noon off. Not right now. You know that. Put your seatbelt on.”
Claire ignored this directive. “Why don’t you just quit? Tell Holloway to F off?”
They were talking about Mom’s boss. They were often talking about Mom’s boss. Claire knew everything about Mom’s job and advised her on how to handle it.
“I thought we decided I’d stick this out for at least a year and then—”
“But he’s not taking you seriously,” Claire interrupted. “You said he’s supposed to give you a raise if you finished the course. At the review he said—”
“I know, but don’t you think—”
“I talked to Dad and he said you should—”
“Don’t!” Mom barked. “Don’t …” she repeated, taking a deep breath and clenching her fists. “Don’t talk to your father about my job. He has too many opinions about me. I know you and he think this house is a failure, Claire, but he’s one voice I don’t need right now …”
Max was so tired of this kind of argument that he didn’t know what to say or think. He had tried to stop these discussions before but all that had happened was that the two of them turned on him at once, and he didn’t want that. Better to wait it out. Something grabbed his mother’s attention.
“Huh,” she said, looking out the window. “See that? You know what that is, Max? Hold your breath.” The traffic was stopped on three sides of the intersection as a line of black cars drove by. Max held his breath.
After the cars were gone, it occurred to Max to tell his mother about what he’d learned in Mr. Wisner’s class.
“We did planets today.”
His mom said nothing. Claire said nothing. It was as if Max hadn’t actually spoken. But he was sure he had spoken.
“Did you hear?” Max said.
His mom was squinting into the distance, as if still arguing, in her mind, with Claire, or her boss, or with Max’s father. She did this every day, usually while driving.
“Mr. Wisner said the sun’s gonna die,” Max said. “After you and me and everyone’s gone.” He looked to his mother for some response, but the profundity of what he said seemed to have no effect at all. “Did you know that?” he asked.
Still no response. He turned around to Claire, but her eyes were closed. Tinny music escaped from her white headphones.
Max turned back to his mom. “Can we stop it?”
Now his mom turned to him, finally focusing all her attention.
“You know, Max,” she said, “I really hope you treat women decently. I hope you never have a relationship with a woman you don’t respect.”
This didn’t seem to have anything to do with planets or the sun, but Max thought about it for a second and answered, more quietly than he intended, “Okay.”
The black cars now gone, she pulled into the intersection.
“Really,” she said. “I mean it.”
“I won’t,” Max said. “Or I will.” He couldn’t remember which way he was supposed to answer.
They drove in silence for a while. Max began deciphering the message his mom had given him. She did this periodically, tossing similar sorts of advice to him. He had starting writing it down, hoping it would make sense at some future date.
“Just try and be a decent person,” she added, finishing the matter. He nodded and looked out the window, spotting the city far beyond, the city where his father lived, looking like a tiny pile of grey rocks in the sea.
CHAPTER IX
Max decided to go for a quick bike ride before dinner. He was going to tell his mom he was leaving, but then didn’t, oh well. She was busy with Gary anyway. He was lounging on the couch, drinking red wine and watching one of their musicals. Every night was some musical.
Max burst out into the cold night and sped down the driveway. He had to think and he could only think while biking or building things, and he wanted to be biking, to think with the blood loudly filling his head.
He rode one-handed, then no-handed, then with his head slung back, squinting at the emerging stars. He whistled quietly to himself, then louder, then hummed, then sang out loud. It was a quiet night and he wanted to slash it open with his own voice.
“Aw, shut up, you,” a voice said.
Max recognized the voice. It was Mr. Beckmann. Max had just passed him and his dog, Achilles.
Max circled his bike around.
“You shut up, old bones,” Max said.
Mr. Beckmann laughed out loud. He was an older man, maybe eighty or a hundred, who lived down the road and was often seen walking, slowly and steadily, for hours at a time, through the streets and paths and forests, always with Achilles, a dog easily as big as Max and with an aristocratic bearing. The animal was so perfectly bred and well cared for it looked like a dictionary etching of a German shepard. Achilles knew Max well and was already laying on his side, urging Max to scratch his stomach.
Max dropped his bike and did so.
“So Maximilian,” Mr. Beckmann said. “How the hell are you?”
“Okay I guess,” Max answered. “I got in trouble again.”
“Oh yeah? What’d you do this time?”
Mr. Beckmann’s eyes were dangerously alive, punctuated by brows so thick and mischievously arched that he seemed at all times to be plotting a great and dastardly plan.
Max told him about soaking Claire’s room with the water.
“What’d you use?” Mr. Beckmann asked. “A bucket?”
Max nodded.
“Yeah, I would have used a bucket, too.”
This is why Max loved Mr. Beckmann: he was an equal. He seemed to have navigated his way through seven or so decades of adulthood without forgetting one moment of his childhood — what he loved and hated, feared and coveted.
Max and Mr. Beckmann stood for a long moment, breathing their loud grey breaths into the still night.
Max had visited Mr. Beckmann’s house a few times, and had walked carefully through, fascinated by his collection of strange old toys and posters. Mr. Beckmann had a thing for King Kong, and had collected various souvenirs and models from the movie’s first incarnation. There were also delicate tin toys, Mickey Mouse and Little Nemo, in glass displays. There were huge books full of paintings and all throughout the house, most of the time, was music, something classical, stringy, and bright.
The last time Max had been there, Mr. Beckmann had answered the phone and Max had overheard a colorful argument between the old man and one of the street’s new neighbors. This new neighbor apparently was objecting to the run-down barn in Mr. Beckmann’s backyard. It was a barn Max often played in, and where he had stored his wristrocket and M-80s. The man on the phone saw it as an eyesore and was apparently offering to remove it for Mr. Beckmann. Mr. Beckmann did not like the idea so much. “If I hear from you again,” he yelled at the phone, “I’ll hire a crane, pick that barn up, come over to your house, and drop that barn on your head.”
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.
CHAPTER X
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.