“I had to see my kingdom,” Max said, trying to sound as royal as possible. “To survey it. Carol gave me a tour.”
The wave of their anger seemed to retreat for a moment, then roared back.
“How come we weren’t invited?” Judith asked. “I could have shown you all that. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but I would have done it. Probably. If I felt inspired.”
“Judith, stop,” Carol said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “It was my job to give the tour and I gave it.”
“I didn’t want to go on the tour anyway,” Ira said.
“See?” Carol said, “no one missed out on anything. Everything is as it should be.”
There was a grudging chorus of acceptance of this explanation. Judith sat down, put her head on her chin, and looked up to Max.
“So Max,” started Judith. “Or King. What is it, anyway? King Max or what?”
“It’s King, Judith,” Carol answered.
She grinned. “Hmm. King Judith, yeah. I like the sound of that.” This got a chuckle out of Alexander. “So King Max,” Judith continued. “What kind of king are you going to be?”
Carol’s face tightened. “Judith, don’t—”
“I’m just asking him. You got to walk around the island all day, no doubt talking about all of us, who of us was good and who was not as good, and meanwhile we’ve been here suffering.”
Carol rolled his eyes. “Suffering? Really?”
Judith sniffled. “Yeah,” she said, quietly. “Suffering with all the questions. And the doubt.”
“And the void,” Ira added.
“And the void,” Judith repeated. “Almost forgot about the void. Ira’s feeling the void. You know how Ira feels about the void.” Seeing Max’s blank look, she explained: “He doesn’t like the void. Makes him feel hollow. And when he feels hollow, he chews on me, and that annoys me. And when I’m annoyed, I chew on small things made of bones and blood.”
Ira, now chewing on Judith’s arm again, whispered loudly in Judith’s ear: “And the hammers …”
“Right,” Judith said, “remember the hammers, Max? You had this whole story about the hammers, and how there was this king who could make them happy. Well, the hammers are unhappy, Max. What about the hammers? It’s been a whole day and so far nothing’s changed. The hammers are displeased.”
Carol laughed, dismissing her question. “Judith, please. Tell me you’re not happy right now. We’re all happy.” He turned around, finding a single tree still standing against the stark landscape. “Tree, tell me you’re unhappy.” The tree did not answer. Now he turned to a group of rocks, one of which Douglas had been wrestling the previous night. “Rocks, tell me if you feel misunderstood.” The rocks did not respond. Now with arms outstretched, Carol looked to the sky. “Sky, speak up if you feel unloved.” There was no answer. Now he turned back to Judith. “See, everything else in the world is perfectly content.”
Max smiled at Carol’s theatrics, and Carol smiled back. Carol then took Judith’s head into his mouth. Max froze, thinking something violent was about to happen, but instead Carol shook her head affectionately, like a dog playing with a chew toy.
Judith laughed. “Yeah, yeah, okay, I understand, you’ve got yours, Carol,” she said, freeing herself and wiping Carol’s saliva from her ears, “but he’s everyone’s king. What’s he going to do for us?”
“Right. Sure,” Carol said. “I get it. I know. But just give him a chance. Max has a lot of great ideas. His brain is the best I’ve ever seen.” Now he turned to Max. “Go ahead, Max, tell them your plan to make everything better for everyone always for all time.”
CHAPTER XXVI
Again Max reached into the dark velvet of his brain and found something. Was it a gem? He wasn’t sure.
“How about a parade?” he said.
He got only blank stares. No one knew what a parade was. But Max loved parades, had been in parades every year since he was born, every year but last year, when he had to be at his dad’s apartment, doing nothing all day except missing the parade that he was supposed to be in.
He had been invited to ride on the hood of one of the mini cars, the size of a kayak, driven by the Rotarians. He’d practiced with Mr. Leland, an oval-faced older man who wore a fez not just during parades but at all times. Some people called him Fez, and every time someone called him Fez he pretended to be baffled by the source of the nickname. Then, after a moment of deep thought, he would say, “Oh, because of the hat!” That put the nicknamers in their place every time. Nicknamers are usually the least creative people in the world, he said.
Anyway, the parade landed on one of the days Max was supposed to be with his dad in the city. Since he’d left, his dad had tried to avoid all situations where he would run into one or two or a few hundred of Max’s mom’s friends, so the parade was out.
“A par … What is one of those?” Ira asked.
“A parade?” Max explained that a parade was, first of all, one of the great inventions of mankind. Second, he said, it was the best way to demonstrate to the citizens of any civilization that there was a new king. It would entail Max leading all of his new subjects through the island, stomping very loudly and while singing many songs, and ideally doing so for the benefit of the thousand lesser-animal inhabitants of the island.
“Wow, that sounds pretty good,” Douglas said.
And so they lined up, with Max in the lead, scepter in hand. It was decided that they would parade through the forest, around the gully, across the many-colored meadow — this is where the mini-tornadoes dwelled, Max was told, and he’d see them when he saw them — and then finally finishing at the lagoon, where, Max figured, they would take a swim to wash off the exertion of the parade. His parades at home typically ended at the town pool, and he had come to associate the parade’s end with a massive free-for-all in the main pool, diving off the high dive and playing Marco Polo deep into the evening.
“Everyone ready?” he asked.
Carol was directly behind him, followed by Douglas. Judith was next, and then Ira, Alexander, and the Bull.
“Where’s Katherine?” Max asked.
“We can’t wait for her,” Carol said quickly.
“She wouldn’t want to do this kind of thing anyway,” Douglas noted. “She’s not much of a joiner, King.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
“That would diminish her aura,” Judith said, dressing the word aura in garish sarcasm.
Max didn’t like parading without the full retinue, but a parade like this, all ready to go, couldn’t wait. Max raised his scepter high, straightened his crown and took a deep breath.
“Forward march!” he yelled.
Max marched in the most parade-like and martial way he could manage, pumping his knees and thrusting the scepter over his head with every step.
The rest of the paraders followed suit, and, at Max’s urging, improvised however they saw fit. Carol began marching with both of his arms over his head like a ghoul. Douglas marched with his feet shuffling side-to-side, which seemed much more difficult and tiring than necessary, but Max thought it gave the parade a certain panache. Judith and Ira were marching in a more or less traditional way, forward and high-stepping, though Ira, with his poor balance, was having trouble maintaining a straight line. Max couldn’t see the Bull or Alexander very well, but he trusted that they knew what they were doing and were making the parade proud.
After parading for about an hour, through sparse forest, much of it charred and crushed by the rumpus the previous night, Max was beginning to lament the one conspicuously missing part of the parade: spectators.