Freak the Mighty

  Freak, he’s looking over her shoulder at me looking over Gram’s shoulder, and he gives me the thumbs-up as she carries him away.

  “Freak the Mighty!” he says. “Freak the Mighty strikes again!”

  We all of us had to go down to the police station, of course, where they took a bunch of pictures of the bruises on my neck, and then they insisted I needed X rays and so we had to go over to the hospital and get that done and then go back to the police station again, which wore on my nerves almost as much as being kidnapped.

  Grim, the second time we go to the cops, he’s sitting there in this room with me waiting, and he says, “I can’t tell you what it felt like, coming up out of the basement and seeing that double track of footprints in the snow. I knew it was him, I just knew in my heart.”

  He kept insisting that Gram go home, which she finally did, because we were there at the police station for hours more, me telling all about it over and over, until I thought I would faint dead away if just one more person asked me what happened after I woke up in the dark and was stolen from my own bed.

  Grim, he just keeps patting me on the arm and saying, “This is important, Max. Maybe this time they’ll lock him up for good.”

  That’s what everybody keeps saying, that this time they’ve got Killer Kane where they want him, in violation of parole, in violation of a restraining order, abduction of a minor, and two counts of attempted murder, me and the Heroic Biker Babe, which is what the papers took to calling Loretta Lee.

  The word is she’s hurt pretty bad because he cracked a bone in her neck, but she’ll be okay in the long run. Iggy, when I saw him that time in the hospital waiting, he was chewing a hole right through his beard he was so worried, and it made me think he wasn’t such a bad dude after all.

  It all goes to show, like Grim says, that you can’t always judge a book by the cover.

  It turns out to be a pretty weird Christmas vacation, as you might imagine, and Gram keeps fussing at me and won’t let me sleep in the cellar.

  “I don’t care if he is under lock and key,” she says.

  Grim, he says please humor the woman, she’s worried about to death, and so I sleep upstairs on the foldout and at night Gram keeps checking to see I’m there. Which is a pain, but she can’t help herself, and anyhow I’m just as glad not to be alone in the down under.

  Freak, well, the Fair Gwen just about threw a fit when she got him home, because of him disobeying a direct order and sneaking away to rescue me, but after a while she calms down and all she does is just look at him and shake her head.

  “What am I going to do with you?” she asks.

  “Put me up for adoption,” he says. “I want to go live with the Waltons.”

  He means the TV show that keeps repeating, and of course he’s teasing her, but the Fair Gwen is not amused.

  “No more crazy adventures or dangerous quests, young man. You have to be careful,” she keeps saying. “Extra careful.”

  She means the trouble he has sometimes catching his breath, because of the way his insides keep growing faster than his outside, which hasn’t really grown at all.

  Freak goes into the medical research place every few months now, which he says is a real pain, not that it actually hurts.

  “Dr. Spivak says my unique status as a marvel of genetic aberration makes me an object of intense curiosity,” he says in that lofty way of his. “Specialists from the world over are familiar with my case.”

  “What about the secret operation?” I ask when the Fair Gwen can’t hear us. “The one where you’ll get a robot body?”

  Freak gets this very cool, scientific look on his face, and he always says the same thing: “The bionic research continues, my friend. The work goes on.”

  I don’t know why I keep asking, because it gives me the creeps. You’d think I could be as cool as Freak about the idea, because it’s him that’s going to get a new bionic body, but just thinking about it makes me want to jump up and run around.

  I keep telling Gram that when Freak is in the hospital for his tests I shouldn’t have to go to school, because we’re like a team, but she won’t buy it.

  “I know Kevin has been a great help to you,” she says. “But you’ve got a brain of your own, haven’t you dear?”

  Yeah, right.

  The other thing about school that’s different after Christmas vacation is how jealous everybody is that we got our pictures in the paper and on the local TV. Mrs. Donelli in English calls us “the dynamic duo” and she put a cutout picture from the paper up on the bulletin board. Wouldn’t you know some goon put mustaches on us the very first day.

  Freak says he looks cool with a mustache and he can’t wait to grow one, and he makes Mrs. Donelli leave the picture up. Me, I’d just as soon forget about the whole thing. I really hate the idea of having to testify at the trial and tell what really happened, but everybody says I have to if I want him locked up for the rest of his life. Which I do, especially after what he tried to do to poor Loretta, who was only trying to help.

  “They can’t make you if you don’t want to,” Freak says. “A son doesn’t have to testify against his father.”

  “Grim thinks it will do me good. Plus he’s really worried he’ll get off again, or fool the jury by quoting from the Bible.”

  “Grim worries too much,” Freak says. “Everybody worries too much.”

  The way it finally turns out with Killer Kane, Freak is right. Because just before the trial is supposed to start, and I’ve got my fingernails chewed down to the second knuckle, Grim gets this telephone call that makes him punch his fist in the air and go, “Yes! Yes!”

  What happened, they made a deal and Killer Kane pled guilty, which means he has to serve out the rest of his original sentence plus ten more years.

  “He’ll be an old man when he gets out,” Grim says. “He’ll be older than me.”

  That should make me happy, but instead I feel really weird and worried, and Grim, who still thinks he knows everything, says I just have to get used to the idea.

  “The man is an accident of nature,” he says. “All you got from him is your looks and your size. You’ve got your mother’s heart, and that’s what counts.”

  The weird thing I keep thinking about, what if something happens when I get older and I turn out to be another accident of nature?

  Grim sees me thinking about that one night just before bed, and he sits on the end of the foldout and he says, “Things will make a lot more sense when you finish growing up, Maxwell. Now sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  Grim means well, I know that, but sometimes he says the numbest things. Because it’s growing up that worries me.

  ��Spring has sprung,” Freak says. “And so are we.”

  This is the day school gets out, and we’re taking the long way home. By now I’ve been carrying him around on my shoulders for almost a year. We call it walking high, and even if we haven’t been going on any dangerous quests lately, so the Fair Gwen won’t have to throw a fit, Freak hasn’t exactly given up on slaying dragons.

  “The world is really and truly green all over,” he says. “Do you remember what it used to be like, back in the Ice Age, when the glaciers covered the earth and the saber-toothed tiger roamed the frozen night?”

  “Uh, no,” I say. “How could I remember that? I wasn’t even born.”

  “Don’t be a pinhead,” he says. “Remembering is just an invention of the mind.”

  I go, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that if you want to, you can remember anything, whether it happened or not. Like I can remember what it was like in the Ice Age. I kept trying to invent stuff — the wheel, central heating, indoor plumbing — but the Neanderthals were happy with just a campfire and a fur coat.”

  If you guessed that Freak has been reading a book about the Ice Age, you’re right. He’s been seeing a saber-toothed tiger behind every bush, except that so far, all of them have turned out to
be stray cats, or once it was this skunk and it’s a good thing I can run fast or we’d have to soak in tomato juice, which is the only way to get rid of the stink.

  “Inventing electricity would be tough,” he says, “without copper wire and magnets, but I could handle inventing a compass — all you have to do is rub the needle. That way everybody could head south and get away from the glaciers.”

  “First you need to invent a time machine,” I say. “So you can go back there and give all the cavemen a hard time about indoor plumbing.”

  Freak goes, “You don’t need a time machine if you know how to remember.”

  Which is something I’ll always remember, him saying that and me trying to figure it out.

  Freak’s birthday is a couple of days after school gets out, and the Fair Gwen has already made it clear he’s not getting a ride on the space shuttle.

  “Thirteen is supposed to be extra special,” he says. “The least you could do is get my name on the list. Or how about a linear accelerator, just a small one so I can split a few atoms?”

  The Fair Gwen goes, “I suppose this means you’re going to be an obnoxious teenager.”

  The deal is, this is really two birthdays for the price of one, because Freak the Mighty is almost a year old.

  “Talk about a prodigy,” Freak says. “One year old and already he’s on his way to ninth grade.”

  The Fair Gwen just rolls her eyes when we talk like that. Freak says we can’t expect her to understand, because you can’t really get what it means to be Freak the Mighty unless you are Freak the Mighty.

  Anyhow, the party is just a family affair because Freak isn’t supposed to get overexcited, which is like saying the moon isn’t supposed to go around the earth.

  “Last year I got the ornithopter,” he says. “This year, why not a helicopter? A real one, though, you can’t expect a teenager to play with toys.”

  “Why not a jet plane?” the Fair Gwen says.

  “Cool,” Freak says. “A Learjet.”

  What he’s really getting, and I’ve been sworn to secrecy, is this new computer, the one he’s been drooling over in his computer magazines. It comes with a modem, which means if he has to stay home for some reason, he can go to school over the telephone. The idea is I’d be there in the classroom with a matching computer. The only problem, I don’t know squid about computers.

  “You’ll learn,” the Fair Gwen says. “Kevin will teach you.”

  “But why would he have to stay home?” I ask her.

  We’re out in the kitchen and she and Gram are frosting the cakes and Freak is hanging out in the living room, acting like he intends to have a party every day for the rest of his life.

  “Maybe he won’t have to stay home,” the Fair Gwen says, and she and Gram kind of lock eyeballs for a second, that secret code that mothers have. “This is just in case, Max.”

  “I think maybe he already guessed about the computer,” I say. “That’s why he’s jerking your chain about the space shuttle ride and Learjets.”

  “I’m not surprised,” the Fair Gwen says. “You can’t keep anything from Kevin.”

  Freak hardly touches his supper, he says he’s saving his appetite for the cake, and finally we’re all done eating except for Grim, who keeps rubbing his belly and rolling his eyes and telling the Fair Gwen what a genius she is with fresh peas and new potatoes and salmon and he’ll have just a smidgeon more, thanks, until finally Gram clears her throat and smiles and Grim has to apologize for being such a pig.

  The funny thing is, when at last they do bring out the cake, Freak asks me to flame out the candles while he makes the wish, and then he doesn’t even touch his piece, he just sort of pushes it around the plate. I figure he’s so excited about getting the new computer that he’s lost his appetite. Not that he’s letting on he doesn’t feel good, he’s acting just as wise and smart-mouthed as ever.

  “I should have asked for earplugs,” he says when we’re done singing “Happy Birthday.” “You better check the glassware for cracks.”

  “Hush up,” the Fair Gwen says, “or we’ll give you another chorus.”

  When she brings out the computer he acts so surprised and happy, maybe he really is surprised. Right away he wants to turn it on and show off what a brain he is, and because it’s his birthday we all have to sit there and admire him and go, “Amazing,” and “Fantastic,” and “Kevin, how did you know that?” and so on.

  He’s showing Grim how to play 3-D chess, and just watching that makes me dizzy, so after a while I go out to the kitchen and help clean up, which is something I’m good at.

  “Maxwell never breaks a dish,” Gram is saying. “He’s very sure-handed for someone so large.”

  We’re almost done putting stuff away and wiping the counter when Grim shouts from the other room.

  All he says is, “Kevin!” but we can tell right away that something is wrong.

  We run in and Freak is leaning back in his chair making this wheezing sound, panting real fast, and his eyelids are flickering.

  “He’s having a seizure,” Grim says. “Call an ambulance.”

  The Fair Gwen is already on the phone.

  I run out in the street and start waving my arms and jumping up and down so they’ll know where to stop, and I keep running back in the house to check on things, but the Fair Gwen says there’s nothing we can do except wait.

  They won’t let me visit him the first day, and Gram says I’ll just have to be patient and let the doctors do their business, but I can’t stand just sitting around so I decide to walk over to the hospital, which Grim says is miles and miles, but suit myself.

  I know how to get there because Freak and I went yonder that way once so he could show me the medical research building. It’s not the same, though, without Freak along to turn the houses into castles and the swimming pools into moats.

  All I keep thinking is, what a gyp it is to have to go into the hospital on your birthday.

  Finally I get there and I see the Fair Gwen’s car in the visitor parking lot, but Grim says I should leave her alone and let her tend to her son, so what I do is go around back to the medical research building and find this stupid little tree I can sit under.

  I have the old ornithopter bird with me and I’m winding it up and flying it around. Figuring maybe Freak will get a chance to look out the window and see it flittering by, that’s my plan, and I’m under that puny little tree messing with the bird until this guy mowing the lawn makes me move. So I wander around to the front of the hospital and that’s when the Fair Gwen finds me.

  “Maxwell!” she says, and she gives me this great big hug. A wet hug, because she’s been crying. “Max, we’ve been looking all over for you. Kevin wants to see you. He’s making quite a fuss about it and Dr. Spivak says it’s okay, but just for a few minutes.”

  So the Fair Gwen takes me inside, and I figure we’re heading for the medical research building, but instead we go into the regular hospital.

  “He’s in the ICU,” she says.

  “So they’re taking really good care of him?”

  “They’re doing their best, Max,” she says.

  The intensive care unit is this place where there are so many nurses, you can’t hardly turn around without bumping into one, which I do as soon as we get there. Every patient gets a room alone, and there’s all this electronic gear the Fair Gwen says is called “telemetry,” which means when Freak sneezes, the nurses know about it before he can wipe his nose.

  I’m not scared at all until I actually go into his room and see how small he looks on the bed. They’ve got him sitting up with all these tubes going into his arms and up his nose and Dr. Spivak is guarding him, she won’t let me come too close.

  “I thought no visitors was the best policy for now,” Dr. Spivak says. “But what Kevin wants, Kevin gets.”

  Dr. Spivak is this small woman with short red hair and a real stern face, and it’s like she’s mad because Freak wants to see me, or because I’
ll break some of her precious equipment.

  “That will be all,” Freak says to her. “You are dismissed.”

  The thing is, his voice sounds funny. Not just faint and weak, but kind of whistley. Only when I get closer do I see he’s got this weird little plastic button stuck in his neck.

  “It’s called a tracheotomy,” he says, holding his finger against the button, which stops the whistling noise. “Standard procedure to facilitate breathing.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “No way,” he says. “I think it’s cool. Listen to this.”

  Then he plays with his finger against the button, making his throat whistle a tune, which he says is the theme from Star Trek, although you can hardly recognize it.

  “So when do you come home?” I ask.

  Freak can’t move much the way they’ve got him set up in the bed, so he sort of shakes his eyes instead of his head. “I’m not coming home,” he says. “Not in my present manifestation.”

  I go, “What?”

  “The Bionic Unit is on red alert,” he says. “Tonight they’ll take me down there for my special operation. The next time you see me, I’ll be new and improved.”

  “I’m scared,” I say.

  “Don’t be a moron,” he says. “You’re not the one having surgery.”

  “I still wish they wouldn’t.”

  “Don’t argue with me,” he says.

  I have to lean close to hear him because his voice is so small and whispery.

  He goes, “If you argue with me, I’ll get upset and they can tell on the telemetry. Then you’ll get in trouble.”

  So I just stand there like a lump and don’t say anything for a while. I put the ornithopter on the foot of the bed, but I don’t think he notices.

  “See that book on the table?” he asks.

  He can’t point, but I see the book on the table.

  “Open it,” he says.

  The book reminds me of the dictionary he gave me for Christmas, except when I open it, all the pages are blank.

  “That’s for you,” he says. “I want you to fill it up with our adventures.”