Freak the Mighty

“Was the real Darth Vader as tall as this?” Freak asks, from where he’s riding high up on my shoulders.

  “I thought it was just a movie.”

  “You know what I mean. What’s that!”

  “That” is a cat that runs out from under my feet so out-of-nowhere sudden that my heart goes wham.

  “Was it a black cat?” Freak wants to know.

  “Too dark to tell,” I say. “Are we almost there?”

  Finally I figure out it’s hard to see because the Darth Vader cape is hanging in my eyes, but by then we’re at the end of the block and the storm drain is right there by the curb.

  “See if you can pull it open,” Freak says. He’s standing with his arms folded, and the expression on his face — well, he really does look like a pint-sized Darth Vader.

  I hook my hands in the storm drain grate and give it a heave but nothing happens.

  “I can’t budge it.”

  “Try again,” he says with his arms folded, like he’s a lord of the universe.

  I try again and it’s like the grate is Super Glued or something. No way can I pull it up. Freak is tugging at my leg and he goes, “Option Two is now in effect.”

  He reaches inside his little cape. Out comes a flashlight, one of those small kinds that look sort of like a cigarette lighter, and also a spool of kite string.

  “I devised a special retrieval device,” Freak says.

  “Looks like a bent paper clip on a string,” I say, and Freak tells me to shut up and follow orders.

  “You hold the string,” he says, and then he gets down on his knees and shines the little flashlight through the grate. “Can you see it?” he asks. “Can you?”

  I look, but it’s hard to see anything and it smells like something died in the storm drain, which come to think of it, it probably did. Rats or worse.

  “Down there,” Freak says. “The beam is hitting it right now.”

  “That? That’s just a piece of junk.”

  “Wrong,” Freak says, real fierce. “It looks like a piece of junk. It may very well contain fabulous wealth. Drop the line down and see if you can hook it.”

  I’m thinking, boy, what a butthead, rolling in the dirt for this little Darth Vader so he can play pretend games in the middle of the night, but I do what he asks, I drop the hook down, and much to my surprise, it actually hooks into something and when I pull up on the kite string I can see what it is.

  “A purse,” I say. “Looks like a grotty old purse.”

  “Careful,” Freak says. “Pull it up to the grate so I can grab the strap.”

  I bring it up an inch at a time, and Darth — excuse me, Freak — manages to get his small hand down through the grate and grab hold of the soggy old purse and then he almost drops it. I yank up on the kite string and we both manage to squeeze the slimy purse up through the bars.

  “Whew! Mission accomplished,” Freak says.

  The old purse is torn and wet, and I don’t want to touch it unless I have gloves on.

  “Gross,” I say. “Somebody must have flushed this down a toilet.”

  “No way,” Freak says. “I saw one of Tony D.’s punks stuff it down there yesterday morning.”

  “Yeah? They must have stole it.”

  “No doubt,” Freak says, and he opens the clasp and points his little light inside the purse.

  By now I know there isn’t going to be any treasure, but still this is pretty cool, recovering stuff that Blade’s gang ripped off from some little old lady or whatever.

  “A wallet,” Freak says, and he flips open this cheap-looking wallet, the kind that’s made to hold credit cards.

  There’s no money inside, but there is a plastic ID card, and on the plastic card is a lady’s name.

  “Loretta Lee,” Freak says. “I’ll bet you anything she’s a damsel in distress.”

  Which, as it turns out, is almost true. The real deal is that she’s a damsel who causes distress. Which we find out the very next day.

  The address on the ID card is this place on the other side of the millpond. They used to call it the New Tenements, but now everybody mostly calls it the New Testaments, which Gram told me has nothing to do with the Bible.

  “People will make their jokes,” she says. “Call that place whatever you want, but you are not to set foot over there. Is that clear, Maxwell dear?”

  It’s not like I wanted to go into the Testaments, so it was real easy to keep that promise, and then the day after we pull that soggy purse out of the sewer Freak explains how it’s okay to break a promise if you’re on a quest.

  “There may even be a reward involved,” he says.

  “The lady won’t have much money if she lives in the Testaments,” I say. “Poor people live there, and dope fiends.”

  What we do is go down to the playground and cut over behind that little patch of trees, just in case anybody is looking, and then we can circle around behind the pond. Freak is riding up top, which he almost always does now. That way he doesn’t have to wear his leg brace or carry his crutches, and besides, I like how it feels to have a really smart brain on my shoulders, helping me think.

  Freak is talking a mile a minute, more stuff about the Round Table and how important quests are, and why knights are bound up with oaths, which is not the same thing as swearing, and I’m trying to listen and not ask questions because if I ask questions, he’ll pull out his dictionary.

  When we get to the Testaments, though, Freak shuts right up. It’s this big, falling-apart place with a bunch of apartments, and it looks sad and smells like fish and sour milk. There’re a lot of bikes and toys lying around, mostly bashed up and broken, and the little kids who live there look almost as busted up as the toys. When they see us coming they make these screaming noises and run away, but you can tell they’re not really scared, they just want to pretend like we’re a monster or something, eek eek.

  “Maybe we should reconsider this particular quest,” Freak says. He’s up there on my shoulders and he’s getting fidgety, squirming around.

  But we’re already outside the apartment door, and I go, “Maybe she really needs that ID card,” so it’s my fault what happens next.

  The door opens before we even ring the bell, and this hand comes snaking out and reaches for the mailbox and finds this rolled-up newspaper and pulls it back inside. And there’s something about the blind way that hand moves that’s creepy. Get out of here, I’m thinking.

  Then, before I can get my feet moving fast enough to leave, this woman’s voice is cussing us out.

  “Iggy!” she says. “Iggy, come here and see this!”

  Now she’s standing in the doorway, this scrawny, yellow-haired woman with small, hard eyes and blurry red lips. She’s wearing this ratty old bathrobe and she’s smoking this cigarette and squinting at us and making a face.

  “Iggy,” she says out of the side of her mouth, “come here and tell me is the circus in town or what?”

  Next thing there’s this big hairy dude in the doorway, he’s got a huge beer gut and these giant arms all covered with blue tattoos and he’s got a beard that looks like it’s made out of red barbed wire.

  “Ain’t the circus,” he says, spitting a big gob on the step. “This here is the carnival.”

  Freak isn’t saying anything, and I want to get out of here, so I go, “Sorry, wrong number,” and I’m trying to back away and not fall over a tricycle when the hairy dude comes out the door real quick and gets in my way.

  “Not so fast,” he says. “Who sent you?”

  “I know the big one,” the woman is saying. She’s waving her cigarette around and squinting her eyes up and you can tell she’s thinking on something, worrying it like a dog with a bone. “I seen him around somewhere. Don’t he look familiar, Iggy? Don’t he?”

  Freak finally says, “Please excuse us, we have the wrong address. We were, uhm, trying to locate a Miss Loretta Lee.”

  The tattoo dude hears that and he starts to laugh, this fat sound way down in h
is big belly, and he goes, “You hear that, Loretta? This an old flame of yours or what?” Then he reaches up and pokes me in the chest hard enough to make me catch my breath, and he says, “Cat got your tongue, kid? What is this, a Siamese-twin act?”

  All I can think to say is, “Oops,” because we have the right address after all. The squinty woman in the robe is Loretta Lee, and even more important, Iggy is Iggy Lee, and I feel like a total butthead because I’ve heard of Iggy Lee, he’s the boss of The Panheads, this bad-news motorcycle gang.

  “We found your purse!” Freak blurts out, and he tosses down the purse and Iggy Lee catches it with one hand and he gives Loretta this secret look, like he’s going to have some fun here.

  “You better come inside,” he says, looking up at Freak. “You and Frankenstein.”

  “Sorry,” Freak says, and his voice is chattery high. “We’ll have to decline your kind invitation because we, uhm, we have to leave now.”

  Loretta flicks her cigarette butt at my feet and she says, “Iggy says come inside, you better do it.”

  So we go inside. I have to take Freak off my shoulders so we can get in the door and that’s when Loretta looks at me real hard and she says, “I know that one. It’s like a flash from the past, Iggy. You know him?”

  Iggy isn’t paying any attention to her, he’s pointing at this ratty chair and he says, “Sit down, it makes me nervous looking up.”

  Loretta comes around and she says, “Don’t be making Iggy nervous. Not this early in the day. Last dude made him nervous, they had to —”

  “Shut up, Loretta,” Iggy says in this real quiet voice. “I’m thinking. You’re right, he does look familiar.”

  I’m sitting in this chair, which feels like it might bust apart, and Freak is right next to me and I can see he’s trying to stand straight but it’s not easy because he’s all bent up inside.

  “Names,” Iggy says.

  Freak clears his throat and tries to make his voice sound deep and more grown up. “We’re sorry to disturb you, but we have to go home now. It’s a matter of some urgency.”

  Iggy reaches out and he flicks his fingers at Freak’s nose, whack. I can tell it hurts, but Freak doesn’t say anything, he just tenses up.

  Iggy goes, “I ask a question, you better answer, get it? Names. I want your names.”

  Freak tells his name and then mine and Iggy reaches down and pats him on the head. “Very good,” he says. “Now that wasn’t hard, was it? Next question, where’d you get Loretta’s purse?”

  Freak tells him we found it in the storm drain. He doesn’t mention us dressing up all in black, or the Darth Vader costume, or anything about knights or quests.

  “Next question,” Iggy says. “Where’s the money?”

  Loretta coughs on her new cigarette and says, “But Iggy, there wasn’t any money,” and he goes, “Shut up, Loretta,” and she coughs again and shuts up, you can tell she’s afraid of Iggy, the way she holds herself tight whenever he says anything.

  Freak goes, “I’ve got two dollars in change, you can have it but we have to go home now.”

  Iggy gives him this look like he’s thinking seriously about throwing up and he says, “What is it with you, you’ve gotta go home? We’re having a nice little talk here, don’t spoil it.”

  All of a sudden Loretta jumps up and she goes, “Iggy! Iggy! I’ve got it! Kenny Kane! Remember Kenny Kane?”

  For a second I think he’s going to hit her, and then he relaxes and really looks at me and his eyes go wide and he nods and says, “Sure. That’s it. Kenny Kane. You’re right, he’s a ringer for old Killer Kane. Must be his kid, huh? Sure it is.”

  Loretta looks real happy that she finally figured it out and she runs into the kitchen and kicks some stuff out of the way and pulls open the refrigerator and we can hear her laughing and saying, “I knew it, I just knew it.”

  When she comes back in she’s got two cans of Bud and she pops them both and gives one to Iggy. “Breakfast of champions,” she says. “What a flash, huh? You remember that time old Kenny —”

  “Shut up, Loretta!” Iggy says, then he chugs the Bud and squashes the can in his fist and he drops it right on the floor. Which is the first time I notice all the other crushed cans, they’re everywhere, the whole place is like a trash can or a big ashtray or something.

  Meanwhile Freak is giving me this look like he has no idea what’s going on, and that look scares me more than Iggy Lee and all his tattoos.

  “I’ve got him, too,” Loretta says, snapping her fingers. “The midget or dwarf or whatever he is. He must be Gwen’s kid, you remember Gwen? Stuck-up Gwen?”

  “No,” Iggy says, and his eyes are burning into me. “Never heard of Gwen.”

  Loretta goes, “Doesn’t matter. What a flash this is. Kenny Kane. Time flies, huh, Ig? I can remember when these two were born. And then, what was it, a couple of years later Kenny does his thing and he’s in the yard, right? Doing time.”

  Iggy says, “That he is. I know a guy knows him inside.” He gives me this creepy look and he says, “You go up there to visit the old man, you tell him Iggy says hello, okay?”

  “I doubt he even knows his father, Ig. He was only a little kid when it happened. Right?”

  I don’t say anything and Freak is looking at me like he’s never seen me before and then Iggy says, “Killer Kane. What a tough hombre he was.”

  Loretta says, “I heard he seen the light in there. He’s got religion, is that true?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Iggy snorts and he says, “He don’t know. You don’t know much, do you?”

  I shake my head.

  Loretta says, “He’s some kinda retard, Ig. He don’t even know how big and strong he is, I’ll bet.” She pokes Iggy or tickles him and in this strange giggly voice she says, “Whyn’t you find out? Find out if he’s as strong as he looks?”

  Iggy scowls and he goes, “Give me a break, Loretta.” He gives me this long look and then he hooks his thumb at the door and says, “Show time is over, boys. Get out of here, the both of you.”

  Loretta says, “But, Iggy, we could have some fun.”

  “You’re the retard, Loretta,” Iggy says. “What if Killer Kane hears I was messing with his kid? No thank you.”

  “He’s in for life,” she says. “What’s the harm?”

  “Life ain’t life, how many times I tell you that?”

  Loretta is squinting at him and she goes, “Are you serious? He’s getting out someday?” and Iggy looks at me and tells her to shut up again.

  Finally we get to the door and that’s when Loretta wants to rub Freak on the head. Real hard, with her knuckles.

  “This is for luck,” she says to Iggy. “It’s good luck, rubbing a dwarf on the head.”

  Freak is trying to duck away and he says, “I’m not a dwarf and I’m not good luck.”

  So Loretta gives up on rubbing his head and she stands up straight and folds her arms and says, “Hey, midget man? I know all about you. Your old man was a magician, did you know that?”

  Freak is scuttling around behind me, keeping out of her way, but when she says that, I can tell he wants to know about his father, if maybe he really was a magician.

  “Yeah,” Loretta says. “Right after you was born. He must be a magician, because as soon as he heard the magic words ‘birth defect,’ he disappeared.”

  A second later Iggy shoves us out the door.

  I feel real bad for Freak, because he hates it when people try to rub his head for luck, but I don’t say a word, I just run us home, thumping the short way back around the pond, and my big feet never even trip me up because I’m on automatic, I’m this running machine.

  “Whoa!” Freak says when we get to his house. “Now that was an adventure, huh?”

  “An evil dude like Iggy Lee, we were lucky to get out of there alive.”

  Freak goes, “No way, that was all talk.”

  Yeah, right. The real deal is that I was scared the whole
time I was there, and so was Freak, even if he won’t admit it now.

  “That stuff about my father was true,” Freak says, studying his fingernails and acting real cool again. “The Fair Gwen won’t talk about it. All she says is, ‘He made his decision and I made mine.’ But I know he ran away because of me. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  For some reason that really gets me laughing. Something about the way he says it, or maybe it’s all that nervous stuff left over from the New Testaments. Whatever, I’m rolling on the ground like a moron and Freak is strutting around and saying stuff like, “Loretta my Queen, wouldst thou accept my hand in marriage?” and, “Sir Iggy, wouldst thou do us all a big favor and fall upon thy sword?” And I’m laughing so hard I can hardly breathe.

  Everything is pretty much okay after that. One thing we don’t do, though, we don’t talk about my father, good old Killer Kane. Which is fine by me.

  School.

  For the last week or so it’s like getting jabbed with a little needle every time I hear that word. Gram is trying to pretend how excited she is I’m finally in the eighth grade, like this is a really big deal. Which is a joke, because the only reason I got passed from seventh grade is because they figured this way the big butthead can be — quote — someone else’s problem, thank God, we’ve had quite enough of Maxwell Kane — unquote.

  Gram takes me out to the mall to get new clothes, which is about as much fun as going to the dentist, except maybe worse because at least at the dentist you’re mostly just in the chair with the door closed, where at the mall with Gram it’s like hello, world, here I am, take a good look.

  This girl at the shoe store, she’s got a little smirk and she goes, “Thirteen triple E? Do they make shoes that big?” and Gram goes, “I’m quite sure they do, dear, you go ask the manager.” And then she looks at me and she goes, “Maxwell, this is not major surgery, so you will please, as a special favor to me, wipe that wounded look off your face and try to be polite.”

  Yeah, right. The manager, when he comes out with these Brand-X running shoes, he wants to help me take off my old shoes, like he’s pretty sure I can’t do it by myself, but I give him this look and he backs off and lets me do it myself.