Freak the Mighty

  The car passes and you can’t see through the dark windows and you can hear the snow crunching under the tires, squeaky and frozen.

  “We’re invisible,” he says, making me stand up. “Now now, isn’t that a kick in the pants?”

  My feet already know where we’re going. The New Testaments. There’re a few lights on in the old buildings, and you can see some of the windows are cracked, it looks like a knife cut against the light, and he’s saying, “You know about Mary and Joseph, how they sought shelter in Bethlehem, and how the baby Jesus was born in a manger?”

  I try to nod and the funny thing is, even though I’m not cold, my teeth are chattering, so it’s like the rest of me is freezing but my head hasn’t noticed.

  “That’s what we’re doing, seeking shelter,” he says. “Except this isn’t exactly a manger we’re going to.”

  “No, sir,” I say. “It sure isn’t.”

  He touches me real soft on the back of the neck and says, “I didn’t ask you a question, boy. Rule number one, don’t sass your old man.”

  I make sure my mouth stays shut. We’re coming up on the Testaments and they look almost pretty with the new snow coating the roofs and making the yards clean and white and soft. You can see where an old bike handlebar is coming up through the snow, and shapes of other things left out, and even the old car up on blocks looks new, like it might take off into the air without any wheels.

  I know where we’re going, even though he doesn’t tell me.

  The door opens before we get there, and Loretta Lee is standing in the light and she’s saying, “Iggy! Come look what the cat dragged in.”

  He says, “Say hello to my boy, Loretta. Ain’t he a chip off the old block?”

  Then we’re inside, and Iggy is there bolting the door behind us and closing the shades, and Loretta, she’s wearing this real slinky red dress that looks like it might fall off if she sneezed, she’s saying, “Mission accomplished, hey Kenny? I knew you could do it, if anybody could.”

  Iggy says, “Watch your mouth, Loretta.”

  “I do believe you’ve been drinking,” my father says. “Has she been drinking, Iggy? I thought I made myself clear.”

  “Hey, it’s Christmas Eve,” Iggy says, and he sounds real nervous. “A little punch, what can it hurt?”

  “A little punch,” Loretta says, and her voice is slurpy. “That’s all.”

  She’s wearing these fake eyelashes and they’re coming loose, so her eyes look almost as blurry as her mouth. I know because she keeps flapping her eyes at me and smiling so I can see where the lipstick got on her teeth.

  Iggy says, “She’s okay, Kenny, you got my word.”

  “Oh right,” Loretta says. “Turned over a new leaf, Preacher Kane turned over a new leaf so there’s no booze for anybody on Christmas Eve, even in our own house where a man is his castle.”

  “Oh, shut it,” Iggy says, and he makes Loretta sit down on the busted couch, where she kind of leans over and waves at me, wink wink.

  “Bring me and my boy some food,” my father says. “We’ve been out in the cold for eight long years and we’re hungry, aren’t we, son?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say.

  Iggy goes out into the kitchen to fry up some hamburgers and we sit there waiting, not saying anything. Loretta is snuggled up on the couch, passed out with this dreamy look on her face.

  I eat that greasy hamburger, even though I can hardly stand to swallow, and Iggy is fussing around like it’s such a big deal, having Kenny Kane in the house, and it’s hard to believe he’s the same Iggy who is boss of The Panheads, this motorcycle gang that strikes fear into the hearts of everybody, including the cops.

  Then Loretta wakes up and stretches like a cat, yawning so you can practically see right down her throat, and she says, “I guess I needed that.” Then she giggles, hiding her mouth. “I guess I need a lot of things.”

  My father wipes his mouth with this folded-up napkin and he ignores her and looks at Iggy and says, “You ever do time, you could be a cook.”

  Iggy gives this nervous heh heh heh, like wouldn’t that be fun, being a cook in prison. He says, “Any time you want, I’ll show you that place I told you about.”

  My father stands up. “Now is good,” he says. He looks right at me. “Come on, boy.”

  There’s a back alley between the tenement buildings, you can’t see it from the road, and Iggy takes us along the alley to this other place. You can tell how the door has been busted in and the lock broke, and we go into the dark hallway.

  The lights come on and the first thing I notice is the perfume an old lady wears, and the smell of cats.

  “It ain’t much, but the old bat who lives here took the Greyhound to visit her sister for the holiday,” Iggy says. He’s trying to smile.

  The little room is warm and close-feeling, and the furniture is real old and saggy. There’s a big old TV with a doily on the top, and an empty goldfish bowl, and piles of newspapers tied up neat with string, and a Bible on this little table by the TV. Also there’s this trick picture of Jesus on the wall, where his eyes keep following you, and you go cross-eyed looking at it.

  “Ain’t much worth taking,” Iggy says.

  My father is looking around, making sure the curtains are closed. “You think I’d steal from an old woman?” he says.

  Iggy shakes his head. “I sure don’t.”

  “Never you mind,” my father says. “This will do in a pinch, until we get started.”

  “I better get back to Loretta.”

  “You do that.”

  My father watches the door shut behind Iggy and he doesn’t say anything. I’m just standing there in the middle of the room because I don’t know what he wants me to do.

  “Make yourself comfy, boy,” he finally says. “I’m going to check we have a back way out.”

  I’m looking at the door we came in by, just looking, when all of a sudden he’s there behind me, and I feel the cool air of him on the back of my neck.

  “You wouldn’t light out on me now, would you?”

  “No, sir, I wouldn’t.”

  “Sit down,” he says. “We need to talk, man to man.”

  I sit down in this old-lady chair that’s so soft, I almost sink through to the floor and I’m wondering what happened to the cats. Maybe she took them with her, to visit her sister. Or maybe Iggy let them out and they can’t get back in.

  He leans over me and puts his big hands on the arms of the chair and he says, “Now, your grandparents say you’re nothing but a dysfunctional retard, but no kin of mine is a retard, and that’s a fact. So first thing, you’ve got to start acting smart. Use your head. We’ve got a situation going here, boy, so the way to handle it, you just do exactly what I say, no matter what. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His hand shoves through my hair and I can feel how strong he is, even though he doesn’t hurt me.

  “That’s good,” he says. “That’s real good.”

  He goes into another room and I can hear a door banging and stuff being moved around and when he comes back, he’s got this rope in his hands. “A boy who doesn’t know his own father might be dumb enough to run away,” he says. “We can’t have that, can we?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No, sir, what?”

  “No, sir, we can’t have that.”

  What he does is tie up my feet and hands and then he loops the end of the rope around his waist.

  “I’m taking sack time while I can,” he says. “You’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll get some shut-eye, too.”

  He turns out the light and lies down on the floor beside the chair, with just his arm for a pillow, and for a long time I can’t tell whether he’s asleep or pretending. Then I decide it doesn’t matter, if I move, the rope will surely wake him.

  It seems like we’re frozen inside that room, even though the air is warm and stuffy. The soft chair keeps a hold of me, I’m not strong enough to get up, my feet and han
ds are getting tingly where they’re tied, and pretty soon I can’t even keep my eyes open.

  I’m half asleep, dreaming a cat is in the other room, mewing for milk, and I’m still thinking about that cat when something tugs me.

  He’s sitting there in the dark, so I can’t see his face, and he says, “Wake up, sleepyhead. I better tell my own son a thing or two he needs to know about his own father. First thing, like I already said, I never killed anybody. I’m big like you’re big, so folks assume things they shouldn’t. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Good. Now the other thing is the geezers you’ve been living with all these years. I bet they never gave you the presents I sent you, did they?”

  “No, sir, they didn’t.”

  He shakes his head real sorrowful. “That’s a crime, not giving a boy presents from his father. I suppose you didn’t get the letters I sent? No, if they didn’t give over the presents, they likely tore up the letters. Another crime against humanity, that’s what that is. They hated me from the first sight. On account of my appearance, and because I wasn’t good enough for their precious daughter. As if a man should be blamed for how fearsome or cruel he looks, when in fact he’s truly a loving person inside. Which I am. I can hardly see a sad movie without crying and I’m not afraid to say so.”

  There’s just enough streetlight coming through the curtains, so I can make out part of his face when he turns it. You can see where there’s a wet spot on his cheek, and he brushes it away.

  “I’ve been locked up like an animal,” he says. “Every single night I cried myself to sleep and that’s a fact. Killer Kane, that’s just an unkind nickname they hung on me. You know how kids can be mean in school, mean as animals? It was like that, only these weren’t kids, they were adults who should know better, except they’re so ignorant and hateful they believe the worst.”

  His voice is sort of ragged, but you can’t help but listen to him, you follow the words up and down like you’re riding through mountains and you can’t see to either side, all you can see is the road just ahead.

  “A great injustice was done to me, boy,” he says. “What those people did, they stole my life. They took years away from me, might as well have cut out my heart with a knife, that’s how it was to lie awake each night and think about the injustice was done to me. They’d blame me for all the wrongs in the world, those people. By which I mean the geezers, her folks that always hated me, and of course the police who failed to see the truth of the situation.”

  He stops to rub away another stream of tears. There’s no crying in his voice, you can’t hear it there, but sure enough the tears are all over his face, slick and shiny in the pale, pale light.

  “I woke up just now worrying that you might wonder why I never did mention her. Your mother. You might still be thinking the wrong way on that, and believe what they told you. You being such a tiny little thing when it happened, how could you know the truth of it?”

  He gets up then, and he goes over by the TV set, far enough so the rope is tugging at me. Then he’s back and he’s got a book in his hands.

  “You know what this is, boy?”

  “The Bible,” I say.

  “You can tell that in the dark, can you? That’s fine. What I’m going to do, I’m putting my right hand down on this Bible, see?”

  “Yes, sir, I see.”

  “And I’m putting my other hand over my heart, can you see that?”

  “Yes, sir, I can.”

  “That’s good, boy. Now listen up. I, Kenneth David Kane, do swear by all that’s Holy that I did not murder this boy’s mother. And if that isn’t the truth, may God strike me dead.”

  I’m waiting to see if something happens, and nothing does. The room is the same. It smells of old-lady perfume and missing cats, and my hands and feet are still tied by a rope to his waist.

  “Satisfied?” he says.

  I want to answer him but my throat closes up and my tongue is so dry, I can’t hardly open my mouth. I keep thinking about how heavy his hand was on that Bible.

  “I asked you a question, boy.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say. “I’m satisfied.”

  He lies back down after that and pretty soon he’s breathing heavy again. I can’t sleep, though. I just sit there like a lump until the sun comes up, trying not to think about things I didn’t want to remember.

  I’m waiting for something to happen. The whole world except me is asleep and the only sound is him breathing heavy. I’m trying to see through the curtains, out the old lady’s window when it finally gets light, but the snow is stuck to the glass and everything is fuzzy, which is pretty much how I feel.

  Looking down at him on the floor, how he overflows the rug, I think about that story where a giant falls asleep and is tied up by little people. Not that I do anything. I’m just a blob in the chair with numb hands and numb feet.

  Finally what happens, there’s a noise from the back and these light skittery footsteps, and then my father comes awake so fast he almost yanks me from the chair.

  He’s on his feet with this wild look in his eye, and Loretta Lee glides into the room.

  “Merry Christmas, boys,” she says. She’s got this pizza box in her hands, holding it out like a present.

  “Where’s Iggy?” my father asks.

  “Waiting for Santa Claus,” Loretta says. “Ain’t nothing open this morning, but we got this left over, you’re welcome to it.”

  “Best put that down,” he says, and he pulls on the rope and lifts me up. He gives her this cold look. “You go on and get Iggy,” he says.

  Loretta Lee is wearing this long winter coat, it looks clean and brand-new, so she probably got it for Christmas, but her legs are skinny and bare where her feet go into these old rubber boots. She’s smoking this cigarette and squinting through the smoke at my father, like she’s trying to figure out what he’s thinking.

  “Why can’t you be nice, Kenny?” she says. “We had some good times in the old days, remember?”

  “The old days are over,” he says. “That the best you can do for us, leftover pizza?”

  “Hey, pizza is good for you,” she says. “It has vitamins and stuff.”

  “I still want to see Iggy.”

  Loretta takes a drag on her cigarette and she’s got this crooked smile. Her eyes keep flicking at me and the way I’m roped up, but mostly she’s looking at him. “Ig’ll be up soon,” she says. “He had himself a tough night.”

  “I have business with him, Loretta,” he says. “Important business.”

  “I’m sure,” she says, and she turns in her boots and leaves through the back.

  The pizza box is sitting there on the table, but my father says we can’t eat anything touched by her dirty hands, so he walks me out into that dark little kitchen and he unties me and we go through the cupboards and find mostly boxes of prunes and old cereal. There’s nothing in the refrigerator that hasn’t already gone bad, so I eat a bowl of cornflakes with water and I’m so hungry, it almost tastes good.

  “This is what they call a temporary situation,” he says. “I know a way we can live like kings if we play our cards right.” He stops for a while and squints at me, like he wants to see inside my head. “We’ll be heading for warmer weather. That agreeable with you, boy?”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  He seems real thoughtful. “I had a lot of time to plan this out. A lot of time to study people, figure what makes them tick. First thing, we’ll get a bus, one of those RV things, a real big one, because it’s important to look impressive. Put a name up on the side: The Reverend Kenneth David Kane. Or it might be we’ll go with another name, just to be on the safe side. Did you guess I was a man of God, boy, could you tell that by looking at me?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say. “I mean, no, sir.”

  “What’s that mean, boy?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  He reaches out and tussles at my hair. “You’ll lea
rn,” he says. “You’ll be standing out in front of the bus in a real nice suit. What you do is collect money in a basket. You won’t have to steal it because folks will give to a man of God, and what they love to hear about is a bad man who has redeemed himself. I learned how to preach the word to a lot of illiterate convicts, but they were no more ignorant than a lot of other folk. No, sir. We’re going to do just fine.”

  After I finish the cornflakes, he ties me up again.

  “This is just a precaution,” he says. “Can’t take any chances until you see the light. You want to see the light?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  He’s grinning at me and he taps himself on the chest and says, “You’re looking at it, boy. I am the light, and don’t you ever forget it.”

  He turns on the TV, it hardly comes in at all the screen is so fuzzy, and he keeps switching channels and he’s cussing out the old lady for having such a crummy TV. All that’s on is Christmas stuff and cartoons and what he wants is the news, to see if we’re on it.

  “I bet they haven’t even missed you,” he says. “Kept you down in that cellar like an animal, how would they know?”

  We’re sitting there waiting for Iggy when the blue lights start flashing bright against the curtains. He quick grabs me by the neck and shoves me down to the floor and we both lie there. The blue lights go by real slow, you can see them shining all around the room.

  “Might be someone else they’re looking for,” he says. “A place like this, it could be anybody. Still, you can’t be too careful.”

  When the lights stop flashing, he crawls to the window and looks out.

  “There’s nothing dumber than a dumb cop,” he says. “If they were so smart, they wouldn’t be working on Christmas day, would they?”

  “No, sir,” I say.

  “You hush up, boy, and let me think.”

  I’m lying there on the floor tied up when Iggy sneaks in through the back. I know it’s him by the draggy way he walks, and the heavy boots.

  “Kenny!” he’s whispering. “You there?”

  “’Course I’m here,” he says. “Show yourself.”

  Iggy comes into the room and his eyes are darting around. At first he’s surprised to see me trussed up, then he shrugs and doesn’t look at me anymore. “Close call,” he says. “You see that cop car?”