Freak the Mighty (11 page)

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.