Freak the Mighty (2 page)

Okay, back to the down under, right? My room in the basement. Scuttle into your dim
hole in the ground, Maxwell dear. Big goon like you, growing about an inch a day,
and this midget kid, this crippled little humanoid, he actually
scared
you. Not the kind of scare that makes your knee bones feel like water, more the kind
of scare where you go whoa! I don’t understand this, I don’t get it, what’s going
on?

Like calling me “earthling.” Which by itself is pretty weird, right? I already mentioned
a few of the names I’ve been called, but until the robot boy showed up, nobody had
ever called me
earthling
, and so I’m lying on my mattress there in the great down under, and it comes to me
that he’s right, I
am
an earthling, we’re all of us earthlings, but we don’t call each other earthling.
No need. Because it’s the same thing that in this country we’re all Americans, but
we don’t go around to people and say, “Excuse me,
American, can you tell me how to get to the nearest 7 Eleven?”

So I’m thinking about that for a while, lying there in the cellar dark, and pretty
soon the down under starts to get small, like the walls are shrinking, and I go up
to the bulkhead stairs into the back yard and find a place where I can check it out.

There’s this one scraggly tree behind the little freak’s house, right? Like a stick
in the ground with a few wimped-out branches. And there he is, hardly any bigger now
than he was in day care, and he’s standing there waving his crutch up at the tree.

I kind of slide over to the chain-link fence, get a better angle on the scene. What’s
he
doing
whacking at that crummy tree? Trying to jump up and hit this branch with his little
crutch, and he’s mad, hopping mad. Only he can’t really jump, he just makes this jumping
kind of motion. His feet never leave the ground.

Then what he does, he throws down the crutch and he gets down on his hands and knees
and crawls back to his house. If you didn’t know, you would think he was like a kindergarten
creeper who forgot how to walk, he’s that small. And he crawls real good, better than
he can walk. Before you know it, he’s dragging this wagon out from under the steps.

Rusty red thing, one of those old American Flyer models. Anyhow, the little freak
is tugging it backwards, a few inches at a time. Chugging
along until he gets that little wagon under the tree. Next thing he picks up his crutch
and he climbs in the wagon and he stands up and he’s whacking at the tree again.

By now I’ve figured out that there’s something stuck up in the branches and he wants
to get it down. This small, bright-colored thing, looks like a piece of folded paper.
Whatever it is, that paper thing, he wants it real bad, but even with the wagon there’s
no way he can reach it. No way.

So I go over there to his back yard, trying to be really quiet, but I’m no good at
sneaking up, not with these humongous feet, and he turns and faces me with that crutch
raised up like he’s ready to hit a grand slam on my head.

He wants to say something, you can tell that much, but he’s so mad, he’s all huffed
up and the noise he makes, it could be from a dog or something, and he sounds like
he can hardly breathe.

What I do, I keep out of range of that crutch and just reach up and pick the paper
thing right out of the tree. Except it’s not a paper thing. It’s a plastic bird, light
as a feather. I have to hold it real careful or it might break, that’s how flimsy
it is.

I go, “You want this back or what?”

The little freak is staring at me bug-eyed, and he goes, “Oh, it talks.”

I give him the bird-thing. “What is it, like a model airplane or something?”

You can tell he’s real happy to have the bird-thing back, and his face isn’t quite
so fierce. He sits down in the wagon, and he goes, “This is an ornithopter. An ornithopter
is defined as an experimental device propelled by flapping wings. Or you could say
that an ornithopter is just a big word for mechanical bird.”

That’s how he talked, like right out of a dictionary. So smart you can hardly believe
it. While he’s talking he’s winding up the bird-thing. There’s this elastic band inside,
and he goes, “Observe and be amazed, earthling,” and then he lets it go, and you know
what? I
am
amazed, because it does fly just like a little bird, flitting up and down and around,
higher than I can reach.

I chase after the thing until it boinks against the scrawny tree trunk and I bring
it back to him and he winds it up again and makes it fly. We keep doing that, it must
be for almost an hour, until finally the elastic breaks. I figure that’s it, end of
ornithopter, but he says something like, “All mechanical objects require periodic
maintenance. We’ll schedule installation of a new propulsion unit as soon as the Fair
Gwen of Air gets a replacement.”

Even though I’m not sure what he means, I go, “That’s cool.”

“You live around here, earthling?”

“Over there.” I point out the house. “In the down under.”

He goes, “What?” and I figure it’s easier to
show him than explain all about Gram and Grim and the room in the cellar, so I pick
up the handle to the American Flyer wagon and I tow him over.

It’s really easy, he doesn’t weigh much and I’m pretty sure I remember looking back
and seeing him sitting up in the wagon happy as can be, like he’s really enjoying
the ride and not embarrassed to have me pulling him around.

But like Freak says later in this book, you can remember anything, whether it happened
or not. All I’m really sure of is he never hit me with that crutch.

Freak’s not in my room for ten minutes before he sets me straight on the Fair Gwen.
He’s able to hump down the steps by himself, except it makes him sort of out of breath,
you can hear him wheezing or I guess you’d call it panting, like a dog does on a hot
day. He gets into my room and I close the bulkhead door, and he goes, “Cool. You get
to live down here all by yourself?”

“I eat upstairs with Grim and Gram.”

Freak works himself up onto the foot of my bed and uses a pillow to make himself comfortable.
It’s pretty dim down here, only the daylight from one basement window, but it catches
him just right and makes his eyes shine. “Gram must be your grandmother,” he says.
“Grim would be, I suppose, a sobriquet for your grandfather, based on his demeanor.”

I go, “Huh?”

Freak grins and pushes back his yellow hair, and he goes, “Pardon my vocabulary. Sobriquet
means ‘nickname,’ and demeanor means ‘expression.’ I merely postulated that you call
your grandfather ‘Grim’ because he’s grim. Postulate means —”

“I know,” I say. Which is a lie, except I can guess what he means, figure it out that
way. “So how come you call your mom ‘Fair Gwen of Air,’ is that a nickname?”

Freak is shaking his head. I can see he’s trying not to let on that he’s laughing
inside. “Guinevere,” he finally says, catching his breath. “The Fair Guinevere, from
the legend of King Arthur. You know about King Arthur, right?”

I shrug. The only King Arthur I know is the brand of flour Gram uses, and if I say
that I’ll
really
sound like a butthead.

He goes, “My mom’s name is Gwen, so sometimes I call her the Fair Guinevere or the
Fair Gwen. King Arthur was the first king of England, way back when there were still
dragons and monsters in the world. Arthur was this wimpy little kid, an orphan, and
there was this magic sword stuck in a big stone, okay? The old king had died, and
whoever could pull the sword from the stone proved he was the next king. All these
big tough dudes came from all over to yank at the sword and they couldn’t budge it.
One day this wimpy little kid tried it when
nobody was looking and the sword slipped out like it was stuck in butter.”

“So he was the king, this little kid?”

Freak nods, he’s really into this story, and he’s making shapes in the air with his
hands. This is the first time for me, hearing Freak really talk, and right away I
know one thing: When he’s talking, you can’t take your eyes off of him. His hands
are moving, and it’s like he’s really seeing it, this story about an old king.

“Arthur’s magical sword is called Excalibur, and the Fair Guinevere is this pretty
girl who becomes his queen. ‘Fair’ in those days meant the same as ‘beautiful’ does
now. Anyhow, Arthur got bored just sitting around, so he invited all the knights of
England to come live in the castle. They all ate supper at this round table, which
is why they were called the Knights of the Round Table. Every now and then King Arthur
would send them off on a special secret mission, which in the old days they called
a ‘quest.’ They had to slay dragons and monsters and evil knights. I assume you know
what a knight wears into battle?”

I think so, but I like hearing Freak talk, so I go, “Better tell me,” and that’s when
I find out why he’s so interested in some clanky old knights.

Because Freak really lights up and he goes, “The knights were like the first human
version of robots. They wore this metal armor to protect
them and make them invincible. When I get my stuff unpacked I’ll show you the pictures.
It’s pretty amazing, really, that hundreds of years before they had computers they
were already attempting to exceed the design limitations of the human body.”

I go, “Huh?” and Freak sort of chuckles to himself, like he expected me to go “Huh?”
and he says, “The design limitations of the human body. You know, like we’re not bullet-proof
and we can’t crush rocks with our bare hands, and if we touch a hot stove we get burned.
King Arthur wanted to
improve
his men, so he made them armor-plated. Then he programmed them to go out and do these
quests, slay the dragons and so on, which is sort of how they program robots right
now.”

I go, “I thought there weren’t any real robots. Just in the movies.”

Boy does that make his eyes blaze. Like whoa! talk about laser beams! He’s like
fuming
, so upset he can hardly talk.

Finally he gets control of himself and he goes, “I suppose I must make allowances
for your ignorance. On the subject of robots you are clearly misinformed. Robots are
not just in the movies. Robotics, the science of designing and building functional
robots, is a
huge
industry. There are
thousands
of robot units presently in use.
Millions
of them. They don’t look like the robots you see in movies, of course, because they’re
designed according to function. Many
robotic devices are in fact sophisticated assembly units, machines that put together
cars and trucks and computers. For instance, the space shuttle has a robot arm.”

“Right,” I say. “I saw that on TV.”

Freak sighs and rolls his eyes. “Ah, yes,” he says. “Television, the opiate of the
massives.”

For about the eleventh time I go, “Huh?”

“Opiate, a drug,” he says. “Massive, that means large and heavy. Thus television is
the drug of fat heads. Opiate of the massives.”

“You don’t have a TV?”

“Of course I have a television,” he says. “How else could I watch
Star Trek
? Matter of fact, I watch
tons
of tube, but I also read tons of books so I can figure out what’s true and what’s
fake, which isn’t always easy. Books are like truth serum — if you don’t read, you
can’t figure out what’s real.”

This time I don’t say
huh
because then I might have to explain how I’m an L.D., and reading books is the last
thing I want to do, right after trimming my toenails with a lawn mower, gargling nails,
and eating worms for breakfast. Of course Freak has probably already guessed I’m a
learning disabled, because he’s had a look around my room and it isn’t exactly the
public library.

“I’ll lend you some of my books,” he says.

“Cool,” I say, like it’s just what I’ve been waiting for, another chance to prove
I’m a butthead.

Then we both hear it at the same time, this
voice calling his name and sounding real worried.

“The Fair Gwen,” he says. “I gotta beam out of here.”

I go up and open the bulkhead door and his mother is in the back yard and she’s looking
at the little red wagon. She catches sight of me coming up out of the down under and
it’s like somebody shot her. Like she’s scared out of her mind. “Kevin?” she says.
“I’m looking for a little boy.”

Freak is huffing and puffing as he humps himself up the steps, and the Fair Gwen grabs
Freak and puts him in the wagon and I swear, she almost
runs
home, like if she doesn’t get away quick something really bad is going to happen.
Freak is in the wagon and he’s trying to look back at me, trying to shrug his shoulders
and let me know he doesn’t understand what got into the Fair Gwen, but
I
know.

It’s pretty simple, really. She’s scared of me.