Freak the Mighty (8 page)

Christmas Eve is real quiet. Like Freak says, “You could hear a mouse fart.” Which,
even if it is a stupid joke, makes Grim smile and shake his head.

Freak and the Fair Gwen have supper with us, and we’re all trying to pretend like
everything is normal, and nobody says a word about Killer Kane getting out of prison.
The Fair Gwen is wearing this dark red silky blouse and a long black skirt that almost
touches the floor, and her waist is so small, she looks like one of those Christmas
ornaments, the kind that makes a tingle-bell sound when the branches move.

Freak is all dressed up, too, he’s wearing this tweedy new suit jacket that has patches
on the elbows and Grim says all he needs is a pipe and he’ll look like quite the professor.

“No tobacco,” Freak says. “Nicotine is a toxic waste of time.”

“Just the pipe,” Grim insists. “You don’t have to smoke it.”

“Don’t get him started on bad habits,” Gram says. “Maxwell, pass the mint sauce.”

Mint sauce is one of Gram’s specialties, and you’d be amazed how it improves everything,
which is why I’ve been keeping it close by. Anyhow, the food is the best, you can’t
beat Gram for Christmas or Thanksgiving or birthdays, and we all eat until we’re fit
to bust, except the Fair Gwen makes sure Freak doesn’t eat too fast.

“You’d think I was starving him,” the Fair Gwen says.

“Please, sir, more gruel,” he says, holding up his plate and making a funny face where
his tongue sticks out sideways, and Gram laughs so hard, she has a coughing fit, which
makes us all shut up.

After supper we sit around like you do, admiring the tree and talking about how lucky
we are not to be homeless, and Grim starts telling these old stories about when he
was a kid and they got lumps of coal in their stockings.

“If we were lucky, we got an apple core,” he says, “or a few orange rinds.”

“Now, Arthur,” Gram says. “You never got a lump of coal in your life.”

“You’re right. We never even
got
a lump of coal, can you imagine? My father couldn’t afford
coal, so he’d write the word ‘coal’ on a piece of paper and put it in our stockings
and we’d
pretend
it was a lump of coal, that’s how poor we were.”

The Fair Gwen is laughing to herself and shaking her head.

Gram says, “How can you tell such lies on Christmas Eve?”

“I’m telling tales, my dear, not lies. Lies are mean things, and tales are meant to
entertain.”

And so we all sit there acting polite and listening to Grim make up stuff no one would
ever in a million years believe, and all of us have a cup of hot chocolate and a piece
of Russell Stover candy right out of the box, and then it’s time to pass around a
few of the presents.

Gram has this rule that you can open one on Christmas Eve and you save the rest for
morning. Which can be tough, deciding what to open first. Grim always starts it off
because, like he says, he’s really a kid at heart and he can’t stand to wait.

From Gram he gets this wooly sweater that buttons up the front and he acts surprised,
even though he’s got about a hundred just like it already. Then Gram opens her present
from me, which is a bracelet made of shells from beaches around the world, and she
right away puts it on and says it’s just what she wanted. Which is so like Gram —
if you gave her an old beer can she’d act pleased and say it was just what she wanted.

Then Freak opens his present from me and even before he gets the paper all the way
off, he gives me this thumbs-up and says, “Cool.” It’s a gizmo that looks like a jackknife,
but really it’s a whole bunch of little screwdrivers and wrenches and even a little
magnifying glass. I’m pretty sure Freak can invent stuff with it if he feels like
it.

Gram gives the Fair Gwen this scarf that just happens to match her blouse, and everybody
goes ooh and ahh, and then I finally decide what present to open. Right away you’d
know it was something Freak did, because the box isn’t square, it’s pointed at the
top like a pyramid, and instead of regular wrapping paper, he’s got Sunday comics
taped all over it, and it’s driving me nuts trying to figure out what would fit inside
a pyramid-shaped box.

Freak seems like he’s just as excited as me, even though he already knows what he
put inside. “Take off all the paper first,” he says. “There’s a special way to open
it.”

Real careful, I peel off all the paper, and the thing is, it’s not a pyramid-shaped
box he bought somewhere, he
made
it. You can see where he cut out the pieces of cardboard and taped them all together,
and written on the sides of the pyramid are these little signs and arrows.

“Follow the arrows,” he says.

The arrows point all over the place and I have to keep turning the pyramid around,
until finally I get to this sign that says:

PRESS HERE AND BE AMAZED

“Go on,” Freak says. “It’s not an explosive device, silly — it won’t blow up in your
face.”

I press the spot on the pyramid and all of a sudden, all four sides fold down at the
same time and I’m looking inside the pyramid and, just like Freak promised, I’m amazed.

“The young man is a genius,” Grim is saying. “And I don’t use that word lightly.”

Grim is right about that, because Freak has the whole thing rigged with these elastic
bands and paper clips, which is what made the sides unfold all at the same time, and
inside is this little platform and on the platform is a book. Not a normal book, like
you buy in the store, but a book he made himself, you can tell that right away. It
looks so special, I’m afraid to pick it up or I might ruin it.

“What I did was take all my favorite words,” Freak says, “and put them in alphabetical
order.”

“Like a dictionary?”

“Exactly,” Freak says, “but different, because this is
my
dictionary. Go on and look inside.”

I open up the book the way he asks, and the pages smell like a ballpoint pen. It starts
with A, just like a regular dictionary, but as Freak said, it’s different.

“You don’t have to read them all tonight,” Freak says. “Save some for tomorrow. I
gotta tell you, though, you’re gonna flip when you see what I did with the Z’s.”

This is the best, getting Freak’s dictionary. Everything else is extra.

I figure it will take forever to fall asleep, because my head is full of stuff. Grim
and his written-down lump of coal, the pyramid with the special book inside, and how
fat, wet flakes of snow were falling when the Fair Gwen towed Freak home in his American
Flyer wagon, and the way he was pretending to boss her by saying, “On Donner! On Dasher!
On Guinevere!” and she’s telling him to shut up or she’ll leave him outside until
he turns into a snowman.

Which must be why I’m dreaming about a little snowman who looks like Freak. The snowman
keeps saying, “Cool. Cool.” And when I wake up, I can feel the cold coming into my
bedroom. Which is weird, because it’s always warm in the down under, with the furnace
right next door.

I think I hear the wind right there in the room.

Except it’s not the wind.

Someone breathing.

Someone who rises up darker than night, as big as the room, and puts a giant hand
on my face and presses down.

“Don’t say a word, boy,” he whispers. “Not a sound.”

I try to move, try to shrink myself back into the bed, but the hand follows me down.
The hand is so hard and strong I can’t move, and it feels like my heart has stopped
beating, it’s waiting to see what will happen next.

“I came back,” he says. “Like I promised.”

Once on the TV this dude hypnotized a lobster. Maybe you saw it. He touches a lobster
and it freezes, it can’t move. That’s sort of what happens to me when his hand clamps
over my mouth. Like I’m paralyzed and my head is empty and all there is in the world
is that big hand and this cool breath like the wind.

“So this is where the geezers stuck you, huh?” he whispers. “Down in the basement,
out of sight, out of mind?”

I still can’t see his face, he’s this huge shape in the room.

“Everything changes now,” he says. “It’s time I got to know my own son, who had his
mind poisoned against me.”

He makes me sit up and shushes me to make sure I won’t make any noise. Making noise
is the last thing I want to do, because I don’t know
whether or not Grim ever bought that gun he mentioned, or what might happen to him
if he tried to use it. Gram’s bad dream about Grim getting shot with his own gun seems
pretty real right now, and I don’t want to be the one to make it come true.

“I know what they told you,” he says. “It’s all a big lie, you understand? I never
killed anybody, and that’s the truth, so help me God.”

By now I’m sitting up on the bed and he’s making me put on my clothes and the weird
thing is, none of this is a surprise. Somehow I always knew this would happen, that
he would come for me, in the night, that I would wake up to find him there, filling
the room, and that I’d feel empty.

I’m so weak, I can hardly put my shoes on. Like when you wake up and your arm is still
asleep and you can’t hardly make it move? That’s what I feel like all over — numb
and prickly and as light as a balloon. Like my hands might float up in the air if
I let them.

“This’ll be an adventure,” he says. “You’re going to have the time of your life, boy.
Okay, we’re leaving, and not a peep out of you.”

The bulkhead door is open, and you can see the stars. Some people think the stars
look close enough to touch, but Freak says the sky is like a photograph from a billion
years ago, it’s just some old movie they’re showing up there and lots of those stars
have switched off by now. They’re already dead, and what we’re seeing is
the rerun. Which makes sense if you think about it. Someday the rerun will come to
an end and you’ll see all the stars start to flick off, like a billion little flames
blown out by the wind.

“This way,” he says. “Quiet as a mouse.”

There’s snow on the ground. Not a lot, enough to cover the ground. I can tell how
cold the air is, but I can’t feel it, even without a jacket, which I didn’t have time
to put on. The cold doesn’t matter. Nothing does, really, not Grim and Gram or the
old stars in the sky, or Freak and the Fair Gwen. They’re all just make-believe, this
dream I was having for a long time, and now I’m awake again and he’s still filling
the room somehow, even though we’re outside.

The lights are out at Freak’s house, and I’m thinking:
The stars clicked off
and I don’t even know why I’m thinking that, it’s like a dead voice in my head or
something.

We’re under a streetlight when he says, “Let me look at you.”

He’s got these big eyebrows that make it hard to see his eyes and that’s fine, I don’t
want to see them, looking at those eyes is
asking
to have a bad dream.

“My, my,” he says, checking me out. “Will you look at this? It’s like I’m looking
at an old picture of myself. You really
are
a chip off the old block, you know that?”

I don’t say anything, and he reaches out and touches my face real gentle, as if he’d
never
hurt a fly. “I say, boy, do you know that? Answer me now.”

“Yes, sir,” I say. “Everybody says so.”

“Christmas Eve,” he says. “You know how many Christmas Eves I’ve been deprived of
my own blood kin? Now is that fair, to do that to a man? Lock him up for a crime he
never did?”

He’s waiting for me to answer, and I say, “No, sir, not fair.”

“That’s over and done now,” he says. “We’re starting fresh. Just you and me, boy,
that’s how it was meant to be.”

I’m standing there under the streetlight and it’s amazing how quiet it is. Like everybody
went away or died. The quiet is almost as big as he is. He’s as tall as me, only wider
everywhere, and for some reason, maybe because we’re not far from Freak’s house, I’m
thinking this weird thought:
He doesn’t need a suit of armor.

No, and he doesn’t need a horse, or a lance, or a pledge to the king, or the love
of a fair lady. He doesn’t need anything except what he is. He’s everything all rolled
into one, and no one can ever beat him, not even the brave Lancelot.

He’s squinting around, his eyebrows are furrowed shadows, and he says, “You know what
I think of when I see a neighborhood like this? Hamsters, is what I think. That’s
how these people live, like hamsters in cages. They have their little wheels to run
on and that’s what they do for the whole of their lives, they run and get nowhere.
They just spin.”

I stand there.

“They poisoned you against me, I know that,” he says. “Give it time, you’ll see the
truth.”

He starts walking fast and I walk with him, like my feet already know where to go.
We’re cutting through the side streets and heading down to the pond, all cold and
white and frozen. Tomorrow morning a bunch of kids will take their new sleds and skates
out there, and probably lose their new mittens and scarfs and get yelled at by their
moms and dads, but tonight the pond is as empty as the moon, as empty as my head.

Once a car goes by real slow around the pond, and I’ve got this strange feeling there’s
no one at the wheel.

He hooks his finger in my shirt collar and makes me duck down until the car goes by.

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.”