Freak the Mighty

by Rodman Philbrick

  Anyhow, this is the first year I get to go to the fireworks without Grim and Gram, which I’ve never understood, because it’s right down by the millpond where I’ve been allowed to go for years, so why should it make a difference just because about a million people show up to watch the rockets’ red glare over that smelly pond?

  The deal this year is that I get to go with Freak, which Gram thinks is a good idea because she’s afraid he’ll get crushed or something, she actually thinks people are going to step on him, which just goes to show how brainless she can be sometimes, and scared of everything. I mean nobody steps on little kids down there, so why should they step on Freak?

  Turns out the thing to worry about is not kid-stompers, but beer swillers, like I mentioned before. Because Freak and I are still a couple of blocks from the pond, just kind of easing our way along, when these punks start mouthing off.

  “Hey you! Mutt and Jeff! Frankenstein and Igor! Don’t look around, I’m talkin’ to you, bone-heads. What is this, a freak show?”

  I know that voice. Tony D., they call him Blade, he’s at least seventeen and he’s already been to juvy court three, four times. I heard he cut a guy with a razor, he almost died, and everybody says the best way to handle Tony D. and his gang is, you avoid them. Cross the street, hide, whatever it takes.

  “Yeah you,” he goes, and he’s doing his hip-pity walk, strutting along, he’s got those fancy cool cowboy boots with metal toes. “Yeah, Andre the giant and the dwarf, hold on a sec, I want a word with you.”

  Only the way he talks, he goes ah wanna woid weecha, except it’s bad enough having to listen to the creep, I don’t want to have to spell the dumb way he talks. Anyhow, big mistake, we stop and wait for Tony D., alias the bad-news Blade.

  “Got any, dudes?” he asks, pretending like he’s friendly. He’s a couple of feet away, but you can smell the beer on his breath. Also it smells like he ate something dead, for instance road kill, but maybe that’s my imagination.

  “Pay attention,” Tony D. says. “I asked did you got any.”

  Freak, his chest is all puffed out and his chin looks hard and he’s looking right up at Tony D., and he says, “Got any what?”

  Tony D. has his hands on his hips and his punkster pals are trying to get closer, working through the crowd. He leans over Freak and he says, “Boomers, you little freak. M80s. Maybe a rack of cherry bombs, is that what’s making a lump in your pocket, huh?”

  Freak starts to hump himself away, trying to walk faster than he really can, which makes his leg brace bump against the ground. “Come along, Maxwell,” he says over his shoulder. “Ignore the cretin.”

  Blade goes, “Hey what?” and he moves right in front of Freak. “Want to say that again, little freak man?”

  Freak says, “Cretin. C-R-E-T-I-N. Defined as one who suffers from mental deficiency.”

  Hearing how little tiny Freak is dissing the fearsome Tony D., alias Blade, I can’t help it, I laugh out loud. Tony D. is looking up at me and he’s showing his white teeth, I swear they’ve been sharpened to look like vampire teeth, and I go, “Uh-oh,” and start to get real cold inside. Real icy, because I can see that Blade is trying to make up his mind, is he going to fight me, or is he just going to kill me quick?

  Just then I hear the whoop of a siren and like a miracle this cop car comes out of nowhere, heading for the millpond, and Blade takes one look and he and his punksters are out of there, burning rubber in their Reeboks.

  Freak goes, “Whew! That was a close encounter of the turd kind,” and it takes me a second to get the joke, but then I’m laughing, amazed he can be so cool about it, like it was no big deal that Tony D. was after us.

  “You can take him, right?” he asks a couple of minutes later.

  I go, “Are you kidding? You can’t just fight Blade, you have to fight his gang, too.”

  “You mean you couldn’t take him and I was giving him lip?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Freak goes, “Oh my gawwwwwwd!” and he’s shrieking and laughing and whooping it up so loud that everybody is looking at us like we’re total goons, which isn’t far from the truth.

  Freak hasn’t got his crutch tonight, just the leg brace, and he’s laughing so hard he falls down. Not that he has far to go. Anyhow, I pick him up and I’m amazed how light he is. Like it’s nothing for me to lift him, and maybe that’s where I get the idea. Because later, when we’re down by the pond and the first of the rockets is streaking up, up, up, Freak is making a fuss because he can’t see. There are so many people crowded around, all he can see are feet and knees, and people are lifting their little kids up to see the fireworks explode like hot pink flowers in the sky, and so I just sort of reach down without thinking and pick up Freak and set him on my shoulders.

  He’s kind of trembly up there until he grabs hold of my hair to steady himself, and then the first really big rocket whams off, a humongous thud! I can feel in my stomach, and Freak is shouting “Awwww right!” and I know it’s okay, he’s not flipped out because I picked him up and put him on my shoulders like he was a little kid instead of possibly the smartest human being in the whole world.

  “Magnesium!” he shouts as the white sparkles glitter down over the pond. “Potassium chlorate!” as the shells go womp-womp-womp and everybody goes oooooooh. “Potassium nitrate! Sulphur! Aluminum!” And after a burst of hot red fire in the sky, Freak tugs my hair and screams, “Copper! That’s copper powder combusting with oxygen!” And when the fire blossoms are flashing blue he goes, “Good old strontium nitrate!” and I’m thinking whoa! is there anything this little dude doesn’t know?

  At the end, like always, they have a thing they call the “grand finale,” when they just go nuts and light off everything at once and it sounds like World War III, whizzing and banging and popping, and there’s so much hot stuff falling from the sky you can hear it sizzling in the pond. Freak keeps on shouting out the names of chemicals and elements, until the last spark dies in that scummy pond and the crowd cheers and then everybody tries to leave at once, like a bunch of morons.

  You ever notice how the smell of gunpowder makes you thirsty? Because after the fireworks I’m aiming us for where the food carts are parked along the street, thinking about an ice-cold lemonade, how clean it will taste, and for a moment I almost forget that Freak is riding on my shoulders.

  “Amazing perspective up here,” he’s saying. “This is what you see all the time.”

  “I’m not that big,” I say. “This way you’re like two feet taller than me.”

  “Cool,” he says. “I love it.”

  We’re working our way through the crowd and we’re almost to the food carts when Freak tugs on my hair. “Cretin at two o’clock,” he says, real urgent. “Two more at three o’clock.”

  I go, “Huh? What?”

  “The Blade and his gang,” Freak hisses. “They’ve locked on to us. Their trajectory is converging. Go to the left,” he says. “Make it quick, if you want to live!”

  Too bad I’m a little confused about rights and lefts. If I don’t think about it I know, but if I have to think about it quick my mind goes blank. Right? Left? What does it all mean?

  “Left!” Freak says, and he kicks me with his little foot, like he’s digging into a horse and it clicks in my head. Go that way! Follow the feet! “Faster,” Freak is saying, and he’s urging me on, it’s lucky for me the little dude doesn’t have any spurs, but I don’t care, I just want to get clear of Blade.

  “Warp factor nine!” Freak is shouting. “More speed, o mighty beast!”

  Now I’m running at a full gallop, weaving through the crowd, and I don’t even need to look back, all I have to do is follow the way Freak is kicking his feet, steering me. I’m pretty sure we’re getting away until this punk comes out of nowhere, he’s one of Blade’s gang and he’s got this big ugly grin.

  “Over here! Tony! Got ’em cornered!”

  “What do I do?” I say to Freak.
/>   He goes, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking!”

  I can hear Blade before I can see him. Hear his wicked laugh, so mean and dirty it makes my stomach freeze up and my knees feel squishy.

  “You! The freak! You and that giant retard, I’ll cut you down to size. Dice and slice, baby! Freak show time!”

  And now I can see him, see that pointed white grin and his eyes so dark and cruel, and he’s swaggering through the crowd, he’s got us surrounded with punks, everywhere I turn there’s another mean face trying to look as tough as Tony D.

  In a small voice I say, “Tell me what to do,” and Freak pats me on the shoulder and says, “Just give me a nanosecond to process the alternatives.”

  “Slice and dice!” That’s Blade, and he’s reaching into his back pocket.

  “Make it quick,” I hiss, and then Freak is kicking my right shoulder and I turn that way and he’s saying “Go! Go!” and I run right over this punk, he’s so surprised he loses his bubble gum and he tries to grab my leg but I kick free and I’m running right and then left, running blind and just letting Freak decide which way we should go because he must have a plan, a dude as smart as that.

  Which I’m right about, he does have a plan. Only the plan is to run out into the smelly millpond and drown us both.

  “Go on!” he’s shouting from up above my head. “Trust me, we’ll be okay!”

  Blade is shouting, too, and I can hear his feet pitter-pattering behind me. Catching up.

  “Warp speed!” Freak is shouting, and he’s kicking with both feet now, which means go straight. “Head for the H2O!”

  The pond is right ahead of me, and I’m sort of running along the edge, crunching over the bottles and cans and candy wrappers, and then I hear this zingy sound and I just know that Blade is swinging a knife, cutting the air right behind us, and there’s nowhere to go but into the pond, like Freak wants me to.

  I almost lose it right there, taking that first step, because it’s a gunky pond and the mud is really oozy and deep and it sucks right up to my knees. But I’m so scared of getting cut by Tony D., so scared he might bite me with those wicked teeth, I just keep going. There’s this great ugly sucking sound as my feet come back up out of the mud and I stretch out as far as my legs will go and I take another step and I just keep going.

  I’m going so fast that the water is up to my chest before Freak gets my attention, he’s tugging at my hair with both hands. “Whoa!” he’s saying, “slow up, we did it.”

  The mud is up around my knees and it’s real hard to turn around. Finally I get so I’m facing back at the shore and there’s Blade, just his head above the water, and he looks all white and scared. “Help!” he’s blubbering, choking on that dirty water, and then his punksters are splashing in to rescue him. Man, they can hardly get him loose, the way he’s stuck deep in that mud, and before they drag him to shore they’re all covered with slime and mud. They’re gasping like fish, almost too tired to cuss us out, but that doesn’t last.

  Blade is covered with mud right up to his neck, which on him looks natural. He turns to his gang, who look as slimy as he does. “Get some rocks, it’s target-practice time!”

  “What do we do now?” I ask, because the mud is sucking me down. It’s over my knees now, and the water is right up under my arms and even Freak’s feet are getting wet.

  “Wait,” Freak says. “The cavalry is coming, can’t you hear that bugle?”

  I’m listening, but I can’t hear anything except for Blade and his gang, and how they’re scrambling around trying to find some rocks to heave at us.

  I can see Blade rearing back to throw, and the first one misses us.

  “Can you move?” Freak says.

  “I don’t think so.”

  It’s true. The mud is up over my knees, and I’m locked in place. I can’t even fall down, that’s how stiff it is. I’m like a big fence post, and everybody knows a fence post makes a good target.

  More splashes as the rocks fall short. At first they’re throwing stuff that’s too heavy. Pretty soon they smarten up, and Blade says, “Smaller rocks! Get me smaller rocks!” and I know in my heart we’re doomed.

  Then up above me there’s this really loud, high-pitched screech. Freak has his fingers in his mouth and he’s whistling. Real shrill and shivery and so loud it almost hurts my ears. And then I see what Freak has been seeing all along, a cop car cruising real slow along the road around the pond, which is what they always do after the fireworks.

  Freak is whistling and the cop car spotlight comes beaming around the pond until it settles on us. I’m blinking because the light is so bright, and Freak is making a fuss and waving his arms and we hear the metal megaphone sound of a cop voice ordering us not to move. Like we could even if we wanted!

  It’s hard to see in the glare of the spotlight, but Freak tells me that Blade and his punks are running away. Like snakes on sneakers, Freak says.

  “Officers!” Freak is shouting into the white light. “We request assistance!”

  They finally have to use ropes to pull me out of there. Freak won’t let go, he stays right where he is on top of my shoulders even when this cop in a boat tries to lift him off, and then we’re up on the bank of the pond and everybody is being real nice and giving us blankets and Cokes and saying they know all about Tony D., and they’ll keep an eye on him, don’t you worry.

  “Okay, boys, you’d better give us your names and we’ll call your mothers,” this one cop is saying, and there’s this other guy who is looking at me funny and he says, “Hey, isn’t that Kenny Kane’s boy? Must be. Old Killer Kane, is he still inside?”

  Freak is still holding tight to my shoulders and when they ask him for his name, he says, “We’re Freak the Mighty, that’s who we are. We’re nine feet tall, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  That’s how it started, really, how we got to be Freak the Mighty, slaying dragons and fools and walking high above the world.

  It turned out to be a cool summer.

  I figured we’d get in trouble for running into the pond. It looked bad for a while when the cops drove us home and I got out all soaking wet and covered with gook, and when Grim was hosing me down he had this really pruney look on his face, like he was smelling something bad, but the cops made out like I was a hero or something, rescuing the poor crippled midget kid. So Grim listens to the cops and then he gives me this weird look, like, imagine my surprise, and he goes in the house and then Gram comes running out in her nightgown with this big fluffy towel and she really makes a fuss.

  Me rescuing Freak. What a joke, right? Except that’s how it must have looked from a distance, because they never knew it was Freak who rescued me — or his genius brain and my big dumb body.

  Gram is there rubbing me with the towel and her hands are shaking and she’s saying, “Oh, I saw those blue lights and I thought the worst,” and Grim is behind her looking at me real intense and shaking his head, and he’s saying, “Who’d a thunk it, Mabel,” which is some kind of joke because Gram’s name isn’t Mabel.

  Anyhow, they take me inside and the first thing Gram does is give me a bowl of ice cream, and Grim, he keeps shaking his head and he goes, “What this young man needs is a cup of coffee. Real coffee,” and then he gets busy putting the filter in the machine and measuring out the coffee and standing by while it drips through, and he’s got this stern look like he’s thinking deep thoughts. By the time I polish off the ice cream, Grim is handing me coffee in a china cup, from the set they never use.

  He gives me that cup like it’s a really big deal, maybe because I’m not allowed to drink coffee yet, and he’s so Grim-like and serious I open my mouth to say what’s the big deal, you really think this is my first cup of coffee (yeah, right!), and something happens and the words come out: “Thank you, sir,” and it’s like I’m possessed or something, I’ve no idea where the things I’m saying are coming from, or why.

  I go, “Thanks for the towel, Gram. And the ice cream. Could I have sugar
in the coffee? Two teaspoons, please,” and Grim claps his hands together and he says, “Of course you can, son,” and it’s like whoa! because he never calls me that. Always Max or Maxwell or “that boy.”

  Next thing he’s clearing his throat and coughing into his fist and Gram is looking at the two of us and she gets this Gram-like glow, like this is how it’s supposed to be, the way things always happen on The Wonder Years, with the family getting all gooey and sentimental about some numb thing the bratty kid did while he’s having all his wonderful years or whatever.

  Gram says, “I want you to promise me something, Maxwell dear. Promise me you’ll keep away from the hoodlum boy and his awful friends. Nobody got hurt this time, but I shudder to think what might have happened.”

  And Grim, bless his pointed little head, he goes, “Maxwell can handle himself, can’t you, uh, Max?”

  Right. Uh, Max. Not son. Which is okay by me.

  “I can run,” I say to Gram. “I see Tony D., that’s what I’ll do.”

  “Good boy,” Gram says. “I thought, because you’re so much bigger than he is … well, you just do that, dear. You run away.”

  “He’s not running away,” Grim says, real impatient. “He’s taking evasive action. Avoiding a confrontation. That’s a very different thing, right, Max?”

  I nod and drink my coffee without slurping and decide it’s better not to mention that Tony D. carries a knife and he’s probably got guns, too, because then Gram would only worry and she’s such a clunker when she’s worried.

  Like I said, it turns out to be a pretty cool summer. Usually what I do is just hang around and look at my comic books and watch the tube, or go shopping with Gram if she really makes a fuss. I hate the beach because the beach is stupid, the cool crowd looking sleek and tanned and aren’t-we-gorgeous?, and because if you saw me lying on a blanket you’d go, hey, why is that albino walrus wearing sunglasses?