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 comi
ng 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.
There’s a place I go inside my head sometimes. It’s cool and dim in there and you float like a cloud — no, you are a cloud, the kind you see in the sky on a windy day, the way they keep changing shape except you can’t really see it changing? It just sort of happens, and suddenly you realize the cloud that looks like a big hand with fat fingers now looks like a catcher’s mitt, or a big soft TV set? Like that.
Anyhow, I went there right after the Fair Gwen ran off with that look on her face, like: What was he doing with my poor little boy, stealing him away in the wagon?
What I do is lie on the floor under my bed, where you can just barely see the bedsprings and stuff because it’s so dark, and before long I’m somewhere else, sort of floating, and it’s so cool and empty in there, you don’t have to think about anything. You’re nothing, you’re nobody, nothing matters, you’re not even there. Time out.
Except this time I can’t stay as long as I’d like because Gram is knocking on the door. Going, “Maxwell? Max, are you there? Please answer me, dear, it’s important.”
Yeah, right. But I wedge out from under the bed — there’s getting to be less and less room under there — and I dust myself off and open the door. There’s no lock, but Gram has this thing about waiting until I say come in, she makes a big deal about not intruding.
“Maxwell,” she says, and she takes a little step inside the room and you can tell she’d rather not be here, she makes this face because the place is dark and messy and probably it smells like my socks or whatever. “Max, dear, I’m sorry to bother you — you know I never come into the basement — but I just got a call from Gwen Avery and I think it’s important.”
Uh-oh, I’m thinking. Now the Fair Gwen is calling up my Gram, probably to report a great hulking beast that lives in the cellar, and I close up inside, waiting for the worst.
“She called to say how sorry she was,” Gram is saying.
“Huh?”
“I guess she came to pick up her little boy, is that right? You and Kevin were making friends?”
Making friends. What a wet idea that is, but Gram gets her feelings hurt pretty easy, so I don’t actually say that. What I say is, “Yeah, I guess so.”
Gram is uneasy, I can see her eyes flitting nervously around the room, like she’s crossing the border into a really foreign country. This is as good a place as any to mention that even though Gram is my grandmother, she doesn’t look like a granny, she looks more like a mother because she was, as she always says, “a mere child myself” when my real mother was born.
“Well, uhm, I get the impression poor Gwen wasn’t expecting to see you looking so big, and now she thinks she’s offended you. Does that make any sense?”
“I guess so. You know her, huh?”
“Oh my yes,” says Gram. “Gwen was a good friend of your mother’s. They were both pregnant at the same time. Then later on you and little Kevin went to the same day care, did you know that?”
I give a shrug because I don’t really like Gram to know how much I remember about way back then.
Gram is saying, “She said — she especially wanted me to tell you this, Max — she said she’s delighted that you and Kevin are going to be friends. That’s the word she used — delighted. And she’s inviting you to supper.”
First thing, without thinking, I say, “Do I have to?”
Gram reaches out and she puts her hand on my shoulder, real light and feathery, you can feel how nervous she is just to touch me, and how it makes her uncomfortable to have to look up at me, because did I mention I’m a lot bigger than Gram? Bigger than Grim, too? Bigger than most people? It’s true.
Gram says, “She feels bad about how she treated you, Maxwell, dear, and she wants to make it up to you. You don’t have to go, but it would be the right thing to do.”
“It was no big deal,” I say. “She just ran away is all. I guess I scared her.”
“It wasn’t you,” Gram says.
“No? Then who was it scared her?”
Now she’s got her tongue stuck, and you can see her swallowing in her throat, like her mouth is dry. “I’ll just leave that to Gwen,” she says. “She’s quite a remarkable young woman, you know. Raising that poor boy all on her own.”
“He’s not a poor boy,” I say. “You should hear him talk. I think the rest of him is so small because his brain is so big.”
“Yes,” says Gram. “Well well.”
Gram is always saying that, well well, like it means something, which I guess it does to her. Anyhow, I agree to have supper with Freak and his mom, even though the idea of it makes me feel tensed up, like there is a hand inside my stomach and the hand is, you know, making a fist.
It turns out to be not so bad. The Fair Gwen, right away she’s beaming at me, bouncing around the kitchen and talking a mile a minute, so fast the words kind of smoosh together.
“SodidSusanexcusemeyourgrandmother mentionyourmomandIwerepalsthatis … until shegotmarriedexcusemeInever … could abide thatmanIalwaysthoughthewascrazyand … scaryisitokaytosaythatyou … won’tbeoffended?”
It’s like this delay while I sort it out, and then I go, “Yeah, Gram told me,” and the stuff about her knowing my father and thinking he was sick in the head, I decide no comment is the way to go.
“You were the cutest little baby,” Gwen says. “I remember like it was yesterday. We were all of us living over in the tenements in those days, because the rent was so cheap and we were all just starting out.”
Freak is on the floor, digging through the packing boxes for pots and pans and stuff, he’s almost inside this box, all you can see is his funny little rear end sticking out. You’d think he was maybe two years old, that’s how small he is, until you notice where his leg brace makes a lump in his pants.
From inside the box he goes, “Hey, Gwen, leave the guy alone, huh? You’re going spastic.”
“Am I?” Gwen asks. She’s at the counter, going through drawers and looking for spoons or whatever. “Sorry, Max. That is, I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. It’s just, you know …”
Freak’s head pops out of the box and he’s got this wicked know-it-all grin. “What she means is, you’re a spitting image of your old man.”
Gwen says, “Kevin, please,” and her voice is real small, like she’s embarrassed.
“Yeah,” I say. “Everybody says that.”
“They do?”
I shrug. Is it really such a big deal for a boy to look like his father? Which is typical butthead thinking, because of course it’s a big deal, if your father happens to be in prison. Which everybody in town knows about, it’s not like there’s any secret about what he did or why he’s there, except everybody acts like it should be a secret, and the bigger I grow and the more I look like my old man, the worse it gets.
“You really knew him?” I say. “I mean him and my mom when they were together?”
“Not very well,” Gwen says. She’s looking for a knife to slice open a pack of hot dogs. “I never saw much of your mom after they got married. He made it … difficult for your mother to have any friends.”
There’s a knife on the table and I pick it up and hand it to the Fair Gwen. She doesn’t flinch away and I decide she’s okay, she’s really pretty cool.
“So,” Freak is saying. “When do we eat? My fuel cells are depleted.”
Supper is great. The Fair Gwen makes this really tasty potato salad
with spices and stuff, way better than the mushy stuff Gram makes, and we have hot dogs fried in a pan with the buns toasted up butter-crisp just the way I like, and two kinds of relish and three kinds of mustard, and red onions cut up real small.
We sit out in the back yard eating from paper plates, and Freak tells robot stories that are so strange and funny I’m laughing like a maniac and then I’m choking and Freak is pounding me on the back.
“Expel the object!” Freak shouts. “Regurgitate, you big moron!” and he gives me another thump and I cough up this yucky mess, but I’m still laughing so hard my nose is running.
What a goon, except it really is funny, me trying to sneeze a hot dog through my nose, and we’re both laughing like total morons.
“This is great,” Gwen says, looking at Freak and me. “I’m so glad we decided to move back, you know? I feel like we’re all getting a fresh start.”
It’s time to go home, Gram gets nervous if I’m not back before dark. Everything seems really great, just like Gwen says, except when I lie down on my bed it hits me, boom, and I’m crying like a baby. And the really weird thing is, I’m happy.
Fourth of July, right? Everybody goes nuts. The dads are getting drunk and having their cook-outs, and the moms are trying to keep all the brats from blowing their precious little pinkies off with cherry bombs, and the kids are running wild through the back yards. It’s like no rules apply, and that makes everything real edgy, if you know what I mean, like let’s have a blast and who cares what happens.
Don’t get the wrong idea. I love the Fourth. It’s just that people tend to get all choked up about firecracker holidays, and they don’t see what’s really going on, which like I say is the dads swilling beer and acting numb, that’s the basic formula.
Not that Grim ever swills anything stronger than root beer. No way. The poison never crossed his lips, he likes to say, even though I’ve seen a picture of him in the army and that sure looks like a bottle of beer in his hand, and he’s got that same wacked-by-a-hammer grin that dudes always get when they’re drinking.