Freak the Mighty

Iggy takes them down a back alley to an old building whose resident is gone for the holidays. The place is warm, the furniture old; a Bible rests on a table near the TV. The place smells of cats and old-lady perfume. Kane and Max will stay here for a few days. Iggy leaves them to settle in.

Kane makes Max sit, leans over him, tells Max he’s a smarter boy than the locals believe, and orders him to act smart and do as he says. He then ties a rope to Max’s feet and ankles and attaches it to his own waist. He lies down for some sleep and tells Max to do the same. Max’s hands and legs tingle from the tight rope, but soon he falls asleep.

He awakens to see his father sitting up in the dark. Kane asks if Max ever received the gifts and letters he sent him; Max shakes his head, and Kane calls it a crime. He says “Killer Kane” is an unfair name, and that he cried himself to sleep every night in prison. Max notices a tear on his father’s face; his father wipes it away. He says Grim and Gram did him a terrible injustice, “might as well have cut out my heart with a knife” when they blamed him “for all the wrongs in the world” (112).

He picks up the Bible, puts one hand on it and the other on his heart, and swears he didn’t kill Max’s mother. “And if that isn’t the truth, may God strike me dead” (113). He forces Max to say he’s satisfied with his father’s oath. Still, Max waits for God to kill Kane.

His father goes back to sleep, but Max can’t. He sits in his chair, hands and feet tied, until the sun rises. 

At dawn, Loretta appears with some leftover pizza. Kane tells her to get Iggy. He won’t eat food touched by Loretta; he and Max go into the kitchen, but they can only find corn flakes and water. Max eats hungrily. A blue police-car light blinks through the window, and Kane makes Max lie down with him on the floor until the light passes.

Iggy arrives and tells Kane that the cops came looking for Max. Kane thinks Iggy turned on him, but Iggy explains about the purse that Max and Freak found, and how the tiny kid was in the police car, peering out. Kane orders Iggy to find him a gun and a getaway car.

He turns to his son and says he knows that Max wouldn’t waste his time stealing stuff with Freak, using the word “cripple,” an offensive slur, to describe Freak’s disability. “You can’t trust a cripple, but I guess you know that now, don’t you?” (121) As with every other question, Max nods and says, “Yes, sir.” 

Kane and Max abandon the old lady’s place as too dangerous; they cross the alley and break into a burned-out building where they can hide until Iggy brings an escape car. Inside the ruins, they find the entrance to a basement and clamber down the stairs. Max, hands and feet tied, goes in first and nearly falls, but Kane pulls him back with the rope and Max briefly dangles in the air.

The basement is filled with burned junk; under a window lies a large pile of coal. Kane ties Max tightly to an old, broken boiler, then tears a piece from Max’s shirt and gags him so he can’t shout. He leaves; a while later, Loretta sneaks down the stairs, ungags Max, and says Kane has changed for the worse since she knew him, and that it’s wrong for a man to tie up his own son. She unties him, but Kane appears suddenly, grabs her around the neck, and begins to choke her. 

His hands and feet still numb, all Max can do is fall onto his father. Kane bats him away and continues to strangle Loretta. Max stumbles between them, shouting that he saw Kane strangle his mother and that he never forgot it. He can’t budge Kane’s hands; his father has the same look in his eye that he had when killing Max’s mom. All Max can do is keep shouting at him.

Kane lets go of Loretta, turns, and gently takes Max by the neck. His cool breath is hypnotic. He says Max can’t possibly remember such a thing, that he was too young, and that Grim and Gram “brainwashed” him. Max tells him what he was wearing, how he tried to stop Kane, who took him to his room and told him he was just dreaming, how Max broke the window and shouted for help.

Kane says, “I wish you hadn’t done that, boy. It cost me years” (130). His hands tighten around Max’s neck. Max grows faint. He hears a window break and Freak’s voice yelling, “Put your hands up, villain!” (131) Freak drops into the room and lands on the coal pile; he’s holding a squirt gun. Kane reaches for him; Freak backs away. Kane scoffs at the gun, but Freak tells him he got it for Christmas along with a chemistry set, and that the gun contains sulfuric acid.

Kane says he’s lying; Freak squirts Kane in the eyes. Kane screams and paws at his face. Max grabs Freak and bolts for the stairs. Kane follows, nearly catching Max’s leg, but Max kicks him away and escapes. He covers Freak and bursts through a plywood wall and into the arms of Iggy and the cops. Freak shouts with glee, saying Kane fell for his ruse—the gun contains only soap, vinegar, and curry powder.

Gram, Grim and Gwen push through the crowd and hug their boys. The police bring up Loretta, who’s still breathing; Iggy runs to her side. Gwen scolds Freak for leaving the police car; as she carries him away, he gives Max a thumb’s up and cries, “Freak the Mighty strikes again!” (134) 

They go to the police station, where a photographer takes shots of Max’s neck bruises. They go to the hospital for X-rays, then back to the police station. Grim gets Gram to go home; he and Max remain with the police for hours, going over Max’s story several times.

Max and Freak get their picture in the news; when school resumes, Mrs. Donelli puts it up on the class bulletin board, and a kid promptly draws mustaches on the two boys’ images. Freak likes the mustache; Max just wants to forget the whole thing. He’ll have to testify against his father if he wants to guarantee that Killer Kane goes away forever.

Instead, Kane pleads to a lesser term, his previous penalty plus 10 years. He’ll be older than Grim when he gets out. He tells Max that his father “is an accident of nature” (139), and that Max, unlike Killer Kane, is a good guy. Max isn’t so sure, though. He hasn’t finished growing up, and things could change.