Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick

Author:Rodman Philbrick [Philbrick, Rodman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 1993-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

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.

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