Max the Mighty

by Rod Philbrick

  I go, “Um, I saw the cartoon version. On TV.” Which sounds so lame, having to admit you never read a really famous book.

  I’m expecting Worm to give me a hard time, but she doesn’t. Instead she says, “We don’t even have a TV. You Know Who won’t let us.”

  “Huh?” I say.

  “My creepy stepfather. He hates TV even more than he hates books. My real dad loves TV and books.”

  “Rachel!” her mom says, like a warning.

  “Well, he does,” Worm insists. “My real dad is always sending me stuff to read. He calls me his little bookworm.”

  Her mom stands up and takes a deep breath. “Come along,” she says, taking Worm by the hand. “We have to keep moving.”

  I’m wondering why they have to keep moving when suddenly this old black station wagon screeches to a halt in the street behind us. No, not a station wagon exactly, it’s an old Cadillac hearse, the kind that isn’t used for funerals anymore. The motor is smoking and drippy streaks of rust make it look like the hearse is bleeding from the inside.

  Suddenly the door flies open and out pops this tall skinny dude with a floppy black hat and a long black coat and black shoes — everything black.

  It’s the Undertaker. And he’s coming to get us.

  They call him the Undertaker because he dresses in black and drives this ratty old hearse. I’ve seen him on street corners and downtown, waving this Bible around and telling people to give him money because he knows the Truth with a capital “T.” Only he never quotes from the Good Book like a real preacher, he just acts like he’ll thump you on the head if you don’t fork over some cash.

  Some people like to egg him on and get him really shouting, but I always steer clear. He is just another angry nutbar ranting about the world gone wrong. A street crazy with a mean streak.

  You see a guy like that, you never think he might have a wife and child at home.

  “Don’t you run from me!” he’s shouting. Only he’s the one doing the running. Coming right at us, waving his arms. With the long black coat and his cold dark eyes he looks like some kind of crazy black bird flapping his wings.

  “Run from me and you run from the Lord!” he snarls.

  He’s staring furious hard at Worm’s mom. She’s not looking at him, or me, or even at her daughter. She’s looking straight down at the ground like she hopes it will open up and swallow her.

  “You hear me?” the man in black shouts. “You hear!?”

  “I wasn’t running,” she explains in this strange dead voice. “We just went for a walk.”

  I look over at Worm. She’s kind of curled up on the bench, hugging her knees. Her eyes are open but you can tell she’s not seeing anything on the outside.

  I reach out to tap her on the shoulder, to get her attention, and that’s when the man in black screams: “Don’t touch that girl!” Spit flies out of his mouth, he’s so angry. His face is white and tight, like a skull without enough skin. “Rachel! Get away from that man this instant!”

  Worm won’t look at me. She moves slow-footed to where her mom waits.

  The Undertaker has planted himself in front of me, like a stake driven into the ground. “What did they tell you?” he demands. “Speak to me, you big oaf!”

  I don’t know what to say so I decide to stand up instead. The man in black watches me get a lot bigger and taller than he is, and he takes a few steps back, like he doesn’t want my shadow to touch him.

  I’m still trying to think of what to do next when Worm’s mother comes to life. “You win, Martin,” she says to the man in black. “Come along, Rachel. Let’s go home.”

  Worm follows her mom to the old hearse. Then just before she gets inside she breaks away and runs back to me and grabs hold of my jacket.

  “Rachel! Get back here!”

  Worm whispers, “Don’t forget,” and then she turns and runs back to the hearse. A moment later they speed away, tires screeching.

  I’m standing there like the biggest dork in the world when I realize that Worm hid something in my jacket pocket.

  The lump in my pocket is a book. The Wind in the Willows, the worn-out old copy Worm had in her backpack. I open up the cover and see where she’s written her name and address on the inside, with the instructions RETURN OR ELSE.

  Don’t forget. So that’s what she meant.

  Just my luck. I’m sitting on a park bench minding my own business and now I’m supposed to return a book to a weird girl who’s in trouble. I figure that’s why Worm put the book in my pocket, so I’d follow her home and be Max the Mighty and save her from her creepy stepdad and leap over tall buildings in a single bound like Superman.

  Yeah right.

  But even though I’m a weenie, something way inside thinks maybe I should return the book and make sure Worm and her mom are okay. That’s when my brain says, Don’t be a doughnut — you want to return the book, put it in the mail.

  But the rest of me is thinking I’ve got to do something, even if it scares me.

  Because the Undertaker is always spouting about punishing sinners, and how only he knows what is true, the Truth with a capital “T.” What a load of baloney. A man who’d do that to his own family, treat them like dirtballs, he wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the butt.

  The address inside the book is in the projects. That’s a place where people don’t have enough money, and half the stuff that should be inside the houses is left outside, like old baby strollers, and busted furniture, and cheesy toys that always look sad in the rain. The wrong side of the tracks, like Gram says, except they took out the railroad tracks before I was born, so now it’s just the wrong side of town.

  Anyhow, I’m trudging along, looking out for cracks in the sidewalk because now I need good luck more than ever. And the more I think about how the Undertaker treats his family, the more it burns me. Cracking his voice like a whip and talking to Worm like she was nothing special, just a thing to be yelled at.

  Part of me wants to stop and go back to the millpond and forget about the girl and her mom, but I keep going. Like my brain has switched off and I’m this lumbering beast with feet as big as shoe boxes.

  After a while I get to her neighborhood. The buildings kind of lean the wrong way and the shadows are long and spooky. The street signs have been torn down or sprayed over, and I’m trying to figure out which way to go when the shouting starts.

  The Undertaker and Rachel’s mom. The woman’s voice is high and sharp and angry, but you can tell she’s scared, too. The Undertaker, well, it makes me feel kind of sick in my stomach because he sounds so cruel and hateful.

  I’m like a dinosaur with a second brain in its tail, except the extra brain is in my feet and they’re making me follow the terrible dark noise. Follow it through the gloomy shadows that live in the alley, and past the filled-to-the-brim Dumpster, and around by the rusty chain-link fence.

  It’s still daytime, but the old buildings are so close together it might as well be night. I keep on going and the whole time I’ve got this feeling like I’m on an elevator going down too fast but I can’t get off and any second it’s going to hit bottom.

  The angry voices are getting louder.

  “Keep your hands off that child!”

  “Shut up, woman! Shut your mouth or I’ll break it!”

  “Leave her alone or I’ll call the police! And this time I’ll tell them the truth!”

  They’re fighting about the Worm, I can feel that in my bones. And then I come around the corner of the old tenement building and see the old hearse parked in the street. There’s a light coming from the basement apartment. The kind of apartment where the entrance is under the front stoop and there’s iron bars on the windows.

  The Undertaker is shouting, “I will punish that child as the Lord sees fit!”

  And then her mother goes, “You’ve never even read that Bible! You’re not a real preacher, you’re a fake!”

  And then smack comes the noise of a hand slapping hard a
gainst a face and then the sound of a woman sobbing. “This can’t go on,” the woman whimpers. “Martin, please stop. Don’t do it, please.”

  “Quit your blubbering!”

  But the woman keeps crying. Crying from deep inside, like her world has cracked open and all the good is leaking out. It’s a sound I remember from a long, long time ago, when my father made my own mother cry, and that’s why my feet won’t let me run away.

  I’m not really thinking about what happens next but I want to stop that terrible sad crying and that’s why I go down the steps to the front door. Thinking maybe if I ring the bell they’ll stop fighting. Dingdong and everything gets better. But there isn’t any doorbell and before I can make a fist and knock, the woman cries out, “No! No!” and then something falls to the floor and everything gets very quiet.

  The silence makes me wish I was a thousand miles away. And when I look into the room through the bars on the window, I see a terrible thing. A thing so horrible it feels like my heart has stuck to my ribs and won’t ever beat again.

  Rachel’s mom is lying on the floor, blocking a bedroom door with her body. Her eyes are black and bruised and her nose is bloody and she’s not moving.

  The Undertaker yanks her arms and pulls her away from the door. He’s about to open it. There’s a cruel look on his pale white face, and his eyes are cold and gleaming and his angry hands are reaching out.

  Ker-wham!

  That’s when I come crashing through the front door and knock it off the hinges and slam it flat on the floor.

  “You!” he screams. But he sees the look in my eyes and how big I am and he backs away.

  Rachel’s mom moans and raises her head and when she sees me through her swollen eyes she almost smiles.

  “Get away from that door!” the Undertaker shouts.

  That makes me want to open the door, and I do.

  The first thing I see is a light shining on a book. Worm is sitting in a corner with her knees up, in the dark. She’s got the old miner’s helmet on her head and the light is aimed at this book she’s reading.

  She knows I’m there but she won’t look at me. She’s all shut up inside.

  When I get my mouth working, it says, “Come on. You have to get out of here. We have to call the police.”

  Worm just keeps reading her book like the book will save her. Like her stepfather can’t touch her as long as her miner’s light is shining.

  But that won’t stop him. Nothing will stop him except getting her away from him, so I grab her backpack, scoop her up in my arms and carry her out of the room.

  When I get clear of her bedroom the Undertaker takes a run at me, then pulls up. “She’s mine!” he screams. “Give her to me!”

  I decide I’d rather die than do what he wants.

  Rachel’s mom has crawled up from the floor. It’s hard for her to talk, but she looks at me and says, “You’ve got to get her away from here. Please. Take her away!”

  Worm has her face hard against my chest and she won’t look at her mother.

  “Run away!” her mother urges. “Do it! Go!”

  And that’s how I became a desperate criminal and kidnapper, wanted by the law.

  When you get in trouble, head for home. That’s the first thing that comes into my head after me and Worm get clear of the alley. The Undertaker doesn’t follow us, which sort of surprises me. Somebody takes away his stepdaughter and he just lets her go?

  Of course he’s got his hands full, after what he did to his poor wife.

  Worm lets me carry her out of the basement apartment, but then she wants to walk on her own. When I ask if she’s okay, she doesn’t say a word but she reaches out and takes my hand.

  “Grim and Gram will know what to do,” I promise her.

  We can hear sirens wee-ooing in the distance and I’m thinking they’ll be putting the cuffs on the Undertaker so he can’t hurt anybody else. I don’t even want to think about what will happen to Worm, or what she should do until he’s locked up in jail and can’t hurt her anymore.

  We’re cutting across the backyards, heading for home because Gram will make everything okay somehow. Hey, after dealing with a big doughnut brain like me, helping an eleven-year-old girl should be easy, right?

  Wrong, because when we come up to the back of the house, there are blue lights flashing through the windows. Cop cars in the street. Something in my brain goes “uh-oh.”

  I put my finger to my lips and Worm nods and doesn’t make a sound.

  There’s a row of thick hedges that runs close to one side of the house, between our yard and the neighbors. I used to hide in there when I was little — after my mom died, but before Kevin moved next door. I’d hide myself in the hedges and pretend I was far away inside the forest where it was green and cool and the good smell of leaves and earth made me feel safe. Grim and Gram knew about the secret hedge place, but they never let on.

  I’m way too big to hide in there now, but if I crouch real low and keep my head down I can still look around to the front yard without being seen. And what I see there just about blows my mind.

  The Undertaker. He’s with the cops but he’s not in handcuffs. He’s acting all weepy and upset and he’s telling the police the biggest bunch of lies you ever heard.

  “He was after Rachel. Menacing her! And when my wife tried to stop him, he hit her.”

  It never happened that way, but he sounds like he believes it. He wipes his eyes and sniffles a bit and says, “You’ve got to catch him and lock him away before he does my girl any harm.”

  The cops don’t say much, except they tell the Undertaker to stay back. By now the front door has opened and Grim and Gram have come out on the steps. The blue lights make them look pale and old.

  “What happened?” Gram asks, real worried. “Is it Max? Did something happen to Max?”

  One of the cops says, “Is your grandson home, ma’am? We’d like a word with him.”

  The Undertaker hears that and goes nuts. “A word!” he shouts. “The boy assaulted my wife and ran off with our girl! Arrest him!”

  Grim kind of staggers and grabs hold of Gram and then they’re holding each other up and looking sick. Grim says, “Impossible! There must be some kind of mistake. Max wouldn’t hurt a soul.”

  The other cop pipes up and says, “Maybe he doesn’t know his own strength, sir. Have you seen him in the last few hours?”

  Gram’s voice is shaking. “He went down to the millpond,” she says. “To the park. He goes there almost every day.”

  The Undertaker charges up behind the cops, waving his hat around. “See!” he shouts. “I told you! He followed us home from the park! Just like I said!”

  Grim straightens up and goes, “You’d better tell us what happened, officer.”

  The cop doesn’t look too happy about it, but he clears his throat and goes, “This man says a youth fitting Maxwell’s description broke into their apartment and ran off with an eleven-year-old girl. While trying to stop him, the girl’s mother received several blows to the face.”

  “And the woman told you Max attacked her?” Grim asks.

  “She agrees with her husband,” the cop says with a shrug.

  Grim’s voice gets stronger. “Then it wasn’t our Max. Couldn’t have been.”

  The other cop goes, “I’m afraid Maxwell was seen leaving the scene of the crime, carrying the girl. There’s really nobody else who fits the description, sir. I mean, a boy that big. The door was broken down, knocked right off the hinges.”

  Gram has a quiet kind of voice but I hear her clear as a bell. “Listen to me, you people. There has been a mistake. Max will be home any minute, and he can explain for himself.”

  Inside I’m going, Good for you, Gram. And I’m thinking maybe I should come out and tell everybody what really happened, and how the Undertaker is a total liar. Why shouldn’t they believe me instead of him?

  Then Gram says something that makes my heart drop down into my shoes.

  “I
t wasn’t Max who broke down the door and kidnapped the girl,” Gram says. “Our boy would never do such a thing. I assume you’re taking fingerprints?”

  The cops both nod.

  “Good,” says Gram, like everything is settled. “That will prove it isn’t our grandson.”

  Fingerprints. Mine will be all over the door I busted down. And besides, I really did break in and run off with Worm. That part is true.

  The Undertaker is wiping his eyes with his floppy black hat. “Poor Rachel,” he sobs. “My little girl.”

  “We’ll find her,” one of the cops tells him. “Maxwell Kane is too big to hide.”

  The other cop pats him on the back and says, “You’ll get your daughter back. I promise.”

  Worm moans and goes, “I knew it. Nobody can stop him.”

  That’s when I decide there’s only one right thing to do.

  Run away with Worm to a place where the Undertaker can’t find her.

  The last time I ran away from home I was five years old and took my teddy bear along for company. Now I’m fourteen and I’ve got a real live eleven-year-old girl hanging on to my hand like she’s afraid I’ll disappear.

  We’re cutting through the back streets, away from the flashing blue lights, trying to stay out of sight.

  “I knew that would happen,” Worm says. “He can make my mom say anything. It happened before. They were fighting, you know, like tonight? And somebody called the cops. But when the cops got there, my mom said it was all her fault.”

  “So what do we do now?” I ask.

  “I want to find my real dad,” Worm announces. “He’ll know what to do.”

  Actually, that makes sense. Let him be the one to protect her, he’s probably a whole lot braver and smarter than I am.

  I go, “So where’s your real dad? Does he live nearby?”

  Worm shakes her head. “Montana,” she says. “In a place called Chivalry.”

  Great. Wonderful. Geography isn’t my best subject, but I know Montana is at least a thousand miles from here, maybe more. So whatever hope it gave me, that all comes crashing down.