Maniac Magee Read online

  “Yeah! Yeah!” they yell, and they stand there cheering and clapping.

  Years later, the high-schoolers’ accounts differ. One says the kid from nowhere hopped the fence, hopped it without ever laying a hand on it to boost himself over. Another says the kid just opened the back gate and strolled on in. Another swears it was a mirage, some sort of hallucination, possibly caused by evil emanations surrounding 803 Oriole Street.

  Real or not, they all saw the same kid: not much bigger than Arnold Jones, raggedy, flap-soled sneakers, book in one hand. They saw him walk right up to Arnold, and they saw Arnold look up at him and faint dead away. Such a bad case of the finsterwallies did Arnold have that his body kept shaking for half a minute after he conked out.

  The phantom Samaritan stuck the book between his teeth, crouched down, hoisted Arnold Jones’s limp carcass over his shoulder, and hauled him out of there like a sack of flour. Unfortunately, he chose to put Arnold down at the one spot in town as bad as Fin-sterwald’s backyard — namely, Finsterwald’s front steps. When Arnold came to and discovered this, he took off like a horsefly from a swatter.

  As the stupefied high-schoolers were leaving the scene, they looked back. They saw the kid, cool times ten, stretch out on the forbidden steps and open his book to read.

  6

  About an hour later Mrs. Valerie Pickwell twanged open her back screen door, stood on the step, and whistled.

  As whistles go, Mrs. Pickwell’s was one of the all-time greats. It reeled in every Pickwell kid for dinner every night. Never was a Pickwell kid ever late for dinner. It’s a record that will probably stand forever. The whistle wasn’t loud. It wasn’t screechy. It was a simple two-note job — one high note, one low. To an outsider, it wouldn’t sound all that special. But to the ears of a Pickwell kid, it was magic. Somehow it had the ability to slip through the slush of five o’clock noises to reach its targets.

  So, from the dump, from the creek, from the tracks, from Red Hill — in ran the Pickwell kids for dinner, all ten of them. Add to that the parents, baby Didi, Grandmother and Grandfather Pickwell, Great-grandfather Pickwell, and a down-and-out taxi driver whom Mr. Pickwell was helping out (the Pickwells were always helping out somebody) — all that, and you had what Mrs. Pickwell called her “small nation.”

  Only a Ping-Pong table was big enough to seat them all, and that’s what they ate around. Dinner was spaghetti. In fact, every third night dinner was spaghetti.

  When dinner was over and they were all bringing their dirty dishes to the kitchen, Dominic Pickwell said to Duke Pickwell, “Who’s that kid?”

  “What kid?” said Duke.

  “The kid next to you at the table.”

  “I don’t know. I thought Donald knew him.”

  “I don’t know him,” said Donald. “I thought Dion knew him.”

  “Never saw him,” said Dion. “I figured he was Deirdre’s new boyfriend.”

  Deirdre kicked Dion in the shins. Duke checked back in the dining room. “He’s gone!”

  The Pickwell kids dashed out the back door to the top of Rako Hill. They scanned the railroad tracks. There he was, passing Red Hill, a book in his hand. He was running, passing the spear field now, and the Pickwell kids had to blink and squint and shade their eyes to make sure they were seeing right — because the kid wasn’t running the cinders alongside the tracks, or the wooden ties. No, he was running — running — where the Pickwells themselves, where every other kid, had only ever walked — on the steel rail itself!

  7

  When Jeffrey Magee was next spotted, it was at the Little League field in the park. A Little League game had just ended. The Red Sox had won, but the big story was John McNab, who struck out sixteen batters to set a new Two Mills L.L. record.

  McNab was a giant. He stood five feet eight and was said to weigh over a hundred and seventy pounds. He had to bring his birth certificate in to the League director to prove he was only twelve. And still most people didn’t believe it.

  The point is, the rest of the league was no match for McNab. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been a right-fielder, but he was a pitcher. And there was only one pitch he ever threw: a fastball.

  Most of the batters never saw it; they just heard it whizzing past their noses. You could see their knees shaking from the stands. One poor kid stood there long enough to hear strike one go past, then threw up all over home plate.

  It was still pretty light out, because when there are a lot of strikeouts, a game goes fast. And McNab was still on the mound, even though the official game was over. He figured he’d made baseball history, and he wanted to stretch it out as long as he could.

  There were still about ten players around, Red Soxers and Green Soxers, and McNab was making them march up to the plate and take their swings. There was no catcher. The ball just zoomed to the backstop. When a kid struck out, he went back to the end of the line.

  McNab was loving it. After each whiff, he laughed and bellowed the strikeout total. “Twenty-six! … Twenty-seven! … Twenty-eight! …” He was like a shark. He had the blood lust. The victims were hunched and trembling, walking the gangplank. ’Thirty-four! … Thirty-five! …”

  And then somebody new stepped up to the plate. Just a punky, runty little kid, no Red Sox or Green Sox uniform. Kind of scraggly. With a book, which he laid down on home plate. He scratched out a footing in the batter’s box, cocked the bat on his shoulder, and stared at McNab.

  McNab croaked from the mound, “Get outta there, runt. This is a Little League record. You ain’t in Little League.”

  The kid walked away. Was he chickening out? No. He was lifting a red cap from the next batter in line. He put it on. He was back in the box.

  McNab almost fell off the mound, he was laughing so hard. “Okay, runt. Number thirty-six coming up.”

  McNab fired. The kid swung. The batters in line automatically turned their eyes to the backstop, where the ball should be — but it wasn’t there. It was in the air, riding on a beeline right out to McNab’s head, the same line it came in on, only faster. McNab froze, then flinched, just in time. The ball missed his head but nipped the bill of his cap and sent it spinning like a flying saucer out to shortstop. The ball landed in the second-base dust and rolled all the way to the fence in center field.

  Dead silence. Nobody moved.

  McNab was gaping at the kid, who was still standing there all calm and cool, waiting for the next pitch. Finally a sort of grin slithered across McNab’s lips. He roared: “Get my hat! Get the ball!”

  Ten kids scrambled onto the field, bringing him the hat and ball. McNab had it figured now. He was so busy laughing at the runt, he lobbed him a lollipop and the runt got lucky and poled it.

  This time McNab wasn’t laughing. He fingered the ball, tips digging into the red stitching. He wound, he fired, he thought: Man! That sucker’s goin’ so fast even I can hardly see it! And then he was looking up, turning, following the flight of the ball, which finally came down to earth in deep left center field and bounced once to the fence.

  More silence, except from someone who yelped “Yip —” then caught himself.

  “Ball!” bellowed McNab.

  He was handed the ball. He slammed his hat to the ground. His nostrils flared, he was breathing like a picadored bull. He windmilled, reared, lunged, fired …

  This time the ball cleared the fence on the fly.

  No more holding back. The other kids cheered. Somebody ran for the ball. They were anxious now for more.

  Three more pitches. Three more home runs.

  Pandemonium on the sidelines. It was raining red and green hats.

  McNab couldn’t stand it. The next time he threw, it was right at the kid’s head. The kid ducked. McNab called, “Strike one!”

  Next pitch headed for the kid’s belt. The kid bent his stomach around the ball. “Steee-rike two!”

  Strike three took dead aim at the kid’s knees, and here was the kid, swooping back and at the same time swatting a
t the ball like a golfer teeing off. It was the craziest baseball swing you ever saw, but there was the ball smoking out to center field.

  “Hold it, runt,” snarled McNab. “I can’t pitch right when I gotta wizz.”

  The kids on the sidelines made way as McNab stomped off the field, past the dugout and into the woods between the field and the creek. They waited a pretty long time, but they figured, well, McNab’s wizz probably would last longer than a regular kid’s. Might even make the creek rise.

  At last McNab was back on the mound, fingering the ball in his glove, a demon’s gleam in his eye. He wound up, fired, the ball headed for the plate, and — what’s this? — a legball? — it’s got legs — long legs pinwheeling toward the plate. It wasn’t a ball at all, it was a frog, and McNab was on the mound cackling away, and the kid at the plate was bug-eyed. He’d never—nobody’d ever — tried to hit a fastfrog before.

  So what did the kid do? He bunted it. He bunted the frog, laid down a perfect bunt in front of the plate, third-base side, and he took off for first. He was halfway to second before McNab jolted himself into action. The kid was trying for an inside-the-park home-run bunt — the rarest feat in baseball, something that had hardly ever been done with a ball, and never with a frog — and to be the pitcher who let such a thing happen — well, McNab could already feel his strikeout record fading to a mere grain in the sandlot of history.

  So he lumbered off the mound after the frog, which was now hopping down the third-base line. As a matter of fact, it was so close to the line that McNab had a brilliant idea — just herd the frog across the line and it would be a foul ball (or frog). Which is what he tried to do with his foot. But the frog, instead of taking a left turn at the shoe, jumped over it and hopped on toward third base. He was heading for the green fields of left, and the runt kid, sounding like two runners with his flap-soles slapping the bottoms of his feet, was chucking dust for third.

  Only one hope now — McNab had to grab the frog and tag the runner out. But now the frog shot through his legs, over to the mound, and now toward shortstop and now toward second, and McNab was lurching and lunging, throwing his hat at the frog, throwing his glove, and everybody was screaming, and the kid was rounding third and digging for home, and — unbefroggable! — the “ball” was heading back home too! The ball, the batter, the pitcher all racing for home plate, and it was the batter, the new kid out of nowhere, who crossed the plate first, at the same time scooping up his book, twirling his borrowed red cap back to the cheering others, and jogging on past the empty stands and up the hill to the boulevard; McNab gasping, croaking after him: “Don’t stop till yer outta town, runt! Don’t let me ever catch ya!”

  And that’s how Jeffrey Magee knocked the world’s first frogball for a four-bagger.

  8

  And how he came to be called Maniac.

  The town was buzzing. The schools were buzzing. Hallways. Lunchrooms. Streets. Playgrounds. West End. East End.

  Buzzing about the new kid in town. The stranger kid. Scraggly. Carrying a book. Flap-soled sneakers.

  The kid who intercepted Brian Denehy’s pass to Hands Down and punted it back longer than Denehy himself ever threw it.

  The kid who rescued Arnold Jones from Finster-wald’s backyard.

  The kid who tattooed Giant John McNab’s fastball for half a dozen home runs, then circled the sacks on a bunted frog.

  Nobody knows who said it first, but somebody must have: “Kid’s gotta be a maniac.”

  And somebody else must have said: “Yeah, reg’lar maniac.”

  And somebody else: “Yeah.”

  And that was it. Nobody (except Amanda Beale) had any other name for him, so pretty soon, when they wanted to talk about the new kid, that’s what they called him: Maniac.

  The legend had a name.

  But not an address. At least, not an official one, with numbers.

  What he did have was the deer shed at the Elmwood Park Zoo, which is where he slept his first few nights in town. What the deer ate, especially the carrots, apples, and day-old hamburger buns, he ate.

  He started reading Amanda Beale’s book his second day in town and finished it that afternoon. Ordinarily, he would have returned it immediately, but he was so fascinated by the story of the Children’s Crusade that he kept it and read it the next day. And the next.

  When he wasn’t reading, he was wandering. When most people wander, they walk. Maniac Magee ran. Around town, around the nearby townships, always carrying the book, keeping it in perfect condition.

  This is what he was doing when his life, as it often seemed to do, took an unexpected turn.

  9

  John McNab had never in his life met a kid he couldn’t strike out. Until the runt. Now, as he thought about it, he came to two conclusions:

  1. He couldn’t stand having this blemish on his record.

  2. If you beat a kid up, it’s the same as striking him out.

  So McNab and his pals went looking for the kid. They called themselves the Cobras. Nobody messed with them. At least, nobody in the West End.

  The Cobras had heard that the kid hung around the park and the tracks, and that’s where they spotted him one Saturday afternoon, on the tracks by the path that ran from the Oriole Street dead end to the park. He was down by Red Hill and heading away from them, book in hand, as usual.

  But the Cobras just stood there, stunned.

  “I don’t believe it,” one Cobra said.

  “Must be a trick,” said another.

  “I heard about it,” said another, “but I didn’t believe it.”

  It wasn’t a trick. It was true. The kid was running on the rail.

  McNab scooped up a handful of track stones. He launched one. He snarled, “He’s dead. Let’s get ’im!”

  By the time Maniac looked back, they were almost on him. He wobbled once, leaped from the rail to the ground, and took off. He was at the Oriole Street dead end, but his instincts said no, not the street, too much open space. He stuck with the tracks. Coming into view above him was the house on Rako Hill, where he had eaten spaghetti. He could go there, to the whistling mother, the other kids, be safe. They wouldn’t follow him in there. Would they?

  Stones clanked off the steel rails. He darted left, skirted the dump, wove through the miniature mountain range of stone piles and into the trees … skiing on his heels down the steep bank and into the creek, frogs plopping, no time to look for stepping rocks … yells behind him now, war whoops, stones pelting the water, stinging his back … ah, the other side, through the trees and picker bushes, past the armory jeeps and out to the park boulevard, past the Italian restaurant on the corner, the bakery, screeching tires, row houses, streets, alleys, cars, porches, windows, faces staring, faces, faces … the town whizzing past Maniac, a blur of faces, each face staring from its own window, each face in its own personal frame, its own house, its own address, someplace to be when there was no other place to be, how lucky to be a face staring out from a window …

  And then — could it be? — the voices behind him were growing faint. He slowed, turned, stopped. They were lined up at a street a block back. They were still yelling and’shaking their fists, but they weren’t moving off the curb. And now they were laughing. Why were they laughing?

  The Cobras were standing at Hector Street. Hector Street was the boundary between the East and West Ends. Or, to put it another way, between the blacks and whites. Not that you never saw a white in the East End or a black in the West End. People did cross the line now and then, especially if they were adults, and it was daylight.

  But nighttime, forget it. And if you were a kid, day or night, forget it. Unless you had business on the other side, such as a sports team or school. But don’t be just strolling along, as if you belonged there, as if you weren’t afraid, as if you didn’t even notice yon were a different color from everybody around you.

  The Cobras were laughing because they figured the dumb, scraggly runt would get out of the East End in
about as good shape as a bare big toe in a convention of snapping turtles.

  10

  Of course, Maniac didn’t know any of that. He was simply glad the chase was over. He turned and started walking, catching his breath.

  East Chestnut. East Marshall. Green Street. Arch Street. He had been around here before. That first day with the girl named Amanda, other days jogging through. But this was Saturday, not a school day, and there was something different about the streets — kids. All over.

  One of them jumped down from a front step and planted himself right in front of Maniac. Maniac had to jerk to a stop to keep from plowing into the kid. Even so, their noses were practically touching.

  Maniac blinked and stepped back. The kid stepped forward. Each time Maniac stepped back, the kid stepped forward. They traveled practically half a block that way. Finally Maniac turned and started walking. The kid jumped around and plunked himself in front again. He bit off a chunk of the candy bar he was holding. “Where you goin’?” he said. Candy bar flakes flew from his mouth.

  “I’m looking for Sycamore Street,” said Maniac. “Do you know where it is?”

  “Yeah, Pknow where it is.”

  Maniac waited, but the kid said nothing more. “Well, uh, do you think you could tell me where it is?”

  Stone was softer than the kid’s glare. “No.”

  Maniac looked around. Other kids had stopped playing, were staring.

  Someone called: “Do ’im, Mars!”

  Someone else: “Waste ’im!”

  The kid, as you probably guessed by now, was none other than Mars Bar Thompson. Mars Bar heard the calls, and the stone got harder. Then suddenly he stopped glaring, suddenly he was smiling. He held up the candy bar, an inch from Maniac’s lips. “Wanna bite?”

  Maniac couldn’t figure. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, go ahead. Take a bite.”