Maniac Magee Read online

  Scene: Football game, from the front of the living room to the back of the dining room. Except for space, it has everything a regular game has — running, passing, blocking, tackling, kicking. There is little furniture to get in the way. Ordinarily, the windows wouldn’t last five minutes, but the windows of this house are boarded up with plywood. Body-blocked Cobras fly into the walls. The house flinches.

  Scene: A faint rustling noise behind the stove. Oh, no, rats! Maniac dares to look. It’s a turtle, box turtle, munching on old Whopper lettuce. Whew!

  Scene: The boys’ bedroom. Russell and Piper lie prone at the hole. They fire toy submachine guns — tata-tata-tata-tata — at the Cobras heading out the front door. Piper jumps up and blows Maniac away, killing him at least fifteen times. “This is how we’re gonna do it! Bam-bam-bam!”

  “The guns’ll be real,” says Russell, still prone and firing, the stock of the toy gun tight against his cheek.

  “Yeah!” squawks Piper. “Real!” He flops back to the floor, sprays the whole downstairs. “Soon’s they start comin’ in — bam-bam-bam!”

  “Who?” says Maniac.

  “The enemy,” says Russell.

  “Who’s that?” says Maniac.

  Russell stops firing long enough to send Maniac a where-have-you-been? look. “Who do ya think?” he sneers. He points the red barrel of the submachine gun toward the bedroom door. Toward the east. The East End.

  The heavy front door.

  Scene: Darkness. Silence. Sometime early morning. Maniac lies between the two brothers, on the bed. Do cockroaches climb bedposts? Unable to sleep, asking himself: What am I doing here? Remembering: Hester and Lester on his lap, Grayson’s hug, corn muffin in the toaster oven. Thinking: Who’s the orphan here, anyway?

  Hearing, as he at last lowers himself into sleep’s deep waters, a door slam, a slurred voice: “Do yer homework!”

  Fearing: Will I float?

  36

  The he deal was, if Russell and Piper went to school for the rest of the week, Maniac would show them the shortcut to Mexico on Saturday. He figured if they all managed to survive till then, he’d come up with something.

  On Saturday, the boys had their paper bag packed, and Maniac had a new deal: go to school for another week, and he’d treat them to another large pizza. Besides, he said, crossing his fingers, this was volcano season down in Mexico. The whole place was a sheet of red-hot lava. Better wait till it cools down.

  They bought it. And they bought the same deal the following week.

  But school was still agony for the boys. It had to be worth more than a pizza a week. But what? The. brothers thought and thought about it and soon began to realize that the answer was sleeping between them every night.

  Ever since the famous Maniac Magee had showed up at their house, Russell and Piper McNab had become famous in their own right. Other kids were always crowding around, pelting them with questions. What’s he like? What’s he say? What’s he do? Did he really sit on Finsterwald’s front steps? Is he really that fast?

  Kids started giving them knots — sneaker laces, yoyo strings, toys — and saying, “Ask Maniac to undo this, will ya?” Really little kids referred to him as “Mr. Maniac.”

  The McNabs ate it up. In the streets, the playgrounds, school. The attention, not the pizza, was the real reason they put up with school each day. They began to feel something they had never felt before. They began to feel important.

  What a wonderful thing, this importance. Waiting for them the moment they awoke in the morning, pumping them up like basketballs, giving them bounce. And they hadn’t even had to steal it! They loved it. The more they had, the more they wanted.

  And so, when Maniac tried to cut the next pizza-for-school deal, Russell answered, “No.”

  “No?” echoed Maniac, who had been afraid it would come to this.

  “No,” said Russell. “We want something else.”

  “Oh,” said Maniac. “What’s that?”

  They told him. If he wanted another week’s worth of school out of them, he would have to enter Finsterwald’s backyard — “and stay there for ten minutes!” screeched Piper, who shuddered at the very thought. When Maniac casually answered, “Okay, it’s a deal,” Piper ran shrieking from the house.

  On the next Saturday morning, Russell, Piper, and Maniac set out for Finsterwald’s house, about seven blocks away. They took the alleys. Along the way they were joined by other kids, who were waiting, their eyes at once fearful and excited. By the time they got to Finsterwald’s backyard, at least fifteen kids huddled against the garage door on the far side of the alley.

  Maniac didn’t hesitate. He walked straight up to the back gate, opened it, and went in. Not only that, he went all the way to the center of the yard, turned, folded his arms, smiled, and called “Who’s keeping time?”

  Russell, his throat too dry to speak, raised his hand.

  For ten minutes, fifteen kids — and possibly the universe — held their breath. The only sounds were inside their heads — the moaning and wailing of the ghosts of all the poor slobs who had ever blundered onto Finsterwald’s property.

  To the utter amazement of all, when Russell finally croaked, ’time,” Maniac Magee was still there, alive, smiling, apparently unharmed. Even more amazing, he didn’t come out. Instead, he said, “Say, you guys, how about adding to the deal? If I do something else while I’m here, will you make it the next two weeks at school?”

  “W-watta you g-gonna do?” stammered Russell.

  Maniac thought for a minute, then announced brightly, “I’ll knock on the front door.”

  Five kids finsterwallied on the spot. Several others screamed, “No! Don’t!” Piper went into some sort of fit and began kicking the garage door. Russell zoned out.

  Maniac took all of this to signify a deal. He hopped the backyard fence and strolled around front.

  The others went back down the alley and around the long way. They stationed themselves not only across the street but almost halfway up the block. And even then, they squeezed together in a bunch, as though, if they allowed any space between them, Fin-sterwald might somehow pick them off, one by one.

  They huddled, trembling, to bear witness to the last seconds of Maniac Magee’s life. They saw him stand directly in front of the red brick, three-story house, the bile-green window shades. They saw him climb the three cement steps to the white door, the portal of death. They saw him raise his hand, and though they were too far away to hear, they saw him knock upon the door, and fifteen hearts beat in time to that silent knocking.

  The door opened. Finsterwald’s door opened. Not much, but enough so the witnesses could make out a thin strip of blackness. Would Maniac be sucked into that black hole like so much lint into a vacuum cleaner? Would Finsterwald’s long, bony hand dart out, quick as a lizard’s tongue, and snatch poor Maniac? Maniac appeared to be speaking to the dark crack. Was he pleading for his life? Would his last words be skewered like a marshmallow by Finsterwald’s dagger-tipped cane?

  Apparently not.

  The door closed. Maniac bounded down the steps and came jogging toward them, grinning. Three kids bolted, sure he was a ghost. The others stayed. They invented excuses to touch him, to see if he was still himself?still warm. But they weren’t positively certain until later, when they watched him devour a pack of butterscotch Krimpets.

  37

  Thus began a series of heroic feats by Maniac Magee.

  At twenty paces, he hit a telephone pole with a stone sixty-one times in a row.

  When the once-a-week freight train hit Elm Street, he started running from the Oriole Street dead end — on one rail — and beat the train to the park, no-sweat.

  He took off his sneaks and socks and walked — nonchalant as you please — through the rat-infested dump at the foot of Rako Hill.

  The mysterious hole down by the creek, the one you would never reach into, even if you dropped your most valuable possession into it — he stuck his hand in, his ar
m in, all the way to the elbow, kept it there for the longest sixty seconds on record, and pulled it out, dirty, but still full of fingers.

  He climbed the fence at the American bison pen at the zoo — he had suggested this feat himself, everyone else scoffing — and, while the mother looked on, kissed the baby buffalo.*

  So it went through February and March of that year, a feat a week.

  To much of the town, hearing about these things, it was simply a case of the legend adding to itself, doing what legends do. To Russell and Piper McNab, it was a case of boosting their importance ever higher in the eyes of the other kids. Was it not at the brothers’ direction that Maniac Magee performed these deeds? And who after all is the more amazing, the lion or the tamer?

  As for Maniac, he understood early on that he was being used for the greater glory of Piper and Russell. He also understood that without him, they would not be going to school every day. For the McNabs, there was nothing free about public education. A tuition had to be paid. Every week Maniac paid it. (And besides, he loved to meet the challenges they cooked up for him.)

  And then one day they gave him the most perilous challenge of all. They dared him to go into the East End.

  38

  The witnesses — there were twice fifteen this time — went with him as far as Hector Street. They halted at the curb. He crossed the street and went on alone.

  Piper megaphoned after him: “Maniac! Come back! We was just kidding! You don’t have to!”

  Maniac just waved and went on.

  He knew he should be feeling afraid of these East Enders, these so-called black people. But he wasn’t. It was himself he was afraid of, afraid of any trouble he might cause just by being there.

  It was the day of the worms. That first almost-warm, after-the-rainy-night day in April, when you bolt from your house to find yourself in a world of worms. They were as numerous here in the East End as they had been in the West. The sidewalks, the streets. The very places where they didn’t belong. Forlorn, marooned on concrete and asphalt, no place to burrow, April’s orphans. Once, when he was little in Hollidaysburg, he had gone along with his toy wheelbarrow, carefully lifting them with a borrowed kitchen fork, until the barrow was full, then dumped them into Mr. Snavely’s compost pile.

  And sure as the worms followed the rain, the kids followed the worms. West End — East End — they had poured from their houses onto the cool, damp sidewalks, and if they gave the worms any notice, it was only when they squashed one underfoot.

  And so as Maniac moved through the East End, he felt the presence of not one but two populations, both occupying the same territory, yet each unmindful of the other — one yelping and playing and chasing and laughing, the other lost and silent and dying by the millions …

  “Yo — fishbelly!”

  Maniac snapped to. He glanced at a street sign. He was four blocks from Hector, deep in the East. Mars Bar came dip-jiving toward him, taller than before, bigger, but still scowling. “Hey, fish. Thought you was gone.”

  Maniac turned to face him fully. Mars Bar did not stop till he was inside Maniac’s phone booth of space, inches from his face. They locked eyes, levelly, Maniac thinking, I must be growing, too. He said, “f m back.”

  The scowl fiercened. “Maybe nobody told you — I’m badder than ever. I’m getting badder every day. I’m almost afraid to wake up in the morning” — he leaned in closer — “ ’cause-a how bad I mighta got overnight.”

  Maniac smiled, nodded. “Yeah, you’re bad, Mars.” He gave a sniff; his smile went a little smirky. “And, I’m getting so bad myself, I think I must be half black.”

  Mars’s eyes bulged, he backed off, the scowl collapsed, and he howled with laughter. His buddies, who were hanging back, stared dumbly.

  As Mars unwound from his laughing fit, he studied Maniac up and down; aware, too, that Maniac was studying him. When he could speak again, he said, “Still them raggedy clothes, huh, fish?” He lifted one foot, posed. “I seen ya looking. Like them kicks? Just got ’em.”

  Maniac nodded. “Nice.”

  They were more than nice. They were beautiful. The best — yes, the baddest — sneaks he had ever seen. Way better than anything Grayson could have, afforded.

  “I forgot to tell you something else, too, fish.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m fast. I mean, I’m fas-ter. I been workin’ out. Got my new boss kicks.” He sprinted in place, arms and legs pistoning to a blur. He stopped. He jabbed a finger at Maniac’s nose, pressed it, flattening the soft end of it. “See — guess you were right — now at least you got a black nose.”

  He laughed. They both laughed. Everybody laughed. Then Mars turned scowly again, saying, “But you ain’t black enough or bad enough to beat the Mars man. We gonna race, honky donkey.”

  The race was set up on Plum Street, the long, level block between Ash and Jackson. By the time they were ready, half the kids in the East End were there, from the tiniest pipsqueaks to high-schoolers. The little kids ran races of their own from curb to curb. The bigger kids shouldered blasters and dug into their jeans for coins to bet with. For the first time since last fall, mothers opened windows and leaned out from second stories. Traffic was detoured from both ends of the block.

  No one could find string for the finish, so a second-story mother dropped down a spool of bright pink thread. Another problem was the start. First, they had to find chalk to draw the starting line. When they did, nobody could seem to draw it straight. The result: a stack of starting lines creeping up the street, till someone brought out a yardstick and did it right.

  The next problem came when the starter, Bump Gilliam, who was also Mars Bar’s best pal, called, “Get ready!” — and someone in the crowd yelled, “That ain’t what you say! You say, ’take your mark’!”

  Well, everybody jumped into it, then. There was shoving and jawing and almost a fistfight over the proper way to start a race. Finally there was a compromise, and Bump called, “Get ready on your mark!” At which point someone else called, “Go, Mars!” and Bump turned and snarled, “Shut up! When the starter starts, there’s no noise!” So, naturally, someone else called, “Smoke ’im, Mars!” and then came “Waste ’im, Mars!” and “Do the honk, Bar Man!” And they might still be calling to this day had not a single voice separated itself from the others: “Burn ’im, Magee!” It was Hands Down, laughing and pointing from his perch on the roof of a car.

  Bump jumped into the let-up: “Get set! — Go!” And at long last, mossy from their wait at the starting line, they went.

  Even as the race began — even after it began — Maniac wasn’t sure how to run it. Naturally he wanted to win, or at least to do his best. All his instincts told him that. But there were other considerations: whom he was racing against, and where, and what the consequences might be if he won.

  These were heavy considerations, heavy enough to slow him down — until the hysterical crowd and the sight of Mars Bar’s sneaker bottoms and the boiling of his own blood ignited his afterburners, and before you could say, “Burn ’im, Magee!” he was ahead, the pink thread bobbing in his sights. But he never saw his body break the thread; he saw only the face of Mars Bar, straining, gasping, unbelieving, losing.

  They went crazy. They went wild. They went totally bananas.

  “You see him? He turned ground!”

  “He ran backwards!”

  “He did it backwards!’”

  “He beat ‘im goin’ backwards!”

  Mars Bar tried. He shoved Bump. “You started too fast! I wasn’t ready!” He shoved the thread-holders. “You moved it up so’s he could win! I was gaining on ’im!” He shoved Maniac. “You bumped me! You got a false start! You cheated!” But his protests drowned in the pandemonium.

  Why did I do it? was all Maniac could think. He hadn’t even realized it till he crossed the line, and he regretted it instantly. Wasn’t it enough just to win? Did he have to disgrace his opponent as well? Had he done it deliberatel
y, to pay back Mars Bar for all his nastiness? To show him up and shut him up once and for all? His only recollection was a feeling of sheer, joyful exuberance, himself in celebration: shouting “A-men!” in the Bethany Church, bashing John McNab’s fastballs out of sight, dancing the polka with Grayson.

  Maybe it was that simple. After all, who asks why otters toboggan down mudbanks? But that didn’t make it any less stupid or rotten a thing to do. The hatred in Mars Bar’s eyes was no longer for a white kid in the East End; it was for Jeffrey Magee, period.

  The crowd surged with him as he made his way westward. It wasn’t clear whether they were glad or not that he had won, only that they had seen something to set them off. They jostled and jammed and high-fived and jived. For every one who called him “White lightning,” two more challenged him to race, “Right here, baby — you and me — see who gonna turn his back on who.”

  Maniac kept moving, embarrassed, wishing he could just break out and sprint for the West End, wishing he could duck into the Beales’ house and be sanctuaried there and not fear reprisals on them — and just about then, miraculously, two little hands were worming into his, two familiar voices squealing, “Maniac! Maniac!” Hester and Lester! He snatched them up, one in each arm. He was on Sycamore Street. There was the house, the door opening, Amanda, Mrs. Beale smiling to beat the band.

  39

  During the night, March doubled back and grabbed April by the scruff of the neck and flung it another week or two down the road. When Maniac slipped silently from the house at dawn — the only way he’d ever manage to get away— March pounced with cold and nasty paws. But Maniac wasn’t minding. The reunion had been ecstatic and tearful and nonstop happy, and inside he was pure July. He was half a block up Sycamore before he stopped tiptoeing. Minutes later he crossed Hector. The streets were dry. An occasional scrap of chewed rawhide was all that remained of the worms.

  Hours later, Russell and Piper spotted him three blocks off.