Maniac Magee (15 page)

Authors: Jerry Spinelli

Tags: #JUV007000

“So,” said Maniac, “what
did
you do?”

“Wha’d I
do?
I took him home.”

Maniac stopped dead. “
What?
”

Mars Bar shrugged. “I figured, let my mom pry him off me. ’Course, the other one had to come too. But I made him leave them muddy sneakers outside.” He put his nose to a fence. “What’s in there? I don’t see nothin’.”

“Prairie Dog Town. They’re underground. So, what then?”

“So, my mother took over. She pried the one off me, and soon’s she does, he jumps right onto her, like a octopus. I go to pull him off and she gets all mad at
me
and says let him go, let him go. She gets the wet one dried off. Takes off his clothes and puts my old stuff on him. Stuff she been savin’ case I get a little brother someday. But I won’t, ’cause my mom can’t have no babies no more. And I ain’t even come to the craziest part yet.”

“What’s that?”

“They didn’t wanna go home. They stayed all day. My mother babyin’ ’em, feedin’ ’em. I tell her not to, she swats me away. Sometimes my mom ain’t got no sense. She makes me play games with them. Monopoly and stuff. Finally my father drives them home. It’s after dark. They’re getting out the car, and know what they say to me — I’m in the car too — “ He wagged his head. “They ask me to come in and play that game-a theirs. Rebels. They, like, beg me. They say, ‘Come on —
pleeeeese
— if you
play
with us, we’ll let you be
white.
’ You
believe
that?”

Maniac chuckled. “I believe it.”

They walked on.

“Magee?”

“Yeah?”

“I had to ask you something. Now I gotta tell you something.”

“What’s that?”

“You smell like a buffalo.”

Ears of a hundred different shapes prickled at the long, loud laughter of the boys.

“Magee?” Mars Bar said, after a spell.

“Yeah?”

“My mother wants to ask you something, too.”

“Your mother?”

“Yeah. Like I told her about you, y’know. Actually, she already heard about you.”

“So?”

“She wants to know, like, uh, why don’t you come to our house?”

Maniac turned, stared directly at Mars Bar. Mars Bar looked away. He said nothing more.

They walked on, silent among the crickets and fireflies.

Having made a full circle of the zoo, they were back at the pen of the American bison. Maniac said, “I can’t.”

“Why not?” said Mars Bar. “My house not good enough? My mother?”

Maniac struggled for words. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to. It’s just … I don’t know … things happen … I can’t…”

“Look, man,” Mars Bar snapped, “ain’t nobody sayin’ come
live
with us. All we sayin’ — all
she
sayin’ — is, you wanna come for a little, you know, visit? You
want
to? Well, come on, you can. That’s all. Don’t go makin’ no big thing, man. Ain’t no big thing.”

Maniac shuddered. He turned his eyes to the sky, beyond the flickering fireflies to the stars. If there were answers, they were as far away as the constellations. “I gotta go,” he said, and before Mars Bar could react, he was over the fence and hurrying for the lean-to.

T
he teeth of the buffalo clamped firmly upon his ear and lifted his head up from the straw, up from sleep.

Mars Bar was right! They DO eat people!

The buffalo did more than bring great pain to his ear. It spoke to him.

“Ain’t you nice … ain’t you nice …”

But the voice of the buffalo was the voice of Amanda Beale, and its teeth were her fingers pulling and wrenching his poor ear till he was sitting upright.

“See
that
, “ she snapped, and scrambled his brains with a smack to the head. He’d rather she pulled his ear. “There you go, making me say ain’t. I
have not
said that word all year long, and now you go making me
soooo
mad.” She snatched a handful of straw and flung it at him.

“I’m
sorry
” he said. He wondered if he would have better luck sleeping in the emu pen. “Can I ask a question?”

“Make it quick,” she growled.

“Except for making you say ain’t, what is it I’m saying I’m sorry for?”

“
What?
” she screeched. She was standing above himrthands on hips. He didn’t need the light of day to feel the look on her face. “You’re
sorry
for a whole mess of things, boy. You’re
sorry
because you didn’t accept Snickers’s invitation to his house. And you’re
sorry
because he came throwing a ball up against my bedroom window and waking me up and telling me I had to get up
out
of my bed and sneak
out
of my house in the
middle
of the night and come
out
here and do something about all
this.
That is why you are
sorry,
boy.”

Maniac yawned. “Snickers?”

“That’s what I’m changing his name to. How
bad
can you act if everybody’s calling you” — she said it loud—“Snickers?”

A voice came rasping from the fence. “Shut up, girl.”

Maniac howled with laughter. It struck him that it had been a long time since he had reared back like this, so he just let the laughter carry on as long as it wanted.

When he finally settled down, Amanda said, “Okay, let’s go.”

“Huh?” said Maniac.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Home.”

“Whose?”

“Mine. Yours. Ours. Come on, I’m sleepy.”

Oh, no.
Maniac opened his mouth to speak, to protest, to explain — but there was too much. A hundred nights would not be long enough to explain, to make her understand. So he simply said, “I can’t,” and lay back down.

In an instant he was bolt upright again, yanked by a hand he couldn’t believe belonged to a girl. “Don’t tell me
can’t.
I didn’t come all the way out here in my nightshirt and my slippers and climb that fence and almost kill myself so I could hear you tell me
can’t!
” She was yelling. Several pens away, Prairie Dog Town stirred. Heads popped into the moonlight. “You got it all wrong, buster. You ain’t got — ouuu,
see
” — she kicked him—“you
do not
have a choice. I am not
asking
you. I’m
telling
you. You are coming home with me, and you are going to sleep in
my
room, which is going to be
your
room — and I don’t care if you sleep on the floor or the windowsill or what — but you are going to sleep
there
and not
here.
And you are going to sleep there tonight and
tomorrow
night and the night after
that
and the night after
that
and
every
night, except maybe once in a while if you decide to sleep over at Sniekers’s house,
if
he ever asks you again.
This
is
not
your
home!
Now
move!
”

She jerked him to his feet. Applause and a brief whistle came from the fence.

Amanda led him by the hand across the muddy, lumpy earth. “Boost me,” she commanded at the fence. He boosted her. Mars Bar helped her down from the other side. Maniac hesitated, then climbed over himself.

They walked through the zoo and down the boulevard, the three of them, Amanda and Mars Bar/ Snickers and Maniac, Amanda grumbling all the way:” … You’re more trouble
outside
the house than
in
it … Now I’m gonna have to throw these slippers away, ’there’s probably buffalo poop all over them … And you better
not
come within ten feet of me, boy, till you get a
bath
…”

Maniac said nothing. He was quite content to let Amanda do the talking, for he knew that behind her grumbling was all that he had ever wanted. He knew that finally, truly, at long last, someone was calling him home.

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Maniac Magee

Newbery Medal Winner

might have lived a normal life if a trolley accident hadn’t made him an orphan. After living with his unhappy and uptight aunt and uncle for eight years, he decides to run—and not just run away, but run. And this is where the myth of Maniac Magee begins, as he changes the lives of a racially divided small town with his amazing and legendary feats.

“Writing that bursts with creativity, enthusiasm, and hope for the future: in short it’s a celebration of life.” —
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