Maniac Magee: Part III

He returned only long enough to pick up a few things: a blanket, some nonperishable food, the glove, and as many books as he could squeeze into the old black satchel that had hauled Grayson’s belongings around the Minor Leagues.

Here the Continental Army had suffered through a winter of their own, and the vast, stark, frozen desolation itself seemed a more proper monument than statues and stones.

Screecher retaliated, and Maniac had to step back while a two-kid tornado swirled around the cabin.

Then the brothers had to do some more trembling and clinging while John finished lambasting them for running away, which apparently they did about every other week.

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

And then one day they gave him the most perilous challenge of all.

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.

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.

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!”

In spite of their twisted, ludicrous impressions of East Enders, the concern and the tears in their eyes had been genuine.

Maniac tried to picture Amanda and Hester and Lester and Bow Wow storming the barricades.

He took them to the library, then scrapped that idea after their shenanigans left the librarian blubbering and blue-faced.

It was a maddening, chaotic time for Maniac.

Running in the mornings and reading in the afternoons gave him just enough stability to endure the zany nights at the McNabs’.

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.