Maniac Magee (12 page)

*Nobody knows why "buffalo" became "bull" in the jumprope song. History often gets things wrong.

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.

*¤* nihua *¤*

Chapter 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, "I'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 lit-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 a-round!"

"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 deliberately, 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.

*¤* nihua *¤*

Chapter 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.

"Maniac! You're alive!"

"We thought they got ya! We thought they slit yer throat!"

"We thought they strangled ya and pulled yer tongue out!"

"We thought they chopped yer head off and... and..."

"And boiled ya!"

"Yeah, boiled ya!"

"And drunk yer blood!"

"Yeah!"

"And drunk yer brains!"

"Ya don't drink brains, ya moron meatball!"

"Yeah, ya do. Brains're like milkshakes. Like Dairy Queen. You can drink 'em with a straw. You can hear 'em sloshin' if you shake yer head hard enough. Listen---"

"Hey --- get off my head! Hey! Help!"

They were off and running.

Maniac couldn't help laughing. In spite of their twisted, ludicrous impressions of East Enders, the concern and the tears in their eyes had been genuine. They had really missed him. They had really been afraid for him.

Two houses away he could hear the thump --- almost feel it --- and father George McNab's voice: "Lay 'em down easy, I said. Easy!" Followed by son John: "This easy enough?" Thump! Followed by a string of curses from George McNab that fried the cold morning like an egg.

The living room was hazy with dust. At the back end of the dining room, they were bringing in the cinder blocks --- George and John and a handful of Cobras --- lugging and grunting them in from the backyard and dumping them onto the floor. Thump! Thump!

"Hey, kid" --- George McNab was pointing through the haze. Three months and he still didn't know his tenant's name. "Get yer lily hide over here. Start luggin' these."

Maniac waved. "Later. Gotta go." He shut the door and headed up the street.

So, they were really doing it. He had heard them planning it for weeks. Making drawings. Buying, or stealing, cement, trowels, a level. "A pillbox," they called it.

Once it was done, they'd be ready. Let the revolt begin. Let the "rebels," as they called the East Enders, come. Let 'em bust through the newly installed bars over the plywood on the windows. Let 'em bust through the steel door. They'll find themselves staring down the barrel of a little surprise. They squabbled over what the surprise should be. Uzi. AK-47. Bazooka.

"Why?" Maniac had asked Giant John one day.

"Why what?"

"Why are you doing all this?"

"To get ready, what else?"

"Well, what do you thinks going to happen?"

"What's gonna happen?" Giant John swatted a squad of roaches from the kitchen table and sat down. "What's gonna happen is, one of these days they're gonna revolt."

"Who says?"

"Who cares who says? You think they're gonna make an announcement?"

Maniac tried to picture Amanda and Hester and Lester and Bow Wow storming the barricades. "When's all this supposed to happen?"

John shrugged. "Ya never know. Maybe this summer." He jumped up, grapped a beer from the fridge, flipped it open. "They like to revolt in the summer. Makes 'em itchy. They like to overrun the cities. This time we'll be ready."

And he told Maniac what he often imagined, lying in bed: the blacks sweeping across Hector one steaming summer night; torches, chains, blades, guns, war cries; marauding, looting, overrunning the West End; climbing in through smashed windows, doors, looking for whites, bloodthirsty for whites, like Indians in the old days, Indians on a raid...

"That's what they are," Giant John nodded thoughtfully, "today's Indians."

The cockroach strolling up his pant leg wasn't the only thing making Maniac feel crawly. He shook off the roach. He moved to the center of the kitchen, to surround himself with as much space as possible. "But other people," he said, "I don't hear them talking about revolts. Nobody else wants to make a pillbox."

Giant John tilted the last of the beer into his mouth. "Maybe when we do," he grinned, "they will."

That had been weeks before, and now the pillbox was under way, no longer an idea in the backyard but a reality in the dining room. Now there was no room that Maniac could stand in the middle of and feel clean. Now there was something else in that house, and it smelled worse than garbage and turds.