turned out to be four and a half blocks long. Someone tied it to a stop sign and started walking, and that's how far he got before it gave out.
The yelling went on and on, the way yelling does if only to hear itself. But one person wasn't yelling: Amanda Beale. She was holding one of the homemade confetti scraps, gaping at it. Then she was scrambling across the sidewalk, the street, shoving people's legs aside, grabbing more scraps, crying out, "Oh no!... Oh no!" And then she was running.
Maniac saw. He leaped from the table. He picked up a scrap. There was printing on it, about Africa. He picked up another; this one mentioned ants. Another: Aristotle.
The encyclopedia A!
He followed the scrap-paper trail up Hector and down Sycamore, all the way to the Beales' front steps. The only thing left of the book was the blue-and-red cover. It looked something like an empty looseleaf binder. Amanda was hunched over, rocking, squeezing it to her chest. "It was my fault," she sobbed. "I got careless. I left it in the living room. Anybody could look through the window and... and..." She clenched her eyes so tightly it was a wonder the tears got out.
More than anything, Maniac wanted to hug Amanda and tell her it was okay. He wanted to go inside, be with his family, in his house, his room, behind his window. But that wasn't the right thing. The right thing was to make sure the Beales didn't get hurt anymore. He couldn't keep letting them pay such a price for him.
He turned and headed back up Sycamore. Maybe the man with the can-of-worms voice was right: "Back to your own kind... back to your own kind..."
He never got farther west than the far curb of Hector Street, because McNab and the Cobras were there to meet him, grinning, leering, hissing, "Yo, baby, we hear ya got a little pizza prize there... come on back... we missed ya... we been waitin' for ya..." So he turned and started walking north on Hector, right down the middle of the street, right down the invisible chalk line that divided East End from West End. Cars beeped at him, drivers hollered, but he never flinched. The Cobras kept right along with him on their side of the street. So did a bunch of East Enders on their side. One of them was Mars Bar. Both sides were calling for him to come over. And then they were calling at each other, then yelling, then cursing. But nobody stepped off a curb, everybody kept moving north, an ugly, snarling black-and-white escort for the kid in the middle.
And that's how it went. Between the curbs, smack-dab down the center, Maniac Magee walked --- not ran --- right on out of town.
*¤* nihua *¤*
PART TWO
*¤* nihua *¤*
Chapter 22
If you were the baby buffalo at the Elmwood Park Zoo, maybe it would have gone something like this:
You wake up. You have breakfast, compliments of mother's milk. You mosey on over to the lean-to. Surprise! A strange new animal in there. Bigger than you, but a lot smaller than Mom. Hair, but only on top of its head. Sitting in the straw, munching on a carrot, like Mom does.
Every morning, same thing. You get to expect it. Some mornings, you forget Mom's milk and head right on over to the lean-to. The creature offers you a carrot, but all you know how to deal with is milk. You nuzzle the new, funny-smelling, hairy headed animal. It nuzzles you back. Mom doesn't seem to mind.
After the nuzzling, the stranger climbs over the fence and goes away, not to return until that night. Only, one morning the stranger falls from the fence and lies on the ground, on the other side. It doesn't move. You try to poke your nose through the chain links, but you can't reach, you can only watch... only watch...
The old man was bumping through the zoo in the park pickup when he spotted the body clumped outside the buffalo pen. He wheeled over, got out. "A kid!" At first he could only stare, at the body, then at the baby bison, whose large brown eye seemed to be watching them both. The
The yelling went on and on, the way yelling does if only to hear itself. But one person wasn't yelling: Amanda Beale. She was holding one of the homemade confetti scraps, gaping at it. Then she was scrambling across the sidewalk, the street, shoving people's legs aside, grabbing more scraps, crying out, "Oh no!... Oh no!" And then she was running.
Maniac saw. He leaped from the table. He picked up a scrap. There was printing on it, about Africa. He picked up another; this one mentioned ants. Another: Aristotle.
The encyclopedia A!
He followed the scrap-paper trail up Hector and down Sycamore, all the way to the Beales' front steps. The only thing left of the book was the blue-and-red cover. It looked something like an empty looseleaf binder. Amanda was hunched over, rocking, squeezing it to her chest. "It was my fault," she sobbed. "I got careless. I left it in the living room. Anybody could look through the window and... and..." She clenched her eyes so tightly it was a wonder the tears got out.
More than anything, Maniac wanted to hug Amanda and tell her it was okay. He wanted to go inside, be with his family, in his house, his room, behind his window. But that wasn't the right thing. The right thing was to make sure the Beales didn't get hurt anymore. He couldn't keep letting them pay such a price for him.
He turned and headed back up Sycamore. Maybe the man with the can-of-worms voice was right: "Back to your own kind... back to your own kind..."
He never got farther west than the far curb of Hector Street, because McNab and the Cobras were there to meet him, grinning, leering, hissing, "Yo, baby, we hear ya got a little pizza prize there... come on back... we missed ya... we been waitin' for ya..." So he turned and started walking north on Hector, right down the middle of the street, right down the invisible chalk line that divided East End from West End. Cars beeped at him, drivers hollered, but he never flinched. The Cobras kept right along with him on their side of the street. So did a bunch of East Enders on their side. One of them was Mars Bar. Both sides were calling for him to come over. And then they were calling at each other, then yelling, then cursing. But nobody stepped off a curb, everybody kept moving north, an ugly, snarling black-and-white escort for the kid in the middle.
And that's how it went. Between the curbs, smack-dab down the center, Maniac Magee walked --- not ran --- right on out of town.
*¤* nihua *¤*
PART TWO
*¤* nihua *¤*
Chapter 22
If you were the baby buffalo at the Elmwood Park Zoo, maybe it would have gone something like this:
You wake up. You have breakfast, compliments of mother's milk. You mosey on over to the lean-to. Surprise! A strange new animal in there. Bigger than you, but a lot smaller than Mom. Hair, but only on top of its head. Sitting in the straw, munching on a carrot, like Mom does.
Every morning, same thing. You get to expect it. Some mornings, you forget Mom's milk and head right on over to the lean-to. The creature offers you a carrot, but all you know how to deal with is milk. You nuzzle the new, funny-smelling, hairy headed animal. It nuzzles you back. Mom doesn't seem to mind.
After the nuzzling, the stranger climbs over the fence and goes away, not to return until that night. Only, one morning the stranger falls from the fence and lies on the ground, on the other side. It doesn't move. You try to poke your nose through the chain links, but you can't reach, you can only watch... only watch...
The old man was bumping through the zoo in the park pickup when he spotted the body clumped outside the buffalo pen. He wheeled over, got out. "A kid!" At first he could only stare, at the body, then at the baby bison, whose large brown eye seemed to be watching them both. The
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