—Maniac Magee—
by Jerry Spinelli

Chapter 17

 

It was a hot day in August.

It was so hot, if you stood still too long in the vacant lot, the sun bouncing off a chunk of broken glass or metal could fry a patch on your hide.

So hot, if you were packing candy, you had soup in your pocket by two o'clock.

So hot, the dogs were tripping on their own tongues.

And so hot, the fire hydrant at Green and Chestnut was gushing like Niagara Falls (courtesy of somebody wrenching off the cap).

By the time Maniac and the rest of the vacant lot regulars got there, Chestnut and Green was a cross between a block party and a swimming pool. Radios blaring. People blaring. Somebody selling lemonade. Somebody selling Kool-Aid ice cubes on toothpicks. Bodies. Skin. Colors. Water. Gleaming. Buttery. Warm. Cool. Wet. Screaming. Happy.

The younger you were, the fewer clothes you had on. Grownups sat on the sidewalk and dangled their bare feet in the running gutters. Teenagers stripped down to bathing suits and cutoffs. Little kids, underwear. Littlest kids, nothing.

Maniac danced and pranced and screamed with the rest. He learned how to jump in front of the gusher and let it propel him halfway across the street. He joined in a snake dance. He got goofy. He drenched himself in all the wet and warm and happy.

When he first heard the voice, he didn't think much of it. Just one voice, one voice in hundreds. But then the other voices were falling away, in bunches, until only this one was left. It was a strange voice, deep and thick and sort of clotted, as though it had to fight its way through a can of worms before coming out. The voice was behind him, saying the same word over and over... calling... a name... and even then Maniac turned only because he was curious, wondering what everybody was staring at. But when he saw the brown finger pointed at him (not a speck of icing on it), and the brown arm that aimed it and the brown face behind it, he knew the name coming out of the can-of-worms mouth was his: "Whitey." And it surprised him that he knew.

He just stood there, blinking through the waterdrop sun blur, the hydrant gusher smacking his thin, bare ankles. The radios, the people, were silent.

"You move on now, Whitey," the man said. "You pick up your gear and move on out. Time to go home now."

The man was close enough to be catching some water around his shoes, which, Maniac noticed, were actually slippers. His pants were baggy, and his shirt wasn't really a shirt but a pajama top covered with high-tailed roosters. White hair curled around his ears.

Maniac gave his answer: "I am home."

The man took a step closer, dropped his arm. "You go on home now, son. Back to your own kind. I seen ya at the block party. Now you get goin'."

Maniac stepped out of the gusher, the water roared on to the opposite curb. "This is where I live. I live right down there." He pointed toward Sycamore.

The man didn't seem to notice. "Never enough, is it, Whitey? Just want more and more. Won't even leave us our little water in the street. Come on down to see Bojangles. Come on to the zoo. The monkey house."

He must be hard of hearing, Maniac thought. So he called it out really loud and slow and pointed again. "I - live - at - seven - twenty - eight - Sy - ca - more. I - do."

The old man stepped closer. "You got your own kind. It's how you wanted it. Let's keep it that way. NOW MOVE ON. Your kind's waitin' " - he flung his finger westward - "up there."

Suddenly Hester and Lester were by Maniac's side, barking at the man. "You leave him alone, Old Rag-picker! You shut up!"

And the man was croaking, ranting, not to Maniac now but to the people. "What happens when we go over there? Black is black! White is white! The sheep lie not with the lion! The sheep knows his own! His own kind!" A woman was rushing in then, pulling him away, up the street. "Our own kind!... our own kind!..."

The water thundered across the silent street.

 

Maniac, who was one of the world's great sleepers, didn't sleep well that night. Or the next.

He started getting up earlier than usual, not to sneak some time with the A book --- just to run. Bow Wow wasn't even ready for his morning pee yet, but he went along.

Usually Maniac just jogged around the East End; now he did the whole town, plus over the river to Bridgeport. By the third day, Bow Wow refused to go along.

One morning, as Maniac was heading home, Hester and Lester came running up Sycamore. "Maniac! C'mon! We're gonna run too! Let's go that way!"

They tried to turn him around, but he told them to just hold on a minute; he wanted to stop home for a quick drink, then he'd go running with them. They kept yelling and tugging and pushing and grabbing his legs. And then Amanda was pedaling frantically up to him, slapping on a quick smile and gasping, "Hey, I'm going to the store. Wanna come along?"

Maniac checked the sun. It was hardly up to the second stories. "Stores aren't open yet," he said.

Amanda just gawked. She was a rotten liar, Maniac knew. He shook loose from the little ones and trotted on. He didn't know what, but something was wrong.

The little ones jabbered and screeched and grabbed. He ran faster, faster...

Mrs. Beale was out front with the yellow bucket, soapsuds spilling over the brim, a stiff bristle brush in her hand. She was scrubbing the house, the brick wall, scrubbing furiously at the chalk, grunting with the effort, her cheeks wet. He had been way too early, way too fast. Only the F had been scrubbed away. The rest was quite easy to read, the tall yellow letters the same color as the scrub bucket:

ISHBELLY GO HOME