—Maniac Magee—
by Jerry Spinelli

Chapter 28

 

The first book Grayson read cover to cover was The Little Engine That Could. It took almost an hour and was the climax to a long evening of effort. At the end, the old man was sweating and exhausted.

The kid's reaction surprised him. He didn't jump and yippee like he did after the first sentence. He just stayed in the far corner, seated on a stuffed and lumpy equipment bag. He had kept his distance all during the reading, letting Grayson know there would be no cheating, he had to do it on his own. Now he was just staring at Grayson, a small smile coming over his face. And now he was making a fist and clenching it toward Grayson, and he said, "A-men."

"What's that?"

"A-men."

"What's that for? Who prayed?"

"I learned it in the church I used to go to. You don't have to wait for a prayer. You say it when somebody says something or does something you really like." He hopped off the bag, thrust both hands to the ceiling, and shouted: "Aaaay-men!"

And suddenly the kid was hugging him, squeezing with a power you never suspected was in that little body, unless you had seen him pole a baseball almost to the trees in dead center field.

"Okay," said Maniac, clapping his hands, "what'll it be? I'll be the cook. Whatever you want."

Maniac had a toaster oven now, compliments of his whiskered friend. In fact, little by little, Grayson had brought him a lot of things: a chest of drawers for his clothes, a space heater, a two-foot refrigerator, hundreds of paper dishes and plastic utensils, blankets, a mat to sleep on (which the kid ignored, preferring the chest protectors). In time the place was homier than his own room at the Y.

"How 'bout a corn muffin?" said Grayson, choosing something easy on his bad teeth and aching gums.

Maniac went to the bookcase that served as a pantry. "One corn muffin coming up. Toasted?"

"Yeah, why not."

"Butter?"

"Sure, butter."

"Something to drink with that, sir?"

"Nah, muffin's enough."

"The apple juice is excellent, sir. It was a great year for apples."

Live it up, thought Grayson. "Yeah, okay, apple juice."

"Coming right up, sir."

After the snack, the kid proved himself as good a mind reader as a cook. "Why don't you stay overnight?" he said. "It's late."

While he groused about so preposterous an idea, the kid laid down the mat he never used, bulldogged him down to it, pulled off his shoes and draped a blanket over him. He protested, "This is s'pposed to be yours."

The kid patted his chest protectors --- "I'm okay... I'm okay" --- and he knew that was the truth of it.

The old man gave himself up willingly to his exhaustion and drifted off like a lazy, sky-high fly ball. Something deep in his heart, unmeasured by his own consciousness, soared unburdened for the first time in thirty-seven years, since the time he had so disgraced himself before the Mud Hens' scout and named himself thereafter a failure. The blanket was there, but it was the boy's embrace that covered and warmed him. When somebody does something you really like. "A-men," the old man whispered into the corn-meal- and baseball-scented darkness.