—Maniac Magee—
by Jerry Spinelli

Chapter 46

 

The teeth of the buffalo clamped firmly upon his ear and lifted his head up from the straw, up from sleep.

Mars Bar was right! They DO eat people!

The buffalo did more than bring great pain to his ear. It spoke to him.

"Ain't you nice... ain't you nice..."

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.

"See that," she snapped, and scrambled his brains with a smack to the head. He'd rather she pulled his ear. "There you go, making me say ain't. I have not said that word all year long, and now you go making me soooo mad." She snatched a handful of straw and flung it at him.

"I'm sorry," he said. He wondered if he would have better luck sleeping in the emu pen. "Can I ask a question?"

"Make it quick," she growled.

"Except for making you say ain't, what is it I'm saying I'm sorry for?"

"What?" she screeched. She was standing above him, hands on hips. He didn't need the light of day to feel the look on her face. "You're sorry for a whole mess of things, boy. You're sorry because you didn't accept Snickers's invitation to his house. And you're sorry because he came throwing a ball up against my bedroom window and waking me up and telling me I had to get up out of my bed and sneak out of my house in the middle of the night and come out here and do something about all this. That is why you are sorry, boy."

Maniac yawned. "Snickers?"

"That's what I'm changing his name to. How bad can you act if everybody's calling you" --- she said it loud --- "Snickers?"

A voice came rasping from the fence. "Shut up, girl."

Maniac howled with laughter. It struck him that it had been a long time since he had reared back like this, so he just let the laughter carry on as long as it wanted.

When he finally settled down, Amanda said, "Okay, let's go."

"Huh?" said Maniac.

"Let's go."

"Where?"

"Home."

"Whose?"

"Mine. Yours. Ours. Come on, I'm sleepy."

Oh, no. Maniac opened his mouth to speak, to protest, to explain --- but there was too much. A hundred nights would not be long enough to explain, to make her understand. So he simply said, "I can't," and lay back down.

In an instant he was bolt upright again, yanked by a hand he couldn't believe belonged to a girl. "Don't tell me can't. I didn't come all the way out here in my nightshirt and my slippers and climb that fence and almost kill myself so I could hear you tell me can't!" She was yelling. Several pens away, Prairie Dog Town stirred. Heads popped into the moonlight. "You got it all wrong, buster. You ain't got --- ouuu, see" --- she kicked him --- "you do not have a choice. I am not asking you. I'm telling you. You are coming home with me, and you are going to sleep in my room, which is going to be your room --- and I don't care if you sleep on the floor or the windowsill or what --- but you are going to sleep there and not here. And you are going to sleep there tonight and tomorrow night and the night after that and the night after that and every night, except maybe once in a while if you decide to sleep over at Snickers's house, if he ever asks you again. This is not your home! Now move!"

She jerked him to his feet. Applause and a brief whistle came from the fence.

Amanda led him by the hand across the muddy, lumpy earth. "Boost me," she commanded at the fence. He boosted her. Mars Bar helped her down from the other side. Maniac hesitated, then climbed over himself.

They walked through the zoo and down the boulevard, the three of them, Amanda and Mars Bar/ Snickers and Maniac, Amanda grumbling all the way: "...You're more trouble outside the house than in it... Now I'm gonna have to throw these slippers away. There's probably buffalo poop all over them... And you better not come within ten feet of me, boy, till you get a bath..."

Maniac said nothing. He was quite content to let Amanda do the talking, for he knew that behind her grumbling was all that he had ever wanted. He knew that finally, truly, at long last, someone was calling him home.

 

THE END