Free Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli Page B

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-
mew!
”
    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 cornmeal- and baseball-scented darkness.

29
    F or most of November, winter toyed with Two Mills, whispered in its ear, tickled it under the chin. On Thanksgiving Thursday, winter kicked it in the stomach.
    But that didn’t stop the old man and the boy from joining the ten thousand who thronged to the stadium on the boulevard to see the traditional high school football game. The arctic air laid panes of ice over the crayfish edgepools of Stony Creek. The effect was the opposite on human noses. Maniac’s and Grayson’s ran like faucets, and not a handkerchief in sight. They deputized their sleeves and grabbed handfuls of napkins from the refreshment stand.
    Two Mills won the game, thanks to a last-minute 73-yard TD pass from quarterback Denehy to James “Hands” Down. From the instant his old trash-talking sandlot pal cradled the ball in his long brown fingers, Maniac was jumping on his seat, screaming trash at Hands’s pursuers every step to the goal line (and glancing about to make sure Mrs. Beale wasn’t hearing).
    By the time they got back to the baseball room, they were nearly frozen. But the freeze was good, for it made the warmth of the little apartment all the more welcome. Within fifteen minutes the space heater had the place positively tropical, while in the toaster oven their five-pound Thanksgiving chicken was already beginning to brown. A pair of hot plates and a squad of pots were pressed into