—Maniac Magee—
by Jerry Spinelli

Chapter 32

 

Most mornings, Grayson would be the first one out of bed. He would turn on the space heater, visit the band shell lavatory; then heat up some water, get breakfast ready, and finally wake the boy with a gentle shake of the shoulder. On December thirtieth, it was the silence that woke Maniac, and the cold. The space heater wasn't on, no steaming cups sat on the table, the old man was still under the covers.

Maniac went over. "Grayson." He shook the old man. "Grayson?" He took the old man's hand. It was cold.

"Grayson!"

 

He didn't run to the Superintendent's office. He didn't run to the nearest house. He knew.

He held the cold, limp hand that had thrown the pitch that had struck out Willie Mays, that had betrayed the old man's stoic ways by giving him a squeeze. He began talking to the old man, about places he had been on the road, about places the two of them might have gone to, about everything.

Then he began to read aloud. He read aloud all the books the old man had learned to read, and he finished with the old man's favorite, Mike Mulligan's Steam Shovel.

When he looked out the window, it was night. He dragged his chest protectors alongside the old man's mat and lay down, and only then, when he closed his eyes, did he cry.

 

The funeral, such as it was, took place on the third day of the New Year. Maniac had at last gone to tell someone, the zookeeper, and from then on he pretty much stayed out of the way.

Grayson came to the cemetery in a wooden box. The pallbearers were unknown to Maniac. They were members of the town's trash-collecting corps, and as they huffed and bent to lay the box over the hole, they smelled vaguely of pine and rotten fruit.

Maniac was the only mourner. He had thought the park Superintendent might show. Or the attendant at the Y locker room. Or maybe the lady who ran the park food stand in summer. None was there. Only Maniac and the man from the funeral home and the six pallbearers and two men off to the side, smoking cigarettes and leaning on a little hole-digging tractor that made Maniac think of something. He smiled inwardly: Hey, Grayson, look --- Mike Mulligan's steam shovel had a baby! High above, a silver plane crossed the sky, silent as a spider.

A voice startled Maniac. "When's he comin'?" It was one of the pallbearers.

The man from the funeral home pushed down the top of his black leather glove to expose his watch. "Should be here now. Should've been here five minutes ago."

"How long we gotta wait?"

The funeral man shrugged. All but one of the pallbearers lit up cigarettes.

Maniac wished he hadn't come. This event had nothing to do with the man who once lived in the body in the wooden box.

"I'm freezing my cochongas off," a pallbearer announced.

"Me, too," said another.

"Hey, y'know" --- called one of the gravediggers --- "we ain't waitin' all day to fill in that hole."

Everyone looked to the man in the long black coat. He looked again at his watch. "Traffic, probably."

The minister, thought Maniac. That's who we're waiting for.

A pallbearer walked over to the funeral man. "We hauled the stiff here, ain't that enough? They only give us an hour."

Another pallbearer chimed in, "Let's go get some doughnuts."

"Hot coffee, baby."

Loud clanks --- a gravedigger was striking the baby steam shovel with a spade.

The funeral man sighed. He pulled out his own cigarette, lit it from the glowing tip of the pallbearer's. "Give it two more minutes. Then we'll see."

Maniac waited for one of those minutes, searching the horizon for signs of a minister. Whatever was going to happen at the end of the next minute, he didn't want to see it. So he ran. "Hey, kid!" they called. "Yo, kid!" But he was running... running...