Maniac Magee: Chapter 40 Summary & Analysis

Maniac spends the day running, but that night, he answers Mrs. Pickwell’s dinner whistle. This time, he’s not a stranger—the Pickwell kids cheer when he arrives, and even better, Mrs. Pickwell treats him like family. There’s a down-and-out shoe salesman at the table, too. Enjoying dinner, Maniac compares the Pickwells to the Beales and finds the two families similar—“whoever had made Hector Street a barrier, it was surely not these people.”

Back at the McNabs’, Maniac finds he no longer has much influence over Piper and Russell, especially with summer approaching. The kids are beginning to build a raft and daydream about escape. It’s unclear to Maniac why he continues to care. He feels that, somehow, abandoning the McNab boys would be “to abandon something in himself.” Deep down,  he thinks, the boys are so much like Hester and Lester Beale, but unlike the Beales, their environment is rotting them from the inside.

One day, Maniac finds Piper and Russell punting Grayson’s baseball glove back and forth like a football. He explodes at them for 10 minutes. This wins Maniac a few days of respect and obedience. But then, angered by their pretending to attack the “rebels,” Maniac stomps the boys’ toy guns into bits. The boys tell him to leave their house, and Maniac does. A few days later, however, the boys find Maniac at the library and beg him to come to Piper’s birthday party the next day. Maniac agrees—on the condition that he can bring any guest he wants.