For the rest of the day, Maniac tags along with Grayson, helping him with the work he has to do and listening to story after story - a routine they begin to carry on every day. In the morning, Grayson comes back for Maniac and reveals that he used to actually play baseball as a pitcher in the Minor League! Grayson has to go to work for the morning, but at lunch, Maniac presses him for stories about his time playing baseball. He does, however, ask for a bedtime story, but all Grayson will give him are a few curt answers about what he does at the zoo and the fact that when he was a kid he wanted to be a baseball player. When they get back to the baseball shed, Grayson invites Maniac to stay with him at the YMCA, but Maniac turns this down, thinking of 'the bad luck he always seemed to have with parents' (89). Grayson seems to not quite believe this, accepting Maniac's description of black houses with 'Ain't that somethin'. He tells Grayson, when asked, that he will not be going back to school because school is like a home where they don't let you stay, so he would not be going to school if he didn't have a home.ĭuring dinner, Grayson drills Jeffery on the things black people do, with Maniac repeating over and over that black people do things just about the same as white people - 'They're just regular people, like us' (88). Maniac decides that he will start living in the baseball equipment room. After buying the food, Grayson takes Jeffery to the YMCA where Jeffery takes a long, hot shower and puts on some of Grayson's clothes (Grayson has disposed of his old clothing, which smelled like the buffalo pen, while he showered). The man, Earl Grayson, talks to Jeffery once he wakes up, asking him a few questions and then taking him to get butterscotch Krimpets. The perspective then shifts, again not focusing directly on Jeffery, but instead tracking an 'old man' (80) as he finds Jeffery lying there and takes him back to the 'band shell' (80) or baseball equipment room. The buffalo sees Jeffery 'Maniac' Magee living in the zoo after having run away from the Beale home in East End and, one night, falling so badly that he can't get up.

Part II begins from the perspective of a baby buffalo seeing a 'new, funny-smelling, hairy-headed animal' (79).

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