In Jan­u­ary, the month was bit­ter­ly cold, devoid of snow, and char­ac­ter­ized by frozen hard­ness and ice. Mani­ac Magee wan­dered, lost in his mem­o­ries, sur­viv­ing only through the neces­si­ty of eat­ing and stay­ing warm. He could not remain at the band shell, fre­quent­ly return­ing to col­lect a few essentials—his blan­ket, non­per­ish­able food, the glove, and as many books as he could fit into an old black satchel that once belonged to Grayson. Before leav­ing, he hasti­ly paint­ed over the num­ber 101 on the door, indi­cat­ing the end of a chap­ter in his life.

His days were spent run­ning, often at a slow pace, occa­sion­al­ly break­ing into furi­ous sprints as if try­ing to escape him­self. His route mean­dered through sur­round­ing areas—Bridgeport, Con­shohock­en, East Nor­ri­ton, and others—while he avoid­ed the near­by P & W tres­tle and the trou­bling mem­o­ries of his par­ents’ deaths. This avoid­ance soon led him to cease cross­ing the bridge alto­geth­er.

Mani­ac roamed freely, tra­vers­ing roads, alleys, rail­road tracks, fields, and ceme­ter­ies, cre­at­ing a tan­gled web of move­ment that might have mir­rored Cobble’s Knot if viewed from above. By night­fall, he returned to Two Mills to retrieve his satchel and find shel­ter for the night, some­times from a buf­fa­lo pen, or oth­er times from aban­doned cars or base­ments.

As his food sup­ply dwin­dled, Mani­ac sought sus­te­nance at the zoo or the Sal­va­tion Army’s soup kitchen, and he worked odd jobs but refused to beg. One day, he found him­self in Val­ley Forge, a place marked by its his­toric sig­nif­i­cance where the Con­ti­nen­tal Army endured a harsh win­ter. Sur­round­ed by rolling hills and mon­u­ments, he felt an over­whelm­ing ache that res­onat­ed with the harsh­ness of his own expe­ri­ences.

Resum­ing a sem­blance of com­fort, he put him­self up in one of the tiny log cab­ins at Val­ley Forge, its space akin to a dog­house, com­plete with dirt floors and no real door. He lay down, throw­ing away uneat­en saltines to the birds, wrap­ping him­self in the blan­ket, and suc­cumb­ing to the pur­suit of dreams filled with mem­o­ries. As night fell, Mani­ac rest­ed in a pro­found still­ness, res­olute in wait­ing for death, under­stand­ing it would not come quick­ly or eas­i­ly, feel­ing he had earned this wait­ing.