Read Online Gypsy Davey by Chris Lynch - Free Book Online

can stay away now they can leave us alone now. But I know they won’t. But they don’t know me though. What I would do. What I would do if I ever knew that they were coming here to get my baby Dennis I would take him and put him on my bike the one that my dad left for me in my room at night the bike that is tougher and faster than anything and that nobody or no thing can touch me when I’m on it. I’d take my baby Dennis and I’d put him in the front of a milk crate wrapped in a heavy blanket just like Eliot and E.T. in the movie we’d touch our fingers together they would glow and I’d pedal hard and he would make the bike fly so we couldn’t be caught and I know Joanne would let me do it.
    We’d be up there away from everybody my heart would glow right through my skin right through my shirt and the baby Dennis’s would too because we’re just like in E.T. the same he’s just like me and I’m just like him all connected up he feels everything I feel I feel everything he feels he feels everything I feel.
    And I’d ride him all the way up to the star that both of us are always looking at out the window is what I would do.

GIMP
    When the orders eventually changed from “Joanne, dammit, you stay in this house and take care of your brother” to “Joanne, dammit, would you get that Davey up and out of the house for a change,” Joanne was out the door like a heat-seeking missile, with Davey in tow.
    She introduced him to her friends, who actually didn’t do much more with their time than Davey did, but they did it outside and in a large group. They spent their weekends and afternoons hanging out draped all over one another, boys and girls mostly ages twelve to fifteen, just like a pride of heat-prostrated lions, on the porch of a family whose parents seemed to be nonexistent and whose daughter Celeste was more or less the group’s leader. Joanne was scared, bringing her little brother to this place, but he was hers, and they were hers, so she was going to do it.
    The problem was whenever somebody brought along a new hanger, the first order of business was typically to give him a beating before letting him stay. But that wouldn’t be a problem this time. Davey was just a kid, too young for that kind of stuff. And he was so sweet and no trouble to nobody. He was Davey. Anyway, not while Joanne was around. No way.
    Big old Celeste, who some of the kids called “Brutus” when she wasn’t in earshot, came right toward Davey the first time Joanne brought him around. “Yo, Jo, who’s the gimp?” she said, getting it started.
    There was nothing wrong with Davey, not really. Nothing physical. Nothing outside of a few too many hours spent alone. Lately in front of a TV of course, or on his bike riding furiously to nowhere, talking to no one, stopping for nothing, until he’d gone out ten, fifteen, twenty miles and only the fading light told him it was time to come back. The glaze came from not talking enough to other human beings. The prominent forehead and the height—Davey was, at nine, already five feet six inches—came from his father, Sneaky Pete. The crooked Prince-Valiant-meets-Julius-Caesar haircut that exaggerated it all was courtesy of Lois. “Goddammit, Davey, you look like a sheepdog, staring out of that bangwork, and you haven’t got the brains to even brush it out of your way.” So, one big snip. The overall look was a mistake, was all, too much head, too much height, too much quiet, too much dumb sweet. Just an unfair, unfortunate mistake.
    â€œHe’s my brother,” Joanne said coolly. “And he ain’t no gimp.”
    â€œYou never said nothin’ about havin’ no half-wit at home.” Celeste laughed, making others laugh too.
    But Joanne knew how quickly, in a circle like hers, the casual remark became the permanent identity, so she did what she had to do. She walked