Gypsy Davey (7 page)

But some of the things she does like they say because the law makes her like she does take him to children's hospital all the time. I tell her maybe I should go with her sometimes so that I can understand things more and so she doesn't maybe forget or not care enough about something the doctor might be telling her to do. She tells me to forget it and that once the doctors get a load of me they'll take the baby Dennis and they'll take me and they'll throw her Joanne into jail for conducting experiments at home so I should shut up and drink my grape and leave the fucking mothering to her is the end of what she tells me.

And when they told her she had to move out of that old house because it wasn't safe for the baby Dennis she did but she moved to another house that had the same unsafe stuff in it because she found out about this thing where you don't have to pay any rent if the landlord doesn't take care of the problems so she does that not paying rent for a few months until she gets chased out and can find another unsafe place. So you keep the goddamn baby away from the goddamn windowsills Davey is what she says about it and is that so hard that it shouldn't be a decent trade all that rent money that can go to food that will fill the baby up and he won't want
to be eating no windowsills like he does. Only I haven't seen hundreds of bucks of new food going into the baby Dennis since all this started.

But all the bad stuff was when I wasn't here when I didn't know but now I am and now I do so they 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.

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.

“He's my brother,” Joanne said coolly. “And he ain't no gimp.”

“You 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 right up and smacked her in the mouth.

“Go, Jo, go, Jo,” a handful of the kids yelled as they jumped to their feet to watch the two girls tumble down the stairs.

“Kill her, Celeste,” somebody yelled. “Snatch her bald. Rip her face off.”

They were all twined up, the two girls looking like a single alligator caught in a net and twisting, rolling, slapping on the ground. Joanne had Celeste's long loose black hair wrapped around and around her fist like a cowboy roping a bronco. Celeste, from her position on her back, had both arms outstretched, both hands on Joanne's face, both sets of long nails digging into the face. Celeste dug in and pulled at the flesh, her thumbnails catching inside Joanne's mouth and pulling the lip up to make her look like a snarling dog. Joanne started listing one way, looking about to tumble over, as Celeste's fingernails caught the lower rim of both eyes and started ripping down.

Davey watched, like everybody else. Inside, in his stomach
and in his chest and in his temples, he was sick. He was screaming. He was wielding an aluminum baseball bat, raising it high over his head, and bringing it crashing down on Celeste's head. He could see it like it was happening, Celeste falling with no life in her rolled-back eyes, falling with her face right on Davey's shoes, the soak of blood warming his toes. And the disgusting animals beside him, across from him, behind him, in the fight-circle that had formed on the sidewalk, all backing away giving Davey his due as he helped his wounded sister off the ground. Inside, it all happened. Outside, he did nothing but look on, hyperventilate so shallowly that you had to put an ear to his lips to tell, and wipe his eye once.

As she was about to fall, to land on
her
back with Celeste on top—the certain death spot—Joanne pumped her fist one hard time. The fist with the hair in it. Everyone heard it, the scrape and bang sound like a baseball landing in a parking lot. Celeste stopped clawing momentarily, stunned. So Joanne did it again,
BANG
. Celeste just tried to push Joanne away now, or hold her off, rather than attack, but it was no use. Joanne finally got her other hand close enough to grab more hair and, with two good grips, pounded and pounded and pounded Celeste's head on the pavement. People stopped cheering. Blood started showing, a spot, a blot, a puddle, on the sidewalk behind Celeste's head as well as on her face,
dripping from Joanne's mouth. Out of the crowd, one boy grabbed Joanne's left arm, one her right.

And it was over just like that. Joanne got up peacefully, as if a timer had sounded or a referee had declared it over. Gradually the whole pride went back to flopping in their spots. Two girls and a boy helped Celeste up and took her, crying lowly and spitting, into the house. Joanne pulled Davey by the hand and sat on the bottom step. Shaking, but silent, looking everybody in the eye.

The blood, a red cloud floating on the white concrete, was the only sign that anything had happened.

There was a slap on Joanne's shoulder, then another, and she started feeling a little good. Nobody said anything about it, but she knew what she'd done. Celeste, hated though she was, was still the queen, but she was more of a figurehead now. Joanne had the
real stuff
. Then she felt Davey's hand lightly touching her face. He reached out and laid two fingers on the hurt part just below one eye, ran the fingers down slowly over the long skid marks of nail that ran straight to her mouth where the gums were still bleeding. She grabbed his hand there, put it back in his own lap, turned away, and spat some blood.

She looked at him. But what had she done for
him
? This is what she knew. She knew, before she'd even put a hand on Celeste, that there was nothing she could really do about the
gimp thing or the half-wit thing or any other thing anybody wanted to pull on Davey. But what she
had
done, the one and only thing she always knew she
could
do for him, was that she made sure it wouldn't happen while
she
was around. She had that one nugget of the universe to hold, and she'd held it. It wasn't much, but it was the one thing she could truly, surely do for him.

Joanne's hulking, mumbling, grimy sometimes boyfriend Phil came over and wedged his big butt between Davey and Joanne on the step. “Pretty tough, babe,” he said, kissing her on the bloody lip, then licking it off. “But, ah, but you know, you know how it is here, don'tcha?”

She straightened up, fear finally in her face.

“Well, what, Jo?” he said, as if the situation were honestly out of his hands. “Did you think you could go around it? Jus' 'cause you say no?”

“No, Phil,” she pleaded, grabbing his hand. “He's only little.”

“Ain't neither, babe. He's big as you. Not too much behind me, even.”

“But, Phil, he's only—”

Phil held up his great big hand, walling her off. “But I tell you what we can do. Because it's you, Joanne. Maybe we can make a sorta axception.”

Joanne relaxed.

“Hold on a second,” Phil said, turning away from Joanne toward Davey. Davey looked up at Phil, the wide eyes waiting, like always.

With a quick flick of his forearm, Phil punched Davey. Cracked him in the eye a half-speed poke about like a Ping-Pong stroke. He didn't follow through, pulled his meaty fist back as soon as it landed. His concession to Davey and Joanne.

Everyone sat frozen, even Joanne. Phil stood up over Davey, who had fallen backward and now lay over two steps, holding his eye.

“And that's it.” Phil addressed the crowd, who didn't seem to care. “This young man is all paid up.” He leaned over and pulled Davey up to sitting position, “What is your name again?”

“Davey,” Davey answered, removing his hand to expose an already swelling, bluing eye.

“Nobody hits Davey no more.”

“Yo Phil, yo Phil, yo Phil,” the lions chanted, something they'd clearly had to practice for.

Phil sat back down next to Joanne. “See, babe, I took care a ya.”

Joanne looked at nobody. Tears welled in her eyes but did not fall. Instead she tipped her head back and spit. Spit blood, through the space in her front teeth, a high, arcing stream better than any ballplayer with tobacco juice, clearing the sidewalk to land in the oily street.

Davey leaned toward Joanne, right over Phil as if he weren't there. “You okay, Jo?” he asked. “You need me?”

She just leaned back on her elbows and stared off blankly, like the rest of the lions. Phil put his arm around her and leered. Jo sighed but didn't resist. Now Phil had to be repaid. For his kindness.

I'm on my bike. It's
cool on my bike. Always is, cool, the
only
place that is. I don't mean cool like aren't I the big man and doesn't everybody wish he was me. I just mean regular cool. Like the weather isn't so hot on my bike the way it seems to be everywhere else. The breeze puffs nice over my brow and stops the heat that's always under there. And I've got a
lot
of brow.

And with the cooling, the thoughts, my thoughts, come easy and orderly and slow the way I figure everybody else's thoughts come all the time.

I stayed on my bike one time, last weekend, for twenty-four hours straight. Mostly just to see if I could do it. Not moving every second of the time, but pretty much. Sometimes I took a break to just straddle the bike for a few minutes
and watch stuff, but then I'd get all nervous and sweaty and jumbled again until I pedaled it away. Where I went in twenty-four hours of biking was everywhere. I rode out ten miles late Saturday afternoon, all the way to the quarry. Sometimes I can go to the quarry and find nobody there and I can scream, loud enough and long enough so that I nearly pass out, and then I can stand there and listen to myself scream back at me. But on a Saturday afternoon you don't find nobody at the quarry, you find a bunch of kids drinking beer in tall cans and pony bottles, smashing the bottles on rocks right near me with a pop like dropping a lightbulb. Kids with air rifles who shoot frogs in the water and who see a kid like me and start to run in my direction and say things like “Hmmm humm, maybe we ought to get the pants off of this young man and see what we got.” So I didn't stay but a couple of minutes at the quarry before I pedaled so hard my great mountain bike that I got from my dad that I kicked up rocks and a cloud of quarry dust big as a hot air balloon.

I rode the ten miles back into town, which is where I spent the rest of the time. Riding, looking at everybody. Riding up close to the little kids at the park because I cannot get enough of little kids at parks. I could go on watching that, little kids playing on the swings and slides and turtles mounted on great big springs that coil up out of the ground, I could watch it forever even if I wasn't on my bike. I smile
there like no place else in the world just because I can't help it. I can feel the difference in my face, the muscles all stretched out and tired at the corners of my mouth and on the balls of my cheekbones. And they like me back, little kids, because they run up to me and slap the fence with sticks and poke their tongues out at me and smile just as big as I do. But every time, I feel it, and I have to go. The deep heat of the stares I'm getting from the mothers who are sitting on the benches and sipping diet tonics and talking to each other but looking at me. And they're all now scowling, or frightened, and then one or two or four of them stand up and inch their way my way and I have to go before they reach me.