Free Gypsy Davey by Chris Lynch Page A

“Whatcha doin’ back here, little crazy boy,” Lester said when he saw me again. I rode in a circle around him, around and around the way I would when I wanted to see something up close but I didn’t want to stop riding. The circle got tighter and tighter until I could keep my balance while buzzing in a four-foot circle like a circus trick rider. Lester liked that, standing in the center with his arms folded trying to follow me from behind his sunglasses without moving his head.
    â€œRiding,” I answered. “I like to ride.”
    â€œI guess you do,” he said, and we began having little conversations like that all the time. Sometimes I would ride that way just to have the thirty-second talk with Lester.
    â€œYou back again ? Boy, don’t you got no home?”
    â€œI got one.” I circled and circled him.
    â€œThen go there,” he snapped, stamping his foot. I took off, whizzing down the street, but it was play. Lester was the person who never really chased me off.
    â€œGypsy boy,” Lester said next time. I could tell he was starting to like seeing me. If I didn’t come by one day, he’d be twice as excited the next. “The boy with no home. The day-and-night cycler.”
    â€œYou’re always here, too,” I said. “You got no home?”
    Lester smiled, nodding. He was like a flashing neon light as I spun around him. His big electric smile with the two gold front teeth on one side, the six-inch gold lettering L-E-S-T-E-R flashing across his black satin baseball jacket in back.
    â€œWhat is your name, boy?” Lester asked.
    â€œDavey,” I said as I peeled away, suddenly feeling the need to fly.
    â€œGypsy Davey,” he called after me. “There go the Gypsy Davey.”
    So when Lester and his friends saw me time after time after time during my twenty-four hours, he didn’t think anything of it other than to say, after a while, “Gypsy boy, y’know,if you’re gonna do all this motoring around for nothin’, then here, why don’t you take this little package over to so-and-so street and give it to so-and-so little man and here, keep this little fi’ dollars for your trouble.”
    And I did it. Lester was pretty happy when I came back, and he gave me another package and another five dollars. And then one more. But I asked him, after the last time, when the person I brought the package to came out to the sidewalk in some leopard-skin bikini underwear, with a gun in his hand and a baby on his hip, I asked Lester if he’d be mad if I didn’t go to any more houses. Lester didn’t mind, and I hung around some more until my twenty-four was up and I went home Sunday afternoon to sleep for about twenty-four more. On my way in the house Ma said, “You missed lunch, Davey.”
    But now I’m back. I’m rested and I’m on my bike and I’m at the quarry. But it’s not Saturday afternoon and the place is all mine. I passed the playground and drew a stare, even though I didn’t even slow down. I wish I could tell them. I wish they could see how I take care of the baby Dennis, so then they could feel better and I could feel better. But I can’t and they can’t because there just seem to be things that can’t work that way.
    I scream across the quarry, like I’m blowing all my air out, and the scream and the air sails out and over, bounces off the far granite, then comes back to me like I wanted it to.

BIG NOW
    Joanne was tired. A very tired fifteen. Where she used to flop with her friends, just like her friends, leaning back on her elbows on the steps killer cool like she wasn’t lazy, just too mean and pubescent pretty to care, now she lay flat out, wasted. Stretching herself across the middle step of Celeste’s porch, she didn’t care about people stepping over her, didn’t care about sunburn, didn’t care if somebody, maybe Phil or maybe