A/N: S.E. Hinton owns Tim Shepard, no matter how much I wish otherwise. Ditto anyone else you recognize from The Outsiders.

This is the sequel to 'Natural Selection' and crosses over with my Evie universe. (Spoilers for the outcome of 'Love Me two Times', if that kind of thing bothers you!)

What you may not know, if you don't read my Evie stories, is that the reason 'Natural Selection' ended when it did is because my Tim was arrested and given the choice of prison, or enlisting in the Army and going to Vietnam, in January 1966, when he was 19. He took the Army deal.

Summer 1972

It oughta make me smile, I guess, when I hear where I can find him. Maybe the place, but especially the fact that he's working there.

The old lot looks different. The lumber company must be doing good; they took over the space next door too, got an office building, customer counter, all of that. I figure I ain't gonna find him there though, so I walk into the yard. They put up some new sheds where we used to have the bonfire. There's a forklift parked where I fought Morris.

"Help ya with something?" I can hardly hear the old guy over the noise of electric saws and whatever. I tell him who I'm looking for. He pulls a face. "Curly? We got a Jerry Shepard, that who you mean?" He's squinting at me. Surely we can't look that different, even now, he's gotta see that's who I mean.

I follow him over to the open sided workshop and he hits a button on one of the upright beams. One of the machines eases to a halt.

"The fuck?" The machine operator looks up as the belt stops and the timber he was pulling towards him stays put in the saw. He pushes a pair of goggles up over his forehead, wiping sweat off his face in the same movement. "Tim?"

I vaguely hear the old guy saying something about 'five minutes' break', but I ain't looking at him. I'm looking at the face in front of me. It's like one of those mirrors you get at the fairground; me, but not me. Not my nose but, apart from my scar, that was always the biggest difference. I guess he's still never gotten his broken.

Curly walks forwards, out of the shed. Hell, he might be taller than me.

"What're you doing here?"

"Nice to see you too."

He don't crack a smile. "What you expect? A fucking ticker tape parade? It's been four years..."

"Exactly."

"...with no word."

"I wrote when I got my discharge."

He makes a scoffing noise. "Coupla postcards, no return address?" His face turns hard. "You seen Ma? Angel?"

"How'd ya think I found you?"

There's a couple of seconds where we regard each other in silence. Then he shakes himself. "I gotta get back to it. You sticking around, or you passin' through?"

He might as well have slugged me. I tell him I'm around.

He nods. "You know 'Crazy Eights', over on Second?" I tell him I can find it. "I'll be there after six." He turns around and starts up the machine, pulling on his goggles.

xxXxx

'Crazy Eights' is a dive. About the only thing going for it is that it seems to have a decent ID checker; there ain't no kids in here. At six, most of the clientele is after work drinkers, men with tired eyes and heavy shoulders.

I order two beers, because, despite the cool reception, I believe that he'll show. I sit at the bar and I'm about half way down my glass when he walks in. He nods hello at the barman and a Coke appears in front of him.

"That's yours." I indicate the second beer. He shakes his head slightly, looks over his shoulder, scanning for a booth, walks over without a word. I take both beers with me. Damned if he's gonna refuse to drink with me. What the hell did I do that was so bad? Wasn't my choice to go away in the first place.

Although I guess it ain't about the going away, it's the staying away that's got him hacked.

I push the olive branch over to his side of the table. He pushes it back.

"Curly, c'mon. You that pissed with me, man? You won't lemme buy you a drink?" I'm pretty sure I don't sound as hurt as I actually am.

"Buy me this." He lifts the Coke and swallows.

"Jeez. You wanna little umbrella in it?"

He shrugs, looks away. Then he seems to decide something and he swings his eyes back onto me, takes a deep breath. "I don't drink no more."

I snort.

"I ain't joking." He digs in his pocket and puts a poker chip on the table. Only it ain't a poker chip. "Ten months this time." He rubs the chip for luck, then flips it up, like a coin toss, and stuffs it back in his pocket, shrugging almost shyly.

The words are out before I think them through, which ain't like me at all. "You ain't a freaking alcoholic, you're twenty one years old!"

Curly bites off a laugh. "Twenty two. And I was an alcoholic at fourteen, man. You don't get it."

The world shifts under me, just a little. "'This time'?"

"Huh?"

"You said 'ten months this time'..."

"Yeah. Kind of a false start, when I first got out, it was tough. But I'm on it, this time. Ain't goin' back."

I ain't sure if he means 'back inside' or 'back on the booze'. I don't like that I don't know what he went in for, or even when. He's watching me, I realize, the way I used to watch people. He acknowledges that I see him doing it, that he knows what I'm thinking, and he explains:

"Couple of years back. I got pulled over speeding and my passenger was drinking. Nah...we was both drinkin', but she was seventeen, so they threw that at me too. Corrupting a minor. Added in a coupla old warrants and I got a stretch in County. Best thing that ever happened to me."

I stare.

"They got the program there. Proper counselors. Gave me a chance to get some stuff outta my head."

I've started in on the second beer without noticing. Curly notices. He sits back, lights a weed, offers me one. I take it.

"Where've you been, Tim?"

Where have I been?

Almost seven years since I lived in this town. Six since I was here. I remember that week I was on leave.

"Angel ever say any more about that kid we worked over?"

Curly frowns. "Who? Oh, the kid we thought cut her hair? Wasn't him. He took the fall for his buddy."

Christ. We could have killed that kid. I wanted to kill that kid. I was on my way over there and I was ready to start the killing. I thought.

"You been inside all this time?" I look up in surprise at the question. He shrugs. "Ma figured that was it. When the postcards stopped."

"No. I ain't been inside. Not since I got out the Army." Four years.

"You shitting me?"

I shake my head, finishing the last of my beer. Not enough sky in prison, I never chanced it once. But I couldn't put into words the why of it, not if I wanted to.

It's warming up in the bar. I slip off my jacket without thinking, signal the barman.

"Nice ink." Curly waits for my eyes to meet his. He's right, the work is good. Covers most of my arm now. But it don't hide all the scars. "You get that done over there? In Vietnam?"

"Some. Some back here." Any time I still feel the burning of the long gone shrapnel and I convince myself that this time, seeing the tattoo, not the scars, will make me forget the smell of hot metal in my skin. My side itches, just at that thought. Curly got better at reading people, I guess, because he asks:

"Was it bad?"

"Bad enough."

"You get a Purple Heart?"

"Yeah. Think I oughta keep it in my pocket?" He winces at my swipe at his sobriety chip. I don't even know where the fucking medal is. Don't think it even made it back to the unit with me, once I was out of the field hospital.

Curly takes off his denim jacket. He does it slowly, deliberately. Puts his arm on the table.

Curly's scar is neater in a way. But more horrific in its placing, the way it tells its story, arching from one side of his right wrist down and then across to the other side of his arm. I'd forgotten he was left handed.

"Twenty first birthday present to myself."

I don't have the words to ask. I don't want to know the answer. I seen people do it quick with guns, watched others do it slow, with drugs. Seen a man come through hell, only to get home and walk in front of a semi-trailer. I know the answer.

"You think Vets are the only ones screwed up in the head?" He's a fucking mind reader these days, this kid brother of mine. I tell him no, I don't think that. Because I don't want him to explain.

There's a pause as the barman delivers another round. Beer and a Coke. Fuck me. I take a swallow.

"Weird thing happened, when I went through AA. You know about the steps?" He's going to explain anyway.

Yeah, I know about the steps. Janssen tried it, when we was in Arizona. Or was it New Mexico? Either way, he never seemed to make the connection that the only time he had a drink problem was when he was jonesing for a hit. Never was the alcohol that was the problem. Not sure the semi was the solution, either.

Curly keeps his voice low. "Supposed to 'make amends', right? Only you wasn't here."

I look up at him in surprise. "What you got to make amends to me for?"

"That was the weird thing. I spent so long feeling like it oughta be the other way around."

What?

"I was still carryin' around what happened. In the reformatory, when I was thirteen." He leans back in the booth, exhaling. "That's what I was drinking for, before. To forget. Never worked. Something in jail that last time brought it back – nothing that happened to me, but something I saw. So I figured I'd let it all go..." He rubs the scar absently.

I've sunk almost all my beer. I fish in my jacket for my smokes. Curly says no to the one I offer him. He's waiting for me to say something.

"It wasn't my fault. Not that you went in the reformatory, not that it happened." Jesus, he's got me sounding like a whiny brat. "I tried to help!"

"By getting me laid?"

"Yes!"

"I was just a kid."

"You never complained." We're both getting louder. I sit back, rubbing my temple. I feel a headache starting. This ain't what I came home for. Curly leans forward, his voice quiet again.

"Jesus, Tim. I was scared and lost and you set some blonde nympho on me. I wouldn't have known how to complain, I never talked back to you in those days."

"I was tryin' to help. I thought...maybe, it would show you that you was normal. That whatever happened didn't make you..." I bite the sentence short, sucking on the weed.

"Queer? That what you wanna say? Jesus fucking Christ. Were you trying to show me or yourself? Did you think that was it? Some pervert had his hands on me, I was a lost cause?"

"No. Not that. I didn't mean...An' you never said exactly –"

"You never fucking let me say! You walked away, made it quite clear the subject was closed."

"I...I'm sorry." The words vomit out of me, like bile after a hard night's retching. "I didn't know what to say, what to do. How to help..." I stab the weed into the ash tray, ready to get up and leave. "It wasn't my fault!"

"No. It wasn't. And that's why I gotta say sorry to you after all."

I stare at him. He nods. "That was what I figured out, after this - " He holds up his wrist. "I had to stop and think about what I was pissed about. 'Cause I blamed you for not rescuing me, for not being able to fix it. I was so used to you doin' that for me. I resented that you couldn't do it that time. Somehow some of the blame went on you, not the sick bastard who deserved it." He exhales slow. "You were only sixteen. It wasn't fair on either of us."

Something that's been on my shoulders for a long time falls away. Maybe this is what I came home for. Then he repeats his earlier question, real quiet.

"Where've you been, Tim?"

"I had my own shit to deal with."

"And you couldn't do that at home?"

I shrug. "I needed...space." It sounds like some kind of hippie talk, but I actually mean it. I needed sky and horizons and empty roads. Needed to not feel the press of trees and men and noise all around me.

The third beer is gone.

"Is this...like, shitty of me, to drink in front of you?" Christ. I feel...shy in front of my own brother. He shakes his head.

"I wouldn't come in here if I couldn't handle it." There's a strength in him that I never recognized before. Maybe it wasn't there before.

"Okay then." I go to the bar and order a shot, down it, and take another back to the table.

He asks me if I'm staying at Ma's and I tell him I guess I am.

"Well, I wouldn't recommend Angel's, unless you like being woke up at three a.m. by a screaming brat."

"What's her old man like?"

Curly tilts his hand side to side. "Okay. Better than the last one. Works, at least." He hesitates. "You could, maybe, stay at mine."

"You got your own place?"

He changes what he was going to answer, I can see that. He settles for: "Yeah. Ain't much, but you can have the couch." He looks at the empty shot glass in front of me. "You should eat."

Apparently, I am taking advice from my kid brother now.

I realize he's right, when the air hits me as we push out onto the sidewalk. He pauses with his hand on the door of his car, looks at me over the roof.

"Tim? You know I'm glad you're back, right?"

I would have rolled my eyes, shot some sarcastic remark back at him, before. When we was kids. Right now, I can't say anything. I just nod.

He drives us away from the bar. Away from where I would expect food joints. We end up outside some all night diner, over to the expressway. It don't look like the kind of place famous for good eating. There's a lone trucker, hunched over a bucket sized mug of coffee at one end of the counter, and no one serving.

Curly leans right over the counter, snatching up a spoon and throwing it through the hatch into the kitchen, where it clangs against something metal.

"Two with everythin' and put it on my tab!" he yells.

"You don't got a fuckin' tab, kid, you just owe –" Dom breaks off his complaint as he pushes through the swing door, plate in hand. His eyes stay fixed on me as he slides it in front of the trucker, not acknowledging the guy's thanks.

The booze is buzzing in my brain but it ain't enough, I didn't drink enough for this, to handle this. I need to get outside.

Only I don't get to move, because Dom suddenly vaults the counter, sliding in his haste, grabbing me into a hug. He does that thing where a person stands back but grabs the other person's face to look at them close. I ain't imaginary, I guess, because he breaks into a lopsided grin.

"Fuck me, Timmy, you got old." Then he turns and shoves Curly. "You think about calling? Warning me? Or you just figure it'd be a gas to gimme a heart attack?"

I got old? There is no fairground mirror in the world that does this, gives you grey temples and lines at the corner of your eyes.

I move.

The air outside ain't cold enough. Ain't fresh enough. Ain't...something. I need to be on the road, need a horizon to aim for, need -

I hear Janssen, like he was next to me. Never had nothin' and no one to leave, man, so never had nothin' to come back to. But you, Shep, you got roots. Roots'll pull a man back. No use fighting it.

The fuck did he know about anything? If he wasn't shooting up, he was drinking himself blind and if he wasn't drinking, he was walking in front of a goddamn, lousy -

"Tim?" Someone's hand is steering me over to sit on the rickety picnic bench, leaning me forwards. "Breathe, man, just breathe."

Like it's that easy.

C'mon then. Can we go for a war damaged Tim? Let me know.

If you didn't read 'Natural Selection', Dom is Tim's older brother, but he was illegitimate and brought up by their grandmother as her own child/Tim's uncle. Tim only discovered the truth just before he went in the army, when Dom was in prison, on a long stretch.