Std Disclaimer: I don't own anything even remotely relating to the Outsiders, but this is my own work. Blah, blah, blah.
I chickened out, at least for a little while. Soda came banging in the house just before Darry pulled the cornbread out of the oven. He was early. He didn't usually get off until five. Not right. I had the perfect chance to corner them, but I let it slip by as Soda dipped a spoon into the stew and gave it a taste test.
Darry told him to take the trash out, which is usually my job. Soda didn't even make a token protest. He just swooped the can out of the corner and disappeared. Normally you have to tell him six times and then threaten him to get him to do anything. Just more proof that everything was messed up, I guess.
Two-Bit must have shown up, because I heard shouting and laughter outside, and then it spilled inside onto the rug and kicked an ashtray off the coffee table. The sound of them pounding on each other didn't even register with Darry, he just kept ladling stew into bowls. Not right. Not right. Not right.
Things finally came to a head as we finished up dinner in silence. By the time we started eating, I'd grown so scared that every time I opened my mouth to demand answers, I put a spoonful of stew in it, instead, to shut myself up. And then I went back to the couch, and Darry went nervously to his armchair and flipped on the TV to a news show, his knee bouncing out an edgy tune. Soda and Two-Bit were having second helpings of cake in the kitchen.
Tim poked his head in the screen door. There it was again, that look. He and Darry locked eyes.
"Soda around?" Tim asked.
"Dishes," Darry nodded. And then he looked at me. "Let's go," he said to Tim, still looking at me.
"Where you goin'?" I asked, and Darry looked cornered.
"I'm just driving Tim to the plant, Pony. He's working a double shift tonight."
"Darry," I half-yelled, sending ripples of pain down my back, "quit lyin'! You and me and Soda, we don't lie to each other. So quit dancin' around it, whatever it is!"
Darry sank down on the sofa beside me and looked at me with such helplessness that a lump bubbled up into my throat. He put his head in his hands, scrubbed his hair with his fingers.
"The judge's decision for probationary custody is being challenged by the state prosecutor," he said flatly. "Prosecutor wants to bring you up on charges for aiding and abetting a criminal." He paused for a long time. "Soda, too."
I went cold.
"You've been in bad shape," he blinked fast, choking up. "We were scared if we told you, you'd get worse."
He wouldn't look at me.
"Don't they want to hear my side?" I asked, my throat getting tighter by the second. "Can't I go in there and explain?"
He shrugged. "Right now, I'm just meeting with the lawyers a lot. That's where Tim and I are headed now."
I looked accusingly at Tim. He just shrugged.
"Figured if I showed up for moral support, they'd realize you and Soda were harmless in comparison," Tim didn't look at me. It sure wasn't like him to be afraid to look a fifteen year old kid in the face.
Darry gave me that helpless look again, and I couldn't help it. I started to cry. But I turned my face away, toward the kitchen, so he wouldn't see. Darry's not stupid, though. He reached out and rubbed the back of my head for a second. Then he just got up and dug his keys out of his pocket.
"I'm coming with you," I decided, and ignored the way the room spun when I got up again.
"Pony, sit down. You're not up to it yet."
"I'm going," I repeated and went out on the porch to prove it.
Darry didn't like it, not at all. First off, I was wearing only boxers and a t-shirt. Second, I was already shaking with fear, and I'm pretty sure he could see it. But he knew he couldn't keep arguing with me or he'd be late, and that wouldn't look good.
"Soda!" he called. "Go get Pony some jeans and his shoes!"
Five minutes later, we left Tim frowning on the porch next to Two-Bit and headed downtown to the lawyer's office. My back and head were killing me, but my feelings were numb. Nobody spoke, but I felt Soda shake a little beside me. It scared me worse than anything.
It was nothing like on TV, but I knew that already from the last time I'd been in the courthouse. Except we weren't in the courtroom, just a dingy little room in the upstairs part of the courthouse where a lot of lawyers, judges, and even a couple doctors had their offices.
They sat me at a table across from both our lawyer and the state prosecutor, and they put Darry and Soda in some chairs next to the door. Darry said I still wasn't feeling good and if they got too rough on me, he'd march me right out of there and to hell with the consequences. The lawyers didn't respond to that. Another man entered the room and he introduced himself to me as Judge Herman Stout. He said he was going to sit in the room and listen while I gave my side of things to the lawyers, but that this wasn't a hearing or a trial and he wouldn't be in charge of deciding what happened next. Then our lawyer, a guy named Stanley Sikes, said calmly,
"Ponyboy, what we really need to determine is whether you helped Carl Rossey to elude the sheriff and his deputies, and if you did, why you did."
"I did it," I admitted, taking a deep breath. I didn't figure there was any way they didn't know the truth already, seeing as how I'd spilled my guts to the social worker at the hospital.
I went on to explain about working at the railroad and watching the way the wardens treated the chain gang, withholding water and clubbing them with the butts of their rifles. "One day, one of the cons keeled over from heatstroke, and they took care of him. I thought things would get better after that, but they didn't."
Sikes nodded. The state prosecutor hadn't said a word, but he wrote furiously on his yellow notepad. "So, you felt sorry for those men because you thought they were being treated poorly."
I froze. Was that a good thing, or a bad thing? Would it help us or hurt us? My head started pounding. The state prosecutor looked up from his notepad and I fought back another lump in my throat. "When the wardens weren't looking, I set a water pail down in front of one of the cons. I didn't know it then, but it was Carl Rossey. McMasters turned around about then and saw him getting ready to drink, and he knocked the ladle out of Rossey's hands."
I paused, fully expecting the state prosecutor to start asking questions, but he didn't. Sikes encouraged me to continue, so I told them how I almost fell off the bridge and Darry and I fought and how the next day, we fought again and I ran off to the pond. I left out the part about Darry telling me not to come back, though. Instead, I explained about Rossey pulling me out of the water with a gun and how I was scared I'd never see my brothers again. Darry just blinked and swallowed at that part, and Soda leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
I told the lawyers I was scared because I'd told Rossey too much and thought he might come look us up if I didn't help him. That was the truth, but it wasn't the whole truth. A wave of heat washed over me, followed quickly by an icy chill.
"Ponyboy," Sikes said sympathetically, "that must've been pretty frightening for you. How did you get away?"
"I did what he said," I shrugged. "Rossey told me he needed something to get the chains off, and I didn't figure it was something I could say no to. He knew who I was and where I lived and how to get even with me if I didn't do what he wanted," I said. I didn't tell them how he reminded me of Dally and how I'd thought he couldn't be all that bad.
"Why not go to the sheriff at that point?" Klein, the state prosecutor, finally spoke up.
"You ever see what happens when a greaser goes to the sheriff?" I asked him sharply, sending pain rocketing and ricocheting through me. I didn't wait for him to answer, either. "They take a report. Maybe they spend a few minutes tellin' us how we probably deserved whatever we got. Then they put that report in the circular file. So we don't bother."
This time I waited, but neither Sikes nor Klein said anything. Darry and Soda were both leaning forward now, listening intently.
"Next morning, I grabbed Darry's hammer and spike and I took it to Rossey with some food. He put the gun on me again and started to work on the chains."
"Why didn't you run away while he was busy with the chains?" Klein asked. I guess Soda saw me wince as I turned to look Klein full in the face.
Clearly disgusted, Soda leapt to his feet and snapped, "Who're you kiddin', man? Maybe if he gets up and runs, he gets a few feet, but what then? Bullet in the back?"
"Easy, Soda," Darry cautioned, pulling him back into his chair. "I warned you, Klein, about getting Pony all worked up. Let him finish before you start hassling him."
"What I'd like to understand, Ponyboy," Klein said in a sickly, friendly voice, "is how Soda got involved."
I sighed and explained about Rossey asking for street clothes, me being late for school, and Darry catching me at it. I told them I didn't want to get into worse trouble, so I convinced Soda to take him the clothes, instead. "And when Soda went into the barn, I guess he scared Rossey and Rossey shot him." I thought about how still and pale Soda had been and my stomach twisted up in knots.
"What was he doing in that barn?"
That annoyed me. It was just like lawyers did on TV, asking questions they already knew the answers to just so they could twist it up into something unrecognizable. "I told him to hide there until the three o'clock train to Windrixville."
Klein nodded and looked smug. Sikes didn't look too worried, and the judge didn't look any which way at all. "So," Klein said, tapping the eraser of his pencil on his full yellow pad, "seeing as how Windrixville hid you and Johnny so well, you knew it was a good place to avoid capture. You—"
"Don't you talk about Johnny!" I shouted, leaping up from my chair. My head spun, and my blood rushed in my ears.
"Why not? He killed a boy, and you helped him hide, just like you helped Rossey."
Angry, I started around the edge of the desk, intending to slam out of the stuffy little room. Then I saw Darry rush forward as the swirling, roaring black reached up and pulled me down.