A/N: S.E. Hinton owns The Outsiders. Creedence Clearwater Revival owns "Who'll Stop the Rain."
Long as I can remember, the rain been comin' down
Clouds of mystery pourin' confusion on the ground.
Tuesday, October 4, 1966
Dr. Marin smiled as he sat down in the chair beside his bed. Pony offered a half-smile. The guy was nice enough, but Pony didn't really like when he came to check on him.
"How are you today, Ponyboy?" he asked, setting his briefcase on the floor by his feet. He pulled a small notebook out of his jacket pocket and leaned back.
"Okay, I guess," he said.
"What's that?"
Pony looked down in his lap at the pages he had scrawled across. "Just some drawings."
"Mind if I see them?"
Shrugging, he handed them over. They weren't much of anything, just horses. It was his favorite thing to draw and probably what he was best at drawing.
"Those are pretty good. You like horses?"
"Yeah, I like 'em all right. My brother used to have one."
The doctor nodded to the stack of school books on the bedside table. "Your brothers have been making sure you keep up with schoolwork?"
"Darry tries," he replied with a smirk. It was hard to focus on math and history and even English. He felt jittery being cooped up in bed for so long.
"Are you anxious about the trial coming up on Wednesday?" he asked, his pen tapping on his notebook. He always had the pen and paper, but Pony couldn't remember ever seeing him write anything. He liked that about Dr. Marin. He was prepared, but he was relaxed. "I know it's a big deal."
Honestly, Pony had tried to push it out of his mind, but it kept finding its way back in. Like when Darry would yell at him to stop smoking in bed. When Soda would bring in funny-shaped green pancakes. What if the judge didn't see how good those things were for him? What if the judge decided he should be in a home where he couldn't smoke at all and where he had to eat regular food? It created a lump in his throat that made it hard to breathe.
"No, I'm not worried," Pony lied. He looked the doctor in the eye. "Darry's a good guardian. The judge'll see that."
The doc nodded.
"What kind of doctor are you?" Pony asked suddenly. It had been bothering him for a couple days now.
He shrugged. "Just a doctor. I make sure people are healthy."
Pony nodded, but he wasn't sure he understood. If he was a doctor, why wasn't he poking and prodding him? Listening to his heartbeat and using his mallet to check his reflexes? He would rather have that than all of this talking business.
"I've been coming to see you for a few days now," Dr. Marin said, "and we haven't had a chance to talk about the night you and your friend Johnny were jumped. I have a feeling the judge will want to ask you about that. Would you like to talk about it now?"
Trying to keep his face blank, he shrugged. There were a lot of emotions wrapped up in that night, and it was hard to think about it without letting them show.
"Do you think it was Darry's fault you and Johnny ended up in the park that night?"
"No," he said immediately. Where did Dr. Marin get these ideas? Pony liked him well enough, but sometimes he was just plain weird. "I had a curfew. It was my fault."
"Were you scared of those boys that jumped you?"
"To be honest, scared don't even begin to explain how I felt, Doc," Pony said with a sheepish smile. It wasn't something he would admit to most of the guys, but he didn't think the doctor would go blabbing it around.
"I would imagine it was a frightening thing that happened. Were you afraid for your life?"
Pony considered that. "I guess you could say that. If it weren't for that switch I always carry, I think we both woulda been goners."
Dr. Marin had been nodding as Pony spoke, but he suddenly stopped and cocked his head slightly. "Both of you?"
"Shoot, yeah," he said. He looked past the doc and thought about that night. The Socs, drunk and angry. Him and Johnny, just looking for a place to hang out until Pony could work up the nerve to go home again. "They tried to drown us both. I know it's against the law and everything, but I had that blade on me just in case. And they were asking for it. They were going to kill Johnny."
He thought about the weight of switch in his hand, Bob's sweater in his grasp, the warmth of his blood on the cold metal of the blade. He shuttered.
"I had to," he explained.
The doc nodded slowly. "Self-defense."
"I didn't know what else to do."
"What about your other friend that was with you during the fire in Windrixville? I think his name is Dallas."
Pony sighed. "Dally always got what he wanted."
"And what did he want the night Johnny d – the night your friends and the other boys fought?"
"He wanted to die."
Marin scratched down a couple words on his pad of paper. It was the first time Pony had seen him take notes during their talks, and there was a twinge in the pit of his stomach that made him wonder if he said the wrong thing.
"Thanks for talking with me, Pony," he said, tucking his notepad back in his jacket pocket.
"That's all?"
"For today," he said with a nod. He picked up his briefcase and stood. Before he turned and walked out the door, he put a hand on Pony's shoulder. "You've been through an awful lot. Take it easy on the homework for now and just rest. Doctor's orders."
Pony smirked. "You mind telling Darry that?"
Dr. Marin grinned. "I'll let him know."
He closed the door behind him, and Pony scrambled out of bed. He trampled over all the junk that littered the floor and opened the door a little ways.
"How is he, Doc?"
It was Darry.
"He talked to me about Johnny and Dallas."
There was a pause, and there was that twinge in his gut again. Pony held his breath so he could hear what they were saying.
"He still thinks Johnny's alive, and Dallas is dead."
There was more silence and Pony strained his ears, listening harder.
"He needs time to process everything that's happened," Dr. Marin said quietly. "How close was he with the two boys?"
"Close with Johnny," Darry said. "Not as close with Dally."
Pony could imagine Dr. Marin nodding silently at the information.
"Do you think that's why he thinks Johnny's still alive?"
"It's a possibility. He could be making a trade off in his mind. Maybe to him, he's trading Dallas' death to keep Johnny alive."
"How can we convince him that Johnny's gone?"
"It's not something for you to convince him of. It's something he has to come to terms with. My best advice is to give him time. If he wants to talk about everything that's happened, let him. If not, don't force it. The best comparison I can give you is that of a sleepwalker. Have you ever tried to wake up a sleepwalker?"
Darry must have shook his head because the doctor continued. As far as Pony knew, he only had nightmares.
"They look just fine, but they're in a daze where they aren't really seeing what's in front of them. It can be hard to get them out of that daze and sometimes when you try, you end up frightening them. What you have to do is guide that person back to bed and let them snap out of it themselves."
Pony quietly closed the door to their conversation. He didn't want to hear anymore. He sank down on the bed and thought of a line from an old movie he had seen with his dad. What was it again? You don't yell at a sleepwalker. He may fall and break his neck.
He balled up the drawings Dr. Marin had been looking at and threw them at the door. He didn't know what he was talking about.
Pony tuned off the lamp beside his bed and crawled under the blankets, burying his head under the pillow.
XXX
Ellie knocked on Pony's door.
"Come in," he yelled from the other side.
She opened the door to find him sitting in the middle of the bed, flipping through a book.
He grinned at her and pulled his hand out from behind the book. He had a cigarette between his fingers.
"I thought it was Darry," he explained. "He's gonna kill me if he sees me smoking in here."
His room had always been a wreck, but in the past week since he had been awake and confined to his room, it was a disaster. Ellie kicked books, clothes and trash out of the way so she could walk in.
"How are you doing?" she asked, sitting on the bed next to him. It was nice to see him looking like himself again, but she felt anxious there. Darry had explained to all of them that he refused to believe that Johnny was dead. The doctor had been there nearly every day as part of an examination the courts had ordered, but according to Darry, Pony was under the impression they were just check-ups.
He shrugged. "I'm bored. I hate bein' cooped up in here."
"Trust me, there's not much going on anywhere else," she said. She pointed to the book on his lap. "What's that?"
"One of Soda's yearbooks. Look at this." He held out the book for her and pointed to a picture. The name below it jumped out at her.
"Bob." She looked up at Pony who was studying the picture carefully.
"Yeah. He looks different. I wonder what color eyes he had."
That caught her off-guard. "What?"
He held up the book again for her to see. "You can't tell what color his eyes are in this picture. Do you know?"
She shook her head. "No. I only really saw him the night …"
She didn't have the heart to explain which night, but he knew.
"He was only eighteen when he died, you know," he said.
She swallowed hard and wanted to remind him that Johnny was only sixteen and hadn't done a thing to deserve what happened to him, but she kept her mouth closed.
"Have you been keeping up with your homework?" she asked.
"Yeah, a couple guys from track have been bringing by some of my work. One of them's in our English class. He said you haven't been there for a while."
She shook her head.
"How come?"
"Just don't feel like it, I guess."
"Man, I'd love to go back to school. I just want to get out of here and do something," he said, finishing his cigarette. He picked a shoe up off the floor and stubbed it out on the sole before he tossed it onto the bedside table.
"No wonder Darry doesn't want you to smoke in bed," she said, standing up and crossing over to the table. She picked up the butt and set it on the corner of the table, away from all of the books and homework papers. "You're gonna burn the whole house down if you keep this up."
"You sound just like Darry," he said with a smirk.
"Well, you have to admit that he has a point."
Pony shrugged. "Maybe."
There was a knock on the door and Ellie looked up to see Darry.
"Ponyboy."
"Yeah?" he asked, still looking at the yearbook.
Darry looked at Ellie, something strange in his eyes. "There's a guy here to see you. Says he knows you. His name's Randy."
"Yeah, I know him," Pony said.
"You want to see him?"
"Yeah. Sure, why not?"
Ellie was surprised to see Randy in the doorway. She had seen him around school with all the other Socs, but mostly she remembered him from that night at the drive-in. Pony had talked to him the day of the rumble and seemed to think he was an okay guy, but she didn't trust him.
She excused herself from the room and carefully squeezed past Randy at the doorway.
She followed Darry into the kitched. "What's he doing here?"
"Who is he?" Darry asked. "He seems like he's on the wrong side of town."
"He is," she snapped. "He was friends with Bob. He was there that night."
Soda and Steve seemed to hear them from the living room and walked into the kitchen.
"I've seen him around school, but he doesn't really strike me as the Socy type," Steve said. "I didn't see him at the rumble."
"Yeah, well, he is a Soc. He was with those girls that Pony and Johnny were talking to when I left the movies. He was there when they jumped them. He had to be."
Darry seemed to understand her concern, but he didn't look worried. "Steve's right, he wasn't at the rumble. And Pony didn't seem to mind that he came here."
She shook her head and walked into the living room. She didn't want to say it out loud, but Pony wasn't exactly in the right frame of mind.
After a moment, she noticed Darry head back to Pony's room. She heard him tell Randy he ought to leave. Darry was saying something to Randy as they walked down the hall, but she couldn't hear it. Steve and Soda were studying him carefully as Darry walked him to the door, and it didn't go unnoticed by Randy.
"Is he gonna be okay?" he was asking Darry when they got to the door.
"Yeah, he'll be fine. He's just having a hard time accepting what happened."
Randy nodded. "I'm awful sorry about everything that happened. I'm going to be at the trial tomorrow and so are a couple of the other guys that were there. I hope we can get everything straightened out so you guys will be okay."
"Thanks," Darry said gruffly, affectively ending the conversation as he shut the door.
He headed back to Pony's room, and Ellie looked out the front room. Randy was still standing on the porch, but he slowly turned and headed to his car. She wondered what his angle was. First he talked to Pony before the rumble and then he came to see him at his house. She couldn't imagine he was shopping around for a new buddy in Pony to replace the one he lost in Bob.
Good men through the ages, tryin' to find the sun,
And I wonder, still I wonder who'll stop the rain.
Sorry for the delay in posting! We hope you're still enjoying the story. :)
