guest: Thank you for you review, its so good to hear that you were captivated and moved by the story!
xxkaylakittyxo: Thank you so much for the compliment! Yes, I think I can fit a scene like that in somewhere!
little miss michelle: Well, here's the update!
Eilidh MacGavin: Thank you so much! I love the Outsiders and tried to do them justice! I have an important sence wth Darry in the works, it just know he doesn't have much to do with the kids.
Happier than Most: Yay, Molly has a soft hard, and I'm glad you like what I did with Dare. I thought it made sense that if Mrs. C got attched to Dally, then Mr.C focused on Johnny.
morgannotmeagan: I've worked hard to devolve my writing style, and I'm so glad you like it!
lulusgardenfli: Yep, Johnny's an oak, and my love of foreshadowing comes from Shakespeare.
Chapter XXV
S*S
"Didn't I tell ya this shit would happen, kid?" Dally grounded out, glaring murder at anything unfortunate enough to be crossing their path. Not even the trees in the park were spared, and Johnny was honestly impressed that they didn't lose their remaining leaves under such frozen ice. Tusla's toughest and quietest hoods were currently tossing a football on his unexpected day off. Or at least, that was the...premise?...was that the word?...he dunno...of what they were doing. In between throws, Johnny was also getting the same old lecture made new, as Dallas once again regurgitated all the reasons he thought Johnny was being a 'stubborn little shit' when it came to dating his girlfriend.
"Look, ya haven't even been datin' her a month yet, an' ya already a bigger target at school-" Dally bit out, but Johnny was already shaking his head, uncharacteristic defiance bubbling up slow and mild within him. Kinda an odd feeling, he admitted. Almost flip-floppy, topsy-tervy, to be taking a side opposite Dally. In the dynamics of their friends, the two of them were inevitably linked by the fact that outside the group, they were honestly alone. Not to knock at the troubles Steve and Two-Bit could have at their houses...what with Steve's father and Two-Bit being the failed provider of his Ma and little sister...but before Mary-Anne Randle's death Steve once had his mother, and Two-Bit's family always forgave him, despite contributing near zip around the house.
Johnny breathed out and stood with the ignored football in his hands, turning it over and rubbing it like a genie lamp (he could use a few wishes after all). But Dallas and him? They were truly alone. Maybe it was that kinship that made it mattered to Dally, about what Johnny did, and what he didn't do to avoid drawing attention to himself.
That kinship was what kept his mind cool and his voice even as he raised his head and spoke.
"Nah, Dal," he answered, spinning the ball in his grasp now while the wind rustled, and red-brown leaves scurried around them. Dang, it was getting cold faster every day now. "Wendy didn't have nothin' to do with that. I've been on that kid's bad side a while now, even before we started datin'."
"Oh, and ya think word gettin' out 'bout you goin' steady with one of their girls will make 'em not kick your face in?"
"They ain't gonna find out-"
Dally snorted in disagreement, his blistering gaze glaciers of primordial ice showing frozen displays of human savagery of now, then, and always going forward. Least, Johnny knew that that was how Mr. Curtis and Ponyboy saw it. And it was true in part -Dallas wasn't anything soft or nice. But alongside that savagery was strength, separate yet entwined. An iron rod and iron-worthed. That was what Johnny respected in him, envied even.
But here, he just didn't agree with 'im.
"And anyway, it's my neck Dally, I got the right to decide what to do with it, if nothin' the hell else," he muttered, tossing away the football to shove his hands in the pockets of his jacket. He shrugged, trying for nonchalance. "M' not too worried. it'll die down at school sooner or later. Meantime, we'll just be careful."
...Now if anyone and Johnny meant anyone, other than him tried to walk away from Dallas Winston after finishing a conversation like that, they'd been waking up sometime in the following week. But because it was him, Dally couldn't do much more than work his jaw and spew curses under his breath before tossing up his hands.
"Ya know what. Fine. Get yourself kill Johnny," Dally snapped at his retreating back. "See if I give a hang."
S*S
"Heard ya had a rough day at school," Dare Curtis drawled out when Johnny came shuffling up the walkway later that evening, looking far more pensive than he normally did. Not that Johnny wasn't a thinker...he was, in his own way, the sort of thinker who if he looked at himself in the still water of a rain puddle, might wonder if it wasn't an entirely different world peering back at him. That was what made him such a good friend to Pony, cause when the imagination of Dare's youngest ran away from him, having someone to bounce his thoughts off of was as good a sharpener as iron to iron.
Course, it wasn't cause of Pony or any of the gang that made Johnny gawn his lip in thought now, eyes wondering and soft and just a little bit wonderstruck. No, the only thing that could make a guy look like that was the first delicate of the feminine, when you fully realized that girls were more than boys that could wear skirts and dresses -that they were conduits of life, linking past to future in a fragile steel-strong thread.
A casual tilt of his head invited the kid to stand beside him on the porch, and Johnny was soon fishing out a cigarette and a match to join him in the smoky rings of nicotine fire.
"Wasn't the best day ever," Johnny admitted after they'd smoked for a spell. Then he sighed, hand reaching up in the same way Joe Cade's did when he was a solider beside Dare in France, grabbing at lanky bangs. "Harder on Wendy than it was on me though...she can't stand it when things happen to me..."
Dare pressed his lips at the note of fascination in the boy's tone, the quiet awe and slow-formed jewel of trust: knowing that to someone out there his skin was worth something.
It wasn't something he'd ever gotten from his parents.
Now wasn't the time to bring that up though -all that could be said and done on that subject had been done. He wasn't gonna waste no breath thinking about Joe's sorry excuse for a brother and the wanna-be Sicilian Rita Hayworth. Instead, Dare thought about their son and the chance for a life he had away from them.
Instead, he smacked his mouth. "Speakin' o' which, will you be bringing that little gal back around this Sunday Johnny B. Good?"
The kid shook his head. "Not this Sunday sir, Wendy has to go to a funeral out in the country."
Dare immediately grew sober. "Ah'm most surely sorry to hear that. Do you know who foar?"
Johnny suddenly looked a little hesitant but nodded.
"Yeah, her cousins," he said quiet-like, shuffling. "They were killed over in 'Nam."
Dare went very, very still now, fingers pinching hard on his cancer stick, thoughts of Darry and Soda running through his mind. "Ah'm most sorry indeed then."
"Yeah," Johnny answered.
They were quiet a spell again.
S*S
When the moment had passed, Dare had a moment of sudden inspiration, all the more opportune since Molly was out of the house till nightfall, and none of the gang were here either.
"Besides that, how do ya like her? Now that she's your girl instead of a school friend?" Dare clarified.
Johnny's neck heated up faster than a hot-dog at a carnival, dark head ducking in embarrassment. But the kiddo was smiling too, the shy, pleased twitch of the lips that came when he was satisfied with something.
Dare hadn't seen it a lot.
"It...different sir," Johnny eventually mumbled to his sneakers -Soda's old sneakers- though Dare was pleasantly surprised to witness the boy lifting his head, the embers in his gaze wild and glowing with life. With hope.
O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention.
Dare bit the inside of his cheek to keep from howling in sheer delight. Ol' Willy and he had gotten acquainted with each other in the fields of France. Where on Saint Crispin's day (and many days after), a different band of brothers had gone once more on the beaches, just as King Harry, Bedford, and Exeter had done.
"But..." he encouraged, the shit-eating grin he shared with Sodapop spreading on his face. Johnny grinned back, shrugging his shoulders.
"But it's good, Mr. C," he said soft-like, and those embers seemed to defy, like a star that brightens the moon. "It's...I dunno..."
And, Kate, when France is mine
and I am yours, then yours is France and you are mine.
"Well whatever it is it's mine," Johnny finally wrapped up, looking solemn but content with his reasoning, older than his years, and somehow ennobled, despite the mud-stitched shoes,the jean-jacket and greasy bangs. "Never had anythin' like it..."
"And that makes it seem like it's the whole world," Dare hummed knowingly, thinking back to coming home from the war, home to Molly and to Darry, to lands and minds and touch untainted from blood.
Yes, my lord, you see them perspectively,
the cities turned into a maid, for they are all
girdled with maiden walls that war hath never
entered.
Didn't matter how old a guy was when he first saw, persevered, all he had chosen to be his home, waiting for him. Dare had found Molly barefoot in the grass, hanging laundry on a line -sheets of white like heaven's breath and angel wings. Which was where Dare had nearly spooked her too, wrapping his arms 'round her waist, his face buried in Goldilocks hair.
"How like an angel ya are Molls."
Even now, near twenty years later, the wrap of his wife's heart and white limbs, her disbelieving shriek to the Mother of Jesus, was ever-present on his skin, as much so as his wedding ring. Dare leaned his head back, considered. Could Johnny and Wendy have that same stroke of luck? The optimist in him -the street rat that survived the Depression and wooed Molly under her witch of a aunt's nasty-lil'-nose- wanted to say yes, of course they could. Cause they weren't so different from Depression-era kids -more familiar with sorrow and loss than people their age usually were.
A benefit of that was that their eyes were open, seeing farther and deeper than kids normally could. And they had seen each other.
...So yeah, Dare would place his bet, and lay his chips on the kids making it. After all, when he was their age, who the hell would've looked at him and believed what he had now? A house, a girl, three of the most beautiful sons to walk the earth...
Yes sir, Dare Curtis was a betting man. And in his opinion, Johnny could take home the whole pot.
S*S
Though...that did bring up another point, one Dare wasn't sure Johnny ever had brought up with him. Joe had died long before things like this were a subject of discussion, and Ray Cade didn't give a shit...which meant either Dare had to do it...or leave Johnny to the mercy of Two-Bit.
Not much a choice there. Plus, he had just finishing given the same talk to Soda; since he and Sandy Williams had taken their fooling around to the next level.
From experience, Dare knew it was better, to just go right at it.
"One more thing Johnathan Cade, then Ah'll let ya go. Ya'll called this thing with Wendy yours," he noted seriously, fixing Johnny with the patented "Dad Glare" he gave his sons. He pulled the cigarette snub from his mouth, pointing its lit end Johnny's way. "But have ya figured if you'll know what to do, if she's ever yours? Fully?"
God forgive him, but there was something almost classically comical about the Johnny jump as if he was on a livewire, his one smoke nearly falling from his lips as he scrambled for an answer.
"Uh...we're not...I mean I'd like...but we're..."
"I'll take that as a no, then," Dare said drily, as Johnny fell silent, neck burning. And Dare allowed himself to softened.
"Don't think ya need a run down of the basics, but there are a few things ya need to remember-"
"I know all that Mr. Curtis-" the kid tried to wiggle out of it, but Dare only snorted fondly.
"No ya don't," he said. "Oh, Ah don't know that hangin' round with Darry and Two-Bit, ya've picked up or figured out the mechanics o' it-"
By this point, Johnny looked like he wanted to crawl under porch and stay there. Now Dare got more serious.
"But ya know somthin'? Ah watched all ya boys grow and go crazy trying to get some, but 'til you brought that little gal over for dinner, Ah ain't never seen anythin' that has the potential to be lasting."
Curious now, Johnny's head tilted, despite himself. "Not even Soda and Sand-"
"Ahh, hell no. Soda's love dizzy 's all." And while his middle son was currently going crazy over Sandy Williams' blond hair and generous knockers, neither of those kids were mature enough to dive past the ideal they had painted of each over, to the niches and crannies of their beings. And that was fine -that was how first loves went. Most of the times.
Well, to be honest, Johnny may have done something similar with Wendy a tad...but that was something he would have realize for himself. So Dare stuck to the topic.
"Johnny, sex isn't a picnic foar girls, not the first time round -or ever, if a girl has any brains to speak of. 'Cause if somethin' goes wrong, ten to one says that the consequences are on their heads -mostly if the pick the wrong guy."
Johnny nodded soberly -there had been enough girls in trouble in the neighborhood to known that. Dare sighed, and leaned back.
"If Ah've learned nothin' else in this life, it's this -when ya choose to sleep with someone, a girl basically sayin' -whether she's knows it or not- "Ah'm givin' ya the chance to hurt me, an' I'm trustin' ya not too...". "
Now Dare fixed him with a look, soul piercing. "Ah've haven't told any o' the other boys that yet -they haven't reached the stage where they had to know."
"Damn," Johnny muttered, tugging a hand through his hair again, kicking at the dirt. "Never though I'd beat any o' the guys at anythin' like this..."
"Ah didn't either," Dare confessed. "But truth told, Ah ain't too surprised."
And just like in the stories told 'round the world, Johnny had achieved a sort wisdom through suffering, though losing a part of himself that was supposed to last through a non-existence childhood trust. He thought to the mythology book Ponyboy had been given at a secondhand store for his twelfth birthday. Odin had gorged out his eye and hung himself on a tree for three days to gain knowledge...and while it hadn't been fully been Johnny's choice, his own daily crucifixion from living in his house with an indifferent Pilate and a furious Whore of Babylon had nevertheless given him a grace, an understanding of the dark muck the human soul had to crawl out of.
There was a reason why the gang couldn't get on without him.
"That makes one of us," Johnny muttered, jabbing his toe into the ground again.
S*S
That part of the talk went well -the second part...well...
"Ah, sir, c'mon-"
"Nope," Dare popped, struggling not to grin. In his hands, he held a rubber pack and a cucumber, with the exception the Johnny show that he understood how to operate the thing that could keep him out of trouble.
"Ya killin' me here, Mr. C-" Johnny pleaded -in vain.
"Then end ya sufferin' little man," Dare said reasonably. "Get it over with, and we can head inside."
"Sir, me and Wendy ain't stupid-"
Dare held up a his free hand. "There's lot of couples who get themselves over their heads cause it ain't their heads their thinkin' with. Common sense is the first to say 'see-ya' when the ball gets rollin'...kid, for my own peace of mine, jus' show me ya know how to do this."
"...Alright," the kid yielded, with something of groaning sigh. Snatching the objects from Dare's hand with a pair of burning ears, Johnny was quiet and methodical as he went about the task.
"There," he said when he was done, handing the properly sheathed vegetable back to Dare.
"Now was that so terrible?"
"Yes," Johnny muttered, shoving the rest of the pack into his jacket pocket at Dare's insistence. "N' honestly sir, this was kinda inaccurate."
Dare winged up an eyebrow. Well this oughta be good. "How so?"
Johnny shrugged and nodded at the cucumber, utterly straight-faced. "'M bigger than that."
With only a slight smile, the kid bounced his way up the stairs into the house, leaving Dare slacked jaw and performing some fast mental gymnastics, 'cause there was no-damn-way...
Blinking, he caught himself, and shook his head in begrudging admiration.
"That little son-of-gun."
Reviews make me happy, so tell me what you thought and 'll update sooner.
I decided to show a little of what Ponyboy got from his Dad here, with Mr. Curtis' love of Henry V. Lots of soldiers took up reading in world war 2. Something to do.
Ha! Johnny was shown to be sassy in the book, how much more so before he was jumped? Up next is Wendy attending the funeral.