…………………………………..Lending a Hand
Clyde looked at me with his clear teacher's eyes and rested a hand on my arm.
"I thought I'd come down to Tulsa to see you," he said in an oddly casual tone, "considering I saw you get shot on national television,"
"It was on television!" This seemed surreal, my moment of shock and pain transmitted across the country for the mild entertainment of others.
"Like Kennedy and Oswald," he said, taking out his fancy engraved cigarette holder and admiring the different ways it could reflect the light. Then he frowned and put it away.
"Dean," and now his tone was oddly serious, "I've come down here to give you a hand with the trial. I thought you might need some help after this, uh, incident,"
I nodded, considering the truth of his statement. The trial wasn't going all that well when both the lawyer and the defendant nearly managed to perish on the same day.
…………………………………………Regret
I was at the hotel, convalescing. I'd been sprung from the hospital over a week ago but the trial was on a delay due to the attempted homicide/suicide of the defense.
I sipped the soup I kept ordering from room service and thought about Mrs. Sheldon. Clyde had informed me that she was in a country club like sanitarium, tapping golf balls and taking vitamins and valiums out of tiny paper medicine cups.
I could just imagine what it was like where Johnny was.
"But she tried to kill my client," I protested to Clyde, "she almost killed me!"
Clyde shook his head, tapped the end of his cigarette and lit it.
"My dear boy," he said drolly, "I thought you understood how the world works,"
I consulted my watch, anxiously awaiting my next dose of painkillers. I had been warned upon leaving the hospital that a strict number of hours had to elapse between each dose.
There was an urgent knock at my door and muffled voices that sounded, even through the haze in my brain and all the molecules of the heavy door, familiar.
"Come in!" The doorknob rattled and the urgent knocks followed. I forgot I had locked it. I went to let them in.
"Hi, Mr. Williams," Ponyboy said, his face pallid, dark dashes beneath his eyes. Dallas was next to him, his face covered with white blond beard stubble.
"Hi," I said calmly, stepping back to let them in.
"What brings you boys here?" I said, turning my back on them and walking to the bed.
"We need you to bring us to see Johnny," Dallas said in an almost frightening tone. Ponyboy looked at me in an endearingly anxious, pleading way.
"Why? Just go visit him yourselves," I didn't feel up to visiting Johnny. I could imagine all too well how it would be.
"We can't, Mr. Williams," Ponyboy said, "they won't let anyone but his lawyer see him,"
Ah, shit. I really didn't want to go and see that fucked up kid.
They both stared at me in their different but equally needy ways, and I regretted ever coming to Tulsa, ever getting myself involved in this, this, mess. My wound gave off a nasty twinge of pain and I consulted my watch, relieved to see it was time for my next dose.
"Please, Mr. Williams?" Ponyboy said, and the stoic looked slipped from Dallas' face and I saw for just a moment the scared boy beneath. I popped two pills into my mouth and gulped back water.
"Okay, sure, yeah. Okay,"
……………………………………Johnny
The hospital Johnny was at was an odd combination of a prison and a hospital. There were bars on the windows and locks on all the doors but nurses and orderlies glided around in white, smiling placid little smiles.
Ponyboy looked around wide eyed and Dallas affected a cool that was nearly faultless.
"Who are you here to see?" a plump gray secretary said, smiling behind her wire rimmed glasses.
"Johnny Cade," I said. She looked him up in her little book and then looked back at me, her smile gone.
"I assume you are his lawyer," she said and when I nodded she looked pointedly at Ponyboy and Dallas.
"They are part of my team," I lied, and both she and I knew there was nothing she could do about it. She frowned but called up to his floor and announced our visit.
A neatly groomed orderly came to get us and he smiled. He looked to me that maybe he was two or three years older than Dallas.
"Going to visit Johnny?" he said, and shook his head.
"Yeah. Why?" Ponyboy said in a tougher voice than I'd ever heard him use.
"Oh, uh, nothing. It's just he's been here for two weeks and he hasn't said a word," This bit of information was imparted in a tone of pity and wonder and the orderly shook his head again. I saw in his eyes a grudging admiration of Johnny.
We climbed up to the fourth floor and turned down a hallway, at the end of which were a pair of double doors. The orderly dug a key from his pocket and unlocked them.
There was a glassed in nurses' station, a drab little sitting area composed of chintz couches, a pinewood coffee table, and a small T.V. A cigarette lay smoldering to ash in the ashtray on the coffee table. A blank eyed older gentleman sat leaning to the left in a wheelchair. He was dressed in a matching soft blue pajama type outfit. Another man, younger, stood staring at the T.V., a cigarette dangling from his slim fingers. He was dressed the same as the man in the wheelchair.
We followed the orderly to a hallway lined with doors, and he brought us to one door inparticular.
"Johnny! You got visitors," he smiled at us, the sunny smile of a young man with very few real problems. Ponyboy blinked after him and Dallas glared.
The door was opened about the width of a pie wedge and I pushed it open. Johnny lay on the made bed dressed as the other patients were. Both wrists were wrapped in white bandages and over these on his right wrist was the wide white hospital band, giving all the particulars of his case.
His black hair and eyes accentuated his pallor. Everyone of his fingernails was a bloody ragged mess. He stared at the wall and seemed not to have heard us at all.
