………………………………Johnny

I didn't know who to go see first, Clyde or Johnny. The sun streamed through my motel window, no longer was I at the posh hotel above the twilight bar.

I poured myself some coffee and looked out at the blue morning sky. Clyde, in the way of mentors, remained in many aspects unknowable to me. What would he say when I told him I was scraping my planned defense and was going with straightforward self defense? I had no idea.

So I decided to see Johnny first.

……X…….X………X

Johnny had more good days than bad days now, and I knocked softly on the door to his hospital room.

"Hey, Mr. Williams," he said.

"Hi, Johnny, um, we need to talk," I swung the door shut and sat in the white plastic chair near his bed. He raised his eyebrows but didn't say anything.

I could see he'd gained weight, and he looked like he'd made a sort of peace with himself. I felt myself struggling for the same peace. Because I wanted so badly to save him, to take him with me. I thought back to the cocky confidence I'd had when I'd first come to Tulsa, how effortless winning the case seemed like it would be. But now it was like the deep woods and the birds ate my breadcrumbs. No way out.

"Johnny, uh, I've been thinking a lot about what you've said. Well, something you said awhile ago, at the jail, remember? Anyway, it seems to me, it seems that it, maybe I should actually…"

He was giving me a puzzled look and I realized I was rambling, not saying anything. I took a deep breath and tried again.

"Okay, you know the defense I had planned, incorporating the fact that your parents abused you?"

He nodded, his eyes big and solemn.

"I think you were right. That isn't going to figure into it. It's going to be just self defense,"

And he smiled.

…………………………………Clyde

Mid afternoon. Clouds trailed across the sky behind crimson trees, and I headed toward Clyde's temporary office here in Tulsa. The office he'd rented so he could help me with the case, help I needed because left to my own devices I got myself shot and caused my client to attempt bleeding to death. Preferable to my counsel, perhaps.

"Dean," Clyde. Coffee by the right hand, cigarette in his left. Wink of jewelry in the sun, the glint of the pinkie ring, gleam of the watch.

"Hello, Clyde," A lump in my throat. A dryness in my mouth. Telling Clyde of my decision would be infinitely harder than telling Johnny. What if he tried to sway me that I was wrong? Of all those who held sway over me, Clyde was the greatest of these.

"I've decided to revise my defense strategy," I started, anxiously searching his face for clues to his thoughts.

"I've decided to go with a straight forward self defense," I was amazed at how much I felt like a child awaiting my father's approval.

"Uh huh," he said, non committal. Uh huh? What kind of answer was that? What sort of advice was that?

"Well," I said, "what do you think?"

He leveled me with his teacher's stare and after a long while, silence spinning out between us like spun glass, he spoke.

"That's fine, Dean. You do what you want. It's your case,"

……………………………..Curtis'

At the Curtis house I felt a bit better about things than I had in awhile.

"So Johnny's getting outa that hospital soon?" Ponyboy said, leaning over the arm of the couch.

"Soon. That's what they say,"

Not cured, certainly, but he was no longer suicidal. Still depressed but medicated. He was functioning. It was more than I could say for myself.