My lawyer pushed his pad away from him and looked up at me for the first time since I had started my story. He hadn't interrupted once, just listened and scribbled down notes while I talked.
"Had any of them made a move to attack you before you knifed that boy?"
I thought back, remembering that moment, wishing I could go back and change it. They had been circling me, stepping in closer, Will had a knife drawn same as me. I had stood still and ready, under the sun and the shadows of buildings, scared of nothing in this world. If I could really go back, I would probably do the same thing again, despite everything. How could I not have?
"Not really, they was just about to, you know…"
I paused, figuring the lawyer would have only ever been on the other side of the fight. He would have been the soc's. He didn't know what it was like have nothing but what you had fought for. And now I had to trust him with my life.
He stretched and gave me a grin.
"I think we're gonna go for the self defense angle here, what about those boys ahhh…" he checked his notes again. "Darrel and Soda, you were on the ground when they came along?"
"Yeah, look," I sighed, wishing I had a cigarette. "I just cut him. It wasn't enough to kill someone, it really wasn't."
What was the point, he would never believe me, and no one ever would.
I would be served to the beast, left to grow old behind these walls, or die with lightening running through my body. And there would be no shelter for any of us. Not for Roberts parents, not for Curly, not for me. No punishment and no pain that could ever make a smartass rich kid live again.
"You really think that?" he sounded genuinely interested. "You just cut him the one time?"
"Yeah, just in and out" I mimed it with a quick flick of my wrist. Anger coursed through me, rising over the despair. He died for that, for nothing. And now so would I.
"I'll take a look at the photos, talk to forensics." He jotted something down in his notes again, talking to himself more than me. "Meet with those Curtis boys, see what they say…"
He started putting stuff back into his briefcase, talking as he did.
"You'll go to court to be arraigned in the morning, you'll be asked to enter a plea…"
"I know all that shit, I got priors" I cut in.
"Of course." He looked at me, strange recognition on his face. "Well I'll see you there then, might as well apply for bail but don't hold your breath."
"Not with the fucking soc judge" I said.
"That's right, your biggest problem is who you killed, not what you did. Why couldn't you have killed one of those Brumly Boys, they'd be giving you a pat on the back?" He lifted an eyebrow and grinned.
I couldn't believe I was stuck with this idiot as my lawyer.
"Man, what the fuck do you know about anything?"
He paused in the doorway and turned to me, the knowing look on his face again.
"I should know all about the Brumly Boys, I grew up right on River Road."
"Now you're telling me I got a fucking greaser for a lawyer?"
"I come from the same place you do. I was fourteen when I saw my older brother killed. He was just a punk kid with a drunk for a father and more enemies than friends, dead at nineteen. I saw him in his coffin, and I knew I didn't want to live and die like him, with nothing."
I didn't know if it was worse than when I thought he was a soc.
"How'd you get to be a lawyer and all then, you mug someone for that bit of paper?"
I wasn't kidding, this guy had better be for real.
"I won a scholarship when I was seventeen, it put me through school. See you in court."
I sat waiting to be taken back to my cell. He was a kid, and he was a greaser. Shit it just kept getting better.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"You are charged with the murder of Robert Casey, how do you plead?"
For an instant I thought about just holding my head high and saying "Guilty". This was the life I had chosen to lead. But I had never backed down from a fight before, and I couldn't start now.
"Not guilty."
I stood in the dock with my lawyer and the same two cops who had brought me in the day before on my other side. The judge shuffled some paper on his desk, he hadn't even looked at me since calling me up.
"Due to the serious nature of the charge, the application for bail is denied. You are to be remanded to the custody of Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Trial date is set for November tenth. Step down."
"Gregory Ivan" he announced as I was led out, hardly waiting until I was out of the dock. I was just the latest in a long line of criminals, not so special after all. Not so much smarter than all the rest that I couldn't be caught.
"We got a bus going up to the State Pen' today" the older cop said to me as we walked down the long, high corridors of the courthouse. "Looks like you'll be taking a ride later."
I could see daylight through the double doors at the end of the hallway as we approached the exit, and felt my pulse speeding up. My whole body seemed to be one collective urge, aching to breakaway, to run and fight and escape. Yet still the cops fingers dug into my upper arms, my hands were shackled behind my back, the young cop's baton struck my side rhythmically as he strode beside me. I could see no way back.
"Here's the fucking circus" the old cop said dryly as we stepped through the doors.
I blinked at the brightness of the sun and the flash of cameras, we had hardly taken two steps outside before we were hemmed in by reporters.
"Step aside, get back everyone!" the young cop yelled, swaggering out ahead of me. He started clearing a path down the steps of the courthouse, pushing his way through.
The cameras went off and the reporters called out to me.
"How did you plead?"
"Did you do it?"
"Do you have anything to say to Robert's parents?"
I ignored them, just kept my head up and a slight smile on my lips, knowing my photo would be on the front page of the paper the following day.
"Damn it Tim" my lawyer hissed near my ear. "Stop looking so pleased with yourself, you supposed be remorseful."
And I was, but that didn't mean I was going to show it. I didn't think I could show my feelings anymore even if I wanted to, I only knew how to bury them.
We made our way down the steps and to the waiting police van. The cops shoved me in the back and slammed the doors closed, shutting out the light and noise and clamor of the crowd. I could still hear the muffled jostling outside for a minute, and then it faded away. I looked out the wire covered window of the van, already the reporters were heading off, going to find the next big story. It struck me suddenly that this is how it would be. I wouldn't be a legend on the streets; young greasers wouldn't grow up hearing my name. I would be forgotten, and new heroes would take my place. The only one who would always remember would be Curly.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"So this fucking nigger said to me, what's your problem brother? So I put my arm next to his and said, see that? I ain't your brother you fucking monkey…"
I leaned my head back against the brick wall of the exercise yard, thinking if this guy said "nigger" or "monkey" one more time I was going to pound his skull in. In the cooler there ain't greasers and soc's, there's 'honkeys' and 'spics' and 'niggers'. Everyone sticks to their own race, which meant getting stuck with this asshole from the Aryan Brotherhood.
He had sought me out the second I set foot in the yard, just hours after arriving here. I had the impression he had been sent to try and recruit me.
"Yeah, you gotta watch for the niggers in here. They think they own the joint."
He gave me a sideways glance. I wondered why he and his brethren thought they were so much better than the blacks, we were all in the same fucking place.
"I got no problem with 'em" I said coolly.
"Not if you stick with us you won't. And us white brothers gotta stick together right?"
He held out his hand for me to shake. I gazed over the yard, the black gangs on the basketball court, the Hispanic gangs on the other side, the whites on our side. I knew how it worked here, you had to have guys to stand back you up. There was no room for heroes here.
I crossed my arms over my chest and ignored his offered hand.
"I'll take my chances." I said.
Boys home, foster home, reform school, prison. Wherever you are, the first night is always the worst. The first night when you lay on your bed and stare at the ceiling and think of all the nights you will spend here. You lie there and understand that this is your life, this is real, and it's the only life you're going to have. You roll on your bed, unable to sleep, the prison a nightmare you can't wake up from.
Living in a box, and watching TV, and standing in the concrete yard, and listening to the boy down the hallway crying because he's somebody's punk, and talking to guys who hate a man for the color of his skin, and knowing that this is it…
…and it's for life, your life.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The intercom crackled to life as I leaned over the pool table to take my shot.
"Tim Shepard, you have a visitor."
I missed my shot and sunk the black. I've never been any good at pool, Curly always liked to play because it's the only thing he could ever beat me at.
"If only my aim had been so bad when I was holding that knife" I said to the guy I was playing.
He grinned at me. "Shoot we all got a story like that. If only my daddy's aim had been so bad I never woulda been here in the first place."
A guard escorted me down to the visitor's room, the doors opening and shutting as we went. Slamming and locking, slamming and locking. Three months until my trail, three months…and then this…
I came in and glanced around the room, seeing my brother as I had expected. He was seated in one of the plastic chairs, looking cool and remote, his gaze hard and unafraid on the other prisoners. He looked like he belonged.
"Hey."
"Tim" he looked up quickly as I came over, and for a second I saw behind his hard expression the child who had been abandoned by everyone. Cast adrift and left to fight alone. But then it was gone so quickly, if I didn't know him so well I'd think I'd never even seen it.
"How's it going?" I asked, taking a seat opposite him.
"Okay. Nice outfit." A hint of his old smirk crossed his face as he looked at the blue trousers and shirt I was wearing.
"Watch it, or they'll be adding beating your head in to my list of crimes."
"Yeah, they might give you a medal for that."
"How you been?"
"Okay. Hey I just saw that soc Will McIntyre on my way here."
"What happened?" I asked.
I couldn't protect him from in here. And if anything happened to Curly, I might as well have died that day at the hospital.
"Nothing really, he just said he heard you was in jail, said you was gonna get the chair and all. He's a fucking weird guy that one. He's like a greaser in soc clothing."
"Yeah, I know what you mean." I remembered the day him and his buddies had jumped me. I had seen myself in him then, like I had seen myself in Dallas.
"He kind of reminds me of you, no offence or nothing."
"But without the tuff clothes" I said, indicating the prison issue shirt.
He grinned and ducked his head, then looked up, suddenly serious.
"I know you did that for me" he said, so softly I could barely hear him.
I looked at the guilt and the gratitude in his eyes, feeling sick. I had never deserved how much love he had for me. I had never even wanted it.
"Don't flatter yourself kid. I did it 'cause ain't no fucking cop gonna get the credit for taking me down."
Again I saw emotion skitter across his face before he hid it, relief, doubt, disappointment.
"How'd they know where you were?"
"I dunno, an undercover must have followed me."
"But how would they…"
"So, where you been staying?"
"At Wade's house, he said I could stay with him until you got out."
"Okay there?" I asked him, surprised at the relief that filled me. Relief that Curly was okay, he had somewhere to go, someone looking out for him. Surprised to find just how much I cared.
"Yep, his mom cooks the best dinners you ever saw." Then he grinned slyly and added. "Better than anything you seen the last few days at least, I'll bet."
"No doubt" I said , sitting back in my chair, just too glad and proud to be angry with him. He had so much fight in him, so much defiance in the face all the knocks that life had given him.
"Your picture was in the paper the other day, you look like a fucking poser too, smiling at the camera and shit. They think you're the baddest hood that ever lived, those newspaper people." He laughed, pride and fear in his eyes.
"How's the boys?"
"Aww hell, Wade can't keep 'em in line. You better get back Tim, it's going to shit without you."
Like I had known it would. Nothing without me, not even a gang on the street to carry my name.
"My lawyers gonna go for self defense" I told him. "I might get off."
As I said it I felt that desperate hope inside, the hope that it wasn't all over, I might yet have a second chance to live this life.
"You reckon?" The same hope was on Curly's face, flooding it. "Damn, I want that so fucking much."
He suddenly clenched his jaw and swallowed hard.
"Hey, listen" I said, feeling my heart twist as I looked at him. "It'll be okay, I got a good lawyer and all."
No need to tell him my lawyer was a kid, and a greaser.
He nodded took a deep breath. I never should have let him need me so much, I should have made him stand alone from the start. Then I never could have hurt him so much as I had.
"Times up Shepard" a guard called out from behind me.
I stood up and looked down at my brother, guilt running through me.
"I'm sorry" I told him. "I never wanted it to be like this."
A/N: Please keep in mind that while I do make an effort to have everything accurate to the U.S in the 1960's, it is not always possible to find the information. In that instance I just go on the assumption that the U.S prison and legal system works in a similar way to here in New Zealand where I live.
So bear with me on any inaccuracies, thanks.
Thanks to all reviewers, a few replies…
NittanyLizard: I'm so glad you liked the detective. I was planning on writing the "police beat down" interrogation scene, but then that detective suddenly came to mind, and he seemed like a good character so I put him in instead.
Just Playin: It's not that his case isn't important, but seeing as he is a greaser who killed a soc he wouldn't get good publicity for the lawyer. Also, given the circumstances, it would be seen as a hard case to win. As far as I know, people using legal aid can't just ring up any law firm they want. But I could be wrong, see A/N above!
Vripter: Well you'll have to wait and find out what happens…I'm mean huh!
Reviwer: Hope you liked seeing Curly back in this chapter. Sorry, not saying what the next story will be about just yet.
Tensleep: Wow, almost lovable! I guess I have probably taken a more generous interpretation of the Shepards then most people, but even the most hardcore gang members are still human after all, they still have thoughts, feelings, family they love, etc. And I wanted to show a different side to Curly, most (not all) fic's on here that he appears in give him all the personality of toxic waste. I realize that is because Ponyboy describes him as "not very bright", however he also says he's "tough, cool and hard as nails" so I'm keeping that in mind too when writing him.
Skateboard101: Hey don't apologize, I love getting reviews! Well I guess he is trying to act tough, but finding it hard because as you say he is sad.
Wish-upon-a-star: Thanks, glad your enjoying it. As for what will happen to Tim, you'll find out! I won't put the summary of the next story up, as I'm still deciding on a few things.
Alicia: I do write my own stories, but wrote and posted this partly out of interest to see what people would think of my writing. I don't show my stories to people I actually know because it's not like they would tell me to my face "that sucks" and I wanted some honest feedback. So that's really nice to hear, thanks.
Kelly90: Thanks, I'm always relieved when reviewers say that! Seeing as I'm writing it from Tim's POV it's a lot easier to show his emotions etc, but I have to make sure I don't get carried away with it either.
CloudyDay: I'm glad you like the detail, I like writing it but sometimes wonder if I put too much in.