Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters used herein which come from S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders.

The man, tall and silver-haired, stood in the old house watching the driving rain through the front window. He didn't know how long it was that he'd been standing there, but the ache in his back that never entirely went away these days was telling him he'd been standing too long.

He sat down, carefully easing himself onto the couch. All he had was memories. Memories of days gone by so long ago he couldn't be sure they still existed. He closed his eyes and remembered fondly the black-haired boy who'd rarely said more than a few words at a time, but who could be counted on to pitch in whenever help was needed. He remembered the almost white-blond youth whose expression rarely let anything through, a mask that hid his affection for the black-haired youth.

He remembered a boy who loved to read and write, who would see the beauty in the world around him in a way he never could. He remembered a dashing young man, always ready with a kind word, and who never failed to be seen near a gaggle of girls.

He remembered another young man, angry at his father and turning to the pale substitute of the unconditional support his closest friends all offered him. And finally, he remembered a laughing joker, a man who couldn't resist getting a word in no matter how exasperating it might be.

Those were the days, weren't they? We thought we'd be indestructible. I should have realized we'd drift apart. Dally and Johnny were just the first to break away. And Dally had the chance to choose to die.

The Vietnam War had taken the dashing Sodapop and cast him back in a closed casket. They had been warned that it would not be a good idea to open it.

Steve had fallen by the way in one of the last dying gasps of the great rumbles, when he'd taken a knife meant for someone else. Just plain bad luck, everybody always said, but the rumble had been after Sodapop had come back horizontally.

Two-Bit had hit the bottle hard, especially after Sodapop had been drafted. He had expired of cirrhosis of the liver in the late 1970s.

And Ponyboy. He had somehow failed to outlive his older brother, Darrel Curtis. He had died five years ago, the victim of an unusually nasty flu that had gotten around one winter. On his deathbed, he had grinned, that smile a brief gust of wind from the great days gone by, and whispered, "Stayin' gold. That's the best thing I ever did."

Darry sat alone, the ache in his back a reminder of the years of hard work he'd put in trying to make ends meet doing construction and roofing. When his back had almost quit on him around the time Two-Bit died, he'd taken his workers' comp and decided to finally get that college education he'd always wanted. The four years of scrimping and saving and sweating and studying finally paid off when the owner of the construction company he'd once worked for agreed to sell to him.

Goddamnit, it's not fair! raged Darry as he smacked his fist helplessly on the arm of the couch. Why did he have to be the last to go, to expire of simple old age, the wearing out of the body and the exhaustion of the mind? Why did he have to live on in the twilight of his life, existing just for the sake of it?

Darry had been able to hang onto the house through all the upheavals and swirling of world events. The irony was, there was nobody left to appreciate the house. Ponyboy's children were off, leading their own lives. Old Uncle Darry wasn't exactly going to be their supreme concern.

Oh, they'd go through the knickknacks and ooh and aah over some of the vintage furniture and so on, but they'd just sell what they didn't want and put the house up for sale. And with that would go puff the last breath of the great days, those turbulent, trying, happy, rich, colorful times when they were all together, and nobody would ever tear them apart because they were just too strong and too closely knit for that to happen. But nobody would appreciate the significance of those long-ago days. Or would someone? Anyone?

Darry stood up, wishing the melancholy would go away, and carefully eased himself down the hall to what had once been Ponyboy's room. Even though he couldn't really afford it, he paid someone to come in once every month and dust, clean and generally keep the house in livable condition, even though no-one had been in two of the bedrooms for over twenty years.

Ponyboy's room had been Sodapop's as well, but after Sodapop had died, Darry had slowly stopped thinking of it as having belonged to both, and he suddenly felt guilty that he'd mentally abandoned Sodapop. The room stood as a preserve of the past, and in particular, Darry knew exactly where to look for the one thing he wanted to get.

From the topmost drawer of the desk, he withdrew faded, yellowing sheets of paper, with the scrawl of handwriting over fifty years old. He went outside onto the porch, and noticed the rain had stopped. The sun was shining, and the air felt crisp and cool. Just for a few moments, Darry's back quit aching, and he drew a sharp breath, taking in the deep liquid essence of the spring air. Not yet heavily-laden with the plant smells of summer, but with just a hint of pine.

He sat on the chair and let the sunlight fall onto the paper. His rheumy eyes had trouble focussing, and he fumbled in his pocket for the reading glasses.

"When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman…"

- - -

Darry's eyes opened. He'd fallen asleep, clutching the sheets in his hand. He panicked as he realized he could have ruined the papers forever, but the paper was still resilient enough to withstand some wear and tear. He went back into the house, and as he did so, he remembered he'd fallen asleep just after finishing the manuscript. He hadn't been conscious of time passing, absorbed as he'd been once again in the glory days of the past. But he had a mission. He took a large envelope off the desk he kept near the kitchen, and carefully, reverently, slipped the papers inside, sealing the envelope. Equally carefully, he wrote out a note, in neat lettering.

Darrel Curtis placed the envelope and paper on his desk, then put on a coat and went back outside. The twilight was just beginning to come on, and he felt a sense of accomplishment, one he had not really felt for some years. He sat in the same chair, and wrapped the coat about himself, and closed his eyes, promising himself he'd wake up shortly.

Once again, Darry's eyes snapped open, frantic at the thought that he'd missed something. Swiftly, an unusual sense of peace began to envelop him. As he relaxed back in his chair, the face of his brother, Ponyboy, swam before him. It wasn't the aged face he had been used to, but the youthful face he'd had once upon a time. Then Sodapop, carefree and laughing, swelled before his face and vanished.

Steve Randle, his face peaceful for once, grinning as he fished a cigarette from behind his ear. Two-Bit, holding a beer in his hand, cracking a joke, laughing his head off. Johnny Cade, cracking a rare smile as he shyly looked at the sunset. Dallas Winston, cigarette in his mouth, squinting at something, getting ready to fight just before he vanished.

And then he heard the last thing he would ever hear – a voice that wasn't a voice, but a combination of several speaking in unison: "Welcome home, Darrel Curtis."

- - -

The next day, a relatively young woman, who had cleaned the house for some years, drove over to Darry's house. She noticed that Darry was sitting outside on the porch, apparently resting. She left him alone, and went inside the house. Although she knew she had no business doing so, her eyes were drawn to the envelope and the folded paper next to it. The envelope read, "To Gina."

She took them and a sense of foreboding went through her. She walked back out onto the porch, and looked at Darry again. She noticed that his face, for the first time that she could remember, wasn't pinched from the pain she knew he had from his bad back.

She said, "Hi, Darry."

No answer. A gnawing sense of unease hit her stomach as she gently touched Darry's shoulder. "Wake up, Darry!"

She shook his shoulder, and nothing happened. Crashing realization hit, and she silently held back a sob as a tear escaped her eye, for Darrel Shaynne Curtis was dead.

As she waited for the police and ambulance to come, she opened the envelope. There were many sheets of yellowing paper inside. She then unfolded the folded white sheet, which read:

"The papers in this envelope are the most valuable property of the Curtis family. Please treat them with the care and respect you would give to the most valuable family heirloom. For heirlooms can't do for you what this story will – teach the value of caring, friendship and family."

Gina sat on the porch steps, staring into the sky.