Chapter Eleven

Tulsa

Dally took another drink from the bottle of whiskey.

He didn't normally drink a lot, at least, not as much as Two-Bit but he'd been drinking more lately.

They'd gotten another letter from Johnny yesterday. His uncle had taken his cigarettes away. His aunt had bought some cigarettes for him, but his uncle found out. He got really mad at Johnny and at his aunt. He had forbidden Johnny from smoking ever again, and his aunt wasn't allowed to buy him cigarettes anymore.

That wasn't the worst part. Johnny had tried to explain that he needed cigarettes and his uncle hit him. Johnny didn't think that he meant to hit him, but he did. His uncle said that he was sorry, but that didn't change anything.

Everyone was pretty mad that Johnny's uncle had hit him. They wrote a letter back to him asking him to call them. They were going to work out some way that they could send him a bus ticket home. It would be faster and easier if they could talk to him. They wanted to get Johnny out of New Orleans as soon as possible, and they knew that Johnny wanted to come home.

A little later that night, Two-Bit had been looking at the letter and had noticed that some of the words on it were smudged, like Johnny had been crying when he wrote it and some of his tears had fallen on it. That had made Dally really mad. Johnny was supposed to be in New Orleans because it was better, but it obviously wasn't. His uncle had made him cry. It took a lot to make Johnny cry.

Dally had left to drink away his anger. He had gone to a few bars before he got kicked out. Then he went to a liquor store and bought a pint of whiskey. He was sitting on the Curtis's couch drinking it. He was kind of wishing that he had some company. Whiskey always left a bad taste in his mouth if he drank too much of it. He wanted someone to share the bottle with.

The door opened and Two-Bit walked in. Perfect.

"Hey, Two-Bit," Dally said.

"Hey," Two-Bit said as he flopped down on the couch. "What time is it?"

"Some time at night," Dally said. "Everyone went to bed a while ago."

"Hey, finish this," Dally said as he stuck the bottle of whiskey in Two-Bit's face.

"Sure," Two-Bit said as he took the bottle from Dally. He took a drink and said "Do you think Johnny's OK?"

"I dunno," Dally said. "I hope so."

"Why'd they even send him there?" Two-Bit asked.

"I guess they didn't know how miserable he'd be," Dally replied. "'Sounds like he likes his aunt Ok, it's his cousin and uncle that are giving him a hard time."

"Maybe we should drive down and get him," Two-Bit said. "We could party for a few days and then come back."

Dally laughed, "Yeah. I was almost hoping that he'd like it down there. That way he could have invited me to come visit during Marti Gras or something."

Two-Bit smiled, "Yeah," he said softly. "That would have been tuff."

Dally and Two-Bit sat on the couch passing the bottle of whiskey back and fourth for a while. Then they heard a door open in the back part of the house. They stopped and sat still until someone came into the room.

It was Pony.

"What are you doing sitting here in the dark?" Pony asked as he turned on a light.

"What are you doing up?" Dally asked.

"Couldn't sleep," Pony replied.

"Take a drink of this," Two-Bit said as he handed the bottle to Pony.

Pony took a drink from the bottle and made a face, "That stuff is awful," he choked as he gave it back to Two-Bit. "How do you drink it?"

"I don't know," Two-Bit said as he looked at the bottle.

"Are you guys worried about Johnny?" Pony asked.

"Yeah," Dally said. "But we'll get him home, don't worry."

They kept passing the bottle around for a while. Pony surprised them by taking several drinks from it.

"Since when do you drink?" Two-Bit slurred.

"Since now," Pony replied. He sounded almost as drunk as Two-Bit. He hadn't drank that much, but he wasn't used to it. Dally knew that Darry would kill him if Pony got drunk and it was his fault. He had to get Pony to leave.

"You'd better get to bed, kid," Dally said. "Darry'll kill me if he finds out that you were up this late."

Pony nodded and got up off the couch. Dally watched as he staggered to his room. Hopefully no one would notice that he reeked of whiskey. After Dally saw that Pony was safely in his room he turned to Two-Bit. He was taking a long drink from the bottle. Two-Bit put the bottle down and looked at Dally.

"I'm tired," he said dully. "I'm going home."

"Ok," Dally said. "But leave the booze,"

"Darn," Two-Bit said as he put the bottle on the table. "I was hoping you'd let me keep it."

"Yeah right," Dally said.

"Well, I'm leaving," Two-Bit said. "See you later."

After Two-Bit left Dally turned off the light and sat on the couch, drinking whiskey alone in the darkness. He couldn't stop thinking about Johnny. He really liked that kid, even though he tried not to show it too much. It wasn't fair that his life sucked so much. His parents didn't care about him, and because of them he was a million miles away in New Orleans. It wouldn't have mattered if he liked it there, but he was miserable. Johnny needed a family that cared about him. That seemed simple enough. Why couldn't he have that?

Dally finished off the bottle of whiskey and threw the bottle away. Then he flopped down on the couch and fell into a drunken sleep.