A Day In The Life Of Dallas Winston

Chapter Two: Smile To The Nice Cops

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the second chapter! As always, belongs to S.E. Hinton!

It's always a little boring looking for action alone. Yeah, you can find it, but it's just not as fun with no one to share it with. I knew just who to go see. Tim Shepard, the second toughest hood in the East Side. He and I were a lot alike in that we were both wild and reckless, but levelheaded enough when we had to be. I reckon he can stay cooler longer than me, but I enjoy giving into the red haze called anger. That's why I'm top hood, the toughest. I sometimes wonder where Tim learned to get so hard, but I don't care enough to ask him so I guess I'll never know.

I stopped by Buck's for a few drinks and to maybe catch word of where Tim was. I still haven't forgiven Buck, but the whole in his mouth told me he got the picture. Good, maybe I could sleep in tomorrow if I lay over here tonight. I'm not a big drinker of whiskey or hard stuff like that so I just downed a couple of beers and made Buck pay for them. That holey cowboy still owed me twenty bucks from a poker game last week. I figure he owed me. It was pretty slow, it still being early afternoon, but I saw Curly, Tim's brother, playing pool with one of the guys in their gang. I didn't know his friend very well so he must not have been a hood worth mentioning. I grabbed the guy's pool stick and hit for him, messing up his game. Curly complained, "Hey, man, you just screwed up a perfectly good game!I was up ten bucks already!" Curly was as stupid a hood as I knew, but he was tough enough.

"Yeah? Wanna pay me that then and I'll leave you alone." I didn't really care about the money, I can always steal if I need it or just steal what I want without messing with the cash. The only reason I got up this morning was because I enjoy the horses. There's nothing that I need, I always get whatever I want.

Curly looked like he wanted to start something, but he knew better. Like I said, he was dumb but tough enough, meaning he had some street smarts at least. Rule number one: don't take on more than you can handle. He wouldn't have a prayer against me and he knew it. He whined, "But Dally-"

I waved him off with a smack to the head. Nothing more than a playful tap between two greasers. Tim would throw a fit if I knocked his kid brother around too much and then I wouldn't have anybody to get into trouble with. "Shut up, Curly, I don't want your cash," he looked relieved, "I just want to know where I can find your brother."

Curly went back to his lost game of pool. "Home, probably. He's probably still asleep. Stumbled in pretty loudly around four this morning." Excellent, another person that didn't sleep! I don't know why that made me so happy, but it did. Good to know I wasn't the only suffering.

I nodded and started to walk away, but then I grabbed his whiskey from the side of the table and took a swig before setting it back down and left with, "Oh, and Curly, don't you know it ain't right to hustle against somebody in your own gang?" Curly looked surprised and the other guy looked pretty mad at that. I knew I'd called it. I sure could be mean, not that I was ever 'nice.'

Then I kept walking and hitched most of the way to the Shepard's. Their house was always trashed, looking more like a junkyard than a home. I don't know where it came from, but it was always like that. I looked in the window to their living room which was right by the front door. Tim was crashed in a recliner and his sister, Angela, was sprawled out on the couch watching the cracked TV. Slow morning at the Shepard's. I waited for the usual noise, there was always fights and crashes and whatnot there. Then I heard the general clatter of something breaking and Tim's father hollering at somebody so I went right in. Angela straightened up when I walked in, not that she was my type anyway, but she wasn't the kind of girl that was choosey. I kicked Tim's recliner which made it jump fold up, shooting Tim up out of the chair.

"Dammit, Dallas! You were anyone else and I'd have dropped you!" he looked more surprised than pissed which I took as an invitation.

"I'm bored, Tim. You gonna hunt some action with me or what?"

He ran a hand through his greased up hair. "Why not?" He stood up and we left. It never was hard to convince Tim Shepard to get into trouble.

He requested that we stop by Buck's though so he could get rid of his hangover. Begrudgingly, I agreed. Tim downed three shots of whiskey, yelled at his brother for hustling at Buck's instead of some place I hadn't heard of, and then we were off again. We walked down the street punching out streetlights just for the hell of it. There wasn't much to do this time of day so we kept walking until we hit the Dingo. There was a lots of action going down there.

Some kid, he looked like a homeless hitchhiker or something, was laying on the ground surrounded by people. We joined the onlookers and saw a growing puddle of blood spill out of the boy. He looked about fifteen or sixteen, Pony's and Johnny's age. There was a guy a couple yards away sitting with his knees curled up. He was staring at a knife, dripping with blood, in his hand. He looked pale and shaken up. Something about the dying kid bothered me. It made my blood boil just a little bit, red creeping around the edges of my vision.

I grabbed the guy by the shirt and pulled him up to yell in his face, "Why'd you knife him, huh?"

Tim stood right by me, going along with it, cracking his knuckles. He didn't care who or why, he just wanted someone to beat on just like me. The guy paled even more so I knew I was gonna get an answer I wanted. It had to be something stupid, please have killed him over something stupid. The guy sputtered quietly, "I-I he tried to steal from me. Food, he just wanted some food. I-I didn't mean to, it just got out of control." YES! It was something stupid, which was exactly what I wanted to hear.

I shoved the guy at Tim who got him and help him by the arms so I could pound him. I let the red haze creep just a little further, not enough to cover my vision, just enough to cloud it a little. Then I let the guy have it. By the time I was done, his face was swollen and bleeding. Tim shoved him at me, his was off balance so it wasn't hard to grab him and hold him just the same. I had my arms looped around his so even though he couldn't hold his own weight, I kept him up. Tim beat on his torso and I heard a few tiny cracks along with the guys labored breathing and cries. I dropped him, he lay there crumpled and moaning, just as the cops pulled in the parking lot. I could closely hear the sound of another siren, the ambulance for the kid. I looked over and saw someone trying to stop the bleeding. At least someone was trying to save him.

I grabbed Tim's sleeve and we beat it out of there, one of the fuzz hot on our tail. They saw us beat on that guy and probably thought we stabbed the kid too. Even with my long record, I never killed anybody, not even in New York. We went around the back and jumped on the dumpster to hop over the tall wooden fence. We dropped down and ran across the field, looking back only once. That cop was too chicken to jump over the fence! On the other side of the field, we were cracking up with our hands on our knees and breathing heavily. I was probably around four now. Damn, life's hard when you get up before the sun. There's nothing to do!

I stood up, calming down a little. Tim was doing the same, trying to think about what next. "Let's go find a Soc to jump!" I'm not sure who said it, but we shared an evil grin and stalked down the street. It was a long hike across town to the West Side, but the Socs only came to our side to jump us, so why not?

Greasers like us never catch a break though. The same officers at the Dingo pulled up right in front of us, cutting us off. They jumped out and searched us before throwing us in the back of the squad car. We hadn't even made it to neutral territory yet. It figures. I thought of how Two-Bit was always cracking jokes to the fuzz when they caught him. That made me smile a manic grin. Tim punched me in the shoulder thinking I was cracking. The cop looking at us in the rear-view mirror saw and turned around to face me. "What's so funny, Winston? You're suspected of murder or at the very least assault and battery." They all knew me, but I only remembered a few of their names.

Still grinning like a mad man, I laughed, "Nothing, just how Tim here used to go with your wife!" His name was Officer Stanton.