Dark Alleys and Somewhere Special - Part 3

Warning: Drugs mentioned, drug use

December 15th, 1968 - Evening

His ice-blue eyes bored into Ponyboy like perfectly sharpened daggers. The vein in his forehead was so large that he almost thought it would finally pop. Darry's breaths were calm and slow—never a good sign when he got mad. Sodapop was chewing on an apple, leaning on the kitchen counter. His eyes were kind of blank, like he was watching the argument unfurl through a TV screen. But that was something he had to worry about later. Right now, he needed to worry about the angry bull that was Darry.

Having never been any good at an argument opener, he mumbled dumbly, "I went out bowling with a few guys I know."

Now that explanation was a real ace. It didn't seem to soothe Darry's anger; in fact, he looked angrier than he had before.

"Didn't I tell you that you were grounded for two days?" Darry said calmly, his evenly-toned voice battling the pure flames that were licking in his blue irises. He wasn't sitting down like he had been last night.

Ponyboy's eyes darted across the room, looking for something interesting in order to avoid looking him in the eye. Sodapop just watched, chewing on the apple. Even when he gave him a desperate look, Sodapop just shrugged and answered with his eyes. He could clearly tell Soda was saying, you got yourself into this. Get yourself out. No help from the cavalry. Maybe the roof would randomly cave in or a freak tornado would come through and keep him from having to look Darry in the eye…

"Look at me when I'm addressing you!" Darry's voice almost made him wince. It forced him to meet his gaze. Whenever Darry yelled at him, he was fourteen again, and it was impossible not to shift uncomfortably underneath those hard chips of ice that looked so cold but burned with rage at the same time. Sometimes, if he was mad enough, Darry was terrifying when he was angry.

Darry pointed a finger at him. It was a hair close to being jammed in his chest, and whenever Darry spoke, it hit him square in the middle.

"You're grounded. I won't think twice to take away your driving privileges. You're seventeen, and as long as you live under my roof, you abide by my rules, do you understand me?"

Darry emulated that of a football coach when he got mad. The bite in his voice, the hard-set eyes that didn't even seem to blink as he addressed you. Ponyboy suddenly thought of his father, that one night Darry had royally fucked up in junior year, coming home drunk, and their father had beat it out of him. Their father was a man of corporal punishment. Suddenly, Ponyboy considered himself lucky that all he was getting from Darry was a loud voice and a few days of no freedom.

Of course, though, he wouldn't be Ponyboy without pushing it. "But I am seventeen, and don't you think I oughta be able to stay out late at night without your consent?"

That got Darry amped up like you wouldn't believe. That vein in his forehead was pulsating so much that Ponyboy could see it. Darry was too mad for words at that moment. He just stood there, red-faced, looking like he was wondering, why didn't I put this smart-aleck bastard in a boy's home when I had the chance?

After the longest minute of Ponyboy's life, Darry took a long, long sigh, and said with constrained calm, "I pay the bills. I buy the food. You're legally a minor. Until you're eighteen, you do everything by my consent. On your eighteenth birthday, you can leave for Egypt for all I care. But right now, you're my responsibility. Do you understand?" He drew that last sentence out, putting extra emphasis on the words. Ponyboy didn't even consider giving him any more overtime. He just nodded, his eyes narrowing. Seventeen years old and he was still chained to this place.

"Now get your ass in bed."

Ponyboy mumbled something incoherently and stalked off, his nerves on edge. Sodapop was finishing the core of his apple, smirking as if something were funny. Ponyboy shot a glare at him as he walked past the kitchen, and for a fleeting moment, the old Soda was in Sodapop's eyes. There was just that slight trace of amusement in them, and it had come from the old tried and true Ponyboy-argues-with-Darry line. But just as soon as it came, it left. His brown eyes looked blank once more and Ponyboy kept walking.

He grumbled to himself the whole time he got changed, brushed his teeth, and got in his bed. I live under his roof, my ass, Ponyboy thought bitterly as he pulled the cover over his body. Why did Darry have to make every goddamn thing as difficult as pulling teeth? Couldn't a guy go out bowling and not get his head chewed for it?

But you were grounded, that sensible little voice called his conscience told him. You broke the rules. That argument was fair.

Still kind of miffed from their previous argument, Ponyboy fell into slumber.

He didn't sleep for long.

Maybe it was the middle of the night, but he was too tired to think about that. He woke to the sound of the words "I didn't mean to!" being wailed into the silence, echoing against the walls. Startled from sleep and still a little too groggy to piece together what was happening, Ponyboy got up, leaving his warm refuge in his covers, and searched for the sound. His eyes traveled over to Sodapop's ajar door, where he could hear Darry saying, "It wasn't your fault. None of it was your fault."

Ponyboy pushed the door open, standing in the freezing night air, taking in the scene. Soda was standing up from his disheveled bed, his face sweat-streaked. He looked strange, staring at nothing at all, his brown eyes like two holes in his head with no focus in them at all. Darry was next to him, telling him that it wasn't his fault all those people died, that he was protecting his country, that he had to do it.

"Bullshit." Sodapop suddenly broke out of his daze. "I wasn't protecting anybody. I shot all of those kids. I wish I never came home… I wish I died in Vietnam, in that village. I wish one of those gooks shot me."

Ponyboy felt his skin go cold at his brother's fever-like, morbid words. Darry looked back at him, their previous argument forgotten, replaced with yet another worry. Darry's eyes were pleading, the amount of sadness in them almost too much for him to bear.

Sodapop's eyes suddenly fixated onto his, their depths filled with an immeasurable amount of pain. "My biggest regret is coming home."

December 16th, 1968

It was one of those long days at school. The kind where you look at the clock, look away for what seems like a long time, look back, and the big hand has barely moved an inch. Ponyboy was itching to get out of school, but when the bell rang, his freedom was dampened immediately when he remembered that he was grounded.

Sighing, he started the trudge home, not looking forward to sitting in his room and thinking about the meaning of life or watching television on the sofa with Soda. Sodapop had been kind of strange that morning since his war flashback the night before, and guiltily, Ponyboy didn't want to be alone in the house with him. Sometimes, he couldn't stand looking at his brother, seeing that blank, thousand-yard look in his eye.

Ponyboy knew if he didn't show up at his house at four-thirty sharp, Darry would chew him out for it. But that didn't stop him from crossing the enormous school parking lot to the familiar black paint-job of Terry Jones' car. Would he ever learn?

He noticed two legs sticking out from the driver's seat side door, and was met with the scene of Mark Jennings under the steering wheel.

"Mark," Ponyboy said, startling Mark out of his wits, "what are you doing?"

"Goddamn, Curtis!" Mark said, almost hitting his head on the bottom of the dash. "Don't just sneak up on people like that. Just about scared the life outta me… I'm wiring Terry's car."

Ponyboy sniffed and started fishing around for a cigarette. "Where's Bryon? Y'all are usually doin' something together after school." Once he found his smoke, he looked for a lighter, but cursed himself quietly when he realized he'd left it on his nightstand at home. "Gotta light?"

Mark, who was bending down to finish what he'd started, threw a silver lighter at him. Ponyboy fumbled with it for a moment and then lit the cigarette.

"Bryon's mad about something. Probably Angela Shepard," Mark explained as he struggled with the wires underneath the steering wheel. "I don't know why he gives that girl the time of day. She's got looks, sure, but she ain't got any heart."

Ponyboy watched him try to start Terry's car and thought. Angela Shepard… probably Tim's sister, judging by the name. He didn't know much about her, only that she bounced from guy to guy like a fly to a flat surface. He never really paid much attention to Angela.

The car engine rumbling snapped him back to the present. Mark jumped up, his eyes flashing triumphantly. Ponyboy glanced around for Terry, but he was nowhere to be found. "Does Terry know you're takin' his car?"

Mark shrugged and took off his leather jacket, throwing it haphazardly over the backseat. "I do this all the time to run my errands. He don't care. He usually walks back home anyway." he said, sounding unbothered. He jumped in the driver's seat and glanced up at Ponyboy. "Wanta come with? I'm just doing a few deliveries around town."

Ponyboy had no clue what he meant by deliveries, but he had to get home anyways. He was going to give Darry an ulcer at this rate, seeing how it was already four o'clock. Darry wasn't home, but he'd find out. He always found out.

"Nup, I've gotta get home anyhow. My brother—he grounded me until I'm eighteen years old, basically. I don't think he'll ever let me leave the house again." Ponyboy huffed. Mark raised his eyebrows at him suddenly, a mischievous look in his eye. It took him a moment, but he figured out exactly what Mark was edging at. He wanted him to sneak out again.

"No way. I'm not skipping out on Darry again. He won't skin me—he'll kill me if I don't get home before four-thirty, Mark. No deal." Ponyboy said forcefully, trying to make himself believe it more than Mark. He found himself wanting to go and do something… hell, he'd been stuck in school all day, watching that clock drag around in a circle. Shouldn't he be able to just go out for an hour or so? Maybe two hours…

"I just don't know how you get me into these things, Mark," Ponyboy grumbled as Mark drove happily down the street, near downtown Tulsa. Mark glanced over at him and shrugged.

"I didn't make you get in. You got in that passenger's seat yourself." Mark answered, digging in his back pocket. He pulled out a loose sheet of paper with an address scrawled on it, squinted at it, and then pocketed it again. He turned on his blinker and started down a new street.

"Where are we going, anyways?" Ponyboy asked, watching the scenery change from downtown to the average rough neighborhood. Mark grinned at him funny and said, "I told you, man. I've got a few deliveries to make."

Ponyboy sighed, a little uneasy and slightly confused. "What's a delivery?" he asked, but as soon as the words came out of his mouth, he suddenly understood. He remembered he and Mark's conversation the day before in the car, about getting a job. What Mark's 'profession' was. This wasn't a harmless errand to run, like he had previously thought.

"A delivery is just selling some of that stuff I told you ab-"

"Oh, no, man. I'm not getting caught up in a drug-selling game or anything," Ponyboy began, sitting up a little straighter in the seat. "My brother will kill me if-"

"Relax!" Mark told him, taking a hand off of the steering wheel. "It's just a few hippies that want some grass and some coke and stuff. It won't do you any harm. You can just stay in the car if you want. It'll only take two seconds, I swear. They'll pay and I'll give them the dope. Simple as that."

Ponyboy stared at him disbelievingly, and his gaze drifted down to the leather jacket that Mark had deposited in the passenger's seat next to him. He could see the white powder sticking out of his pocket… how hadn't he seen that before getting into this car with him?

"Just where do you get the dope, anyway? You know, to sell?" Ponyboy asked out of pure curiosity. This whole thing was kind of fishy to him. It felt like they were going against something—obviously, the law, but something else just didn't feel right about it.

"I got connections," Mark said vaguely, pulling to a stop in front of a weather-beaten house. The house was small, two stories, white, and had colorful front stair-steps and a sign that read 'Love' in Christmas colors hanging over the front door. Ponyboy couldn't help but have his interest piqued. Mark started to get out, and he followed.

Mark stopped and looked at him. "You coming? It'll only be like, five seconds, I swear. These people who buy dope are twitchy as hell, always scared of the police coming. Maybe not the hippies so much, but the weed-fiends are. Either way, they don't let me hang around that long, so don't expect to stay here for a while." he said. Ponyboy shrugged and stared at the blue stair step in front of him.

"Sure. I'll come, I guess."

Ponyboy was slightly interested in the hippie movement and all. He knew there was something happening out in Laurel Canyon, what with all the rave about Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and The Mamas and the Papas. He liked what they stood for, being against the war and all that, but he sure didn't like it when they pointed fingers at war veterans and called them fascist baby killers. His brother was no fascist baby killer, that was for sure. And even if Soda had killed any babies in Vietnam… he didn't think that was his fault. That was the main reason why he never fraternized with any of those 'peace and love' guys at his school. Maybe M&M Carlson occasionally, but that was basically it.

His shoes clicked against the hollow wooden porch of the house. Mark knocked once, two times fast, and then once again. He was always knocking in strange patterns, Ponyboy noticed. He wondered just how long Mark had been selling dope.

He could hear the faint noise of some Rolling Stones song on the other side of the door. It took a long moment, but somebody finally answered. It was this platinum blonde haired girl, who looked just about an inch from death. Her skin was so pale that it almost matched the platinum blonde of her hair, and her eyes were so sunken in that shadows were cast underneath them. There was a strange blankness in her eyes that reminded him of Sodapop.

"Hey, Cat," she greeted Mark, and then looked past him at Ponyboy. "Who's this guy?"

"He's cool. He's a friend of mine," Mark answered casually. Ponyboy stuck up a hand as a hello, but the girl just shrugged and turned away, sitting back down on the old tattered sofa that laid in the middle of the room.

The place reeked so badly of weed that Ponyboy could taste it. It was quite empty—there was this guy with really long hair sitting at a table playing cards with himself, and a short kid about thirteen years old noodling around on a broken acoustic guitar, but that was all he could see. He didn't know what was happening upstairs, but he could hear the record player playing Time Is On My Side by The Rolling Stones.

The living room was truly a sight to behold, though. The walls had spray paint of all colors everywhere, the sofa had so many rips in it that stuffing was on the floor, the TV on the stand didn't even work. The adjoining kitchen was full of alcohol and leftover lines of coke were still sitting on the coffee table in the middle of the room. Ponyboy glanced around, shoved his hands into his pockets, and watched Mark's demeanor.

Mark looked totally unbothered by the scene—in fact, he looked comfortable, like this was familiar ground that he had walked on before. He greeted the thirteen year old looking boy, whose name was August or something like that, and the long haired guy who was talking to himself. Ponyboy didn't catch what his name was.

"On something?" Mark asked casually. The blonde answered, "Way out." They sounded as casual as if they were talking about the weather.

"So, you got the stuff?" she asked, her blank stare fixing on Mark. He nodded and pulled out about four bags of dope. It sure didn't look like grass and coke were the only things he was selling. Ponyboy guessed by the looks of it that he sold acid and other pills. It looked like he had the whole entire pharmacy in his leather jacket.

"Far out," she said, with no emotion behind her voice. Mark dropped them onto the coffee table and then stuck his palm out. The girl called the long haired boy over, which gave Ponyboy his name. It was something like Arlo. All of their names were kind of strange, which meant his didn't stick out as much as it normally did.

Arlo got up, loped over, dug in his vest pocket, and gave Mark a fat wad of green bills. Mark counted them, licking his finger as he flipped through the bills, and then stuck out his hand for Arlo to shake it. "Pleasure doing business with you," Mark said cheerfully. He was acting like this was so normal.

Arlo just huffed and went back to smoking his joint and playing poker with himself. Mark cast Ponyboy a shrug and the two of them left the house. The smell of grass clung to his jacket like cologne. That place smelled so strongly that he was convinced if you stayed there long enough, you'd get high without smoking a single joint.

"Some place," Ponyboy muttered as Mark pulled the car out of the driveway. Mark smiled as they pulled out onto the main road. "The hippies are alright if you don't talk too much to them. Some of them are overbearing, but most of them are too drugged to care about what you do. It's the weed-fiends you want to look out for. Which is my next errand," he explained. Ponyboy swiftly glanced at him.

"Another? I thought this would be quick!"

"I'm not the guy who decided to jump in the car. You got yourself into this, Curtis."

Ponyboy chewed the inside of his lip. "Why'd you say to look out for the weed-fiends?" he asked, slightly interested. Mark gave him a quick sidelong glance and then said, "I'll explain when we get there."

Mark drove some more and Ponyboy watched the scenery change again. Now they were deep downtown, where all the apartments and stuff were. Mark stopped the car in front of this apartment building and then turned to him.

"These guys are really crazy about the police finding them. They worry about narcs. They're so addicted to weed that they're crazy without it, so I always bring a gun just in case one of them starts threatening me or something, you dig?"

Mark pulled back his jacket and revealed a black gun handle holstered to his hip. It was a pistol, by the looks of it a twenty-two. Ponyboy stared at him in disbelief and then said, "Are you crazy? Is that loaded?"

"'Course it's loaded, idiot. These guys will shoot you without thinking twice. I'm not crazy, they're crazy. You coming?" Mark opened his car door and got out, not looking bothered in the least. Ponyboy thought for a moment. Should he just stay in the car and hope that Mark didn't get shot to death upstairs? He seemed to be experienced enough… but then he thought that it would be a shitty thing to do to leave a buddy hanging like that. So, he got out and pulled the collar of his jacket up to his ears.

"Let's just make it quick. My brother's going to kill me at this rate."

"Oh yeah," Mark said suddenly, pulling the gun out of his holster, "take it. If he gets all freaked, he's shootin' you first. Better if you have the gun."

Oh great, Ponyboy thought as he stuck the pistol under his jacket, I have to worry about getting shot. Darry won't have any time to kill me because I'll already be dead. I should've gone home when I had the chance.

He and Mark walked up the front steps to the apartments. The place was real fancy. You had to take a whole elevator to get upstairs. It was designed like a hotel.

When they got to the blue apartment door, Mark once again knocked in a strange pattern. The door opened slightly, a chain keeping it from opening fully, and a pale blue eye appeared through the crack. It studied both the two boys, and then a young voice asked, "Davis, who is this guy?"

Davis? Ponyboy wondered, knowing that Mark's name was nowhere close to Davis. Mark shot him a quick glance and said, "This is my friend, Jerry. He's cool, he won't narc." Mark answered without a hitch. Ponyboy understood—he was using fake names.

The eye stayed for a moment more, and then the door closed, unlocked, and opened. This place was just as unique as the last. There was a huge pot leaf tapestry on the wall, and some guy was sitting on the sofa, trying to find a new channel to watch. Everything either had the word 'hemp' stapled on it or looked like it was stolen from a hippie commune. The person who had greeted them at the door was small, lanky, just as pale as the hippie girl, had disheveled long hair, and looked to be in his mid-twenties. As Ponyboy stared at him, he knew what Mark meant about these guys being crazed. There was a wild look in that guy's eyes.

"Are you sure he won't narc? You won't narc, right?" the lanky one asked worriedly, over and over. The one on the sofa was acting as if nobody was in the house, still messing with the TV.

Mark slapped a bag of grass on the table, and that shut the lanky one right up. The exchange was formal and quick, and Ponyboy was relieved that he didn't even come close to using the pistol that was now strapped under his jacket to his jeans.

"You still set to deliver that other bag tomorrow?" the guy messing with the TV asked. He looked a lot younger than he sounded, with a deep voice that had startled Ponyboy.

Mark clicked his tongue and gave the guy a thumbs up. The guy didn't so much as look up at him. He was so interested in that television for one reason or another.

"Okay—I think you should leave now. Hey, Jerry, please don't narc. Okay? Bye." The lanky one shoved both of them out of their small apartment just as quickly as they came in. Mark didn't even have time to say goodbye back before the door chain clicked again and it was locked.

Ponyboy glanced at Mark and he shrugged. "You see what I mean? Scared of the narcotics officers. Told you we wouldn't stick around long."

"Do you have another 'errand' or can we get out of this dope selling ring?" Ponyboy asked as they got into the elevator again. Mark pulled out his little sheet of addresses again and squinted.

"Nope. That was my last one. I guess now we've got the rest of the evening."

Ponyboy shook his head as they stepped out into the freezing cold from the warmth of the apartment building. "If I don't get home, you'll never see me outside my house again. My brother will lock the front door, I swear, and he doesn't ever lock the front doors." He thought for a moment, and then continued. "Don't you have anything to do with Bryon?"

Mark's face suddenly grew dark and slightly annoyed. "Bryon don't know I'm selling this stuff. I keep it under my mattress, so he don't find it. He's so wrapped around the axle about hash. Talkin' about how five years of jail time isn't worth a smoke off a joint. Bryon used to be one cool cat, he used to have all the answers… but now, I just don't know. He's changing." Mark rattled off, starting up the car again and going toward the passenger's seat. Ponyboy went toward the driver's.

Doesn't sound like he's changing to me, Ponyboy thought, it sounds like he's wising up.

But he didn't say that out loud, based on the look in Mark's eyes as he rambled about how Bryon didn't want to do anything risky anymore.

"A few weeks ago, he would've jumped at the idea of getting into a fight. Now, he doesn't want to fight anyone, he doesn't get that look on his face, that look of pure excitement. He just looks resigned, y'know? I don't know why he's changed all of a sudden." Mark was on a roll. Probably because he couldn't talk to Bryon about this, so he was dumping it all on Ponyboy. He simply listened as he backed the car out onto the road.

Mark sighed agitatedly in the middle of his mini-speech, resting one elbow on the side seat door. Ponyboy quickly looked over at him and turned the car right. He was driving around downtown, edging closer to their side of town. He really had to get home.

"You want to get stoned?" Mark asked all of a sudden. Ponyboy's eyebrows raised a little bit and he cast a sidelong glance at him while trying to focus on the road.

"What?"

"I said, do you want to get stoned? I'm in a bad mood. I could mellow out. I've done it before—I'd never tell Bryon I did, 'cause he'd get suspicious—but I've done it before." Mark was digging in his shirt pocket for something, and he produced two fat cigar-shaped joints. Where the hell did this guy get all of the dope?

"Hey, now, I just want to get home," Ponyboy said, staring straight ahead. He'd been trying to go home for two hours now. He should've just gone home when he had the chance, when school got out.

"Come on, ain't you ever got stoned before? You're a grease in a neighborhood where everyone's got some sort of hash. You've been stoned before." Mark egged him on.

Ponyboy had been stoned before, when he was fifteen in 1966, before Soda got his draft letter. It was in the empty DX garage with Soda and Steve. They had joints, smoked them, and he remembered that everything was really hysterically funny for no reason. Sodapop and Steve were good people to get stoned with, because they were so chock-full of stupid and crude jokes.

"Well, yeah, but-"

"So what's the big idea? Come on, it's no fun to get stoned alone. Just smoke it." Mark tossed him one and lit up his. Ponyboy pulled Terry's car into an empty parking lot—he didn't think that Terry was getting this car back anytime soon—and the acrid smell of the smoke stung at his nostrils. What could it hurt, right? Just a little high… not so much that he forgot where he lived.

He grabbed the lighter and watched the flame flick up at the end of the joint. Sometimes, he really didn't use his head.

"I'm baked. I think."

The sky was dark, the clouds were covering the stars, and Ponyboy sat with his chin propped on the steering wheel, his eyes whisking lazily from one side to the other. He couldn't think too straight, and any thoughts he had settled in the back of his brain where he couldn't reach them.

Mark was beside him, laughing crazily. It must've been past 9… it was too dark to be any earlier.

I had to go home, didn't I? I was grounded, wasn't I?

That was the only thought he could really make sense of. Something about Darry being mad… but Mark's hyena laughs were dragging him from his fuzzy thoughts to his fuzzy vision. He watched Mark laugh in the passenger seat next to him, and then started to laugh too. It had been way too long since he got good and stoned.

It always made him sleepy, though. His eyelids drooped and became heavier than ten-ton weights.

I had to go home… didn't I?

As he fell asleep, his cheek leaning against the huge steering wheel, he remembered that he had the gun. The cold metal of the pistol was like ice against his hip.

Song used: Time Is On My Side by The Rolling Stones.

I hope you're enjoying this so far, this was a quick update because I started writing this chapter when I was writing chapter two.