East West Sunset - A Darry Curtis Fanfiction

Chapter Forty-One

"You did real good, Pony!" Soda said when we got out of court that evening. The sun was very low in the sky, and the clock on the tower of the bank across the street read 6:30. 

"Thanks." Pony shook his head sheepishly. "I feel like I jumbled up some of the details, though."

"Naw, that's exactly how it all went down," Steve assured him.

"You certainly got the jury on your side," my mother noted. "There wasn't a dry eye in the house when you were talking about Darrel. It was very nice."

I mussed up Pony's hair with pride, too emotional to say anything. He grinned up at me with eyes shining with tears. 

"You think I did good?" he said.

All I could do was nod and scoop him into a tight hug.

"Gee, we know who's the girl in the gang. You're crushing me," Pony protested, but he held onto me just as tightly before letting go.

"You guys want to go grab an ice cream or a burger or something?" Soda asked. "I could use with something to eat. I'm starved."

All the boys chorused their agreement, bellyaching about how hungry they were and complaining about the bland food the courthouse cafeteria had served for lunch. We started to move down the street in search of a place to eat. My mother walked with Pony and Soda at the front, and Steve was resolutely avoiding speaking to me by joking with Bryon and Two-Bit, so I was left to walk by myself behind the group. Perhaps someone else would have felt lonely, but after the emotionally exhausting day I'd just had, I was more than willing to be alone with my thoughts for a while.

After Pony, two more Socs had testified against Arnie. I still couldn't believe that they had chosen to do that, especially since Arnie was pretty much the leader of their gang. Both, like Leonard Gardenzi, had spoken about their fear of their leader, how he had become something like a monster. It chilled me. Arnie had watched them testify without moving at all, sitting with his back ramrod straight and his hands flat on the table in front of him. I wondered what was going on in his head: did he care at all that he was being tried for murder? Did he think he'd get off, or was he content to go to jail for a very, very long time for what he did? Did he still stand by his choice to kill Darry?

The picture the prosecution painted of him seemed to suggest so. Along with the knife and the insistence upon location, they had managed to coax out the testimony that Arnie had wanted to kill one of the greasers for a long time. One of the Socs had said that Arnie had once told him: "It's got to be one of the Curtis brothers. I'm gonna kill one of them one day, God willing."

A chill had sunk into my bones when I heard that, I chill I still couldn't shake, even outside of that courtroom. I had no question in my mind of why Arnie wanted revenge on the Curtises so badly; they had helped Charlie after Mr. Stienham had shot him.

If my mother had recognized Mr. Stienham, she didn't show it outwardly. If she had, I knew that she would, like me, internalize the guilt and blame herself in silence. I was sure she had been doing that for eighteen years already.

I tried to push away any thoughts of the trial and focused instead on my surroundings. Tulsa was just as beautiful at night as it was in the day, perhaps even moreso. Now that we were downtown, there were so many brightly colored lights beaming down on the street that it looked like the inside of a circus tent. I heard laughter as we passed by a bar, the band inside in full swing, and the carefree joy it exuded darkened my own cloud of sorrow. I should feel happy, I told myself. The prosecution had made huge strides towards convicting Arnie today, and Ponyboy's testimony was beautiful! But I couldn't help feeling the earthshaking ripples of bad memories that listening to him had brought up. Of course, he had reminded me of the good ones: Darry's smile, how much he cared about his brothers, how he really was like Superman; but the awful image of him falling into the Arkansas River was too much to stomach.