Tim Sheperd has spent almost his whole life looking after his brother Curly. Here's how it was for him, from the very beginning to the very end...

Tim's POV

The first time I saw Curly, he was three days old. In spite of his newness, his head was already covered with the thick blond curls that would earn him the nickname he carried his whole life through. I was four, which means that my family had not yet gone completely to shit; when Mama brought him home, there was a bit of a celebration, small signs that the new life she had brought forth was welcome. By the time Angel came along, three years later, drinking and my father's hard hand had put an end to that, but for Curly's earliest days, we were still capable of normal family happiness.

Mama made me sit on the sofa. It was a ratty old thing, even then, with lots of worn, faded places in the ugly green upholstery, but in those days, it was clean, the back covered with a bright afghan in a rainbow of colors. They came and sat with me, my mother on one side, my father - not smelling of beer, for once - on the other. Then my mother carefully unwrapped the blue blanket and showed me Curly.

I had known a baby was coming, of course, but I was four. My interest in the proceedings had been fairly minimal, especially since mama talked of the baby coming in a future that was too hazy for a little kid to grasp. I couldn't even remember to pick up my toys from the living room before my father got home from work; even knowing that his hand would leave dark bruises across my baby backside wasn't enough reminder. Even before dear old dad lost his job and decided to devote the rest of his life to drinking, he was no prize-winner, and our life would not have been all rainbows and kittens, even without the booze. Just... not as bad as it later became.

So I looked down at Curly with only casual interest, most of my attention on the reassuring closeness of my mother. I had spent the last three days with my Aunt Jess, who was ok, but I missed my mother, and the chance to sit next to her was welcome enough that I was even willing to pretend an interested in the baby, my new brother. Mama pulled the blanket back, and I saw those thick blond curls for the first time. His skin was a dark pink, and his head was a weird shape, rising to a point on top. Later I would find that typical for newborns, but on this day, seeing it for the first time, I laughed. "Why's his head that funny shape, mommy? Like a cone!"

"That's just how newborn babies are," she answered, in the sweet, happy voice that had not yet been roughened by cigarettes and anger. "It will smooth out in a few days. Would you like to hold him?"

"Uh- sure," I said. I was sure of two things; one, that I did not want to hold him, and two, that it would be most unwise to say so. My mother helped me get my arms in the right place, then she carefully lowered Curly into them.

I was surprised, at first, by how solid he seemed. He didn't weigh all that much; even at four, I was quite capable of holding his weight. But Curly seemed oddly compact for his size, all heavy muscle, and it was never any surprise to me when he grew up to be as husky as a football player in our family of lean, panther-like builds. That potential was in him from the start.

He reached up with a tiny hand, searching. Automatically, I put my finger in his palm, and his fist closed around it. That was the second thing that surprised me; his grip was strong even though his fingers were so tiny. "He isn't big enough to play with," I said, watching him and letting him hold my finger.

"He'll grow," my mother said. "Sooner than you think, he'll be able to crawl, and then you can teach him to walk. You'll be his big brother; he'll look up to you."

"Yeah," I said, finding the idea not unpleasant. Even at four, the idea of having someone who looked up to me was - interesting. I looked down at Curly, considering him in this new light, when he surprised me for the third time.

He opened his eyes, and looked up at me with the bleary gaze that newborns all seem to have in their first days. The child development experts say that during their first weeks, babies don't really see people, just unrecognizable blobs of shape and color, and I never found that surprising, either; Curly's gaze was intent, but oddly vacant. It was his eyes themselves that were so interesting to me. "Look, ma!" I said. "Look, his eyes are brown." Then I looked up at her, laughing a little. "Ain't that funny, mama? His eyes are brown, not blue like all the rest of us."

Talk about how kids should be seen and not heard.

My father, who had been a silent monolith next to me for all this time, stirred himself at last. "Brown eyes?" he said. Even at four, I wasn't completely stupid. I didn't understand why the color of Curly's eyes should matter, but I read my father's moods very well. The tone of his voice caused me to stiffen; for the first, but not the last, time, I curved my body protectively between my little brother and my father. "That ain't right. What's the kid doing with brown eyes, Margie?"

My mother put my brother in his crib, and made me go to my room, even though I had given up naps years before. Even lying in my room with my eyes squeezed shut, I couldn't help but hear them fight. Hell, no one on our street could help but hear them fight. My father called my mother terrible names - I didn't know what they meant, but I knew they were terrible - and for the first time, I felt an awful hatred of him begin in me. A wish that he would just go away. And I also felt the first stirring of guilt. I didn't know why they were fighting over the color of Curly's eyes - it seemed like a silly subject to me - but I knew I was the one who had brought the matter up.

Curly began to cry in his crib. After a few minutes, I realized that nobody was going to go to him. They were too caught up in their grown-up drama, so I'm not even sure that they heard him. I got up and went to his room; this was before Angel was born, and Curly and I each had our own room. Curly was lying there, screaming, his face red, snot pouring from his nose. I took one of the cloth diapers from the pile and used it to wipe his face, gently, like mama wiped mine. His cries tapered off, and he turned his head and looked at me through the bars of his crib; it would not be the last time we saw each other with bars between. I put my finger against his hand like I had done earlier, and he turned his head more, pulling my finger to his mouth. He sucked on it fiercely, calming himself, eventually putting himself back to sleep. I stood there for a long time, letting him use me for comfort, and that was the first day I saw Curly.

The last time I saw Curly, the trademark curls were all gone. They had cut his hair very short, the way they do; you could barely even tell that he was blond, they left so little of it. He looked younger without it, like the little kid he had been only a few years ago. But he was eighteen now.

I had driven up to see him off. The Army base was in some little dipshit town in Kansas, and he was leaving real early for the ride to Wichita, where he would catch a plane. He hadn't been drafted, although that had maybe been coming. Curly had been caught breaking into a jewelry store, and the judge had given him a choice, since he was now a legal adult. The Army, with all its dangers, or a ten-year prison sentence. Curly had chosen the Army, though even then I wondered if prison might have been safer. Closer to home, too, 'cause it was nineteen seventy-one, and joining the military meant going to 'Nam.

He did his basic here, at this little Army base in south-central Kansas. Later, they would have only a few massive places where the new soldiers trained, but in those days, there were dozens of little places where they sent the recruits. How much training you got and - how good it was - ended up depending on where you joined, but it didn't matter all that much. Machine guns and land mines took out everyone, regardless of training.

He was already at the bus stop. A couple of dozen soldiers were in a group, sitting in sullen silence on a row of benches, their knapsacks in front of them, stuffed full of whatever shit they give them to put in there. Nothing fancy, I'm sure; this was the government, and even the little bit of stuff they gave them came at way to high a price. At first, I didn't even recognize him; the hats they gave them, along with the dorky buzz-cuts, made them all look oddly alike. But then I saw him, sitting glumly at the end of one of the benches, staring into the dirt in front of him like it contained the answers to the worlds great mysteries (like maybe: why did I break into that jewelry store, anyway?). He didn't look up when I stopped in front of him; until I spoke, he didn't know I was there.

"Hey kid," I said. His head snapped up, and he looked at me, surprise and pleasure mingling in equal parts on his face. I couldn't help but know two things; first, that he hadn't expected me to come, and second, that it mattered a lot to him that I did.

"Tim!" he said, laughing a little. Reaching out, he took my hand in a spontaneous gesture that was not quite a handshake. "What are you doing here?" he asked, leaning back and taking a drag off his cigarette, trying to look cool.

"Angel nagged me to come up and see you off," I lied easily. "She can't come herself; she's out to here-" I gestured in front of my belly, "-and mama has to work." I didn't mention our father; he had taken off when Angela was a baby, leaving us to the tender mercies of a step-father who was even worse. "So how ya doin', kid? I see they cut all yer pretty hair off."

He ran a self-conscious hand over his scalp, lifting his hat to do so. "Yeah, they did that the first day we got here. Then they went back over it yesterday. Don't know what fucking difference they think it'll make; they're just sending us out to get shot at, anyway."

He laughs again, that goony Curly-laugh that has sometimes made me just want to bash his head in. It's the way he sounds when he's laughing cause he just doesn't get it, and I've heard it often. Today, though, today it only makes me feel sad, and tired. There's so much that Curly never got, even with me explaining it to him in words of one syllable. Things like posting a look-out when you're going to do something stupid like break into a jewelry store. Curly never got it, and standing here in this bare-dirt driveway, I understand that Curly is never going to get it. He's always been dumb as a post, and that's never going to get any better.

"Speaking of that, kid, mama told me to tell you to keep your head down. She'd kind of like to have you back when all this is over."

"She don't have to worry about that!" he exclaimed. "I'm going to take real good care not to get shot. If it takes learning to crawl on my belly like a snake, that's what I'll do,man."

"You do that," I said, clapping him on the shoulder as if I really believed that anything good could possibly come of this. The bus pulled up then, belching clouds of stinking diesel exhaust, motor roaring so we couldn't hear ourselves think, much less talk.

I suddenly remembered the first day I had ever seen him. Standing beside his crib, watching as he had sucked on my finger to comfort himself as our parents screamed at each other, I had known then that it was my job to take care of him, 'cause they never would. Today, standing beside this waiting bus, I faced the fact that I had failed. He was going alone into danger that I could not save him from, and for a moment, I felt as if he were still that newborn baby, needing protection from a hostile world. On impulse, I pulled him into a hug, leaning my head against his shoulder. I could do that easily, 'cause even though he was my baby brother, he was six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than I was.

When I pulled away and looked up at him, my eyes were perfectly dry, I swear it. "Take care of yourself, you little shithead," I said. I stood there, watching, until the bus pulled away. Then I got back into my car and drove back to Tulsa. And that was the last day I saw Curly.

Today, I will not see Curly.

I pull at the collar of my suit; it's July, and sweat is already making it itch. Mama looks at me, trying to smile, though her eyes are red and swollen. Who can blame her? This is the second child she's lost in less than a year. Now she's down to just me again, and that was never no particular bargain. I remembered how she had cried at Angela's wake, how she'd held Angel's hand and begged her to wake up.

Well, at least we wouldn't have that problem today. The Army guy who had helped me make the funeral arrangements had told me, quietly but emphatically, that the Army recommended that the casket be kept closed. He looked at me to see if I got it, or if he would have to say something less discreet, but he didn't need to worry; I understood. There wasn't anything left that was recognizably Curly.

In some ways, that bothered me more than seeing whatever there was would have, or so I think. In the three days since we got the news, I've thought a lot about exactly how Curly might have died. Napalm? Were we burying a charred husk today, with bags of sand added to the coffin to make the weight? Or was it a land mine that had ripped his young body apart, leaving only scraps too mangled to be seen? A sniper wouldn't have left him so disfigured, so I've pretty much ruled that out, but late at night, when I can't sleep, I think about all the other possibilities. Helicopter accidents, artillery shells, even friendly fire... all the possibilities have crossed my mind at one time or another, since we got the news. If I knew exactly which one it was, at least I'd be able to cancel out the nightmare visions of all the other horrible things that could have happened.

Or so I think.

We decided against a church service. Curly didn't care anything about religion; I'm not even sure if he believed in God. The priest from mama's church will come, though, and say a few words over the grave. It can't hurt, I think, and it will make mama feel better. She fixes my tie, smoothing it down with trembling hands; then we get in my car and leave for the cemetery.

There are more people there than I thought there would be. The Army is well-represented; Curly died while actively in combat, so his funeral is all nice and paid for. My own thought is that it's the least they can do; they took my brother's life and wasted it, fighting for something that even I can tell isn't going to amount to anything in a few years. It will all be forgotten, and no good will have come from it.

My gang is all here. I glance around, making sure they're all present. Not that I really care; the ones who really mourn Curly do, and the ones who don't, don't, and their presence at the funeral doesn't change that. What does matter is that I'm the leader, and their presence shows respect for me. If anyone is not here, I'll have to have words with them about it later. A quick glance around is enough to reassure me; all present and accounted for.

The Curtis gang is here, too; what's left of them. Dally got hisself killed by the fuzz a few years back, just after that dark-haired kid (what was his name? Jacky, maybe, or Joey?) died. Dally loved the kid like a brother, and he broke when the kid died. Pulled a heater on the fuzz, and they shot him dead. The others are all here, though. Darry, who is my age, and Sodapop. Soda went to the war himself, but he came home safe.

And Ponyboy. Ponyboy is a year younger than Curly. They used to pal around together, when they were in elementary school, but later, not so much. Curly ran with my gang, and his brothers didn't want Pony involved in that. Not that I think they had much to worry about. Pony is a quiet, bookish kid, about as different from Curly as a lake is from a desert. He was never going to be much for Curly's kind of trouble, which was fighting, boozing, and broads. I wondered, just for a minute, if I should have tried harder to make Curly more like Ponyboy, then I had to laugh a little at the idea. Wasn't ever going to happen. Curly was a tornado, brash and hot-tempered, laughter and anger in equal measures. Nothing I could ever have done would have made him into a Ponyboy.

The service goes by quickly. I don't pay much attention to the priest; he rarely if ever met Curly, and if he knew him at all, he didn't approve of him. So how does he know what to say? Mama listens intently, though, and seems to find some comfort in it, and for that, I can put up with it for an afternoon. I just hope he hurries it up; it's early July, in Tulsa, and it's hotter than the hinges of hell.

So, did you like it? Please read and review, whether you did or didn't. If not, hope you'll try to tell me why; I like constructive criticism! If you did, feel free to tell me why there, too; praise is even better than criticism:). I'd be esp. interested in hearing if you think I got the 'tone' of Tim right; he's never been my favorite character from the book, so I wasn't sure if I could 'do' him. Thanks for reading!