warnings: referenced underage sex, drug use, period-typical attitudes, death, etc. some colorist rhetoric that is period-typical / culturally relevant but is not shared by the author. i own nothing!
"Richard felt envy such as he had never felt before. Not because Ricky was going to be an officer, but
because he was going to go to college. "You'll make it, too, Ricky," he said, and he knew that Ricky was right."
José Antonio Villarreal, Pocho
Curly knows he's bound to die young. His daddy wasn't even thirty when the bastard he was doing business with—and yeah, smuggling is a business if it's done right—shanked him mid-argument. His mama's youngest brother, who Tim's named after, was there and gutted the guy, quick as he could. Didn't matter. Frankie Shepard bled out at the outskirts of town on a November night before Angela was even five. Uncle Teo died a few years later, in his early twenties, after the girl he was half-seeing forgot to mention her man owned a gun.
Maria Shepard, who dropped Nazar soon as daddy got a ring on her finger, was left with three mouths to feed and not one good man around to help her. It's no wonder she ended up with that rat bastard of a second husband. She ain't real dark, but dark enough to notice. Doesn't matter that daddy made her a citizen if her English don't lose the sound of Mexico, Angela was always saying. No one cares if none of the kids came out looking like her in a bad way. Matter is his mama wasn't ever going to be able to take care of them all by herself, and that second husband of hers makes her so miserable there ain't much left to do but turn to the bottle.
Curly's always swore he was going to do better than that. Wasn't fixing to lose himself to some broad and end up the worse for it. He was going to blow up bigger than his uncle and daddy ever did, bigger than Tim if he had it his way. Vicky Bernal used to laugh in his face when he said that. Said he was a piece of work and she sure as hell wasn't going to stick around to fix him. Who did he think he was? Good, he used to tell her, 'cause I ain't gonna want you much longer, anyway, and then they'd have sex in his car or maybe in his bedroom when everyone was gone, but never in that Pontiac her big sister gave her.
All that summer they said it like a mantra: I ain't about to fall in love with you, you hear? Get it through that thick skull o' yours. Vicky with that Texas twang that only ever came out when she was yelling at him. Real pretty mouth, just like her sister, but not half as dark and twice as beautiful for it. Pretty Vicky, who hated her name, said, Call me Vic, savvy?, who thought he didn't notice the way she watched his own best friend, who thought he was too high to notice the way the smoke trailed from Curtis's mouth to hers and then back to Curly, all at once and slow like honey.
If she didn't put out so easy Curtis might've even gone for her first, but he was after Douglas's girl all that year, while Curly planned his move. He ain't a patient man. Never was, never has been. Vicky Bernal let Mark Jennings give it to her in his shitty car and when they hauled him in finally let Curly walk her home from school. Not a girl like Maria Shepard must have been, the summer she met her first husband, not a woman like she grew to be.
I ain't sticking around much longer, Curly used to tell her, seventeen and a senior, not a year behind or ahead but exactly where he was meant to be. His uncles used to say he was his father incarnate; he don't buy it.
Sure, slick, she used to tell him, her skirts barely at regulation length and her shirts real tight. She let him go all the way on the only date he ever took her on, at the drive-in that Curtis don't ever go to, not since the fall that Curly was in the reformatory when he should've been keeping his airheaded best friend out of trouble. Sure, they weren't best friends back then, but it's the principle of the thing. That's what Curly thinks, anyway.
What Curly's getting at is that he ain't stupid. Ain't from the best part of town, ain't even from a great town, he thinks, but he's smarter than he looks, even if that don't mean much. His mama says he could do better, but then again she only says that when she kicks the habit for a few weeks and starts answering the calls from her girlfriends at Our Lady of Guadalupe, the same ones who used to cluck over Tim and Curly before their daddy kicked the bucket. They're the same ones who used to say they were all real beautiful children, But keep them outta the sun, María, no quieres que se pongan todos negros, as if the gringas on the West side don't die to get a little color on them every summer.
His mama never did like Vic, Curly knows. Neither of the Shepard boys have good taste in women, not the way their mother wishes. Granted, Angela can't stand her, either, but that's probably because Vic's friends with Ponyboy and Angela ain't ever been good at not being able to take what she wants. Curly did his best to stay out of that particular disagreement, but he yelled himself hoarse when he found out she'd sent a couple of goons after him, knew from the get-go it wasn't nobody who worked with him or Tim on the regular.
You don't go after Curtis, you hear? he yelled at her, yelled a lot of things, and she made her eyes go real big, those crocodile tears that smeared her makeup ever-so-slightly, and he knew she was faking it, because Angela Shepard doesn't ever cry, not sober.
Shepard women, like the Nazar ones, are built for the long-haul. Life throws shit at 'em and even when it hits they keep on. Worse, every last one of them's a sucker for no-good men, his sister included. They may be at each other's throats half the time, but she and their mama are two peas in a pod. Curly don't like how much both their husbands act alike. Tim got into it with the both of them when the news broke, told their mother to shut the fuck up—What did she know about parenting, what's she been doing the last ten years? And it shut Maria up, quick. Gave her that trembly look that Curly used to hate, when he was a kid and Teo was still around.
Worse, soon as Angela hit thirteen, Curly found himself keeping more tabs on her than he wanted. He knows he's not a good brother. He never wanted to be, so he never tried, but something about his sister makes him feel like if he doesn't the world might come falling down around all of them. Doesn't help that she knows she's good-looking, throws it in people's faces and gets pissy when one of her brothers comes hunting after her. At the very least she's discrete, or was, up until she got herself hitched to that other rat bastard 'cause the damn girl never learned to count. Curly was ready to kill someone when she first told them, still wants to sometimes.
When he remembers, that is. 'S real hard to think about home, some days, when the heat of the jungle is stickier than mosquito spray and heavier than their uniforms to boot. Should be easier to think of his mother, sober, making fideos. Of Angela when she was real little, before Uncle Teo died, her hair plaited carefully and looking so much like Curly folks called them twins. Tim before the street got to him. Some days before he falls asleep he remembers them being children together, before she knew she was beautiful and before he realized none of them were going to amount to nothing but dirt.
Fucking figures, he said when his notice came in, that first argument with Tim about Guadalajara, that you ain't gonna be sent over before I am. And then, turning to his mother, on one of those breaks that preceded a bender, crying and clutching at the rosary she got as a wedding present, Where's your god now, ma? He fucking listening to you? and stormed out, went on a bender himself.
Last time he fucked Vicky was sometime during those few weeks, midsummer making him run madder and hotter than ever. Pulled her hair, told her to scratch him, said he was tired of it all. She told him not to touch her, afterwards, but rubbed his back and touched the back of his head, gently, like she didn't want none of it to be true.
I still don't love you, he told her, and she shrugged. Wasn't even dressed, had just pulled on his shirt like she knew no one was about to come bother them, up in his ransacked room, reeking of weed and unwashed bodies.
Not sure I'd call what we did fun, she said, but you're a decent enough lay I don't mind.
Did I hurt you? It was the only time he ever asked her something like that. Only time he asked anyone.
You pulled too hard, she said, touching her scalp, then, hey. We ain't fucking again.
Not gonna send off your soldier after the best night of his life?
Best night of your life, she snorted, if it were up to you you'd ship out doped up, teeth knocked out, fresh out a blasted fight. You ain't never liked a woman's touch, Shepard.
He got mad. Said, Fuck you mean, I don't like a woman's touch? Sat up, almost tried towering over her, like she was the type to get scared of a man.
You like me in your bed, she drawled. You like girls for one thing and one thing only. You and I ain't hardly friends.
He dropped back to his belly, made calm by the way she spoke, the way she sat, cross-legged in nothing but his shirt and talking to him like she knew a damn thing. We're friends, Bernal, he told her. But only 'cause you put out.
She dug her knuckle into a knot in his back in retaliation and that was the last of it, last of them, whatever that was. It didn't stop him from yelling at her something fierce the week before he shipped out, Curtis in the car looking wide-eyed as ever. Said, out loud for the whole neighborhood to hear, dead of night, You want me fucking dead and I know it. He won't tell nobody, but he nearly cried at how she yelled right back at him, accent shifting and her voice real pretty, loud as it got.
Part of him still believes it. It'd be easier for her, he knows. Maybe if he was killed during a deal or something, where it was his own damn fault and people could pretend to be sad instead of satisfied, like that's all he's ever been fated to amount to. If he died back home and not in the jungle she could find a way to make Curtis fall in love with her. Knows that if they kill him out here she'll always be Curly's girl, poor thing, boyfriend she can't stand shot to death on the other side of the world.
Curly never called her his, never wanted her like that. They were friends, even if neither of them liked to admit it. Vic's got a real sweet look to her, makes people trust her even when they shouldn't. Helped him make a good amount of money during break-ins, and she always took her cut. That doesn't mean he wasn't glad to have her in his bed, but Curly's a big boy, he knows that don't mean nothing past a certain age and he was past that. Sure, Vic was a little younger, but as long as her sister was out of town he didn't have much to worry about, what with their daddy always working.
Talk about bad luck. Bad enough Curly's mama was widowed young with children. Old man Bernal left one wife, lost the other, got left by the last. Vic tutted over him like a fourth, cooked all his meals and made sure none of her stories got back to him. Nothing like Maria Shepard, who threw plates when she remembered what her sons had gotten arrested for, who threatened to ship Angela down to Mexico when she told them how bad she fucked up. She used to tell Tim and Curly at turns that they were just like their daddy, looked fond about it half the time and madder than a bat out of hell the rest of it.
Curly ain't nothing like his daddy. All three of them got their hair from their mama, and yeah, they all got the same eyes from Frank Shepard, but Tim's the one who looks most like him. Curly looks like Tim, after all, but he's seen the photos side by side. He's more his mother's child, more than even Angela, who's got the same trembling lower lip, the same tiger-eyes. Something about his father just don't fit on him the right way—maybe that's why he's spent so long trying to be just like Tim. It won't bring his dead father back; Curly's only just realizing.
Vietnam is stifling. It's trees everywhere, water everywhere, heat sticking like a glaze. It's worse than any summer Curly's experienced, even the one time his mother sent him and Tim down South to cause trouble in Jalisco instead of Oklahoma. His mama was at her wit's end that summer. Tim managed to steal a girl's virtue while they were down there, anyway, and Curly remembers how she cried, wanting him to marry her and having to deal with the aftermath on her own. Curly used to joke that there were some new blue-eyed bastards down in their mother's city, Tim smacking him upside the head and launching into some finagled speech about rubbers, like Curly was stupid or something.
Curtis writes him the most. Keeps him updated on shit that Curly don't much care for, but that kid has always been good about spinning a good story out of nothing. Curly tells him to get over the ginger he was after and barely keeps himself from telling him to just give Vicky a chance already. Wants to pretend he misses her a little more, or a little less, than he does. Wants to pretend he don't miss Ponyboy's dopey ass, laughing at nothing after splitting a spiff with him.
Vic keeps telling him to hurry up and come home already, and part of him gets mad when he reads it. What, he wants to write, you think I'm having the time of my life out here? Eaten alive, barely any food, sweating my fucking skin off every day? He knows better than that. Tells her to send a good picture or shut her trap, doesn't bother correcting anyone when they think he's grinning at his girl's letters. His mama don't write at all. He tries to pretend it don't matter to him.
Sometimes he thinks about what Tim is up to, or if Angela's doing alright. She's always been a step ahead of him, that sister of his, but she's fucking stupid in a lot of ways. He'd beat up Bryon Douglas a hundred times for her, and then he'd do it a hundred more just for himself. He knows Jennings was there that night, and if it weren't for him being locked up already, he'd have gotten ahold of him, too. Curly won't admit to how far he'd go, not if anyone asks. Probably better that way. Plausible deniability, he thinks it's called. Can't nobody say they never expected more out of him.
Maybe his mama's even stopped drinking and is visiting her girlfriends more regularly. Maybe she's finally going to leave her damn husband, the one he finally got into it the summer his notice came in. Curly's almost ashamed of it. Spent a good five years ignoring the bastard and a tiny slip of paper he should have burned breaks the record? Pathetic. The man stopped putting his hands on her around the time Tim got big enough to hit back, and that's probably only because he did hit back. Their mama probably loved and hated it in turns, but that's Maria all the way through, like the rest of them, just like Curly even if he wishes he were like anyone else.
He doesn't think it often, but sometimes he wishes he listened to Tim. Let him send him off to Guadalajara, marry a nice local girl like his mama must have been, settle down with his remaining uncles and call it a fucking year. Not like he had much to do in Tulsa. Their outfit's shrinking, a slow and steady suffocation. Curly was one of four to get drafted that year, and Tim don't write much but it's clear there ain't much left to run in that damn city now that half the boys are dead or soon-to-be.
Angela's sent him a handful of letters, writes like Vic does: asks him to hurry up and come home. It's enough to make a lesser man scream. He wants to make all of them deal with the truth, the same one he carries somewhere in his chest and refuses to exorcise. This country is godless, he wants to tell them. I seen three men die in front of me and couldn't do a goddamn thing but hold their fucking hands. It would kill you, Curtis, it would kill you, Tim, it would kill you.
Curly almost wants to tell them—anyone—to just do it, already. Put a bullet in him and send him home. It's not worth it. He thinks of all the dead trees. The stories some guys tell, the way they describe girls screaming and liking it. Stories enough to make Curly puke up the little bit of dinner he can stomach, thinking of his sister stuck with that husband of hers, still forgetting that she's been taking care of herself best as she can since she could barely walk.
He's a no good hood, but he's got enough of a backbone to admit that this shit was a mistake. He should have gone to Mexico. Should have admitted he was wrong, to his mother or Tim or even Angela. He writes his brother, gets a letter back, reads I fucking told you so in that familiar hand, same handwriting as their father, and thinks that maybe that's one good thing about death. Maybe he'll get into heaven, or hell, or whatever level of purgatory they've sent Frankie Shepard to and they can pretend they're any other father-son pair.
Honestly, he ain't too sure he believes in all that. He knows Curtis is into it—the spiritual side of things, maybe, nothing like the organized shit that his mama falls back onto when she thinks she's hit rock bottom. But the things he sees, the men he's killed—it's nothing like what happens on the East side. He's been in enough fights to have caused serious damage, has a reputation that starts with his dead daddy. Vietnam, though. He's pretty sure they're all going to have to pay for the shit that Uncle Sam's letting them get away with. He'd even say they deserve it.
When it ends he's been gone less than a year. Longer than six months, at least. Some of the guys are talking about how they're going to miss the Fourth of July, and for the first time in his life Curly wants to say he ain't even American. Wants, suddenly, to talk about his mother with her bad English and year-round brown skin and the way she looks like all her children. Remembers that Shepard men don't last, but the women do.
Y'all would get a kick outta Mexico, he wants to tell them, knowing even in this fantasy that they won't believe him at first, until he says, once or twice or three times, No, really, I'm a no-good Spic, too, my girl used to say so, like he really loved Vic and wasn't just wishing he could go back to that moment in his room and never ship out in the first place.
It's fucking hot, he says, out loud, like it's going to get a response besides groans of agreement. They've been trudging along for an hour, maybe two. This can't be the worst moment of his life, he tells himself, thinking of the handful of times they tossed him to the reformatory, or the lickings he'd get from his mama's husband before he got big enough, or even that night in '58, seven years old and his uncle telling him his daddy ain't coming home. Like his mother, he doesn't think he'll ever hit rock bottom. Just keep falling further and losing his breath all at once. He believes it, even, and it's the last coherent thought he has when the land-mine goes off, thinking of all the things his mama's done for them up until he can't think at all.