AN. Just thought of this when I woke up this morning. Hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own The Outsiders. All of those wonderful characters belong to S.E. Hinton. Whiskey Lullaby belongs to Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss.
Whiskey Lullaby
By: dally's little girl
Sum: What would happen if Mrs. Curtis was the only one that died in the car accident? How would Mr. Curtis react to it? Put to the song "Whiskey Lullaby" by Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss.
"Hey. That was fun. We should do it again," Molly Curtis tells her husband.
"It was. We should do it again," Darrel Curtis tells his wife while driving.
They are on there way home from a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant. Their boys were always saying that they needed to have a dinner together, but they never wanted to leave them.
"I wish we would've taken the boys' advice before. I'm sure they're fine," Darrel said as they stopped behind the stoplight.
"I'm sure they are."
The light turned green and they started to go.
"HONEY, WATCH-" Molly tried to warn her husband.
It was too late. A car had hit them.
DARRY'S POV"Where's mom and dad at?" my youngest brother Ponyboy asks me.
"I don't know, little buddy. They'll probably be back anytime considering that it's 10:50 at night," I reassured him. Just then, the phone rang.
"I got it!" I hollered.
"Okay," said my younger brother Sodapop.
"Hello?" I answered.
"Is Darrel Curtis, Jr. available please?" the man on the other line asked.
"This is Darrel. How may I help you?" I asked in a panic.
"I'm sorry, but are you the son of Darrel and Molly Curtis?"
"Yes sir. What's wrong with my parents?"
"They were in a car accident. Your father made it, but your mother didn't."
"Okay. What hospital is he at?" I asked on the verge of tears.
"The Hospital of Tulsa."
"Thank you, sir. Have a good night."
"Same to you." We hang up.
I can't believe my parents were in a car accident. Our mom's dead, and our dad's probably in bad condition.
"Soda, Pony, come here!" I holler for them.
"What is it Darry?" Soda asks.
"Mom and dad were in a car accident. Dad's alive, but mom wasn't lucky," I explain. Pony looked like he could cry, and Soda was in shock.
"Mom's dead?" Soda asks.
"Yeah, little buddy," I state calmly. "We gotta go to the hospital to see dad." We grab our coats and head to the hospital.
The hospital's about twenty minutes away from our house. The whole car ride was quiet and it felt like a two-hour drive. I'm sure we were mad about mom's demise. Who knows what kind of condition dad's in? I guess only God, the doctors, and nurses. We'll find out when we get there. How will the guys react when we tell them? They'll probably be depressed when they find out mom's dead. She was all of their moms. I wonder how dad's taking it.
We get to the hospital and ask where our dad's room was. The nurse told us it was down the hall and to the right. It's room 217.
We walk in and see our dad hooked to wires. He has an oxygen tube up his nose and an IV in his right hand.
"Hey dad," we greet him as we came in.
"Oh boys!" he greets us back ready to cry.
"How're you doing?" I ask him.
"Fine. It's just the pain of your mother's absence that hurts the worse. Other than that I have two broken ribs and a slight concussion. I guess I hit my head on the steering wheel. It was a drunk driver so you know. He survived." Now he's close to crying. "Why did he survive and your mom didn't?"
"I don't know dad. I just don't know." The four of us just sit there and cry.
MR. CURTIS POV
It's been a couple days since the accident. We're at the funeral and underneath the willow in the graveyard looking at my wife's casket. The boys took it very hard. They were all pallbearers. They about lost it walking the casket up and down the aisle of the Church.
We all left and headed for the mercy meal as the procession ended.
La la la la la la laThere, we had some whiskey.
La la la la la la la
DARRY'S POV
It's been three years since the funeral and mercy meal. I'm 19 now. Dad loved that whiskey. He's taking mom's death very hard.
The rumors flew, but nobody knew how much he blamed himself. For years and years, he tried to hide that whiskey in his breath. He finally drank his pain away a little at a time.
He always said it was his fault, then he drank it away and he'd leave his anger out on us and beat the crap out of us. Poor Pony was 12, 13, and 14 years old. Soda was 14, 15, and 16 years old. I was 18, 19, and 20 years old. Luckily I was in college. I'd come home from school and find my brothers at Two-Bit Mathews's house all banged up.
"What happened?" I asked one day.
"Dad whipped us with a belt. He told us that we were bad and we deserved what we got. Then, he hit me with his whiskey bottle and slashed my cheek open," Soda says pointing to his stitched up cheek.
"Why is dad acting like this?" Pony asked.
"Yeah. That's not like your dad," Two-Bit said.
"He's just taking mom's death really hard," I explained to them.
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind.
"That's a dumb reason to beat his kids like that and try to get drunk on whiskey," Dally Winston says.
"It sounds like my parents but without the whiskey," Johnny Cade told us.
"I wanna kill that guy even though he was like my father," Steve Randle told us. "No one is getting away with hurting my friends like that."
"I'm gonna go check on him," I said and headed out the door.
I got there and went in the house. My dad was drinking away. The door slammed behind me. I cringed figuring that he heard it. He did unfortunately.
"DARREL CURTIS! YOU HAVE BEEN THE WORSE SON EVER! YOU'RE NEVER HOME!" he bellowed and comes and slashes me with that damn whiskey bottle.
"Dad it's alright. I'm at school. You have to get off that whiskey. You're kind of abandoning us."
"NEVER! THIS STUFF IS GREAT! I DON'T WORRY! DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!"
"Hey, you're hurting your kids."
"I don't care," he slurred. "You all have been horrible since your mother died." He sat down cried after that. "I just miss her."
"I do, too," I told him and left.
I went to Two-Bit's house. I walked in and Mrs. Mathews panicked.
"Are you okay?!" she asked.
"Yeah. He's very depressed."
"Come on. I'll stitch you up, too."
She did and we went to sleep.
Until the night, he put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger and finally drank away her memory. Life is short but this time was bigger than the strength he had to get up off his knees.
The next morning was Saturday so there was no school. We decided to go to our house to check on dad. We went into the house. We didn't see him in the living room, so we went to his room.
And we found him with his face down in the pillow clinging to her picture for dear life.
We found our alcoholic father dead. We were shocked. Our jaws fell to the ground.
"Go call Mrs. Mathews now," I ordered.
Soda did and she was there in two minutes. Her jaw fell to the ground too. She called 911.
SODA'S POV
It's been a couple of days since dad's death. We were at the burying. The seven of us boys were pallbearers once again. We're at the burial.
We laid him next to her beneath the willow while the angels sang a whiskey lullaby.
We were walking away and I looked back behind us. I could see mom and dad happily reunited. They were dancing and happy again.
La la la la la la la la la la la la la laDarry has to take care of me and Pony now. He's only 20. He's doing a great job though.
AN: There you go. Hope you enjoy. R&R please. Whiskey's probably the worse alcohol to get hooked on.