"There just ain't no money, kiddo." Dad rubs his temples— he's young enough still that people mistake us for brothers (him nudging me in the ribs, calling himself the better-looking one by far, every time), but tonight he seems painfully old, bent over like a withered tree. Two decades of construction built up his muscles and wreaked havoc on his back. "I don't know what you want me to do."
"OSU gave me a football scholarship, a big one," I say, hating the tightness in my throat. I've always been too fussy over my athletics to smoke, but right now, I'd abandon my firstborn for a cigarette, something to do with my hands. "They want me in the starting lineup next fall— this is what I've worked for my entire life."
This is the most emotion I've ever shown, or at least it feels like it. My eyes prickling with suppressed tears, desperate to make him understand. I've never really fought him before, never had much of a reason to, but I guess there's a first time for every shitty thing under the sun.
He's quiet, staring at the glittering night sky— I've always loathed his silences, 'cause that's far scarier than when he yells. My dad's the kind of guy who only shuts up when it's a funeral. "No man wants to tell his son that he can't take advantage of what he's earned," he finally exhales. "But I'm gonna have to sell both my kidneys to afford this, and I can't, Darry. I just can't. You got two brothers to feed, and we're barely keepin' up with the mortgage as is. Your scholarship'll have to wait."
"You're gonna break Mom's heart," I say, not above the cheap shot of sending him on a guilt trip, and suddenly glad that she's in the kitchen and not out on the porch with us. "Doesn't she always say that she wants her boys to get the best education possible?"
"Shit, Darry," he says, "your mama still thinks Soda's got a real shot at college if he works hard and believes in himself. God knows I love her, but she sees what she wanna see, when it comes to her babies." He leans forward, beseeching me. "Listen to me, son— you'd be miserable at that place. Bunch of spoiled rich brats, like them... what do y'all call them? Like them Socs, at Will Rogers. You're a strong kid. I can get you a job at my buddy's roofing business, and you'll start makin' good money in no time. Doin' real work, man work, with your hands."
"Didn't you ever want more for us?" I ask, before I can stop the words from spewing out. Words I've wanted to say for years and years, listening to my parents whisper-shout about the mortgage and the groceries and the crime rate in this piece of shit neighborhood on Tulsa's East Side. "More than this? If I got a degree in business or somethin', I could make a great salary after I graduate— we could buy a place somewhere nicer, safer. Where we won't have to worry about our windows bein' broken every time we leave the house."
"You want to be a… business owner?" he sputters disgustedly, like I just announced my intent to run a prostitution ring, and that's when I realize I've lost whatever ground I once had. "What's next, votin' for Barry Goldwater?"
Oh, fuck, I think, here comes 'The Importance of Labor Unions in Protecting the Rights of the Working Man, Who Could Really Use a Clean Break and Some Goddamn Dental Insurance', a speech that usually takes three beers to get going. (Dally's the only one of us who ever attends Dad's union meetings, mostly because he's dead convinced he'll get to throw Molotov cocktails at the boss's house if he sweet-talks some of the more disgruntled members. He claims that by five beers, that speech is whittled down to The Importance of Labor Unions in Protecting the Rights of the Half-Apache Working Man Who Grew Up on a Really Shitty Reservation and Now Has Seven Mouths to Feed, So Can He Have a Fucking Raise Some Time This Century?) But instead, he just dips his head and chuckles, no humor attached to the sound. "You're so much like your mama," he says. "She keeps askin' me why I ain't worried about Soda's future, even though he can't do school worth a damn— it's 'cause that boy's got the kind of smarts that matter. He knows who he is, and he ain't ashamed of a bit of it." He looks up and pierces me to the core with his big dark eyes; they could see through any lie when I was a kid. "You're the one who scares me."
I laugh, uncomfortably, because compared to Soda, I'm the golden boy— great grades, stellar athletic record, definitely getting out after high school. His constant failures illuminating my successes and overshadowing any of my own fuckups. But Dad doesn't let up for a moment. "Soda's friends are always hangin' around here," he says. "Damn, I'll just admit it— they're all sons to me, even Dally, though my sleep schedule's permanently screwed from bailin' his dumb ass outta jail. They're family. Your best friend's.. Paul Holden, right? His daddy owns that Holden Car Wash chain?"
A stiff nod is the best I can do. I don't know what to say, even if I could maneuver my jaws open, and he won't let me look away from him.
"You've never brought him here. Not even once. Not him, or any of your other friends." He tilts his head to the side now. "Your girl was— Judy, right? You two were together for three years, and I don't think I ever met her. Must be a reason for it."
She broke up with me after I couldn't afford to rent a limo for our senior prom. Not exactly a keeper. "You're ashamed, ain't you?" he concludes.
"Dad, no, of course not—"
"You're ashamed that you're Boy of the Year, top student, quarterback, and you live here. With an Indian daddy who works construction. Tell me I'm wrong, Darry."
My dad is my hero. I still mean that with every fiber of my being. He grew up as the kid of two alcoholics on the rez, where the only thing worse than the crime was the rabid dogs, and made an at least semi-functional family for us. He doesn't drink much anymore, doesn't gamble, and doesn't mess around with any woman other than my mama. Around here, that basically makes him the second coming of Christ.
But I didn't know how to explain that to any of my friends, who lived in neighborhoods with neatly-trimmed grass blocked off by white picket fences, who didn't have to shoplift clothes nicer than secondhand while fighting terrified nausea. I didn't know how to explain to Paul, who got a brand new Caddy for his sixteenth birthday and bitched that it was the wrong color, that my old man said I'd only get a car if I damn well earned the money myself— or how his father had an MBA diploma framed in his office, and I doubted mine had ever read more than twenty books. I could never bring them back here and still keep my head up at school if they saw the broken beer bottles on the street, the faded furniture, the dirty footprints from Dad's work boots never coming out of the carpet— endless evidence of my double life.
"No," he says once he figures out my lips are welded shut, with the finality he'd used banning Soda from rodeo. "You wanna go to college, you'll probably save up enough after a few years, but you'd better get your head on straight first. Decide what kind of man you're gonna be, without Paul Holden and his kind deciding that for you."
I could destroy him, in this moment, and there's enough dark, ugly rage pent up inside of me to make it a tempting prospect. Call him a mediocre, broken old man with all the ambition of a shingle, dragging his son down into his dust because he's afraid I'll surpass him. But then he puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes, the lines around his mouth gentle, and I'm ten years old again, the only Curtis son who can shut up long enough to shoot a bird without scaring the whole flock away. The one least like him and still the one he put the most of himself into. Him finding out about my secret shame hurts worse than the time I broke my arm falling off the garage roof.
Steve's father kicks him out at least twice a week, usually with the help of a few hard blows, and then pays him off when he returns like it's some kind of a paycheck. Pony once watched Johnny's beat him bloody with a two-by-four, and for Johnny, that was just Tuesday. Two-Bit's split when he was twelve and hasn't sent over a penny to support his kids. And Dally— fuck, Dally never talks about him, but I've seen the belt buckle scars on his back and the cigarette burns on his arms, and I know they didn't come from rumbles. Someone held him down to do that.
My issues amount to jackshit, held up to the harsh light of theirs. But right then, I hate my daddy more than I've ever hated anyone in my entire life, mostly because I can't bring myself to hate him at all.