This is something light and fun cause it's Friday y'all and we made it :)
CONCRETE OASIS
The July sun blazes so hot today, I'm wondering if my bike tires might actually melt into the pavement if I don't pedal fast enough. When you can literally fry an egg on the sidewalk, there's only one thing to do for relief, and Johnny and I are headed right for that one oasis. Our eyes blink through sweat as we fly on our bikes at breakneck speed, down alleys and up busier main roads, earning some angry honks when we weave in and out of traffic, too close for drivers' comfort. But we sure ain't the only ones on this pilgrimage to a chlorine paradise, cause anybody who's anybody knows Fridays are Quarter Days at the East Tulsa Public Pool.
We have to make a pit stop first though if we want to gain admission and a snack or two. So we turn down the quiet tree-lined street that Darry happens to be working today. Most mornings Darry makes sure to leave a note on our fridge, stuck under Mom's 'Kiss the Cook' magnet, that tells us where we can find him if there's some kind of emergency. What qualifies as an emergency is up for debate in my family, and Darry and I lean on opposite ends. But our differences rarely stop me from tracking him down and borrowing his change when the need strikes. Especially now that the DX has started eyeballing Soda and the way he mans the store. He's told me to steer clear for a little while.
It's a small one story house Darry's working on, just a two-man job, and I'm glad I don't have to yell for a good five minutes to get him to notice, like I do on the bigger sites. He's right in front today, carrying a bundle of roofing up one of his smaller ladders, and he doesn't even look back when I call out, "Hey Darry?" I can tell he's in a bad mood cause he only shakes his head like I'm bothering him already and continues climbing. "It's hot today man, I gotta go swimmin'. Can you maybe loan me a coupla bucks?" I make sure to say me and not us. Johnny doesn't want to borrow money from Darry or anyone for that matter. Cause he knows, more than likely, he can't pay it back. But he lets me spot him every now and then. He has no choice really, seeing as I make him most the time.
"Why don'tcha go swim at the hole where it's free?" he asks gruffly, as he tosses the tiles on the roof and finally turns his head to look down on me. From where I stand, Darry looks like he's melting, and I think about saying never mind, you need the pool more than we do. But his face softens when he sees I'm with Johnny and tells me to go on and look for his wallet in the truck.
His windows are down so I reach through, open up his worn leather billfold and pull out two dollar bills, leaving Darry with the five. I throw his wallet back on the dash and it lands open faced, revealing his lame license photo, the one I razz him about cause he looks like such a square.
"Don't you take that five Ponyboy," I hear Darry threaten without reason and roll my eyes, and Johnny and I are already halfway down the street, our backs to the noise of my brother's hammering that fades over rooftops, time and distance.
By the final stretch we're winded, and we're moving considerably slower through the thick heat. "Why do you think Dally don't ever come swimmin' with us?" I ask Johnny as he stands on his peddles and brings his bike over the curb with a jerk of his handlebars, landing clean on the street after a popped wheely.
"Guess the same reason Tim never does," he says above the vibrating sounds of his tires rumbling over sewer grates. "Swim trunks don't look too cool with leather jackets I reckon." And we both chuckle at the thought.
I hear it before I ever see it. Sure our pool ain't no country club. Its chain link fence surrounding it bends and buckles, cigarette butts and trash litter the entry way, the clientele might be a little rougher than most, but it's got everything we need. A snack bar, diving boards and loud music. No hair grease allowed or the pool would be an oil slick. And no fighting either. Which makes it a miracle if people like Sodapop and his crowd last there more than an hour. For them, getting kicked out is a given. If I only had a dime.
We pay our way in and at two in the afternoon the pool's at its peak. The leftover decorations from last Sunday's Fourth of July give off a festive atmosphere, even if the star spangled banners are looking a little saggy. The speakers are blaring out the ear-splitting, tuffest guitar intro ever from that new Stones song and it's putting a little strut in my step. Johnny and I make our way through the crowds to claim some chairs at the deep end of the pool, cause we like to be by the diving boards, and it's hard not to look down at the row of sunbathing girls in bikinis we pass along the way. With quick reflexes I dodge a wildly thrown beach ball, a violent game of chicken has broken out in the shallow end and some kids' cries of 'Marco...Polo' ring out alongside Mick who just can't seem to get no satisfaction.
Then a familiar cackle cuts through the chaos, announcing Two-Bit's already here and probably already tanked, since he usually sneaks in a flask or two whenever he decides to come. He's at an umbrella covered table, deep in a card game and I shake my head at the boots he's wearing with his swim trunks. But who am I to judge? I guess Johnny and I ain't looking too hot either with our worn out Converses. But surely to God we look better than Two-Bit and those shitkickers he's got on.
We grab two spots in the corner, throw down the towels from around our necks and take off our t-shirts and shoes, toss our change down into them to hide our snack money and waste no time diving into the choppy water. Unfortunately it's not quite as cool as I'd hoped since it's been warmed up by an unforgiving summer, and feels more along the lines of bath water. But hey, it's wet. So I swim down into its depths, away from the noise, away from the fiery sun, away from dry land existence for just a moment. My ears pop when I reach the drain and I let my breath out through my nose in a flurry of bubbles. I try to imagine how it must be to drown and my feet push off the bottom and I shoot back to surface and light and life.
The ladder's been broken for two seasons now so I pull, then push myself up out of the pool, my arms easily bracing me so I can hop up from the side. I shake the water out of my ears and the hair out of my face, then lay the chair and my body all the way back, letting the sun, which now feels nice, dry me out. I remember to cover my smokes with my towel to protect them from the splashing, when I hear the line he can't be a man cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me, and I silently laugh thinking about Soda singing this song and his Jagger impersonation. Johnny's still in the pool, talking to some guy he knows from his shop class, and I'm thinking how glad I am to finally be headed to high school in the fall. After some special tests they gave me at the end of the past school year, Darry said they're skipping me right on up to sophomore level classes, so although he'll be a junior, maybe I'll have at least one with Johnny.
I don't know how I could've made it through the worst winter of my life without Johnny. Or any of the gang, even Steve if only for Soda's sake. The guys truly saved Soda, Darry and me after Mom and Dad died. I don't much like to think about those really dark days when it hurt to breathe, so I focus on these summer days I'm living now. Certainly not carefree, but the pain's more manageable now, and I'll be fourteen in a couple of weeks and fourteen's gotta be better than thirteen.
Johnny's now getting his seat in order, laying out his towel, and the water droplets that fling over feel cold when they land against my skin. "You've still got that bad farmer's tan Ponyboy," he informs me like I don't know. I hold my arms stiffly to my side, willing the sun to tan my chest and shoulders to match them. Johnny's lucky he's brown all over, especially since it helps to hide a lot of his bruises.
"Well, Darry was all over me like white on rice last night," I complain to Johnny, remembering our knock-down-drag-out right before bed. "Started in about my head again and that it ain't screwed on right, sounding like a broken record," and then I realize, to Johnny, I must sound like the most broken one in the stack. But he's too nice of a friend to point that out and always listens to my latest Darry complaints. And so I go on and give him the play by play of what went down, how he won't let me do anything, how he screamed at me and how he's forgotten how to be fun, how to be a brother.
Johnny just nods his understanding, his eyes closed against the sun. Then, with a sleepy drawl he asks, "'Member how upset you were that day he left for college?" And I do remember, but that was another life. In his subtle ways, Johnny always tries to remind me I love my brother, but he's never seen the way Darry attacks me full on. If he saw it for himself, he'd know he's reminding the wrong brother of that fact.
Not wanting to ruin the day, I grab a mangy tennis ball that's caught under the fence. "Wanna get a game goin'?" and Johnny's in. We take turns jumping off the low dive and trying to catch it mid-air. Like any game though, after a while it gets rougher, and the tosses become bullets aimed at the jumper who's just trying not to get pelted. A few more guys join our painful fun. It hurts getting popped by a wet tennis ball on your bare skin but for some reason it's hilarious, trying to escape the wild throws and just as fun trying to nail the moving human target.
Joey Bratcher suggests the high dive and we all know that's just more time in the air for assault. Plus from that height, dives and flips that aren't landed right hurt like hell against the water. It ups the game and it's brilliant. Curly's first and he not only takes a ball to the head, he over-rotates a flip and lands face first, the loud smack of his body against water can be heard throughout the county. A few sympathetic "ooh"s and "ow"s erupt from the crowd and one "Curly, you idiot" remark coming from Angela I'm sure. I'm next.
I both love and hate the high dive. It took me years to get the nerve, and it still gives my stomach that roller coaster roll, even when I'm just doing a straight jump. I almost feel dizzy up so high but at the same time it's kinda peaceful. I look down at Johnny as he's trying to calculate with Joey when to throw the ball and I'm deciding how I'm gonna flip, but all of a sudden the board jiggles beneath my toes and my hair stands on the back of my neck when I feel someone coming fast from behind. Then I hear Steve, "Mind your step Ponyboy, I'd sure hate to see you fall," and before I can say what the hell, I'm wrapped in a vice like grip, my arms pinned to my side useless, and he hurls us both forward and out into the air with violent force.
We fall into nothingness and I tense up, bracing for the impact, but luckily Steve takes the brunt of it. It's a wonder I'm still wearing my shorts and I don't know which end is up when my eyes open under water. I elbow Steve away and swim up for the breath that got knocked out of me. As soon as I find it, I curse that asshole up and down but before I'm finished, Soda comes running off the board aiming his cannonball form right smack in the middle of us all. By the grace of God I end up avoiding his wild body and I know the afternoon just went to a whole other level of nuts now that these two hellions are here. Steve's yelling back at me, "Oh Ponyboy, quit bitchin', you ain't hurt." Soda just laughs like a maniac for no reason whatsoever.
My eyes are stinging and I'm hungry so I get out and towel off. Of course Soda didn't think to bring his own so he shares mine without asking and covers his now insane hair with a baseball hat, then goes to claim the table that just opened up. Two-Bit comes sauntering over, talking to every girl in his wobbly, crooked path and his sunglasses are hiding what I'm sure are half-lidded eyes by now. I ask Johnny if he wants to split a burger since we have enough money for that and two cokes. Before he can answer though Soda nixes the idea. "Uh uh. It's Friday Ponyboy." I bite my tongue but can't help to roll my eyes and sigh.
Soda may not take a lot of things seriously, but his loyalty to Mom and keeping her few Catholic rules alive is certainly one of the torches he carries. We hardly ever went to the Church, but Mom's strict upbringing trickled down to ours, and things like no meat on Fridays, year round mind you and not only for Lent season, found it's way on our weekly menu. To Darry and me, it was just one of Mom's crazy, diehard rules she'd plucked out of her history somewhere, and Dad was just happy cause her fried catfish was the best in town. But we've let Soda hang on to that important piece inside him; for some reason he needs to. And of course, we eat the hell out of some good meat behind his back.
I settle for french fries and Johnny gets a hot dog and Two-Bit's passing his flask to Steve and Soda. "Why don't y'all add some fun to your lonely little drinks you got there," and Steve pours it into his coke and tries passing it to Soda.
"No thanks," Soda says flatly and glances quickly at me.
I don't miss the smirk on Steve's face or the sarcasm in his voice. "Oh I forgot, Soda here's a saint, ain't that right Two-Bit?"
"Sure is. We've been graced here today with the holy presence of Saint Soda," and they both laugh, but Two-Bit's not too drunk to notice the glare from my brother and he cools it, takes back his flask, and changes the subject. Soda smiles his gratitude and I sometimes wonder how he can be friends with a guy like Steve, who obviously teases him over things like choosing not to drink.
The rest of the day is spent talking over each other, judging the songs that come on and the girls that walk by, discussing why crinkle fries just taste better, musing over Darry and his rampages as of late, (Two-Bit says he'll talk to him), who's set to win the drag race tonight, whether or not it was Dally who pulled the knife first in the fight at the Dingo lot yesterday, and how Joey's big sister Betsy's red bikini fits in her all the right places.
But it all ends when Soda's walking back from the snack shack. I can see him stopped at a table in front of the group of lined up sunbathers, all of them flipping in unison every thirty minutes like rotisserie chickens. They're on their backs this particular shift and while Soda's talking to Mrs. Greene's table who lives down our street, I notice the sunbathers giggling and whispering. Just when I'm realizing Two-Bit's missing, I hear a soft, "oh shit" escape on Johnny's breath. And there's Two-Bit, sneaking up behind Soda getting ready to pants him. I know I should scream out and save my brother, but I'm paralyzed and can only watch in horror as the scene unfolds. In a matter of seconds Two-Bit's managed to yank Soda's pants right down to his ankles and everyone on our side of the pool is now privy to Soda's backside birthmark that's shaped like the state of Minnesota, and I don't want to think about what the other side of the pool can't now unsee.
It's only a split second before he covers his front with his hands but the girls' mouths have already dropped, even Betsy Bratcher has her glasses down over her nose and a smile on her face. And while I'd have to pack up and leave town, no the United States of America, if it happened to me, Soda just casually pulls his shorts back up with a smile, then a touch of his hat to all the ladies and walks away with hardly a red face. But I do see him mouthing "asshole" to Two-Bit and he firmly shoves him into the kiddie pool, boots and all. "Dammit Soda do you know how much piss is in this water?"
In his usual carefree and easy amble, Soda's almost back to the table when the lifeguard and pool manager grab him by the arms and tell him it's time to go. "What'd I do?" Soda fires back and he's wearing his falsely accused face. This time it's for indecent exposure that he's banned from the pool the rest of the month, and just like that our pleasant afternoon has come to an end. We're a package deal, so we all get up and gather our things and take that walk of shame right along with Soda, but I do think we set a record though for longest amount of time without forced dismissal. And on our way out I overhear one girl saying, "Well didn't we just pick the perfect day to come to the pool."
The return bike ride seems harder after an exhausting day of sun and chlorine, but the sun is a little more merciful now, hanging lower behind the shade of the big oak trees. I'm making Johnny tell me more about high school and I'm sure he thinks I'm weird for actually being excited about going. He never seems to like it much, but he doesn't seem to mind answering all my questions, like if he thinks I'll get lost my first day (he does) and whether or not the food tastes better than the middle school crap (it's worse).
It's the fork in the road where I leave him, tell him he can always come around if he feels like it, our usual routine. And he turns left where I keep straight, and I'm riding solo again, but I stand up a little to give some more pump to my pedals, finding some newfound energy bubbling up. And I know that's gotta be hope. If I can just figure out how to keep Darry and I from killing each other, yeah, I actually have hope for this year, my fourteenth.
A/N: Outsiders by SE Hinton, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones
Thank you for reading!