I'll update my other story soon, I promise. I don't own anything.
A Change is Gonna Come
On a day where it's so cold out I think my feet may freeze to the ground, Steve offers to pick me up from school. I've learned over time to not think anything of it. Not anymore at least, because over the last few months this has just been the way things have been. He picks me up from school and that's just that.
I slide into his car and slam my boots on the ground to get the snow off them. Winter hit Tulsa hard this winter. I can't seem to remember a time where there wasn't snow covering the ground.
He grunts a hey but doesn't say anything else, but that's fine because I've never been known to hold down conversation.
Steve takes the scenic route, taking curves through parks and going on paths I haven't been on in a long time. I can tell simply by his face—the scowl that usually sits there on it is twisted instead into a distressed grimace—that he's pondering something. Being an introvert allows for watching rather than participating, taking in the ups and downs of voices, the hitches in breaths, the changes in facial expression. Reading people is a trait I've come to cherish.
And he drops a fucking bomb on me. I shoulda seen it coming. It's been happening to people all over the place. "I got my notice today." He puts his car in park in a parking lot by a set of wooden picnic tables. I watch as the snow falls on them. I stare at that because I don't think I can stand to look at his face. "I get shipped off at the end of the month."
I can't hear anything over the rush of blood in my ears. "Shit."
"Yeah."
My blood turns to ice, and for the first time I know what it truly feels like to be frozen, to be stuck in a place and not planning to move any time soon. We sit in silence for a while, and for a moment I think that this will be the way we both die: separated infinitesimally by the armrest in his car, the sounds of Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" filtering through his car's radio even though neither of us is really listening, all while we wait for one of us to say something. There's not enough air in here. I think I may die of oxygen deprivation before I can think of the right thing to say.
He goes first. I release the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "Let me guess. You're probably wonderin' why I'm tellin' you."
I wasn't really wondering that. I was thinking of saying the right thing, of minimal space in a car, of Sam Cooke for Christ's sakes. Now all I can think about is blood, Steve's blood, and how the blood was hot and dark and how terrible it was when Dally was shot years ago and how in the war, at the unrelenting hands of a Vietnamese soldier, it would be so much worse.
"Steve, you—you can't go to war."
"You think I wanna go?" He looks at me, and almost smiles but I can't imagine anything worth grinning about in a world where something as awful as a war exists. And to think, yesterday I was worried about if Cathy Carlson likes me back.
A moment's pause again and he says, "Well, Jesus. Don't flip out too bad, kid. You may get an ulcer."
"I guess Earth-shattering revelations are something I've grown accustomed to. My parents died and everything." I try to say it jokingly, like what I said was actually funny, and I hope he can't hear the sadness underneath. I cringe and wish I could slide underneath the seat. To be anywhere but here.
"That'll do that to you." He grins too. They're so goddamn self-deprecating, his crooked smiles. I think they've always been, and I was too caught up trying to hate him that I never even noticed.
"Well..." I start, because I don't trust myself to say anything else. "Why did you?"
"Why did I what?"
"Why did you tell me?"
"I don't know." He sighs, and then laughs cryptically, and then slams his head into the steering wheel. "I know you're more of the listenin' type then the actual speakin' type." He lifts his head up and stares at the picnic tables like me. When I was seven, I would have wanted to go out and play in it, bury myself in it for hours because that's what kids do. I think of how much I've changed since then. "I guess I thought it'd be easier to tell you. You wouldn't judge or nothin'."
I sit quiet. I picture Steve with a buzz, and how when Soda left he looked so different with his hair so funny. I wonder why they take away their hair when the war pretty much strips them of integrity already. My dad loved the idea of war—was a Korean vet and always loved to talk about how patriotic it was. It may be, I guess, but I can't get behind the idea of people killing people, no matter what for, or how much good it'll do for my country.
"You gotta be careful, Steve. Real careful. I mean it. We—we can't lose anyone else."
"Aw, it can't be too bad. I kick Socs' asses here, might as well do it to some Gooks."
But a Gook with a heater and military training ain't the same as some punk-ass kid wielding a switchblade, I want to scream. I don't understand how he can be so calm about this. "You're...takin' this pretty good." I chew the skin around my fingernails.
He looks at me with an almost cocky grin. "I guess Earth-shattering revelations are something I've grown accustomed to."
"Christ." And then I look away from him. And then I laugh to keep from crying.
"Sorry, kid," he says, and it's real sincere, like he knows what I'm doing. I wonder when he started to be that way. When we started to have such a mutual respect for each other. I guess Sodapop's departure has that effect on people. I just wish he could be here to witness it firsthand, like he deserves to.
"Don't be." Why does everyone I care for have to leave? Is it something about me? The moment me and Steve started really talking, he has to leave too. Soon it'll be Two-Bit's turn.
We sit in a comfortable silence for a short while before I ask, "When did this...happen?"
"What? My draft?"
"No, I mean..." I wave my hands in a circular motion. "...this. When did we stop hating each other?"
"Hatin' requires the energy I just don't got, Ponyboy." He leans back into his seat and doesn't meet my eye. He's so serious now. Where is the teasing lilt to his voice, the excited look his dark eyes always had? I guess it's hard to be excited about kill or be killed. "I never hated you. You were just an annoying kid, is all."
How times have changed. I almost wish we could go back, not because I want him to hate me, but the fact that it represents a time where we were both so much more innocent. Where Steve made the effort to pretend to be annoyed by me and then tease me when my face got in the paper, calling me a hero. He was the one shoved my face in dirt when I was little, the one that used to tell me I was adopted. I don't like the shell that's sitting next to me, the one who doesn't "have the energy" to hate me. The one who's getting sent to a war.
"It's different now, man. I don't know how to explain it. Everything's different now. I don't know if ya get me or not."
"I do," I say quietly and I nod.
He snorts softly through his nose and then shakes his head, like he can't believe the situation he's in, that he's telling his best friend's little brother such an important secret. The little brother he disliked so much at one time.
When he speaks again, his throat is choked. I pretend I don't hear it; that's easier than admitting that Steve can feel emotion. It's easier to pretend that the barely concealed hitches in his breaths aren't there because they make him sound so human, and that just makes it worse. We're all just humans living in a shit world, and I hate it. "Take care of Evie when I'm gone."
He doesn't give me time to process this before he's taking the car out of park and turning the way to my house.
I lied earlier. I don't want to go back. I want to go ahead; I want to go to a future where war doesn't happen, a world with equality. One where we don't pay attention to social status or race. Where I don't get attacked for being a greaser. Where Sodapop and Steve and other people—kids, really—don't have to fight a battle they got no involvement in.
There's a part in this book that was published earlier this year called Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, where he's sitting and talking to his ex-war buddy about the war, and the buddy's wife gets upset at the way they seem to glorify their experience at war, when in reality they were just scared kids too. I loved that part. It's because I see exactly where she's coming from. Because that's all Steve is. That's all Soda was when he left. That's what I am. A scared kid. We're all just scared kids. That's one thing Kurt Vonnegut got right.
Steve turns the radio up loud.
"Oh there been times that I thought I couldn't last for long
But now I think I'm able to carry on
It's been a long, a long time coming
But I know a change gonna come, oh yes it will"
I hope so, Sam Cooke. I hope so.