Why did I write this? Who knows. Maybe I felt the urge to write something lighter for a change :)
LITTLE LIAR
I don't even need to hiss at the sting 'cause Soda does it for me whenever I wince.
"Darry it hurts." So much for being a tough guy when I pathetically beg him to stop.
"Sorry," is all I get, but you can't make Darry stop for nothing. He continues pressing Dad's undershirt firm against the wound, and that sterilizing burn of the alcohol feels a thousand times worse than the bottle that exploded against my temple.
The high from my first real rumble crashed out from under me in Steve's backseat, somewhere between Utica and Pickett. "Hey Soda, he ain't bleedin' all over my new upholstery is he?" Steve had so kindly asked, and that's about when I started feeling woozy.
Now my worried brothers have me laid out on the kitchen table like some Frankenstein science project, the smell of Mom's lemon scented furniture polish seems to have settled my stomach, and when I say they're worried, it ain't so much about me as it is about the trouble we're all fixing to be in.
Soda's got his chair pulled right up next to my face, so he can hold the flashlight for Darry. His other hand is in one second comforting, when his fingers comb through my tangled, bloody hair, and in the next second it's traitorous, when it grips me way too hard, locking my head in place so Darry can fish the glass out of my cuts with Mom's eyebrow tweezers. "Shh, he's almost got it Pony. He pulled out a big piece that time." Please, I don't need a play by play, and my feet flop all over this table like I'm getting electrocuted.
"So? He gonna need stitches?" Soda asks, and I look over at him looking up at Darry, his brown eyes concerned, while his tongue easily flips his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other.
Darry squints behind his glasses as he examines me hard and close, avoiding my eyes altogether and I don't exactly know where to look as he tilts my face back and forth under Soda's white light and the kitchen's yellow bulb. "Don't think so, it just needs to be good and cleaned," and though I'm relieved to hear I won't have some needle sewing my skin, I don't think I can take much more of Darry's torturous cleaning. He's tugging his t-shirt sleeves up over his shoulders, a quirky habit of his, then rubs his hands together like he's warming up to throw a football. "Alright, how much time you think we got?" The countdown's on.
"It's ten now. They should be back in about an hour if I had to guess," and Soda's sounding pretty hopeless as he's counting on his fingers and figuring out how short a movie usually runs.
Darry picks off a glass shard from the tweezers and flicks it across to the trash but it ends up pinging the toaster. Now he's shaking his head. "What were we thinkin' man? We never shoulda let him fight," and before I can argue against this offensive comment, cause tonight I just found out I'm pretty damn good in a rumble, Soda's off and running with his plea of innocence.
"Hey, we didn't know they'd brought along some psycho bottle butcher. Far as we knew it was a fair fight. Skin on skin." And I feel smaller and smaller as my brothers argue about and over me like I'm nothing but tonight's supper served on top of this table.
"We should've never let him out of our sight for a second," and I can tell Darry's mad at himself, which is far better than when I'm his target. But I can't help catching some of his guilt that runs off him and somehow ends up on me.
Soda, on the other hand, refuses to bathe in it. "We didn't have a choice Darry. That shit broke outta nowhere. What were we gonna do, call a timeout and say, hold your punches a second fellas, just lemme lock my little brother in the car so he don't get hurt?" I can't help but chuckle a little at Soda's insane scenario. That and I'm feeling lightheaded and maybe a little bit loopy. "He's thirteen now. He's way past the age we started fightin', and in far rougher things than tonight's little red rover match." And I feel somewhat vindicated yet mostly insulted, and I'm just now noticing neither of my brothers have a scrape or a bruise. Not even a single hair's out of place.
"'Course it had to be Ponyboy paired up with the one clown who decides to go apeshit with a bottle." And obviously Darry's not seeing it the way I am. Maybe it wasn't just bad luck that I happened to fight the lone bottle-smasher of the gang. Maybe instead it was 'cause I was beating his ass so badly, that it was out of his desperation he had to reach for the closest weapon. Yeah, that's what it was.
"Clearly that little punk had short man's syndrome," Soda's quick to analyze the situation and I'm knocked back down again, remembering how that little punk was probably a whole head taller than me. "Look, we just banked on the fight being fair. That's all. Dad'll believe us."
"Yeah, well Dad ain't who we gotta worry about," and Darry's right. Mom hates fights anyway. Darry manhandles Soda's flashlight and makes him hold it right where he needs it. He blows on his tweezers and bends back down, ready for another brutal round and all my muscles tense when I smell his aftershave and feel his breath against my cheek. "We all know it's gonna be my ass that's chewed when Mom finds out her precious baby's got himself a little scratch."
Now I'm just about good and pissed. My pride and I struggle to raise up, my neck straining to bust through Soda's stranglehold. "Hey hey hey, stay down Pony," he gently commands, but I shove away both his arms and finally make it to a sitting position. "What's gotten into you?" My head knocks the hanging lamp into a full swing, pitching shadows all around the room.
Darry's looking at me like he's had it, and then that sadist comes after me, plucking and pinching at the skin all over my arms with them damn tweezers. By now I'm really hollering. "Ow.. dammit Darry, stop it, quit it..get away from me."
I'm using my feet to push myself up the length of the table in a slippery sock scramble to escape this crab claw attack, until I'm sliding off and my body folds awkwardly into Mom's chair. Now I'm in a position where I can kick Darry if he comes anywhere near and I hold both my brothers at bay, my leg raised and threatening and poised for a powerful karate kick, my sock foot a white wiggling warning to anyone who dares to tread close.
"Heck fire, I ain't no baby," and with eyes narrowing I point at each of them, hoping for a shred of their respect, "and if y'all had your heads outta your asses you'd know I got in some pretty good jabs tonight." I slowly bring down my leg and sit up, cause "I ain't no slouch neither."
I straighten out my twisted t-shirt and mostly they just stare at me, and I'm not really sure if they're gonna laugh in my face, but there's no time to find out now, cause Soda's hyper-sensitive radar detects a certain Ford pulling onto our street. "Shoot y'all, they're back already."
We three work together now, pushing in the chairs, putting the wax fruit bowl back on the table and trying to line up our story. "Okay we went out for burgers and Pony..."
I finish Darry's sentence and in a fast panic announce, "...fell against the coffee table when we got home."
"Soda, slap some band-aids on him." Darry holds up Dad's ruined shirt and says to himself, "Jesus this looks more like a sacrificial lamb slaughter than a coffee table injury," and he's off to stuff it under somebody's bed.
Soda's peeling bandage adhesives, throwing around the sizes from the box we don't need, yelling out "Who in the holy hell ever uses these little circle ones for Pete's sake?" The both of us look at each other and shrug. It's a question to ponder later.
With kneading fingers I'm pressing down the third and final band-aid that's askew and hanging, barely sticking to the gelling blood, just as my parents walk through the door. They're in the middle of talking when they both stop to say, "Hey boys," and they look kind of surprised we'd all three be there in the living room waiting to greet them, like those fake families on television always do.
Darry's going overboard, way too enthusiastic, when we all know Darry hasn't so much as uttered a single hello to anyone in this house since 1958, and I catch Soda rolling his eyes at the overkill. "So how was the movie? What'd y'all see?" I stay still and fixed on the TV so the mangled side of my face is out of their vision. Not that I can keep it hidden all night, but I'm buying some time and nerve before the inquisition.
"We uh...well we saw the Unsinkable Molly Brown." My eyes dart to the right and watch Mom from out of the corner. She seems a little off and I wonder if she smells the lie before it's even out of my mouth.
"What kinda trouble y'all get into tonight?" Dad asks us completely unaware, and he holds out their unfinished popcorn, shaking it a little for Darry to take some.
"Not much," Soda swoops in and takes over, "I made Darry take us out for some burgers. Ran into the guys. Boring night though, didn't do much but shoot the breeze," and Soda scares me how good he can bullshit. Darry's over there stuffing an entire fist of popcorn into his mouth. Thank God he's shutting himself up.
And somehow I guess Mom can smell blood. "Ponyboy. Is that blood on your shirt?" She's beelining to the couch, her face already set on alarm.
"Yeah, maybe, I guess it might be," and I look down at the splattered evidence as if it's my first time seeing it. She's already on her knees in front of me, reaching out, carefully touching Soda's shitty band-aid job. "I fell against the coffee table earlier, but I'm okay." And I almost believe myself.
"Oh honey," and she's peeking underneath the bandages and I can tell she wasn't expecting such a bloody mess. "God Darrel, get over here and look at this. I think he needs stitches."
This ain't good. I already see Mom's features warping from a tender-loving-sympathy face into a what-the-hell-y'all-trying-to-pull-I-wasn't-born-yesterday face. I look to the guys, my eyes widening, alerting them to the potential Code Red situation we got on our hands.
With Dad now squatting down to give me his once-over, Mom stands up for some high pressure cross examination. And believe me, Perry Mason's got nothing on her. "He fell against the coffee table? Looks more like slammed against the coffee table to me. Have ya'll been wrestlin'? Darry how many times do I have to tell you not to be so rough?" Darry's just sitting there, actually letting her accuse him, but you can tell he's having to bite his tongue.
"Mom, Darry didn't.." but before I can defend him Darry's cutting me with his eyes so I know to stop while I'm ahead. And I guess this kind of trouble, of body slamming his little brother in the living room is better than the real trouble he's dodging. Better than Mom knowing how he let me join the action tonight after only barely begging him, how he yanked me by my t-shirt to pull me close so he could tell me exactly what to do before the first fist was thrown, who I could take and who to avoid, how he let me be a real member of the gang. "You gotta be confident. Don't worry 'bout takin' no hits Pony. You won't feel a thing. Pain don't kick in till later. So go in hard okay? You hear me? Don't be afraid." And I wasn't.
Mom's still raking Darry over the coals but kicking my balls in the process, "You've gotta be more careful with him, you're a football player, in a few weeks a college football player. Does it even register with you how skinny Pony is? Honey you could squash him like a mosquito."
Dad's looking at my cuts awfully suspicious, but only ends up patting my knee and telling Mom I'll be fine, that I don't need stitches, which works to calm her down. Darry escapes to his room.
I take the opportunity to change the subject. "What made y'all see Unsinkable Molly Brown anyway? I never pegged you as a musical kinda guy Dad." I would've chosen the new Hitchcock movie myself.
Dad collapses into his chair and something I've said has a wild grin breaking across his face. "You hear that hon? Pony don't even believe I'd sit through a musical." Mom shakes her head at him, tries to busy herself with something in her purse. They're both acting really weird, but that's nothing new. I wonder if Dad's hasn't had a couple drinks tonight. His head's thrown back in his chair and his hands are running over his face and then messing up his hair and now he really gets going. He reaches out and pulls Mom's arm so she easily falls into his lap. "What was your favorite part darlin'?"
"Darrel quit it," Mom says, her face pink but her lips trying to rein in a smile. Dad's hand wraps her waist and his other rubs up and down her thighs
"You know my favorite part? When that Titanic sank," and he feeds my mother a piece of popcorn and gives her a quick wink, "but that ol' gal Molly, she never did." And now he can hardly breathe from laughing and Soda and I just stare at them and I wonder how I got to be normal.
xXx
Toothpaste foam never makes for a tuff look. I wipe it off and hold my stance again in the bathroom mirror. Both my fists up, a jagged cut, the meanest face I can muster. I actually like what I see.
Mom's sudden and invasive goodnight kiss shatters the whole look, but in the privacy of my home, I guess that's alright.
I head to my room. Darry and Soda's door is cracked, but I don't think nothing of it while I pass by, never do. "Hey slugger," startles me, and I peer through at Darry sitting at his desk. He looks busy, but he reaches out his foot and nudges the door open to invite me in. I'm never invited in.
Soda's not around right now and it feels different being in here with just Darry. I hop on Soda's bed cause I'd never mess up Darry's and I sit Indian style, and silently watch Darry do what Darry does. Which isn't that much but it's still kinda interesting. I notice there's a designated place for everything when he straightens his desk, and when there's not, he simply tosses it onto Soda's junky desk, the pigsty where Soda never ever sits, but still refers to as his office.
Satisfied with his area, he can now give me his full attention. "So, how does it feel man, comin' off your first real fight?" When he smiles is when he looks most like Dad.
"I don't know, pretty good I guess." I shrug and try and play it cool.
"Well, from what I saw, you got nice form. And you were right ya know, you definitely got in some good hits Ponyboy." All I can do is smile back at him while his compliment rushes through me. "In fact, you got people talkin' tonight. Whole parkin' lot was buzzin' bout this new kid with the mean right." And I feel like I just now grew ten feet, like there's nobody or nothing I couldn't take on.
Soda floats in and flops on Darry's bed to join in our conversation. We haven't had a chance yet to go over everything that happened, so we rehash the details, about who gave it good and who got it good, how the whole mess started in the first place. And it seems it might actually be as fun for them to talk about as it is for me. I'm finally feeling like one of them.
"Soda, get off my bed if you're gonna pick your damn toes."
Soda stays where he is and continues the minor surgery he's got going on with his foot and Mom's tweezers. "I ain't pickin' my toes. Got a splinter."
"You think Mom believes us? I don't think Dad does." I wait for them to look worried but they don't at all.
"Course he don't," Soda says, with his face almost pressed against his foot, "aha..got it." He raises the tweezers in victory.
"Quit walkin' outside barefoot all the time moron." Darry hurls a jockstrap at Soda, barely missing his head, prompting Soda to rub his feet all over Darry's pillow in retaliation.
"You think he's gonna be real mad? Punish us?" I guess I'm carrying all the worry for them.
"Naw he won't care," Darry assures me, but I can remember the times when Dad got onto him for fighting.
"He sure got hot at you a few times over it."
"That was only during football season," Darry says from under the shirt he's pulling off. He and Soda are now both getting ready for bed, walking around each other, opening and shutting the same drawers, brushing shoulders, their paths crossing for the millionth time in their little room they share, a room of brotherly rituals.
Darry's sliding under the covers in his twin bed beside me, and his big arm reaches for the lamp. "Dad used to be a great boxer ya know. Like a real one. For the street leagues down in New Orleans."
"Yeah, I know," but I do always forget it. Forget that Dad used to be young once.
Darry digs out the tweezers that Soda left in his blanket and he tosses them in my vicinity, the dreaded tweezers he tore me apart with. "I feel bad for lyin' to Mom," I flat out confess. Palming the tweezers, I make a mental note to put them back with her brushes and perfume and makeup stuff, so she doesn't have to go searching for them.
"Oh don't you go feeling bad about that," Soda calls out from the floor, sorting through their dirty hamper, "cause Mom went and told a whopper of her own tonight." Darry and I watch our brother stand up and press his ear to the door, making sure the hall is clear before he comes over to leak some highly classified information. "That Sinking Molly Brown movie? They didn't go see that any more than I did." And I realize he's onto something, thinking back to how they were acting earlier. "I found their ticket stubs," and I wonder for a second if they fell out of Dad's wallet or Mom's purse, or if Soda went sneaking around.
"Why lie about that? What the hell did they see then?" Darry obviously wants him to get on with it already.
Soda leans forward, his detective eyebrow cocked to shoot, and he slowly annunciates the words without a voice so we have to read his lips, "The Carpetbaggers."
I throw my hands in the air cause now it all makes sense. It's just like Mom to not want us to know she'd even have an interest in some movie based off the book she herself called filthy, and Dad must've been teasing her over it. And suddenly my wave of guilt recedes like the ebb tide. A lie for a lie. It all works out in the end.
Dad gives a split-quick, sharp whistle from the doorway. "Hop up to bed Ponyboy, c'mon it's late," and I roll off the bed just as Soda rolls into it. Dad's so tall I can almost walk beneath where his elbow's propped against the wood frame, without hardly bending over. As I'm passing through he stops me by the shoulder and gets another look at the cut that now feels like it's pulsating heat. His fingers that lightly trace the outer lines of my torn skin feel nice and cool. "I'm sorry you got hurt babe," and then he warns me, "lights out and I mean it, no reading."
Dad still lingers in my brothers' door as I walk away, so I switch off my light but don't push my door entirely closed. I stand there and eavesdrop through the crack. He's walked fully into their room making it harder to hear him, so I really have to concentrate. "You two listen good. If y'all plan on gettin' him mixed up in all your little skirmishes, you're gonna have to look out for him better than you did tonight. That's your one and only job far as I'm concerned, lookin' out for each other. That kid's got two big brothers, so he shouldn't have to be lickin' no wounds like that one ever again, y'understand me?"
Both of their yessirs are reflex and rote, sounding more military than contrite. I feel bad cause they didn't do anything wrong. I'm the one who wasn't paying attention.
I'm relieved once Dad allows the strict to melt from his tone. "So...how'd he do?"
I imagine his eyes must be twinkling when Darry and Soda both start praising my fighting skills, but I bet they can't out-twinkle mine, while I listen to them in there telling my story, talking loudly over each other in their pride and enthusiasm, almost celebrating the fact their little brother is pretty damn tough.
And I ride straight to the moon on Dad's stamp of approval, "I always knew that skinny boy could scrap."
xXx
I fly on silent feet when I hear him coming, and act asleep when the door creaks on its hinges. I guess he walks in to make some sense of the blanket chaos that leaves most of my legs exposed. There's a whoosh of air when he gives the sheet a yank, and it floats mid-air a moment, slowly drifting to its smooth landing, barely wrapping my skin. It feels good and I guess it shows on my face.
"You ain't asleep," he accuses me in his lazy, late night voice made raspy from cigarettes, hard living and hard laughing, "you little liar." And I open one squinty eye and smile up at him, cause I can tell he's only teasing me, even though I really have been a little liar. He sits on my bed and starts tucking everything around me, tight just the way I like it.
"Dad, why don't you ever tell me your boxin' stories?" I sound raspy too, like him.
"Why didn't you tell me your boxin' story?" he fires back, and I didn't expect that. He laughs a little in his throat once he sees he's stumped me.
"Yeah," I say slow and long, "but I'm not really a true boxer." I try and blink the dark away.
"Me neither," he whispers, and wipes the hair off my forehead.
"But Darry says you used to be real good at it."
"Used to? That's what he said huh? Well remind me to whoop Darry's ass tomorrow." And he's standing up to go.
"How come you ain't mad at me?" I don't know why I'd ask. I should keep my mouth shut and be thankful I'm not getting tarred and feathered.
He stops and thinks it over, and standing in the pool of both shadow limbs and moonlight, he seems to exist between this world and some other.
"I guess I'm not mad 'cause I always want you to be okay. And cause I know I can't be around all the time. So it makes me feel better knowin' you can fight. I'd rather you be able to stand up for yourself than not." I swallow hard, and refuse to imagine a time when he's not around.
"Why don't you call yourself a boxer then?"
"Cause that was somethin' I used to do, was forced to do for money and it was a mean, mean life. You're too smart to be a boxer like I was. I just want you to be a guy who knows how to fight and who ain't afraid to." I look at him now and where Darry sees some hero prizefighter, I see someone who probably took a lot of painful, humiliating blows. I feel sorry for that boy.
"You gonna tell Mom? I know she ain't too big on secrets and...lies," and I accentuate the word lies and can't help the subtle dig i just took about their fabricated evening. I watch him closely, to see if he gives anything away. He remains steady.
"Not tonight I won't tell her. Prob'ly not anytime soon." He stands a little like Soda now, slouched with his hands in his pockets. "Sometimes a little white lie can keep the peace."
"I guess Mom's probably the one person who never told a lie, huh?"
He doesn't even stutter. "Yep. The one person," and he can't help but smile at all our untruths tonight. Or all the peace he's trying to keep. For me, for Mom, Darry, all of us. We're a family of little liars I guess. A family of secret keepers, scandalous movie-goers, purse snoopers and fist-throwing brawlers. I guess I'm okay with that. It only makes us more interesting.
A/N: the Outsiders by SE Hinton
Thanks for reading!