All the Pieces of You
-Sodapop-
Everything is wet. Everything is always wet in the trenches. Sometimes it's raining, sometimes it's just humid, sometimes it's blood.
I read letters from Brooklyn, Darry, and Ponyboy sitting in the least muddy spots I can find. Steve and I take turns sleeping when we can, our heads resting on each other's shoulders.
I pop my head over the edge of the trench and I shoot my gun. I try real hard not to pay attention where the bullets land. One time when I stand up, I take a bullet graze on my shoulder. Steve rips his undershirt and wraps it around my shoulder before anyone can notice I'm bleeding.
Steve takes a bullet in his arm one night. It's a through and through, meaning the bullet didn't stop in his arm. I wrap it for him and press both of my hands on it. If you get shot, you want it to stop bleeding if you can manage it. If it gets dirty in a trench, you're done for most of the time.
"I don't know how Dally did this," Steve says, his face white even though I'm being as gentle as I can be.
Me and Steve, we hate the trenches. But we hate being out of them even more. At least in the trenches, you can duck when you need to.
When we have to go into the jungle, we see men fall into hidden booby traps. They fall in pits and land on tree branches sharpened into spikes. And we can't stop. We aren't allowed to stop and try to save them.
I want to throw up, listening to them scream, but instead I pick flowers to send to Brookie when we stop to rest.
The other soldiers call me 'Pretty Boy'. Only Steve calls me Sodapop.
We see terrible things, and we do terrible things, and we have terrible rules that we have to follow. We're never supposed to go back for someone, no matter what. But when Steve's boots get stuck in that stupid mud, I don't even have a choice.
Of course I run back for him. I pull him loose. We run, and I'm still holding onto his sleeve. I'm not paying attention—I'm just trying to get us away from the bullets all around us. Steve is, though. He always is. It's why he was so good with cars, back home.
"Watch it, Sodapop," he says, jerking his arm so that I have to follow, since I have his sleeve.
There's a noise louder than the gunshots. Fire, I can smell it, and skin burning. For a second, it makes me think of Johnny and his poor burned, broken back. Steve's white face with his eyes nearly bugging out of it is the last thing I see before everything is black.
I didn't think I would ever stop dreaming about the war. It happened every night. After a few months, my waking up in the middle of the night all the time didn't even bother Brooklyn anymore.
I couldn't blame her. The same thing happened with Pony's nightmares after Johnny and Dallas died. He probably had them for a full year after, but after a couple of months, his waking up didn't bother me anymore at night.
It was weird, though. Johnny and Dally had been dead for four years. Steve and I had spent two years in Vietnam together, and Steve would be gone for two more. Two-Bit had somehow graduated high school. Pony was in college. I had married Brookie. Everything was different, but so much still felt the same.
"Well, it should," Brooklyn said when I told her it still feels the same. She kissed my cheek. Her hair was messy because she had just woken up. "Home should feel the same."
I got what she meant. I've never been real good with words, like Ponyboy. I didn't know how to put it to tell anyone how weird it felt.
But mostly I was just happy to be back. It felt so good to be in a place where fighting was for fun, not for your life.
"Man, it ain't fair that you got a robot leg," Two-Bit said when I pinned him one day after he jumped on my back. I think I hurt him a little, even though he had the same crooked smile that he always had. I didn't mean to, but I had knocked him down hard.
I think there's some saying about old habits.
"Why?" I asked, trying to laugh and calm down. When Two-Bit jumped on me, it scared me something awful. I think it actually made me think I was still in the war for a second. "It doesn't make me stronger."
It was really kind of annoying having to take the time to put the leg on every day. You really don't realize how important your legs are until you only have one and a half.
Two-Bit rolled himself and used his weight to flip me before he sat on my chest. I didn't know what it was with Two-Bit and sitting on people. If you were wrestling with Two-Bit, he would just sit on you once he had you pinned.
"Aaaaand," he said, like I hadn't even said anything earlier, "it hurts like the dickens when it hits you in the shin."
"Really? 'Cause I didn't feel a thing."
"Plus that damn thing is colder than ice, with all the metal in it."
"Y'know, Brooklyn never complains about it."
I had got him there. His face turned red and he started to hit me around my head. I put my hands up to protect myself, but I was laughing hard while he was complaining.
"Soda," he griped. "Too far! I do not need my innocent ears tainted with this talk. Brooklyn is practically my little sister, she spent so much time at my house growin' up. I'm saying this for myself and Dallas, who is probably rolling in his grave—shut the hell up."
I was still laughing while Two-Bit made a face like he was about to throw up.
"Man, so you don't take it off?" He asked, but then he shook his head so hard his hair went all out of place. "No, don't answer that. I don't wanna know. I don't know why I asked. I should've known this day was comin', one where I hear too much about Brookie. You and this damn thing you've always had for her."
Two-Bit shook his head again and got off of me. I stayed on the floor, rolling from my back to my stomach. I watched him go into my kitchen and take a beer out of the icebox. He kept that there for himself, same as he always did at my old house.
"Always?" I asked. Two-Bit used the edge of the counter to crack his beer open.
"Okay, since she was thirteen, I reckon. Now, I ain't good at math—my name's not Ponyboy, after all—but let me see if I can get this right. If you liked her since she was thirteen, and she's nineteen now, that there is six years. But you didn't start datin' her until she was fifteen, so that's two years where you was absolutely clueless."
He held a hand out to me. When I took it, he lifted me from the floor.
"I didn't know I was so clueless."
"Well, that right there is what makes you clueless, dumbass."
"Okay, so tell me more," I told him. "Tell me what a dumbass I was."
Two-Bit jerked his head toward the back door. I followed him out and sat on the back steps with him.
"Alright, so for two years, we all knew. We saw you around her, how you looked at her. We knew you had a crush on her."
I shrugged. I mean, Two-Bit was right. I just hadn't ever told Brooklyn about all that. I always thought she was pretty, and funny. I liked her red-gold hair. I liked her bright eyes. I liked the way she talked, because it was a mix of New York and Oklahoma accents, and nobody else talked the way she did. But the beating I'm sure Dallas would have given me kept me away from her.
"When you started dating that Sandy broad instead, I had to give Tim Shepard five bucks, by the way. You being an idiot cost me actual, American money."
Two-Bit punched me in the shoulder.
"Okay, but wait. Would you have dated Dallas' little sister?"
I reckon I was the world's biggest idiot from the look Two-Bit gave me then.
"Well, you up and married her. But no, I wouldn't've. I liked being alive then and I like being alive now. Reckon things still would have turned out the way they did if Dally hadn't died?"
I looked across the yard to next door, where Brooklyn was hanging up laundry for her aunt while Dulce played in the yard. Dolly was pregnant, and it was making her sicker than a dog, so Brooklyn was helping when she could.
"I dunno, man. Brookie thinks he was always gonna die, somehow." I thought about the day Brooklyn had told me about her mom killing herself. I didn't mention it to Two-Bit, though. That wasn't something you said for someone else.
Two-Bit picked up a rock and tossed it across the yard.
"Yeah. He was too angry, y'know? I mean, I miss him, even if he was mean, but I get what she means." Two-Bit laughed, but it sounded funny. "One time Pony told me that we should've known, because Dally was all fire, and fires always burn themselves out after a while."
See, that's what I mean about how Ponyboy was so good with putting things into words. That made perfect sense. Sometimes I wished Pony could just read my thoughts and say things for me.
"Never expected little Johnny to go, though." Two-Bit threw another rock. "What with the way we were all watchin' out for him. I guess we would all make horrible babysitters, huh?"
"I don't reckon any mother in her right mind would have hired us hoods, anyway."
"That baby would've had great switch-blade skills, man."
I had gotten so busy talking to Two-Bit that I didn't notice Brookie finish hanging up the washing and come back home. Not until she opened the back door a little and squeezed through so she wouldn't hit us.
"Did you drink my last root beer again?" She asked. Brookie drank root beer the way Pony drank Pepsi. Which was all the time.
"You're accusin' the wrong man sitting on this back porch, Brookie." I pulled her down to sit in my lap and she glared at Two-Bit.
"You gave it to this deplorable member of society? Some husband you are. I'm divorcin' you."
Two-Bit let out a low whistle. "That's cold. Rehome him at least, like they do with pets. We can put a personal ad in the paper."
"Twenty-year-old Vietnam War veteran. Devastatingly handsome. One and a half legs. Will give away the things that make you happy to his no-good friends. How much do you reckon that'll cost, Two-Bit?"
"Gotta call Pony for that one. I ain't about to do math. I left that behind when they forced me to graduate."
Brooklyn ran her hands through my hair. It had grown out a little from the short cut the army made everyone get, but it still wasn't long enough to grease.
"I dunno, on second thought, maybe I'll keep him. He is pretty dang cute."
All three of us sat on the porch while the sunset. Pony would have loved it. I was itching for summer to come, so my baby brother would be home all the time, not just on some weekends.
And I was itching for two more years to be done already, because every time things got too nice or happy, my mind went right back to the fighting. All because Steve was there.
It didn't feel right that I should be sitting safe with my wife on my lap and a friend so good that he was really more of a brother by my side while Steve could die.
