Life sucks right now and so does this chapter. Regardless...I hope you'll think otherwise and enjoy this one. Please?
It's the first time Pony's stepped foot in Sodapop's room since finding him on the verge of death. It's too painful a memory to the day he'd been so close to losing his brother. It hadn't been only Darry's wheezing chest cough that kept him from sleeping... it had also been this.
It's difficult for him to think that beyond the thin wall that divided him from an older brother, there was a filthy room trashed in every sense of the word. On the floor lay the drug paraphernalia he'd grown familiar in seeing: needles and spoons, rolling papers and prescription pill bottles. The carpet beneath him was torn, the sheets on the bed in disarray from when Darry had yanked Soda—motionless if it hadn't been for his chest heaving as he struggled for air—from underneath them.
And it's that lingering aura from the horror of the event that's got shockwaves running through Pony's body for the second time, legs struggling to hold the weight of his body too weak to make more than a few steps. His chest tightens and what follows is his lungs coming to a sudden freeze. It's as if the oxygen in this room is no more. But the adrenaline is coursing faster than light speed and he doesn't think he'll need it. The atmosphere around him is suffocating and whatever's keeping him going without clasping is a godsend, searching and searching for something to prove that the retreat Sodapop Curtis had built in this tiny home couldn't be real.
But just when the demons are about to run him out is when he sees the golden crucifix on a chain hanging from the nightstand, the same place where tracks of cocaine and a plastic straw remain—the kind of devastation that had struck this family harder than any bolt of lighting could. Soda wore that chain around his neck since the very day mom had placed it in his once tiny hands. Except now, trapped within the walls of the psych ward, wilting like a rose from the inside out.
And suddenly, it made just a little more sense to the boy standing in awe, tears welling in his eyes as they did so often these days for the same reason: his goddamned brother. His lungs choke on the stale air that smells like Soda and just like on the day he'd overdosed, Pony can't breathe. He falls backward onto the bed as sobs wrack through his body and a guttural cry escapes from deep within. So much for keeping himself together in the wake of two brothers in their shape—physically and mentally incapable to the point they'd shattered as quickly as glass.
Pony convinced he's in his lonesome until hearing his brother's harsh coughs from the doorway. He turns and stares through clouded sight to see Darry in nothing more than flannel pants, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. "Pony? What's goin' on?" Darry croaks, half-shut eyes scanning but still confused. And he couldn't have looked more small, shivering and out of wits.
Darry's about to proceed further into the room when his little brother intersects at the doorway too soon, pushing him to the halls before the sight does damage. Pony wipes his tears with the sleeve, but it doesn't mean the evidence is gone. "Nothing's goin' on. Let's get you back to bed; you're in no condition to be up and movin'."
"But you're cryin'," and to prove it, he wipes a lone tear slipping from his eye. "I heard it from the bedroom and—"
Pony speaks more firmly the next time he speaks, sighing heavily. "This ain't the time to worry about me. You're way in over your head," and when the green-eyed brother leads Darry back to where he belongs, he's disturbed to find no protest, no fight in a guy who had only so much.
As soon as Darry's settled back into bed it seems his lids are too heavy to keep hoisted. He's surrendered to the fight against sleep and before Pony knows it, the opening to his icy blues is no more. And though his breathing softens to a peaceful rhythm he's still whispering to the eldest brother, more to comfort himself than the sick brother before him.
"You're okay. It's just the flu. And if it ain't, I'll call the doc to check you out," Pony's telling himself as he keeps over in vigil. Frustration warms over him to remember he's missing another day of university, but it must've been a duty to keep his brother from declining when he couldn't do it for himself. In deep thought, he remembers the chain in Soda's room in his pocket and sets it on the nightstand. 'Cause if it hadn't meant a thing to him, then with chance it could save this brother.
Time drags from seconds into minutes and soon, the colors of the sky are ebbing away to black as the moon settles into the sun's place. The pale glow that comes radiates through the windows—shining against a pair of brothers longing for peace from a war that had made devastation to their little family.
Moments after one brother goes down it's the other that inevitably follows. As the green-eyed boy succumbs into unconsciousness, little do they or Two-Bit crashed on the couch know that in the reality they've neglected there's a man named Steve Randle stumbling in the driveway vomiting into some bushes, lost in the same town in where he'd been born and raised.
The barn house was as chilly as the outdoors now that nighttime had swooped in and beyond these walls was one hell of a storm, the only suggestion of its existence being the racket of rain hammering at the walls and the occasional clap of thunder. But it's all warmth for Bonnie as she sits at the old fireplace with him in her arms—dead to the world having had drifted to sleep midway into storytime.
But if there was one thing lacking in this home it had been an impression of belonging, and so she'd be off to the commune the next morning just early enough when everyone was in slumber and the blazing sun hadn't yet risen.
Though in desperate need of a hit, Bonnie couldn't find it in herself to bring a single gram into the home. She wasn't about to take the entire family down with her and heaven forbid if the youngins of the family knew what she was doing once she was so often out and about. But she could feel it in deep in her aching bones that withdrawal was closing in, and that there wouldn't be release in shooting up, but at least it wouldn't get her so sick that she'd risk death...she'd already seen it once at the commune.
Bonnie's eyes sag but she's sleepless, stroking at David's black locks—the very kind of hair that defined the members of the Perez family. There's no place finding rest here, not when thinking that no matter dead or alive that the devil was coming for her. He'd restlessly wander through the halls, waiting for the perfect moment where she was most vulnerable at a time where no one could watch.
And when she could fall asleep the memories of him were resurrected from the dead, and many nights from Bonnie's room came forth the screams that fear had silenced countless times in the past. Waking up didn't mean there would be peace, yanking her back to reality with a body sticky in sweat and a set of lungs panting for a breath. But the worst part of the process had to have been the helpless look on aunt Marge's face before black dots undertook her sight.
Shortly after Minnie had been hospitalized, Aunt Marge came to sleep with her to chase those nightmares away—in her own words. And to this day, Bonnie doesn't think she knows what miracle it had done. 'Cause she'd also chased the devil away without knowing, so as long as she'd lingered through the night.
It's half past midnight and Roy is still there at there at her side, staring at the black and white fourteen-inch television. Conversations were easygoing until they'd touched on the topic of middle brother William, who'd come home from 'Nam in less than one piece. Bonnie didn't know the details but that both legs were gone below the knees, and with him bound to a wheelchair he'd settled down with his wife in Tulsa, living in what seemed like a divide from the rest of world. But she understood them more than anyone else in the family.
"You've heard from Will recently?" Bonnie whispers into the space heated by the glow of the fireplace, careful as to not throw her brother out of a kind of sleep so serene.
It takes a moment but in the end, her brother's deep-toned voice comes to surface as his gaze drops from the TV to his lap. "No Bon, not in awhile. All I know is that he's at his house with the wife. Poor woman ain't taking it too well, him comin' home from 'Nam without legs and all."
"Yeah, that's what I figured. I just don't remember the last time he's been in this home..." Bonnie laments, remembering the chill that went down her spine when she'd expected a fully intact brother to come home and instead being greeted with the one in that wheelchair, scarred for the rest of his life in more ways than one.
Roy shoots a strange look, his eyebrows furrowing before raising his voice to speak. "Hey, I don't remember the last time you step foot in his home before you got jumped."
"Shh. You'll wake David up if you're talkin' too loud," she fires back as soon as he's finished, catching a breath before she has the chance to lose control. " I know, Roy. It just ain't very welcoming here when you're a filthy junkie like me. The commune is where it's at and that's the way it is."
"I ain't denying that, Bonnie. It's your right but David told me he's been missing you. We all miss you 'round here. And you ain't filthy so stop with the bullshit."
"I'm sorry, Bubba. I just can't stay here. You know Sodapop? He's been in the psych ward at Tulsa General ever since he came out of that coma. I've got business to do outside these walls to pay for the bills, too."
"You know, I don't forget it when anyone mentions somethin' about a psych ward. Mama was always in and out..." He gives her shoulder a squeeze at the thought of their mother, those same brown eyes as hers all of a sudden dismayed. "So, when you leavin' at? Givin' us time to say goodbye this time?"
"I was thinkin' this mornin' at six," Bonnie admits, shrugging as she seeks to avoid the look of a brother that was must've been chagrined. "They're expecting me soon and I have to make a visit to Soda one of these days."
But he knew that it had been part of her nature—that no words could change whatever had been settled within her stubborn mind. And in the following moment of silence is when the outcries of a hungry baby come blaring from the tiny nursery, putting an end to a conversation he'd knew would go nowhere in particular. "Alright, I see how it is. Well, I think you should get to bed in the meanwhile. You feelin' okay?"
The words that spill from Bonnie's mouth are quick when she spills the fattest lie she's told in a while: "I'm doin' just fine. Now please get Paige to stop her crying 'cause my head's pounding."
The will to respond doesn't come to Roy as he comes to his feet, and before he makes a stride towards the halls is when his head spins to give the final stare—eyes as painful as knives when those darkened landing on his sister. And from one moment to the next, she's got the impression he knows the truth all too well. But there's no way there'll be a thing all right until Bonnie is on the road watching as the barn house vanishes from the rearview mirror; this fucking blessing and a curse of a home.
Thank you so much for reading! It means a lot you'd take time out of your life to read what write—what I pour my heart into :)