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It was now the beginning of summer of the year 1969 which meant that all three of her boys were going to be home for the next three months enjoying their time off from school. After getting the mail and heading back inside to the living room, Linda Curtis smiled when she saw that a letter had arrived from her younger sister Catherine. She and her family were living in Canada and the long distance relationship Linda now had with her sister pained her because they had always been very close. Unfortunately, she had barely seen Catherine over the past five years. Catherine and her husband Rick as well as their two daughters Tanya and Michelle would travel to Tulsa one week out of the year. They had offered to fly the five of them to Canada for a vacation but Linda and Darryl just weren't able to find the time.
After opening the letter, Linda sat down in the living room and began to read what her sister had sent her. After a few minutes, Darryl walked into the room and saw his wife now smiling down at the letter she had finished reading. She had an odd look of relief on her face.
"Is that from your sister?" He asked.
"Yes."
"What'd she say? Would they willing to take them in?"
"She said she'd be more than happy to do it."
Now filled with relief as well, Darryl exhaled heavily before smiling at his wife. There was only one thing left to do. They had to talk to their kids about this.
"So, should we talk to the boys before or after dinner?" Linda asked.
"After."
Linda agreed, better they all have a nice meal first. She was dreading this talk but they had to tell them. She made sure to cook something she knew Darry, Sodapop, and Ponyboy all liked which was spaghetti with meatballs. The Curtis parents treated this like it was just any other dinner because at the end of the day it was. What they needed to talk to them about couldn't happen any time soon but even the slightest possibility of it happening worried Linda to no end. Soda was the first one finished, he asked if he could be excused because he was going to meet up with Steve.
"Actually, we need to talk to you boys about something," Darryl said which stopped his second born from getting up. "It's actually something pretty important."
The three of them looked at each other before looking back at their parents. From the looks on Darryl and Linda's faces they knew that their father was serious about what he had just said.
"What's going on?" Soda questioned. They rarely ever had serious talks. His mind immediately went to the worst when he remembered his Dad telling them all about Grampa Joe...someone must have died.
"Well...it's about...what's been going on in Vietnam," Linda stated. "You know all know about...the draft."
"What about it?" Ponyboy asked, now seeming a little nervous. "We're too young to be drafted."
"Yes, at the moment you are. But this war has been going on for years now and we have no idea when it's going to end."
Darryl then cleared his throat as he took over from his wife.
"Your mother has been talking with your Aunt Catherine. We need to let you boys know that if worse comes to worse, if any of you three should get a draft notice, you're going up to Canada to live with her and her family."
All three of them, even Darry were now wide-eyed. The seconds ticked by like minutes before Soda finally managed to ask;
"Really?"
"Yes. Look, we don't want you all to worry about this, we don't know if it will happen or not, but if it should that's where you'll be going. I'm not going to take the chance of losing one of you boys in some pointless damn war."
"But...what if Steve gets drafted?"
"Or Two-Bit?" Ponyboy added.
Linda looked at them sadly. This was why she didn't want to have to talk to them about this. They shouldn't have to worry about things like this. It probably never would have come up at all until three weeks ago when a woman Linda worked with at the hospital had been killed over in Vietnam. Both Darryl and Linda had disagreed strongly with what was going on, and for the life of them couldn't understand how this war kept going on for so long. Darry's last year of high school was coming up in the fall, Soda had three years left of school, Ponyboy had four years.
The grim reality that one of her sons getting drafted was starting to set in. Maybe more than one, maybe all three of them with the rate this war continued on. The thought made Linda's heart ache.
"I don't know honey," she finally answered honestly." That will be something their parents will have to figure out and decide on."
After she said that her husband began to speak again but at this point Linda was paying no attention to what anyone else was saying, she was too lost in her own thoughts. The boys then got up from the table and Darryl reached over and placed his hand over hers. Later on that night Linda sat on the edge of her bed, her mind still hazy when she suddenly felt two arms wrap around her waist.
"Hey, stop worrying," Darryl said as he maneuvered himself so that he was sitting behind her. He then kissed the back of her neck. "Our boys will be fine. One way or another they'll be fine."
Linda shook her head as she had to stop tears from welling up in her eyes.
"Darryl, I don't want them to have to leave Tulsa against their will. Much less move to a different country."
"Canada isn't that different from the United States. Please, don't worry yourself crazy over this, it won't do you any good." The two of them laid down next to each other on the bed. "Besides, Darry will be going to college. Ponyboy mostly likely will too. Sodapop is really the only one we've got to be concerned about. I don't think he would go to college even to avoid this."
Her husband was under the impression that if you went to college you couldn't be drafted, some other people thought the same, but Linda knew that technically, men who had held college or other deferments were still eligible for induction until age thirty-five. Since few men between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-five were ever drafted however, men who were able to maintain a college deferment until their twenty-sixth birthday could avoid service. Darry and Ponyboy were not out of the danger of being drafted, but Linda didn't want to tell Darryl this. The last thing she wanted to do was take away any type of comfort he had.
"Okay," Linda agreed as she turned around so she was facing Darryl. "Let's not talk about this anymore. You're right, there's no sense of us worrying ourselves to death until we actually have something to worry about. We'll tell the kids not to worry or talk about anymore."
"I already did," Darryl said before laughing a little. "That was the last thing I said to them at the dinner table, remember?"
That must have been when Linda had tuned out.
"I guess I'm just tired," Linda lied.
It wasn't until the day of January 23rd in 1973, as the Vietnam War drew to a close, the Selective Service announced that there would be no further draft calls. The Curtis family had been lucky; Darry, Sodapop, or Ponyboy ever did get sent a draft notice. Linda no longer had to walk around with a knot in her stomach.
After that day, Linda could finally start to sleep better at night.
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Author's note;
At the very beginning of this story, if anyone ever wondered why I changed the year to 1969 when the actual Outsiders book/movie took place in either 1963 or 1964 was so the Curtis brothers and the rest of the gang would have a better or easier chance of avoiding the Vietnam War draft.
