Chapter 8

"DX." Pony answered the phone. "Oh hi Mrs. Randall. No it's Ponyboy." He looked out toward the garage where Steve was working on a car. "Yes he's right here, hold on a moment." Pony covered the phone before hollering out to the garage. "Steve! Your mom's on the phone. She wants to talk to you."

"What does she want?" He called back.

"To talk to you."

Steve rolled his eyes under the hood of the car. "Tell her I gotta talk to her later. I'm right in the middle of this and if I stop I gotta start over."

"Mrs. Randall? He says he has to talk to you later. He's right in the middle of something." He listened then moved the phone aside again. "She says you have to come by the house and get Evie's graduation present for her and she needs you to look at the washing machine. It's not running right."

"Great." Steve mumbled. "Tell her I'll come by this weekend."

"He says he'll come by this weekend." Pony listened as a grin crossed his face. "She says she spent so many years doing laundry for you the least you could do is come by tonight and look at it because she's got a lot of wash to do."

"Tell her I can't. Soda's coming home tonight."

"He says tonight's not a good night Mrs. Randall." Pony laughed as he listened to what she told him. "She said she spent eighteen hours in labor with you and then eighteen years doing your laundry, cooking your meals and taking care of your sorry butt so you better come by for at least eighteen minutes pretending to care if she has a functioning washing machine." Pony was cracking up.

"Okay, okay. I'll come by. After work. But only for a few minutes."

Steve pulled up to the corner of Pony's street to let him walk the three house home while he ran back to his house. As soon as Pony came around the corner he saw Soda's car sitting out front and he ran home. "Soda? Darry?" He yelled as he bolted through the front door.

"Hey!" Darry called to him as he walked out of the kitchen and put him in a headlock.

"Dar let me go!" Pony laughed. "Where's Soda? How is he? What happened? How did it go? What did Sandy say? When did you get back?"

"Whoa Pony! Settle down. Soda's asleep. He drove most of the way home and most of last night. I don't think he could sleep so right now he's beat. We got back about two hours ago. Figured we'd wait to call you and let him take a nap. But to answer everything else. I think it went well. They talked. A lot. And I gotta tell you, that is one cute kid." He grinned.

"But Soda's okay?"

"Yeah, I think he is." Darry nodded. "How are you? How did it go working with Steve and staying by yourself and all?"

"Oh fine. Steve and I actually got along. He even taught me how to change oil and some other stuff. He figures if I work for them this summer, they can do twice as much maintenance with Soda just working on cars instead of trying to do that and work the pumps. He even said they were going to pay me under the table."

"Good. I'm glad it went okay. Where is he? And where's Two-Bit? Those two did stay out of trouble right?"

Pony laughed. "Yeah. Everybody is fine. Steve had to go home and do something for his mom. He'll be back soon. I don't know where Two-Bit is, I haven't seen him all day."

"So are you going to tell us or what?" Two-Bit blurted out, tired of waiting for Soda to talk about the trip.

"Okay, okay." He sat down with his plate of spaghetti as everybody else finished getting theirs. "So we went, I saw her and we talked." He took a big bite of food and just chewed as everyone stared at him.

"And?" Steve demanded as Darry, Soda and Evie laughed.

"Oh you want more than that?" Soda teased, trying to look all innocent.

"Yes!" Steve was getting impatient.

"Okay. I guess I should start at the beginning. Yes, Lucas is mine. And no Sandy didn't cheat on me."

"So she says." Steve grumbled under his breath, but everybody heard him anyway.

"She didn't cheat on me. Now are you gonna listen or you gonna be an ass."

"Probably be an ass." Two-Bit joked.

Soda ignored Two-Bit and just stared at Steve till he mumbled a "Sorry."

Soda explained the whole story to them. How Sandy didn't want to tell him then with Pony and Johnny missing and all. So she told her mother. Who told her father. Who hated Soda for being a greaser and getting his daughter pregnant. The last thing Sandy's father wanted was for her teenage daughter to drop out of high school and marry a greaser. How she was better than that. So his plan was to send her to Florida to his parents. And unfortunately her grandfather agreed with her father on everything. That's what happened to all the letters he sent her. Her grandfather got a hold of them and sent them back.

"But why did she lie to you? Why didn't she ever try and get a hold of you?" Pony asked him.

"Her father made her lie. Said if she tried to tell me the truth, he'd kick her out and her grandparents wouldn't take her in either. And then he told her that there would be no way the state would let her keep that baby. Especially since the state was already threatening to put you and me in boys homes then.

"So she felt like she didn't have any choices. Her mom told her if she lied to me and told me it was somebody else's then I'd be so mad at her I wouldn't want anything to do with her and then she wouldn't have to worry about me trying to track her down."

"Wow." Evie said. "And I thought my dad was an ass at times."

Pony nodded. "So what are you doing now?"

Soda shrugged. "I don't know exactly. We're gonna talk. A lot. See what happens."

"Is she gonna come back here to Tulsa?"

"I don't know. I'd like her too. We still gotta work some stuff out."

They talked for awhile longer. Soda told them all about Lucas. About how the picture Evie had gotten was from when he was nine months old. How he had just turned one and was a holy terror. He showed them some of the pictures that Sandy had given him too. He told them how her grandmother never liked what the rest of her family was doing to her. And how she suggested they get Sandy a post office box so Soda could send her letters there instead of to the house.

"He really is cute Soda." Evie said, looking at the pictures.

"Yeah he is." Soda grinned.

"I still can't believe you got a kid." Pony said shaking his head. "Hey wow that makes me an uncle." He suddenly realized.

"Yeah, I guess it does." Soda smiled at him.

Evie stood up. "Okay, I gotta go home." She told Steve. "I have to work again tomorrow."

"You got a job? Where?" Soda asked.

"The diner." She told him bluntly. "I work breakfast and lunch. So I need to go home. I have to get up early."

"That's great Sandy. Congratulation."

"Thanks." She got her purse and waited for Steve. "I'll see you guys tomorrow."

Everyone said goodbye to her. Steve ran up to his apartment for a moment and Evie went to wait on the front porch for him to drive her home. Soda followed her out on the porch. "Hey Evie?"

"Yeah?"

"Listen, I just wanted to say thanks. For everything. If it hadn't been for you, I never would have known all this stuff. And I'm real glad I know it. So thanks. Especially considering I know Steve didn't want you telling me and what that was doing to you guys. So really, thank you. A lot." He leaned in and hugged her before giving her a quick kiss on the cheek.

"You're welcome. And I'm glad it's working out okay. I was real worried I was ruining your life or something."

"Nope. You might have just made it a whole lot better." He smiled at her and walked in the house as Steve come out to the porch.

"You ready baby?" He asked, leading her to the car to take her home.

Steve took Evie home and came back to the house. He grabbed the book off the front seat of the car and walked into the house. Pony was sitting in the dark watching TV. "Hey. Where is everyone?"

"Two-Bit left and Darry and Soda went to bed." He answered. "Hey Steve?" Pony looked up at him. "Did you, um…"

"Ask Evie? No. Not yet. I figured I'd wait till this weekend sometime. I don't know. She's still acting weird. I don't know what I'm doing."

"Oh. I was just wondering."

"Hey, do me a favor and don't mention it to Soda. I just don't want him finding out that I sorta told you first before him. You know?"

"Yeah, I understand." Pony smiled up at him. "No problem."

"Thanks. Oh, here." He handed Pony the book he was holding. "Thought you might want to look at some of that."

"Oh wow, thanks Steve." Pony flipped through the book on car repair.

"Yeah well, figured you'd be able to understand it. I read when I was like fourteen. I understood what they were trying to say, just not the way they wrote it out. Figured you'd be able to understand it some. Then you could do some more stuff this summer. You know, instead of just pumping gas."

"Wow Steve, thanks. That's really cool of you. Where'd you get this?"

"Believe it or not, my dad. Christmas when I was thirteen. He was having me help him a lot on his car, realized I knew what I was doing and figured I'd like it." He shrugged. "One of the few cool things I ever remember him doing for me. But anyway I figured you could look through it for the summer."

"Thanks. Hey Steve? I'm uh real glad we're getting along better."

"Yeah, me too. I know Soda is."

"Yeah." Pony let out a little laugh. "He is I think. He was real glad to hear how good it went while he was gone. And me working there all summer."

"Yeah well now that you sorta got your own life and aren't always tagging along with us, not to mention you're not such a whiney little kid anymore," Steve teased him, "you're okay I guess."

"I was never a whiney little kid!"

"Whatever. I'm going to bed. I gotta drive Evie to the diner before work tomorrow, so make sure Soda's up and you guys are gonna have to ride together."

"Okay. Good night."