4. Sodapop
My brothers scare me sometimes.
Not in the way that Johnny and Steve fear their dads, of course.
No, Darry and Pony scare me because they don't need me in the same way I need them. Sure, Pony has always worshiped the ground I walk on, preening and glowing whenever someone asks if he's Sodapop Curtis's little brother.
But I know those days are numbered, even if Pony would insist otherwise. See, my brothers had been born with something that I don't have. I can't quite label it or explain it. It's not intelligence—I know deep down that I'm nearly as smart as both of them, even though school had been rough for me.
It's just—I know they're both going big places just as sure as I know that I'm destined to stay in Tulsa for the rest of my life, working at a gas station or a grocery store or a bar.
It might not have been so bad if Mom and Dad hadn't died. I could've stayed with them in our rundown, comfortable house on the east side, maybe marrying Sandy one day and raising a family in that same house, with my parents around as doting grandparents. But they're gone now, and I sometimes feel this sense of urgency when I look at my brothers, as though I'm looking at an hourglass with the sand running out. Especially on the days when Darry and Ponyboy don't get along, which are growing more and more frequent since Mom and Dad died.
Maybe potential is the right word. That's what the college scout had said to our dad about Darry, after watching him play as a linebacker on the high school football team.
"He's got lots of potential, Mr. Curtis. Mark my words, your boy is going to be scouted by every school in the tristate."
Or Pony's teachers, coming by the house to say that he needed to be moved up a grade. "We just want to keep Ponyboy challenged, so we don't let his potential go to waste…"
No one has ever said something like that about me.
I know my talents don't compare with my brothers. Sure, I've been one of the most popular kids at school and in the neighborhood my whole life. Sure, I'm tough as nails and have never lost in a fight. Sure, girls always come by the DX looking for me. Sure, I can make almost anyone smile and laugh.
But in the long run, none of that is going to get me very far.
Darry, on the other hand, is smart and disciplined and practical. He's been talking about going to trade school to become an electrician and owning his own business one day. I can perfectly imagine Darry moving down to Dallas in five or ten years, marrying a nice middle-class girl, and buying a big house in the suburbs.
And Ponyboy…well, with his combined grades and talent at track, Ponyboy could go anywhere and become anything. Maybe he'll get a scholarship to attend school in Los Angeles or New York or Chicago. Maybe he'll lose his Oklahoma drawl and become a lawyer or a journalist or a literature professor, and he'll fly down to Tulsa once a year to visit me and call Darry once a year on Christmas, and that'll be it.
I'll be all alone.
And that's the rub, isn't it? I don't mind the gas station. Hell, maybe Steve and I could even open up our own gas station one day. And Two-Bit and Johnny and Dally probably aren't headed out of town, unless Dally gets shipped off to a federal supermax prison someday. They're all greasers through and through, and they'll stay on the east side of Tulsa with me.
But my parents are gone, and I won't have my brothers.
And that terrifies me.
So I reluctantly play the middleman, going back and forth between my brothers and trying to keep the peace. I try to reason with Darry, to tell him to ease up, to explain that his worry for Pony is coming out like anger. I try to remind Pony that Darry's only twenty and he's new to this whole thing, and that if he could just look beyond the veil of Darry's sharp tone and see the true emotion behind it, they'd get along much better.
But for two smart people, my brothers are awfully dumb sometimes.
And it doesn't take much for things to boil over. For example, I come home from work one day to find Ponyboy sitting at the couch and furiously scribbling in his notepad, a deep scowl marring his features.
"Heya, Pone. How's it going?" I ask, flopping on the couch next to him.
I can tell right away that he's in a bad mood, because instead of scooting closer to me and cuddling up under my arm like usual, he scoots in the opposite direction, not looking up from his work.
"Fine," Pony mutters, erasing a word and rewriting it, pressing his pencil into the paper like it's insulted him.
"Hey, you okay, kiddo?" I ask, ruffling his hair curiously.
Pony looks over at me for a second. I can see his resolve waver, and he opens his mouth like he wants to get something off his chest. I lean forward, eager to hear what's bothering my brother so I can help fix it. Ponyboy seems to think better of confiding in me, however, because he gives a little shake of his head.
"I'm fine," he sighs. "Just have a headache and lots of homework. How are you?"
His smile looks forced. I want to keep pestering him until he tells me what's wrong, but I bite my tongue. I know that kind of stuff doesn't work on Ponyboy. He thinks and feels things differently than Darry and I.
"I'm good, Pone," I say. "You want me to grab you some aspirin?"
"I just took some a little bit ago," Pony admits, and he must really be feeling awful, because he's always sneaking aspirin without confessing that he's hurt or sick. "I'll be okay; I just need to concentrate on getting this done."
I mime zipping my lips and throwing away the key, which earns me a quick half-smile. I relax onto the cushion next to him and turn on the TV, flipping through the channels until I find an episode of Bonanza.
After an hour or so, I get up and make dinner, leaving a plate out for Darry to eat later. Ponyboy takes a quick break to listlessly pick at some food, and then he goes right back to scribbling in his notebook, looking real tired and miserable.
"Anything I can do to help, buddy?" I ask. "It seems like your fingers will fall off if you keep going at that rate."
Ponyboy shakes his head. "No offense, Soda, but my handwriting without any fingers would probably still be better than your best printing."
I chuckle. "Hey, I'll have you know that the ladies love these fingers." I lewdly wiggle my eyebrows.
Ponyboy grimaces and turns pink. "Ew, Soda!"
"I was just talking about fixing ladies' cars for them, Ponyboy; get your head out of the gutter!"
Ponyboy rolls his eyes and smacks me on the arm. It's good to see him acting more like his usual self.
Of course, this is the moment that Darry chooses to walk inside, clutching a letter in his hands and looking like he's about half a second away from imploding.
"Hi, Dar," I say cheerfully, trying to head off any sort of conflict.
"Hi," Darry says shortly. Then he turns to Ponyboy. "We need to talk." He waves the paper in Ponyboy's direction.
My stomach sinks. I can already feel the tension in the room ratcheting up, like the air before a summer thunderstorm.
"Okay," Ponyboy shrugs, a defiant glint appearing in his eyes. "Talk."
Darry raises an eyebrow, as if acknowledging Ponyboy's challenge and resolving to beat it.
"Your midterm grades came in the mail today. You have an F in history."
I'm surprised by this information, because Pony has never even come close to failing a class in his life. Ponyboy doesn't seem surprised, though. "I have it handled, Darry," he says, speaking very formally and calmly, as though Darry is a distant relative or a teacher.
"Clearly you don't, if you're getting an F!" Darry's voice rises dangerously. "What the hell happened, Ponyboy?"
Pony picks at a thread on his t-shirt. Again, he seems slightly torn for a second, as though he wants to admit something, but he can't quite bring himself to do it.
"I lost my term paper before I could turn it in," Ponyboy finally says quietly, looking down at his lap.
Darry is silent for a beat. "You lost it? You mean to say that you did the work, but as usual, you were being irresponsible—"
"I don't know what you want from me!" Ponyboy snaps. "I can't go back and un-lose it; it's already done! But I'm not irresponsible—I talked to the teacher and he said that if I turn it in this week, he'll give me 75% of the credit back. I'm almost done rewriting it. I told you; I have it handled!"
"People with 75% grades on their report cards don't get scholarships, Pony!"
"I don't see why that's any of your business! You're not Mom and Dad!"
As soon as the words leave his mouth, Ponyboy's face goes white and Darry flinches like he's been slapped.
Our parents would be heartbroken to see Darry and Pony facing off like this, each encamped on one side of the living room and me stuck in the middle.
"Stop it!" I blurt out, growing desperate.
My brothers freeze, identical guilty expressions appearing on their faces.
"Can't you both just stop?" I plead, embarrassed to hear that I sound close to bawling but unable to do anything about it.
Darry appears to forcibly reign in his temper. He clenches his jaw and squares his shoulders, like he's in a rodeo and approaching a wild bronco, tight and controlled.
"You're right. I'm sorry, little buddy. We shouldn't fight like this." He scrubs a hand tiredly over his face.
I let out a relieved exhale. If the two of them can stop hollering at each other and just talk for ten minutes, I know that they can work things out.
I turn to Pony hopefully. Pony is generally easy-going, but he's got a lot of wrong notions in his head about why Darry acts the way he does. He's the wild card here in this conversation.
But Pony…doesn't seem to be looking at anything at all. He's staring at the wall, a strange, far-off expression on his face. Come to think of it, he doesn't look too hot, kinda like his headache has gotten worse and he's not all there in the head right now.
"Pony?" I ask tentatively. "You okay?"
Darry's instincts must be better than mine, because he suddenly dives forward. He moves just in time to catch Pony, who abruptly slumps sideways and topples over like a puppet with its strings cut, his head barely missing the sharp corner of the bookcase.
"Glory, he's burning up!" Darry exclaims.
He scoops Ponyboy up and carries him to our room, where he carefully sets him down and tucks him under the covers.
We go through the usual routine our parents had followed when one of us was sick—I wet a rag with cool water and place it on Pony's forehead while Darry finds the bottle of aspirin and coaxes Pony to take a dose.
When all that's taken care of, there's not much more to do besides sitting and waiting to see how Pony feels when he wakes up next.
"I should've seen that he was sick," Darry says, running a hand through his hair repeatedly, a nervous habit that he'd picked up from our dad.
"It's not your fault," I assure Darry. "Pony is always hiding stuff like that."
Darry doesn't seem to believe me. We lapse into silence for a while. I normally find it hard to sit still for longer than a minute or two, but a mixture of worry and exhaustion have me firmly planted in place. I wonder if the fight downstairs is replaying over and over again in Darry's mind like it is in mine.
I doze off after awhile and wake up again when Ponyboy starts shifting in his sleep.
"Pony?" Darry asks, giving his shoulder a little shake. "How are you feeling?"
Ponyboy manages to crack his eyelids, squinting up at Darry as though even the dim moonlight is too bright for his eyes.
"...Dad?" He croaks hopefully.
I can't help the broken gasp that escapes my throat, one of my hands reflexively flying up to cover my mouth.
Darry, on the other hand, goes stiller than a statue, his eyes sliding shut.
For a second, the room is perfectly silent. Then Pony shifts again, letting out a panicked, confused sound when Darry doesn't respond, his voice rising fearfully. "Dad? Is that you? Dad, please!" He pleads, reaching for Darry, who remains frozen in place.
I understand Pony's reaction perfectly. Everyone has always commented on how Darry looks like our dad, and that's only become more true since Darry assumed his role as head of the family, responsibility weighing heavily on him and making him seem older than twenty. In the dim light, with Ponyboy sick and confused by a high fever, I'm not surprised that our little brother had taken one look at Darry and assumed that he's our dad.
"I don't feel good, Dad," Pony whimpers, still reaching for Darry, and it hits me all over again that it's only been eight months since Mom and Dad died. Of course Ponyboy assumes that Dad is here. The last time he was this sick, maybe a year or two ago, Dad had read The Fellowship of the Ring to the two of us when we'd both gotten hit with the flu, sitting in the same chair that Darry's in now. At the time, our biggest worry in the world had been making up our missing schoolwork.
I see Darry draw in a deep, bracing breath—the exact same way I'd seen Darry breathe before he'd gone up to give a eulogy at our parents' funerals. And then Darry finally breaks the spell, moving out of the chair to sit right on the edge of Pony's side of the bed, smoothing Pony's hair back from his forehead.
For the first time in my life, I feel like I'm intruding on my brothers. Like I'm seeing both of them with their masks stripped back—all of the fear and longing and grief that they're too stubborn to show in the light of day laid bare in this darkened bedroom.
"I'm here, baby," Darry says, his voice coming out rough, like an elbow or a knee scraped against concrete. "I've got you, honey, okay? We're gonna get you feeling better in no time."
Those nicknames—baby and honey—are nicknames that no one has called Pony since our parents died, I realize, vowing to change that in the future.
Pony immediately relaxes back into his pillows at Darry's words, turning towards Darry so that Darry's hand is cupping his cheek. For a few seconds, it seems like Pony will drift back to sleep, satisfied by Darry's performance.
I'm about to let out the breath I'd been holding in when Pony speaks again.
"Dad? Where's Mom?" He slurs sleepily.
The words are like a knife in my chest, and I admire how even Darry's voice is when he responds.
"She's not here right now, Pony," Darry says gently. He removes his hand from Pony's cheek and starts rubbing soothing circles in between his shoulder blades. "But everything is gonna be just fine, you hear me? Don't you worry about it, baby, because I'm always going to be right here with you."
My eyes burn with tears. I wonder if that last bit had been Darry speaking as our dad, or Darry speaking as himself.
"M'kay," Pony mumbles, finally drifting off. "Darry 'n Soda are fine?"
"Yeah," I chime in. My throat is tight, and it's hard to get the words out. "We're good, honey."
Darry and I remain silent for a few minutes, just in case, but when Pony starts snoring quietly, I feel like it's safe to speak.
"Darry—" I begin, but Darry holds a hand up.
"Don't, Soda," he says, and there's no bite in his tone but there's also no room for argument. "Leave it. Go sleep. Take my bed."
"But you have to work tomorrow, and I'm off," I protest.
Darry shakes his head dismissively. "Go on, Soda. I'll sleep just fine in this chair."
Darry's a lot more like our mom, personality-wise, but he has the same stubborn streak as our dad. I'm unenthused about leaving, but I tell myself that maybe it'll be good for Darry to take care of Pony. Maybe it'll show Pony that he's wrong about Darry.
I toss and turn for a bit, unused to sleeping in a bed without Pony after all this time. I manage to doze off for a few hours, though, and I arise just before dawn, anxious to check on my brothers.
Both of them are sound asleep. Pony's face is relaxed and he's breathing easily, a sure sign that his fever had broken in the night. Darry is slumped over in the chair, his body placed protectively between Pony and the door, one of his hands loosely intertwined with one of Pony's hands.
I reluctantly wake Darry up for work, crawling into bed next to Ponyboy to catch another hour or two of sleep.
When I wake up again, Ponyboy is sitting up next to me and reading The Grapes of Wrath.
"Pony!" I exclaim, jolting upright. "How are you feeling?"
"Much better," Pony smiles, and he seems to be telling the truth.
"You were real sick last night, honey."
Pony gives me an odd look, perhaps because of me calling him 'honey.' "I don't even remember it," he says, shaking his head absently.
I fight disappointment. "You don't remember anything at all?"
"Not really…I remember writing my essay and Darry hollering at me, and I felt terrible, like that day when we went to the state fair as kids and I got heat stroke. And then…I think…I think I had a dream about Dad," Pony muses thoughtfully. It's one of the first times that I've heard Pony speak about our parents since they died. "It was real nice, Soda."
I open my mouth to tell him the truth—but in the end, I falter and I can't do it. Pony looks so peaceful, and I can't bring myself to take away the comfort he'd received from "our dad" in his dream.
"That does sound nice, Pony," I sigh.
Pony rests his head against my shoulder and keeps on reading.
