Chapter 1: The Constellations
Tulsa, May 1970
Even though I'm halfway across the room at the bar, I can tell by her forced smile that this date is a complete bust. I tried to warn her an hour ago when I pointed out his patchy mustache and oh-so-shiny dress shoes. He certainly isn't a country boy. But she's stubborn, and honestly, I love that about her. She wants to give everyone a chance, except for me of course. I guess there's a first for everything.
She glances my way, catching my not so subtle spying as I point at my bare wrist like there's a watch so she knows it's been over an hour and she should just call it quits and join me at the bar. Her boy is looking down at his food, so she has just enough time to stick her tongue out at me before he looks back up, still yapping away about something that has to do with his life changing Economics class.
We both know I'm still watching, but she's so fed up with my constant lingering around her failing love life, that she just flat out ignores me. But I'm nothing if not a creative, outside-of-the-box-thinking, pain in the ass, so I make my way over the jukebox with an idea in tow. I don't even need to check over my shoulder to be sure she's tracking me with a held breath, dreading whatever I have planned. I slip the nickel into the slot and make my musical selection with care.
'I'm looking for a hard headed woman, one who'll take me for myself' rings out in Cat's smooth singing that Pony loves, the calm melody falling on completely deaf ears amid dozens of overlapping conversations; no problem, she's the only one who needs to hear it, and I know she does, even if she's trying harder to listen to Pencil-stache Man. But she doesn't cave, not once through the entire song, and by Mr. Stevens' final strum on his guitar, I'm on to Plan B with another nickel.
'Well'a hardheaded woman, soft hearted man, been the cause of trouble ever since the world began, oh yeah' busts in like a calvary throughout the entire bar. I've officially gotten on some of the other people's nerves with my lively interruption, their heads spinning to look at me all annoyed as that twangy electric guitar dives into its solo. But Grace doesn't budge, fulfilling the song's prophecy by not bending even a little to my will.
It isn't until the third chorus' 'hard headed woman been a thorn in the side of a man' whines out in Elvis' sleazy duo with the trombone that I catch her feigning interest in their discussion while also flashing me the finger with both hands in front of the condiments so only I can see.
Obviously being named Grace doesn't make her feel restricted to holiness, and yet somehow she's still so very elegant in all her phallic gesturing.
I laugh out loud at her jab, then smile a hello to Tim Shepard as he enters the bar and nods stoically back, his face set with that determined wrinkle between his brows. Curly's clumsy walk catches my eye as he follows closely behind his brother, his eyes look all dazed and confused and just not quite right. I thought he had quit with all that junk. I run my fingers over the new Vietnam tattoo on my forearm in memory, then notice that the punctures in the lock of my arm right above it are almost completely scarred over, and if that ain't proof that it's a new season and I'm starting over, I don't know what is.
Grace downs the rest of her beer like a champ.
I'm going to marry that woman, whether she knows it now or not.
The date only lasts as long as the rest of Elvis' song, and I hope it's not coincidence. Twinkle Toes tries to walk her out to his car, but she uses the bar as an excuse not to leave. I guess working in the same place you have your dates has the perk of an easy escape. Even though he gives her those puppy dog eyes that beg her to let him take her home, she writes him off real quick with a hand shake instead of a kiss.
I chuckle at his expense because I can be a real asshole if I want to, although this really doesn't have anything to do with him.
She meets me by the taps, grabbing her apron without acknowledging the look I'm giving her, elbows on the counter and face in my hands trying hard as I can to look cute. I offer my hand to help guide her step behind the platformed bar, but she doesn't take it.
"Don't say anything." she warns with that biting tone, starting to dry some of the pint glasses with Lucky Joe's new leprechaun logo that came in yesterday. For a non-drinking man, I sure know this bar well. Or maybe I just know her so well. Joe got a dishwasher installed last year, so now she only cleans the glasses by hand when she's good and pissed.
"How did it go? I couldn't tell." I lie flatly, knowing she'll hear all the notes of sarcasm on her own.
"Don't you have something better to do? Anything?" the violent soapy water swashes against the sides of the sink, and even I'm in the splash zone two seats away. "You don't get to call me out on my rocky love life when you don't even have a love life to begin with."
She's not the kind of woman who chases, clearly. If you want a shot, you have to pencil yourself in. I've never met a woman who wasn't after me at least a little, and now that I've met Grace, I'll never go back. She's real, and I want to be that way too. There's a kind of curse that comes with good looks, right off the bat it sets people for disappointment when they discover that underneath it all, you're just a screwed up as everyone else. Or in my case, even more so. Grace hardly notices anything about the way I look, and that's another thing I love about her.
Just then, Martha Harwood winks at me from three tables down all alone, and I don't want to be rude so I give her as quick of a smile as I can, then look back down at my hands. High school me would smacked me upside the head if he knew I turned down Martha Harwood, of all people, for a shot at a woman who won't even give me the time of day.
Grace ties up her dark chocolate hair in this hot restaurant, those blue eyes vibrant against her sun kissed summer skin as they land on me once again to see that I haven't moved.
"Sodapop, you're killing me." She sighs, putting her hand on her hip, and leaning her weight to one side.
I spin on the barstool, whipping back around to look her. "How many of your dates have crashed and burned in the last month, huh?"
She cocks her eyebrow, and good God if I wasn't worried Mom was watching me from above, I'd kiss her right here and now. "Excuse me, but how many dates have you not even had this month?"
It's true. I haven't been on a date in over four months. Not because there haven't been chances, but because if I know I don't want anybody else, what's the point?
"Let me take you on a date." I suggest, batting my eyelashes. Subconsciously, she looks at the scars in the crook of my arm, and I feel my insides twist into a knot. She knows better than most about all the crazy that's come from those scars. She's actually one of the reasons that they're almost healed and not fresh punctures.
"What makes you think I even need a man? I'm only twenty." she argues, now scrubbing the counter like she's trying to remove both the grime and the varnish.
"You don't, Gracie, you never have." She freezes because I've caught her off guard, "But you want one. And am I really that bad? Even after tonight's date with Captain Virginity? You want to be with a guy who ain't gonna love you right until marriage?" I tsk and shake my head all disappointed like.
She cracks a smile in spite of herself and I jump off of my barstool before she has the chance to change it. "Was that a yes?"
She covers her mouth and shakes her head, the grin gone as quickly as it came "No. Soda. You're my friend, that's it." She slides a Coca Cola my way.
Her mind's made up for the night, and I can respect that, I'm actually starting to get on my own nerves. I'll try again tomorrow. I sit back on the barstool, a little dejected but not at all hopeless, and help her dry the rest of the glasses.
I'm going to marry that woman one of these days, whether she believes it now or not.
Tulsa, February 1976
I almost throw that damn phone against the wall after the second ring, but Deb's feather-like shoulder tap sweetly recommends that I'd better just calm the hell down and answer it, for all of our sakes. My grumbles are getting louder and more frequent every year, I'm lucky my wife of all people still thinks it's funny.
"Be nice." She whispers, because even sleeping Debbie is wary of my temper.
"What." She whips me with a lazy backhand at the hostile impatience in my tone to whoever thinks two in the morning is a peachy time for a chat.
The voice on the other line is unfamiliar at first, but only because I've never heard my sister-in-law cry. I'm out of bed and on my feet, awake instantly, and that hollowness in my stomach reverberates in my throat at the sound of her.
"Grace, what's going on?" I ask, much softer now that I can hear just how afraid she is. Debbie's already sitting up, wide awake and looking at me with concern.
"It's the baby. I-I think I need to go to the hospital." Her words trip all over each other as she tries to contain herself, but more than anything I can hear that she's hurting.
"Where's Soda?"
There's a pause, and in the quiet I can hear her pained breaths before she speaks through clenched teeth, "I don't know, I woke up and he wasn't in bed. He's not here, Darry."
My fist tightens by my side the way they do when one of my brother's needs either protection or an ass-whopping. "You stay on the line with Debbie until I get there, okay sweetheart? I'm on my way now."
Deb snatches the phone from me, already alert and coaching Grace through the line, while I'm running around, throwing on whatever shirt and pants I find in the dark first, then bolt out to the car, the slaps of the screen door echoing down the street.
I'm gonna kill him.
I use the spare key tucked inside of the Grace's potted daisies on the porch, the one Soda finally stashed there after locking himself out so many times, not accustomed to needing to bolt a front door. When I enter the house, it's dark, and the air is unbearably still. The light from the street lamp outside is just bright enough to illuminate my shadow in the doorway, and reveal Grace in the corner outside of the bedroom, back against the wall and knees scrunched up as close to her chest as her belly will allow. I can hear Deb from the telephone clutched in her hands, but she's barely holding it to her ear, looking all kinds of worn out. After surviving three different labors with Deb and the kids, each with their own rockiness, this is completely new to me.
"Deb, I'm here. I'll call you when I know something." I say into the phone, not giving her a chance to respond before I struggle to put it back on the receiver with unsteady hands that startle even me.
"I'm only 26 weeks, Darry, this isn't supposed to be happening yet." Grace says in an exhausted whisper, reaching for me with shaking hands before she crumbles inward again, and a guttural wail fills up the room. I try to convert weeks into months since that's all I'll understand and fight the panic that's starting to rise within me. I've never seen a sight quite like this, especially from Grace, who's always steady in a storm.
In one scoop, I've got her clutched close to my chest, and I take us back to the idling car trying not to think about all that anger that's boiling up like lava when I think about Soda.
I'm gonna kill him.
cont.
I empty the smoke out into the air above me, watching the cloud evaporate into the dark sky towards Lyra, Pony's favorite constellation. As little kids when Dad quizzed us on Greek Gods and their stories, Pony was smarter than me even then. While he loved Lyra's tale of music and poetry, I just liked the funny singsong way that Dad would say Cassiopeia.
The swings sway a bit in the wavering breeze as I look out on the dilapidated park from my childhood, weathered more every year but I guess never on the agenda or in the budget for repairs. My next drag brings with it an ache in my lungs from all those cigarettes I've been smoking lately to get me through these long days. To get me to the solitude of night. And though I'm no lone wolf by nature, I long for that kind of freedom now for all the wrong reasons.
I extinguish the stick out on the bottom of my shoe in surrender when the tightness in my chest doesn't fade, then lie on my back, legs stretched out to get a better look at the constellations again. Right there is Orion and his bow and arrow in warrior stance, Darry's favorite, and I laugh wondering if any other constellation would fit him better.
I've marked myself at this bench in each day's early hours for the past two months, my nightly hang out, ever since that night at Lucky Joe's and that fight broke out on my deployment anniversary, and I tell you, the universe can be cruel that way.
Nine years. I can't believe it's been that long. And yet, each passing year does nothing to dull the twinge that tangles my insides in a knot. I never expected anything would. I hate that a twenty-something-year-old trust fund double identity hippie at Lucky's had the power to send the dominos falling after all the careful arranging I had done. Would it have been so bad if Pony wasn't there? I hate to think probably not.
"We don't want to share the bar with a criminal."
That kid's words hit hard, and not because they were untrue. That's the worst part. It reminded me of the months after I came home and the riots and protests throughout the country, not in our honor but against it. Hell, it's not like I ever asked to be signed, sealed and delivered anyhow. And though I had jumped headfirst into that downward spiral all those years ago, when I climbed back out, I was sure I would never look back. Now, here I sit with these three little white pills, ready to toss them back dry.
And it's so easy when I do.
The thing about Vicodin is that while it doesn't hit you as fast as some of the other ones, it lasts much longer. I'm not looking to be tripping out anymore, I just need to be numb. Something to get me through the rest of the night and a better part of the morning. Then, I'll wait not so patiently for night to come again and do it all over.
That scar between my ribs tugs even today, and whenever it does I try to ignore the gunfire explosions that echo in my ear, the heat from the detonations just as palpable in memory as they were in that humid marsh. These are the things that burn themselves into the very fibers of your being, forever, that can spring their life onto you at the smallest of triggers. I was stupid to think I could keep them tamed forever.
I'd gone almost six years without temptation, but it's no riddle as to why that night at Joe's brought it all back with a force not unlike those tropical storms. Once you've been in war, you never leave, you just learn to live there. Now, my chest hurts at all hours of the day. A tightness I feel at every sunset, when I have to go home to Grace, knowing she deserves so much more than I've been giving her lately.
There's a heartache that follows you when you're knowingly betraying the people you love most. My brothers. My wife. The last thing I want is for any of them to go down this road with me again. And right now, I'm in control of it- maybe with white-knuckled, shaking fists, but still, I've got a death grip and I ain't about to let go. This is temporary. I'm sure of it.
Finally, the numbness starts to course through my veins and I melt a little deeper into my bench like butter on toast. My brain is the first to be enveloped by that blissful embrace, and not long after that, the constriction in my lungs releases. I can breathe again.
Time sneaks by with the drifting clouds, and when I check my watch it's already a quarter to three in the morning. Grace has a nightly kitchen raid around three every morning ever since she and the baby hit two months. I'd better get home so I can cheer from the sidelines as she tears into another pint of ice cream and jar of pickles. Hands down, my favorite part of the day.
I get up from the bench with just the right amount of wobble in my step to think it's funny. Suddenly, headlights turn the corner on Walton Street, exposing me and my sinful existence, and I almost drop to the grass instinctually. This makes me laugh out loud, but only until I realize it's that Chevy Camaro, 1965, the one I let Pony borrow from the shop while he's back in Tulsa between jobs.
I'm so tangled up in my ecstasy, that I forget the oddness of the hour and sing my elation to see him.
"Ponyboy!" I holler, arms outstretched as he gets out of the car with an unexpected urgency. The flame from his cigarette lights up his face just enough for me to tell he's not as happy to see me. "I thought you weren't smoking no more."
"It's Grace." he says, and the quake in his voice steals away my high real quick, the tightness returning even worse than before. "Get in the car, we're going to the hospital."
Author's Note:
SE Hinton owns these gems, not I.
"Hard Headed Woman" by Cat Stevens (1970) and "Hard Headed Woman" by Elvis Presley (1958)
Also..."Once you've been in war, you never leave, you just learn to live there" is not mine, but from 'Firefly' (Joss Whedon)
Thanks for reading, feedback is always appreciated :)