'Corrupted by the simple sniff of riches blown
I know you have felt much more love than you've shown
And I'm on my knees and the water creeps to my chest
But plant your hope with good seeds
Don't cover yourself with thistle and weeds
Rain down, rain down on me
Look over your hill and be still
The sky above us shoots to kill
Rain down, rain down on me'
~'Thistle and Weeds' by Mumford and Sons (2009)
Chapter 10: The Simmer
Tulsa, December 1965
Heavy hands, even tighter grips, and the water sloshes over your head and into your ears, washing away any chance of jurisdiction. Your kicks are powerless, inhibited, like you're moving through thick mud that's trying to swallow you all at the same time as the water rips stitches into you side, stealing your oxygen, your very tie to life.
A moment to gasp as you're pulled out, but only a moment before you're pushed deeper, fully submerged now with your back flush to the fountain floor. Their fingers have wiggled sneakily not only on their way to pin you down, but now to your face, constricting like prickly phalanges to silence you, consigning you to this night.
Johnny's supposed to make his entrance any minute now, where is? And what if he doesn't this time? He is dead after all, why do expect him to save you time and time again? You feel the fight, the flicker of light starting to huff out within you with every move you make to try and free yourself.
More hands, suffocating. Imprisoned. The bottom of the fountain floor becomes a cemeterial garden of thistle and weeds, growing stronger and pulling you further down. You decide to use the rest of your energy to cry, underwater, because that's all you can do when you wonder if it really does matter anyways. Your life has made all these turns for the worst that you weren't even sure you were going to come back from anyways, so you submit, and cry though the water steals the thunder of your tears when they washed away so easily.
But then soft vines envelop you, wrap around and coddle you, and they pull your from that bed of thorns delicately. You ease up, noticing how the barbed wire brush below starts to untangle themselves from you, scared off. You're floating back up... slowly but surely, just in time for you to devour the air above.
"Ponyboy?" His voice is soft and tired, and rings right in your ear. "Nightmare?"
The soft vine morphs into his self-proclaimed Wile E. Coyote arms, cloaked around you chest, and you feel the tears on your cheeks now. You cry a little harder, because you're in safe company to do so. He frees one of his hands to ruffle it through your hair, and the blood flows freely through your body, your lungs now full of air that comes and goes as needed, no restrictions.
"It's okay, Pone. It was just a dream. I ain't gonna let anything happen to you."
Knowing you're back in your room, brother smushed in that tiny bed right there with you even still, and the fear dissipates. It's been that way every night this week. Though Johnny and Dally have been long gone, months now, it doesn't mean the rest is history for you. You're exhausted, in all of the ways one can be, but he pulls you in a little closer to him, and you're thankful he's there to give you a moment's rest.
He's your reminder. He's your constant. He won't ever change, and that's all you need lately.
At least the nightmares abide by one single rule that is enough: they're no match against your brothers.
Tulsa, October 1976
There's an ebb and flow that surges through my eardrums. It's possible that it's from the electrical shortage of flickering lights down the hall, or maybe it's from the ambulance that had come out of nowhere, it's siren imprinted permanently on every one of my senses that's itched raw and fired up right now. Locked inside a time capsule of pandemonium with screaming parade voices that float then undulate in the air as they please no matter their destruction.
I count the black and white tiles below my feet again for something consistent. The same tiles that sealed this very floor way back when my parents were swept away, and here they are ready to steal away another one from my team. Whoever decided that it would be fair that flooring could outlast the very fabric of my family? The faint memory of the ambulance sirens and cheering civilians wail back into my brain.
I don't know who called on them and sent them our way like angels on high where we were stuck, unmoving among the crowds of people who wouldn't budge for us. They moved for the sirens, though. They watched from their safe distance, whispering and speculating as my famous brother was pulled from one vehicle to the next. Someone else's hands swept in for Deb in compressions, the steady rhythm uninterrupted, and then they were gone as quickly as they came.
I look for Deb then, my comfort, and try to account for the kids, my purpose, only to remember she's taken all four of them home- no need to have them waiting in a hospital no matter what outcome may come our way. They've seen enough today as it is.
"I'm sorry, Daddy." Junior's tug on my wet jeans can still be felt even now, and I'm not sure I had really heard his words when he said them. Did I say anything back? Did I even look at him when he asked if he had done something wrong when we chased the ambulance? The poor kid's had his own scare today, I'd forgotten already.
One thing at a time, that's the only way to filter through the noise and seek a solution. There's nothing I can do in this moment but wait in the silence that is all at once illusory and yet deafening as it screams out at me like a pointed finger placing blame.
How did I not see this coming?
But surely, if it was all over, we wouldn't still be put up out here waiting. If he'd... gone away, we'd have been shoved into into the offices of the ones who handle prayer, then the ones who handle grief, and finally the ones who handle disposal. Do they do that for grown men, too, or just newly orphaned boys?
I've never seen him so still.
The unknown has always haunted me, biting at my heels with every step, every unturned corner, laughing in my face with all I can't control as it taunts the existence of all the things I hold dear. How easy it was to let him slip through my fingers when I thought in some sneaky way I was gripping him tighter.
I must have missed something.
"Darry, stop. Please." Pony's voice comes out soft to plead. I stop short and stumble a bit from my momentum, realizing that I've been pacing. I grab a chair and work to organize my thoughts once more.
There's nothing to do but wait, but if he was gone they would've told us by now.
Pony's slumped back in his chair, hand over his eyes, elbow on the plastic arm rest, and clothes still damp enough to make him shiver under the blasting air conditioning. I'm shaking, too, but it's hard to know if it's the cold from the river water, or if a part of me is still trapped in that car.
Nothing to do but wait.
Grace grips either side of the chair tighter, sitting upright and looking like she's been strapped into some wild rollercoaster ride she didn't sign up for. That's about right. She must be saving her tears, I hate to think of what for.
A measly attempt at checking in, "Grace?"
She looks up at me and blinks a minute, surely trying to return from what she saw back there and meeting us here in the waiting room again. She nods, and then fixes back on that lonely, cracked tile I accounted for just a few feet ahead of her. She's a picture of shock, and it makes me relieved I couldn't see his face when...
I don't understand, we know he hasn't been using.
That's when Pony's head whips up at me, eyes laser set for the kill and I realize I've said it out loud. My timing's never so good.
"How do we know anything?" Pony bites back, but even behind his thick impatience is a vast ocean of grief and regret and loneliness. We're farther apart than I thought, buried under months of heavy resentment and abandonment.
"I just know." I say, and he's heard it enough as he rolls his eyes and shakes me off. When did we lose all the progress we'd made between the two of us while Soda was overseas? How did we opt for regression in times like these?
"Well, bless you, Darry. For always knowing every step of the game. But you sure as hell didn't anticipate this one, did you?" His hand goes back over his eyes, as if that's all there is to say, and my pulse just adds to the pounding already in my ears.
As much as he's got to have the last word, I guess I do, too. That's our problem. "He's been clean, Pony, trust me."
He rips his hand away from his eyes again to glare back, "How am I supposed to trust you when you ain't even been around? How am I supposed to believe anything you say when you've been keeping me in the dark just as much as he has?" His finger points behind him, directionless, but it's an easy fill in the blank. He sinks back again, instantly regretful, always ready to pardon our middle brother.
I bite my tongue when I almost tell him he abandoned me too, the first time we went through this. That I was all on my own with Soda, and it was the hardest thing I've done. Maybe we've got more in common than we can think clearly enough to see right now. But I don't tell him, I don't throw it in his face because what good would it do anyhow? No matter how much older we get, he'll always be my little brother, and there will always be truths I'll fight to protect him from.
"He's clean." Grace's voice chimes in quietly but with power and a steady exhale. "He's got this stash of pills he keeps under the couch. He thinks I don't know about them, but I count 'em every night after he's gone to bed. He quit using after Marley." She draws a shaky breath, "Even if I didn't count them, I'd still know if he was using."
Pony gives her an understanding nod, satisfied with that because she's not the one he's set on misunderstanding tonight. We both know full well that we should shut up, if not for our own sakes, for Grace's.
"This is about so much more than just pills." She comes in again in the silence we've paved on her behalf. Grace never needs volume or harsh consonants for her voice to have the impact she's aiming for, and Pony and I lie smack center of her crosshairs. "I wish you three would've just talked to each other." She says woefully, tossing that single tear from her eye, suddenly defeated, "We've all been keeping a lot of secrets lately, and here's where we are."
A determined set of footsteps round the corner in the form of a doctor, clipboard in hand and a wax cup of coffee, filled up just enough that it doesn't quite slosh over the edges with his quick pace. He stops directly in front of the three of us.
"Sodapop Curtis?" I find myself blurting out and standing before he's even able to open his mouth to take a breath.
He points to the three of us, "Family?"
I take to introducing each of us, matching his pointedness. "Wife. Brother. Brother."
He nods exhaustedly, downing that scalding coffee and crumples it up and tosses it across the waiting room into the trash in a single movement.
"I'm Dr. Blach. Let's sit."
Suddenly I'm nineteen again, two kid brothers clinging to either side of me in the moment the hospital staff announced us as parentless, Soda working with all his might to keep Pony from soaking into those damn everlasting floor tiles, and me pushed into a room with a dried out ballpoint pen and a sea of papers to be signed, alone.
I find the chair before I can full on collapse because though it was ages ago, though we've been given so much since then, not once did I ever think I'd be back here. Somehow I never thought Soda, even junkie Soda (maybe especially junkie Soda), being among those that could get ripped away from me so easily.
"Your brother suffered from a tension pneumothorax earlier this afternoon. A collapsed lung. It's when air leaks from the lung and into the chest cavity, which can cause a number of complications. In a serious case, like your brother's, it can lead to respiratory failure and or cardiac arrest."
My brain burns when I think about the moment that that exact complication occured.
"Now, we were able to re-inflate the lung with a procedure known as a needle thoracocentesis, which essentially acts as a valve to release the built up air. We'll need to keep him here a couple of days to monitor his condition, just to be safe."
He stops talking to gives us space to digest, the three of us with nodding heads and eyes glued to him, shallow breaths.
"So... he's alive?" Pony's voice trembles.
"Yes. He was resuscitated in the ambulance."
I'm dizzy, but the breaths that come easily after that clear things up right away.
"All due respect, Doc, but you should've led with that."
Grace's tears start in now, and I feel better knowing they're not locked up anymore for her to spend on something worse than this.
"I'm sure this is all a relief, but I still have some concerns I need to make you aware of. According to my EMT staff, upon resuscitation, your brother became aggressive. Mental confusion tends to happen when someone is brought back the way he was, especially when the location you lost consciousness in is different than the location you regained it in."
"Aggressive?" Pony repeats.
He nods, matter of factly, "We did sedate and restrain him. Your brother packs a punch, and we'll need to keep him contained until we know he's no longer a safety concern. I have to look out for my people, you understand?"
Grace and Pony can't seem to stomach that one.
"Of course." I say, because I can what with all I've seen.
"Forgive me, this is strictly for medical use. But.. those scars... on his arm?"
"Heroine." I say, and the doctor seems to be just as taken aback as us three at my initiative. "He hasn't used it in years, though, not since the war."
"Okay. This is important for us to know. We'll just have to take things as they come, then. When your brother does wake up, we'll need to assess any kind of brain damage that may have occurred from oxygen deprivation. It's different from person to person, so there's really no way to know until we can communicate with him directly."
Uneasy swallows at 'brother' and 'brain damage' in the same sentence.
"Dr. Blach, this can't just up and happen again like it did this afternoon, can it?" Pony asks, green irises begging for a negative.
"These things are tricky. They can be caused by any number of things. Physical exertion, injury, history of respiratory troubles, drug use." He holds his gaze at Pony, "I imagine it was the swimming, this time. The water can be strong down there, not the mention the rocks."
"But something like being too scared, or remembering a bad memory... that wouldn't set him off, would it?" I wonder what he's getting at.
"No, fear is a mental hurdle. It can't actually harm anyone unless they decide to act on it. But it certainly wouldn't help in any situation where breathing is already difficult."
Pony nods, pensive but relieved.
"Doc, I think it'd do us all a lot of good just to see him. Can we?"
"We're transferring him from the ER now, give us a minute to set him up in a room and I'll send someone to come get you and bring you all in."
He's so still, all I want to do is untie those restraints that hold him down like he's some sort of an animal when he's just my little brother. But safety concern is right. His exposed chest bares the bruising from those abusive compressions, but more importantly, it rises and falls.
Grace is fearless when she approaches the side of the bed immediately, a well seasoned soldier in this kind of battle, and she grabs his hand with none of the hesitancy Pony and I haven't quite numbed yet as we cling to the perimeter of the room. He begins to stir at the moving commotion around him, always finely tuned with the elements around him.
It startles us all when his eyes open so quickly, first looking up at the ceiling tiles above with confusion, and then they fall tiredly at the foot of the bed where Pony's stationed himself. Soda's brow crinkles after a moment like he can't see that far, but it quickly morphs to haunted. I've never seen him look so ghastly at our brother before, but it leaves an uneasiness in my stomach. Pony's face drains pale right in the line of Soda's fire.
Soda's trying to speak, unable to with a voice that's completely stripped bare, but the way his lips try to meet each other looks like he's trying to say Ponyboy. Pony shuffles a bit, as concerned as the rest of us and unsure what he should be doing to pacify the horrified look that's spreading on Soda's face. Soda's wrists start to pull a little against the binds, more and more desperate the more he realizes he's tied down, caged in and unable to act on his own behalf. I suddenly feel trapped, too. I can tell he's trying to reach for Pony though they're much too far apart from one another for him to get to with those ties.
"Parson..." raises the hair on the back of my neck when Soda says it.
I start to catch on, and take a hesitant step towards the bed. This hasn't happened with Pony around before.
"It's okay, Soda, you're alright." Pony finally says with a horrible quiver in his voice as he reaches as far as he can to grasp Soda's hand. Soda squeezes it hard by the looks of Pony's blood rushed fingers, and panicked whimpers start to hiccup from within him, eyes getting wider with each passing second. "You're in the hospital, man, just relax." But Soda's far from it, and Pony's starting to sink right there with him. I put forceful hands on him, the last thing I want to do because I know it'll only make him feel like he's got something to fight off. But all the tubes and machines don't look too forgiving to the jostling around he's working at, so I place a hand on either shoulder and lean my weight in.
"Soda, quit fighting, it's your brothers!" I say, wishing I could sound as comforting as I mean to.
"Pony, let him go." Grace has jumped in now, trying to pry their two hands apart. "He's confused, let him go."
"I'm tryin'!" Pony huffs, but Soda can out power anyone when driven towards it. His airless cries are somehow getting louder and louder, and when Pony's hand finally breaks free from his and he reels back from the momentum, Soda starts to writhe in his restraints, his body thrashing with eyes shut tightly.
"You're home, baby." Grace says with gumption over the commotion, and immediately, he slows his fight as if her voice in itself is a sedative. "You're home in Tulsa, it's just Ponyboy, he's okay." And he stops tossing, but his whole body still trembles like Pony did with his night terrors. She puts her hands on his cheeks and leans over so that their foreheads touch softly. While he's still catching his breath, his body goes quiet, but this time I'm relieved to see him so still. I can see in his crinkled eyebrows that he senses who it is right away and his hands wander within the cuffs trying to find her. "You got a wife and baby girl and it's all okay now, remember?" I release him when I know he's got who he needs. Grace nods to me, a silent thank you, another round where the two of us have beat those lies out of him before they consume him completely.
Soda nods softly, sinking further into the bed before he's unconscious again, and we can finally breathe.
Except for Pony. His back is up against the wall, away from the foot of the bed, tear streaks streaming down his face as he keeps his eyes on Soda. Then they find me eventually, fear replaced almost instantly with fury.
"What the hell just happened?"
We find ourselves again in this lonely corridor of the hospital hallway.
Darry's just staring back at me, eyes grasping towards empathy, but how can he be calm after all of that?
I'm still shaking all over with Soda's firm grasp on me still imprinted on the skin of my hands. "What was that?"
His frown deepens, and he shakes his head, disappointment that I can actually see for once isn't aimed at me but at the one whose mind is currently locked away from his body in that hospital room. His voice is low, defeated, hoarse, tired. "He never did tell you, did he?"
"No, because nobody fucking tells me anything anymore!" My eyes burn with hot tears, never giving my anger or my sadness more than a second to work themselves out before joining in. "So tell me."
"He made me promise I wouldn't tell..."
My march over to him is fueled purely by whatever adrenaline hasn't already been burned up from this afternoon, my finger pointing in his face, noting silently how we're eye level now, how he doesn't tower so startlingly above me anymore. When was the last time I tried to take Darry on like this?
"He had every chance to tell me, and now he can't even talk." I crumble a little thinking about him in there, but buck myself back up because that doesn't erase the fact that it's his silence has been crushing me. "So it's up to you."
His face remains without fear, I'll never ask to be scary again, just this once so my point gets through. To my surprise, his jaw clicks in and his eyes narrow, and that's how I remember I don't need scary.
"Why don't you sit down, Pony." He gestures to the chairs that are aligned against the wall.
"I ain't made of glass." I say, feeling as fragile as I ever have.
"I'm asking you to sit 'cause I'm just barley hanging on. Sit down for me."
I find my chair, cramping quad muscles instantly grateful. "You know what Post-Vietnam Syndrome is?"
"I ain't stupid." My ain'ts only come out now in the safety of Tulsa and the throws of my fire.
"You know Soda's got it, right?"
"He fought in Vietnam, didn't he?" What I wasn't taught in courses, I researched heavily on my own in Butler Library at Columbia. I interviewed soldiers, psychologists, desperate to understand what my brother wouldn't tell me, desperate to find him where he was at like I'd let him in way back in '65.
"You know about Parson?"
"One of his buddies."
"One of his buddies who was shot dead in front of him." My stomach churns, not having to guess what it's like to see that unfold before your very eyes.
"Is that what he thinks of when he gets confused like that?" I try and think it through, but it still doesn't add up. "Why was that any kind of secret? I've seen him have flashbacks before. I already know who Parson is."
"Parson was a quiet kid, used to read to Soda during their down times, from what I understand. Green eyes, brown hair. I guess you could say you and him got a lot in common." My heart palpitates rapidly at where this is going. "Pony, you have to know he didn't even want to tell me any of this. I didn't learn about it until one night when he was real out of it."
He wrings his hands, to work it out in his head first.
"I came home late from a date with Deb and he was worked up as ever, telling me you were gone, dead, and he should've saved you, shouldn't have done what he did. He didn't mean for it to happen. Scared the hell out of me, I thought maybe something had happened to you up at school. Once I got him to calm down, figured out that you were okay, I forced him to tell me what he was talking about."
I can't speak.
Darry's eyes bounce back and forth between mine waiting for a response. I plead with an empty expression for him to keep talking because I can't start.
"Deb explained it later to me that sounds and smells and lights can bring back bad memories, it's that way for people who have been in any kind of war, really. Even the ones that ain't overseas. He'd fallen asleep watching 'Get Smart' and the news came on after, a special report was broadcasted about the cost of artillery, and you can guess those gunshots are what set him off when they woke him up. When somebody goes through something like that, their brain can get-"
"I know what happens." Now my voice is defeated, because I already know how relentlessly fear can distort what's real. Like scrambled eggs, I'd written once. I've been there before. Even the shower water was enough to send me right back to that night at the fountain for the first two years after Dally and Johnny. I knew Soda had demons, but I never knew they could have me wrapped up in them too. "He said he didn't want my help, he was pushing me away. It's because I was making it worse? Kept reminding him? Confusing him?"
Darry shrugs, because now my guess is as good as anyone else's. Finally.
"I can't be his constant, can I?" I think aloud, and Darry looks at me like I'm suddenly on a different wavelength.
"His what?"
I think of Grace, how it was her voice in there that brought him back like his used to with my nightmares. My heart has been ripped to shreds, but it's been patched back together at least a little knowing that he has someone who will shut those demons up.
"Hell, I finally confronted him about it after you asked me when we were playing pool 'couple months back. He promised me he'd tell you, and I just assumed he did."
"Why didn't he, Darry? I needed to know."
It's then that Darry's face at least start to mimic the heartbreak in my own. He scrunches his nose up, his signature way to hold back the tears when the last decade of shit comes crashing back down all over again.
"What happened to us, Darry? We used to all be a team."
He reaches out to me.
My arms go under his and I weave them up and over to his shoulders, and when his hands wrap me up right back, pulling me out from these thistle and weeds, there are sobs that I can't control just from the strength in his tired hold. My cries are all at once muffled by Darry's shirt and magnified by the sterile reverberation of the hallway. Darry's body is wracking, too, so hard that I wonder how it could be that either of us are even standing.
Author's Note:
S.E. Hinton is to thank for these characters.
'Thistle and Weeds' by Mumford and Sons (2009) is a powerhouse of a song and certainly influenced this chapter.
Though it may seem redundant, I can't express my level of gratitude for all of you who continue to read.