Act Three

It was biting cold I wasn't used to, as we went to the diner on foot, passing by tons of strange people who were also out and about at 2:30 in the morning.

We walked by some heavily made-up women in short-shorts, fur coats, and platform heels.

"Pony, sugar, why don't you bring your new friend over here," one shouted. Her voice was low and sultry.

As we got closer to these women, I was struck by how tall some of them were. At nearly 28, I was 6'4", same as Dad. I knew tall. These women were tall, and it wasn't just the heels.

Pony looked a little funny, before he introduced me. "They sure grow 'em handsome in Oklahoma, don't they?" one said. They were all laughing a bit, obviously drunk. We didn't chat long.

"Those are some tall ladies," I remarked as we walked away.

"Darry, you know they're -"

"Prostitutes, I know." I wasn't some rube. It didn't worry me that Pony was friendly with them. He was always smart when it came to girls.

"Right, nevermind." Pony was laughing at me a little. He looked like Soda when he laughed like that. "Okay, that's it, up ahead."

Pony pointed to a diner seemingly built out of a train car. When we got inside, people seemed to know him there too. In fact, the waitress brought over a coke for Pony as soon as we sat down. I got water. The place looked like a train car from inside, too, with curved, chrome walls decorated with framed photos of celebrities.

I shifted in the booth. We were both long legged, even if I was taller overall. It was hard to sit across from him and not bump knees. "You come here a lot?"

He shrugged. He was thinner than he looked on TV. It was still strange to be here, glimpsing at his life, filled with places I had never been and people I'd never met. It was so hard to talk to him.

He ordered a patty melt. I got a burger.

I told him about the business and our next project, tearing down what remained of the Dingo to put up a law firm. I told him what I'd last heard about Steve, how he had left Evie for her sister, how they'd been caught stealing cars stereos to fund their heroin addiction. I didn't tell him that I wondered if maybe Soda had been lucky.

Maybe he was thinking along the same lines, because he got that faraway look he got sometimes.

I searched for something else to say. "I'm supposed to tell you that you owe Sheila Razzles."

"Dammit. I keep forgettin'. I lost a bet." Pony paused. Ketchup dripped off the fry in his hand.

I decided I didn't want to know why he was waging bets with a small child. "She said you haven't been there in days."

"Sheila don't know shit." I couldn't tell from his face if he was lying to cover his ass or what. "She's a little kid, Darry."

Like I didn't know that.

"There was a guy, too."

Pony perked up then. "Yeah?"

"He seemed pretty mad when he saw me. Blue eyes."

"Did-" Pony looked at me real hard. "Did he say anything?"

"Not really." Nothing that made a lick of sense. 'Fucked up,' I recalled. 'Fucked up, fucked up, fucked up.' I hoped I hadn't fucked up the baby.

We ate mostly in silence. I asked him about the girl Yvonne thought he was dating, the ballerina. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, then shrugged.

I wished I'd brought Yvonne. He'd answer her questions. Why did everything have to be so hard with him?

I felt awkward when we'd gotten back to his apartment. Suddenly I was a guest in his home, even though I'd already spent hours there, cleaning and sleeping in his bed like Goldilocks. We had stopped by the truck before coming up, so I had my gym bag with the few things I threw in before I'd left Tulsa.

"Nice decor," I teased as I sat on his little couch while he bustled around playing host.

"The apartment came furnished. The lady who used to live here died, and no one ever came for her stuff. There's some pretty neat pictures over in the closet. I didn't want to get rid of anything in case her kids ever came for it."

God, he was so weird. I could tell he was feeling awkward too, because he kept looking around like he might find something to ease the tension. Why was there always tension?

He sat down next to me. There wasn't much space. Side-by-side, facing forward, I stared at his stocking feet.

Pony wore his socks inside out, because the seams bothered his toes, and when the hand-me-downs made their way down to him, Mom'd always taken out the tags because they were "too scratchy." He was the most sensitive person I'd ever known. In every way possible. He broke down the first time Dad let him come hunting. 'It was beautiful and I killed it,' he sobbed with a dead bird at his feet. He was ten.

"I ran into Cathy Carlson the other day."

"Oh yeah? How was she?"

"She said you had another book coming out." I was too tired to dance around it. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know you were interested." He didn't look guilty. He hadn't been hiding it from me, I realized. He just didn't think to tell me. Shouldn't he want to tell me things like that? I wanted to be somebody he wanted to share good news with.

"What's it about?"

"A murder. Well, I guess it is more about brothers. Pioneer Press is pretty excited about it. I think I might be able to write full time, if it sells like they think."

"You gonna quit acting?"

He looked at me strangely. "You didn't want me acting, anyway."

That wasn't true. I didn't want him dropping out of college. He didn't, but I was worried he would. As soon as he started college, I feared he wouldn't finish. How could he manage in this big new city without someone on him to get things done, to keep in on track? Of course, it turned out he didn't need that. He had flourished in New York without me.

"I don't like everyone staring at me." He'd always gotten a lot of attention because of his looks. "It's not so bad, but everyone's so stressed out on set. If someone messes up their lines the producers give us hell. And it's real cold. There's talk it might get cancelled. When it does, I'll just be out. Everyone says I'd like stage work, but it seems boring, doing the same thing every night. I'd rather write."

"When the show ends, you should come back to Tulsa. You can write from anywhere."

"Yeah, sure." He sounded noncommittal. He got real quiet.

I wondered what was so bad about Tulsa. I'd always thought he'd come back eventually, after he finished school.

He hadn't invited me to his college graduation. I didn't think he attended. Either way, he didn't invite me. I'd have come if he'd invited me.

I made him walk when he graduated from Will Rogers. He hadn't wanted to, but I thought about the day I graduated and how proud Mom and Dad were - neither of them had a diploma. They threw a party with the whole neighborhood, which I left after an hour to go to Paul's. It seemed like Pony should walk. I thought he'd regret it if he didn't. But after the ceremony, after he took a few pictures with kids who'd insisted and walked through all their parents and families to our Ford, his face was red and blotchy. I knew he didn't want me to see him cry. I felt like shit. I wanted to apologize, or tell him it was okay if he was sad, but I didn't. I just added it to the running tally of how I'd failed him.

He left on a Greyhound bus a few days later, for Columbia's summer session. He'd been sixteen. In the scheme of things, I hadn't spent too long parenting him, never quite figured out how to, but I didn't know how not to, either.

I wanted to ask, 'Why do you hate me?' But I didn't.

I did ask, "You think it's strange that you're the only family I got left, and I don't know anything about you?"

"You've got Yvonne and her family," he said, ignoring the last part of my assertion. So I ignored it too.

"It ain't the same."

A heavy silence fell over us. He got up and started pacing. Then he stilled, chewed his fingernails and stared at me for a while.

"I got something to tell you."

He walked over and reached above the icebox to set out two tiny tea cups, of all things. He grabbed the whiskey from the window ledge and poured. He handed one to me. He stood there. Anxiety poured into my chest like cement into a freshly dug foundation. I wanted him to spit it out.

"Cheers." We clinked our cups together. Mine looked dainty and ridiculous in my hand. I looked up at him. He looked so scared. I felt scared. We drank.

I was still sitting. "What is it?"

Enough time passed before he answered, I ran through scenarios in my head. He was sick. He was on drugs. He'd gotten some girl pregnant.

"Darry, I'm gay."

"What?" I really had no idea what he meant. I didn't know words like that back then.

"You know, like homosexual." His voice was oddly high-pitched and shaking as bad as his hands, but he kept his chin up defiant, firm. He lit up a smoke.

And I felt like I did six years ago, when he told me, "Darry, there's somebody from the army here." Behind him, the street howled, cold wind gushing in through the gaps in the window frame. I couldn't move.

I finally asked, "Have you seen a doctor?"

"I don't need a doctor. I'm fine." He didn't look fine. He looked like he might pass out. I felt like I might pass out. "It ain't like I'm hurtin' or hurtin' anybody else. It's just what I - who I am."

"I don't - what do you want me to do?"

"Nothing. You don't got to do nothing. I just thought you should know."

"Why?" Why would he tell me, if he didn't want me to help fix it?

"I don't wanna lie to you anymore. I've been so scared that I'd lose you; I think that's what I ended up doing. " He took a drag from his cigarette and blew the smoke up towards the ceiling, which was already stained a sickly yellow. "That's some irony, right there."

"What are you gonna do, then?" I watched his smoke curl into nothingness.

"I'll keep doing what I've been doing."

"Which is?"

"I'll just make art and friends and date and maybe find someone nice and fall in love."

"With a man." There was water damage on the ceiling.

"That's the idea, yeah."

I ripped my eyes down to look at him. He was leaning against the counter, with his one arm wrapped around himself, daring and scared.

"Don't you want a family?"

He smiled a resigned smile. Mom's smile. "It's not about what I want. I can't love a woman like that. I'm not wired like that, ya know?"

I had all these ideas in my head. That Pony would get a real job, marry a nice girl, and have kids. He'd move closer. We'd get to the point where we could be friends almost. We'd barbecue together. I wanted those things for him. For me.

And he was going to give all of it up to, what, let perverts touch him? I felt nauseated.

"Did somebody … hurt you when you were little?" I couldn't look at him. I stared at the typewriter on the coffee table.

He shook his head. "It don't work like that Darry."

I didn't believe him. A stray thought, a realization came into my head. "Your English teacher -"

"Mr. Syme ain't like that!" he snapped.

"He was arrested -"

"Those were trumped up charges."

It'd been quite the scandal at the time. A high school teacher arrested in a police raid for 'lewd and lascivious behavior.'

Pony took a deep breath, and I realized I needed to too. "It's not something anyone did to me. I've always been different. For as long as I can remember. You know that."

I did know, but it wasn't something we ever talked about. There were unspoken rules in our house. You couldn't call Soda stupid or Pony a sissy. 'Course, that didn't always stop me when we were younger.

I hated it, but something about it made sense. Still I asked, "What about Cathy?"

"She's a friend. A good one, but it was never like that - she knew it."

"She knows?" Pony nodded. I had another persistent question. I needed to know. I don't know why, but I did. "Did Soda?" He nodded again. "Of course he did." It came out with more resentment than I wanted, directed at who I didn't know.

Pony looked at me measured. "I didn't tell him."

It made me feel better. Why would that make me feel better?

"Remember my friend Mark Jennings?"

I nodded. "The drug pusher."

"Uh - yeah, well, Soda kinda saw us - you know - together."

"I loved him." He looked down at his teacup. "You know, the way you love someone when you're fifteen." His gaze was far away. "You remember how much Soda and me fought back then."

I did. Our house had turned into a warzone before Soda was drafted. I had thought it was the overdue tension of having a sibling so close in age, that maybe they had trouble with the same girl. I was just glad for once that I wasn't the enemy.

How had all this gone down under my nose?

"He should have told me."

"You had enough to worry about." - but I knew the truth, they hadn't trusted me - "He thought he could deal with it himself. But I didn't want to be dealt with. I should have been more mature about it, with Soda. I just - I don't know - I thought he hated me."

That shocked me. "Sodapop loved you more than anything. Ain't nothing you could ever do to change that."

He nodded, his eyes were shiny. I knew the pained look in his eyes. Pony had been too young when Mom and Dad died, but I had years of teenage brattiness and ungratefulness to dwell on. Sometimes I still got caught off guard and thought, 'I can't believe I said that to Mom.'

I wanted to comfort him but didn't know how. I sat my cup on the coffee table and I put my hands under my knees.

"He was scared of us getting separated, me being institutionalized or something. I think he might have came around, if we'd had more time." He wiped away a tear with his thumb and smiled ruefully. "He showed me so much porn."

"What?"

"I guess he thought it would help. He even made a collage. "

"I remember that!" Soda had taped it to the back of Pony's door. It seemed odd at the time, but Soda was an odd duck.

I don't know if it was really that funny, but we laughed like it was. Soda'd been gone for six years. I don't think we'd talked about him like this before. We'd never talked about anybody, but everyone we'd lost lived in every word we ever spoke to each other. I couldn't lose Pony, too.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?" he echoed.

"I don't get it." I wasn't about to lie to him. "But it's your life. You can do what you want. You're an adult."

"Really?"

He could have told me he was a serial killer, and I was so desperate to be close to him, I'd have helped him bury the bodies.

"I just want you to come home sometimes. And call. I should know what's happening in your life."

"I'll try harder, Darry."

"Me, too."

I was quiet for a long time. I was afraid of what I might say and how Pony might respond. Pony didn't say nothing neither, maybe for the same reasons.

Eventually, he went to drop his cigarette into the old soup can.

"Let's just go to sleep."

"You can have the bed. I'll sleep on the settee."

"No, I'll take the couch."

After about ten minutes trying to lie on that stupid tiny couch, I stood up and walked to the bed. Even without any lights on in his apartment, I could see everything clearly. Light came in from the window. It never got completely dark here. Pony was still wide awake, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.

"Scoot over."

He did, pressed his body against the wall. The bed was plenty big.

It creaked when I got in. I tried not to think about what might have happened on this bed. I thought about the guy with the blue eyes. I wanted to ask Pony about him, but didn't.

"Can I tell Yvonne?"

"I guess."

I thought I'd feel better once I got to talk it over with her, but a small nagging fear sprouted. What if she had a problem with it? What would I do then?

Pony was staring at me.

He didn't take strongly after Mom or Dad, like Soda and me. He looked like someone shook them up in a sack, and out he came with all their best features and a few just his own. Dad's jaw, Mom's nose, Pony's eyes ...

"Think you're due for a haircut, kiddo," I told him and pushed his hair from his forehead.

"You should talk. I ain't ever see your hair so long."

I looked at him, my kid brother, the artist, the faggot. So pretty they put him on TV. He was exactly the kind of guy I would have beat the shit out of in high school. I remembered holding down Ken Mefford as Paul swung at him. I felt scared and sick.

"You really should lock your door, Pony, if you're gonna be … like that."

"Are you tryna tell me people don't like queers?"

I flinched. "I'm serious. Somebody might try to hurt you."

"I know, Darry. This has been my whole life. I know how bad people can be." He sighed. "You can put a new lock on it tomorrow, if you want."

"Do you know where there's a hardware store? We need plaster, too."

"I'm sure we can find one." No, then. I wasn't surprised.

"We'll get you some groceries too. You need real food."

"And Razzles for Sheila." His face broke into a smile. "I can't believe I thought you were a grownup when you were twenty."

"God, I ain't even feel grown now."

We stayed silent for a while, until Pony asked, "What - what do you think Mom and Dad would think?"

I didn't have to think. "Shoot, they let you get away with murder."

"No, they didn't." This was a familiar fight.

"Remember when you drew all over the wall?"

"You mean my mural?"

Pony couldn't have been more than three or four. We'd just moved to Tulsa from Blaine County. Dad had let me have it a few days before for cutting all my and half of Soda's hair off. I was primed to see someone else get into trouble, but Dad saw the crayon squibbles on the wall and howled with laughter. "I'm bigger than the house!" Dad had bragged, pointing at the stick drawing of our family and our new home. "My baby's an artist!" As close as Dad and I were, I don't think he adored anyone like he did Pony. And he babied him like no one else - his delicate, dazed baby. I used to find it so annoying. But gosh, if I don't miss it now.

"Daisy?" I had never used Dad's pet nickname for Pony before. It had felt more sacred than Pepsi-Cola. In Daisy, there was a tacit admission that Dad saw Pony for who he was and cherished him for it.

"Yeah?" Pony asked softly.

I loved him, but I didn't tell him that. "You got enough blanket?"

"I'm good. 'Night, Darry."

"G'night."