Soda Curtis moves with the river, the Arkansas, polluted with the oil that made parts of this town wealthy and enviable floating besides. But I'm not gon' let 'em catch me, no. Really brings out his drawl and he's singing the rest of the way, windows rolled as his fingers tap against the steering wheel. He was an fantastic dancer though, back in the day at Cain's, he and Mary, on the dance floor. Which sometimes wasn't a dance floor at all, but a bar, but a car hood, but the mud wet and oozing beneath their feet. Soda shouted his wife's praises, have y'all seen my Mary move?! He used to say. Like a firefly, hot and electric and tiny, buzzing with energy that's too much for anyone but Soda, who's too chaotic anyways.
Along the side, tiny flags pushed in the ground for Memorial Day. A zoom of micro-patriotism. But it means nothing. Soda can't forget.
Couldn't fucking stand Tate Parker half the time, but he loved him. And Thomas Payne aka Tap, Cooper aka Charlie (but not as in VC, cherry ass) Cooper and Mike Chavez who might of had a nickname but what is remembered is that he died of a heart attack while in the shitter and Philip Mihailovich aka Irish. And more. God, he loved all of them.
And of course Steve Randle, met him at Crutchfield, but really got to know him in elementary school, first or second grade, and best buddies ever since, and Johnny Cade and Dallas Winston and Keith Mathews aka Two-Bit. Soda could see himself in all of them and maybe it's because they could recognize parts of themselves in Soda. Johnny may have been the pet, but Soda, Soda was the center. And thirty five years later the center is still holding, more resilient than most people only given the litany of his experiences, but who didn't know him, would have expected, but still, still, it can be a struggle. You know?
He needs to get back. Makes the turn sharp, skirting on a red light by a tailgate and rolls past the Praying Hands, the ridges on the thumbs appearing like lips ready to speak before making his way downtown with it's Art Deco buildings to head north and home. Some kid cuts him, almost ramming into his truck and Soda shoots a middle finger, cusses like it will make a difference and wonders how the hell he and Steve survived these same streets; the way they burnt rubber like they had some place to go.
In the Walgreens parking lot it hits him like a spike who she is. Hasn't seen her in a couple of years, and before that even longer. Something's different though. Can't quite pin it down. She asks about his grandbabies, which surprises him (in a nice way) that she remembered Patrick's boys. She still thinks it's a riot he's sort of related to the Shepards, though she only knew of Tim. But this is just an excuse for her to brag that she's gonna be a first time grandma soon. No, they don't know the sex yet...but she's been praying for a boy. She folds her hands together.
He mentions with a huge smile that my middle one, my little girl is graduating today. Junior High. Yeah, Rogers this fall. He's been back, Pony's youngest daughter is in a lot of the plays and Darry's youngest son is the starting pitcher on the baseball team. Sometimes he and Mary catch a football game too. No, they ain't doin' too hot, maybe they'll turn it around, though I bet Jenks will win State again. But hey, gotta support the Ropers. Though heck it ain't like Jenks ever produced a J.J. Cale or nothing. Course neither did Rogers. Cale graduated from Central. He adds.
Look at that, never knew you were such an expert.
How could any self-respecting Tulsan not know Cale who wrote Clapton's Cocaine and After Midnight?
Remember how you could tell Buck's mood just based on what Hank Williams's song he was playing?
Buck, now how could I forget? She snorts out a laugh and they chat about Buck, the man and his roadhouse.
Pauses for half a second before answering her next inquiry. Mary's doing good, working hard at her salon. Hasn't completely given up yet on making east side Tulsa as cool as she is. When he asked her, just curious, if she'd ever considered moving back to L.A., after their kids are grown, or maybe traveling again, like how they used too. Course they'd do it right this time, in an RV, not wandering and barely surviving. But she says that Tulsa, Oklahoma is her home.
How's everybody? He asks. Not sure who in her life is alive or dead, not sure what category her folks fall under.
They talk a bit more, about the people they still have in common, which makes the conversation go by quickly. Though 'died' and 'locked up' comes up more than once, but mostly 'don't know.'
Staying out of trouble? she teases like the answer can't possibly be no, like he ain't who he was/is.
He's agreeable and honest (this time) yes'm and gives her a salute, shifting his bag to his other arm, to give her a grin too.
If she mentions something about his charm right now, it would have made his eyes roll internally, but he would have also thought about Sandy. How she once call him charming like a cuss or something. And it's amazing how the mind works like that, how something or someone lays like a shark at the murky bottom of the ocean that's called your memories, how one word yanks them back into being and into your flesh.
But she doesn't and Sandy remains under surface. Instead she says: But don't think I wasn't aware that half the trouble Dallas got caught up in you was involved somehow.
Laughs, but can't deny. He lucked out, his kids ain't nothing like the greasy hellion he used to be. Or, he thinks, the former junkie, which makes him look at his teen years with it's fights, drag races, rodeos and cheerful mayhem with a kind of nostalgia.
Wait til your baby girl starts dating, she crows from experience.
For dramatic effect inhales a bit, between his teeth, the medication still kicking in. Sure, if Hazer was anything like her parents back in the day they'd be gearing up for a world of hurt, but Hazer more takes after her big brother.
Brings his hand up to his brow like a visor to block out the midday sun that shadows half her face. And as he does so, as he blocks out the sun, he thinks about how they were, and how they aren't that anymore. If, they ever were in the first place.
But honest, how's life treatin' you these days?
She doesn't think she's going to be able to retire until she's 70. It's strange, how seventy seems both so far off in the distance, but close enough to snatch you up. If death don't get to you first. He shivers, though it's May in Tulsa.
He works at Randle's now.
Like y'all did at the DX. She says like nothing changed between '65 and '99.
His mouth turns a bit bitter. Steps back so one foot on the curb one foot on the gutter. His boot's toe pushing against one of the slits in the cover. The air heating up his tongue before he speaks again.
Yeah, he says like there haven't been other jobs and families and a war too, in between. But he's damn grateful for the work and hell it's a good gig, working on cars with his best friend. Steve's a good boss, an even better man. Though Soda don't want to be treated differently than the other guys, but Steve won't act like he's Soda's boss. Still knows his way inside a engine, still knows how to make her purr, can teach the younger guys Steve hired the same. He's not making the type of money he did before.
Take it to Steve. You know he's gonna give you a better deal than anyone in town. When she looks skeptical, he continues his sales pitch. Steve's the best mechanic in Tulsa, built his business from the ground up. With this, he speaks with unalloyed pride.
Him and Evie they live close to where her mom is, off Utica. Points in the direction, though she doesn't turn her head to see. Mrs. Martin? She's getting by. Doesn't add how Evie picks up drawers full of Rx for her mom at this same Walgreens.
Yeah, he knows it's wild that he ended up living in Randle's old place and for a spell Steve and Evie and their two boys lived in his old house.
So how is he?
Shrugs and smiles wistfully, shrugs his shoulders up, surviving, and brings his shoulders back down. You know how it goes. Same as it ever is.
Flips his phone out by habit and that has her eyes wide and musing, my, my, my, look who's living large, only people I know with a cellphone are the big shots.
Only people I know with a cellphone has a big shot older brother who gave it to him for Christmas.
She gives the sort of low whistle he gave once when he saw a cherry red stingray pull into the DX.
Tells her congrats on the grandkid again; hope they do you right and give you that little boy you're wantin'. Then thinks about Hazer, you'll do just fine with a little girl too.
She scoffs, tell that to my daughter, will ya?
Just be patient with your daughter. Doesn't like lecturing so adds, I know you know that and I know it ain't just in your hands.
Take Care, Soda.
You do the same. Nice catchin' up with you, Sylvia.
And yeah, he did, he loved 'em all.
Oklahoma as a face: the Panhandle on the west and the Tulsa on the east are the eyes are, Oklahoma City is the nose and the mouth is the stretch of border shared with Texas. The past four years were brutal ones; it started at 9:02 A.M. on April 19, 1995 with a Ryder truck and only a few weeks earlier on May 3, 1999 an F5 Twister landed a second punch right on the nose.
Whole state feels off-kilter. Then there's Tulsa, the state's eastern eye, not directly affected by these man and nature made calamities; but, those glass shards.
She dyed her hair. His grin's different too. He once had the type of grin that jumped out of his mouth. A grin wild, sweet, lopsided too, which only added to it's character and yes, it's charm. Now his grin is subdued, rougher around the edges. Though it's smaller, it holds more; annoyance and anger and melancholy alongside.
Lopsided grins are claimed by the young; his runs crooked.
It's strange, Mary made a big deal of it, got him a cane and a package of adult diapers, but turning fifty didn't feel any certain way. Not that he knew what turning fifty was supposed to feel like. His dad died at forty and looked and acted younger still and Darry, Darry who at twenty looked middle-aged is now fifty-four and looking and acting as young as he ever did, running in a marathon to benefit the hospital Cathy works at. Pony, the only one of them who is still in his forties, but he seems to be adjusting.
Which leaves Soda. Orphaned at sixteen, he helped raise his little brother and it wasn't easy, he wouldn't admit it, or rarely would, but Pony wasn't an easy kid with his nightmares and neediness though Soda recognized both of those qualities in himself too. Growing up, he looked to both his brothers, older and younger, but wished that Pony didn't share this burden.
He went to war and fathered a child at eighteen with a woman whose countrymen he was fighting, which is another word for killing. So, he's not really sure what fifty is supposed to feel like cause he sure as hell didn't understand what eighteen, never mind sixteen was supposed to feel like.
Chuck Berry comes through the radio and Soda loved Chuck, him and Jerry Lee Lewis especially. Elvis too, to his wife's later mockery. Could've busted his ear drums with how loud he cranked up the volume in Darry's old Ford. But in his own truck (still a Ford) quickly switches the station. It's hard sometimes, too hard, to listen to that music and remember how he used to be, when his grin could both shatter and light up this world, when all things felt possible.
In the mirror the midnight rider looks back, hard and worn, that bit of beard he'll be shaving when he gets home. Then he remembers, in October he'll be fifty-one.
There's more security this year, which means there are two uniformed policemen outside the door instead of the plainclothes one that would've spent the evening in his squad car, munching on Long John Silver's. There's talk about security guards, about video games, about Marilyn Manson, about prayers in school, not much talk about guns, but a month later the "our hearts and prayers" sign outside the school is gone and replaced with "Congratulations Class of '99!"
Yesterday they are eighth graders and at a Banquet Hall and dancing, or talking, watching, if they are there at all and not ditching. Boys in baggy polo shirts and baggier jeans that woooosh when they strut on the dance floor, a lot of them with curtain haircuts. They wrap their sweaty hands tight around girls with newly defined hips some of them in hip huggers and tight shirts, in sundresses with spaghetti straps.
They smell like Calvin Klein, like pizza and hot wings, like zit cream, like smoke, like fruit punch, like fuzzy navel, like hormones.
Girls wrap their arms around each other, form a centipede and sing-shout as if they're one-upping each other with the force of their enthusiasm.
All around the world statues crumble for me
Who knows how long I've loved you
Everywhere I go people stop and they see
Twenty-five years old my mother God rest her soul!
When they are juniors in high school, their teachers wheel in T.V.s and they'll watch the plane dive into the second tower. Some will serve in Afghanistan or Iraq, a few both, some marry spouses who serve. More endure scars, emotional and physical. One returns in a platinum coffin. For some, their twenties will be defined by the Great Recession, by addictions, and For Sale signs.
But that's their future. Now they are on the cusp of a new millennium, of high school, of endless possibilities and they sing; IIIII just want to flyyyyyy. Stretch their arms to the ceiling. And they look up.
Mary is there of course, so are Hawk and Patrick in his chinos and Oxford shirt. The eighth graders are only allowed 4 guests at their graduation and some of the parents threw a fit, but for Curtis, Hazer L. four guests is a perfect number.
The band strikes up, and the eighth graders: drooping, swaggering, confident, scowling, smiling, just there, barely, form two lines and walk into the gymnasium for the last time.
Before, Hazer and her mom had a fight, Hazer told her mom it's embarrassing that Mary wears the same rock t-shirts as her daughter, sometimes the exact same shirt. That she should dress her age. Which Mary and Hazer both know is gonna be 50 this fall. The two of them stand there in the Curtis (used to be Don Randle's) living room. An icon of Mary, Jesus's (not Hazer's and Hawk's) mother looks down at them, she was picked up at a thrift store.
Embarrassing?! You know what's embarrassin' Hazer Curtis? Not knowing what a cool mom you got! When Mary Curtis feels something she shares it uncensored with the world. And she felt hurt. Tells Hazer she's lucky her mom ain't like all the other boring as shit mothers. Turns the volume back up on General Hospital.
When they go at it, Soda'll intervene. Though he won't tolerate Hazer's mouth, or rolled eyes, but will slide a hon on low in his wife's direction when she's on the precipice of saying something she won't be able to take back. He's their peacemaker that way.
Though there was this one time: Mary and Hazer were arguing when out of the blue Soda grabs Hawk's hand and said fed up: c'mon, we're gonna blow this Popsicle stand.
Hawk then bursts out laughing, his little green Mohawk head shaking, Popsicle stand?! this ain't no Popsicle stand! Mary and even Hazer laugh, with Hawk, who has a laugh like his daddy did when he was five. But Soda answered, yup, we're gonna bust outta this joint, hot rod, it's gettin' too crazy in here for me.
They took a spin in his truck, Hawk sat on his Dad's lap and honked the horn and steered while Soda controlled the pedals.
Mary thinks she's over this latest tussle when she sprinkles powder sugar on the French toast but she sprinkles angry and by the time the toast looks like winter she can't help but asking her daughter in a voice dripping with sarcasm if her plain black shirt meets her approval. Hawk's wearing his new t-shirt, a silk screen dragon that tells everyone: I'm a Kindergarten Leader.
Soda and Mary are young for grandparents but at Hawk's kindergarten graduation (Miss. Avery gave them all coupons for DQ along with their dragon t-shirts) they were the oldest parents there. Hawk keeps them young and makes them feel old.
Hey Dad! Hawk's wearing his Dragon t-shirt at his sister's junior high graduation and he runs down the bleachers, almost knocking a woman over. Soda bends down and grins and kisses his little boy, before instructing firmly: watch where you're going. Makes him apologize to the woman.
For his children his grin is largely unmitigated by how he feels about himself.
Now Mary watches her daughter in a black dress her legs freshly shaved, but showing little dark bumps of in-grown hair, if you gawk like a perv or something. Her hair pulled back in a tight pony tail. Wet, her curly dark brown hair is straight and black. She has on fresh canvas white sneakers on, (the ones with black duct-tape oceans are in her closet) and her family watches her walk down the aisle formed by folding chairs, streamers wrapped around the metal legs.
In the cheering and the clapping, that's my baby!
Hazer hopes it wasn't her mother shouting like a psycho. But of course it was. It always is. She can't wait for this shit to over. But then she remembers after the summer it will be high school, 9th grade and English in the dungeon.
As for Soda, his arms wrap around his wife and he's squeezing and feels her back and ass press into him like home. Feels her hips sharp inside the crooks of his arms.
He's content with letting out a celebratory whistle. It's one he and his buddies and the Shepard gang used a long time ago, before Soda and eventually Curly served in Vietnam, before Soda and Angela Shepard Jones screwed each other, long before he and Angela shared a grandson.
When he thinks about it, though he tries not too, even though it was a mutual decision, getting with Angela was a mess. Not that he felt real friendly towards Tim and Curly back then, but they all knew each other and fucking Angela was perilously close to screwing Steve's cousin. Violated some arcane but sturdy code of his. But then again, by the time he and Angela had sex Soda had violated so many of his moral codes in Vietnam that this felt more like a revert to the norm than anything wrong.
Though he was stoned and in a bad way when he got with Angel, maybe he's got a type: petite and dark haired. Fearless too, though in different ways. In high school he didn't have a type but good looking and female, and after that, blonde. Unlike Two-Bit's preference they didn't even need to be stacked, though shit, he ain't complaining when they were, 'specially when they wore them low cut blouses that hinted at their tits and got them a detention and a trip to the girl's locker room to put one of those bag like gym shirts on.
But when he thinks about it, those women, Mary, Anna, Angela, all had gone through so much in their lives. What was it about him that drew them in? What was it about them that he was attracted to?
Then there's Sandy. He loved her. Sure that love was 9/10ths pup, 1/10th wolf, but it was there, he felt it.
Did they let you see it? He once asked her softly, decades ago. About her baby.
Her blue eyes shut, why are you doing this to me? Are you trying to get back at me?
His guts iced and sharp, dropped. No, No, he wasn't trying to hurt her. Though since he came back from that war that seemed all he was capable of: hurting.
He just thought...He thought maybe she was the only one in the entire world who might know what he's going through. That maybe he understood what she went through too, though he thinks it's different, a whole lot worse for the mom. How it feels not to feel whole anymore because there's a part of you cut off from yourself, out there. In the world. Which is far darker than he could ever imagine. Just like his brothers as much as they strived, can't understand his combat life, his brother vets can't get this. They may have left part of their flesh in 'Nam, but their flesh didn't have ten fingers, ten toes that curled just so, big brown eyes, slightly elfin ears, a heartbeat and a name. His name, too.
I'm sorry Soda, Their situations ain't the same. Tells him, adoption isn't a tragedy for everyone.
So in this too, Soda Curtis is alone.
He thinks: You ever think about maybe changin' up your perfume Sandy? I dunno, you've been wearin' the same scent since we were sixteen. Ain't it time to move on?
That's the bizarre thing, people talk about 'moving on' but what they really mean is going backwards, going back to who you were before.
And anyways his wasn't a path, or even like chutes and ladders, but a swirl of darkness and light that seemed to form it's own universe with him spinning in the off-center. That as resilient as he was, (what the hell did that mean anyway?) the past could be even more resilient.
But back to 1965, when on New Year's Eve Darry was out, Soda launches a few firecrackers in the backyard, his dad, his Okie from Muskogee dad, who dreamt of becoming a cowboy puts on Frank Sinatra and Fly Me to the Moon. Ponyboy, embarrassed by his parents' tipsy displays of affection, or maybe still secretly believing in moon men at thirteen, or maybe captivated by the night, looked up at the sky long after the firecrackers stopped and Frank stopped and only the stars remained.
His fingers are in his mouth and he lets out a whistle, low and long with a zing at the end. He looks up, at the rafters, at a ConGRADulations balloon that flew out of someone's hand and is days away from deflating, at the industrial ceiling fans spinning in their cages; at the lights.
A/N: I know this chapter is a bit weird and meandering and if you made it to the end thank you! The song on the radio is Midnight Rider by The Allman Brothers Band. The song at the banquet hall is Fly by Sugar Ray. The center holds line is a reference to 'the center cannot hold' in W.B. Yeats' The Second Coming. And Jenks won the State Championship that year. ;) J.J. Cale is a musician. Cain's is Cain's Ballroom a legendary music venue in Tulsa. The praying hands is a famous sculpture...
'Scuse me, what the sort of fresh hell is this? "Hazer told her mom it's embarrassing that Mary wears the same rock t-shirts as her daughter, sometimes the exact same shirt."
That makes it sound like I'm the Grinch and my daughter is what's her name, the little girl? Uh Cindy-Lou, Cindy-Lou that's right. And I'm a tip-toeing into her room at night and snatching her clothes right off her. That's not how it happened at all. I spilled some Totino's Pizza roll sauce all over my shirt (totally worth it by the way) and needed to wash my shirt and figured might as well do the rest of laundry while I'm at it. Hazer had her clothes still in the dryer, for at least eight hours, but that's not neither here nor there. Any how, as I'm doing my daughter a favor and neatly folding her clothes and I just happen to notice A Dead Kennedys t-shirt. Doesn't my Hazer have great taste in music? And I also just happened to notice that the shirt fit me perfectly and not to sound conceited or nothing but I looked damn good in it, especially with these tight jeans I had on. That's how it happened, not that I owe an explanation or nothing.
A/N: okay, well that was obviously a very worthwhile interruption. Thank you so much for reading. I appreciate it so much. :)