Chapter Ten

Soda was at the kitchen table with a cigarette and a solemn face. I remembered when we walked into the house for the first time after Mom and Dad died. Nothing would ever be the same again.

My heart was pounding something fierce, as I sat down and reached for the Camels in the center of the table and searched for matches. Without saying nothing, Soda slid a book over to me.

Between my cast and my sweaty, shaky hands, it took a few tries to strike a match. I loved the smell, normally, but while my senses were still warped from the sassafras and Pepsodent stung deep in my nostrils, it made me sick.

Our stained placemats were once a vibrant orange but had faded to a muted coral color and our table top was covered in scratches from doing homework and paying bills. Grooves carved in it like on the corner of the calendar that Darry's work had given us, where we always tried to make dried-out pens write. I too had nothing to say.

We sat across from each other like a detective and a suspect in a crime movie, with an ashtray and a smog of smoke separating us. The silence thickened into anticipation.

Beads of perspiration dripped down my back.

I finished one weed and lit another before I couldn't take it anymore. I said, "Soda," - I didn't think I was going to cry, but my voice sure sounded like I was - "say something."

He exhaled. "You didn't put the pot roast in the oven."

"I'm sorry, I forgot. I'll go do it now." That was my job, Darry had assigned it before we all left in the morning. He'd assembled it last night. I just had to put it in the oven. I forgot, of course.

Soda looked at me for the first time since I entered the kitchen. I don't know what he saw, but I don't think he liked it. "I already started preheating the oven." He fiddled with the frayed edges of his placemat.

"What are you doing home so early?" I asked. I should have propped the bedroom door shut. I should have been listening in case someone came into the house. I never think. Why do I never think?

"Floyd's nephew wanted the hours, so he sent me home." He looked down. "Are you high right now?"

I blinked and sorta nodded. In all the panic I forgot the drugs next to my typewriter on the desk. He must have seen them when I was brushing my teeth.

It didn't seem to me that it mattered much, under the circumstances.

"I'm getting rid of the grass."

"Okay."'

I waited for him to say something about the pills. He didn't. He hadn't seen them, maybe Mark had grabbed them before he fled. I don't remember.

He just stared at the crumbling end of his own cigarette as he tapped it over the ashtray. It looked like a miniscule rockfall - so insignificant, so devastating. "You need to tell me what's going on."

I had never rehearsed justifying this. How could I? There wasn't a reason that would make sense. "I think - I just like Mark."

"No, you don't ... He's got you all mixed-up. He's got you doing drugs with him and -" He didn't finish, too disgusted to say the things I did with Mark aloud. He looked like he was going to puke. "How could you let him do that to you?"

What could I say? That I liked it? That I couldn't stop him? That he overwhelmed me? That he consumed me? Everything I had ever written about him, all the dissonance, so many words and brushstrokes, and the persistent fear that this really was wrong after all.

He ground down his cigarette and shook out another from the pack. "How long has this been going on?"

"Since February. But maybe I was just made like this."

"No," he asserted firmly. "Pony, you're not ... You're confused, is all … It ain't your fault. I mean, after everything that happened, after Mom and Dad, and then Johnny and Dallas. It … It makes sense you're out of sorts. Golly, Ponyboy, you're not you no more. I should have known something was wrong. You been on edge, hiding stuff. There's no girl, is there?"

I shook my head and confessed, "I don't like girls, not like I should."

He shook his head and said nothing.

He got up to put the pot roast in the oven. I look out past him through the kitchen window to mom's garden. I never got around to planting anything in it. I got distracted, and the weeds grew back. What was another year anyway? I figured there'd be time next spring. I always thought there'd be more time. You'd think I'd learn.

I don't remember all we talked about that day. He asked a lot of questions, and I tried to answer him. I didn't tell him everything, because I knew it would look bad, worse than it was. It wasn't that I thought anything was that horrible really, but I knew Soda would think so. I swallowed every reservation I had about Mark and all the things I had desperately wanted to talk over with Soda before. I thought he might kill Mark, if he knew everything. I'm serious. I don't know why I thought that, but I did. And I couldn't let that happen. To either of them.

When the sun subsided, Soda said, "We should make some potatoes." He pulled the chain to turn on the light that hung above the table. It swayed, making his face shadowy and strange, while he peeled potatoes over the sink. I wasn't much help with one arm.

He talked. I listened. Part of me died.

"Steve was right, he's trouble. He's manipulating you. He's a fucking psycho, a goddamn pervert," he said. The sound of knife against the skin on the potato scraped at my nerves, leaving me raw and exposed. "Pony, you need to stop."

Quietly, I asked, "What if I feel about Mark like you felt about Sandy?" I loved him. I'd marry him, if I could. No matter how bad he betrayed me. I don't know, I guess I was holding out hope that Soda would understand that.

"You don't," he snapped. Then his eyes softened, pleading almost. ""You're sick. You can't do that. You can't see him anymore. This ain't like sneaking into the movie house, Pony. This is a serious crime."

I thought about Mr. Syme and all the people at Jack's. I'd been going every week. I'd sit at the bar and draw portraits of the patrons, portraits with enough ambiguity to be safe. Though, I sometimes wanted to draw them more specific, because I don't think I'd ever seen anything as lovely as when Miss Doris came in and leant across the bar to kiss Jack so sweetly on the cheek. I thought about the men at Bird Creek. I thought about money I'd given to Mark. I thought about Mark's edges. I thought about his laughter. I thought about the things I mostly tried not to think about.

How could something be a crime and an illness? How could I be the victim and the patient and the perpetrator?

"I can't just stop." Did he think I hadn't tried?

"You don't understand how serious this is. What if the state finds out? They'll take you away, lock you up in a nuthouse." He blinked and sucked in a quivering sort of breath. "Darry'll be home soon."

There was a painful lump building in my throat. "Are you gonna tell him?"

He shook his head. "We don't got to worry Darry with this," he said, assuring himself more than me, I think. "Yeah, I'll figure it out."

"You still upset about Soda?" Mark asked three days later when we were finally saw each other. I thought about staying away like Soda said, I really did. But I could no sooner give up oxygen. So when I knew that when Soda couldn't get out of going drag racing with Steve - and it wasn't like Steve was going to strong arm me to come - I'd called Mark right up to meet me at Jack's.

"Would you be okay if Bryon found out?" I asked.

"I got him under control. It'd be fine. Hell, he might already know."

I scoffed. There was no way Douglas knew. I didn't care how well Mark thought he could handle him.

"You said he wasn't going to tell, what does it matter?"

I couldn't explain to Mark that it killed me that Soda was looking at me different. Soda and me hadn't really talked about it again yet, not really. But it was all different. When he wasn't at work, he was at my heels glancing around nervously, like he was going to catch me in the act. All the easy affection we used to share was gone, and that hurt. I don't know how to say this but I never existed before Soda. Mark couldn't understand that though; Bryon wasn't really his brother.

"What's wrong with the chicken?" Jack came over and put a coke in front of me. I must have looked pretty down.

I asked her once why she only ever called me 'chicken' and not Mark. She told me Mark was more of a fox in a henhouse. I'll always wonder if that was fair to him. He was barely sixteen.

"His brother walked in on him blowing me."

Dead silence. Suddenly, people turned to look. No laughter, no teasing like they normally did when it came to me and Mark.

Mr. Syme wasn't there that night, but I wanted him to be.

"Are you safe?" It was a loaded question, and it seemed to me that the whole bar held its breath while I tried to answer.

Eventually I nodded, but voiced a fear I hadn't even fully thought yet. "If he tells Darry," - my voice caught - "I don't know what'll happen."

It was different from before, when I thought Darry hated me. No one was trying to reassure me that it would be fine, that of course my brothers loved me enough and would want to keep me. Everyone in that bar understood that love could be conditional. Over the last couple months, I'd gathered stories about how Mr. Syme never went home to see his family, and whatever had happened to Miss Doris at a hospital up in Vermont when she was in college. It was so bad no one would actually say what it was. There were dozens of stories like that, stories told always with an air defeat, no less hidden then we were in the shadows. There were no good ones. It was never fine after your family found out. The best you could hope for was that they would be so upset it would turn into denial, and they would know you had a "roommate" and never address them directly. Most queers, their families didn't know back then.

I breathed in through my nose and tried to not to cry there in front of everyone, like I tried to hold it in that night when I laid in my bed staring at the ceiling as Soda pushed everything that had built up over the past two years that covered his mattress onto the floor and laid down. I don't like sleeping alone. Maybe I was too soft, I had thought. But getting juiced up would prove him right which was about the last thing I wanted.

The bar was gross, but I laid my head on it anyway.

"Oh honey," Jack said, soothingly. I felt her put her hand on my hair. It was rough and callous from hard work like Mom's, so dry it caught and pulled a little. Jack picked cotton with her mother when she was a girl, she told me once. That was before she married a man who drove a tractor trailer to get out of Alabama. She'd left him in the night years ago, but they were still married, legally speaking. I talked to Jack a lot back then. I always wondered if Mom and her ever met through Miss Doris, but I never asked. I wish I had. And I wish I knew what Mom made of her. It's funny all the things you wonder about once someone's gone.

When we left the bar, I looked over my shoulder, more anxious than normal, which was saying something. I was scared that Sodapop would appear and see us together. I was worried about what Soda would do if he saw Mark again, and if he realized I had no plans to stop seeing him ever.

"I'm gonna go drop off the cash tomorrow, wanna come?"

"Mark, I can't …"

"Cowboy up, you don't need him," Mark declared, as he slung an arm across my shoulders. "You got me."

I shrugged him off. "We got to be more careful."

A couple days later, Soda woke me up to go to church. Last time I was inside one it was on fire and Johnny died. I wasn't too keen on going, but I couldn't refuse. We both knew what Soda meant by it.

My Sunday best had never been as nice as the rest of the congregation, but I couldn't even get the jacket on. The shoulders were too tight. Nothing fit anymore.

We stayed in the back, like Johnny and I used to. Like Mom and Dad had when I was an acolyte. I had once loved the ceremony, the prayer, the white cotta over red cassock reflected in the chalice, a surreal rendition of me, another me. It always reminded me of Mom's wedding regalia, folded neatly in a box beneath their bed. Was it a sin to be an eight-year-old boy imagining I was a bride?

"For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops." (Luke 12:2-3)

We sat and we stood and we kneeled and we sat.

Sometime around this time, I got the call. It was before school started, but after Soda found out, I know that much. I was home alone, and it might have been the afternoon. It was the first long-distance call I was ever on. The reception was terrible. I could hardly hear the woman through the hissing in the background. New York sounded as far away as it felt.

I got second place for Erwin T. Speicher Prize. Normally, I'd have found out officially in the mail, but they had a secretary call me because they had questions about my cover letter and my pseudonym.

"That's a hundred dollars, right, ma'am?" I was perplexed. I hadn't thought about the contest since I dropped the envelope in the mailbox two months ago.

"Yes, it is. 'Ponyboy' is this a name you've published under before?"

"It's my real name," I said, with much more hostility than needed toward a secretary who had called me to tell me I won a prize. Maybe I had forgotten how to receive good news, since all I knew how to be for a long time was confused.

"Alright." She hesitated. "I'm sorry, how old are you?"

"Fifteen."

There was nothing but static, I was about to ask if she was still there, but then there was a brief laugh. "No one's going to be happy about this."

"Nobody's happy with anything I do."

"Can I speak to one of your parents?"

"No, they're both dead."

"Are you kidding?"

"That'd be real funny, if I lied about my parents being dead. Just a real lark." I was rude to Nell, then. I don't even know why. I was just tensed up back then. It's a wonder she puts up with me.

We worked out some of the details. She talked me into publishing under P.M. Curtis, and asked a few questions about the things you were supposed to put in a cover letter. I think I just sent in a piece of paper with my name and the title of my poem on it. I didn't know what a cover letter was when I submitted. She told me she'd call back when Darry was home, next Tuesday between three and six. Darry wouldn't get his schedule for the week until Monday, but I was hoping if I told him he could figure out a way to be home then.

Before she hung up, I had one last question. "So y'all liked it - my poem?"

"It was one our most polarizing submissions." I let that sink in. "You placed second. That's a huge honor. This is a very prestigious competition." When she said 'prestigious,' it rhymed more with auspicious than egregious.

"Did you like it?"

"I wasn't on the committee."

"But you read it, Ms. Carmichael?"

"… I did."

"What did you think?"

"I liked it. It was visceral, disturbing."

She didn't get it; it was a love poem.

I stood dumbly in the living room after the call was done, before I went and sat on my bed and thumbed through my drawings, trying to figure out how I was going talk to Darry about the poetry contest lady. I figured I should tell him about the prize money first. But I knew he'd want to read it, and I wasn't eager to have that happen. You can't show a guy like Darry a love poem you wrote. He'd never understand.

I heard the door slam, but didn't bother getting up.

"Ponyboy!"

"In here!"

Soda burst in. I kept drawing and I didn't even think to tell him about the competition.

"I got you something."

"Hmm?"

"Maybe you shouldn't draw so much."

I closed my sketch book, and put it on top of the desk.

He dropped a paper bag on my leg. I picked it up carefully, and pulled out a magazine. It was a Playboy.

"Soda – "

"Listen, kid, I know you haven't been around girls much, so they can seem scary … but they're not. They're real nice." He tapped the magazine. "Look at 'em and try. You need to get used to it. Trust me."

I flipped through all the glossy women, but paused at the centerfold. I'd seen naked women before; it wasn't the first time someone showed me a skin mag, and I'd seen my share of nudes in books and the museum. Of course, this was unlike anything I'd seen at the Philbrook. The woman was taken out of context, floating in white space. It was two whole pages of just one woman, with her arms awkwardly bent away from her sides. It was an unnatural pose. She reminded me of Nancy in Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. She was wearing swimsuit bottoms and no top, but what stood out the most was her expression.

"She looks sad."

"No, she doesn't."

"Look at her eyes."

"You're not supposed to be looking at her face, Pony." He sounded impatient, and implored, "You just got to try."

I did try that night, but it didn't work.

School started up just a week or so later, and Mark cut another deal with his supplier, against my better judgement. He had only just broke even selling a hundred dollars' worth of pills. He said it'd be easier to sell now that I was in classes with Socs again. It was, but it's not a great feeling when you get messed up in stuff like that, and you can't ever get away from it, not even at school. I didn't like it.

The only part of school I did liked was Creative Writing, but even that felt strange.

For one thing, it was all girls and they were all older than me. I was the only boy in that class, and I felt funny about it. Since it was an elective, everyone knew I signed up too. And since you had to be a junior or a senior to take Creative Writing, and it was mostly seniors, they were all older than me. Cherry Valance was in it. But we hadn't talked. Mr. Syme seemed funny about that, like he would have warned me.

And don't get me wrong, I liked Mr. Syme, but it was uncomfortable to see him in class again, now that I knew him differently. If you've seen somebody's calves through the bottom of a bathroom stall with their pantlegs bunched up at their ankles, next to a similar pair of calves in the same stall, it's bound to be weird to hear them talking about points-of-view. First person, third person, second person – who is telling the story? And to whom? Why? Why is this a story worth telling? For them? For you? "Be sure to remember the poet is not always the speaker," Mr. Syme would say. I knew he had stories he would never tell.

I think it was uncomfortable for him too. I didn't talk to Mr. Syme much at Jack's or at school, really. Not as much as I wanted to. I wasn't sure how he felt. He was hot and cold with me, familiar one moment, stiff the next. I don't blame him. I'm sure it wasn't easy for him. He was a master at compartmentalizing, and that can throw you - when different parts of your life collide. I would know.

Still, I lingered after each class. I don't know why. It's just what I did.

One day, though I had no intention of doing so, I told him about the contest, he said, "That's incredible!" It was good to hear some excitement. I hadn't felt excited yet, and neither had Darry when I told him. Darry wasn't mean about it or anything, just baffled.

"I –" I glanced at the open door. "I didn't tell Mark. I'm not going to." I didn't want him to laugh at me, and I didn't want him to know about the money. I'm not sure why I wanted Mr. Syme to know this.

He nodded real slow. Then he open his mouth like he was going to say something, but a student came in for his Honors 10 class.