notes: repost with some semi-significant edits (orig. pub.: 29 march 2019). idk why i deleted this in the first place :(
referenced underage sex, drug use, period-typical attitudes, death, etc. some colorist rhetoric that is period-typical / culturally relevant but is not shared by the author. obligatory reminder that words in spanish function differently than in english, in case anyone is worried about that.
I wanted
the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,
whoever I was, I was
alive
for a little while.
(Mary Oliver, "Dogfish.")
Curly knows he's bound to die young. His daddy wasn't even thirty when the bastard he was doing business with shanked him mid-argument. His mama's youngest brother, who Tim's named after, was there and gutted the guy, quick as he could. Didn't matter. Frankie Shepard bled out at the outskirts of town on a November night before Angela was even five. Uncle Teo died a few years later, in his early twenties, after the girl he was half-seeing forgot to mention her man owned a gun.
Maria Shepard, who dropped Nazar soon as daddy got a ring on her finger, was left with three mouths to feed and not one good man around to help her. It's no wonder she ended up with that rat bastard of a second husband. She ain't real dark, but dark enough to notice. Doesn't matter that daddy made her a citizen if her English don't lose the sound of Mexico, Angela was always saying. No one cares if none of the kids came out looking like her in a bad way. Matter is his mama wasn't ever going to be able to take care of them all by herself, and that second husband of hers makes her so miserable there ain't much left to do but turn to the bottle.
Curly's always swore he was going to do better than that. Wasn't fixing to lose himself to some broad and end up the worse for it. He was going to blow up bigger than his uncle and daddy ever did, bigger than Tim if he had it his way. Bernal used to laugh in his face when he said that. Said he was a piece of work, who did he think he was? Spitfire, that Bernal girl. Sometimes he even thinks he misses her, Vicky with that Texas twang that only ever came out when she was yelling at him. Real pretty smile, just like her sister, but not half as dark and twice as beautiful for it. Pretty Vicky, who hated her name, said, Call me Vic, savvy?, who thought he didn't notice the way she watched his own best friend, who thought he was too high to notice the way the smoke trailed from Curtis's mouth to hers and then back to Curly, all at once and slow like honey.
If she didn't put out so easy Curtis might've even gone for her first, but he was after Douglas's girl all that year, while Curly planned his move. He ain't a patient man. Never was, never has been. Vicky Bernal let Mark Jennings give it to her in his shitty car and when they hauled him in finally let Curly walk her home from school. Not a girl like Maria Shepard must have been, the summer she met her first husband, not a woman like she grew to be.
I ain't sticking around much longer, Curly used to tell her, seventeen and a senior, not a year behind or ahead but exactly where he was meant to be. His uncles used to say he was his father incarnate; he don't buy it.
Sure, slick, she used to tell him, her skirts barely at regulation length and her shirts real tight. She let him go all the way on the only date he ever took her on, at the drive-in that Curtis don't ever go to, not since the fall that Curly was in the reformatory when he should've been keeping his air-headed best friend out of trouble. Sure, they weren't best friends back then, but it's the principle of the thing. That's what Curly thinks, anyway.
What Curly's getting at is that he ain't stupid. Ain't from the best part of town, ain't even from a great town, he thinks, but he's smarter than he looks, even if that don't mean much. His mama says he could do better, but then again she only says that when she kicks the habit for a few weeks and starts answering the calls from her girlfriends at Our Lady of Guadalupe, the same ones who used to cluck over Tim and Curly before their daddy kicked the bucket. They're the same ones who used to say they were all real beautiful children, But keep them outta the sun, María, no quieres que se pongan todos negros, as if the gringas on the West side don't die to get a little color on them every summer.
His mama never did like Vic, Curly knows. Neither of the Shepard boys have good taste in women, not the way their mother wishes. Granted, Angela can't stand her, either, but that's probably because Vic's friends with Ponyboy and Angela ain't ever been good at not being able to take what she wants. Curly did his best to stay out of that particular disagreement, but he yelled himself hoarse when he found out she'd sent a couple of goons after him, knew from the get-go it wasn't nobody who worked with him or Tim on the regular.
You don't go after Curtis, you hear? he yelled at her, yelled a lot of things, and she made her eyes go real big, those crocodile tears that smeared her makeup ever-so-slightly, and he knew she was faking it, because Angela Shepard doesn't ever cry, not sober.
Shepard women, like the Nazar ones, are built for the long-haul. Life throws shit at 'em and even when it hits they keep on. Worse, every last one of them's a sucker for no-good men, his sister included. They may be at each other's throats half the time, but she and their mama are two peas in a pod. Curly don't like how much both their husbands act alike. Tim got into it with the both of them when the news broke, told their mother to shut the fuck up—What did she know about parenting, what's she been doing the last ten years? And it shut Maria up, quick. Gave her that trembly look that Curly used to hate, when he was a kid and Teo was still around.
He knows he ain't a good son and he ain't a good brother. He never wanted to be, so he never tried, but sometimes he wishes he wanted it anyway. Truth is, it's real hard to think about home, these days, when the heat of the jungle is stickier than mosquito spray and heavier than their uniforms to boot. Should be easier to think of his mother, sober, making fideos. Of Angela when she was real little, before Uncle Teo died, her hair plaited carefully and looking so much like Curly folks called them twins. Tim before the street got to him. Some days before he falls asleep he remembers them being children together, before Angela knew she was beautiful and before Tim realized none of them were going to amount to nothing but dirt.
Fucking figures, he said when his notice came in, that first argument with Tim about Guadalajara, that you ain't gonna be sent over before I am. And then, turning to his mother, on one of those breaks that preceded a bender, crying and clutching at the rosary she got as a wedding present, Where's your god now, ma? He fucking listening to you?
It'd be easier for everyone, Curly knows, if he had died instead of getting shipped out. Would have hurt less. Maybe if he was killed during a deal or something, where it was his own damn fault and people could pretend to be sad instead of satisfied, like that's all he's ever been fated to amount to. Everyone would have it easier: Tim, Angela, Vicky. If he died back home and not in the jungle Vicky could probably find a way to make Curtis fall in love with her. He knows that if they kill him out here she'll always be Curly's girl, poor thing, almost-boyfriend shot to death on the other side of the world.
Talk about bad luck. All those Bernals, cursed, even their daddy who didn't like either daughter none. Bad enough Curly's mama was widowed young with children. Old man Bernal left one wife, lost the other, got left by the last. Vic tutted over him like a fourth, cooked all his meals and made sure none of her stories got back to him. Nothing like Maria Shepard, who threw plates when she remembered what her sons had gotten arrested for, who threatened to ship Angela down to Mexico when she told them how bad she fucked up. She used to tell Tim and Curly at turns that they were just like their daddy, looked fond about it half the time and madder than a bat out of hell the rest of it.
Curly ain't nothing like his daddy. All three of them got their hair from their mama, and yeah, they all got the same eyes from Frank Shepard, but Tim's the one who looks most like him. Curly looks like Tim, after all, but he's seen the photos side by side. He's more his mother's child, more than even Angela, who's got the same trembling lower lip, the same tiger-eyes. Something about his father just don't fit on him the right way—maybe that's why he's spent so long trying to be just like Tim. It won't bring his dead father back; he's realized it a bit late, but he's realizing it anyway.
Vietnam is stifling. It's trees everywhere, water everywhere, heat sticking like a glaze. It's worse than any summer Curly's experienced, even the one time his mother sent him and Tim down South to cause trouble in Jalisco instead of Oklahoma. His mama was at her wit's end that summer. Tim managed to steal a girl's virtue while they were down there, anyway, and Curly remembers how she cried, wanting him to marry her and having to deal with the aftermath on her own. Curly used to joke that there were some new blue-eyed bastards down in their mother's city, Tim smacking him upside the head and launching into some finagled speech about rubbers, like Curly was stupid or something.
Curtis writes him the most. Keeps him updated on shit that Curly don't much care for, but that kid has always been good about spinning a good story out of nothing. Curly tells him to get over the brunette he was after and barely keeps himself from telling him to just give Vicky a chance already. Wants to pretend he misses her a little more, or a little less, than he does. Wants to pretend he don't miss Ponyboy's dopey ass, laughing at nothing after splitting a spiff with him, the orange glow in whatever car Curly stole.
Vic keeps telling him to hurry up and come home already, and part of him gets mad when he reads it. What, he wants to write, you think I'm having the time of my life out here? Eaten alive, barely any food, sweating my fucking skin off every day? He knows better than that. Tells her to send a good picture or shut her trap, doesn't bother correcting anyone when they think he's grinning at his girl's letters. His mama don't write at all. He tries to pretend it don't matter to him.
Sometimes he thinks about what Tim is up to, or if Angela's doing alright. She's always been a step ahead of him, that sister of his, but she's fucking stupid in a lot of ways. He'd beat up Bryon Douglas a hundred times for her, and then he'd do it a hundred more just for himself. He knows Jennings was there that night, and if it weren't for him being locked up already, he'd have gotten ahold of him, too. Curly won't admit to how far he'd go, not if anyone asks. Probably better that way. Plausible deniability, he thinks it's called. Can't nobody say they never expected more out of him.
Maybe his mama's even stopped drinking and is visiting her girlfriends more regularly. Maybe she's finally going to leave her damn husband, the one he finally got into it the summer his notice came in. Curly's almost ashamed of it. Spent a good five years ignoring the bastard and a tiny slip of paper he should have burned breaks the record? Pathetic. The man stopped putting his hands on her around the time Tim got big enough to hit back, and that's probably only because he did hit back. Their mama probably loved and hated it in turns, but that's Maria all the way through, like the rest of them, just like Curly even if he wishes he were like anyone else.
He doesn't think it often, but sometimes he wishes he listened to Tim. Let him send him off to Guadalajara, marry a nice local girl like his mama must have been, settle down with his remaining uncles and call it a fucking year. Not like he had much to do in Tulsa. Their outfit's shrinking, a slow and steady suffocation. Curly was one of four to get drafted that year, and Tim don't write much but it's clear there ain't much left to run in that damn city now that half the boys are dead or soon-to-be.
Angela's sent him a handful of letters, writes like Vic does: asks him to hurry up and come home. It's enough to make a lesser man scream. He wants to make all of them deal with the truth, the same one he carries somewhere in his chest and refuses to exorcise. This country is godless, he wants to tell them. I seen three men die in front of me and couldn't do a goddamn thing but hold their fucking hands. It would kill you, Curtis, it would kill you, Tim, it would kill you.
Curly almost wants to tell them—anyone—to just do it, already. Put a bullet in him and send him home. It's not worth it. He thinks of all the dead trees. The stories some guys tell, the way they describe girls screaming and liking it. Stories enough to make Curly puke up the little bit of dinner he can stomach, thinking of his sister stuck with that husband of hers, still forgetting that she's been taking care of herself best as she can since she could barely walk.
He's a no good hood, but he's got enough of a backbone to admit that this shit was a mistake. He should have gone to Mexico. Should have admitted he was wrong, to his mother or Tim or even Angela. He writes his brother, gets a letter back, reads I fucking told you so in that familiar hand, same handwriting as their father, and thinks that maybe that's one good thing about death. Maybe he'll get into heaven, or hell, or whatever level of purgatory they've sent Frankie Shepard to and they can pretend they're any other father-son pair.
Honestly, he ain't too sure he believes in all that. He knows Curtis is into it—the spiritual side of things, maybe, nothing like the organized shit that his mama falls back onto when she thinks she's hit rock bottom. But the things he sees, the men he's seen killed—it's nothing like what happens on the Eastside. He's been in enough fights to have caused serious damage, has a reputation that starts with his dead daddy. Vietnam, though. He's pretty sure they're all going to have to pay for the shit that Uncle Sam's letting them get away with. He'd even say they deserve it.
When it ends he's been gone less than a year. Longer than six months, at least. Some of the guys are talking about how they're going to miss the Fourth of July, and for the first time in his life Curly wants to say he ain't even American. Wants, suddenly, to talk about his mother with her bad English and year-round brown skin and the way she looks like all her children. Remembers that Shepard men don't last, but the women do.
Y'all would get a kick outta Mexico, he wants to tell them, knowing even in this fantasy that they won't believe him at first, until he says, once or twice or three times, No, really, I'm a no-good Spic, too, my girl used to say so, like he really loved Vic and wasn't just wishing he could go back and never ship out in the first place.
It's fucking hot, he says, out loud, like it's going to get a response besides groans of agreement. They've been trudging along for an hour, maybe two. This can't be the worst moment of his life, he tells himself, thinking of the handful of times they tossed him to the reformatory, or the lickings he'd get from his mama's husband before he got big enough, or even that night in '58 when his uncle told him his daddy wasn't coming home. Like his mother, he doesn't think he'll ever hit rock bottom. Just keep falling further and losing his breath all at once. He believes it, even, and it's the last coherent thought he has when the land-mine goes off, thinking of all the things that have ever been done for him up until he can't think at all.