Chapter Text
I always thought raising three kids was the hardest thing I’d ever have to do.
Boy, was I wrong.
The hardest thing I’d ever have to do was leave my three children behind. And watch my oldest struggle to raise his brothers. They were my kids and I should be the one bringing them up. Me and their mama. Darry was doing a real good job under the circumstances, but still, he wasn’t their father. And Maggie had been taken from them too, leaving him to play mama as well as daddy.
Even worse, I left my three sons behind with pennines to their name. The house was worth practically nothing, and yet Darry was still stuck paying off the mortgage instead of saving for school. Maggie and I had wanted to help him with college, but we just never had the money. Now whatever Darry earned went into feeding and clothing two boys that he didn’t ask to raise. And instead of working for pocket change and putting money aside for a car, Soda was having to chip in on the bills. We’d basically scraped by before the accident, but I was never able to save up much, and Darry had to spend most of what we did save burying Maggie and I.
I worked as a roofer most of my life and never really made much of myself beyond that. Growing up, I’d never even considered having a career. My father put no importance on education. He’d dropped out at thirteen to work at his father’s sawmill, the one he eventually inherited when my granddaddy died. When the Depression hit, we lost that mill and my father worked odd jobs to keep us fed. My mother always wanted me to finish high school, but I hated it. I was almost decent with numbers, but letters made me go cross-eyed, and I could never seem to sit still long enough to finish reading a page, let alone a whole book.
“Daddy, I ain’t goin’ back to school next year,” I said on my last day of tenth grade, trying my best not to stammer getting the words out. My Daddy wasn’t a man who took much lip from his children and I didn’t know how he’d react to me declaring what I was gonna do instead of asking his permission. A date with his thick leather strap could've easily been in my future.
Butterflies filled my belly as my father looked up packing from his pipe with fresh tobacco and studied for a long moment. Finally, he shrugged and said, “Alright. We could use the money anyway. “
And that was it. I was a high school dropout. I worked in a machine shop for a spell, but on my 17th birthday, I marched into the recruiting station and signed up to fight the Krauts. My mother cried when I told her, but I was determined to fight. Pretended it was my civic duty, but really I just wanted some adventure. I got more than I bargained for.
I never spoke of the war after that. When I got home in ‘44, I married Maggie and soon enough Darry was on the way. Without a high school degree, I couldn’t find decent work. I tried to get my factory job back, but with all the men coming home, they didn’t need me anymore. I worked odd jobs, just like my father had, until I got a full time gig roofing houses. Eventually, I worked my way up to foreman, but I knew that was the furthest I could go. We made do, but I always wanted more for my children.
It crushed me that Darry didn’t get to go off to college with his buddies, but I worried more for Soda than I did for Darry or even Ponyboy. Soda was just like I was at his age. Wild and reckless. Too much energy to sit inside of a classroom. I couldn’t’ve known at the time, but Sodapop was the perfect name for him. He was like a soda bottle that was shook up too much and ready to blow. He loved excitement and adventure, and I worried about him going down the wrong path if opportunity knocked. Without his mama and me to help him keep his feet planted on the ground, God only knew what trouble he could find himself. I could only hope Darry was up to the task.
Thankfully, Soda had a good group of boys around him. Hell, my sons’ friends had practically became my own kids. The first to arrive was Keith Mathews—Two-Bit. He lived down the block and started following Darry around like a baby duckling from the time he could walk. Maggie started watching him during the day when he was two or three, as a favor to his mother when her no-good husband started coming home less and less, and she had to pick up extra shifts as a barmaid to keep a roof over her son’s head. We weren’t particularly surprised when Allen Mathews blew dodge when Carol found out she was pregnant with her second child.
Steve Randle was next. Sodapop’s best buddy had shown up at my doorstep when he was barely old enough to tie his own shoes. He called me “Mr. Soda” at the beginning. I thought it was too sweet to correct him, but Darry had taken it upon his seven-year-old self to set the record straight. Steve was bursting at the seams too, but he was white-hot instead of golden warm. I blamed his father for that. Mark Randle was a grade-A jackass. I didn’t know him before Steve’s mother died, but it was clear he never recovered from the loss. I don’t know what I would’ve done if Maggie had left me behind, but I like to think I wouldn’t’ve turned cruel and mean and hateful.
Ponyboy’s best friend was Johnny Cade. He was closer in age to Sodapop, but the rest of the boys saw him as a younger brother, and I had to admit that I lumped him in with Ponyboy too. He was afraid of his own shadow and terrified of me. It always broke my heart the way Johnny huddled in on himself when I entered the room or flinched when I raised my voice one decibel, even just to call the boys inside for dinner. Maggie had to stop me on more than one occasion from taking my hunting rifle over and blowing Frank Cade’s head off. It amazed me that the state was making Darry do a whole song and dance to prove he was a fit guardian when little Johnny Cade was too scared to go home most nights.
If I was being honest, my least favorite of my boys’ friends was Dallas Winston. Unlike the others, Dally hadn’t been around when he was small. He showed up one day in ‘62 and started hanging around my house. I wasn’t proud of this side of me, but I didn’t like him much. My boys could be wild, but Dallas had a mean streak in him that set him apart. He was a bad influence on my boys, especially Johnny, who looked at Dallas like he hung the moon. The only reason I’d been cordial to him was that Maggie had taken him under her wing. Said there was a scared little boy inside of him that just needed some love and nurturing. I didn’t see it.
So the boys had good friends—for the most part—but I was still worried about the neighborhood. Kids had too much energy and no way to let it out, so they drank and smoked grass and fought each other. There was some kind of class war going on between the poor kids and the rich kids. I didn’t condone it, but I admit I understood when the poor kids jumped the rich kids. They were angry about the hand they’d been dealt and wanted to make somebody pay. I just didn’t get it when the rich kids jumped the poor kids. But the war between the groups raged on, and my boys were the ones that ended up getting roughed up by the cops and thrown into reform school. I wasn’t dumb enough to think that my boys didn’t ever throw the first punch, but I had a hard time buying that they were always the ones starting it, like the fuzz liked to say.
The only hope of getting out of the East Side my boys had was to stay in school. Darry had made it through high school, and I wasn’t too worried about Pony calling it quits. Even if I was, Darry was all over his tail about his schoolwork. But Soda was the one who always struggled with school. He wasn’t dumb, far from it, but he had never been one for book learning. Still, he could read people like nobody else. Hell, get him in a room with Johnson and Brezhnev and he’d probably have the whole Cold War sorted out. He certainly had plenty of practice with Darry and Ponyboy.
Ponyboy and Sodapop walked into Will Rogers together on their first day back. Most of the students brushed past them. A few kids from our neighborhood— my boys called them greasers—came up to them and clapped them on the back. But the teachers were the worst. They looked at my boys with pity. Ponyboy’s homeroom teacher, a sweet but misguided young girl fresh out of the teacher’s college, hugged him in front of the entire class. I could tell my youngest wished in that moment that he was the one in the accident instead, and I couldn’t say I blamed him.
Soda’s girl, Sandy, had met him at the door and hung off his arm. I always liked her alright, but she always wanted Soda’s attention, pulling it away from anything else. And like the love struck puppy he was, Soda obliged. It wasn’t like he was focused much on his classes to begin with. He either spent the class with his head down on the desk or completely blew the class off to meet Sandy under the bleachers.
Darry had met with the vice principal the day before to talk about Soda and Pony coming back to school. He’d signed a form saying they couldn’t be paddled for acting up in school. I understood why Darry did it, but that didn’t mean I agreed. The boys needed things to be as normal as possible, not to run wild and get away with everything. My middle son especially needed a smarting behind every now and again to keep him focused.
In his third period, Soda’s math teacher walked around the class collecting homework. He hadn’t been to school in a week and a half, and for once had a decent excuse for not getting his work done. Still, the teacher looked at Soda expectantly when he got to his desk. When Soda said he didn’t have his work, the man sighed and made a little mark in his gradebook.
“C’mon, Mr. Wilson, of course he don’t have it,” Two-Bit tried to argue. Sodapop blushed, but I was glad he had a buddy who was willing to stick his neck out for him.
“Yes, I suppose I should’ve expected that by now,” Mr. Wilson said coldly, “Of course, if you ever bothered to show up to school, you might know the assignment.”
All of Soda and Pony’s teachers were supposed to have been told about the accident, but apparently word hadn’t reached Mr. Wilson. At least, I hoped word hadn’t reached him, and that he wasn’t being plain cruel. Soda didn’t say anything, just slunk into his seat. Mr. Wilson looked at him with distaste. “I’ll give you until the end of the week to finish this make up work. Otherwise, I’ll have to give you a zero.”
“Yessir,” Soda nodded, looking like if the teacher didn’t leave him alone, he would break down and bawl right in his seat. I could tell his attention wasn’t on the quadratic equations Mr. Wilson droned on about for the hour. When the bell finally rang, Soda darted from the classroom, not even waiting for Two-Bit. He made it out to the parking lot and jimmied the loose handle on Steve’s passenger side door, diving inside before the school security guard could notice him. If I was a betting man, I would’ve said that Soda wasn’t going back inside for the rest of the day.
When Darry came home that night, he looked bone tired. He walked through the doorway and tripped over a stray sneaker. “Ponyboy! I’ve told you a million times not to leave your shoes in front of the door.”
“Sorry,” Pony said, chewing on his fingernail. Maggie had tried to break him of that habit, but now every time Darry raised his voice, Pony's fingers ended up raw and bloody.
“I swear, next time I’m gonna pop you with that damn sneaker,” Darry snapped. Easy, cowboy.
“C’mon, Darry, lay off him,” Soda interjected. “We had a long day at school.”
“Yeah, and I had a long day at work,” Darry said, but he backed down, stomping off to the bathroom.
“Don’t worry about him,” Soda said, plastering a grin on his face the way he always did when tensions got high. “Let’s make green pancakes for supper.
Twenty minutes later, Darry came out, freshly showered looking a lot calmer. Soda and Pony had wrecked the kitchen, but they’d made at least one edible pancake. They hadn’t really eaten dinner together since the accident, but Pony had wordlessly starting setting the table. Darry didn’t comment, but helped him as Soda finished the pancakes.
Darry didn’t sit down at his normal seat at the table, but took Maggie’s place instead. Pony raised an eyebrow, but Soda elbowed him. He could see, as I could, that Darry was trying to make our absences less apparent. It was a good thought, but turned out he didn’t need to do it. Two-Bit and Johnny barreled through the front door minutes later. Two-Bit immediately grabbed himself a plate from the cupboard and handed one to Johnny.
“Hey, Curtises, hows it hangin’?” Two-Bit asked, stabbing a pancake with a fork and pulling it onto his plate.
“Doesn’t your mother feed you?” Darry asked, rolling his eyes.
“Yeah, and then I come here for round two,” Two-Bit laughed. He put a pancake onto Johnny’s plate too. As much as Johnny looked up to Dally, Two-Bit seemed to really look out for him. Johnny stayed over at Two-Bit’s house nearly as much as he stayed over at mine. “Missed you in history today, Soda.”
Soda made a throat slicing gesture, but it was too late. The cat was out of the bag. Darry frowned at him. “Why wasn’t you in history today?”
“Uh, I head a stomachache and went to lie down in the nurse’s office,” Soda lied. He could never lie convincingly to me or Maggie, and it seemed like he couldn’t lie to Darry either.
“Little buddy, I can tell when you’re lyin’,” Darry said, “Don’t let me hear about you skippin’ class again, got it?”
“Got it,” Soda answered, looking relieved that Darry wasn’t giving him the third degree about what he was up to.
“How come you don’t get on Soda like you get on me?” Pony complained.
“Soda can actually use his head,” Darry said, “He don’t need so much lookin’ after.” Soda grinned smugly at his younger brother, but I could see in his eyes that it was insincere. I wished Darry could see that Soda still needed, and even wanted, to be looked after.