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Darry hadn’t been sure it was even worth putting together the funeral. After all, few folks had loved Johnny Cade, and even fewer had loved Dallas Winston, and most of them were the five who remained, all but three of whom were unemployed. He’d managed to scrape together money for headstones, albeit cheap ones, but a funeral- even a joint one- so soon after mom and dad was more of a strain on the budget than Darry could realistically handle, even with Soda and Steve offering to pitch in.
Then the parents of all those little kids Johnny and Pony saved had contacted him out of the blue, offering to help cover expenses and for all his pride Darry didn’t have it in himself to turn them down. Johnny and Dal deserved a proper burial any way he could manage to make it happen, and if that involved taking a bit of charity, well, for once so be it. It sure as hell wasn’t like Mr and Mrs Cade were going to pay to make sure Johnny was properly laid to rest.
So he’d taken the money and made the same terrible phone calls he’d made eight months ago, contacted the same vendors, and booked the same small room at the same small funeral home, feeling sick to his stomach the whole time. Pony had helped, more than he had eight months ago, had chosen Johnny’s casket from the few they could afford and written a eulogy he refused to show to anyone until the service itself. Darry didn’t begrudge him, trying to tamp down the guilt that came with the relief that cut through him every time he looked at his baby brother. It felt wrong, planning the funeral of two of his best friends, knowing that if the universe had offered him any sort of choice, he'd have still chosen Ponyboy and doomed them both anyway, every time. It’s a hard truth, a horrible one, but Darry has grown used to confronting such horrible things as of late, even if he can only ever confront them in his own head.
After a few weeks of planning, the day of the funeral seems almost underwhelming. Soda and Ponyboy are once again dressed in the outfits they wore to mom and dad’s funeral, Ponyboy somehow looking twice as lost as he did then for all he’s grown almost half a foot taller. Soda is a shadow of his usual self, drawn in behind the careful mask he dons when he doesn’t want anyone to see what he’s really thinking, but the cigarette in his hand is enough to give Darry a good idea of his tenuous mental state.
Pony climbs the steps of the funeral home in the same dreamlike manner he’s adopted since the night of the rumble, the same cloak of oblivion he’d shrouded himself in for months after mom and dad passed, the one he’d only just started to lift off himself before Darry ruined it all with his temper and that slap. Sometimes he thinks he will never truly be able to undo the damage he caused that night, all the consequences of one despicable rash action.
Soda loiters near the stairs, Steve a supportive, grim faced pillar beside him, their shoulders pressed together and pinky fingers linked in a way they probably think is subtle. Darry wants to tell them they’re too close, warn them yet again about being in public and what people might think, but today he doesn’t have the energy. Besides, it’s not like there's anyone coming. All of them, from Two-bit to Ponyboy, know the only folks this funeral is for is them, the gang. If anyone else shows at all it’ll be a miracle. So he leaves Soda and Steve and the obvious, secret love that could kill them both by the door, and goes inside to check on Ponyboy.
His younger brother hasn’t stepped into the small chapel yet, instead he’s sitting with his back against the wall and his legs sprawled out, half hidden behind a small side table. The picture of Johnny that is supposed to be beside the guest book is clutched in his hands, and silent tears are running down his face, his tiny form shaking violently with suppressed sobs.
Shit. The sight of it chips another shard off of Darry’s thrice broken heart. This poor kid. This sweet, sweet kid, who’s been through more in the past year than most people go through in a lifetime. Darry can’t help but wonder if his baby brother is ever again going to know a life without pain.
“Hey little buddy,” Darry’s knees crack as he kneels down beside him, tossing an arm around his brother's shoulders, “how’re ya doin’?
It’s a stupid question, and they both know it, but it startles a choked off, surprised laugh out of Ponyboy, and it feels like a bigger win than winning the state football championship back in high school.
“M’alright,” Pony glances around as if making sure they’re alone before snuggling into Darry’s side a bit. He’s been awful cuddly since he got back home, but fourteen and a greaser is still fourteen and a greaser, and Darry knows Pony would die before he let anyone outside the gang find out about his newfound clinginess.
“You sure?” Darry tightens his grip on Pony and drops a kiss on his gelled hair. Today is gonna be a hard day for all of them, but things like this always hit Pony worse, and he’s worried about him. He’s still so young, only fourteen. Darry himself had seen some rough stuff by the time he was fourteen- you couldn’t grow up in their neighbourhood and not see some stuff you wished you hadn’t- but back then he’d had dad to talk things through with and mom to lie to him and promise everything would be okay. Compared to that, Pony has nothing, just two brothers who love him but can’t protect him, and now a dead best friend to mourn on top of his parents.
“No,” Pony shakes his head, letting out another watery laugh, this one verging on hysterical, “no, I’m not okay. Sometimes I think I’m never gonna be ok again.”
“Baby…” Darry doesn’t know what to do. He isn’t cut out for this, isn’t meant to be a guardian or a parent or whatever he’s become, and he’s never been good with emotions anyway. It’s always been Soda’s job, since their parents passed, to deal with the feelings while he deals with the bills, but Soda is his little brother too, has decided not to feel today so that he can cope, so Darry is once again all Pony has. He wishes he could be enough, or at the very least think of something to say, but he isn’t and he can’t. Instead, all he can do is rock Ponyboy as he cries and wish the world wasn’t so horrifically cruel. At the very least he wishes he could reassure him…but Darry doesn’t like to lie, and the truth is that lately he isn’t sure Pony will be ok. Lately, his brother seems uniquely broken in a way Darry isn’t sure he can fix.
Johnny would have known what to do. He and Pony would have gone for a smoke on the porch and talked in low voices, and somehow whatever he’d said would have brought Ponyboy back to himself. But Johnny is gone, isn’t coming back, and Pony might just stay this empty shell because of it. The thought makes something dark and cold creep into his chest, but Darry is a realist and learned a long time ago that ignoring uncomfortable things does not simply make them go away, as much as he might wish they would. Johnny is gone, and Pony is different, and things will never be the same as they were. That’s that.
“I just…” Pony manages once he’s cried himself out, “he- he was the only person who completely knew me without me havin’ to tell him. I’m never gonna find anyone like that again in my whole life I don't think, and that…that’s terrifyin’.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Pony nods fervently, almost begging him to understand, and fuck it, Darry is trying because he isn’t Johnny and he isn’t Soda but he’s still trying his best, “I miss Dal too, of course I do, but losin’ Johnny is just- different. He dug me and I dug him and I just-I’m really gonna miss him. “
“Sometimes,” Pony’s voice breaks, but he soldiers on, “sometimes I wish I coulda died in his place. Or Dal’s. That way we’d at least be together.”
“Don’t say that!” Fear so cold it burns flashes through Darry, and he squeezes Pony tighter, as if the mere thought is a blow he could shield him from, “Please baby, don't ever say that, I couldn’t survive without you. Soda would go clean crazy I-”
“Cool it Dar,” Pony shakes him off, “I know that. I ain’t stupid and I don’t got a death wish either. I just miss him and I…wonder, sometimes. That’s all.”
“Well quit your wonderin’,” Darry scolds. He can hear himself getting harsh, the way he always gets when he’s worried, and tries to even out his tone, “that sort of wonderin’ does more harm than good. I wouldn’t trade you bein’ here for the world and I know for a fact Johnny and Dal wouldn’t neither. Savvy?”
Pony looks at him for a moment, and there’s such fear in those eyes, such grief, and yet so much trust it makes Darry’s heart ache in a completely different way.
“I savvy.” he says at last, and Darry internally sighs in relief. This conversation isn’t over, and Ponyboy has never been one to let things go, but at least, for the moment, he is safe.
The door opens then and Soda and Steve reappear, flanked by Two-bit with his mom and sister. Darry climbs to his feet, pulling Pony up beside him and they take a deep breath and all enter the chapel together.
For a second he stands there frozen, completely caught off guard, heart swelling with an odd mixture of gratitude and something else that isn’t quite grief, but has the same bittersweet tinge.
There are more people inside than Darry expected, which is to say, there’s people there at all. He’d fully believed the only ones who’d bother coming to Johnny and Dal’s funeral would be the gang and Two’s family, but Tim Shepard and a few of his guys are clustered near the back door, looking uncomfortable, and Sylvia Devares is as cold eyed and sour faced as ever, but present nevertheless, sitting in the second row of chairs, glaring at Dally’s casket as if she expected him to sit up and start cussing her out any second. There’s no sign of Mr or Mrs Cade, but there’s a dark haired girl probably a year or two younger than Ponyboy sitting next to a tired looking man in his forties that Darry remembers Johnny staying with sometimes when he was really little, before Mrs.Cade cut her family out of her life for good. It’s strange, Darry thinks, seeing the love people don’t express until it’s too late. It has to have been nearly a decade since Johnny last saw his uncle and baby cousin, yet here they are, waiting to say their goodbyes.
Darry speaks quietly with the funeral director and the service begins, some local pastor kicking things off with a short sermon. Darry knows Dally probably would not have chosen a clergyman to speak at his funeral, but he also probably would have told them to have a beer in his honour and chuck him in the ground; and knowing how much Johnny had liked going to church with Pony, the sermon seemed appropriate. If he’s being quite honest with himself, Darry isn’t at all sure heaven or hell exists, but he also isn’t willing to gamble when it comes to Johnny and Dally’s souls. If a qualified preacher putting in a good word with the big man could get them a chance at eternal happiness, Darry would gladly sit here for fifteen minutes listening to him talk. If Darry’s being honest, if Dally’s gonna get into heaven, his soul needs all the help it can get.
It’s after they’ve all said a final amen, but before Pony has managed to start the eulogies, that the door creaks open and one final mourner slips inside. She’s clearly trying to be inconspicuous, but the timing of her arrival and the fact she clearly isn’t from around here make it so every eye in the room turns directly on her the second she gets through the doorway.
The first thing Darry notices is how skinny she is. He’s known a lot of folks in his time that are somewhat underfed, but this woman is better described as emaciated. The second thing he notices is how sick she looks, with her pale face, puffy eyes, and hunched posture; and the third is her white blond hair and pointed ears, two features he’s only ever seen on one other person.
“Who’s the junkie?” Tim Shepard sidles over and murmurs in Darry’s ear as the woman takes a seat in the second row of chairs, and Ponyboy clears his throat and starts Dally’s’ eulogy.
“Hell if I know.” Darry murmurs back, and it’s true. Dallas never mentioned anything or anyone from his past, and the gang had always respected that. He has no idea who the girl might have been to Dallas, just figures there must be some sort of familial relation.
“Well damn. Mighta been useful to know he had family who like smack,” Tim shrugs, “coulda got her a decent price at least.”
Darry glanced at the girl’s slumped posture and the way she kept scratching at her arms, and winced. Drugs are an aspect of the east side he’d always found particularly unsavoury, simply based on how visibly they could destroy someone. There were slower poisons, yes, like booze and gambling and hate, but drugs were simply more obvious. There were plenty of addicts that bummed around the train tracks or out near Brumly territory, and much as Darry hated to admit it, Tim’s assessment of the blonde was spot on. She was clearly hooked on smack, and from the looks of it, had been for a while.
Pony finishes the eulogies, voice shaky but more composed than Darry would have expected, but he barely hears him. All he can see is the back of the girl's blonde hair and the points of her ears. For some reason it had been easier to grieve Dallas when he felt like one of the only people who could mourn him properly; but this girl has clearly travelled who knows how far to attend this cobbled together funeral, and now some part of Darry feels like maybe he should have publicized it wider, spent some time really looking for Dallas’ next of kin. Not that he would have known where to look, but maybe it was selfish to just assume their ragtag pieced together family was truly the only family Dallas had. After all, everyone comes from somewhere, right? Maybe he should have tried to learn more about Dallas’ somewhere.
A voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Dallas himself tells him not to be stupid, that Dallas was a kid who’d left where he came from and never looked back once, a kid who had died after losing the only person he couldn’t stand to lose. This girl may be here now, the voice says, but whoever she was clearly meant nothing to the person Dallas was when he died. It still does little to assuage the guilt slowly curdling in Darry’s heart.
The funeral director smoothly wraps up the ceremony without Darry having to do anything, mentioning the refreshments in the other room and reminding everyone to say their final goodbyes as they’d be closing the caskets in half an hour before moving to the graveyard. There’s a part of Darry that’s grateful that making the announcement didn’t fall on him, and a larger part that dreads the next half hour but dreads the minutes after it even more fervently.
A line at the caskets forms quickly, the scant mourners each taking a turn to say their own goodbyes, and it would be almost sweet if it wasn’t so grim.
Mrs. Mathews and Susie go first. Neither one of them glances at Dally for long, but Darry can’t really blame them for that, considering they hardly knew him. Both women linger longer next to Johnny, and Susie drops a tootsie roll into the casket with a sniffle. Those two were buddies, Darry knows. Johnny used to crash at the Mathews’ place almost as much as he crashed at their house, and Johnny and Susie’s matching gentle souls had bonded them quickly.
Tim and his guys go next, and they linger longer beside Dallas. None of them say much really, but there’s a tightness in Tim’s jaw that speaks more to regret than anger when he finally mutters an ‘asshole’ under his breath and stalks away, his gang following behind. Darry doubts he’ll show up to the cemetery, but can’t exactly begrudge him for it. It was good of Tim to come at all, mostly because if the roles were reversed and it was Tim lying there instead, Darry isn’t at all sure Dally would have done the same.
Sylvia goes next, and her glare doesn’t waver, but whatever rant she’s murmuring to Dallas seems heartfelt for all of its rage. She doesn’t even glance at Johnny on her way out, and it should make Darry’s blood boil, but it doesn’t, not really, because everyone knows Sylvia Devares doesn’t care about anyone but herself, so if Dally meant enough for her to show up at all then she really must have cared as much as she could. Those two were a dumpster fire even at their best, and nothing about them ever gave the impression they were in love, but Darry knows better than anyone that you don’t need to be in love to love somebody in a way that could destroy you.
Johnny’s uncle and cousin step up the small dais, and the old man says something in the language Johnny’s mom stopped letting him speak the same year she stopped speaking to her family, the one Johnny tried teaching to Ponyboy just to spite her. Whatever he says, it’s a blessing meant only for Johnny, but Darry can feel the weight of it, the love, the regret, the pain, just from the man’s tone. Johnny’s cousin glances once more over her shoulder as they leave, black eyes twinkling just the same as Johnny’s used to, and for a second it’s hard for Darry to breathe.
Now it’s the hard part. Ponyboy, for all his evocative words and stubborn strength, has not looked at Johnny’s body since he stepped into the room, and the second he does he lets out a horrible sound, something between a choked off whimper and and a sob, before darting from the room like something is chasing him. Maybe something is. Darry knows all about how memories can be specters.
“I’ll go,” Soda stops him from following after Pony with a hand on his shoulder, “you say your goodbyes.”
Dary almost protests, almost tells him to say his own goodbyes while he still can, but there’s shadows in Soda’s eyes, and a strickenness to his face. Suddenly, Darry remembers the way Soda had panicked back when they closed the caskets on mom and dad, how his face had turned white as harsh breaths forced their way through clenched teeth, and he realizes that maybe this is Soda trying to save himself; so he nods and offers him the closest thing he can manage to a smile before Soda turns and follows Pony out the door, leaving Darry with Steve and Two-bit.
Two-bit is blubbering where he stands in front of Dally, and Steve is misty eyed beside him with a hand on his shoulder. Darry knows he should comfort them, play big brother to the brothers who are still his, just not by blood, but there’s something about watching the other people who cared say goodbye that is healing a piece of him, and he can’t bring himself to move. Not yet.
Eventually, Two-bit’s sobs give way to hushed murmurs and begging, Steve’s solemn facade cracking a bit as a single tear finally traces down his cheek. Darry swallows against the lump in his throat, wishing there was a way to make this easier for them and knowing there isn’t. This is one of those things they’re just going to have to feel.
“We’ll see you out there, Superman,” Steve claps Darry on the shoulder as he guides Two-bit out to the parking lot, the redhead already in the process of lighting a cigarette. Not for the first time, Darry is inordinately grateful for Steve Randle and his unmatched ability to be supportive without ever being overbearing.
He steps up the dais, steps muffled by the cheap carpet of the funeral home, but seeming to echo nonetheless. Johnny and Dally are arranged side by side, cleaner and more put together than they ever were in life. Darry hadn’t had any nice clothes to send for them to be buried in, but they wouldn’t have wanted them anyway. They’re both in jeans, Dally in a black t-shirt, and Johnny in a blue one, his jeans jacket pressed and arranged neatly around his small frame. There’s the same uncanny wrongness in their corpses that there was in mom and dad’s that make it impossible for Darry to be able to pretend they’re sleeping or any other such platitude people try to lie to themselves with. Dally’s skin, while pale in life, is now so white it’s waxy, seeming even more stark against the contrast of his shirt. Johnny’s unnatural stillness is so unlike his constant fidgeting it’s almost startling, and his face so peaceful is eerie. Jumpy, gentle, fierce Johnny Cade never looked so calm in life as he does in death, and the realization is a whole new kind of sickening.
A presence at his shoulder is the only thing that keeps a tear or two leaking out. When Darry looks over, the blonde girl from earlier is standing quietly a half pace behind him, her sunken eyes fixed on Dally with such sorrow it’s hard for him to look at.
“You knew him.” Darry says. It isn’t a question.
“I did,” The girl agrees, “or at least I used to.”
When he was alive, even after years in Oklahoma, Dally’s voice always kept a burr of the yankee accent but this girl is full Brooklyn, and the oddness of it to his country bred ears almost has Darry laughing, despite the seriousness of the situation. Luckily, the girl doesn’t seem to notice, her eyes still locked on Dallas, for all she’s conversing with him.
“How?” Darry wonders. “How did you know him, I mean?”
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not.” Not anymore, at least. Not that it had mattered before, but he’d always been curious about Dallas, the only one of their gang whose background was a true mystery.
Silence reigns for a minute. Darry watches a wasp buzz around the flowers on top of Dally’s casket.
“He’s- he was - my brother,” the girl admits, voice breaking, and Darry can’t keep the shock off his face. He’d thought, based on the resemblance, that she might be a cousin or something, but a sister?
“My baby brother,” the girl repeats, almost to herself, and Darry’s heart clenches. It isn’t just the bone deep anguish comprised in those three words, it’s the way they force Soda and Pony to the forefront of his mind. Sure, Dally wasn’t anything like either of his hard headed, stupid, secretly sweet brothers, and it’s clear whatever relationship Dally had with his sister isn’t anything like how Darry’s own is with his little siblings, but this girl has still lost her baby brother. Darry had got a taste of what it was like to lose Ponyboy for a week, and it nearly killed him. He’d been lucky enough to get Pony back. Dally’s sister will never get him back.
“I..I’m sorry,” Darry chokes, “I didn't know. I would’ve tried to invite you or let you plan stuff, I-”
“Don’t.” She cuts him off, and for a second its Dallas glaring at him. Then he blinks and her glare has faded, and he can breathe again, “You did the right thing. There’s a reason he left New York. He wouldn’t have wanted me anywhere near the planning of this.”
She doesn’t say he wouldn’t have wanted her there. Darry figures it might be implied anyway.
They lapse into silence again. The air in the chapel smells like incense and cleaning chemicals, a stiff, heavy, artificial mixture that seems like a strangely fitting smog over the day.
“He wasn’t always like that, y’know?” Dally’s sister bursts out, like she’d been trying desperately not to say it and been unable to keep silent anyway.
“Like what?”
“Like..he wasn’t always the way he was when he left. The way he was when he found you guys. He didn’t always hate everything.”
Darry tries to picture it, a Dallas Winston who wasn’t jaded and callous to the point of cruelty sometimes, a Dallas who lived instead of just surviving. Try as he might, he can’t quite manage it.
“What was he like? Before?”
“Quiet,” The barest trace of a smile tugs at her chapped lips. “Smart. Kind, before he forgot how to be.”
“He didn’t forget,” Darry tells her, thinking of the million and one ways Dally had helped out the gang, refusing any and all thanks for it, “he just wished he could have. But he was still kind. In his own way.”
“Well that’s something, I guess,” the half smile fades and she sighs, gazing down at Dally’s still face with so much regret Darry could drown in it. “He deserved better.”
“They both did.”
“Before he left I mean. He deserved a chance, and I…I couldn’t give it to him. Not since that first hit.”
“Oh,” For a second Darry thinks she means an actual physical hit- then he realizes, “ oh. ”
He’s never been good with words, and right now is no exception. He doesn’t have a clue what to say. Luckily, she just gives him a sardonic grin and keeps talking.
“I was ten when Dally was born. His mom left when he was like, two, and our dad is a fucking asshole, so I kind of raised him. I had to. But I was ten . I didn’t know what I was doing, and he always wanted to know.”
She shakes her head ruefully.
“‘Raya,’ he asked me once, ‘how come everyone else has a mom and I don’t?’ I didn’t know what to tell him. Then it was ‘Raya, how come Joey’s dad never hurts him like dad hurts us?’ and ‘Raya, what’s in dad’s cigs that make them worse than yours?’ and on and on until he stopped asking because I never had a good answer. Then he started going out by himself, and getting mixed up with the wrong people and then it was too late. He was, what, seven? maybe? the first time he got jumped, and he wasn’t even the littlest kid in our neighborhood it happened to. He never really had a chance. And then I went to that party, and-and I-I couldn’t…and he left. And he never came back.”
“Sorry,” she sniffs, wiping her eyes, “I didn’t mean- I just- I think you were good for him. Better than I was. You and your friends. I saw the pictures of you in the paper, after the fire and the shooting and everything, and there was one…he was in it, with this one,” she nods to Johnny, “and the other little one, and he was smiling. He didn’t smile much, even when he was real little. I figure anyone who could get him to smile and who bothered to plan a funeral must have been good for him.”
“Sounds to me like you did the best you could,” Darry tells her, because hell, he does the best he can and fucks it up, and so does Tim Shepard, and so does every older sibling who has ever had to be a parent when they themselves were still a child, “I think you were good for him as much as you could be.”
“Maybe,” Raya says, “maybe not. It doesn’t matter now anyway.”
“It matters,” Darry says, because he’s seen too little love to not know how important even the imperfect kind can be, “you loved him, so it still matters.”
Apparently it was the wrong thing to say. Her lips purse, causing her sharp cheekbones to stick out even further.
“I need a smoke,” is all she says, casting one last look at Dally’s still face before turning on her heel and stalking out the door without looking back.
Darry doesn’t follow her, even though it feels like maybe he should. He’ll see her when they end up at the graveyard and if he doesn’t, well, he’ll have known she’d said her piece.
He turns back to the caskets, taking in one unloved boy and a boy who wasn’t loved enough. Boys he’d loved like his own family. Boys he’d let down, no matter how hard he tried not to.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and it isn’t enough and it never will be but what else is there to say? “I tried.”
He stays there until the funeral director comes, shutting the coffin lids, locking two more of Darry’s family away from the world that never treated them right.
He squares his shoulders. Takes a deep breath. This day isn’t over, and his surviving family still needs him.
Darry Curtis goes back to trying his best.