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Johnny Cade was not his brother. And now, he was dead.
Darry had known for a long time that something foundational inside of him had to break in order to be the man sitting by Pony’s bedside, praying to not lose one more person. It started cracking the night his parents died. He told Soda he doesn't remember the call, let alone the night, that it had been blurred out by the panic and the grief, and that he was grateful to forget, to have one less thing to lose sleep over remembering.
But he remembered, as if the ringing phone had been the press of a recording button– always ready to rewind to the moment he picked up the receiver. When he was twelve, his mom told him she knew her sister had died before the phone even rang. Something cold had settled in her gut, and she let it go, ringing and ringing, before she found the courage to pick it up.
Darry didn't get a warning. His parents had run out to pick up frosting. He had been getting calls from his friends all day wishing him a happy birthday.
He thought it was Paul, who told him he’d be giving him a call sometime that evening. Darry remembered smiling as he answered the phone. Eagerly, he spoke first.
“Hey, it's Darry-”
“Darrel Curtis?” It wasn't Paul. The voice was stony, aged, his name delivered in a carefully neutral tone.
“Yes?” Even still, Darry had yet to sober up. It could have been an uncle. It could have been anyone.
There was a pause on the other line.
“My name is Officer Shepard, from the Tulsa City Police Department. Are you home by yourself right now?” That neutral tone started slipping towards the end, enough to have Darry grabbing for the wall. Finally, something was tilting.
“Why?” His brows pinched together, every muscle tensing with them. “Why are you calling?”
“There's going to be a few officers coming by your house in just a minute,” another pause, Darry could hear a breath, “are you alone?”
“My two brothers are here– my parents just left. They should be back soon. Do you need them? They just went to the store.” It's my birthday, Darry didn't say. He didn't ask that they stop by tomorrow instead because he was looking forward to knowing what that thing wrapped in blue paper was under his parent’s bed, and to taste the cake which had been delayed for a few hours because Pony forgot the frosting on his way home from school. But he wanted to ask. What could be so important? Was Soda in trouble? Was he in trouble?
“Did I do something, officer?” Darry asked when the cop stayed silent on the line. The man rushed to answer him.
“Nothing, you did nothing, Darrel. I- you- do you have anyone who you can call to come to your house?”
Darry’s heart started flipping, his stomach growing cold. He thought about his mom, his aunt Darlene.
“Why do I need someone to come to the house? What happened? Can you please just tell me why you're calling?” Darry’s voice hadn't cracked since he went through puberty freshman year. But he heard it break, heard his fourteen-year-old self bleed into the phone as bad as when he broke his arm in JV football. That was the last time he really cried. Before then, it was when Pony was sick with the flu and had to be hospitalized.
The officer started to stumble through another non-answer when there was a knock at the door. Soda was in the kitchen, setting the table. Pony was in his room, working on something that he said he couldn’t be disturbed for. Darry hung up the phone without a goodbye and answered the door.
Darry understood everything the officers said to him. They were very sorry, and his parents were very dead, and he had to be the one to go to the morgue in the morning to double check beyond all reasonable doubt that the two bodies peeled from the wreck were his parents, who were dead. His parents were dead. And that’s why Soda was crying, and why Darry was gathering him into his arms, and why Pony was shaking in the corner with a cop awkwardly picking up the paper he dropped, a drawing of Darry in his football gear throwing a ball that read “happy birthday Darry”, and Darry knew everything would be different now.
But he didn’t cry. There was a moment between the phone being slammed down and the door being opened where the world inside of him broke, and his soul must have slipped out from his body because he couldn’t feel it anymore. The cops left, and he held his brothers, and he wanted to cry with them. He couldn’t open his mouth.
Darry splintered, but he wasn’t one to lose. Life sharpened into a series of things that had to get done, and he was the one who had to do them. He was numb to the action, so long as he achieved the goal.
Someone had to ID the bodies, so he went to the morgue. Someone had to call his relatives, so he picked up the phone. Someone had to plan the funeral. Someone had to look out for his brothers– he would get custody. Sign the papers, meet the social worker, clean the house, keep moving, don’t stop, get the job to make the money to keep his brothers, do the job, wake up every morning, do the job. Pony needed to be disciplined, it didn’t matter why, he had to be the one to keep him on track. Responsibility. Outcome. Action.
Darry could admit, now, watching Pony thrash about the sheets in restless slumber, that he had done everything he could and it never would have been enough. Because his soul had escaped him that night, had left him with only his mind and the burdens of this new life without any way to feel and overcome them. If he had been in his body, maybe he would have been able to listen. He would have felt his hand pulling back to strike his little brother and kept it from flying.
His soul had only returned, after all those months of tunnel vision and static, when he saw Ponyboy sitting covered in ash in the hospital waiting room. He knew it by the way his stomach bottomed out, the way his chest cracked open, like his ribs were reaching out alongside his arms to grab Pony tight and never let him go. He knew it when he did what he couldn’t do all those months ago: he cried.
So he knew that as he was before, there was nothing he could have done for Johnny.
Except that wasn’t good enough.
Pony whimpered in the bed next to him. Darry ran his fingers through his hair, like Soda always did for him. He stilled under his touch, the crease of his eyebrows smoothing out, and Darry almost cried again, marveling that he had the power to do that all along, to be a comfort to his little brother.
Soda would be home from work soon, his first shift since Pony came back from the hospital. Darry promised he had everything under control. And Soda, who had seen the worst of Darry that night when Bob Sheldon died, smiled and said “you always do.”
God, he wished he deserved the trust Soda gave him. He would do anything to earn it from Pony, too, to see the stars in his little brother’s eyes as he looked at Darry and believed he would always keep him safe. Well, he failed.
He failed Johnny, too.
Johnny, the kid who walked the streets like a shadow but became a living boy of flesh and blood and technicolor when he was inside the Curtis’ household. Johnny, who loved oranges, but never asked for them. Never asked much of anyone, especially not his own parents, even though he could have asked the world of the gang and they would have found a way to get it to him.
Is that why things went so wrong? Because he didn’t ask? If Johnny had asked Darry to take him in, would he have done it? They all knew what went down in that house: they could pull a friendly punch to save the kid from flinching, but they couldn’t stop the people who trained him to be afraid.
Not my brother, not my responsibility. Darry remembered the boundary he designed in order to make sure his family always came first. The gang was family, but even they had to come second to the war which was Darry against the State. It’s why his back hurt so bad he could hardly sleep at night, why his hands had aged thirty years, why his little brother thought he hated him, because he couldn’t back down from the fight.
Johnny understood that, so he never asked too much. Darry used to be silently grateful for his intuition. He felt selfish now. It should never have been on the kid to ask. He was sixteen.
Under his ministrations, Pony stirred. He had woken a few times since the hospital, in short bursts of confusion, but he mostly mumbled in his sleep, calling out for Soda, Mom, Dad, Johnny, and to his surprise, Darry himself.
“Johnny,” he muttered, turning his face towards the wall, “s’gonna be okay…”
Darry felt his eyes grow watery, and he removed his hand from Pony’s hair to swipe it down his face. It had been like that since the hospital, since he felt his soul find his body again– he couldn’t help but cry. This time he cried for Pony, the one who saw Johnny die, who could sleep and dream that the worst had not yet passed. Whatever hope the sickness was providing him would be snuffed out when he got better and woke up, and could there be a thing more cruel than that? Darry wished he could have both. A brother who believed it would all be okay with eyes wide open, remembering everything that has happened.
He leaned back in the armchair, trying to center himself. Pony was still there, breathing, and he would keep breathing.
Johnny was dead. Dally was dead. His parents were dead.
The sob escaped his lips before he could bite down on his tongue to stop it.
Pony twisted around, facing Darry. He didn’t hear the cry, he couldn’t have, but Darry still tried to silence himself. The last thing he wanted was for Pony to wake up for the first time to his mess of an older brother.
For months, Darry had lived always considering the next step. But now, he thought brokenly, he had no idea how to move forward this time.
He had planned a funeral for his parents. He didn’t have the money to do it for his friends. And worse, even if he did– got the flowers and the casket and the church to host it in– he knew no one beyond the gang would come.
Darry considered their bodies, likely still in the basement of the hospital morgue. Waiting. He didn’t know if Johnny’s parents would do anything for him. No, he knew they wouldn’t. Dally functionally had no one to make those kinds of decisions, as Darry was certain Buck would not be considered among a list of emergency contacts. His friends were in freezers, waiting.
All he wanted to do was scream. Had he not been through enough? Was this not more than one person can take? He didn’t know if he believed in God, and he didn't think to pray. His parents never really got on the subject, though Pony did try to read the Bible once ‘for fun.’ Pony had told him a story about a man who was swallowed by a whale. He wished he remembered if it ended well for that guy, because he felt trapped, like he was being slowly digested by his reality, and he didn’t know if he could make it out.
The tears tried to come back, his breaths picking up– he stared at his little brother. Watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, and his twitchy, slumbering face. His hair looked awful, all chopped up and yellow, but it would grow back to its natural reddish brown. Darry would make sure of it. He pulled the sheets back up past Pony’s chest, hesitated for only a second before kissing his temple.
Soda would be home from work soon. He would make them both dinner. Keith, too, if he hadn’t drunk the day away again. Steve may stop by afterwards to check in on Soda. Dally and Johnny would still be in the morgue.
He had to take care of who he had left. Do it better, this time. Do it right.
That’s all he could do.