Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Darry started keeping his grandfather’s Colt Python Six-Shot Revolver in the glovebox of the truck soon after Ponyboy was taken, and he still wasn’t quite sure why.

He didn’t check it. Didn’t reach for it when pulling up to trouble, didn’t consider using it even if something did go wrong. The revolver just sat there, dormant, taking up space in the glovebox and in the back of his head.

He didn’t want to use it. At least, he had no reason to use it anymore. And, in that moment where he had wanted it, wished it was in his hands, wished he would have done everything he could to stop that woman from putting Pony in her car– he knew his ass would have gone to prison for his trouble. 

But that night, he’d fished it out from the closet, right next to where his father’s hunting rifle stood at the ready, and he tucked it into the glovebox.

Soda didn’t know, and Darry tried to pretend like it wasn’t a secret. Like he wouldn’t be at a loss for words if Soda kicked open the compartment one day and saw it sitting there wrapped up in cloth. Soda knew they had guns, and he knew where Darry kept them if, God forbid, their family was threatened.

The thing was, their family had been threatened. Not only that, the threat was made good, and it wasn’t at the hands of a robber or thug or soc stirring up malice in the wrong neighborhood: it was the State, and it was an uncle he’d never known existed.

How could that be fair? They hadn’t done anything wrong, at least, not since the fountain– not since Bob Sheldon met his fate at the end of Johnny’s switchblade, two of their best friends quick to follow in his departure only a week later. Darry had won the ensuing custody hearing, and the whole town knew that Judge Taylor had looked at the facts, heard his brother speak, and saw that Darry had been deemed the best guardian for his brothers even after his shortcomings were made public. He wasn’t perfect, but he was the best. No one could love his brothers more than he did.

Nothing was easy. Ponyboy was the shadow of a brother, clinging to life as hard as he clung to Johnny’s jacket, breathing only because Darry and Soda begged him to breathe, to eat, to remain. For months he teetered, unconvinced of continuation, the future something Darry promised to him and Ponyboy refused to acknowledge. They were just starting to heal. 

Ponyboy had his bad days, days where he couldn’t leave the bed or, worse for Darry, days where he wandered in a daze around town and called Darry at the front office, telling him he didn’t know where he was and he needed a ride home. Darry bit his tongue to keep from yelling when he had to drive twenty, thirty minutes to find his kid brother in the middle of nowhere, Tulsa, because Ponyboy was already crying, and he forced himself to remember how his yelling had ruined him that night of Bob’s murder.

Months and months had passed in despair, and then bad days started to happen less in favor of okay days, and then by the end of the school year, good days were becoming a thing, too, and summer promised more of those between Ponyboy’s fifteenth birthday, grill days, beach days, wild nights– every member of the gang had offered to teach him how to properly drive, and he said he would take his time to decide who he wanted to be his instructor.

Darry really hoped it would be him.

Life was going to keep happening for the Curtis brothers, but that life was going to be good, if not a little bittersweet, and they would have each other and Ponyboy was going to go to college and Soda was going to open a garage with Steve and– and Uncle Ronny was knocking on their door, and he was going to get custody.

Darry still couldn’t quite understand how things had progressed. Maybe that was the kind of daze Ponyboy had been living in, Darry could process now, because it felt like every blink fast forwarded him to the next bad moment, and he was being dragged along, stripped of his power, left to clean up the pieces of something he hadn’t realized was broken until it cut up his feet. The State’s social worker said Uncle Ronny was his mom’s sister’s husband, which meant to Darry he was a nothing and a nobody who didn’t even share blood. They had never met their aunt, who passed away when Darry was little, and an uncle was never mentioned. To Darry, that meant he wasn’t worth mentioning, certainly not worth knowing, and entirely unfit to be a guardian.

They tried to explain he owned his own homestead a few miles outside the city limits, acres and acres of farmland, and he was “well-off”, so Ponyboy would be taken care, and all Darry heard was you’re gonna lose him, you’re gonna lose him, you’re gonna lose him.

Asking “ why” was futile. Ms. Gardner, who was decidedly not their usual social worker and far more disapproving of their situation, only had so many ways to say, isn't it obvious?

It wasn’t obvious. Darry worked hard, and the house reflected that, the fridge was stocked and the porch barely creaked, and Ponyboy had good grades despite his apathy. Sodapop was healthy and out of condemnable trouble, even if he did flirt the line between legal and illegal fun a little too close for Darry’s comfort. He was raising his brothers well, in his eyes.

Ms. Gardner would cut him off and draw attention to that word: brother. Brother was not father, was not parent, did not equate to guardian, was weak against uncle, against age, the stability promised by someone who had been working harder for longer and, she would add, Ponyboy would have his own room instead of sharing one with Soda. As if it wasn’t their choice to share, but a decision a woefully unfit Darry had forced upon them. Darry thought mentioning Pony’s nightmares wouldn’t help, so he could only grind his teeth to dust.

Ms. Robinson had been a middle class woman with sympathy for their situation, even if she could come across as condescending. Ms. Gardner was a soc all grown up, and it was obvious she saw herself as some kind of savior, a do-gooder who could change the lives of orphan boys down on their luck. Darry could tell with every flip of her flat-ironed hair and every squinty-eyed smile that she truly believed she was performing a heroic service.

When Darry felt the carpet start to tug out beneath his feet, he tried to ask for one thing. Just one: to meet the man who they were trying to give his brother to. He wouldn’t stop fighting the State’s decision, but until he could hold all the cards again, he needed to know that Ponyboy would be safe. Ms. Gardner seemed put-off by the resistance, but pursed her bubblegum lips together and agreed it wasn’t the most unreasonable ask.

Uncle Ronny had big ears. That was the first intelligible observation Darry could make. His ears stuck out from underneath the rim of his straw hat, and he looked as if he had stepped out of the screen of one of Ponyboy’s western films, the beaten up overalls and the fading flannel underneath screaming born a farmer, live a farmer, die a farmer. He hadn’t bothered to dress up, not like Darry had, wearing one of his father’s button downs, and jeans that hadn’t been with him up onto the Tulsa rooftops.

Big ears, and big hands, calloused worse than Darry’s, with dirt packed so tightly under his fingernails Darry knew they wouldn’t get clean even if the man had tried to scrub them. He had all his teeth, at least the front ones, and he was older than Darry thought he’d be. His parents had been young, and though he knew his aunt was older than his mom, he knew she wasn’t that much older. Uncle Ronny had at least twenty years over Darrel Curtis, Senior.

Darry didn’t trust him.

Beyond the fact his existence had been kept a secret by his folks, intentional or not, and beyond the fact that he hadn’t tried to come forward at any point past their death– not for the funeral, or the initial custody battle, or even the hearing after Bob Sheldon’s murder– Darry didn’t trust his gruff silence, his sunken-set green eyes. 

Darry knew a lot of things about Ponyboy after reading the essay he turned into Mr. Symes’ English class that spring. Too much about what his kid brother used to think of him chief among the narrative, but he also learned that Pony hated people with green eyes. Maybe it was stupid, but even Darry hated Ronny’s green eyes. The weariness in them went deeper than age, and because he never took the hat off inside the house, they were always shaded, dark and lurking. 

He spoke hoarsely, his voice a grave crackle, and if Darry wasn’t heartbroken he would have nudged Ponyboy and told him that’s what he can expect to sound like if he didn’t quit smoking. Instead, all three brothers had to sit there while Uncle Ronny shrugged his way through an inexplicable introduction of no more than a few sentences and then were told to help Ponyboy to the car.

Darry could tell Ponyboy was trying not to cry. Soda wasn’t doing much better. Darry kept blinking, and each blink took Pony further away so he tried to keep his eyes open, to witness every second he had with his family before it splintered another time.

He had to be the strong one, again. He held Pony’s shoulder and pressed his thumb into his collarbone, feeling his little brother’s pulse. Ponyboy surprised him by seeking out Darry’s eyes with his own, and Darry saw a storm of uncertainties and pleas and desires swirling around those unshed tears.

“We’ll get you back.”

Darry held Soda as the car drove off, catching him when his knees started to give out from sobbing.

“I promise.”

Darry kept the revolver in the glovebox, and he wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe he was afraid of Soda being taken next, and having to do the work of fighting for his family alone. But deep down, Darry knew: if anyone tried to stop him from getting his brother back, they were going to stare down the barrel of his grandfather’s gun and either kiss steel, or get the hell out of his way.

Chapter Text

Ponyboy didn’t like farming in the heat of July’s unabating sun, but he liked getting cussed out by Ronny even less, so he ignored the way his neck burned and the sweat glued his hair to his skin to keep weeding between the crops.

“Fuck,” Pony said, his favorite word from the last month and a half. Everything was, in his opinion, and he’d ask his mother’s forgiveness for thinking it when he ever saw her again, fucked up . The way his hands might as well have had roots with how often they were stuck in the dirt was fucked. The overalls his uncle had given him to toil away in that kept slipping off his shoulders were fucked. The sun was its own demon, and the stifling Oklahoma air, and the quiet farmhouse miles and miles and miles away from anyone who loved him– and most of all, how it had been over one month since he had seen Darry and Soda and Steve and Two-Bit– it was fucked, fucked, fucked. 

“Fuck,” Pony said once more, emphatically despite the dryness in his mouth. His saliva was too thick, clotting up to the texture of a spiderweb, and it reminded him of how horses started to foam at the lips when a bit had been stuck between their teeth for too long. He felt sympathy for horses in a way he had never thought to have before. No animal was meant to work out in the heat for hours and hours.

Ponyboy had yet to cry. He wanted to, in the car, sitting in the passenger seat of Uncle Ronny’s green, 50’s Chevy farm truck which squeaked and steamed as soon as they started going over 30 miles per hour. He wanted to, but he couldn’t, not with a stranger behind the wheel taking him away to lands unknown.

Ms. Gardner made it seem like the farm was close, talked as if it would be no trouble to arrange visitation. Ponyboy was in the car for over an hour. Darry had fastened their dad’s old watch onto his left wrist before he was forced to leave, and he observed the littlest hand tick around and around sixty times for every minute, seventy two times. It was better than looking out the window and witnessing the expanse of crops and nothing as far as the eye could see– at least if he focused on the watch, he was staying close to family.

Any questions about why Uncle Ronny had suddenly appeared as a contender for guardianship were answered within the first week of his stay.

The land he owned was vast as it was unruly– it was too big of a farm to manage alone, and yet Ponyboy saw that Ronny was just that: well and truly alone. He couldn’t bend too quickly without something cracking. He couldn’t hold onto a plow without his fingers shaking, or enter the goat pen without getting headbutted around, and he did not demonstrate enough nimbleness to retrieve a dropped hammer, let alone stoop to weed, to fix a fence, mend a hole.

After a sleepless first night, Ponyboy rose to an inaugural shriek of the rooster, and within minutes Uncle Ronny was leading him around the farm, pointing and muttering and smacking the back of Pony’s head whenever he yawned. There , he would point, and he gestured to the hens or the goats or the crops, and this , and he gestured to a tool or a hose or Pony’s hands, and you, and the finger turned to Ponyboy, and then he would perform the task as Ponyboy watched on. By the third day, Ronny was leaving him with the water pump while he went on to scout the crops. By the end of the week, Ronny left Ponyboy to carry out the morning chores by himself.

Ponyboy realized, with perfect certainty, he had been taken from his brothers to work as a live-in farmhand. And, if the way Ronny beat on him to focus on farm management was any indication, to take over the farm entirely once he could no longer function. 

Pony knew if his brothers couldn’t get him back, it was goodbye to everything he had envisioned and loved for himself. Goodbye high school, any hope of college, goodbye to catching two films on a Friday night, to the Tulsa City Library, his well-loved copy of Gone With the Wind (which hadn’t made it into his backpack like he thought), goodbye to tickle matches and Dingo runs and laughter. What he wouldn’t give to have one more light-hearted Sunday morning spent with all the guys while Soda made a blue mess of the eggs and Darry complained about the noise and the price of milk these days– he’d take a hundred beatings for five more minutes of normal. 

Darry had promised to get him back, and he believed his brother would break himself trying, but he didn’t trust the State to care about three orphans enough to do right by them.

It would be the farm until he was at least eighteen and free of Ronny’s custody, and by then he would be far too behind to catch up. Without his brothers, he was already sinking, giving into the routine of waking to the rooster’s god awful crow and Ronny’s nudging cane and working his body into back-aching oblivion until it was dark and he was too tired to conceptualize what he would have been doing back home. 

Ponyboy received each slap and cuff numbly; the first hit had surprised him, if only because in his absent mind he had been back in the den and with his brothers. He had been hit before, both friendly and fiercely– and once Darry had dealt him the worst blow because it stemmed so desperately from fear– and Ronny’s hits were slow and perfunctory, as painful as a pinch, and they served more as reminders than as punishments. Ponyboy was pouring the grain wrong, or he forgot to collect the eggs, or he didn’t shut the gate properly and so the goats were weaving their way out, and Ronny thwacked him without so much as a word and he would fix whatever it was he had done wrong.

He could lick his wounds in private, at least, as he was afforded a bedroom, even if the doorknob was broken off, leaving a hole in the door where one must have been at some earlier time. His room was sometimes occupied by a black cat he had nicknamed Kid. He liked the cat’s quiet, insistent company, but unfortunately his friendliness was how Ponyboy discovered he was rather allergic to cats. He chose sneezing and red eyes over the surging loneliness he’d encounter on days Ronny himself was too weak to scold him out of the bedroom, and they would sit and watch the rain from Pony’s window and Pony would pretend like the ache in his chest was just another symptom of inhaling Kid’s fur.

The farmhouse had a pronounced hole in the ceiling, just shy of the kitchen table. When it rained, Ronny kicked a bucket underneath to catch the drops, and when the bucket filled, the rain would rise up and spill over the sides and puddle on the floor, anyways. The stove didn’t work unless Ronny took his own lighter to it, and if he didn’t move quick enough, which proved most mornings, the gas would leak out and send a burst of fire up toward the ceiling when he produced a spark. It sometimes singed his eyebrows. It made a lot of sense to Ponyboy that the only grooming Ronny seemed to truly care to perform was shaving his face and neck, because surely those hairs would not survive his attempts at cooking.

After watching his uncle struggle through most things for the last few weeks, Pony was more horrified than amused that anything was still living amongst his acres and acres of land. He couldn’t believe he had been operating by himself for too long; someone must have been helping him.

Ponyboy wished that whoever it had been, they would come back, and then maybe he could go home. 

But there was only Ronny’s silence every morning and Ronny’s wheezing every night, so even if he did hate every bit of work he did for that man and his property, he would feed the goats and fetch the hens water and brush out the old plow horse’s coat because they were Ronny’s victims, too, and he wouldn’t punish an animal just to earn his uncle’s spite. 

Ponyboy hated Uncle Ronny as much as you could hate a man who spoke little yet demanded the world, someone who couldn’t scare a grasshopper off a stalk of corn without coughing yet could jerk Pony around just fine when it came to discipline. Ronny’s soft spoken tone persisted even in moments of small cruelty, and at first, Ponyboy found his voice incongruous to the hardened man he appeared to be. Ultimately, reconciliation occurred when he realized Ronny was soft in the way photographs come out soft from out-of-focus cameras, in the the way ghosts can haunt a room without ever being inside one, and he knew even the most vicious of beings or vivacious of men could fade into a half-state, given enough time, enough loss. Still, Ronny’s fists proved their corporeality, and he swung his hand around casually, so reactionary and unflinching a response to misconduct that it seemed trained into him. Maybe he had done it before– Pony thought of the woman he had never met, his Aunt Darlene– or maybe it had been done to him, and the use of violence was passed along with the same inescapable genetic coding as Darry’s hair, or Soda’s laugh, the sort of things you could trace back to a father.

What could you ask of a guardian? Ronny cooked him breakfast in the morning and gave him enough food to cook dinner for both of them in the evening. He gave Ponyboy clothes, hand-me-downs that had gone through the ringer, or a tractor, and at least a few decades of fall harvests, and they were patched up with a careful hand he could not assign to his uncle, and so through the faded garments he met his aunt. There was a roof over his head, and even if he was starved for human company, there was always noise from shuffling hooves and clucking hens, and it was harder to notice his own loneliness when there was still an abundance of life.

He was not starving in his uncle’s care, and even though he ached from labor and the half-hearted cuffs he received, in his eyes he was not being truly abused. 

What could you ask of a guardian? Uncle Ronny could have loved him, too. Maybe a part of his old, sinewy heart had started beating again when he saw Ponyboy because he shared his aunt’s green eyes, and the long-starved beast of affection that had cowered from loss began to pace, seeking an outlet, a home, and maybe Ponyboy had saved his life, in that respect, gave him purpose again in having someone to take care. And this love would translate to gruff compliments on Ponyboy’s work-hardiness, and candy left on the table when Pony finished clearing the plates from supper, and story-telling from ages past when he had met Aunt Darlene, and his own mother, if they ever had met. 

But it wouldn’t have mattered.

What could you ask of a guardian? Uncle Ronny could have been rich, and swaggering, and as kind as he was assured, he could have owned his own movie theater, renting out the screen to his nephew whenever he desired to see his favorite films, he could have been Paul Newman himself, and yes, he could have loved Ponyboy as much as a father could love a son, and it wouldn’t have mattered, and it would never have been enough because he was not Darry and Sodapop.

All he wanted was his brothers, and his friends, and having lost both his parents and his best friend in the last few years, a loss not even defined by death was still too much for him to bear.

He didn’t care if Uncle Ronny meant well, or meant nothing at all, if Ponyboy truly was a means to an end of ensuring a ramshackle, ill-tended legacy. He hated the man with everything he had, and in a more secret place inside of himself, he pitied him, too. The pity had to stay buried, or else the hated would lose its bite, and Ponboy needed to feel the teeth of his anger if he was going to get through this.

When Ponyboy was nine years old, he caught some of his peers focusing rays from the intense sun through the lens of a magnifying glass, using it to fry ants where they stood on the sidewalk. Ponyboy hadn’t joined in– he didn’t think the ants deserved the torture, even if he had thoughtlessly trampled them so many times before– but he thought about the sun, and how it could be deadly if given enough focus. He was focused on hatred now. 

It started to grow stronger than the grief, and it got louder than the despair, and for every denial of a phone call or redirection after a question of when he would get to see his brothers next, it exploded inside of him like magma, burning through his veins. His welts stung as bad as his sunburn, and his eyes were tired of squinting from the bright sunlight, even with the protection of the baseball cap Soda had tugged onto his head as he pulled out of their final hug.

It was July, and he was hateful, and in a few more days he would be fifteen. He got the feeling that if he didn’t get to see his brothers on his birthday, it may be a long, long time before he ever saw them again.

Ponyboy finished weeding out the row of corn he had been tasked with that morning, and he slapped at his clothes to shake as much dirt as he could from the front before heading back toward the farmhouse. Uncle Ronny had an ever-filled jug of sweet tea in the fridge, and it would be a wonder of a thing if Ponyboy hadn’t woken up once in the middle of the night to see his uncle brewing bags of black tea fresh on the stove. It was no Pepsi, and it was hardly sweet despite its namesake, but he had grown accustomed to putting down a glass or two during his early afternoon reprieve.

He had woken up that night because of a nightmare, a flash of fire left smoldering in his mind’s eye, but it was the only time he had screamed awake, and it was after a rainy day when he only had to tend to the animals and not the crops. At least he could thank the labor for the exhaustion he needed to sleep dreamlessly.

He stomped through the field with heavy steps, boots another gift from his uncle and a few sizes too big for his runner’s feet, and he was nearly to the house when his uncle honked the horn of his truck at him, already behind the wheel.

Ponyboy furrowed his brow but changed course, plotting over to the passenger window.

“Going to town,” Ronny gruffed. He didn’t elaborate further, and he didn’t pull away upon explaining his destination, so Ponyboy read it as an invitation and hurried to get inside the cab. 

Ronny had only gone into town once since Pony arrived, and he had gone while he was busy taking care of the hens. He was devastated to be left behind. The farm had no working telephone, just an old rotary dial that got jammed after the first spin of the numbers. Ponyboy had tried writing letters to his brothers, but the mailman never seemed to make it out to Ronny’s farm, the box at the end of the long, dirt road steadily filling up with Pony’s letters and nothing else. There was a true sense of isolation, stranded in acres of winter wheat and corn, that Ponyboy found after six weeks to be unlivable. 

He hadn’t told his uncle how much the exclusion upset him– he didn’t think it would matter to him– but maybe he noticed. Or maybe he just needed an extra set of hands this time.

The ride into town took twenty minutes, and the ride through town took a total of two minutes. Compared to Tulsa, Pony thought Paden, Oklahoma could fit within a thimble. 

“Why’s no one here?” Ponyboy muttered, more to himself than anything.

“It’s a bedroom community,” Ronny said in his low rasp, words further obfuscated by his constant chewing of something or another– today, as Ponyboy noted, it was a stick of Clove gum.

“What’s that?” Pony hazarded to ask. Ronny huffed, and early on Ponyboy thought it meant he felt put upon by all his questions, but now he realized Ronny needed to clear his airways of mucus anytime he tried to speak.

“Means people don’t live here. They just sleep here.” Uncle Ronny didn’t expand further, and Ponyboy knew better than to try and get an answer worth hearing.

Uncle Ronny parked outside of the Paden General Store, and Ponyboy wasted no time in hopping out and seeing himself inside. 

The store only appeared large due to the high, rounded ceiling, but it seemed to hold more empty shelves than filled ones. A bell chimed as Ponyboy walked through the door, and an older woman with thick, grey hair swept into a low bun emerged from a back room, propping up her elbows on the cashier’s counter. 

“You’re new,” she said in greeting, her chin rolling over her knuckles. She had a sleeveless, blue and white criss-crossing shirt which made her look a bit like a picnic blanket after a fatal run-in with scissors.

“I’m… new.” Ponyboy fished for another word, like visiting or temporary, but he had not heard from his brothers in six weeks, and fear kept him from correcting her.

“You gonna rob me?” She asked with a passive face, and she shook her head until one tendril of hair fell over her eye. Ponyboy flinched in bewilderment.

“Why would you think that?” Ponyboy gawked at her, shaking his hands out of pockets as if to prove he was innocent.

“Youths.” She waved him off dismissively, and Pony thought of Two-Bit, who would have already slipped half of the store up his jacket sleeves. He conceded that it was a fair assumption, even if he had run out of hair grease in the second week of his stay with Uncle Ronny. 

“I’m just waiting for my uncle–” Ponyboy continued to defend himself from her critical gaze, but Ronny eased his way through the door and resolved any question of his presence. The woman moved her hands to her hips, tsking as he approached.

“Ah, Ron, we ain’t seen you for a good quarter! You didn’t think to call ahead this time?” She reached under the counter and slapped a pack of gum down, returning her chin to the grooves of her hands once she was done.

“Phone’s broken,” Uncle Ronny said, as short as ever. Ponyboy, despite his best attempt to remain uncaring, felt good knowing that he was conservative with his breath to everyone, not just him. 

“Well, fix it,” the woman sighed, “and you’ll have to gather your usual order by your lonesome, ‘cause you didn’t call an’ I got a bum knee.”

Ronny nodded, cleared the back of his throat in a short, forceful expulsion of air, and set about the few blocky aisles with clear purpose. Ponyboy found himself drifting through the canned goods and toiletries until he was a few feet away from the counter, looking at the sun-spotted skin of the store clerk.

“You got a name, kid?” She tugged on one of her earlobes, and Ponyboy thought she must do that a lot because it was stretched out and sagging. He considered, too, that could be what age did to the human body, but he had no grandparents to compare her to and he wasn’t often looking at elderly ears unless someone was yanking on their own as she was.

“Ponyboy Curtis,” he said, including his last name with emphasis. He was not a local, and he had no intention of becoming a local. 

She stopped playing with her ear. “Ponyboy?”

“Curtis,” he finished for her, not eager to explain himself or his father for the umpteenth time. She accepted the dismissal with a half-lip smile and shrug.

“Peg,” she said, sticking out a hand to shake, “you ain’t look a thing like Ronny.”

Ponyboy took it, intending to be gentle as her fingers looked as frail as bird bones, but she squeezed with a hidden strength so he had no choice but to be firm in response. “That’s ‘cause I ain’t related to Ronny,” he muttered, though he didn’t think Ronny would be offended by the truth.

“You must got some of that Darlene stock in you then, huh?” Peg appraised him with hazel eyes, and the longer he looked, the cloudier the left one seemed to be, like she had a cataract.

“I suppose so, ma’am,” Pony said, wholly unconvinced. There was one photo of his Aunt Darlene in the farmhouse, and it sat on the window ledge right above the kitchen sink. It was a small photo, his aunt with a large belly and a head of untamed ringlets that went past her shoulders, his uncle a full foot taller than her with a stoic hand on her shoulder, his other hand on the hood of his truck. Squinting, Darlene looked a little like his mom, but he thought he didn’t look much like either of his parents, so he didn’t know what Peg was looking for in his face.

“Oh, yeah. Same gray-kinda-green eyes, like a burrowing owl. Little like she was too, that’s for sure.” Peg hummed, satisfied with the dots she had connected. Ponyboy channeled Darry’s lessons in politeness to avoid losing his eyes to the back of his head.

“Thanks. I guess.” He said dryly, picking at his nails. He glanced at the doorway behind the counter, and an idea struck him. “You said you got a telephone?”

“Sure do,” Peg shared, “wouldn’t get half the business we do without it.”

“Mind if I use it?” Ponyboy swallowed, trying to rein in his eagerness. “I can be quick. And I can pay! In, uh, nickels.” Ponyboy patted down his pockets, feeling for the change he thought he had, but Peg flicked her hand at him, grunting.

“Don’t you worry ‘bout your coins, just come on back here.” She raised the wooden bar that partitioned the counter off from the store, and Pony ducked under as she was still hoisting it up. “Slow, kid, it ain’t growing any legs!”

Behind them, Uncle Ronny was stacking his bounty on the counter, and the sound of cans clinking and bags shifting filled the otherwise quiet store. Ponyboy knew Ronny would insist on his help as soon as he paid, so he resolved to be quick, thanking Peg as she returned to check his uncle out.

It was too early for anyone to be at the house, and calling Darry’s office had a 50/50 shot of actually getting through to his brother, so he spun the dial for the third number he had memorized, hoping Soda would be at the DX and not lazing about the summer sun with a girl.

The phone rang once, twice, three times, and Ponyboy felt himself start to sweat, his collar suddenly too tight, the room too small, his chance slipping out of his fingers–

“DX Station, you got Steve.”

“Steve!” Ponyboy crowed, never happier to hear the other greaser’s voice. “Steve, it’s Ponyboy!”

“Ponyboy!” Steve hollered, then his next words were slightly muffled, “Soda, get the hell over here, it’s Pony!”

Pony heard shouting and whooping, and then his brother, “Pony, my god, how are you?”

Soda sounded equal parts frustrated and relieved, and he was real and alive and on the other end of the phone, and for some reason this was Pony’s permission to feel again. He grabbed for the wall, legs unsteady and eyes stinging. 

“I’m, oh, I’m okay,” Pony squeaked out, a tightening throat another symptom of having emotions, “how are you? Darry?”

“Honey, we’re–” the line fritzed, and Ponyboy smacked the phone box, “y’know, and he’s calling every day to get y–” more static, and Pony growled as he slammed his palm against the wall, “we miss you.”

“I miss you!” Pony cried, trying to ignore the buzzing that kept cutting through the line. “When can I see you?”

“Well we’re trying to–” more and more and more distortions, vowels cutting through the fuzz and not much else. Frustration rose in him, the same temperature as his newfound hatred, and his tears dried up.

“I can’t hear you,” Pony confessed, “and listen, listen, I ain’t got much time– just come find me! Okay? The farm, it’s off of–”

“Pone, what? Can you hear–”

“Listen! Ronny’s farm, it’s–”

“Ponyboy, your uncle’s lookin’ to leave,” Peg called.

“Just a second!” Pony yelled back before shoving his mouth into the receiver with the force of his desperation. “Soda, the farm is south off of 48, you just need to drive until–”

“Po–”

“Soda! Please!” But the line was ringing with the dial tone, and Pony knew the connection was lost, and it was over. He slammed the phone against the wall. He took a moment, his head pressed against concrete, breathing through the haze of red in his vision. Then he wandered into the light of the store, where Peg and Ronny were standing and talking in small sentences.

“Your phone’s broke, too,” Ponyboy informed them, and he hoped neither of them noticed the rasp in his words.

“Ah, it only really likes to take local calls,” Peg said, “you musta been tryin’ for some distance.”

“Yeah, must have,” Pony echoed, though he didn’t know in what world Paden and Tulsa would be considered far apart. An hour wasn’t far. He was still so close to his brothers. It made everything that much harder.

“Grab that crate.” Ronny interrupted, jerking his head toward a box full of canned goods for the pantry. His arms were already laden with bags of feed, and he didn’t wait for Ponyboy to accept the job before lumbering for the door.

“Aye, aye,” he muttered, securing his hands around the edges. He looked up at Peg. “Thanks for lettin’ me try.”

“No problem, kid,” she patted his arm, “anytime. You got manners. That’s good. You’re nothin’ like his last one.”

“Pardon?” Ponyboy asked, blinking at her. She pointed at his eyes, a delighted grin overtaking her face.

“Yep, them those Darlene eyes, those Darlene manners! Ain’t the worst blood to share, that’s for damn sure.”

“You said like his–”

“Oh, don’t forget your uncle’s gum. Only thing that got him to quit smokin’, you know.” She tucked the pack of Cloves between the rows of cans in his arms.

“Me too,” Pony agreed absently, confusion forgotten for a moment. He couldn’t smoke the same after the fire. At first, he couldn’t stop smoking, the nicotine doing wonders for his shakiness, clearing his head from all the clutter of his fears. Then, after a few weeks, he couldn’t get past the click of the lighter. He’d stand there with the cigarette between his lips and freeze, the flame dancing in front of his face, and he would get sick and let the weed fall to the ground. Darry bought him a pack of gum to swap out for his cigs, and though he never thought it possible, Ponyboy stopped craving them so bad after about a month or two.

“Well, you don’t wanna keep that man waiting– see you next time, Ponyboy Curtis.” Peg waved goodbye, dismissing him and any further questions he might have, and Ponyboy gathered the crate in his arms and trudged after his uncle.

Maybe I’ll see if she can send out my letters, Pony thought, then he kicked himself for conceding that he may be with Ronny long enough to return to the Paden General Store. He hoped that wasn’t the case.

He knew hope wasn’t worth much, and so he kept all his hopes and fears alike sealed inside of him on the drive back to the farm, wondering when it would be safe to feel again.

Chapter Text

Ponyboy had always been a quick learner, even if he preferred what could be taught in a book or a story, and so it didn’t take long for him to understand the farm he had been tasked with caretaking. 

Uncle Ronny owned roughly forty acres of land, a modest number for a farmer in rural Oklahoma, but Pony’s sense of desolation was bolstered by the fact that Ronny used to own two-hundred -and-forty acres, and the earth he had sold sat all around them, idle and waiting to be repurposed. Ponyboy had discovered the sale by accident, flipping through drawers in the empty front room, looking for more stationary to write his letters with. Instead of envelopes, he found a deed of sale, and tucked under that, a water-damaged and shabby leather-bound journal. He had left the deed, keeping only the information that they sat on forty-acres and were most certainly not using all forty-acres, and pocketed the journal. He brought it into his room and tucked it between the mattress and the ancient bedframe. It would be an invasion of privacy to read, even if it were clearly unloved and abandoned in that drawer, and he vowed only to open the pages if boredom overcame his good manners.

Further, Pony learned that the farm was falling apart, and he didn’t believe it would be much longer before those forty-acres shrank into twenty, or ten, or total foreclosure. Ronny had explained the irrigation system that was meant to supply water to the crops, but begrudgingly admitted that only half of the pipes were in working order, so they could only expect about half of the harvest this fall. He learned that Ronny usually hired migrants to assist with the harvest, which satisfied some of Pony’s curiosity about who had been helping his uncle with the farm, but not all of it. Even with the instability of the crops, the animals had been tended to, and he did not believe Ronny fit enough to trim the hooves on the plow horse, Chester, yet he had seen the hooves and noticed they were not overgrown as he would have thought.

Uncle Ronny could have worked with a country veterinarian, Ponyboy mused, but he did not strike Pony as the kind of man to ask for help, rather the kind to either learn the steps himself or seek a different solution. Ponyboy felt his reordered custody fell into the latter category of how Uncle Ronny problem-solved.

The day after they had returned from Paden, a goat chewed through Darry’s shirt, and Ponyboy stared at the offending hole and wondered what was the point of any of it. He didn’t know if Soda had even heard his rattled attempt at sharing his location, but the mailbox had been emptied of his letters, so at least some of his words were escaping Ronny’s farm. He hoped the next time the mailbox was filled to the brim, a letter would be left in return for his efforts.

Ponyboy finished feeding the goats before heading inside to throw together a lunch of eggs and spam– a great deal of what he ate now was either canned or produced by the animals he was coming to know all too well– and he tried to ignore the hole, but Delilah had big teeth and a strong jaw, and the bottom of the shirt was irreparably marred. He was so distracted by the wounded fabric that he broke an egg over the counter instead of the pan, and after he soaked a towel in its yolk trying to clean his mess, he sat down on the floor and gave into the urge to put his head between his knees.

He shouldn’t have worn the shirt to do the chores and he knew it. But he wanted the comfort that came from swimming in Darry’s old work shirt, and he had tried to be careful. Now Delilah had a piece of Darry he was never going to get back, and this made him afraid, because what piece of Darry was he ever going to get back? He told himself Darry was looking for him, but why was that getting harder to believe with every crow of the rooster, every turn of the sun?

Uncle Ronny was deep in the back acres doing something he had yet to instruct Ponyboy on how to do, and he took the extra few minutes of solitude to breathe with his hands clamped around his head. He wanted his brothers. He wanted to go home. 

Eventually, when his breathing eased into a normal cadence, he stalked off to his bedroom and hated that he considered it his bedroom. He paused at the door, his eyes darting to the other door further down the hall to his left where Uncle Ronny slept, and the door past that still at the very end, which was always locked. Pony wanted to be distracted from his longing, and he thought the locked room might very well be a good distraction. Two-Bit had taught him to pick a lock, after all, and he hardly found the opportunity to put the skill to use.

After a few warring minutes, he chose to ignore the impulse. It wasn’t worth a slap from Ronny, no matter how glancing the blow landed. Instead, he grabbed the journal from underneath the mattress and carefully unwrapped the long coil of leather wrapped around its covers. He had long since finished Hemingway’s rather short novel The Old Man and the Sea– dreading the end with every page because he knew it wouldn’t be a happy one– and since he had forgotten his copy of Gone With the Wind, he had only Ronny’s Bible to keep him company, and he had read it cover to cover for the second time in his life.

The first page was blank but crinkled with water damage, and from its age Ponyboy did not have high expectations for the legibility of the rest of the journal. He scooted back on the bed until his shoulders thudded against the wall, and he settled into the corner to read. 

Before he could resume, the covers shifted next to him, and what he thought to be a pillow began to wiggle and stretch and stick a head out from underneath the old comforter.

“Kid,” he greeted, his itching nose explained, “I’m going to have to wash these sheets again.”

The black cat meowed and stretched his front paws out until they were pushing into Pony’s thigh, and then he let out a fang-displaying yawn which got a chuckle out of Ponyboy.

“You have no right to be so tired,” he told the little beast as it climbed into his lap, “you get to sleep all day while I work.” 

Kid paid his chastising no mind, and he spun in two tight circles before settling down with his head near Pony’s knee. Ponyboy sighed, and then sneezed, and then sneezed again for good measure. Kid merely cracked one eye in judgement, but refused to move. Ponyboy didn’t want him to leave, anyways.

Labored breathing was a small price to pay for decent company at the farm. He would spend the rest of his time with Uncle Ronny sneezing if it meant he wouldn’t have to be so lonely.

Despite Darry’s shirt being ruined by goat teeth, Pony chose to wipe his running nose on the pillowcase and cracked the journal once more. He turned past the soiled first page to find another blank page, save for a cursive signature at the bottom. He squinted, not the best at reading cursive as, for as smart as he was he had skipped the grade where they taught cursive penmanship. He only got along as good as he had with cursive because Darry exclusively wrote in it, and he left all his notes in the looping scrawl. Ponyboy improved his reading out of necessity.

Darlene Richards.

“Oh,” Pony said, and Kid meowed as if to ask why. Ponyboy drew a nail down the cat’s curving back, staring at the name. “This belonged to my aunt.”

It shouldn’t have startled him, to hold something his aunt owned, because he was living in the house she had lived in, and he was staying with the man she had been married to. But beyond the photograph in the kitchen, this was the first real proof that she had been a person, a living person, someone he could get to know even after death.

He hesitated with his fingers gripping the next page, ready to flip. His Aunt Darlene had died soon after he was born, and his mother had only spoken of her in wistful memories of childhood, as if she had died long before growing up. He knew his Aunt Darlene used to hunt for frogs before she got all her teeth in. He knew she would paint a rock for his mother for every birthday they shared once she turned six. He knew his mother only had seven rocks, kept in a jar in his parent’s bedroom, because Darlene had been five years older, and she had left home at age eighteen to marry ‘some farmer,’ as his mother had described.

Ponyboy tried to imagine how his mother must have felt: tried picturing life without Soda, as Darlene was his mom’s only sibling, and then having Darry leave for college right out of high school. Even if it was supposed to go that way, Pony thought he would have been pretty beaten up about it. 

He didn’t have the highest opinion of his Aunt Darlene, and he didn’t expect that to change from reading her private thoughts, so he stopped stalling and flipped to the first entry.

September 13                    1939

 

for but an hour, there is no talk

of war, there is no

kettle roar or poster board, there is no

bus stop breakdown, city squall, heat wave

unsurvived– one hour, I give, and a dog tooth

sinks neck deep in some other sad woman’s

collar– for one hour,

home is my barren of bad news

Pony read the poem three times over before giving up on finding its meaning. 1939– that was almost thirty years prior to Ponyboy opening a drawer and finding the journal sitting there. He knew World War II had just begun to rage that year, but he didn’t know much else. His mother would have been thirteen, so he guessed Darlene had just left home. 

September 17                    1939

 

a garden he grows, the land

all green beneath his thumbs

he treats me as a rose, fragile

a thing I did not know I could be

until now,

until you

until

The words bled into the page, a smudge of ink obscured by water damage, and Ponyboy squinted his eyes and smoothed out the paper as best he could. It was no use. The rest of the poem was lost. 

He prepared to read another, but the sound of the screen door banging shut startled him into dropping the journal onto Kid, who scrambled to get down to the floor. Darry would have yelled at Ronny about banging the door, but Ronny didn’t care about stuff like the hinges or the cost of repairs– and Pony supposed he could afford to be reckless, what with two-hundred acres of land he was richer for having sold.

Ponyboy stood quickly and shoved the book into the same slot under the mattress, feeling distinctly like he was committing some sort of crime. It wasn’t as if Ronny had told him he couldn’t explore the house (aside from the locked room), but he still didn’t think his uncle would appreciate his snooping. He reckoned Ronny would say something like, “If you have time to creep, you have time to work.”

His own door was pushed open a minute later– swinging easy, as it still had no handle– and Ronny stood there with his straw hat and scrunched-up red sleeves, panting as if he had run a marathon. He had the wild look in his eyes, the frantic wobbling pupils of someone taking in the world faster than the brain could process, and Pony noticed he usually got that way after long stretches of the day had passed where they hadn’t seen each other.

Normally, he wouldn’t address it, but between the torn shirt and his aunt’s poetry, he was feeling raw, and that produced its own honesty.

“I didn’t run off,” Pony told him, and Ronny blinked, his eyes finally steady.

“I didn’t think you’d run off.” Uncle Ronny said in his usual rasp.

“You always act like I have,” Pony countered, “you look at me like you can’t believe I’m still here.”

Uncle Ronny was quiet for a moment, and Pony thought he’d stay that way, with all the presence of a scarecrow. Then he cleared his throat, a hand rubbing on his sternum.

“Is that so…” He trailed off. Ponyboy watched as he worked his jaw around, then limped out of his room with a much slower gait than when he arrived.

Ponyboy felt the need to press, and he wandered after his uncle.

“Yes. But you know I couldn’t go anywhere ‘cause I got nowhere to go. And I do everything you ask, and I’m not– listen, why can’t I see my brothers?”

Uncle Ronny was by the kitchen sink, and he shifted his weight off of his left leg, which always seemed to give him trouble once he got inside from working the fields.

“I told you, it’s ‘cause–”

“The State, I know, you say that, and how would you know? The phone doesn’t work, but you’re never in town, and we don’t get mail, so how would you know if someone’s trying to call? Huh?” Ponyboy felt himself shaking, getting worked up with the force of his frustrations. It’s because of the shirt , he thought, and he twisted a fist into the excess of fabric, trying to remember what Darry looked like wearing it.

“I’m working on it,” Uncle Ronny told him matter-of-factly; his end-of-story voice, which was how we conveyed most sentiments. Everything was final with Ronny. Ponyboy pressed.

“I didn’t see you buyin’ wires at the General Store! Phone ain’t gonna get fixed by sayin’ it’s gonna get fixed– see, I can learn to fix up a tractor, but you can’t fix up a telephone? How’s that fair?” Ponyboy stomped closer, an ugly heat rising into his face and he knew his cheeks were red. He kept his fists to his sides, taking in every inch of Ronny’s indignation. People weren’t supposed to talk back to him, or get too close, and he never seemed to know what to do when Ponyboy got into his space of his own accord.

“I’m working on it,” Ronny repeated, but he was standing straighter, and his fingers were twitching in the air, which usually meant trouble. Pony kind of wanted trouble.

“You’re lying!”

He used to push Darry because he felt Darry was being unfair, and if getting grounded was the cost of standing up for himself, then he would take the punishment to know he had tried. Uncle Ronny wasn’t keeping him from the movie house– he was keeping him from his own family. He knew he was going to get hit, and to Ponyboy, that meant he had tried.

Uncle Ronny cuffed him with an open palm right across his ear, and were it not dead on, it probably would have gone unnoticed. As it landed, it pulsed sound and air inside his head like one staccato cymbal crash, and he turned his face, grabbing for the side of his head. Ronny didn’t hit him again– it wasn’t about damage. It was about correcting a behavior. Ponyboy had stopped running his mouth, so he stopped the violence. Simple as that.

Ponyboy rubbed his smarting ear, glaring at Ronny as he did but not daring to hit him back. He wasn’t dumb enough to push the man too far, not when they were the only people for miles in either direction. 

Ronny finished washing up at the sink, splashing water over his closed eyes, and he went to rub his face on the towel plopped haphazardly on the counter, but Pony had the sense to stop him.

“Wait,” he said, stalking around the counter to take the towel and hand his uncle a different one from the closet. The egg yolk he had cleaned up earlier had dried into a brittle yellow, and he didn’t wait for Ronny to address the stain before throwing it in the basket in his room with the rest of his clothes that needed washing.

When he went back into the kitchen, Ronny was working on two plates, spam sandwiches, and Pony’s stomach grumbled to remind him that he hadn’t actually gotten to eat lunch earlier. He slid into a chair at the kitchen table, a nicer set than they had back home, and nodded in thanks when Ronny dropped a plate in front of him.

They had settled into a song and dance routine of uncle and nephew, an experience foreign enough to cause both parties to despair. Ponyboy would get upset, and he would turn to his hatred and start to push, and he’d push until Uncle Ronny lost that confused glint in his eyes and resorted to throwing his hands around. Then, it was quiet. Ronny never said sorry, and Pony knew it was because he felt that even though Pony was miserable, he had nothing to be sorry for. Instead of sorry , he would let Ponyboy take a longer break, or he’d pour him a glass of sweet tea with extra ice, or he would make a spam and egg sandwich and set it silently on the table.

Ponyboy forced himself to eat the sandwich, even though his hunger was dampened by a slew of nauseating emotions. He didn’t like spam, either– reminded him too much of bologna, and he would never be able to eat that again. Still, spam made him think of Windrixville, and the church, and that always led him to Johnny. He hated that processed meat was one of the biggest reminders of his dead friend, and though he got every crumb of the sandwich down, the last few bites tasted resolutely of ash.

When eating was hard, Darry used to sit with him and try to match his pace, working his way through a meal as slowly and surely as Ponyboy was, keeping him company until the plate was clean. Soda helped too, though he couldn’t stop himself from inhaling any food in front of him, and he would talk and talk and keep Pony distracted from his discomfort. Uncle Ronny was neither patient nor chatty, and he left Ponyboy on his own after making quick work of the sandwich.

He must have felt bad, Pony thought, because he didn’t throw a remark over his shoulder about getting back to work, extending his afternoon break indefinitely. 

He didn’t know what to do with the extra hours. Part of him wanted to retreat to his room and read more of his aunt’s journal, but he was met with an instinct to savor the words, like they would lose some of their magic and significance if he chose to rush through them. What he wanted more than anything was to tell his brothers about the poems, and though it was stupid and childish, tell them about Ronny slapping him. 

Ponyboy kept trying to be grateful that it wasn’t worse. Uncle Ronny could have kept him in a shed, or beat on him with a cane, or done a million other treacherous acts that would have truly ruined Ponyboy’s life. He got smacked around a little, barely, and it didn’t hurt, and he had gotten worse from roughhousing with the guys just about everyday of his life. And even Darry had hit him once before, so really, he didn’t know what he was complaining about.

Except Darry had reacted like his hand was a blade, had shouted apologies after him into the echoing night. He had been horrified– and it had only happened once. Ronny may have been weak, but he was consistent. Pony could anticipate the blows, knew what sentence or misstep had caused the reaction immediately before the fist landed, and after a month and a half of the treatment, he was struggling to believe that he didn’t deserve it, if even a fractional amount.

Maybe he was too mouthy, he considered, or maybe he was a forgetful worker– and slowly, these small, haphazardly placed insecurities grew, and two days before he was to turn fifteen years old, Pony wondered if those obnoxious traits of his were reasons his brothers hadn’t found him yet.

He put his plate in the sink, and washed both of them. That night, he would cook dinner, and it would be more eggs, and some kind of bean, he was sure, or something pickled in a jar from the cellar. He would choke it down, and sleep dreamlessly. Then he would wake up and do it all again, and his brothers still wouldn’t be there.

Ponyboy went into his room and found he didn’t have the energy to write a letter home. He sat on the window ledge and let Kid run his head back and forth across his legs until he gave up on trying to win Pony’s attention and clawed his way under the covers.

He watched the scores of goats tussle with each other and chew the grass short, and hours passed like that until he cooked the dinner, choked it down, and slept dreamlessly.

When he woke up, he was one day closer to fifteen and more alone than he could ever remember being in his life.

Ponyboy didn’t know what compelled him to do it, but midway through breakfast he set his fork down and looked at his uncle, cleared his throat and waited for Ronny to return his stare.

“My birthday is tomorrow,” Ponyboy announced. He was sure Uncle Ronny knew that already– he knew there had to have been a good amount of paperwork involved in shuffling around his custody– but he was going to be fifteen, and he thought it could be enough to get him a visit with his brothers.

Uncle Ronny nodded his head, his eyes drifting over to the corner of the ceiling. He made it a habit to take off his hat to eat, and his closely shaved grey hairs rose meekly out of his scalp. He scratched at his neck. 

“Suppose I knew that,” Ronny said, his lips frowning in thought. Ponyboy waited a beat, wondering if Ronny would suggest what he wanted, or if he had to do everything himself.

There was only more silence, so finally Ponyboy held up an empty palm. “I want you to take me to see my brothers.”

Ronny put down his knife and wiped at his mouth thoughtfully, which wasn’t a ‘no’, and definitely not a ‘yes’. He hummed, and Pony interpreted it to be considering.

“Fifteen?” He asked, and Ponyboy nodded.

“Yessir,” he said. He didn’t call Ronny ‘uncle.’ The title was ill-fitting and strange– he was sir , and in his head, he was son of a bitch.

“I’d have to call that lady,” Uncle Ronny chewed, “don’t reckon I could without her.”

Ponyboy had to wrap his legs around the chair to stop himself from jumping up, but his foot began to tap incessantly, knocking into the wood and shaking the dishes.

“Okay,” Ponyboy accepted, waiting for Ronny to make another move. “Okay, and?”

Uncle Ronny shrugged, and Ponyboy was too eager to let his uncle’s reluctance slow him down. “And so we have to go back to Paden! Or wherever there’s a phone that can get a call out over one hundred miles!” 

“I suppose,” Ronny said. Pony’s tapping grew more frantic, and he leaned forward in his chair.

“Suppose we go now,” Pony encouraged, and he popped to his feet, shoes already on. Darry hated when people wore shoes in the house. You would be a fool to go barefoot in Ronny’s– the floorboards were adorned with stray nails, and there was always a puddle from the leaky roof that had gone unnoticed.

“Hold on, boy,” Ronny grumbled, holding up a hand. Pony didn’t sit back down, but he stopped moving for the door. “We ain’t finished breakfast.”

Ponyboy did not care about his scrambled eggs, and he cared even less about Ronny’s, but he trudged over to his chair and tried to be patient. He had spent six weeks barely speaking to Ronny, but the small concession was enough to loosen his tongue, and as his uncle chewed through the rest of his breakfast he found he could not stop the chatter.

“My brothers– man, I wonder if they thought this’d happen, ‘cause your mail service ain’t worth a lick an’ your stupid phone’s still stupid– and Darry’ll have to take the day off last minute but he ain’t a woofin’ ‘bout bills ‘cause he’s had one less mouth to feed for a whole month so he can take the day– he better take the day– no, yeah, he’d take the day. The harder part will be pryin’ Soda off his lousy girlfriend. ” Pony’s nails drummed along the table, and he sighed, thinking of how happy he would be, and how happy his brothers would be, and he’d see that all of his worrying and overthinking was a symptom of homesickness and nothing more than that. 

Uncle Ronny didn’t respond to his sentiments, but he had the graciousness to not tell Ponyboy to shut up. So even if Ronny wasn’t listening, he talked about Darry’s athleticism and Soda’s charm, and once he got on about the driving lessons he was supposed to have, he had to bring up Steve and his Mustang, and then Two-Bit and his affinity for hubcaps. He only stopped once his tongue caught on a story where Two-Bit had tried to teach Johnny to lift caps, because the moment Johnny’s name passed his lips, freely and thoughtlessly, the world came back into startling clarity.

His best friend was dead, and his parents were dead, he was miles away from home and anyone who loved him, and he was a prisoner on a farm without books or movies or people– and he hated it. He remembered he hated his life, and he fell silent without being told.

The morning chores had already been completed, and as soon as Ronny put his plate in the sink, Pony rushed through washing it and hurried over to the door. He was going to Paden, and they were going to call that lousy soc woman Ms. Gardner, and he would see his brothers on his birthday.

Uncle Ronny surprised him by trodding over to the truck without any more prompting, and Pony thought he must have finally worn his nerves thin having to put up with Pony’s frustrations. He swung into the cab of the truck and slammed the door to a close, having learned the hard way that it would jimmy open on the highway if not forced into place. Ronny asked no questions, and Pony couldn’t make anything of his quiet insistence on not getting any closer to him, but he supposed he wasn’t taken to be company, only another set of hands.

He tried to memorize more of the ride to Paden, but it was all a blur of fields and gravel roads that bled into abrupt highway turns, and the ride was corn, blink, wheat, blink, Paden General Store.

Ponyboy crunched down onto the rocky drive-up, and he didn’t skip into the store because boys his age didn’t skip, but it was a near thing. Ronny trailed after him, dutiful and resigned, and Pony didn’t wonder what was in his head so long as he could make one phone call.

“Hello?” He called as he pushed open the door. Just over the ringing bell, there was an unfamiliar clicking sound, and then Ponyboy took in a lot of details at once.

There were cans strewn across the floor, and a busted shelf to the right of the entrance way, and before the bell had even stopped shaking, Peg popped up from behind the counter with a shotgun planted firmly in front of her face. Ponyboy crashed against the wall with the bad shelf, flinching away from her aim.

“Don’t shoot!” He cried, hands going up on instinct. Ronny wasn’t even in the store yet. Ponyboy didn’t know if he would have made getting held at gunpoint better or worse.

“Oh!” Peg exclaimed, dropping the gun down to peer over the barrel. She snapped to a standing position once she saw Ponyboy huddled by the door, and then Pony watched as she slapped the gun across the counter, as familiar as she would have dropped a newspaper. “Ponyboy Curtis, right? Don’t mean to shoot you , dove, come right inside.”

“Okay,” Pony said, creeping slightly further in. Had he not met her the day prior, he would have believed her unstable and ran as soon as he was out of the line of fire. He still thought she might be unstable, but he trusted her enough to not shoot him if he wasn’t her target. “Can I ask…” Pony waved at the gun, his hands staying aloft, just in case.

“Shoot, yes– just the youths, dear! Masked one came in to cause some trouble, but Peg keeps the gun right beneath the counter– yes, this could be the safest place to be in all of Paden,” she tutted to herself, and produced a rag to nervously wipe down the gun with. Ponyboy risked looking away to survey the wall, and he noticed the shelf hadn’t been stricken down, but shot down, and the spattered casings broke through the wood and told the story of its collapse. 

“Scary,” Ponyboy muttered, thinking of being shot at by Peg.

“Not scary when you can defend yourself!” Peg crowed, and the bell rang again to announce Uncle Ronny’s delayed entrance.

“Ron! What did y’all forget to be back here so soon?” Peg put her hands on her hips, loosening up with every passing second to be more like the woman from their first meeting. 

“Nothing,” Ron said, and Pony watched his eyes glide over the gun, dart discreetly to the fallen cans, and then land on Pony’s shoes.

Ponyboy didn’t mind asking. “We came to use your phone again, if possible, ma’am.”

“Sure, sure! Come on back here– I’ll just have to stay out front,” she laughed, a sound almost exactly like the shop bell’s ring, “yes, just in case.”

Uncle Ronny and Ponyboy fell into step as they trekked over the fallen goods, and then they ducked under the counter one after the other, passing a flighty Peg on their way to the backroom.

“Got the number?” Pony asked, bouncing up on the balls of his feet. He would try to call the DX again when Ronny was done, try to get word to Soda that they were going to be reunited as early as tomorrow.

Ronny nodded, and dug around the pockets of his overalls to produce a scrap of paper with a hastily scrawled number. There was a name on there– the first name was illegible but the last name looked a lot like Gardner – and Pony thought that while Ronny didn’t write in cursive, his handwriting might as well have been in a different language with how difficult it was to discern.

Ponyboy tried to be patient as Ronny fumbled the first attempt at punching in the number, and then he chewed on his cheek as the phone rang and rang. Ms. Gardner picked up on the fourth ring.

“Uh– hullo, ma’am?” Ronny pitched into the phone. However awkward he was in person, it was worse to witness how he handled talking into the receiver. “Hullo– uh, this is– this is Ronald Carver.”

Ponyboy popped his pinky nail into his mouth. Darry had tried real hard to break his bad habits, and while he had gotten Ponyboy to stop smoking, if he wasn’t around to smack his hands away from his mouth then his fingers were going right between his teeth when he got nervous. He nibbled away, working his teeth around a hangnail.

“Yes ma’am– no, he’s, uh, he’s fine, ma’am. Yes, he’s–” Ronny paused, and Ponyboy started to taste blood. He wished he could hear the rest of the conversation.

“Well actually, ma’am– it’s– y’know, his birthday,” Ronny glanced over at Pony, and his wide eyes showed stress, “and I told him, y’know, I’d ask if he could see his brothers…”

A long pause, and then Ronny grunted, nodding his head along to whatever was being said.

“Sure, ma’am– he’s just… well, I guess. I suppose so. Maybe–” His uncle crossed an arm over his chest, his opposite elbow resting atop of it to keep the phone near his mouth. “Oh, alright then. I’ll tell him. Bye.”

Uncle Ronny replaced the phone on the wall, but he didn’t let go of it. Pony removed his finger, red from all his gnashing, and stepped forward. “Well?”

“Well,” Ronny continued, “she says it can’t be done.”

“It… can’t be done?” Ponyboy repeated his words, anger lacing through them, confusion marrying the question together. He didn’t understand.

“She said the paperwork–”

“I’m being kept from my brothers over paperwork?” Ponyboy cut him off, growing irate. The people who had loved and lived with him for his entire life were not to be dictated by a piece of paper that said whether they got to see each other or not. 

Ponyboy didn’t use to understand Dallas Winston. The boy had some kind of anger about him which rose up with little cause, and it made him unknowable, in small but important ways. Why Dallas had needed to fight, or needed to run, Ponyboy could understand that. But why he had wanted it? Why he had asked his rage to stay, even in the summer, even when life was worth the peace? Ponyboy never wanted that.

Ponyboy knew anger– he used to be angry a lot, at the world and at Darry, but he had known anger then as a shield to keep him from his grief. He'd never been so wronged that he wanted to choose violence over shelter.

His anger in the backroom of Paden’s General Store was like a sword, and if he did not wield it, he would throw himself against the blade until he bled out all over the shop floor, becoming another mess for Peg to clean up with those dented cans and ruined wood. His anger wanted to make itself known as a fist into the brick wall– and it got real clear, for a minute, who Dallas Winston had been, and why he had always gotten what he wanted. Even when it hurt him.

Pony did let his fist go, but he didn’t strike his muttering uncle or the wall, he swiped the phone off the hook and clutched it to his ear with trembling fingers.

Soda, he wanted to hear Soda, and Soda would be able to talk him down and set everything straight. He dialed for the DX.

His uncle didn’t say a word while the phone rang, hardly let out a breath, either, an unlikely feat for him considering Pony could usually hear his lungs day in and day out rattling a pitiful beat.

The phone rang, and rang, like it had before, and Pony kept waiting for the catch, the click, the friendly hello, any noise that felt like a way to continue, but the release never came.

“We are sorry, your call could not be completed at this time–”

Dally would have broken his hand, getting that message. But Ponyboy felt himself leave the room, sparing his bones, stepping out of reality to the left and letting the world resume without him. 

His uncle did not ask, and Ponyboy did not tell him about the dropped call or the pain inside of him because he knew he did not care to hear about either. They walked out of the backroom, and Ronny mumbled something to Peg, and Peg clapped Ponyboy on the shoulder and apologized for their connection.

“It always acts up worse just before a storm,” she said, and her voice was underwater, and Pony must have been underwater, too, because when he nodded there was more resistance then there should have been to turn his neck this way and that.

Peg put something box-shaped into his uncle’s hands, and then they were moving for the door, for the truck, for another meaningless drive he wouldn’t bother to recall. Every few minutes, his mind would wander back to him, and he’d retreat, the buzzing of his frustration sounding too much like a wasp nest. He needed to wait until he wasn’t going to explode.

Ronny was talking to him. That was new. Uncle Ronny wasn’t the one to fill a silence, he waited for questions he couldn’t ignore or gesticulate to answer, and he only got to rambling when it came to the land and the animals and the care and keeping of his prized tractor. Ponyboy wanted to listen, if only to distract himself, but he could only bother to make out the words “chicken” and “birthday” and neither caught his attention enough to keep it.

The storm Peg had mentioned was brewing in the distance, hours off from striking, and Ponyboy wondered vaguely how he would be tasked with stopping nature from destroying the farm. He considered he had nothing else to do on his birthday, except think about where else he might have been.

As Ronny pulled up the long dirt drive, Pony remembered his fourteenth birthday. His first birthday without his parents, but he had woken up to chocolate cake and a solitary burning candle, and a smile which wasn’t forced like he thought it would be. Darry cut the sleeves off of some old sweatshirts to give to him, and Soda bought him a whole case of Pepsi, and on each and every can he had written Reserved for Ponyboy. Except he had spelled it wrong, writing Resurved for Ponyboy, and so Ponyboy got to spend the morning jacked up on sugars and an endless stream of teases for his older brother. 

He was ready to call it quits– round up the animals in his daze and head to his bedroom– but Ronny parked on the opposite side of the house, closer to the chicken coop. He gestured at Pony to get out, and confusion helped dull some of his earlier anger. Ponyboy slammed the door of the truck with enough force to keep it closed and not enough force to make a statement. 

Ronny flapped a hand at the chicken coop while he kept walking forward, and Pony interpreted his signal to mean he should put the birds in before the storm struck. 

The hens had free rein of the property, but they stayed largely between the buildings, preferring the shade of the neighboring oak and the rafters of the goat barn to the expanses of wheat and corn which were a little more dizzying to a chicken. The rooster (Tim, as Pony called him, reminding him of another boy who wouldn’t hesitate to cut you if you looked at him wrong) didn’t let any of the hens get too far alone, either, so rarely did Pony have to search to gather them all together to shut the coop’s door.

Ponyboy hadn’t meant to name the hens, like he hadn’t meant to name the goats, but seeing them everyday exposed him to their singular personalities, and identifiers turned into nicknames turned into titles, and he counted over them now at the door to the coop, the hens already perched and huddled, mindful of the storm themselves. There was a gaggle of Buff Orpingtons– Buffy, Eggna, and Gladys– and the solitary Polish hen, Elvis, whose feathered afro bobbed when she walked like she was humming a tune. There were the Plymouth Rocks, and as they were black and white, Pony had named them each after a leading lady of the silver screen: Judy, and Doris, and Marilyn, and Vivien, for Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. The Rhode Island Reds were inseparable, and though plain, he thought they had spunk, and after he had jokingly called one of them Soda when the hen in question tried to spook him into dropping an extra serving of grain, he couldn’t stop himself from giving each hen a counterpart until he had Steve, Two-Bit, and Darry, too. 

He was just closing the door, wiping his hands of sawdust, when Ronny rounded the corner with an axe and Pony’s eyebrows rose.

“Did you pick one out?” Ronny asked, hefting the axe over his shoulder.

“Huh?” Pony replied, still not up for talking, let alone listening.

Ronny pointed at the closed door. “A hen.”

“Hen for huh?” Pony tried again, taking a step away from the door.

“For dinner. For your birthday,” Ronny repeated, sounding as if he had said it for the third time already. And he might have, which was rare, as Ronny hated to repeat things he could reiterate just as well with a few grunts and an eyeroll.

The axe caught the lowering sun, and the glint got through to Pony, a flash of his pale reflection upon the obfuscated metal. Oh, he realized, he wants me to pick a hen to slaughter.

“I don’t need a chicken dinner.” Pony put his hands up, and when he took a small step back, his shoulders thudded against the coop door. “Spam’s enough for me.”

It wasn’t a big deal– Ronny had slaughtered hens before. Ponyboy would find the hen cooked in the fridge and feel no guilt, only relief from being offered meat that wasn’t from a can. All he had to do was pretend he didn’t know exactly which hen it was, and he could eat as much as he could stomach as he had done living with Darry and Soda.

“Nonsense, it’s tradition.” Ronny hefted the axe around, and it swung head first into the ground. He leaned on it like it was a cane, a casual pose undermined by his labored breathing. “You get to slaughter it yerself.”

Eating the chicken was one thing, deciding which chicken it would be was torture enough, but being the one to end its life? Ponyboy’s stomach lurched, and for a moment he wasn’t on the farm. He was in the woods with his father, lining up a shot he would never take. He remembered how the doe had turned her eyes onto him, big and innocent, all-seeing of the shot that would take her life. She had frozen– hadn’t run from it, hadn’t accepted it, either. She waited as he waited, and he knew if he lowered his gun then one of his brothers would shoot her, so he tilted the gun up and fired at the tree right behind her head. The doe took off, and his father had said better luck next time while Darry dropped a hand on his hair and ruffled it into his eyes, and he knew neither of them thought it was an accident, and still they didn’t care.

Ronny took a dragging step closer, and Ponyboy remembered a night spent fighting for his life by a fountain. Every muscle straining against the hands holding him, forcing him under the water, beating on him senselessly, every second of pure adrenaline, not thinking about whose face he was sending his nails scratching across, or if his foot was kicking into hard concrete or someone’s crotch. When he came to in the puddle of blood, Johnny shivering next to him with the switchblade clutched in his hands, he blindly wondered between bile and panic if he would have done it himself. Not even if the roles were flipped, if Johnny had been the one under the water– he wanted to know, if the knife had been in his hand, would he have slashed until they were off of him, and then would he have kept going, driving it down again and again until he felt safe.

He didn’t know how far he would go because someone else had been there to do the work of taking a life for him. Johnny wasn’t on the farm. He was a golden memory he kept yanking on like an unspooling thread, trying to keep him like a whisper, a piece of consciousness he could call out to, and he could not take the axe for Ponyboy.

Uncle Ronny must have read his conflict as indecision, and he passed the axe forward with a halting yank of his arm, leaving Ponyboy with the handle held weakly between his hands as he went into the chicken coop himself. Ponyboy stared down at the rusted metal, stained and battered by blood that had refused to leave. Even weapons have scars, Pony considered, everyone is just a record of what we’ve done to still be here.

Johnny would have understood that, had he been there to hear the words aloud. But it was only him, and the axe, and Ronny coming out of the coop with Eggna tucked up by his shoulder. 

“Good meat on this one,” Ronny explained his choice, and Pony noticed he was smacking his words around his mouth, a wad of gum slipping between his teeth. 

Ponyboy dutifully followed Ronny over to the stump, a few yards away from the coop where the windows did not wrap around to provide a view. Pony wondered if that was an intentional mercy, or an accident driven by self-determination. The axe kept getting heavier and heavier, and he ended up cradling it against his chest, the metal head warming his skin through his shirt.

Ronny jerked his head to the left, and Pony knew that meant he had to move around the stump. Then Ronny grunted, and Pony knew he was expected to grab the axe like it was an axe and not a teddy bear, but his grip tightened, digging the sharpened edge into his chest, dulled by the barrier of fabric. 

Ponyboy couldn’t stop looking at Eggna. She was unassuming, standard, her tan feathers faded into the downy white of the feathering tufts near her legs, and she didn’t have those doe eyes, she didn’t know what was coming. She was easily handled, all too trusting, a fat and happy hen. Ronny lowered her closer to the stump, his calloused fingers delicately running along her breastbone to her neck. She started struggling, squawking, once his grip was firmly around her neck, but then Ronny slammed her hard against the killing stump. Eggna was quiet and maneuverable after that.

“Gotta stun the bird first,” Ronny muttered, a rare teaching moment that included words. He squatted on the ground, sliding Eggna’s head into an open, funnel-shaped sheet of metal. She didn’t fight. Pony pressed the axe further into himself, and though it was too weak to cut into him, he thought there might be a red line etched onto his chest.

“I’ve never used an axe,” Ponyboy tried to explain himself after a minute of non-participation. He wanted to say and I don’t want to start now, but the words globbed up in his throat like a spoonful of peanut butter. Uncle Ronny rose with a myriad of cracks and groans, and he took the axe from Pony.

He stepped a foot or two away and then raised it slowly in a hand-over-hand grip, his eyes tracking over to Ponyboy to make sure he was observing, then he swung it down in a clean arc. He did this three more times, a little faster each time, like Pony’s problem was regarding technique and not slaughter.

Ronny passed the axe back to him, and went as far as to shuffle him forward to the stump and a stunned Eggna with a guiding touch to the shoulder. Pony stood before the bird he had spent the last few weeks caring for and unwittingly getting attached to and watched her chest rise and fall, her leg twitch, her eyelid flutter. He raised the axe as high as Ronny had done.

It stayed there, aloft in the air, long enough for Pony’s arms to start to shake with the effort of keeping it up.

“Just do it,” Ronny urged from the side, the sound of his gum smacking against the back of his lips almost a taunt. “One, easy blow.”

Easy , Ponyboy blinked sweat out of his eyes so he didn’t lose sight of the chicken, I’ve never known easy.

Everything had to be hard for him. Bad enough to be a greaser, and now he was a greaser with no grease, and no brothers or friends, and he wasn’t afraid of violence so much as he was afraid of being violent. He didn’t like hurting things, he wasn’t like Dallas in that way. Johnny hadn’t wanted to stab Bob.

He didn’t think Johnny would have done it if he had been the one held underwater.

Eggna let out a sigh, lost in the confusion of being manhandled and struck dumb, and it was a heavy sigh, familiar and relenting, and it felt like coming home to Darry ten minutes past curfew with another weak excuse on his lips ready to be met with a head shake and the sounds of his brother’s exasperation.

“Do it, boy!”

Ponyboy did do something. He dropped the axe to his left and threw up to his right, clutching for his stomach. He was shaking all over, and it wasn’t from the exertion of holding the axe for so long. He felt his knees fold in, and then he was eye to hazy eye with Eggna. He hadn’t saved her from death, maybe even prolonged her state of suffering by refusing to end her life, and he was probably going to get smacked by Ronny for messing up and being weak but his body was racked with spasms and he didn’t care.

He retched again, nothing coming up but bile, and he was aware of Ronny creeping up beside him. He flinched, ready to be thwacked. That’s how the story usually went.

No blow ever came.

“It’s alright, that’s alright, George,” Ronny muttered instead, a steady stream of reassurances which faded out into unintelligible coos. Ponyboy didn’t want to look up and find disappointment, so he kept his eyes on the ground, even when the axe was lifted from the earth beside him.

Ronny pushed at him where his shoulder blades met, more gentle a touch than Pony could understand, and he crawled away from the stump. He stumbled for the oak that still stood, a large tree whose branches shaded half of the coop and the surrounding area. There were divots everywhere by the roots where the hens found enough dried dirt to take dust baths and avoid the sun. He collapsed back into one of the shallows, digging his head into the bark behind him.

Ponyboy pinched his eyes closed, covering his ears with his hands. What happened next was always going to happen, and had happened a thousand times before, and he could not bear to witness it.

Through the blockade of his fingers, he still heard the whistling axe as Ronny cut through the air. He didn’t hear any screaming. He heard nothing more until Ronny was poking his hand, standing before him without a speck of blood on his clothes.

“I’ll show you how to pluck the feathers,” Ronny said, moving right along. Ponyboy was glad that Ronny was standing in a way that blocked his view of the stump. He nodded, pushing against the bark to leverage himself back to his feet.

It’s done. It’s done. The next time I wake up, I’ll be fifteen. It’s all done.

Kid was waiting for him after the blood had been drained and the feathers removed from the hen, already curled at the foot of the bed. He cracked a single green eye when Ponyboy crept in, careful and soundless, like he was the intruder. The cat stretched, and Pony was always jealous of how satisfied he seemed afterwards, as if the stretch had realigned every joint and socket of his body. 

He put a hand onto Kid’s head, pushing his thumb into the soft spot between his ears over and over again, feeling his eyes start to itch and his nerves finally settle. Kid didn’t care about the chicken. Hell, he’d stopped Kid from killing a chicken his second week at the farm. 

He wished he could have done it, if only to prove he could. It wasn’t tough to not kill a chicken, especially when he would have eaten it either way. But the chicken wasn’t only a chicken, but a deer, and a boy with dark eyes, and it was him, in some fucked up way, and it didn’t matter how many years he was stuck on the farm with Ronny, he would never be able to drive the axe downward into another living thing’s neck and watch it bleed.

Kid purred by his legs, and it mirrored the rumbling from the growing storm. He imagined the house shaking with the force of it, or the house taking flight, swept away by wind. He wouldn’t mind that so much. 

Reaching under his mattress, he decided to reward himself for not losing his mind by reading another one of his aunt’s poems. He flipped through the few pages he’d already read, and resumed with the next entry.

September 30                     1939

 

I wish I didn’t have to be here for this part.

any day now, the doctors tell me, and they smile

with all their pretty teeth, and say it like

it’s a miracle to go through, to live as my mother

had to live, give as she gave–

they do not have to swell like the bloated river

nor twist inside like their sheets do

when love turns to sweat and creation

the act that led me here

with this threat inside of me we call ‘baby’

Ronny wants this. I think I want this, too

just not the pain

God, I don’t want the pain.

I want my mother. I want my sister.

I want

 

The water damage consumed the bottom lines of the page, and the rest of the sentiments were lost. Ponyboy turned off the light and sank beneath the covers, Kid coming up under his arm. He couldn’t let go of the journal, nor could he turn another page. 

His uncle had called him George earlier, and his aunt had been pregnant once. He had a cousin, somewhere, sometime, he had more family than he knew. 

Ponyboy didn’t sleep until the storm at last reached the farm, and then his mind was drowned out with the pitter-patter of all the things he couldn’t hope to understand.

Maybe when I’m older, Pony vowed, maybe tomorrow.

Chapter Text

July 22nd, 1968

Ponyboy woke up and knew he needed to run. 

There were no tickling hands or welcoming smiles to greet him upon first look of the world. There were only the shabby wooden panels of the ceiling above him, higher than the ones in his bedroom with Soda, and the lumpy mattress beneath him, which he thought to be hand-stuffed and done so poorly. 

There was no smell of chocolate baking in the kitchen to entice him into standing, nor was there Darry or Soda, certainly not his parents, and Uncle Ronny couldn’t be expected to do something as simple as sing happy birthday. 

Pony was not home, and he wasn’t even himself. He knew he needed to run.

It was a rushed affair; he moved frantically as if being chased out of the house by a nightmare, clothes were selected at random from the piles on the floor, and he shoved his feet into his barely-used running shoes from Darry. He didn’t worry about leaving a note. He just wanted to be gone.

As such, he didn’t want to risk crashing into his uncle in the hallway, or creep past his bedroom on his way to the front door, so he pushed open the window and was violently reminded of the storm. The downpour had peaked sometime in the night, but the early sun was completely blocked out by lingering rainclouds, and the earth was swirling into pools of mud and drowned grass. It was just more than a trickle, a rain you could see through but could still get lost in with the rising mist.

He hopped up onto the windowsill despite the promise of getting drenched. Ponyboy didn’t want to think anymore, and that included being practical, like that it was over an hour of a drive to get home, and he had no real clue where he was and couldn’t even fumble his way back to Paden if he tried. He jumped to the ground, feet slipping immediately for purchase, and he had to grab for the open window above his head to pull himself back to standing.

In front of him was the goat barn, and though turning the corner of the house and cutting past the chicken coop would be a quicker path to the main road, it would also take him past his uncle’s window. He turned right instead of left, committing to the longer route around to the front door and then the opposite side of the house where the vegetable garden was. 

The soggy ground refused to aid his escape, and every step he took splashed mud all over his blue jeans and tried to twist his ankles. Pony dug in his heels, and after fumbling down the drive for half a mile, he made it to the more compacted main road and sent his body blindly forward, running and running and dying for it to change anything.

Ponyboy dreaded long distance events during track season. His coach generally kept him to the sprints, but every now and again someone would get sick, or some of the team would get busted breaking the honor pledge and face athletic suspension, and Ponyboy was subbed in against his will. Endurance was a lot different than sprinting, and Pony had never been good at pacing himself, and he was even worse at breathing as the miles went on. Being a few months clean from cigs was helping him push past the usually unbearable burn in his chest, but the unrelenting rain soaked into his clothes and added a few more pounds of resistance he had to carry.

It was early, though he couldn’t tell how early, and the world blurred by with the distinct impression that other souls were not awake yet to witness what he witnessed. Everything was a grey rush, the rain mixing into the countryside and the rows and rows of farmland to create a watercolor painting of a life he didn’t find worth living as he lived it. There was a sticky hope that refused to be scrubbed from him– he was fifteen, and he had known the worst life had to offer, but he was still a child, and he could not stop picturing his brother’s truck turning the bend, coming to take him home. 

He couldn’t count the miles, but he could count his stumbles. Ponyboy popped up after the first tumble, slowed after the second, and was laid out so completely by the third he thought he might have sprained his ankle. The fall happened in slow-motion: his soiled shoe caught toe-first in a muddy divot, and his body kept moving even as his feet could not. It happened quickly, any observer could have blinked and missed the descent entirely, but Ponyboy felt himself traverse every millisecond of air into impact. He drew his arms back, forearms up, and he cracked into the road with his arms almost parallel, taking the primary hit in place of his chest before his chin was sent smacking into the mud next. He reflexively bit down, teeth drawing blood from his tongue, and the pain was sharper than any of the dull flaring from his legs that he rolled over spitting, uncaring of his shins.

Only blood left his mouth. He prodded at his tongue with a grimey pinky, and it seemed to be all attached. Once he could determine that, the rest of his body announced the effects of the impact, and he laid back against the road, groaning. The rain kept coming. He stuck his bleeding tongue out to catch as many of the droplets as he could.

“Fuck,” he said, hesitant to lift his head and find out exactly what he had done to himself. He hadn’t taken a single turn in his flight, just ran straight and true. Nothing had changed, not even the landscape. He was stuck. 

Ponyboy let his eyes slide shut, the rain a white noise he could use to further escape from his circumstance. He indulged the fantasy of Soda pulling him up by the wrists, wary of his road rash, and hauling him into the house. Darry would make him soup and scold him for running out in the rain because he always gets sick and he should know better by now. But he would suffocate him in blankets, anyways, and pass him the tissue box once his sniffles turned into sneezes. Two-Bit would steal him cough medicine whether Darry asked him to or not. Steve wouldn’t say much, but he would cover Soda at the DX so someone could stay home with him, and that meant more than any words he could ever muster.

Johnny would–

Ponyboy’s eyes snapped open, a stutter in his chest forcing him to roll onto his side.

Even if he were home, Johnny wouldn’t be there. He tried to imagine what Johnny would do if he had been shipped off to a farm, and he imagined him happy, if only just, to be away from Tulsa and the threat of fighting. He thought he’d miss the guys, but Pony remembered that Johnny didn’t use to have the gang, just his wicked parents, and when he was sick, he was sick and alone. He ached for his best friend, and knowing he couldn’t have him, he ached to read the letter he had left behind for him.

Stay gold, Ponyboy.

Ponyboy was suddenly aware of how filthy he was, and more sharply, how stupid he was being. Running away wouldn’t help his brothers find him if he couldn’t even survive a rainstorm and some mud. He felt pathetic.

He rolled onto his back again, slowly drawing his torso up until he could sit straight. When nothing felt broken, he shifted his knees toward his chest one at a time before leaning forward onto his toes to put his weight over his ankles. The left one screamed but didn’t buckle, and he managed to get all the way to his feet.

Pony blinked more water from his eyes, and he wiped his dirty hands on the inside of his shirt so he could hook his fingers and rub at them until he felt satisfied. More of the same nothing awaited him on the journey back. But at least there was a chance. He needed to be more patient.

He would be found. Just not today.

The walk back was a solemn torture. He didn’t know how far he had gone, so he kept scanning the horizon for the farmhouse, the break in the field for the turn-off that would lead him to his bed. Pony wanted to redress his carelessness as something more noble, and he pictured the lines of soldiers coming home as they had in Gone with the Wind, though he didn’t believe he had suffered as much as a man who had fought in war. Still, the idea that he had survived to tell a tale worth telling was motivation enough to propel his soaked and shivering frame the remaining miles back to the farmhouse.

By the time he was trekking up the drive, slipping less than when he had run because of the upward incline and his more manageable pace, the rain had petered out. The clouds remained, stretching out their cumulous bellies as if to mock his hunger for the sun. He marched his way toward the house with all the gravity of a funeral march, having achieved nothing but harming himself.

Electing to go through the eternally unlocked front door and destroy the kitchen floor rather than his bedroom, he twisted the knob with a slow-turning wrist and hoped his uncle was busy in the fields so his absence would go unacknowledged. Ponyboy crept through an opening just wide enough for him to clear going shoulder first, and didn’t expect the gasp nor the clatter he was met with.

“Where the hell were you, boy?” 

Ponyboy’s eyes jumped from the floor to his uncle, who was standing by the stove next to a teetering pan. His uncle didn’t notice the pan wobbling off the edge, and Ponyboy lunged forward to push it back, not counting on it being straight out of the oven. He managed to keep it on the counter, but he pulled his hand back hissing, the soft part of his palm just under his fingers already turning red.

“I was running,” Ponyboy gritted out. He blew on his palm, but he knew it would blister. His uncle sighed, and Pony kept his eyes on whatever the hell his uncle had been baking. It looked like cornbread. They didn’t usually eat cornbread.

After a few seconds passed where Pony fully expected to be cussed out for any number of reasons, his uncle was standing in front of him again and reaching for his arm. Pony jerked it back without thinking, not wanting to be touched.

“Show me your hand,” his uncle commanded, and Pony had no choice but to stick out his arm and let his uncle look at the damage. This time, he did focus his eyes on his uncle’s face, searching for the frustration he normally sported. His brow was furrowed, but it seemed more considerate than upset, and Pony was aware of every drip that fell from his clothes to the floor, wondering when that would change.

Ronny put a bag of frozen peas on his palm and nodded like that solved everything, then he limped over to the pan, inspecting the shaken cornbread. A grumble of thunder sounded outside, a distant threat of another round of battering wind and sheets of rain. Pony saw that the big red bucket under the ceiling crack was only a few inches full, so he assumed Ronny had dumped it out sometime that morning.

“Keep that on there,” Ronny instructed, a redundant direction, as Pony had no intention of taking it off. He had dealt with enough kitchen accidents on his own.

His uncle turned the oven off, and Pony continued to stand in the middle of the kitchen, his skin shivering under the cooling weight of his drenched fabric. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do after having been found out. He just knew he wanted to take a shower and forget the date, best he could.

“Do you want me to–” Pony cut himself off with a sneeze, barely getting his elbow up in time to catch it, “to take care of the animals?”

Ronny had a knife in the cornbread and was cutting it into squares, the pieces crumbling around the edges because it hadn’t properly set for long enough at room temperature. He glanced up at Ponyboy, roamed over the sorry sight of him for a few calculated seconds. He waved the hand not carrying the knife at him.

“Go shower,” Ronny dismissed him, then added, “before you get sick.”

“Right,” Pony agreed without complaint. He stepped back toward the front door and toed his muddied sneakers off, leaving them in an ugly heap by his work boots. He sneezed again, and Darry’s voice brushed against his ears, something about Pony needing to be smarter. He’d start that tomorrow. He needed the day to wallow.

Ponyboy went to shuffle past his uncle on his way to the bathroom, but a quick touch to the shoulder had him turning to face him again. Ronny cleared his throat, the pan held in his hands with two ratty oven mitts protecting him. He extended it to Pony.

“Uh,” he said, then cleared his throat again as a filler, “happy birthday.”

Pony stared at the golden center of the cornbread, the more browned edges, the sloppy way it had been hacked through to create rows of uneven squares. His birthday cake. 

Ronny’s sleeves were rolled up, revealing skin dotted with sun spots and patches of graying hair. He had probably spent his whole life working under the sun, cooking his skin but never managing to tan, digging his hands into dirt and animal manure alike to get a job done. Pony didn’t know how long he had owned this farm, been master of all that land, but it had to have been at least since he whisked away his Aunt Darlene. At least thirty years. 

Thirty years growing quiet and hard, thirty years of thankless, lonely work, thirty years of no neighbors– and how many years without his wife, without children? And this was the man who baked him cornbread for his birthday, and this was the man who was the sole reason why he had to spend his birthday alone.

He hated him. He was grateful. Pony grabbed one of the ruinous edge pieces of the cornbread and mumbled, “Thank you.”

Ronny hummed in acknowledgement, and then Ponyboy kept moving, the cornbread warm within his free hand while the other still clutched at the melting bag of peas. He held it like he would any fragile thing, trying to not let any crumbs slip out between his fingers. The floor was already covered in water, and he didn’t know if Ronny’s charitable mood would last if he continued to make a mess of the house.

Pony tucked the bag of peas under his arm to get into the bathroom, making quick work of the lock as soon as he got the door shut. He slumped against the wood, privacy restoring his ability to be exhausted and in pain. The cornbread had lost its oven glow, and though he wasn’t hungry, he didn’t want to waste food, so he shoved the entire edge into his mouth. He winced as he chewed, the movement reminding him that his chin and his tongue hadn’t made it out of his earlier fall unscathed.

Limping over to the sink, he tossed the peas into the basin with a wet smack. Then he stood in front of the mirror and did his best to assess the damage. As soon as he met his own eyes, he wished he had just stayed in bed and waited until Ronny had gotten him up with a thwack of his cane. 

Two Halloweens ago, he had made the gang come with him to a re-screening of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The movie hadn’t scared him (a poorly costumed Gil-Man couldn’t hold a candle to the very real threat of a Soc bearing down on him with a knife) but he remembered how sickly the creature had looked emerging from the water, and Pony thought he didn’t look all that different from a swamp creature right about then.

His hair was plastered across his forehead, and mud had crusted all around the bottom of his face, framing his jawline with chalky black. Red swirled in at the base of his chin, a cut from the impact of his face hitting the road. Mud had climbed up around his mouth and nose, too, likely from him using his disgusting hands to rub at his skin when he wasn’t paying better attention.

The mirror only extended as far as his waist, so he brought his arms up to see how badly the road had torn his skin. Mud coated his arms too thoroughly to inspect them, and he shoved his arms under the spray of the sink, hissing through the sting as he cleared up the area around the wounds. He tried again, and he was dismayed to find his arms looked like he had dragged sandpaper over them. The score marks weren’t bleeding anymore, but they were red and inflamed, and he realized he may have to douse them in rubbing alcohol to prevent them from getting infected and pus-ridden. If he had been wearing a jacket, or even one of his hand-me-down hoodies, he wouldn’t have gotten it nearly as bad.

Ponyboy turned the shower on, hoping the tank had enough hot water to last him a good long while. He supposed he should just be grateful Ronny even had a running shower, since he seemed content to live outside of time in all other areas of his life. 

He stripped out of his shirt, balling it up to throw on the floor, and his jeans were quick to follow. Pony huffed as he held his pants up, seeing that under the mud painting up the denim there was a hole in the left leg by the knee. He glanced down to see that his knee was the same rough shade as his forearms, as his chin, and Pony let the jeans fall to the floor to deal with later. Darry, the principle saver of the family, had tried to teach him to mend minor rips and tears, but Pony passed the task off to Soda whenever he got the chance. He said sewing hadn’t been his ‘thing’.

Wish you paid attention to Darry now then, huh? Pony chastised himself, tackling his underwear and socks before stepping under the spray. The water was still warming, and Pony wouldn’t mind even if it grew to scald him. Cold showers did him no good– cold water always had a way of bringing him back to a night he tried his best to forget, and in the first few months after Bob’s death, Darry and Soda had caught him a few times on the tiled floor sitting under a freezing stream, lost completely in memory.

His left ankle groaned as he shifted, trying to get the mud off from every inch of his body without dragging his nails over the patches of scraped skin. He wasn’t always successful– some scratches were not apparent until he was clean– so the first few minutes of the shower weren’t as soothing as he had hoped they would be.

Once his hair had been shampooed and the water was hot enough to steam the bathroom to the point of making Pony cough, he sunk to the bottom of the tub and let the stream drum against his back. The rhythmic pounding of the water didn’t feel nice so much as it felt hypnotic, a sensation he could lose his mind to safely. Each drop that hit his spine took with it a thought from his head, until he was blank, and he was not a boy missing his family on his birthday, he was merely a body in a shower, a position he wanted very much to remain in.

It was easier to forget his circumstances with his eyes closed. Any minute Soda would be banging on the door, demanding he get to the mirror so he could grease his hair before his shift. And when he didn’t get out five minutes past that, Darry’s fist would replace Soda’s in knocking, accompanying a shout about how he was driving up the bill. He almost shouted that he would be out soon.

Good things never could last. No one busted down the door, and the stream began to ease off degree by degree until it was an unsustainable lukewarm, and Pony blindly stuck out an arm to turn the water off. He breathed with his head between his knees, trying to hold onto hope. That would be his birthday gift to himself, he decided. Holding on.

Ronny surprised him by dismissing his attempts to help for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. He went off alone in his rain gear and big rubber boots, a shovel thrown over one shoulder, and Pony watched as he dug drainage ditches between the rows of corn closest to the farmhouse. Ponyboy tried not to feel bad for not helping– he had never asked to be a farmhand, let alone a farmhand on a rainy day– but guilt seemed to be second nature to him no matter how it manifested. The guilt compounded when he considered Darry and Soda, and how hard they might have been fighting to get Pony home when they should just be enjoying the summer. 

If they’re still fighting, the dour little voice in his head supplied. He shook his head to dispel the thought. No, he knew his brothers, and they would keep fighting, even if he couldn’t see them or hear from them to confirm if it was true. Pony considered that writing a letter might help, so he sat down at his desk wearing the comfiest clothes he could find and got started.

Dear Soda and Darry (and Two-Bit) (and I guess Steve),

 

I don’t know if you’re getting my letters. The mailbox was full for the longest time and now it’s empty. I guess there’s a chance they got bored of sitting there and walked off themselves, but I like to think you got them. So you know I’m on the farm, and you know I think Two-Bit would get a kick out of some of these goats cuz they sure do like to steal and get into fights. Goats. Who would’ve thought?

 

It’s my birthday today. I’m fifteen, in case you forgot. When you get this, I might be fifteen and a week old. Time moves different when we’re not together. I’ll probably feel thirty-seven by the time you read my letter, and it’ll only have been a few days.

 

Suppose it’s not tough to say I miss you guys. But I’m tough in a ton of other ways now, so I don’t mind none to fess up to that. Ronny’s got me swinging an axe around to split logs, and the only grease I get is when I’m neck deep in the tractor engine. Hey, Soda, I’m getting pretty good at twisting a wrench, so tell Steve I’m gonna take his job at the DX and work with you when I get back, savvy?

 

Darry, you better be resting your back. I don’t want to come home to a grandpa, just my older brother. And Soda, you better be ready to spend the rest of the summer with me cuz your girlfriend can wait. She’s had you long enough. I want to go to Lake Yahola when I get home. 

 

Tell the gang I said hey. Tell Joh– do me a favor and tell me what movies are playing at the Drive-In, when you can. Do me one better and watch them, so you can tell me if I missed anything good. 

 

I hope you get this. I hope I- write back when you can.

 

Love, your brother,

Ponyboy Curtis

By the time Pony finished the letter, Kid was sitting in his lap, and the rain had returned in full force. He would have to get out to the mailbox the next day, not wanting to risk the letter getting soaked through while waiting for the postman to retrieve it. Looking out the window, he saw the goats had scurried back into the barn, and as he was standing up from his desk, he heard the front door slam. 

Ponyboy hadn’t eaten, save for his single square of cornbread that morning, and his stomach grumbled to announce it wouldn’t mind eating dinner. The chicken– which Pony did his best to forget how they got that particular chicken– was in the fridge, ready to be roasted up and served along with green beans and sweet potato from the side garden.

He hated to admit that he had grown somewhat dependent on the farm routine to stave off boredom and longing, and he thought getting the jump on his own birthday dinner would help fix some of that since Ronny’s gift to him had been the day off.

His mom had been the biggest cook in their family, and every birthday she would make a chocolate cake and enough food to feed the neighborhood for a week– or, in the case of their family, the gang for one night. There was never an invitation, but without fail the guys would descend upon the house on July 22nd, October 8th, and January 5th in one large cluster, and Mrs. Curtis would feign surprise at so many mouths to feed before unveiling platters of food that the birthday boy would get first pass at. 

Darry hadn’t been a very good chef in the early weeks following their parents’ death. He had about as much practice as any of the brothers in helping when their mother needed their help, but he had been the busiest of all three of them, meaning he got out of peeling potatoes and shucking corn more often than not. But he was the most level-headed when it came to following instructions, and since their mother had left behind the tome of all Curtis and Richards recipes inherited from parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, Darry studied the cookbook as he would have any college-text and qualified himself as a decent enough cook before too long.

Ponyboy was second to Darry, because Darry trusted Pony with ingredients more than he did Soda, who would pour food coloring into the mix as often as he could and ate as much as he used in the process of cooking. Soda was always snacking without noticing, so when he was in charge of dinner they all ended up with smaller plates, leaving Soda to scratch his head to figure out why. 

He waited for Ronny to shut himself in the bathroom before creeping out to start on dinner. Then he cleared the counters, throwing away the box of cornbread mix that he realized Peg must have snuck to his uncle the previous day. Thinking of Peg brought back the memory of being held at gunpoint, and though he shuddered to recall it, the experience was somehow not nearly as bad as the hen slaughter he’d been forced to witness. 

Still, he brought out the chicken to baste in butter and garlic and whatever dried, unmarked spices he could stand the smell of from the lower cupboard. He wrapped the sweet potatoes in tin foil to roast on the stove, and rinsed the green beans in the sink with ice cold water. He hesitated to get the stove going himself, not eager to burn his eyebrows off like Ronny almost did every morning, so he decided to save the potatoes for later. He hummed as he worked, a mindless tune he had last heard on the radio. He thought it might have been by The Animals, but he couldn’t remember the title, just that Mark Jennings had turned it up and sang it as loud as he could as they sped around downtown.

He didn’t know when he had become friends with a delinquent like Mark Jennings, but it had been in the last few months of school. Darry didn’t like the kid; in fact, he had even said he would rather Ponyboy hang out with Curly Shepard than a hood like Mark, and Ponyboy still wasn’t sure what to make of that. Mark was alright in his book, and besides, they didn’t get into too much trouble together. They hot-wired one car. Maybe two. And very little beyond that! Besides, Two-Bit and Mark seemed to get on okay, and that was approval enough for Ponyboy.

Once the chicken was in the oven, Pony took the initiative to dump out the red bucket on the floor, marveling that the storm was still going. He reckoned Ronny was smart enough to choose land that had sort of a natural slope, but that only helped some acres of crops, not all of them. Pony briefly entertained the idea that the farmhouse would flood out, and Ronny would be forced to return him to his brothers. He laughed aloud without meaning to, then bit his sore tongue to keep quiet.

More than one way to lose a house, he mulled over in his head, a thought he tried not to return to, knowing it led nowhere good.  

Ponyboy retreated to his room while the chicken finished up, and he heard the shower running on the other side of his wall. The bathroom was the only room separating his and his uncle’s bedrooms, though thankfully the single door was placed in the hallway so he didn’t have to worry about bumping into him on accident in the morning. He supposed Ronny would comment that the green beans were too chewy, maybe utter one more happy birthday, then everything would go back to normal by the time the evening ended. 

He busied himself with another entry from his aunt’s journal, sneaking it out from underneath the mattress and thumbing through to the date following her poem on September 30th.

October 10                    1939

 

i am holding him, as i am hearing him

and seeing him, and knowing him,

him as Him as the same one they had to cut

out from me, stalled they say, or stuck

didn’t want to leave me

say it like it’s sweet, a loyalty paid

even before birth and his first look

instead of parasitic

he doesn’t cry for nothing

not for rooster or father or milk

least of all for me

i could keep him down

arms wouldn’t even reach 

which of us doesn’t want

the other?

Pony slammed the journal shut. The only water on this page were fat blotches, like tears had fallen and blotted the ink as she wrote down the words in frantic scrawling lines. Ponyboy considered again that his aunt must have had a baby, and he a cousin, and his empty gut ached with the idea that he had been born wrong, or he had been born lovelessly. Parasitic. He imagined this had been his mom’s journal, and this baby had been him, and what those words might have done to him. 

Which one of us doesn’t want the other?

He swallowed around a lump in his throat. He wanted his mother very badly.

Another crack of thunder from outside had Pony dropping the journal, and he stared at the window frame, the places where paint had been reapplied over natural wear and tear. Whose bedroom had he taken over?

Where was–

The thunder boomed again, and again, but as persistent as it was becoming, it remained dull, a trackable distance. Ponyboy frowned as it picked up in intensity, a clattering, almost like a knocking.

Or, an actual knocking.

Ronny’s shower was still running, but Pony didn’t think much of it. Maybe he had forgotten something outside and locked himself out– nevermind the fact that they didn’t lock the front door and Pony never found Ronny to be careless. He shoved the journal back under the mattress and padded out into the hallway, the smell of almost-finished chicken wafting into his nostrils as he crossed the kitchen to get to the door. The knocking was a catatumbo by that point, rolling and incessant as whoever stood outside demanded to get out of the rain.

Something felt wrong, and there was Darry’s voice in his head telling him to be careful, to listen to his gut more in order to stay out of trouble. Behind him, the shower ran on and on.

Ponyboy cracked the door, and a boot wedged between the gap as soon as it appeared.

Pony’s eyes darted from the shoe to the sliver of a face he could see visible from the limited light, and he saw a narrow patch of dark scruff leading up to a sharp nose, and just above that a wide, green eye cast down onto Pony. 

Pony resisted his instinct to flinch back, because the stranger would be able to push through and walk right in. He squared his shoulders, watched as a mouth hidden in the man’s beard stretched into a sort of grimace.

“Hey, kid,” the man’s voice was smoother than he anticipated, not like the roughness he generally expected from men in the country, “you alone at home?”

Ponyboy ignored him, putting a little more pressure on the door, but the boot wasn’t going anywhere. That green eye was roaming now, looking past Pony into the house behind him. Pony shifted, like that would stop the stranger from seeing anything important.

“Who are you?” Pony asked, dropping his own voice like he used to do when dealing with socs. He had never dealt with a home invasion, but he wasn’t afraid of some guy just because he was almost as tall as Darry. He thought he heard the shower twist off, but he couldn’t tell if it was actually just the rain stuttering in its downfall. 

“Who are you ?” The guy challenged, and Ponyboy scoffed. Darry was in his ear, telling him to not get smart with unknown opponents.

“What are you doing here?” Pony tried again, and the guy merely leaned forward, making Pony stick a leg out behind him to support himself and keep the gap from getting any wider.

“Where’s Ronny?” The stranger ignored him, and Pony saw more of his head as he tried to get it in the house, including a mop of dark, curly hair. He thought the guy might have been around thirty years old, definitely older than Darry, but it was hard to tell his exact age in the dim light.

“Why the hell do you wanna know?” Pony shot back. He didn’t feel any need to protect his uncle, not really, but if anyone had a grudge against his uncle he guessed they wouldn’t feel too good about the same man’s nephew. 

“Some business,” the man dismissed him, his teeth flashing. Pony noticed he was missing some rear molars, though his canines were perfectly intact. 

“Tell me who you are. My uncle’s probably already calling the cops.” Pony directed the last sentence slightly over his shoulder, louder than anything he had said so far. He needed his uncle to catch on. He didn’t know if they owned any guns to defend themselves, but it wasn’t like their phone worked. They were alone against the stranger.

“Your uncle,” the man hummed, a sound that bled out into a crackling chuckle. He laughed like glass breaking. “He don’t trust the cops. Let me in, kid.”

“I don’t know you and you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pony warned. He wished he had his switch. He still had a knife out on the counter from making dinner, and he wondered if he should let the door go in order to grab it.

The man was quiet for a beat, and in the stillness his fingers wrapped around the edge of the door one after the other, skin whitened under the force of his grip. 

“You don’t recognize family?” The stranger said, an insincere note of hurt creeping in. “If I tell you my name, you’d let me in?”

Family? Pony’s body went cold, and he tried to see any part of himself in the man standing before him. He didn’t respond. The stranger slid his face down the door, inch by inch until he was eye with solitary eye to Ponyboy. Glory, it was a sickly green, too yellowed to be from his mother’s, but they did look familiar…

“Let your cousin Bob in, Ponyboy,” the man whispered, and Ponyboy jerked back as if he had been burned, an instant mistake, as the stranger who called himself Bob immediately stepped through the door into the kitchen, dripping all over the floor as Pony had done that morning.

There was a click behind him, and Pony whirled around to see Ronny with a double-barreled shotgun pointed at the intruder. The man didn’t raise his hands, and he let out that laugh again, the unnatural chime of it making Ponyboy spin. Pony found himself stepping slowly toward the counter until he got the knife behind his back, and he clutched it in his hands, keeping his fingers out of sight.

“I told you not to come back here,” Ronny gruffed out, and he stood straighter than Ponyboy had ever seen him. He didn’t think his bad leg would allow him to get there, but he didn’t waver, the gun steady and trained onto the man.

“C’mon, Pops,” the man sighed, as if he was bored by the threat to him. “We both know you’re not gonna shoot me.”

“Leave,” Ronny repeated. He rolled his shoulders.

“In this storm? I barely made it here,” the stranger whined, child-like, and he licked his lips as he flicked his gaze over the stove. “And I’m starving. Didn’t Jesus tell you to feed the hungry? I’m hungry, Dad.”

Ronny massaged his grip on the gun, and what hair he did have was soaking wet, water trickling down his forehead and getting into his eyes. He blinked hard a couple times.

“Go be hungry elsewhere,” Ronny asserted, but Pony heard his voice go weak at the end, the notes of a crumbling resolve. He tried to catch his uncle’s eye, shake his head and encourage him to hasten the man’s exit by any means, but Ronny was too focused.

“Dad, c’mon, it’s me.” The man waved a hand up and down his body, gesturing from his rubber boots to his Levi Jeans and black t-shirt, all the way to his bearded face, where he tapped at the side of his nose. “It’s your son.” He took a step forward. The gun didn’t move.

“Why did you come back here?” Ronny was shaking worse, his left knee wavering in and out of a locked position. “You said you wouldn’t come back.”

“I’m just hungry, Dad. Let me stay for dinner, won’t you?” The man sighed like he was being very inconvenienced by the whole affair. He took another step, only a few feet from Ponyboy, and Pony wondered if he should act where his uncle wouldn’t, even if he didn’t quite understand who the intruder was.

“After what you–” Ronny choked, and the man rushed to cut him off.

“I’ll be good! I’ve always been good, Dad. C’mon. One more night of me, then I’ll go.” The man kept taking small steps until his chest was pressed into the muzzle of the gun, and only then did he reach a hand up to wrap around the barrel. He held it there, staring at his uncle.

Ronny’s eyes seemed to be sunk back in his skin, as if retreating from the sight of the man in front of him. His body was laced with a tremor, a vibration that overtook his frame so entirely Pony, in any other circumstance, would have thought an earthquake was happening solely beneath his feet. Seconds passed like that, on a brink of something, before Ronny relented, and he lowered the gun to the side. 

Pony could see now that it had never been loaded in the first place.

The man clapped his uncle on the shoulder, but the tension still seemed to be ramping up– Pony cleared his throat, trying to regain the attention of the room.

His uncle slid his eyes over in Ponyboy’s direction. They revealed nothing, shuttered into their usual hardness like the weakness had been a figment of Pony’s imagination.

“Ponyboy, you can set three plates for supper,” Ronny started, “my son will be joining us tonight.”

Parasitic, Darlene had written.

The man turned to give Ponyboy a once-over, and Pony squirmed under the attention. He didn’t let go of the knife just yet.

“Ponyboy, huh? ‘Suppose a farm’s the best place for a person with your name,” the man laughed to himself. Ponyboy didn’t crack even a hint of a smile. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, kid. My name’s Bill, from William, but you ain’t gonna like me if you try and call me Willy or–”

“You said your name was Bob,” Pony interjected. “At the door, you said Bob.”

“Golly, must have been the rain messin’ with your ears,” Bill dismissed him, clapping his uncle’s shoulder again. His uncle, the statue, who had yet to move away. “I sure do think I know my own name– Pop’s, you named me, you would know?”

“Yes,” Ronny hummed absently, then came into himself again with a cough, looking between Ponyboy and his cousin. “Yes, Ponyboy, this is William. Set the table, like I said.”

“Yes, sir,” Pony mumbled. He knew what he had heard. That name alone was enough to rattle him– he wouldn’t have mistaken it for anything else.

Right?

“Bill,” Ronny said, and he jerked his head over his shoulder before limping to his bedroom. Bill followed, but not without shooting a wink to Pony, his forefinger snaking up to his pursed lips.

The door to Ronny’s room shut, and Ponyboy wasted time standing in the middle of the kitchen, unsure of how to process his cousin’s arrival. He sniffled, still out of sorts from his run through the rain, and as he inhaled he took in the scent of roasting chicken.

Over-roasting chicken.

“Shit,” Pony cussed as he whirled around for the oven, throwing on the tattered mitts and hastening to get the chicken out. He knew however nice it smelled, it would still be far too dry. 

Ponyboy covered his face and leaned against the counter, trying to keep it together. He didn’t even get a chance to roast the sweet potatoes. 

Happy birthday to me, I guess.

Chapter Text

“This chicken,” Bill declared, his cheeks stuffed with meat so chewed it had turned into a white paste, “is dry.”

Ponyboy cut through his next piece of chicken with a force that scratched against the bottom of his plate. “How’d you figure that one out?”

Bill ignored him, holding a bite of his food up to the ceiling light, studying the skin sliding off. “I know the secret to a perfect bake, if you let me cook the next one.”

“No,” Ronny interjected, having been silent since the two men had returned from talking in his bedroom. “No, one meal, then you’re gone.”

“Right.” Bill lowered his fork, pushing his green beans around with the chicken still on the other end. “Easy to forget when it’s so nice to be home.”

Ronny grunted as the word ‘home’ left his son’s lips, and Ponyboy stabbed at his chicken again. His birthday dinner was never going to be lovely, but he had wished for at least comfortable, and Bill’s arrival had soured everything, even the taste of the sweet cornbread.

Ponyboy couldn’t make heads or tails of the man beyond the Bad Feeling he had. The Bad Feeling was like a breath held indefinitely, growing uncomfortable but never reaching painful, a sideways tension that lingered until SNAP – the cop was telling him his parents had died in the accident SNAP– Johnny was flatlining on the table SNAP– the bullets went into Dallas’ back over and over again until they both hit the ground and knew no more.

The trouble was that Ponyboy had felt the Bad Feeling loads of times since September, and it had been without cause or release. Darry was late coming home once, and Ponyboy became certain that something had happened and he wasn’t ever coming back, and the certainty transformed into panic, leading to pacing and breathing funny and Soda rubbing at his chest trying to figure out what was wrong.

Darry did come home, well as he had ever been, and he had no idea what to make of Ponyboy launching himself into his arms before he could even get his shoes off.

Then the Bad Feeling happened at school when Steve wasn’t in the parking lot waiting to pick him up, because that meant Steve had died in a car crash, and Ponyboy found himself under the bleachers hyperventilating. It happened on the street, when he thought he saw Bob between the packed bodies on a passing bus, and at the grocery store, and the DX, and suddenly it was happening all the time and his life was ruled by the Bad Feeling.

At a loss, Darry took him to the doctor, who gently suggested he may have developed some anxiety disorder as a byproduct of his grief. By giving it a name, they were able to work around it, become understanding of Pony’s triggers, and after months of stable routine, the Bad Feeling struck less often and quieted to a buzz he tried to ignore.

Ponyboy couldn’t tell if this time it was real, if he should trust the instinct he had to be afraid, because he had been working to not trust his anxiety when it told him that nothing was going to be okay. 

The Bad Feeling lingered.

“So, Ponyboy,” Bill drawled, his neck swiveling to give the younger boy his unasked for attention, “how old are you? Thirteen, fourteen?”

Ponyboy popped his jaw to keep his teeth from grinding together in frustration. “Fifteen, actually. As of today.”

“Oh, hell, it’s your birthday?” Bill’s tone conveyed surprise, but his eyes didn’t crinkle, didn’t blink. “Then I bet you butchered the chicken we’re eating. Nice pick, lotta meat,” he grabbed for the remaining leg, waving it under his nose, “shame about the texture.”

Bill sunk his teeth into the leg despite his objections, smacking his lips as he did so. Pony went for another bite of cornbread, since neither the chicken or the green beans agreed with his stomach. He wanted more sweets. He wanted chocolate.

“I didn’t,” Pony felt the need to clarify, “kill the chicken.”

Bill set the bone down, sucking some of the seasoning off of his thumb. He pulled it out of his mouth with a wet pop, raising an eyebrow at Ponyboy.

“That so? I think I slaughtered my first hen when I was– how old was I, Pops?” Bill turned to Ronny, who was picking at the same lump of breast meat over and over and didn’t seem to hear him. “Musta been eight. Tastes better when you do it yourself, y’know– there’ll be other chances to do it right.”

Do it right. The mere implication that Ponyboy might have to spend his next birthday in the same manner as he was currently doing had him throwing his napkin onto his plate. He was done eating.

“Maybe,” Pony said with a noncommittal hum, and Bill didn’t address him further.

Bill didn’t seem to actually see Ponyboy. He didn’t react as Pony reacted, didn’t listen when he spoke beyond finding the cues for whatever he had already intended to say next– his attention stayed on Ronny, who wasn’t giving him anything in return.

“Sir,” Ponyboy said, trying to catch his uncle’s eye, “may I be excused?”

“Hm?” Ronny’s eyes fluttered as he brought his chin up. He looked at Ponyboy, then looked at the clock hanging on the far wall, then the window, piecing something together that Pony couldn’t grasp. “Yes, yes– Bill, it’s time you left.”

“What, no dessert for the birthday boy?” Bill pouted, an ugly expression on someone of his age. Ponyboy ignored him as he stood up, choosing instead to collect the plates. “Not even chocolate cake?”

Ponyboy flinched, the plates clattering in his grip as he drew them closer to his body. He looked at Bill with narrowed eyes, but the man gave nothing away and he shrugged when Ronny dismissed him with a mere grunt. Pony took the dishes over to the sink, thinking maybe liking chocolate was a genetic thing in his family. He wondered if his aunt had liked chocolate, then. 

His gaze flicked over to Bill, who was stacking the serving platters, and considered if that’s something he should ask his cousin.

“Leave the dishes,” Ronny came into focus again, and he waved Bill off until he put everything down on the table, “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“Pop, can’t I even wait out the rain–”

“It’s not raining.” Ronny pointed at the window, and though it was dark, Pony noticed the pitter-patter had ceased upon the roof. He felt relieved at the prospect of Bill’s departure.

Maybe this’ll make Ronny want to lock the front door.

“Fine. Fine, cast your only son out.” Bill sniffed, turning his nose up so Ponyboy alone caught the sight of his uncle putting a hand over his chest, a pained grimace on his face. “Just let me grab my good jacket, I left it behind when…” His head tilted toward Ponyboy, then he cut himself off with an abrupt chuckle. 

His uncle huffed, but he didn’t deny him. Bill started to head for Ponyboy’s bedroom, and Pony opened his mouth, rearing up to protest. Ronny beat him to it.

“It’s not in there,” he called before Bill could push inside. Bill turned his head first, then the rest of his body, staying exactly where he was.

“Why not?” He crossed his arms, and Pony itched to sneak past him and barricade himself in the bedroom to wait out the rest of his cousin’s visit.

“That ain’t your room anymore. I put whatever you left out in the barn in the stall next to Chester’s.”

There was a dark flash across Bill’s face, his eyes losing the glint of light from overhead, and Pony thought it could have just been a trick of the shadows because his face donned a pleasant smile only a second afterwards.

“Guess we’ll stop by the barn then, won’t we?” Bill sounded chipper, more excited than he had been yet. It was an uncomfortable shift. He started for the front door, Ronny creeping around the table to do the same.

He’ll be gone soon, Pony tried to shush the buzzing in his brain, and then you won’t have to worry about him anymore.

Ponyboy had never really wondered about his extended family. His mom’s parents had passed away when he was too young to remember them, and his father, an only child, hadn’t spoken to his parents in so many years that neither of them even showed up for the funeral. Ponyboy didn’t care if they didn’t care, especially because his brothers and the gang were family enough for him. 

Having met his cousin, he was glad he hadn’t put in any effort thinking about who he might have been over the years– he didn’t like him, and he didn’t want to know him. Besides, he didn’t think he could trust whatever the man told him.

All of his problems aside, Pony knew what he had heard. He had said Bob , and sure it was a similar name to Bill and both were as common as they come, but why did he have to say it? For a brief, inexplicable second, he considered that Bob Sheldon was haunting him. It was a good thing he didn’t believe in ghosts.

The Bad Feeling got louder as Ronny and Bill went outside to the barn. A solitary bulb affixed to the wood just above the doors cast a dim beacon of light into the dark, and Ponyboy retreated to his bedroom and watched through the window as they both walked past the goat pen and slipped through the sliding door, disappearing from sight. As he waited, Kid jumped up on the desk and began to pace, flicking his tail into Pony’s mouth with each pass.

“Kid, what’s wrong with you?” Pony whispered, even though no one was around to see him talking to the cat. The Bad Feeling was making him tense, and it compelled him to act small, like tragedy would avoid him if it couldn’t find him. 

Kid mewled, rubbing closer against Pony until he was hacking out fur. “Watch it, geez,” he muttered, and he went to pick the cat up and put him back on the floor.

As soon as his hands got around Kid’s stomach, the cat ducked his head and bit down on his finger. Ponyboy was startled into dropping him the remaining two feet to the floor– he’d never done that before. Pony watched as the cat resumed wrapping around his ankles like the bite had never happened, and a quick look at his finger showed that Kid hadn’t broken any skin.

“You want something? Whaddya want?” Ponyboy tried to think, and the answer dawned on him very quickly when he put his mind to it. Kid, who usually was free to roam the whole of the property, hadn’t left his room since the rain had started. He was probably starving.

“Shoot, Kid, wait here,” he told the cat before hurrying into the kitchen and loading up a plate with chicken. As soon as he placed the food down on his desk, Kid set upon it with startling fervor. Ponyboy sighed as he watched him eat, leaving him to feast even though he wanted to run his fingers through his fur to calm down. 

“At least someone liked the chicken,” he lamented, though he knew it wasn’t really his fault the bird ended up dry. 

He resumed his vigil by the window. Bill and Ronny emerged from the barn, Bill a step before, turning on his heel to gesture widely with his arms. Ronny moved sluggishly through the mud, every other footfall a stumble, while Bill seemed to glide over the grass, long strides taking him around the corner and out of sight.

Ponyboy didn’t think he owed the man a goodbye, but he didn’t want to be outright rude and, driven by his mother’s old urgings on how to behave when company was leaving, he hastened to the front door, shoving his feet into his too-big boots before heading outside.

The mud was even worse than it had been in the morning on his run. He trudged through it around the house toe-first, creating two long ditches as he walked, passing Ronny’s truck along the way. He had parked in a good spot, as the earth sloped down and away from where it sat. In comparison, Bill had parked haphazardly in an area Ponyboy, with no driving experience and arguably questionable common sense, would have tried to avoid.

Bill had a 1960 Pontiac Tempest, a muscle car that suited a soc better than a farm boy, and he had pulled up right under the oak tree by the chicken coop. The lowest branch was only a few feet above the windshield– if the storm had kept on, it might have broken off and crunched through the glass. Judging by the strewn branches that had been knocked down throughout the course of the storm prior to his arrival, Bill was more than lucky it hadn’t.

Ponyboy approached his uncle and Bill, who were standing by the driver's side door and talking in low voices. If the mud didn’t squelch obnoxiously underfoot, giving away his approach, he would have tried to listen in. Bill sensed him first, and he lifted his head, showing a face that was no easier to look at in the dark than it was in the kitchen. There wasn’t a flashlight between the three men, but a lamp left on in Ronny’s room cast a faint enough glow to outline his beard, his cutting smile, his outward ears, just like his father’s.

“Ponykid, you’re coming to say goodbye?” 

Pony took an immediate dislike to the attempted nickname. He shrugged in response, trusting that with his back to the lamplight they could see his shoulders rise and fall.

“Well, we’ll have to do this again sometime. Maybe with the whole family,” he suggested, knocking on the hood of his car as he opened the door. Ponyboy forced his foot not to tap, impatiently waiting for Bill to be an aftertaste he could brush off his teeth and spit into the past. 

Ponyboy didn’t know who he could mean by ‘the whole family.’ His aunt was dead, and he wouldn’t bet on Ronny’s folks still having breath in their lungs.

Bill kept lingering, and since Ronny seemed to have lost a part of himself in the dark, Pony took it upon himself to speed things up.

“Sure, maybe. Bye,” he said, and he tore his hand out of his pocket to offer a tiny wave. Bill looked at Ronny, more faceless and shapeless in the night than any of them, and when he didn’t get whatever it was he wanted he ducked into his low-sitting front seat and slammed the door behind him.

A gust of air left Pony’s pursed lips, relief wrapping around him the instant his cousin was out of sight. It felt a little like Soda’s arm had draped over his shoulders, and he had to remind himself not to lean back. His brother wasn’t actually there to catch him.

Ronny limped over to Ponyboy’s side, and then the engine roared to life, headlights breaking through the dark and illuminating the chicken coop; the killing stump’s shadow splashed against the white paint, stretched taller by the car’s sloped position. 

The Tempest idled for a moment, but the interior lights stayed off, so Ponyboy couldn’t tell what Bob was doing behind the tinted windows. He hoped he was putting the car in reverse. There was a muffled “ A-Ha!” and then strings, flutes, discordant flurries of sound crackled out from the speakers, growing louder as Bill rolled down the passenger window. 

“Birthday boy, you know this one?” Bill shouted over the rising orchestrals. Pony winced– he did not enjoy classical music, and he hated the way Bill’s selection sounded like a march of instruments, frantic pulls of string coming across as quickening footfalls, like he was being hunted by the music itself. 

“No,” he confessed, and Bill laughed. Pony noticed he did that a lot– laughed when nothing was funny. Two-Bit laughed all the time, but that’s because he could find the humor in anything, and he would let you know about it, too, once he calmed down enough to speak. Bill wouldn’t let anyone in on his jokes.

“This is Igor Stravinsky,” Bill said, and he leaned across the console so his face could be seen in the passenger window, “ The Rite of Spring. You like it?”

Ponyboy didn’t want to admit to how much the music unsettled him. He shrugged again, and Bob shook his head like he had failed in some way before rolling the window up and sealing himself inside the car with all that noise. 

The wheels of the Tempest started to move, and Ponyboy turned to leave, ready to get to bed and escape his own birthday. He didn’t make it more than two feet before turning back.

The engine was revving and roaring, and the wheels were spinning– and spinning— and spinning, and nothing was moving. The car was still there. Ponyboy’s eyes dropped to the ground, and he realized the back wheels were caught in the divots dug up by the chickens, shallows turned fully into mud pits by the rain. Uncle Ronny hadn’t made any attempt to move, and he was splashed over and over by the tires driving themselves deeper into the earth with Bill’s attempts to leave.

He was making it worse! Ponyboy stepped into the spray of mud and immediately got battered by clumps of earth all up and down his legs, but he ignored it best he could to pound on the passenger window.

“Stop! Stop the engine!” He shouted, his fist banging against the glass. But Bill was still laying on the gas, grinding deeper into the ground. Ponyboy had once helped Darry and Soda get the truck out from a ditch after a rainstorm, and he knew that they had to increase the traction somehow so the wheels could escape– something he could assist with if Bill would just stop. Ponyboy gave up on the window and bounded around to the front of the car. He positioned himself in the middle of the high beams, and slapped down on the hood. “Cut it!”

The car made a choking sound, and the wheels stilled. Ponyboy went to let out a breath when the engine revved, the wheels spinning forward for one second of high-speed rotations that sent mud flying off the rubber and all over Ponyboy. He yelped as some of it pelted his eyes, averting his head to protect his face but forgetting to move his legs.

“Whaddya think you’re doing?” Uncle Ronny crowed, and Pony felt a tug on his ear dragging him out of the path of the headlights. “Who taught you to stand in front of cars?”

Now he notices the problem, Ponyboy groaned, stumbling over his feet a little to stand off to the side. He couldn’t see– he couldn’t even open his eyes. They burned in a way Pony didn’t think possible, and he fought to keep breathing, a new fear of going blind seizing him. What if a rock had scratched his eyes? What if he could never see again? He’d never go to the movies again. He’d never see his brothers again, or a sunset. He didn’t think he could do it.

No, he wouldn’t do it.

“Sorry about that!” Bill’’s voice sounded from somewhere ahead of him, the car door slamming his only indication that he was out of the vehicle. Ponyboy didn’t like not knowing where things were, and his fingers twitched, reaching out as if to grab onto Ronny’s shirt. He forced them to stay by his side. Ronny would only whack his hand away.

He used to think he wasn’t allowed to show weakness in front of Darry, and he would do anything not to cry if he was in the same room as him. He knew better now, same as he knew it was men like Ronny you couldn’t be weak around– they were the ones who saw a crying man as a horse with a broken leg. A mercy to put down…

“Can’t you get out?” Ronny asked, and he sounded a few feet further up than Ponyboy had realized, not to mention clueless.

“I’m stuck in the mud, Pops,” Bill sighed. The squelch of mud filled Pony’s ears, footsteps closer and closer. Too close. “Sorry about the mess, kid.”

A hand dropped onto his shoulder, and Ponyboy flinched back, nearly falling over one of the broken branches at his heel. The hand just squeezed tighter, as if to keep him standing.

“It’s whatever,” Ponyboy said. He didn’t think Bill was all that sorry, or he never would have done it. He didn’t have to do it. “We need boards to jam under your wheels, the traction–”

“You’re going to get sick if you stay covered in all this grime,” Bill tutted, and his hand swiped across Pony’s face as if to clean it, smearing a blotch of mud over his lips that left Ponyboy spluttering. “Who knows how much is dirt and how much is chicken shit, y’know?”

Ponyboy did not know, and if being blind wasn’t bad enough, he felt his gut kick, a vibration of nausea sent out inside of him. He turned his mouth into his elbow, biting his tongue to fight against the bile trying to worm its way up.

Bill continued, “It’s well and truly stuck– if I had a hand or two I think I could maneuver out, but this kid needs to rinse off and I wouldn’t ask you to get low with your bad knee, Pops.”

Pony wanted to protest, tell them that he could help and get Bill out of here within the hour, but his mouth wouldn’t work. He would sooner throw up then be of assistance.

“No, no, Ponyboy can go inside, I’ll get this outta the mud myself,” Uncle Ronny asserted. His voice was stronger, words more certain. Ronny had been ebbing and flowing since Bill had arrived, and he only seemed to connect with himself again when it came to making sure Bill left that night.

Ronny gave Ponyboy the slightest push, a hand against a shoulder. But with no way to determine which part of the ground was safe to stand on, the force was enough to make Pony panic, and without even thinking he grabbed for Ronny’s sleeve as his uncle went to pull away. It jerked in his grip as he righted himself.

“Wait!” He shouted, a little too loud and far too quick. He cleared his throat, and Ronny grunted as he tugged his shirt out of Pony’s desperate fingers.

He considered he might be able to make it into the house without any help. If he turned on his heel, it would only be a few dozen yards to the outside wall– he could follow the house, keeping his hand along the wood, and get through the front door. He could stumble his way to the sink well enough, just to clear his eyes. He had done worse things. He could do this.

His cheeks were hot, he could feel them burn beneath the hardening mud. He just had to tell them goodnight, and then turn around.

Ponyboy opened his mouth, “I– I can’t see. Right now.” Then his jaw snapped shut. He had not intended to say that.

“You can’t see?” Ronny interrogated, then more hands were on his face, bigger hands than before, with wrinkled thumbs spanning over his eyes like windshield wipers. “Dammit, why’d you stand in front of the car…” Ronny muttered, then the fingers went static. Ponyboy kept still, pinching his eyes closed. The instinct to escape from his uncle’s grasp wasn’t as strong as he normally felt it– in that moment, it was all he could rely on.

Uncle Ronny released him, garbling a string of unintelligible comments under his breath, and Ponyboy heard a steady tapping a few feet ahead. He could imagine Bill standing by the car, hanging on the open door, drumming his fingers on the metal roof. Waiting for Ronny to give him what he wanted.

After what Pony considered to be an indeterminate agony of his uncle’s contemplation and his own stinging eyes, Ronny moved his hand to Ponyboy’s shoulder and gave him a slight shake, like he was the one that needed to confirm that another person was there.

“You can spend the night,” Ronny started, and kept going over Bill’s attempt to speak, “ one night. You get the couch, we get you out in the morning when there’s enough light to work. Then you stay gone, Billy, I mean it, gone.” 

If Ponyboy had been the target of his words, delivered with such grave intensity his arms erupted into goosebumps, he surely would have obeyed. Bill didn’t seem to hear him– he whooped as he slammed the car door shut, and he ran on ahead of both of them, his squelching footsteps already tapering off by the time Ronny started leading Ponyboy forward.

Ronny put a hand on the small of his back and kept a gentle pressure to motivate Pony to take each step, letting out the occasional utterance of further direction, “Rock. Ditch. Puddle.”

Up ahead, Bill was humming around the corner. Pony recognized the tune as the up-down cacophony that had played out of his car. He couldn’t decide if the lack of instruments made the melody more or less haunting– he had loathed Ronny’s house for not having a working radio, but at least Bill couldn’t play anything outside of his car.

Once inside, Ronny steered him to the sink and turned on the faucet, then pushed his head down under the spray, though not unkindly. Ponyboy let the water hit his eyes for a full minute, oblivious to the activity occurring behind him, before he snaked his hands up to rub at his eyelids. There wasn’t any pain, and Ronny hadn’t pointed out any blood amongst the other kinds of filth on his face, which he hoped meant that it hadn’t been a rock that swiped him. Pony gave it an extra thirty seconds, thirty seconds of cool relief, thirty seconds of playing his life out in the back of his mind, every color he had taken for granted, every sunrise he had skipped to tumble around in sleep. He wouldn’t miss a single one, never again, if only he could–

Ponyboy fished around for the handle and twisted the stream of water off. He pushed the hair back from his forehead as he stood, slicking it to his scalp, and more droplets trickled down his neck, ghosted over his shoulders and spine.

He moved his eyes around under his eyelids, noting they were a little sore, but obedient. Then he took a deep breath. It was quiet in the kitchen, he noted, save for the gutter sputtering outside the window. 

You’re stalling, Darry’s voice informed him, as patronizing as the real thing. He knew that much already. We’ll figure it out. We always do.

Ponyboy wondered if he should be worried that he could hear his brothers so clearly in his head, but he didn’t care if he was crazy, because he needed them in any way he could get them. 

As carefully as plucking a dragonfly’s wing from the entrapment of a cobweb, Pony cracked his eyes until a sliver of faint light broke through and showed a hazy vision of the floor. When nothing bad happened, no stinging pains or spots of black, Pony allowed his eyes to open fully, and the room appeared before him exactly as he had last seen it.

Oh, but it was better than it had ever been! Ponyboy stifled a giggle that tried to bubble out of his throat; the walls he had described as red before were really more of a russet color, closer to brick without being brick, and the stove was an oxidizing orange around the edges– orange, a wonder of a color– and the table was more than a table, it used to be a tree, and Ponyboy couldn’t wait to wake up in the morning and see a living oak again.

He could see! He didn’t know who to thank for the gift, so he sent out a stream of directionless gratitude, “Thank you, thank you, thank you–”

“Why the hell’re you still standing around? Go on and git yourself cleaned up.”

A towel hit him in the side of his head, and he fumbled for it, turning to see Uncle Ronny leaning heavily on his cane with a cross expression. Ponyboy noticed the wrinkles cutting deeper into his face, though he could have just been looking too hard. He was soaking up details, eyes insatiably sweeping the room, like his sight could be taken from him again.

“Now, before worms start spilling from your pockets an’ make a home of my floors,” Ronny hastened. Ponyboy nodded and toed out of his boots, noting the trail from the door to where he currently stood. If Ronny didn’t fuss with him to clean it then and there, he decided there would be no harm in letting it sit until morning.

As he passed Uncle Ronny, a hand that had been gripping the curved head of his cane shot out and latched onto Pony’s elbow. Being able to see it coming did nothing to stop Pony’s reactionary flinch.

“Ponyboy,” Ronny muttered, refusing to look up from the ground, “just…”

Pony waited in his uncle’s clutches, keeping his arm still even though he felt like trembling.

“Just–” Ronny turned his head further away, a pained sigh delivered over his far shoulder. “Stay in your room tonight.”

The fingers retracted in one motion, a bear trap springing open, and Ponyboy nodded instead of asking him what the hell he meant. He started for the bathroom, and when he was a few feet away from the door, it swung open, a light clicking off.

Bill was drying his hands on the towel Ponyboy had been using all week. Uncle Ronny normally shook his hands dry, and Ponyboy himself could admit to wiping his wet hands up and down his thighs, always rushing to get to somewhere else. Bill used the towel like he was polishing a blade, running the cloth in-between the grooves and valleys of his fingers, circulating motion over his knuckles. Ponyboy tore his eyes away from Bill’s hands to find his cousin had been scrutinizing him the whole time.

“All yours,” Bill said, and he tossed the towel to his left without looking; it caught slightly over the lip of the sink before sliding to the floor in a damp heap.

“Oh boy, my turn,” Pony huffed flatly, and Bill’s eyebrows shot up at the retort. Ponyboy had made a habit of swallowing down his first response to most things– either Uncle Ronny didn’t care to hear his quips, or he cared enough to cuff him for it, and both reactions motivated Pony to keep his mouth shut. 

Bill’s presence was enough to undo weeks of what Pony had embraced as selective mutism. He needled at Pony’s skin, and the agitation reignited his spark for challenges. 

The funny look on Bill’s face wasn’t going anywhere and neither was he, so with a sigh Ponyboy turned his shoulder sideways to amble past him into the bathroom. Bill stepped out of the way with his hands up by his head, like Ponyboy was taking up the whole space. Pony flicked on the light and another weary breath escaped him.

Ponyboy was too tired to tame his tongue. “Gee, you’d think the roof had another leak with all this water on the floor.” He kicked the towel across the tiles, getting ready to soak up the mess his cousin had left for him. “I’d ask if you were raised in a barn, but we already know the answer to that one.” He went to knock his heel against the door and shut it, but Bill was still half under the frame, and it merely bounced off of him and swung open.

What’s his deal? Ponyboy pushed at the door with his hand, nudging it into his cousin. Bill looked far-off, the way Ronny kept going far-off. What’s this whole family’s friggin’ deal?

Maybe he’s just not used to people getting smart with him, if it’s always been him and Mr. Stoic. Ponyboy shuddered to imagine a world without his brothers in it. No, he did not envy Bill’s childhood.

“Goodnight,” Pony announced with more volume than necessary, and Bill blinked, letting out a little hum before stepping away. Ponyboy closed the door as soon as the blockade was removed.

He locked it, then slumped against the wood, his head thudding dully. He felt every hurt he had accrued that morning radiate down into his bones. His eyes, though greedy and functioning, twinged with a degree of soreness that was just present enough to irritate him when he blinked too hard. To top off the masterpiece of his birthday woes, he was caked in mud far worse than when he had fallen earlier. 

Ponyboy glanced in the mirror to discover he had gone from Gil-Man to The Blob. His face was cleared in one broad stripe across his eyes and the bridge of his nose, but that had only sent mud up into his hairline, clotted onto his cheeks. The clothes he had on may have been salvageable with a few extra washes and patience, but Ponyboy decided they could be donated to the goats to chew on and trample. 

Between Ronny’s recent shower and whatever Bill had been doing in the bathroom for so long, the hot water tank had yet to replenish. The shower water was lukewarm at best, and fading with each second, and though Ponyboy thought he’d need at least two hours to ever feel clean again, he was forced to move quickly. 

He scratched at his skin in long, frantic swipes, and he kept going even when the mud had been sent swirling down the drain, scratching until the road rash started to bleed again, and only when the pain flared up did he realize he could move on. By the end of the shower, the bar of soap in his hand was slimmed enough to break with a pinch, and more than one of his scabs had reopened, running blood down the skin of his arms, his calves.

Drying off took more time than he wanted– exhaustion was never a powerful motivator– but he was glad Ronny had thrown him the raggedy brown towel. Even if Bill hadn’t left his towel on the floor, it was white and surely would have stained. He didn’t feel in the mood to ruin anything else that day.

Pony finished up in the bathroom, brushing his teeth for five more happy birthday songs than usual in case chicken shit had actually gotten into his mouth. His gums were as sore as his eyes by the time he spit into the sink, but his teeth had become a point of pride for him in the past two years, so he didn’t mind. 

Right before their parents passed, all three Curtis boys had been rounded up and shuttled to the dentist. It was discovered that Darry had a cavity in a back molar on his left side: he’d lost the adjacent tooth in an old fight, and his gums had grown sensitive in that area, making brushing a nuisance, though one he got over quickly once he saw the bill from the singular filling.

 Soda was a whole different story. While everything else about him radiated with an irrepressible Hollywood glow, no matter the grease and grime of their lives, his teeth suffered from what the dentist described as “chocoholism.” Too much sugar and too much time in the streets doing anything but proper dental hygiene. Soda had to get five cavities filled.

Meanwhile, and to the chagrin of his brothers, Ponyboy had no cavities. Yet, Dr. Pascal emphasized, no cavities yet . He cleaned Pony’s teeth and said it wouldn’t take too much more to lose some of his molars to decay. Initially, the prospect of a cavity didn’t bother him too bad– thought it might be tough to have some silver poured into his mouth– but then he saw Darry’s face looking at the bill. Then it all felt a little more serious.

Darry hadn’t even been in charge of the family’s finances at that point. He was just an elder son who cared, who was ready to shoulder the burdens of their household. And so even if Ponyboy was fuming mad at Darry in those early months, confused and dismayed by his demands and behaviors, he still brushed his teeth twice a day. He could do at least that much for his brother.

Ponyboy slipped out of the bathroom and into his bedroom without stealing a look into the kitchen or den. He didn’t want to risk seeing Bill splayed out on the couch if he wasn’t yet asleep, as one more conversation or awkward confrontation was likely to kill him. Kid was curled in the center of the bed, and as much as Ponyboy didn’t want to disturb him, he thought that he deserved the bed just a smidge more than the contented feline.

Before he could push his way under the old comforter and give into sleep, he glanced at the door, thinking of Ronny’s firm advice.

Stay in my room… Ponyboy rolled the thought around in his head and scoffed aloud. Does he think Bill’s some kind of werewolf?

Nevertheless, he wished the door had a lock, or even a handle, another layer of protection against him and the stranger in the den. With his last dredges of energy, he pushed the dresser inch by grating inch to stand in front of the wood, and he immediately felt better. He crawled into bed, his legs splitting to rest on either side of the cat-sized barrier in his way. Kid stretched out a paw with a trembling yawn, and came to rest again curled into Pony’s space.

He was no Soda, but he was enough.

Ponyboy sneezed as he started to drift off, though it wasn’t enough to rouse him. His last coherent thought was I really should have changed these sheets.

“It’s just allergies,” Ponyboy sniffled to himself, “it’s just cat fur.”

Ponyboy was tangled in his sheets, still coming out of a fitful, though dreamless, slumber. His head was packed in with cotton, and he jammed a pinky in his ear to see if he could get any of the stuffing out, a way to relieve the pressure. His finger popped out with only earwax under his nail to show for his efforts, and he wiped it against his comforter, telling himself he needed to wash it anyway.

He’d woken up stuffy from nights with Kid before, but it was compounded by his sore ankle, his stinging road rash, his puffy eyes– he didn’t want to think about the new symptoms, like the tightness in his chest, because then he would have to consider that he was sick, and he didn’t want to be sick.

Told you not to run in the rain, genius, he could hear Darry’s voice admonishing him, and he shoved it away. He wasn’t sick. He had never been sick without his parents or brothers around to take care of him, and he wasn’t going to let himself fall ill.

Pony dragged his eyes to the window, seeing there was far more sunlight than 6am usually warranted. He shot straight up, regretting the movement at once when dizziness overwhelmed his brain. The rooster had probably crowed, and he’d missed it! He was surprised Ronny wasn’t already in his room stabbing at him with his cane, but then his eyes shot over to the door and he remembered he had moved the dresser to block it.

“Oh, fuck,” Pony muttered, jerking to his feet and tripping over the sheets he pulled off the bed with him. He caught himself, barely, and he pushed the dresser back to his wall, half-expecting the door to fly open like Uncle Ronny had been waiting to lay into him for his laziness.

When Ronny didn’t break through, he took the time to breathe through the pounding in his temple and cracked the window so Kid could escape into the fields. He tried to keep it open just enough at all times, save for when the rain was droning on like it had been the past two days. Flies appreciated the opening as much as the cat did, but Pony had decided long ago that he was okay paying that price if it meant Kid could come and go as he pleased.

He tried his best to speed through the morning routine– jumping into not- not clean clothes and brushing his teeth– though he really only started to hurry when he heard the shouting from outside the front door.

“I’m almost finished!”

“I told you I don’t need– dammit, Billy, git down before you break yer neck! ”

“Not like I could fall, seein’ as you threw out all the dang liquor–”

Ponyboy burst through the door and saw his Uncle Ronny staring up at the sky, his hands cupped around his mouth as he yelled which did less to extend his voice than he realized. Pony whirled on his bad ankle, and he hissed as he righted himself to follow Ronny’s line of sight to the roof, just over the kitchen, where Billy was hammering with one hand and waving with the other.

“There’s the kid! Thought you were going to sleep the day away,” Billy hollered down, more cheery than ever. He faced them, the eastern sunrise backlighting him so much even his dark hair seemed to brighten. Pony considered he had misjudged his cousin, that perhaps a good night of rest did wonders for his disposition.

“What are you doing?” Pony shouted, and when Bill didn’t seem to hear him he craned his neck over his shoulder, whispering to his uncle, “What is he doing?”

“Patching the hole in the roof,” Ronny rumbled, not an ounce of gratitude within him. “Spent the morning scamperin’ about tryna do this and that and the third, couldn’t stop him from draggin’ over the ladder and now…” Uncle Ronny flipped one of his hands up to his forehead, a finger rubbing into one of his grooved wrinkles.

“To roof, or not to roof,” Pony whistled under his breath, and Ronny narrowed his eyes at him. Ponyboy coughed, realizing he had spoken aloud. “Uh, it’s from Hamlet. Or like almost from Hamlet ,” he tried to explain, “it’s just a bad joke.” 

Stupid English class, stupid Mr. Syme for making us read monologues, Ponyboy whined internally, keen on keeping his thoughts to himself again. He couldn’t dwell any further on his quirks because he felt a sneeze coming on, and as soon as he raised his elbow he sneezed once, then three more times for good measure. By the time he lifted his head again, he was empty of all thought.

“You getting sick?” Ronny asked. He kept his hands to himself, whereas any member of the gang would have checked his head for fever immediately, almost compulsively. He sniffled; their absence struck him, that’s all. He wasn’t sick.

“No, just allergies.” Ponyboy played it off, scrubbing his nose along his sleeve.

“Allergies to what?” Bill’s voice was in his ear, and Ponyboy jumped. He hadn’t heard Bill descend from the roof or shuffle across the grass, and he didn’t know if that spoke more to his ability to lose track of the world or Bill’s ability to lurk.

Bill laughed at Pony’s reaction, and he went to slap him on the back, the hammer still in his hand. Ronny took a sharp inhale at the realization, but Bill stopped just shy of Pony’s shoulder and seemed to catch the problem.

“Ope, close one!” Bill tossed the hammer to the side and proceeded on target, sending a strong palm into Pony’s back that felt a little too firm to be friendly. Uncle Ronny nudged Bill’s hand off, and then they were all facing each other. “Whatcha allergic to, Ponykid?”

“Nothing. I mean, something, sure, but I don’t know.” Ponyboy shrugged. He didn’t think Uncle Ronny was aware of the barn cat that snuck into the house, and he didn’t want Bill to know of him, either. Kid was his secret, and that made him his to protect. Besides, he didn’t like sharing.

“Gotta be something, right? What blooms in July, anyway… Got grass, oak trees, all sorts of pollen– pretty weak to be allergic to pollen,” Bill prodded at him, and Pony could only shake his head. Then Bill moved his hand to his chin, running his fingers through his beard. Offhandedly, Ponyboy wished Darry would never grow a beard like Bill’s, an ugly and untamed thing.

Bill looked him up and down, and a small smile pulled up his lips. “An animal, right? We still got barn cats hanging around?”

“No, we got no more of them,” Ronny interjected before Ponyboy had the chance to deny it. He spoke briskly, and he fixed Bill with a pair of hard eyes. 

“Shucks, I only ask ‘cause I seen some hair,” Bill chuckled, and he plucked a strand of Kid’s fur from Pony’s shirt, “Cats must be back, then.”

Ponyboy hurried to deny it, “That’s goat hair. I’m always out with them, ask Ronny. I’ve never even seen a cat this far south from Tulsa, not even in Paden.”

Pony kicked himself for the overcorrection. He sounded too desperate to be believable. Bill merely tutted, blowing the hair off his finger in Pony’s direction.

“Well, if it’s goats you allergic to, I’m more than happy to help out an’ take care of–”

“It’s fine! They’re expectin’ me, anyway, since I’m late in letting ‘em out. Take care of the roof, or whatever you’re doing.” Pony brushed Bill off, and he hurried away from the two men, forcing his ankle to take his weight so they didn’t catch sight of his limp.

“I’m finished with the roof! If it ever leaks again in that spot, y’all can sue me for not pullin’ my weight,” Bill shouted after him, then his words got harder to hear as Pony got further and Bill spoke lower, “Say, Pops, I saw Chester’s hooves needed a trim…”

Great, more reasons for this guy to stay, Ponyboy lamented as he let himself into the barn. The goats started screaming as soon as they saw him– to the goats, Pony meant food, sunshine, and freedom. That didn’t stop them from biting him for moving slow, or trying to root their fuzzy noses through his pockets. He had a love-hate relationship with the goats, particularly Delilah, who he was still cross with for chewing on Darry’s shirt.

Their screaming got louder as he went for the bags of feed first. Ponyboy had the goat morning routine down to a science: if he loaded the outdoor troughs with food before releasing them, they would ignore Pony and scuttle right through the fence gate and make the process so much easier. Before learning this hack, how Ronny himself had done it for god knows how long without him, he started by releasing the goats first, then surviving near-daily stampedes and front kicks and little pinching teeth as they all frenzied around him trying to rip open the bag themselves.

Bleating cries battered against his ears, a chorus he could normally tune out but found today was borderline unbearable. His head hurt, and the dust and hay stirred up on the floor of the barn sent his nose into another chain of sneezes. 

Gotta get this done before it gets worse, Ponyboy reasoned, glad I saved the chickens for last. 

He dragged a burlap sack of feed out of one of the stalls, glancing at the titan of a tractor behind him as he did. Chester was across the way, housed in a wider stall that still wasn’t spacious for a horse who spent great stretches of time indoors. He whinnied and stomped at the ground as Ponyboy went by, and Pony felt a tinge of guilt that he hadn’t just let Chester out into the back pasture first. The poor horse had been stuck inside with the rainy weather, and Ronny didn’t seem to take the time to sneak him treats or groom his coat like Pony did.

“I’ll be back for you, boy, promise,” Ponyboy called to the horse. Chester knocked against the wood of his stall impatiently. “I am hurrying!”

He’d written about Chester to Sodapop in the first week of his stay at Uncle Ronny’s. The ornery plow horse was too creaky to perform his old job anymore, but too stubborn to succumb to age or disease, and though he seemed mean, Pony could tell he was just neglected. Soda would have done better for him, he knew, could probably give him enough love and patience to resurrect his spirit, repair his body, maybe even get the elderly horse cantering. Ponyboy did his best to think about how Soda would have approached Chester, how Soda would have won his heart, and it worked as well as it could.

Soda wasn’t there for Chester or Pony alike, but Pony drew a doodle of the plow horse rearing up on his hindquarters and stuck it into his letter. He hoped Soda would see it and smile.

Ponyboy hauled the feed up onto his shoulder as he left the barn, not wanting to be caught dragging the sack. Ronny gave him a whack for that once, told him he was going to wear holes in the bag by doing that. Pony didn’t think they were hurting for burlap, they had enough bags they weren’t using on a daily basis, but he did as he was told. 

Today, the weight of the load had Pony blinking stars out of his eyes. He told himself he hadn’t slept well, and he would try and sleep better that night, and he would be fine.

He managed to get to the troughs, but he had to set the feed down in order to tip them over and get rid of all the rainwater that had collected. A blessing in disguise, as that meant their water troughs were filled to the brim as well, and he considered the rainwater to be as fresh as whatever he would have pulled up from the well. Ponyboy tipped the burlap sack over the feeder and watched the grain spill out, taking the weight from Pony’s arms one pound at a time. Ronny largely made his own feed for the chickens and goats, a mixture of dried cracked corn and wheat pellets and other things Pony could not name because Ronny hadn’t taught him. Yet. He was sure the lesson was coming.

Ponyboy swung the burlap over his arm and stomped back into the barn. The goats were downright belligerent by then, Delilah leader among them, sticking her white and black face through the bars and wiggling her tongue at him.

“Calm down,” Ponyboy told them, and he braced himself for the flood as he snapped the door open and released all twenty-two of the sour devils.

Good thing goats can’t run track, or else I’d lose my spot on the team, Ponyboy marveled to himself as he watched them race toward their breakfast. He frowned as he swung the door shut, locking it back up. Goats can’t even go to high school, stupid.

Ponyboy couldn’t wrap his head around the goats. The chickens he could understand between the meat and eggs, but Ronny wasn’t cooking up any goat meat. They served no use, unless Ronny milked some of the does and he just didn’t know about it, and if they were bought to help with land management it defeated the purpose to keep them in the same pen every day. It’s just not my business or my problem, Pony reminded himself.

He threw the burlap into one of the stalls stocked waist-high with various supplies, and he started to head for Chester when Bill and Uncle Ronny strolled in. Ponyboy felt compelled to hide, but it was a useless instinct: they had already seen him.

“Ponykid, you wanna watch as we trim Chester’s hooves? Might be good to know,” Bill called out to him jovially, and Ponyboy had half a mind to tell him off for sticking with that stupid nickname. He bit his tongue against the urge, knowing Bill would only use it more if he thought it got to him.

“No, thanks, I gotta take care of the hens before they peck a hole in the wall,” Ponyboy waved him off, his sentence tapering at the end as he felt a wave of breathlessness.

“They’re just chickens, they can wait,” Bill argued. He had moved closer, while Ronny had gone toward Chester’s stall. “It’s almost like you don’t want to spend time with me.”

“What?” Ponyboy was thrown by the childish statement.

“I’m just saying, family is everything, ain’t it? At least, it can be. I thought you’d understand that, having brothers an’ all.” Bill was practically pouting, and Pony felt cornered, half-in and half-out of the stall. The attention made him itch.

“How’d you know I have brothers?” Ponyboy had made an effort to share as little about himself as possible. He didn’t tell Bill about Kid; he wouldn’t have told him about Darry or Soda.

Bill dismissed him with a scoff. “Pops told me– crazy, y’know, how your family can go from 1 to 4 in an instant. Three cousins I’ve been kept from! Doncha feel kinda cheated?”

Ponyboy’s family had gone from 9 to 7 to 5 in the past two years, and there it stayed, 5, regardless of his uncle’s play for custody or his cousin’s persistence. Bill didn’t look like a negative answer would go over well with him, so Ponyboy shrugged and turned his face away. It helped that he had another sneeze loaded up, and he let the snot shoot out without bothering to stop it.

“Eurgh, were you raised in a barn?” Bill gagged as he stepped clear, the flicker of tension between them gone. Pony even smiled at the callback to his earlier comment. 

“I was raised like every other boy in my neighborhood,” Pony quipped, making small moves closer and closer to the door. 

“Oh yeah? How’s that?” Bill asked as he started rooting through the supply stall. His distraction gave Ponyboy more confidence to break away, and he nearly skipped to the door.

“In a jail yard!” Pony called over his shoulder, and then he escaped into the sunlight again, leaning over his knees to catch his breath. He swiped a hand across his forehead, sweat sticking to his skin. It really wasn’t that hot out.

Just take care of the chickens, and then get a glass of sweet tea. And then sit down. You’ll be one day closer to getting home by the end of the day.

Or one day further from the last time I ever saw my home.

Ponyboy shook his head, too much cotton, too many thoughts and feelings.

“Chickens. Chickens first,” he muttered to himself, and he set off for the coop, the sound of Chester’s squeals echoing off the walls he left behind.

Chapter Text

“Soda, you have to wait for the– you gotta wait,” Ponyboy clucked at the impatient hen trying to jump up his leg to get to the feed cup. “Your hunger oughta be studied, honey, ‘cause none of your sisters are actin’ like this.”

Soda the hen did not respond to his appeals, and she continued rushing underfoot until Ponyboy threw the cup of scratch all over the yard. The chickens became frenzied then, all except for Tim, who stood back crowing and bobbing his head as if he was the one who had found and provided the food for the flock.

“Yeah, you did real good, Tim.” Ponyboy threw the sarcastic comment at the rooster, but he did it under his breath, half-convinced Tim would pick up on the snark and choose to attack him for it. He didn’t want any more Tim-related scars, not after the Great Misunderstanding of his second week.

Ponyboy wiped his knuckles across his forehead, squeegeeing off the screen of sweat covering his skin. He grimaced, shaking his hand to dry it off faster, but the sticky feeling wouldn’t work its way off until he rubbed it against his shirt: his shirt, which was also colored by sweat around the collar and his armpits.

He knew it wasn’t normal, and he knew not normal meant sick . Ponyboy made sure the coop door was secured open with the metal latch and continued to ignore that fact.

With the hens happy, he could look forward to a nice, cold glass of not-so-sweet tea from the fridge and, if he was lucky and Bill held all of Ronny’s attention, a quick nap.

I’ll head inside in just a minute, he hummed to himself, leaning against the peeling wall of the coop. He tilted his head up, braced by the wood, eyes closed to avoid the sun’s stare– though the land had been cooled by the rains, the sun seemed to shine with a vengeance, and Ponyboy figured it must be mad about being hidden by the clouds for so long. A minute skipped by, as did an ant, crawling leg by careful leg from the base of Pony’s throat to his right cheekbone. He felt it, but he didn’t care to smack the bug away. There was just going to be another ant after that ant was gone, and it had as much claim to the coop’s outer wall as he did. 

One more minute, Ponyboy renegotiated after his feet failed to move. His head was packed in and, as there wasn’t much space for his brain to breathe, his thoughts were moving with the same meandering, directionless speed as the ant upon his face.

“Ope, you got something right there.”

The obstreperous remark was all the warning Pony got before there was a swipe across his forehead, an unseen flick of finger nails that scratched his temple and took with it the ant’s body.

Ponyboy jerked to his feet, his palms pressed flat on the coop as he took in his cousin, standing before him, shaking out his fingers like he had sprained something by killing the ant. 

“What was that for?” Pony asked, rubbing at his head. The skin felt tender where Bill’s nail had scraped by, and he dreaded seeing another minor injury develop on his already abused body. 

Bill raised his eyebrows, thumbs pulling on the straps of his overalls– Ronny’s overalls, Ponyboy realized– and he rocked back and forth on his boot heels. “You didn’t feel that ant making a hill outta your face? Most people just say thanks, y’know.” 

His cousin’s body blocked the sun from Pony’s eyes, and since he was loitering inches away from him, Ponyboy could take in new details about Bill: a splash of freckles on his cheeks that started to hide under his wild beard, his exact height being somewhere between Soda’s and Darry’s, the beginnings of a scar that peeked out by his nose and retreated into his facial hair. 

I’m staring, Ponyboy realized as Bill announced, “You’re staring.”

“Sorry,” Ponyboy responded as a reflex, blinking back into his aching body. He ran through what Bill had said, then added, “And, uh, thanks.”

He was by no measure grateful, but instinct told him to go along with Bill whenever he could, and he didn’t feel up for a fight, neither a battle of wits or fists. Ponyboy was glad to have the wall behind him– his legs weren’t feeling too great about keeping him steady.

Bill’s green eyes narrowed, a thoughtful grunt escaping his lips, but he let it go, moving right along, “You shoulda stayed in the barn and helped us with Chester’s hooves. Pops couldn’t keep him calm by himself, an’ he nearly broke his leg kicking into the stall.”

“Are they okay?” Ponyboy gasped, his feet taking him a few paces forward without thinking about it. The wriggling sensation of guilt popped into his stomach, like the ant had survived Bill’s finger and crawled down his throat, inviting all of its ant friends to join, a whole colony in his gut stirring trouble. 

Bill was blind to his conflict. He waved him off, his shoulders relaxed as his hands found his pockets, and he took a couple steps until he was standing in front of Pony again. “Psh, I said nearly. You woulda heard the shot if he succeeded in doin’ a fool thing like that– ain’t nothin’ you can do about a hobbled horse, ‘specially not that skeleton. Chester’s got three hooves in a grave and one hoof on a banana peel, ya dig?”

Ponyboy shoved past Bill’s disregard for Chester, and he craned his neck to look beyond him, scanning for his uncle. “Ronny’s good, then?”

It peeved him to be concerned about his uncle’s wellbeing. He had so much to hate the man for, and he would never forgive him for all the time with his family that had been stolen from him– there would never be a point where he liked Ronny, let alone loved him.

But as he searched for him across the yard, he could only think about the cornbread Ronny had baked for his birthday. He felt dizzy.

Bill snorted, turning his body to follow Pony’s gaze. “Yeah, the old man’s just fine. It would take more than a dusty plow horse to get rid of him,” he jammed his pinky into his ear and started twisting it around, “Yeah, a lot more than that.”

Ponyboy opened his mouth to respond, though with what he wasn’t quite certain. The only words that wanted to form on his lips were what the fuck is your problem, but he was spared from that disastrous delivery by a loud bang.

He spun around and watched as Uncle Ronny came staggering out of the shed a few yards up from the coop, dragging a large plank of wood into the grass.

“Ponyboy! Git over here and grab the other end of this!” Ronny hollered, though Pony had already started to head his way. 

Ponyboy wrapped around the other side and picked up the board, though he thought he might be struggling more than Ronny was, which wasn’t a good sign. He made his ankle take his weight, told his knees to lock him into a standing position, and together they hauled the wood over to Bill’s car. The Tempest was sullied beyond recognition, the paint job hidden beneath a mask of mud– Pony pretended to sneeze only to hide a smile into his shoulder. It served Bill right that he would have to spend a long time working his car clean again after what he did to him.

“I’ve got the other one right here.” Bill had a board thrown over his shoulder, and he didn’t have to slouch to support its weight. Ponyboy was reminded without warning of a similar sight, his brother carrying a bundle of roofing up by his head. 

"You smoke more than a pack today and I'll skin you. Understood?”

“Yeah. You carry more than one bundle of roofing at a time and me an' Soda'll skin you. Understood?”

Pony stuck out an arm to lean on the bumper of the Tempest, the memory making him swoon, the past and present overlapping in sick swirls of color and desire. When Ronny slid a look at him from the corner of his eye, he put his other hand on the bumper, too, and set himself into a lunge, pretending to stretch.

“Hey, my car ain’t your playground– paws off,” Bill griped, swiping at Pony’s hands so that he had to stumble back to avoid him.

“It’s barely a car right now,” Ponyboy mumbled. He slinked over to one of the boards, dragging it up enough so he could jam it underneath the tire.

“What’d you say?” Bill demanded, a rag held loosely in his grip as he did a lazy job of dusting the taillights. 

“I said – it don’t matter what I said,” Ponyboy deflated, and he told himself he was conserving energy by keeping his trap shut. He wiggled the board, putting all his focus into tucking it beneath the left tire so the car could have the traction it needed to get Bill off the farm.

“Sure, whatever, kid.” Bill came up by his side and took over the board with a jarring yank, the wood shaving Pony’s palms as it came out of his hands. 

He glared at Bill’s back as he stepped away, rubbing at the tender skin sore already from the road rash and now agitated into stinging again. He could have given me a splinter, Pony seethed, and he chose to not get in either Bill’s way or Ronny’s, who was stone faced as he forced the other plank under the right tire.

Ponyboy crept over to the oak’s trunk and let himself sink to the ground, the bark pulling his shirt up as he rubbed against it. One of the hens– Vivien– came clucking around the base as he pinched at the grass, trying to investigate if he had any more food. If the Rhode Island Reds were the most daring, the Plymouth Rocks were by the far the most gullible. Ponyboy would pretend to throw a fistful of feed over his shoulder to get the hens out of his path, and Vivien and the ladies of the silver screen would run scurrying off to find the invisible food. Soda wouldn’t fall for that trick, and if Soda stayed, the rest of the Reds would stay. Then Soda would usually jump him for pulling a fast one, which he thought he deserved, and would still be considered a fair reaction even if it had been done against the real Soda.

He plucked out a blade of grass and spun it in his fingers, and the motion was all it took to convince Vivien it was some kind of worm and sent her lunging for his fingers. Ponyboy managed to escape her beak before it could connect.

“Easy!” He reasoned with her, “My fingers don’t need anymore hurts, thank you.”

Vivien blinked her orange little eyes at him, and he pushed at her chest, trying to coax her to turn around and rejoin the flock. “Shoo, before the other girls think I got somethin’ for them I don’t.”

The hen didn’t catch his cue, but she couldn’t get a second peck in as Ponyboy was called back to help with the car. After a few more minutes, the planks were angled and the car was ready to be resurfaced.

“Alright, you’re good to go– reverse, slow, don’t go punchin’ it like you did, then just ease outta here.” Ronny clapped his hands against his jeans, some dirt scattering to the ground and some sticking stubbornly to the denim. 

Bill, for all his previous momentum, was reduced to his former state of kicking his toes into the earth and slouching in on himself, twisting his shoulders back and forth in a petulant manner. “Shucks, no breakfast before I go?”

“You hardly eat in the mornings,” Ronny dismissed him, and his eyes found the sky, squinting like he had to make sure another storm wasn’t on its way to take them by surprise.

“I thought the goat pen could use some new fencin’.”

“Ponyboy can help me with the boards. Goodbye, Bill.”

Bill wasn’t dissuaded, and he tossed his hand out, gesturing to the farm with an open palm. “C’mon, don’t think I didn’t notice the crops aren’t covering the back acres.”

“Ain’t your problem, ain’t your business–” Ronny was reddening, those big ears of his burning up in frustration.

Bill pressed on, “You’re losing profit, old man, but if I could just get to fixin’ the other well–”

“The hell you would!” Ronny shouted, his fist raised trembling in the air with no target, and Ponyboy felt his stomach drop to his feet.

Ronny didn’t yell– Pony didn’t even think the man had the lung capacity left to get words to rise above a hoarse pseudo-whisper– and the ire in his tone seemed to send Bill for a loop, because his cousin snapped his jaw shut.

Ronny cleared his throat, old bones cracking as he drew his limbs tight to his body. “You leave the well, and you leave this farm, and you leave us, y’hear? This is the last time.”

Leave us.

Ponyboy’s head gave a pulse, a starburst of light zipping across the back of his eyes. When he raised his hand to massage the side of his temple, he saw it was shaking. Something bitter tickled in his throat, a feeling or a neglected aftertaste or an allergy, it did not matter, he hawked up a mouthful of spit and spat to his right, missing his boot by an inch.

So he thinks we’re an us, Ponyboy mashed his fingers harder into his head, at first to soothe and then to pinch, to exacerbate the soreness. There ain’t no ‘us’ beside me, and Darry, and Soda. 

He snuck a look at Bill: his cousin was chewing on his lower lip, brows drawn together with a furrow so deep they met in the center, creating one giant, hairy brown ‘V’ in the middle of his face. He nodded, a terse concession, and walked around the car without another word and yanked the driver’s door open, not sparing a glance at either of them as he slammed himself inside the Tempest.

Ronny muttered a phrase that was swallowed by the roar of the Tempest’s engine, and Ponyboy followed his uncle’s lead in stepping far out of the range of the car’s infamous tires. Under the thrum of the machinery, Ponyboy heard the frantic, muted beats of Bill’s stupid Stravinsky cassette. He didn’t bother waving like he had the night before.

The Tempest sputtered with the first rev, the tires twisting, and for a moment Ponyboy worried he hadn’t gotten the wood to stick correctly between the wheel arch and the rubber treads, but then Bill pressed the car again, and slowly the Tempest crept out of the root ditches and rolled onto firmer ground.

Ponyboy had learned not to celebrate too soon– he didn’t let his breath go, kept holding the air in his lungs as he waited for the car to swing around and peel out of the property. Because of his skepticism, because of his doubt, he was punished by being the first to recognize the new problem.

“His front tire’s burst,” he muttered, and he dragged a palm down his face to cradle his eyes, holding a piece of darkness against them like it could mute the sting of what more he had to witness. He listened as Ronny cursed, and Bill’s door squeaked open again, and the ensuing argument that erupted between the two men, but he didn’t look up. If he tried really, really hard, he could almost stop hearing them. Almost.

“Damn rock or somethin’ musta dug in when I was spinnin’ the wheels last night,” Bill sighed, “Don’t suppose you got any spares?”

Ronny grunted, and his first reply was lost to Ponyboy’s ears. Then, “Truck’s are too big for your rims, they ain’t gonna fit.”

“Well, guess I gotta–”

“Get in the truck. We’ll go to town.”

Ponyboy peeked through his fingers as Ronny shut Bill down. A muscle in Bill’s cheek rippled, and he scratched absently at his beard. He was biting on the tip of his tongue, the gap in his teeth just visible through all his brackish hair, and he closed his lips around it after a moment’s pause, nodding his head.

“Right, then, sunlight’s a wastin!” Bill accepted, and Uncle Ronny huffed and started to head around the bend of the house, following the beaten dirt to where he had parked the Chevy.

Ponyboy felt dutiful as a dog as he tailed after him, proving that his time at the farm with all of Ronny’s pointing and prodding and teaching had turned him into a begrudging follower. Awareness was leaking out of his ears, making more space for cotton to stuff his head, and so he didn’t pay mind to Bill as his cousin shouldered ahead.

By the time Ponyboy reached the truck, the engine was running with Ronny in the driver’s seat, and Bill was swinging into the cab with a slam of the side door. He dreaded the prospect of hauling up there to sit next to Bill– God forbid they made him slide into the middle – but he was derailed by a whistle, and two palm taps to the car’s exterior, that made Ponyboy raise his head to find Ronny watching him in the side mirror.

The light reflecting from the sun blocked out Ronny’s left eye in a blinding twinkle, and Ponyboy had to squint to catch his one-eyed, sallow green stare. His head twitched, his straw hat moving with it, in what could have been a shake for no as much as it could have been a flinch caused by a buzzing fly.

Three seconds passed in a hanging pause, the lazer that had become Ronny’s left eye drilling through Pony’s retinas until he blinked, and the world resumed.

“Ponyboy,” Ronny called. He straightened behind the wheel, until only his neck and the long brim of his straw hat could be made out within the mirror. “Finish the chores while I’m out, y’hear?”

“Yessir,” Ponyboy mumbled, and he knew it was a mumble even though he had tried for something more solid, more certain. It spoke volumes that Ronny didn’t demand he repeat himself.

The truck backed straight up, shooting across the dirt, and Ponyboy took a few hasty steps closer to the side of the house. He watched as Ronny changed gears, the truck stalled for one moment as he adjusted, and with the truck pointing toward the road, Ponyboy had a full view of the passenger side. Bill didn’t bother with mirrors– he bore holes right through Pony with the intensity of his gaze. His face hadn’t really smoothed out since the Tempest’s tire burst, and it remained stoney, scrunched, as they sped off the property. 

Once more, Ponyboy decided to blink first. 

He trudged along the house and walked straight through the front door. Only then did he feel alone, and for the first time in a month and a half, alone felt good. Pony grabbed for a kitchen chair to ease himself into, and his ankle pulsed as the weight was taken off of it, almost like his foot was taking a deep breath.

“How long’s it gonna take to get a tire?” Ponyboy sighed, stretching his arms out behind the chair and wincing when the skin pulled tight around his scrapes. There were dim concerns: he should finish the chores before not finishing the chores had clear consequences, he should wash the sheets and the comforter so they could dry out before bedtime, and he ought to make sure Kid was safe, and that Clyde got let out when they were done with his hooves. 

Could, and should, and would, and ought, and on and on, Ponyboy flipped through his responsibilities like they were picture books inside his head, unimportant, small, a far cry from pressing. The chair beneath him felt real, and sturdy. He wanted to see, if he sat there long enough, if those qualities would transfer into him. 

Ponyboy scanned the room, his eyes oscillating between the busted rotary and the fridge. He needed a glass of sweet tea. He needed to talk to his brothers.

Phone’s broke, he told himself, it’s not like a bone, time ain’t gonna heal it.

But as the minutes ticked past, his gaze wandered less and less to the fridge, until the phone was his whole world– and maybe he had been wrong. Maybe there was a secret, better way to dial which made the phone work, and he had been too stupid and impatient to get it right before. Hearing a kind voice was one more attempt away, if he could just take the time…

Ponyboy pushed out of his seat, and he wondered if the ache he felt ripple through his body was what Ronny felt everytime he stood, if age would turn this passing discomfort into permanency.

Johnny Cade, trapped in his youth, flashed through his head, and he stumbled, palms catching on the edge of the table.

You gotta get there first. Can’t borrow tomorrow’s pain if it might not even come. 

He tried to picture Johnny as an old man as he shuffled toward the rotary. Tanned skin cracking, and brown eyes warm, both side effects from the sun out in the countryside. Johnny, swimming in a denim jacket– still scrawny, Pony thought, but not frail, not yet– up on a porch swing, watching the sunset. He supposed he would have to be there, too, but he couldn’t see himself, didn’t know what he would look like– he didn’t have anyone to compare himself to. He had never known his grandparents, and his father died a young man. 

Johnny was never going to sit on that porch, he mourned, Maybe I won’t, either.

The phone was in front of him, same as it had been: a layer of dust was sprinkled over it, untouched since his last attempt, and further proof that Ronny hadn’t even tried to fix it. Ponyboy pulled up the bottom of his t-shirt to brush the surface off, trying to avoid inhaling dust as he brought the receiver to his cheek.

The dial tone was there, a droning buzz, just like it was supposed to be. It was a false hope– no matter how many times Ponyboy had attempted in the past, the dial tone would never shift to a ring. Just droned on, and on–

Ponyboy was determined to make this call the exception. He dialed for the DX, spinning 9-1-8 like he was casting a magic spell, remembering how his mother used to bite her bottom lip when she really wanted something to happen, and so he bit his lip, and he crossed his fingers, and waited.

More dial tone, more hmmmmm signaling failure.

He crossed his fingers the opposite way, and he thought of how his father never missed in a game of cornhole if he spun before he threw his bag, so he spun, and dialed again.

HMMMMMMM

Darry always winked to the stands before making a winning pass–

HMMMMMMMMMM

Soda pinches his earlobe when he’s working up the courage to ask a girl out–

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

And Johnny, he–

Johnny–

The phone slipped from his hands, but the cord slid down his arm and caught on the crook of his elbow, sparing the receiver from clattering against the wood floor. It dangled there, rebounding from the fall, spinning inches away from his feet. 

“What did Johnny do?” Ponyboy jammed a finger into his mouth, teeth latching onto a hangnail. He couldn’t remember. Practically everyone had a ritual, some tiny gesture they performed, knowingly or not, when they tried to exert control over luck. He knew Johnny had one, even for being the unluckiest kid he’d ever known, he was still like the rest of them, wanting, just quietly, hopelessly.

He bit down harder, forcing himself to focus, but he had to concede that there was a lot he couldn’t recall, and the phone wasn’t going to work through any act of magic. Ponyboy tore his finger from his lips to replace the phone before wandering over to the fridge. It was hot inside the house, hotter even than the exposed fields of the farm, and it was time he had a cold drink. He yanked on the door, already reaching for where he knew the tea was in the side compartment.

Except the pitcher was empty.

Ponyboy let a forearm rest on the top shelf while his other hand clutched the wide-open door. He leaned his head against his arm, the cool air washing over him as he took in the pathetic looking pitcher. Ronny didn’t make it last night, he realized, because Bill was sleeping on the couch. He didn’t think that weird comment about staying in the bedroom had applied to him as well. Pony’s eyes drifted over to the sink, and a groan crawled out of his mouth.

It wasn’t that he hated drinking water, it was that water was not what he wanted, and therefore he’d rather shrivel than drink from the sink. At home, Darry was always taking a Pepsi out of his hand and replacing it with a cold glass of H2O, but his exasperation was nothing new to Ponyboy– the struggle to get him to drink water was a fight that went further back into his childhood, and one Mrs. Curtis had lost less often than Darry did.

If Darry was here… Ponyboy caught himself thinking, a line of wishing that never led somewhere productive. But if Darry was here, he’d tell me to drink water before I fell over.

Pony decided if he couldn’t do it for himself, he could do it for his brothers. He didn’t bother with a cup, he just stuck his head in the sink and cranked the tap and let the water pour into his mouth. 

Once he had one room-temperature swallow, his body shuddered, and then he couldn’t tear himself away from the stream for several seconds, drinking and drinking until he felt he was about to choke. Then he tilted his head, and the water started to trickle down his head instead, matting his hair to his scalp. It was cooler, the water from deeper in the well was finally sucking up to the surface, so it felt good running over the back of his neck. 

He drew himself out of the basin as the cold tapered into frigid, the relief threatening to twist into terror. Ponyboy looked out the window and saw the goats chasing each other around the pen without a care in the world, and he tried to not feel jealous of farm animals. Past the goats sat the barn, and out further the acres of crops he was meant to be checking for damages, and rot, and mold, and weeds. The farm was gigantic, and yet Ponyboy knew Uncle Ronny would be able to tell at a glance that Pony had not finished the morning chores. His connection to the land proved to be uncanny.

A sneeze forced him away from the window, and with a full understanding of what he risked by doing nothing, he staggered toward his bedroom.

Nothing a nap can’t fix, he reasoned poorly, though it was hard for him to discern whether the flaw in his thinking stemmed from denial or the buzzing. The buzzing was making it awful hard to keep track of his own lies. He happily blamed the buzzing.

I should wash this comforter of Kid’s hair, he thought, flopping on top of the old quilt. Ponyboy was proficient in thinking of the right thing to do and not so great at fulfilling the thought– part of the problem, he knew, was that once he considered a solution, his brain decided the task had been accomplished by mere acknowledgement alone. He knew the comforter needed to be washed, and his brain decided that was enough work for now, and he continued to lay there.

Ponyboy discovered within minutes that being horizontal was not helping his head. If he wanted to remain laying down, he would have to fall asleep to deal with the discomfort, and he knew it would be even less helpful for his head to be caught slacking. He drew up to a seated position, pressing his back into the wall for support, and to avoid dozing off he wrangled Darlene’s journal from beneath the mattress. He thumbed for the next entry.

December 20 1939

 

it’s been two months.

i held him yesterday. i looked down

and willed myself to know him.

i remembered karen as a baby,

being small and holding something smaller

and how that felt like wonder,

when her tiny fingers wrapped around my wrist–

i wish i felt it now.

ronny’s rocking him in the other room

ronny’s the one who

the one who         

i will try to love him.

i            d     

“Nothing new,” Ponyboy muttered as he went to turn the page. It was well established from her previous entry that Aunt Darlene had not welcomed Bill with the joy expected of a new mother. 

Ponyboy paused before the next entry, remembering a time when his mom had volunteered at the hospital for a summer. She would come home with stories of people having problems Pony had never thought to consider people could have. Issues with earlobes swelling and stomachs bulging, or cuts that wouldn’t heal, just turn green, and hot, and ugly. Soda was the one who liked to listen to those stories, almost gagging at the worst details with a smile still on his face. Ponyboy would half tune-in, waiting patiently for her to open the book she promised to read that night at bedtime.

One of her stories itched in his mind as he read Darlene’s journal. A woman who had been so excited to have a child, only to reject her screaming whenever the doctors tried to bring her to the bed. He only remembered it because of how much she tried to assure him and Soda and Darry that they had always been wanted. 

“I’ll always want to hold my boys,” she promised. “Some moms they just– it can be a little sad, y’know? Just hard. We’ll do our best to help her. Both of them.”

He didn’t remember if she brought the mother up again. He wished he knew if she had learned to love her own child.

December 25 1939

 

it’s Christmas, and I want to go home.

I wonder if Karen is stringing popcorn for the tree

I wonder if Momma’s got her red dress on

if they went to the service still

if Dad’s hiding chocolates around the house–

I wonder, too, if they dance around my absence

like a fire in the center room

if Karen’s getting too close to asking

and they pull her back so she doesn’t burn

I wonder if you had asked me last year

as I sat in math and made big eyes

at that stupid man

if I could have seen the farm I would be resigned to

the garden only I can tend

the baby, silent in the bedroom–

no, my wondering never took me that far

even unwelcome, I still want it. unforgiven,

I still crave– my mistake didn’t undo

all my desires. I yearn.

 

Karen’s a big girl, she’ll be okay.

maybe there’s another Christmas

still yet to see snow fall

where I can be with her again.

“If you missed her so bad, why didn’t you come back?” Ponyboy snapped the journal closed, letting it tumble into his lap. What did he actually know about his Aunt Darlene beyond the simple fact she had run off with a farmer and never returned to Tulsa? He knew that his mother carried her absence around like a hole in her side, long before Darlene had passed, and for as long as his mother survived her afterwards. If Darry or Soda had taken off like that, he didn’t think he’d ever recover the piece of himself they took with them.

Ponyboy was different from his aunt– the moment he had the opportunity to get back, he would seize it, and he would tie himself to his brothers with rope if that’s what he had to do to remain with them. Darlene could have left, couldn’t she?

Maybe Ronny kept her here, something whispered. Maybe she really couldn’t.

“Maybe he’s doing the same thing to you,” another whisper, but it didn’t sound like the voice in his head. It sounded like–

“Johnny?” Ponyboy surged to his knees on top of the mattress, tipping onto his palms as he whipped his head around. His eyes wavered as he catalogued dresser, door, window, desk– no Johnny, no one at all, just him and his aching head. He drew his elbows in toward his chest and cradled them. He had been burning up all morning, and in an instant he felt cold, like nothing could ever warm him again.

You’re losing it. He thought, willing himself to be deliberate. 

“I’m losing it,” he tried the words aloud, just to make sure the words were his own, his voice his own. But his mind rolled over the broken phone, the lack of mail, the call with Ms. Gardner he couldn’t hear. The phone wouldn’t even connect to the DX– did his uncle really get through to North Tulsa?

The front door slammed, and whatever delusions Ponyboy had been about to indulge scattered to dust when he heard two raised voices. He scurried out of his bedroom and picked up a rag as he passed the bathroom, hoping Ronny would think he had been cleaning up around the house.

“It’s not like I’m the one who flooded the dang road– your problem’s with God, not me.”

“You know what you’re– you know! Why?”

“Why, what? It’s more who, Pops, who– and it’s me! Your fucking son!”

“You’re not–” Ronny cut off as the floorboard under Pony’s foot creaked. Bill turned his head an inch in acknowledgement, while Ronny dropped his hands and took a half-step toward Pony before stopping. 

“You’re back,” Ponyboy commented lamely. He swung the rag over his shoulder, like Soda did when he was finished scrubbing the grease off his hands from being under a car hood. He never doubted Soda had been hard at work when he saw the rag hanging there. He hoped the effect was the same for his uncle.

Uncle Ronny didn’t ask about the chores. His face was pinching in on itself, a lemon-sucking grimace that Ponyboy had only seen once when all the goats had escaped on him one evening.

“Road’s flooded,” Ronny bit out, eyes cutting over to Bill and back to Pony.

“Think I heard that, yeah,” Ponyboy confessed. Nothing could surprise him about Bill’s fortunate continuance at the farm– if it wasn’t the road, he thought, it would have been a closed gas station, or a highway robber. “How soon til it’s not flooded?”

“Lemme ask the dirt if it’s thirsty,” Bill joked, “That’s the only way I know to check.”

Ponyboy sneezed, and since Ronny looked like he wanted to ask about it, he churned out another question, “You gonna take the couch again tonight?”

Bill made a big show of planting his hands on his lower back, twisting this way and that way and groaning as he did. “Nah, this couch doesn’t know it’s a couch anymore, acts more like a stone– hey, I think I’ll just steal my old room back from you.”

Ponyboy froze, his eyes wide, and he considered the couch and its sunken cushions and knew he would feel even worse in the morning if he had to sleep in the drafty den.

Bill laughed, having gotten whatever it was he wanted from Pony’s reaction. “I’m kidding, cousin, I won’t put you out. What’s yours is yours now, right Pops?”

Uncle Ronny kept his stricken demeanor and nodded like it hurt to move his head.

“He’ll take the couch one last time,” Ronny promised, and he started to rub his stomach, back and forth and back and forth. 

“Or,” Bill interjected, and he began walking past Ponyboy and down the hallway to the left, “or, you know, it’s not like we don’t have another bedroom.”

“Don’t,” Ronny sounded choked but he didn’t move, “don’t you dare.”

“Dare what? Sleep in a real bed?” Bill threw over his shoulder. Ponyboy trailed after him as he passed Ronny’s room and came to a stop in front of the locked door at the end of the hall. He immediately stretched up on his toes, pawing around the top of the doorframe. “One night, right? I just want to have a pillow. Kid, is it wrong to want a pillow?”

He turned back to Ponyboy, eyebrows raised like he expected an answer. He was framed by the dark wood of the door, a color that none of the other doors in the house shared. There were no windows this far back into the house, so Bill hung in shadows, making him feel further away than he actually was.

“Well?” Bill pressed, and Ponyboy saw a dull flash of metal in his hands. A switch– no, a key. He’d retrieved it from the top of the door, and Ponyboy felt weird knowing his answer to the question of what existed beyond the lock was solved so easily by a key hidden just out of reach.

“No,” Ponyboy relented after another moment’s pause, “I guess I’d want a pillow.”

“See, even the kid would want a pillow, Pops. Not a crime to want to sleep good.” Bill faced the door again, plunging the key into the lock and twisting. It popped, and then Bill pushed his way into the secret room.

“I can’t, God, I can’t,” Ronny muttered, and Ponyboy only saw his back as he fled from the house outright, the front door slamming behind him.

Bill had left the door cracked, and curiosity won him over immediately. He had seen the room from the outside, and it was obvious from a glance it had been an addition to the house. It jutted into the grass and sat like an afterthought stitched into the wall, with three windows, one for each exposed wall, that had been blocked with heavy curtains since Pony had arrived. 

Before he could see anything, his nose found the dust first. He doubled over sneezing, digging his face into his elbow and doing his best to stay upright on his feet. The constant agitation of his nose was wearing on his stomach, a salty line of post-nasal drip trailing down his esophagus, and sneezing pulled his stomach up, kicking it about his abdomen. He finished, sore and disoriented, and shoved his hands into his pockets as he rolled up to a slouch.

Bill was staring at him, point-blank. “I think your nose’s got more kick than Pop’s rifle. We oughta see how far you can shoot a bullet with your nostril, eh?”

Ponyboy could tell it was a joke, but the imagery was absolute: Ponyboy with a bullet in his head. He wanted to leave, because his stomach jerked even without him sneezing, and he thought he might throw up if he ran.

Bill left him to his turmoil, plodding over to a bed shoved into the corner of the room and sitting down on it with a heavy sigh. Dust erupted around him, and Bill’s nose twitched, but he didn’t sneeze.

Ponboy pushed away his discomfort to take in the rest of the room, and he sucked in a breath as he realized what he had missed. Along the far wall stood a floor to ceiling bookshelf that stretched from corner to corner, save for a space in the middle where the window was framed by the units– the top shelves were filled halfway, and the lowest shelf, which took up more vertical space than the ones above it, was filled only about a quarterway. The books slumped on the bottom, cascading over one another like sad, giant dominos.

“My mother,” Bill leaned over his knees as he spoke, “She loved to read.”

It was the first time Bill had talked about Darlene, and Pony watched his face carefully, trying to find a smile, or something worse, a gnash of teeth as he chewed on the memory of his mother like dried leather.

There was nothing. Bill’s face was flat, revealing nothing of how he felt.

Unless, Ponyboy thought, that’s all there is to it. He feels nothing about her.

Bill stood, and the mattress squeaked loud enough to convince Pony a nest of mice had burrowed into the springs. He sauntered up to the shelf and pulled a book out– East of Eden , Ponyboy saw from the flash of its cover. Bill took a comically large inhale and held the book flat in front of his face, right in the space between him and Pony, and Ponyboy flinched as he expected the dust to overwhelm him.

Bill grinned, and he spun around and blew the dust out in the opposite direction, giving permission for Pony to breathe again. Bill was childish, but even as children, Soda never toyed with him as much as his cousin did.

“You’ve read it?” Pony asked as Bill traced a finger along the cover.

“More or less,” Bill said, disinterest ruling his tone, “All of them here to the same extent.” He looked back at Ponyboy with a high eyebrow. “You ever get tired of reading and not just doing?”

Ponyboy blinked, the question catching in his brain like a scratched record. He thought it might be true, sometimes, and other times he was convinced he had already lived too much and wished his life could be a book in a different way, something he could shut and put back on the shelf when it got to be unbearable.

“I dunno,” Ponyboy started, “it’s not like I can just get on a horse and chase down some outlaws, right? Not like I want to go to war, or anything like that. Book’s good for getting you outta your head when you ain’t want to do a thing with your own life.”

“My, what’s this boy running from?” Bill whistled lowly, tapping his finger against the cover.

There was twisted car metal and ditch daisies, rotten wood blazing with licking tongues of fire, there was a crooked, handsome boy, and an undefinable hero, death finding them both in puddles of blood on concrete– then there were the black eyes of his best friend, and two words that had melted into his brain like a brand, a promise destined to be broken, stay gold, and the unfurling fog of loss moving back in, spewed out by a train’s smokestack, a whistle of endless grief–

“I run all the time,” Ponyboy said, evasive and uncertain, “I’m on the track team.”

Bill paused, then chuckled in the same startled cadence he had been using whenever Ponyboy made a joke, like Pony’s sense of humor came as a shock to him. “Well, ain’t there always something new to learn? Bet you don’t get to run too much out in the fields.”

“Nope,” Ponyboy popped the “p” as he inched closer to the bookshelf, “Don’t get to do much of anythin’ these days except chores.”

“You miss your brothers?” 

Ponyboy stopped reaching for a book. It was a ridiculous question. “Everyday.”

Bill hummed, and there was a knock on Pony’s shoulder as Bill tapped him with East of Eden.

“Here, a book that’s all about brothers, then.” Bill released it before Pony had a proper grip on the pages, and Ponyboy had to smack the book into his chest with a frantic palm to keep it from tumbling to the floor. “I expect a full report on my desk by Monday, 8am.”

Ponyboy pressed into the shelf to get a few more inches away from Bill’s expectant face. “If I ain’t runnin’, I sure as hell won’t be writing any papers, either.”

Another halting laugh. Bill reached out, and at first Ponyboy thought he was going for a book behind him so he stepped to the side, but the hand changed course, and then he was ruffling Ponyboy’s hair. His muscles locked up, letting the awkward attempt at an affectionate gesture pass without so much as a word, a twitch, an escape.

“You’ll help me clean this up, won’t you, cousin?” Bill pulled back and started for the door, and Ponyboy shrugged at his retreating figure, not feeling like he could move until he was out of sight. 

After shoving East of Eden back on the shelf, he ran his fingers through his hair, desperately trying to comb it flat again and replace the sensation of Bill’s hand touching his head with his own. He hated when any of the gang messed with his hair, but he found himself missing the way Two-Bit did it, if only because he missed Two-Bit and missed being loved loudly.

Bill touched him like a dog who had learned to roll over and speak on command. He knew it wouldn’t help anything, but he started to tug on his hair, pulling the wrongness out from his roots.

Don’t, the voice inside of him chided, sounding a lot like Darry, don’t you keep doing that.

His eyes dropped to the ground, and he found himself crouching to look at the bottom shelf. They were all children’s books, he realized, and he pried his fingers from his scalp to flip through the dust buried copies of Curious George, Stuart Little, and The Little Prince. He remembered being small, curled up in bed between his mother and father as they took turns reading to him in different voices for each character. Sometimes, Soda and Darry would join in, and they would all play a role in getting Ponyboy to fall asleep. 

He flipped through another few books before coming upon Goodnight Moon. His chest hurt as he knocked it along the edge of the wood with an outstretched arm, trying to get the dust to come off away from him. He used to love Goodnight Moon. On his most sleepless nights, Mrs. Curtis would not leave him until his breathing evened, and after going through the book and saying goodnight to the chair, the red balloon, the three bears, she would put it off to the side and whisper goodnight blanket, goodnight alarm clock, goodnight dirty socks… until at last he was pulled under. 

Did Aunt Darlene do the same? Ponyboy mused as he thumbed to the first page, only to discover the writing had been violently scribbled over with pen, in patches so rough and consistent the page had ripped up in some places. Frowning, Pony turned to the next page, and the next, and the next, fanning through the whole book to see no line had been spared.

On a whim, he pulled out another book, Curious George.

Each page, blacked out. He checked The Little Prince, Blueberries for Sal – ink, and smiling characters, and no words to show for any of them.

He put all the books back in the same haphazard arrangement they began in, all except Goodnight Moon , a token he didn’t think he would be able to part with.

Ponyboy thought Bill must have been the one to deface the books, he just couldn’t fathom why. It was a pointless cruelty, a dormant mess until someone needed to read a story only to discover there was nothing left to read. 

He went to stand, and for a moment, there was no world to stand in. His vision went black, and if not for the shelf he would have crashed into the floor. He managed to catch himself, and he held on for dear life, panting through a wave of dizziness he didn’t know how to quell. He couldn’t stop getting worse.

But Bill would storm back in with cleaning supplies and boss him to help with the floors, and Ronny would come inside the house with the helpful observation that nothing had gotten done since they had left, and Ponyboy couldn’t afford to feel sick, or grieved, or scared. He wiped his glistening nose on the collar of his shirt and ignored the voice inside of him screaming for him to get help.

"Who wants chicken for dinner?" Bill's shout came from further in the house, and Ponyboy buried his face deeper into his shirt.

Darry, where are you?

Chapter Text

“Darry, how come you don’t dream?”

Ponyboy hadn’t meant to wake Darry up– it was Soda’s bed he’d been gunning for, not wanting to disturb his parents or his eldest brother with something as stupid as a nightmare– but Darry’s eyes snapped open with the first creak of the floorboard, and so it was Darry’s bed he crawled into.

He felt safe, far from the rough edges of his slumber, but he felt guilty, too, knowing Darry had practice early in the morning. Ponyboy thought his brother was incredible, and he knew that he was busy with football, and high school, and based on Two-Bit’s snide comments, girls , but with busyness came distance, and Pony didn’t see too much of his brother these days. 

Darry didn’t wrap around him like a monkey, like Soda would have, but he shifted the blankets around Pony’s chin and closed Pony’s wondering eyes with a press of his thumb, one to each eyelid. He shifted onto his back, humming up at the ceiling.

“I don’t know why I don’t dream,” he answered Pony after a stretch of silence. Ponyboy pinched at the sheets in his hand, wanting to reach out but afraid of asking for too much. Darry just wasn’t Soda. He didn’t cry in front of Darry, not anymore, and he didn’t ask his brother to sit out on the porch and watch the sunset with him. His brother was too tough to do things like that. 

“Did you dream when you were my age?” 

He was really asking: Did you used to be like me? 

Will I grow up to be like you?

Darry moved again, his shoulders rolling back into the mattress. “No, I don’t reckon I ever did.”

“Soda dreams,” Ponyboy felt compelled to tell him, “I bet you hear him talk in his sleep all the time.”

“Yeah, yeah I do,” Darry chuckled, and a sense of victory washed over him. Darry was 17, and Pony was 11, and he just wanted to have something in common with him again. 

“What did you dream about tonight, Pone?” Darry’s voice got softer, just over a whisper– it sounded careful. It was easier to answer his brother when he couldn't watch his face and find out what he really thought of Pony’s childishness.

“I dunno,” Pony started, “I guess… y’know, like you and Soda leaving one day?”

“Leaving?” Darry seemed surprised. “Where would we go?”

“I don’t– like college, or moving away, or whatever.” Ponyboy was glad the dark could conceal the blush rising on his cheeks. It was so embarrassing to tell Darry stuff like that, when he didn’t dream and he probably never thought of it himself. “In the dream, Mom and Dad are out shoppin’ and I get home from school and you both are gone. And I forget why, so I check every room and under all the beds and closets trying to find you and I never do. You’re just gone, and I’m still here.”

Darry was quiet, and Ponyboy started to regret opening up until his brother cleared his throat. “Sounds like a scary dream to have.”

Ponyboy jerked his head up and watched the faint outline of his brother’s face in the dark, still staring at the ceiling. He pulled the covers a little further past his chin, until they grazed his lips.

“Yeah,” Pony admitted, muffled into the sheets. He wished he could burrow all the way under the blankets, create a pocket of the world where nothing bad could get to him, but this was Darry’s bed. He had to lay still if he didn’t want to get kicked out.

“Listen, Ponyboy,” Darry turned over to his side, his voice moving closer to Pony’s ear, “I want you to know I am gonna go to college one day. And Soda may too, who knows.”

Ponyboy nodded, and the confirmation of fact, his fear, brought the feeling of panic from his dream to the forefront of his mind. 

Darry wasn’t done.

“But then it’ll be your turn to go to college. And maybe I’ll have moved back home by then, so it’ll be your turn to leave me, and we just take turns being the one who leaves, the one who stays. But, Pony,” Darry’s hand pushed down the covers, bursting the bubble, moving to hold onto Pony’s shoulder, “we’re a family. We’ll always come home to one another.” He shook Ponyboy, then patted his cheek with a gentle palm before pulling his arm back under the blanket. “Besides, Mom and Dad will be here no matter what, and y’know I’d come home for every break! You don’t need to worry about that dream anymore, savvy?”

Ponyboy smiled, a comfort in the dark. “Yeah, we’re savvy. Thanks, Darry.”

“No problem, kid. Now go back to sleep– you’re getting up early with me to stretch and run laps before I gotta go to practice.”

“No, I’m not,” Ponyboy whined, and Darry pinched him into silence.

“Yeah, y’are. It’ll be good exercise for you, you friggin’ bookworm.” Darry rolled onto his opposite side, signalling an end of discussion. “Now sleep.”

“Goodnight, Darry.”

“Mhm. ‘Night.”

Ponyboy didn’t fall right back asleep– even though he knew no one was leaving soon, and his dreams were just dreams, and his parents were down the hall if he needed them and Soda was snoring in soft breaths a bed over and Darry didn’t think he was a baby for needing someone to tell him all those things. He was very focused on not moving too much, not wanting to risk waking Darry again, as his older brother’s breathing evened out within minutes.

He was awake long enough to feel the sheets rustle next to him, for an elbow to be sent back into his side with a grunt. 

“Whazat for?” Ponyboy rose up on his palms, thinking Darry meant to hit him. “I ain’t movin’ around.”

Darry didn’t answer him, but he twitched again, his shoulder rolling, and Pony leaned over his brother’s face and saw his eyes were closed. His brother’s jaw was clenched, the same muscle popping again and again under his skin, and when Ponyboy put a hand on his arm, he didn’t react to the touch.

Ponyboy rolled onto his back, staring up at the ceiling the same way Darry had as he listened to him talk about his dream.

Darry does dream, Pony thought as his brother settled again, he just doesn’t remember that he dreams.

He didn’t know what that meant. And he stayed up until the sun started to creep through the slits in the curtains and Darry started to stir for practice, thinking about which was worse, to remember bad and good dreams alike, or to forget them both entirely.

At least he could tell someone about the good dreams. At least he could be comforted after the bad ones.

No one was going to comfort Darry about a nightmare he couldn’t recall, and that was probably fine, since there was nothing lingering in his mind to bother him; but Ponyboy knew his jaw would hurt in the morning, regardless if he understood why it ached or not.

Ponyboy wondered if Darry had ever dreamed they would be separated like this, and if one of those unknown nightmares painted the exact scene he was living in: Ponyboy sick in bed, locked in his own body, alone, alone, alone.

He barely found the will to groan, a slow release of air, trying to let some of his pain escape through the exhale. It didn’t work the first time, nor the second time, and the third cry stretched on second after second before he came to terms that he was not going to feel any better. He tried to remember falling asleep, and the evening bled at the corners of his mind in watercolor. He had helped Bill dust the other bedroom, hadn’t he? Then Ronny had wandered back into the house, and Bill had offered to cook dinner, he said I’ll just be outside a moment, and one moment became five minutes, ten minutes, a moment broken by a scream– Pony remembered more, now, he remembered thinking Eggna didn’t scream.

Things slipped by after that, his tumble from clarity an unremarkable and unmemorable event which ended, at least, in his own bed. Was it morning, had the rooster already crowed? Ponyboy thought his ears might be clogged enough to prevent sound from coming through– there was a chance he missed the rooster. 

Nothing seemed obvious to him about what to do now that the worst had taken root inside of him except to take measures to prevent the worst from worsening . If he didn’t do the chores, he would be smacked, and he thought one good smack could kill him– so with strength he deliriously believed he borrowed from Darry, he got to his feet and shuffled out of his bedroom. 

The house was smaller. Or, rather, the house took less time to cross through, the hallway and the kitchen a nondescript blur which narrowed into the front door. His feet seemed to know where they were going well enough, and he didn’t want to get in the way of his feet. His boots were left next to the door as he stumbled into the grass in his socks from the day before.

Maybe he tripped over the raised garden bed, and that’s why he ended up on his hands and knees in the dirt, but like magic he was standing again, numb to the heartbeat in his palms where his scrapes throbbed. 

Muscle memory led him past the empty goat pen before turning the corner around the house, but Ponyboy realized with each dragging step that he couldn’t see very well. He considered his eyes might still be closed, and he fluttered them, encouraging them to take in more light. The coop up ahead remained shrouded in darkness, little more than outline.

This is one dark morning, Ponyboy thought, I’ll see about the chickens first.

He felt for the door, unlatched it with shaking hands– shaking, oddly enough, as Ponyboy couldn’t feel any fear or excitement about chickens of all things– and he forgot the order, letting himself into the coop instead of letting the birds out of it. There were a few quiet coos, but the hens weren’t rushing him like they usually did when the sunlight cracked through the door. He remembered the sun was hiding, and he decided to make some light of his own to encourage them outside. 

Uncle Ronny kept a pack of matches on the slant top of an intersecting wall beam– Ponyboy had discovered them in his first week when exploration was a reasonable cure for his melancholy. They were dusty, nearly crusted into the wood, and since there was no gas lamp nearby to be lit by such tools, he assumed the coop had been Ronny’s smoke spot before he had decided to quit. With clumsy fingers, he knocked open the pack. Three or four matches tumbled to the straw covered floor, but he was only able to focus on the one between his trembling nails, scratching it again and again to get a light.

It wouldn’t catch. Ponyboy didn’t notice how ragged his breaths were coming in and out of his body, he could only think about Dallas Winston, and how Dallas would have gotten the damn thing to light with one flick. Or he would have used his necklace.

Ponyboy remembered the necklace, the pendant of Saint Christopher (and wasn’t he martyr before he was a Saint?), he remembered wishing he had one just like it, he remembered wanting to be like Dallas, in the moments where he leaned against a brick wall with a popped collar, a weed between his lips, a smile, too. Where was that necklace? Somewhere on the street, glinting less and less every moonlit night as it rusted over into secrecy, into trash– or was it buried with him? How much of Dallas remained under the ground, and how much was bone, dust, the costumed clothes of a greaser draped over a skeleton?

The match took, and he blinked church smoke from his eyes, another memory fighting to be his whole world. He had the chickens to tend to, and the goats, and he had to– there was something after that. Always something after that; it was exhausting, and Pony didn’t know how anybody could do it day after day. Johnny had been tired. Was he born tired? No, he burned. No, he was tired before the beam– tired of the fighting. Ponyboy was tired. He wondered if Johnny ever got his peace.

Old wood burns quicker, dried out and brittle, and Ponyboy felt the sting of fire kiss his fingertips without having moved from the door. He coughed, and the flame blinked out– smoke bred more pain for his chest, and he coughed again, doubling over with the force of the attack.

Why’d Darry make me get up so early when he’s the one who has practice? Ponyboy thought, panting until his breaths steadied, until he could stand. Then he heard the shuffling hens, and he remembered it wasn’t Darry who had done this to him.

Chickens, goats, and the other thing, Ponyboy hummed, and he set about lighting another match. This time, he stepped forward as soon as the flame caught, and he counted over the birds. He was backwards, still backwards, as he was meant to count the hens at night before shutting the door. But he brought the flame across the cluster of Plymouths, the Orpingtons, didn’t flinch as Elvis bobbed her feathery head to try and eat the flame as he passed her over, as he passed over blustering Tim, and finally with the last few centimeters of his withering match he found the huddle of Rhode Island Reds, filled out on the perch along the right wall. They shrinked against the light, eyes half-lidded, and Ponyboy thought them lazier than him for not wanting to get up this morning.

There was Steve, and Two-Bit, and Darry, and there was–

There was–

The match winked out again, and Ponyboy was frantic trying to get his next one out of the pack, but it was empty. He dropped to his knees, and bare skin met straw– boxers, why did Darry let him leave the house in his boxers– and he scrambled to find the fallen matches on the dirty floor. 

His fingers grasped one, broken in half, he thought he had stepped on it and not felt it snap, but he realized he was wearing socks– and why had Darry let him out of the house without shoes , people were going to think their parents didn’t take care of them– and he didn’t know how he would have missed wood splintering underneath his foot. The half-match was half-enough, and he lit it in one stroke, like Dallas would have, and brought its dwindling light up to the Rhode Island Reds.

There was Steve, and Two-Bit, and Darry, and god, he was right, Soda was missing. 

Darkness again, the match too weak to remain, and Ponyboy stayed low to the ground, trying to work sound out of his mouth. He tried to call her name, but there was only choking. Maybe he missed her, or maybe she got hungry and wandered over to the feeder, or maybe– yes, maybe she had slipped out when he first opened the door. She was the most eager, ambitious, she jumped him for food, yes, she snuck out the door. Ponyboy crawled forward, not quite sure why he was crawling, but he knew it had to be this way. 

It was dark, and he thought the coop had a window: with open eyes the sun should be streaming in, but it wasn’t. The sun was avoiding him, he realized, it was mad at him, and if something as powerful as the sun was mad at him, then the whole world must be, and Darry, and Ronny, and Soda– where the hell is Soda?

Finally a noise, a cry tearing out of his throat, giving a voice to the pain inside his skull. He sat back on his heels as his hands came up to catch his head, press it down, keep it on his shoulders. It was painful, and it was dark, and he was alone. Did his brothers not want him?

He pulled at his shirt and found it was soaking wet, suctioned to his chest, but he couldn’t remember rain. What could he remember? Soda was cooking in the kitchen, he had laid down for a nap, Darry– no, Ronny– called him to dinner. Soda had given him a plate of chicken so moist it slid off the bones. He had felt a wrongness, the twist of a knife like the one that had gone into Bob Sheldon’s back, a pressure in his lungs like he was underwater, blinking black stars from the corners of his eyes. Soda smiled crooked, asked him if he liked the chicken.

He felt the wrongness because Soda had smiled like Bill– then his memory was sliding again, and Soda slipped out with it because he had never been there, Ponyboy had doctored him into the past. Of course, it was Bill, always had been, and he had cooked and given Ponyboy dinner and asked him if it tasted good and asked him if he thought Rhode Island Reds had the best meat.

“Oh,” Ponyboy croaked, and Tim echoed the sound, not one to be outdone even by a sick boy. Soda’s not here, because Soda’s dead.

He let the darkness win, and once more it was quiet.

The hand on his temple was ice cold, and he knew without reason, without sight that it belonged to Johnny Cade.

Ponyboy didn’t know where he was, or when, or how, and he only knew who being himself as a loose concept, as his body wouldn’t listen to him. But if Johnny was with him, then he didn’t need to worry about all those details: he was safe. The hand ran across his head and smoothed through his hair, fingers running gently through knots and tangles. 

He felt nothing beyond that light touch, and he didn’t ask for anything more. He could stay like that a while, even his thoughts appearing soft and slow, because there was no pain, and his best friend was with him, like he usually was, like he always would be.

“I know we talked about living out in the countryside, but this is a little much, ain’t it?” 

Ponyboy hummed, or he tried to hum, but he didn’t know what Johnny was talking about. What countryside? He wondered when Darry would make him get up for school.

Johnny went on fussing with his hair. “Hey, you still got all this blond at the ends. Thought you would cut it off soon as it grew back some.”

Ponyboy decided his friend was seeing things, because he would never cut his hair short and he certainly wouldn’t dye it blond.

“Listen, Ponyboy, you’re not one to just lay around. You gotta get up, okay?” Johnny’s hand went still, and Ponyboy was afraid he’d move away. He wanted to tell him to stay, but he didn’t know where his lips were.

“I’m serious, Ponyboy. You got a whole lot more life to live, and you’re too good to go out on the floor of a chicken coop. Up.” The weight of his hand lifted, and Ponyboy felt all his ease go with it. Like Johnny had been the dam against his pain, with him gone it all rushed back in, singeing into every nerve in his body. Fire, he thought he was on fire, and he curled inwards, elbows into knees, making himself small. Pain still found him.

“Ponyboy,” Johnny whispered, and it sounded like goodbye . Pony let out a choking sound, and then there was light, a great, big flash of it, and his name called again by a voice he didn’t want to hear.

“Ponyboy! What the hell’re– good lord, what’s the matter with you?” 

The hand that replaced Johnny’s was lukewarm and lacked comfort, and it tapped against his cheek with a force Ponyboy could not tolerate. He didn’t dignify the loud voice with a response; he groaned and curled his head away, not wanting that touch, any touch, if it wasn’t friendly. The hand gave up on rousing him and moved along his face, pressing into his forehead before disappearing.

“God, yer burning up,” the voice muttered, and Ponyboy couldn’t get his eyes to open but he knew at once it was Uncle Ronny. He didn’t want his uncle, he wanted his brothers, and he was gearing up to speak this request when two hands gripped under his armpits and he was dragged partially up-right, the wall at his back while his legs stretched along the ground. He heard panting, though he couldn’t tell if it was him or his uncle. 

“Ponyboy, y–”

That’s right, I’m on the farm.

“Why won’t you–”

Think I’m in the straw. The chicken coop? 

“Wake up, dammit–”

Think… I think I’m gonna puke.

“George–”

Water roared in his ears, all sound drowned out as he lurched to the side and vomited onto the floor of the coop. He sat there, folded over crooked, heaving air back into his lungs. He was exhausted, and for all his thinking he couldn’t remember the day or coming outside. A few moments lapsed before he noticed a hand rubbing between his shoulder blades, then the roaring died off and he could hear again.

“That’s right, let it out, an’ we’ll get you back inside the house,” Ronny fretted over him, and Ponyboy fluttered his eyes. He wanted to see Ronny’s face, parse out if he was concerned or flat-out angry, because he didn’t want to cause trouble. Trouble meant discipline, meant he was bad, and bad kids don’t get to stay with their families. That’s what it always meant for Curly Shepard.

“Pops, why’d you run out– well, damn, what’s wrong with the kid?” Bill’s voice at the doorway motivated him even more to get his eyes open, and he peeled them up best he could and saw Ronny’s arm across his chest, still helping him lean away from his legs.

“He’s runnin’ a fever, can’t tell sweat from sweat. I got no clue how long he’s been out here,” Ronny sighed, his other hand patting Pony’s shoulder, “Think I oughta put him in the tub.”

Ponyboy did not like the sound of “the tub” and he started squirming, pushing with weak limbs against Ronny’s hold.

“You’re alright then, quit movin’,” Ronny commanded and Ponyboy let himself be pushed back against the wall. He told himself he wouldn’t have gotten far on his own to ease the sting of his helplessness.

“Long enough to run through a pack of matches,” Bill said, and from his new angle Ponyboy could squint through the fogginess and see him leaning on the doorframe. He had the empty pack of matches in his hand, and he seemed to be scanning the floor, counting up burned sticks of wood. Ponyboy pinched his eyes shut, working to remember why he had lit those matches.

Chickens, something with the chickens.

“Chickens ou’okay?” He mumbled. He was supposed to let them out. Ponyboy lunged forward, aiming to get his feet underneath him, but he went crashing to the floor instead. Straw dug into his cheeks. There was a ringing, and he remembered he was missing details, time. I gotta get home, he thought, I gotta know if everyone’s okay.

“Sun ain’t even up, why’s he so worried about the chickens?”

The ringing made it impossible to discern who was talking, and the back and forth between Bill and Ronny devolved into a sort of breathy monologue he had to devote all his energy to in order to listen.

“I gotta get ‘im inside, damn coop’s like an oven.”

“Let me carry him– no,

                     I’ll carry him

                   Pops, your knee can hardly take on a

        that never mattered and I won’t let you touch him

                             god, you ever gonna trust

                   never, god, not ever,

                              George would have

                         you ain’t talkin’, I know you ain’t

                                   get the damn door. just leave it, leave it–”

“You’ll be alright, little buddy.”

Ponyboy felt weightless, and then finally everyone shut the hell up.

This time, in the empty, no one visited him. Time folded in on itself, and one moment he was in the coop, and then there was an intermission of freezing, a flash of ice cold water and a bathtub, before his eyes opened to greet midday light streaming into his bedroom.

Ponyboy stared up at the ceiling, blinking, piecing himself back together. He struggled to recall the morning, but he grasped at enough memories to believe he hadn’t been thinking clearly. Johnny was dead. He was on the farm. He wouldn’t let himself forget again.

His body still hurt, but he could move, and he wiggled his fingers and rolled his ankles just to be certain he was whole. 

Okay, so I’m sick, he accepted, and immediately he had to wrestle down the hope that Darry and Soda would appear to make it all better. I’m sick, and I’m not going to cry.

Pony’s eyes burned without permission, and he twisted his face this way and that, refusing to let any tears fall. He was fifteen, and he had yet to cry, even when he had to watch his brothers get small in the rearview mirror, even when his birthday came and went without any friends to celebrate with, and he would not cry now, of all times, because of a cold.

The tears retreated, and a dryness in his mouth became his new concern. He was thirsty, so desperate for a drink that water was his first choice over Pepsi. Ponyboy braced his palms on the mattress and dragged his torso up, his nails digging into the sheets as the world began to turn. He moved inch by inch, riding out the waves of dizziness, until he was upright.

He was wearing Darry’s shirt, the one with the hole chewed out by Delilah, and he knew he hadn’t put it on himself because he had tucked it away, afraid to make the hole worse. Pony flushed as he realized he was wearing different shorts, too. The tub full of smashed ice zipped through his mind, and he decided not to dwell on how he ended up in new clothes.

Standing was its own challenge. There was a defeated voice in the back of his head that told him to stay in bed and let the mattress swallow him, but he didn’t want Bill or Ronny to think he was weak if they checked on him. Already embarrassing enough to be found on the floor of the chicken coop– he had no desire to replay getting carried around like a rag-doll. 

Ponyboy eased his legs in front of him and slid forward on the bed until his feet touched the hardwood flooring. He clutched the sheets as he pushed himself to standing, and as soon as he was up, he locked his knees against the tremors running through him to keep it that way. He kept one hand on the bed as he creeped toward the door, acting as an anchor until he got too far. He let go, balance worsening as soon as he did, causing him to stumble the last few steps to the doorway. Pony collapsed against the wood, gripping the frame, sucking in only a shallow breath for fear of coughing again.

He prepared to push onwards, but he heard voices from down the hall and decided to linger a moment. He told himself he needed the breather, but really, he desperately wanted to eavesdrop.

The door had been left cracked: he tilted his head until his ear brushed the opening. 

“You already got rid of the liquor– Pops, that was the problem, not me,” Bill was saying, and his voice treaded in and out of a harsh whisper.

“Liquor loosens your tongue, but it ain’t make you a liar, Bill,” Ronny spat back, and there was a thud as he spoke.

“Then it made me a blowhard, alright? Not a criminal,” Bill whined. Tapping followed his words, and Ponyboy could picture his fingers drumming along a wall. He was so impatient, Pony had noticed it from the first night, so sure of the outcome he wanted that all the steps leading him to it weren’t worth his time. “Momma wouldn’t have wanted this, wouldn’t have wanted us fighting.”

“God, this ain’t a fight, this ain’t even a discussion– I told you not to come back and I meant it then, and I mean it now.”

The drumming stopped. Ponyboy pressed closer to the door, though his legs were beginning to protest against how long he had been standing for.

“You’d still kick me out even with your golden boy laid up like that?” Bill’s tone had shifted from vulnerability to something with more edge. Ponyboy had gotten into enough arguments with Darry to recognize when someone knew they were laying down their trump card.

“What’s his health got anything to do with you, huh?” Ronny was wavering. All the strength he had used to order Ponyboy around for weeks seemed to erode with every conversation he had with Bill.

“It ain’t really his health, though. He don’t matter to this at all, in fact,” Bill huffed, a floorboard creaked, “It’s all about you again, old man.”

Ronny didn’t answer, or if he did, it was too low for Pony’s ears to pick up on.

“Yeah, Pops, I know you can’t do this alone. Hardly could do it with me when you still could lift a hay bale– if you won’t admit it, I’ll say it for you: your knee is shot. Farm could go to hell in the time it takes for the kid to get better.”

“Point, Bill, make a goddamn point,” Ronny urged.  

“You’ll let me stay, least ‘til Sniffles can clamber about the house on his own. How’s that?”

A demand, not a request. Ponyboy stiffened, and as he shifted to hold himself up better he pushed against the door, almost closing it. It let out a solitary squeak, and he froze with a breath in his lungs to see if either man would stop to investigate if he was awake.

He waited, seconds never feeling longer as his arms began to tremble with the same intensity as his legs.

“I’m helping you, Pops. This is me being a good son, alright? I put as much of my life as you have into keeping this farm afloat, believe that I wouldn’t want to see it go under just ‘cause you don’t trust me anymore.”

“Alright.” Ronny spoke so softly, Ponyboy was half-certain he made up his uncle’s response. “Til Ponyboy gets better. Then forever means forever again.”

Even Ponyboy didn’t believe his uncle when he said that.

Thirst won over his curiosity, and he dragged his door open and staggered into the hallway. Bill and Ronny were standing outside of Ronny’s bedroom, and both of their heads turned as soon as Pony managed a full step toward them.

“He lives!” Bill crowed with an enthusiasm Ponyboy found to be intolerable. Kid, Golden Boy, Sniffles, Ponyboy recounted the names Bill had used to refer to him in his conversation with Ronny. Never his name. It’s like I’m not even a real person to him.

“I live,” Ponyboy agreed. His voice scratched up his throat as the words fought to leave his mouth– he hadn’t realized it was sore, and now it was impossible to ignore.

“You should be in bed,” Ronny chastised. Ponyboy would have rolled his eyes if he had the energy to spare. Instead, he slumped against the wall with a puff of air.

“Water,” he responded, and Ronny didn’t question him further. His uncle limped into the kitchen, and moments later Ponyboy heard the sink running.

Bill looked him up and down while Ronny was out of the room, and Ponyboy tried to calm his tremors, draw his shoulders back. I’m not weak, he wanted his eyes to speak for him, I’m not scared of you.

“Anyone ever tell you not to run in the rain?” Bill asked him, lip quirking as he did.

“Anyone tell you not to kick someone while they’re down?” Ponyboy challenged. A bead of sweat dripped into his eye, and though it stung, he squinted around the pain, keeping Bill in his sights.

“Maybe, but that’s no way to win a fight, Ponyboy,” Bill leaned a little closer, and Ponyboy had nowhere to go in order to escape him, “Better to make sure your opponent can never get up again. Who knows what could happen if you don’t?”

“That’s a dirty way to win,” Ponyboy wheezed.

“Y’know, it’s funny, I didn’t know greasers were so concerned ‘bout shit like honor. But trust me, kid, victory always tastes sweet to me,” Bill promised, and he drew back as Ronny hobbled into view.

Ponyboy reached for the glass in Ronny’s hand to avoid responding to Bill, but Ronny knocked his limp fingers away, pointing toward his bedroom with the same hand.

“Bed. I’ll follow you in,” Ronny ordered. Ponyboy grumbled, but decided he didn’t want to be standing anymore. He shuffled toward his bedroom, refusing to look at Bill as he went. He was grateful that only Bill’s eyes followed them as Ronny shut the door behind Pony.

“You got it?” Ronny questioned as Ponyboy collapsed onto the mattress.

“Yeah,” Ponyboy replied, not bothering to keep exasperation out of his voice as he wiggled back under the covers. He wasn’t so pathetic that he needed his uncle to lift the blankets for him.

Once he was settled with a pillow behind his back, Ronny passed him the glass of water, and Pony made sure it was gone within a few gulps.

“You better not throw that up,” Ronny said dryly. Ponyboy swore he almost sounded close to amused. He thought his fever might be coming back.

“I ain’t plan to,” he muttered, tugging the blanket up to his chin. 

“Yeah, probably ain’t nothin’ in there to lose. You oughta eat something,” Ronny proposed, and Pony’s stomach twisted.

The last thing he ate was Bill’s chicken, was–

He couldn’t even think it, or he really would puke. He didn’t want to lose his uneasy truce with Ronny, and he didn’t want to ruin Darry’s shirt anymore than he already had.

Uncle Ronny wouldn’t get it if he tried to explain, so he asked instead, “I’ll eat, I just don’t want to chew. Maybe a soup, or something.”

Ponyboy had seen plenty of soup cans in the back of the pantry, and with any luck Ronny would heat one of those up instead of preaching about the importance of protein.

Ronny nodded, and he patted Pony’s knee under the blanket before he left the room. The tenderness of the act spooked him more than it comforted him– how long before the kindness spoiled, and Ronny went back to jerking him around? Ponyboy didn’t like that his guard was starting to drop around his uncle. 

Then he remembered the letter in his desk drawer, the one he had been waiting to send out after the rain had stopped pounding. His family was back in Tulsa. Ronny was the one keeping him from them. He hated him. He did.

He held onto that reminder as Ronny brought in a bowl of tomato soup and sat with him until half of it was gone, as he checked his temperature with the back of his hand like Darry always did, as he shook out three aspirin into Pony’s palm. It didn’t change anything. It couldn’t.

Ponyboy napped his way through the afternoon, stirring every so often to drink more water or move his pillow. The evening descended by the time Pony felt some life return to him, and since the last thing he wanted was to waste his energy dealing with Bill or Ronny, he reached under the mattress and brought out Aunt Darlene’s diary.

He couldn’t remember the date of his last reading, and feeling bold, he flipped to a random section near the middle of the pages

This one didn’t have a date, but unlike her other entries, it had a title.

on sister

 

i left you with a pile of stones

and an incomplete sentence

a see you (later) later?

 

i wanted you to keep smiling,

freeze you on the porch steps, a portrait

to hang in the lonely halls of my head

a way to hold you as I chased–

chased–

 

oh, i can’t even lie within a poem 

i’ll never send– honey, i was running.

escaping, settling into static

if that’s what it took to feel safe

 

ronny was the only one who’d take me,

see, he was willing to do the work

of seeing this through, and love

was aftermath, i admit, but while late

it was true.

 

i miss you.

i  want

Ponyboy rubbed his eyes and read the poem again, and then again, wondering what he was missing. Ronny was the only one who’d take her?

“Running from what?” Ponyboy kept pushing his fingers into his temple, the headache he’d been fighting all day flaring up as he thought too hard. There were dozens of entries– Ponyboy had been careful so far in reading them, but he was reckless now in his confusion, and he flipped through the whole journal, fanning out the pages as his thumb ran over them. Something tucked into the last few pages fell out, and Ponyboy let the diary thump onto his lap as he grabbed for it. 

A photograph? He hummed as he picked it up, spun it around. 

Two boys, maybe around 8 and 4, stood smiling in front of the goat pen. Well, one of the boys was smiling– the smaller one beamed, golden hair like Soda’s spinning out in curls all on top of his head. A baby goat was clutched in his arms, its lower legs blurry as it probably wouldn’t sit still for the camera. The older boy had his arms crossed, the kind of glower on his face that Ponyboy knew well, a response to the person behind the camera demanding a smile no matter how the subject felt about it. Below the photo, Darlene had written: Georgie + Billy, 1947.

Ponyboy stared at the photo until he was sure his eyes were going to burn holes into it, then he crammed it back into the diary and shoved all of it under the mattress.

He had known for a while, on some level, that Darlene and Ronny must have had another son. Ronny called him George whenever he was scared– it was no different from how Ponyboy mistook Darry for their father at his lowest moments, calling out for Dad, the person he would always want most. He knew George couldn’t have been a neighbor kid– there were no neighbors to know– and Ronny never slipped and called him Bill , so he had suspected George was younger, or at least more vulnerable. The baby of the family.

But suspecting another cousin and confirming another cousin felt very different in his chest. He had been trying to ignore the question of where’s George , but he couldn’t do it anymore. He had seen his childish, wondrous smile, and now he wondered, and now he feared.

Where’s George?

As he lay there paralyzed by his discovery, he heard a scream from outside echo through his window. Bill had decided to slaughter another hen.

Where’s George?

Chapter Text

Kid was smaller than Ponyboy thought usual for cats, and he wondered why that might be as he ran his fingers up and down his spine, listening to the tinny vibrato of his purr. 

He had never really liked cats before meeting Kid. Though he had done his best to steer clear of cats in general after the run-in he had with the neighbor’s tabby when he was about three or four. The memory was crystalline despite his young age; he remembered Miss Frazier had kept a city of kitties in her house, and Darry sagely told him that ladies did that when they couldn’t find a husband. Mrs. Curtis had corrected Darry and explained Miss Frazier had a husband, but ‘he was no longer with us’. Soda had nodded, and suggested that ladies hoarded cats when they couldn’t find a husband, or when they couldn’t keep a husband.

Once Ponyboy scratched at the memory, he wanted more. What happened next? Their mom had called them rude, but she did it with a smile, and she let the brothers take a teetering Ponyboy over to the house with them. 

“She makes the best chocolate chip cookies,” Soda exclaimed to his little brother, and Ponyboy didn’t need to be told twice– he beat them both up the steps and banged a tiny fist on Miss Frazier’s door. She opened it after a couple rounds, time enough for Soda and Darry to join him on either side.

“Why, if it isn’t the Curtis boys– and goodness, am I finally meeting the one and only Ponyboy?”

Miss Frazier had jet black hair worn in soft, bouncy curls up on her head, with a swooshing tail of hair covering the base of her neck that reminded Ponyboy of how Keith had started to style his head. She wore an olive green shirt over her rich, dark skin– his mother had said Miss Frazier was well into her 70’s, but Ponyboy didn’t understand how that could be true. She looked young, and the gold necklaces layered around her throat didn’t do anything to age her.

Witchcraft, Ponyboy thought, having just learned about witches and devils and pagans in Sunday School. He tucked himself behind Darry’s leg.

“Don’t mind him, ma’am, he can be shy when our mother’s not around,” Darry used his grown-up voice to talk to Miss Frazier, making it come out deeper than it naturally was. 

Miss Frazier leaned down, the door wide open behind her. Her jewellery clacked together as she met Ponyboy’s eyes. “Well, is he too shy to try one of my cookies?”

Ponyboy shook his head vigorously. He rationalized that cookies were good, and witches were bad, so she must not be a witch if she’s making cookies. 

“I’d like a cookie,” he managed to say with more confidence than he felt. Miss Frazier seemed satisfied with his attempt, and she ushered the boys into the house.

Ponyboy smelled the cookies, and the rest of his anxieties melted. Their house smelled good when their mother got to baking, but this was a whole new aroma; he wondered how he could bottle the smell, hoard it in his bedroom, to experience whenever he liked.

The second thing he noticed were the cats. Soda had scooped a white kitten into his arms as soon as he cleared the doorway, cooing at it as he kept following Miss Frazier into the kitchen, but Ponyboy hadn’t seen the rest until he was standing in the middle of the front room. There were so many cats. Keith’s grandmother had a cat, and though he thought it was harmless, he only met it once. And some of Miss Frazier’s cats were much, much bigger.

Darry and Soda were in the kitchen, and Ponyboy heard the sound of a metal tray being put down on the counter, the crinkle of parchment paper as Miss Frazier set out the cookies. But there was a hulking, furry white cat watching him from the arm of the couch, and an orange cat with stripes creeping in from the hallway; there were two more kittens bouncing over to something in the corner, and a tabby with green eyes swishing its tail back and forth as it stared Pony down.

He froze, not knowing what they wanted. Their family dog, Duke, was not a hard animal to read, and he was tolerant beyond measure, letting Ponyboy climb all over him as if he were a horse. Pony sensed that the cats were not as easy-going. 

Looking back, he realized the cats probably did not care that he was in the house. That, had he kept walking, none of them would have paid him any mind unless they wanted something from him, and he could have gotten into the kitchen and ate his cookies and been just fine.

But at that moment, the tabby seemed to be his natural predator. The edges of the memory went fuzzy, fear keeping the past from his recollection: He remembered running for the door, through the door, he remembered the weight of something pouncing on his back, the tabby, and then stairs. Not a lot of them, but enough to hurt, and to scare a four-year old something fierce, and Ponyboy did not remember going back to Miss Frazier’s house after that.

Scooping Kid into his arms, he reflected on the tabby’s mannerisms, and how the shaking of his tail meant he wanted to play, and since he ran, the tabby assumed he wanted to play, too– play the game of chase. He thought he could have saved himself a world of trouble if he paid attention more often. 

It wasn’t a new concept. Darry told him he needed to use his head better at least twice a week, and for a good while, twice a day. Ponyboy sniffled, wishing he could use his head at all in the present moment.

One, long sleep had worked to ease his symptoms, but the only exercise he was up for centered around waving a piece of string through the air for Kid to bat between his paws. As he was slow and vulnerable, he hoped Kid would clear out soon; he worried about what would happen if his uncle or cousin saw him cozying up with a barn cat. 

His uncle he could picture. There may be a swear, and some shooing, and a comment about how animals belonged outside. Ponyboy didn’t think he would go further than that. Bill was more unpredictable, and so it was the thought of Bill walking through his free-swinging bedroom door that made Pony keep Kid tight to his chest.

Kid was oblivious to danger. He licked a stripe up along his front leg until he ran out of paw to fuss with, then he twisted his head to lick the underside of Ponyboy’s chin. The skin started itching immediately. 

Ponyboy turned his head to rub his chin on his shoulder, but his shirt was embedded with cat hair and didn’t do anything to relieve the burn. A sneeze teased his nose, and he tried taking deep, shaky breaths to prevent it from happening– the last thing he wanted was to startle Kid into hiding under his bed.

He heard the clunk of work boots squeaking the floorboards in the hallway, and he shoved his cat-filled arms underneath the blanket, wiggling back against his mountain of pillows to try and look natural. Kid didn’t startle, to Ponyboy’s surprise and thanks, and Bill pushed through the door shoulder-first, a tray held above his head and a lit cigarette between his lips. 

“Lunch, freeloader,” Bill announced, sliding the tray onto Pony’s bedside table with an unexpected amount of care. Pony glanced at the offering, pale soup broth and crackers, and he raised his eyes to Bill’s, one eyebrow rising with him.

Bill mirrored his skeptical expression. “What?”

Ponyboy knocked his head on the wall, not wanting to ask if it was poison, because he didn’t think it was poison and Bill would only laugh, and not wanting to ask if the meat was fresh, because he couldn’t stomach the idea of eating that hen. Instead, he huffed, and kept his fingers locked along the curve of Kid’s back.

“No, c’mon, what?” Bill pressed, blowing a puff of smoke Pony’s way. He wrinkled his nose– Bill hadn’t lit a single cigarette during his stay, not that he could remember. The change was unwelcome. “Cat got your tongue?”

His eyes flickered to the blanket and up again, and Pony stiffened. He forced himself to not look down, trusting that Kid wasn’t visible, and let out a cough.

“Throat’s sore, that’s all,” Ponyboy said, his voice scratchy. Inhaling with his mouth open, he tasted the cigarette smoke on this tongue. For the first time in months, he remembered how to crave nicotine, and he smacked his lips to shake the desire loose. “Thanks for the lunch.”

I’ll eat the crackers, Ponyboy decided, I won’t touch the soup.

“You got more than lunch to thank me for, that’s for sure! I’m working double time to make up for your sneezing and Pop’s, well, Pop’s age. I’m thinking we lost ‘bout an acre to improper irrigation, and don’t get me started on Ma’s garden–” Bill pulled his cigarette out and flicked it with his fingers, sending ash cascading over the bed. “M’sure you know this ain’t the only kind of weed, right, so then tell me why I’m up to my elbows in vines n’ thistle?”

“No one’s making you work,” Ponyboy fired back, bristling from the criticism. He didn’t mention that Ronny had told him to leave the garden be, or that he hardly knew what irrigation was, let alone why he should care about one measly acre. “Fact is, you sound like you just want somethin’ to complain about.”

Bill guffawed, swiping his hand across his forehead. Ponyboy almost expected to see ash stain his temple with how close he let the cigarette get to his skin. “Well, as sickness goes, the backtalk returns, huh? Maybe you’re ready to get out there again.”

Ponyboy was tempted to agree on the basis that the quicker he recovered, the quicker Bill would clear out. But even if he could toil for an hour without collapsing, he couldn’t stand with Kid still balled up in his lap. He rolled his shoulders, a cough helpfully escaping his lungs.

“Barely need any breath in me to call it like it is,” Pony promised. He rolled his eyes up to inspect Bill’s face, crossing over the strain of muscles in his neck that always seemed to ripple when they started exchanging words, the half-grin his lips tried to wrestle against. He felt it again, a wave of hesitation making him bite his own tongue, as he couldn’t understand what Bill wanted.

Next to Bill, Ponyboy thought that Tim Shepard would be easy to talk to. Guess there’s something to be said about the devil you know…

“You got no idea why I’m here, cousin. And actin’ tough while laid up in someone else’s bedroom makes it awful hard to listen to you.” Bill glanced over at the tray, then ground his cigarette out on the stack of crackers. It hissed as it mingled with flakes of salt, a curl of white smoke dancing up across the wall. “Just shuddup and eat your soup, alright?”

Ponyboy opened his mouth to retort against his better judgement, but beneath the blanket, Kid was stirring. Two paws ridged up the covers as they stretched into Pony’s thigh, and a mewling yawn interrupted the air.

Thinking quickly, Ponyboy fussed the sheets around as he jerked a hand up to rub his abdomen. “Yeah, just listen to my stomach– I don’t mean half of what I say when I’m hungry, anyone’ll tell you that,” Ponyboy forced out a too-thin laugh, “I’ll let you get back to, uh, doing everything.”

Don’t move, please don’t move, stop moving, Pony kept a hand flat on Kid’s head, willing his words to make it from his brain to the cat’s. Kid licked his palm, and the soft scratch of his little tongue against Pony’s skin made a noise he covered by dragging his own nails over his exposed bicep. He looked nervous, and he felt nervous, but even as Bill’s eyes completed another up-down of Ponyboy’s twitchy form, his cousin started to back up.

“Sure thing,” Bill hummed. “Everything and more.”

Ponyboy pinched his lips together and waved with his free hand, a gesture which never failed to make him look young, and Bill finally pushed past the swinging bedroom door. It flapped a few times, taking its time evening back to center, but Pony waited for the bootsteps to get quiet before throwing the blanket off of his lap.

“Jesus Christmas, Kid, I thought you were a goner,” Pony joked down at the cat, who was now blinking sleep from his beady eyes. Kid let out another snapping yawn, burrowing his head into the crook formed by Pony’s knee. Ponyboy sighed, and wondered fondly how he could become as content as a barn cat. He supposed it started with being cared for.

Ponyboy swirled his nails in tight circles on Kid’s head and thought of Miss Frazier, widowed, cats all she had left for company. He thought of the people he had wanted to grow up to be like: Paul Newman, his father, and without realizing it, Darry, the one who was strong enough to take all the bad, wear it heavy on his shoulders and still move forward. Even if he couldn’t make some things better, he would stand by his family, and he would try. Ponyboy didn’t figure he was shaping up to be that impressive, or reliable, but he was getting older all the same, fifteen and too weak to stand tall. I never would have put money on me ending up like Miss Frazier, Ponyboy lamented, and distance and time were not equal to death, he knew that, but even still Kid was the only one beside him now, so Kid was all he had left. 

Then he remembered his most recent letter, the one he had written before his birthday and was stopped from sending out because of the rain. It was still in his desk, carrying a piece of him, waiting to find its way home. He forced himself to take a breath, shove off his melancholy– Soda had yelled for him on the phone, sharp and desperate, the kind of shout that escapes the lips of dreamers fighting to wake from a nightmare. He said they were trying.  Trying how, trying for what, trying when, he didn’t know, he couldn’t know, but even with all those uncertainties at the surface, deep down, he knew they would come. They have to.

Ponyboy looked at the bowl of soup, and this time his stomach did grumble. His last meal was a round of fever ago and already forgotten. The crackers were covered in ash, and the soup was just soup– there were carrot rounds floating half-submerged, and a chunk or two of celery, green and unappetizing. 

Ponyboy thought, Darry would have just about forced it down my throat by now, and a smile flickered across his mouth. Even if he wasn’t being cared for, he had people who cared. People who wouldn’t let him get away with neglecting himself. He stretched over Kid and stirred the broth, stopping when he saw bites of meat bobbing up at the surface. He looked at the crackers again. Really, only the top one was ruined– the fine powder of ash clinging to the other crackers was a minute deterrent; he’d hawked down Dairy Queen sliders with more cigarette residue slathered into the barbeque sauce multiple times in his life.

He plucked a cracker from the stack and blew on it, wiping the fallen particles off of Kid’s back as he did, and shoved it in his mouth. It was fine, but overwhelmingly dry, and a few bites in had him reaching for the last sips of his waterglass. Ponyboy shrugged, giving the same treatment to another cracker, smacking it around his mouth. His stomach made a noise that he translated as not enough. 

He looked at the bowl. Soup. He willed it to be anything else, a chocolate cake, a platter of ribs– a bucket of fries and pure salt would be better, and easier to accept. 

It stayed soup.

“It’s soup. I eat soup all the time,” Ponyboy muttered, “It’s chicken.”

It’s Soda.

It’s a chicken. I’ve packed down nearly an entire rotisserie chicken in a single sitting before– Darry can eat just about two of ‘em without feeling satisfied.

You knew that chicken. You loved that chicken, and Bill, he just–

“Kid, no!” Kid had no qualms about eating free chicken, and Ponyboy yelped as the fuzzy thief shot out of his lap and tried to dive into the bowl mouth-first.

Pony pushed the bowl out of reach with one hand and snatched Kid by the scruff, the cat instantly going limp in his grasp. Half of the broth sloshed onto the floor, taking the spoon with it, but a puddle was the least of his concerns. He knew if Bill or Ronny heard him yell, they might get it into their heads to check on him, so though he would miss the cat’s company for the rest of the afternoon, Kid could not remain in his room.

“Sorry, little buddy,” Ponyboy apologized as he urged Kid out of the cracked window. If Kid was miffed by the rejection, it was not enough to earn Ponyboy his fangs, and the cat hurried off in the direction of the big barn.

Then it was just him and the soup, a few brothfuls short of the rim and full of his dead– full of meat. His stomach reminded him of its hollowness with another gurgling wail. 

“Soup makes you better. I need to get better,” he murmured to himself. That’s all there was to it. He screwed his eyes shut, and grabbed the bowl with two hands– emptying his mind of all thought and personal hang-ups, he emptied the bowl in the same manner within the next minute.

Don’t think about it don’t think about it don’t think about it but the hen he had cherished was not so easy to dismiss, and Ponyboy rolled himself up in the cat-hair covered blankets and sneezed his way back into a rocky slumber, if only to keep from running to the bathroom and throwing up.

Apart from Ronny shaking him awake and drowning him with more water than his throat could swallow at one time and offering a dose of aspirin that would not have made it past Darry’s regulations, Ponyboy slept until the rooster declared another day was beginning.

Pony noticed his eyes did not feel the weight of the world, and they shed the lingerings of sleep with more grace than he had managed in days. He sat straight up in bed, and noted it was not a chore to do so. His lungs didn’t rattle when he breathed, though his left nostril was refusing to take in air and his throat burned when he yawned. Better was good enough, and motivation returned to him first with the need to get his letter sent off. 

This one will make it. This one has to make it.

He shimmied into a pair of jeans and dug one of Darry’s cut-off sweatshirts out of his barren dresser, completing his look with Soda’s DX cap and his only pair of socks that didn’t have holes yet. He left his work overalls draped over the desk chair– Bill could stand to do another day of everything as he loved to put it.

Ponyboy pulled the desk drawer out and felt his momentum die. Apart from scraps of paper and some envelopes and pens he had managed to rummage from around the house, the drawer was empty. His letter was missing. 

Dropping to his knees, he tried to find the letter on the floor, checked to see if it was stuck along the bottom of the desk– dust bunnies and cat hair met his hand, but nothing of value. His letter was missing.

He racked his mind, sifting through his fevered recollections of the past handful of days, wondering if he had moved it without realizing. He knew he hadn’t, though. That left a few explanations, or rather, two: Ronny or Bill.

No one was in the house, but he didn’t want to wait– he stomped into his boots and burst through the front door, scanning the farm for a trace of his uncle. The barn door slammed, and he took off to the left, glancing at the work Bill had put into the garden beds as he passed. They certainly didn’t look much improved.

“I’m warning ya, the cane’s not just for show!” 

Uncle Ronny was getting bullied by a tribe of goats at the front of the barn. He clutched the sack of feed in an awkward hold, his arm not quite securing it over his shoulder, and it seemed like he had let the goats out first, so they were swarming him with overbites and long tongues. Despite his threat, the cane was dug into the ground, his free hand grasping at it as he teetered this way and that at the goats’ direction.

“Git, you little devils, git or I’ll starve ya, I will!” Ronny shouted, and Ponyboy watched as Delilah hopped on her back hooves and tried to climb his uncle’s thigh in order to reach the feed. 

His uncle seemed too involved to notice Pony’s approach, and he startled when Ponyboy appeared at his side, grabbing and drawing the burlap toward his own chest.

“Ponyboy! What do you think yer doing up?” Ronny looked at him with a scratched expression, bewildered and almost apprehensive. He gripped his cane with two clawed hands, shaking it from the wooden handle down to its steel-tipped ferrule. 

“You don’t really take that out with you,” Ponyboy observed aloud, ignoring his uncle’s question. Delilah sent her head into his lower thigh, and Pony took his cue to keep moving or risk death by hungry goat.

“Take what–? Oh, it’s nothing, it’s– why are you up?” Ronny limped in pursuit of him, left knee locked and dragging the rest of his leg along like a dead weight. When did that get so bad? “Last I left you, there was fever still clingin’ an… you shouldn’t be up.”

“Well, I’m up,” Ponyboy grunted, tipping the bag into the trough as he spoke. The goats switched from snacking on his jeans to their breakfast, and relief knocked into him along with exhaustion. He collapsed against the fence, crossing his arms and pretending he had intended to end up there. 

Uncle Ronny narrowed his eyes. Ponyboy cocked an eyebrow, almost daring his uncle to dispute him, to smack him for lying, to force him back to his bedroom. Ronny’s gaze fell first, finding some patch of dirt more interesting. 

“You, uh, you can walk an’ all it seems,” Ronny muttered. 

“Yep, and carry my weight, too,” Ponyboy added, kicking against the metal trough. It thumped dully, one or two goats bleating in response, and Pony noticed he hadn’t tied his boots. He swung a leg up on one of the higher fence boards, wanting to take care of the problem before it became a bigger problem.

Last thing I need is another fall, Pony chided himself, and his road-burned forearms and knees flared with heat in agreement. He glanced at his uncle, still staring at the earth. Pony felt a swell of anger for how pathetic his uncle was acting. He cracked his knuckles.

“Did you take my letter?” Ponyboy asked.

“Your what?” Ronny straightened, blinking rapidly.

“My letter to my brothers. I wrote one and put it in my desk, and it’s not there, so I’m asking you if you took it,” Ponyboy spelled it out beat for beat, not giving Ronny any room to mishear him. His uncle rubbed at one of his elbows, a few seconds passing before he shook his head.

“No, no– I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t.” Ronny frowned, but before Ponyboy could press him on the matter, the cursed fog rolled across his eyes again. Ever since Bill had arrived, his uncle kept retreating somewhere– whether it was a memory or a dream, the past, in a twisted recollection– that demanded more attention from Ronny than the present, more attention than the boy he stole from his own family. Ponyboy couldn’t stand to watch him anymore, and he closed his eyes.

Counting through his breaths, Ponyboy stood there almost wanting Ronny to hit him, and the thought made his chest constrict. He wanted it, because when Ronny hit him, it meant he was paying attention. He acknowledged Ponyboy. When Ronny left the conversation while still having the conversation, Ponyboy felt like he was the ghost.

Like he was the one being abandoned. Again.

“Just do it,” Ponyboy whispered, words for Ronny he would keep from him at all costs. “Just hit me.”

The back of his neck went cold, and the dizziness he was so sure he had slept off rocked into him. Johnny said this. Johnny’s said this to me before. 

Before the fountain, before the simple wrongs snowballed into a living nightmare, Johnny tried to comfort him about Darry… Darry hitting him. It was how we talked about his own father. “I think I like it better when the old man’s hittin’ me. At least then I know he knows who I am.”

You hate him. Remember, you hate him! Ponyboy reminded himself, but his inner voice was weak, like it lacked breath, conviction. He hated Johnny’s dad. He hated every Soc who had ever looked at him funny, or pushed him too far. He hated Uncle Ronny. 

But only one of those felt true.

“You feel safe?”

Ponyboy’s fingers twitched at the odd question, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Why’re you askin’ me that?” 

“I don’t– nothing, nothing,” Ronny mumbled, trailing off in such a way that Ponyboy was certain he would finish his sentence given enough time. He waited, listening for the intake of breath, a harsh swallow of air, that meant Ronny was gearing up to get on with it. 

The slamming of the barn door sounded first. Ponyboy groaned, knowing without sight his morning was about to be more trouble than it was worth.

“Chester’s out, but good luck gettin’ him back in ‘cause he’s got a– boy howdy, if it ain’t the invalid!” Bill crowed, voice harping closer and closer, and Ponyboy let his eyes crack open to watch his cousin’s approach. Ronny angled his shoulders to face Bill as he shuffled toward the trough. Toward Ponyboy.

“Chester’s got a what?” Ponyboy redirected, a pang of guilt strumming through him for having left the horse alone for so many days. 

“Oh, an attitude, that’s all, but hey, look at you up and running! Thought you were fixing up to waste away for a minute there.” Bill opposed Ponyboy’s closed-off stance, arms held loosely at his sides. “You’re not gonna infect the goats here, are ya?”

“Goats can’t get sick from people,” Ponyboy said with a certainty he could not prove. They can’t, I don’t think. Right? He watched Bill approach the fence and grasp one of the taller posts by the gate, resting his chin over it.

“Sure they can. At least, they can get sick of looking at you,” Bill joked, his beard scratching against the roughed up wood, making a noise like sandpaper dragging. “You ain’t even ready to work. What kind of shirt is that?”

Ponyboy pulled Darry’s cropped sweatshirt down on both sides before forcing his hands to still, refusing to be self-conscious. It was a cool outfit, and he may not wear it as tough as some of the other members of the gang did, but his arms had toned considerably working for his uncle, and not even the uneven lines of his farmer’s tan could distract from his new muscle. He may not have felt right as rain, but he wasn’t weak. 

Don’t let him get to you anymore than he already has. Ponyboy shrugged, feigning casual, keeping sarcasm locked under his tongue. “I ain’t out here to work this morning,” he started, then committed, “I want to know why you took my letter.”

Bill’s eyebrows raised, his fingers wiggling around the top of the post by his chin. “What letter?”

“You’ve been in my room, an’ I know he didn’t take it,” Pony said while waving a hand at his uncle, “so tell me why you did, and where I can find it.”

“Now hold on here, if somethin’s missin’, how do you know it wasn’t my Pops?”

Uncle Ronny opened his mouth, but Ponyboy decided the conversation had no room for him. He jumped in, “His word’s easier to trust than yours. Don’t go pushin’ the finger away from you ‘cause you’ve already run out of people to blame.” He wanted to add that he’s picked fights for less– he remembered being twelve and having Soda in a headlock once over the last slice of chocolate cake disappearing when his back was turned– but Bill’s previous comments about how to win a fight stopped him. 

“Bill–”

“You trust him?” Bill scoffed, cutting Ronny off for a second time. “That’s a laugh. Pops knows how to be honest about as well as he knows how to cook, and I’m sure you’ve had some pretty lousy meals– I mean, just ask him why you’re–”

“Bill.” Ronny entered the argument, the gravel of his voice raised to a rolling thunder. Both Bill and Ponyboy turned to face him. “Give him his letter.”

“Again, I ain’t got a clue–”

“Billy. Please,” and Ronny said please like it cut his tongue to speak, “the letter.”

Ponyboy watched the two men battle in silence, a series of non-verbal parries and weaponized frowns, while he was still stuck on what Bill was implying about Ronny. Something pushed into his calf, making him bend at the knee, and he looked down to see one of the goats demanding scratches. It was smaller, Pony thought this very well could have been its first full summer, and its coat was a spill of white and brown blotches. Delilah was undeniably the most distinguishable goat in the herd, but Ponyboy scratched around the bossy goat’s ears and barely-there horns, and was almost certain he had given this one a name before.

Ponyboy rose up from his crouch to see the stand-off hadn’t concluded. What the hell. Okay. He cleared his throat, “It was in my desk drawer.”

His words broke the tension, and Ronny tucked his chin to his shoulder while Bill brought his palm to his temple, holding it there like he was deep in thought. “In your drawer… oh that letter, your letter to your brothers. Right, my mistake.” 

Brushing off the familiar redress, Ponyboy pushed himself away from the fence and stuck a hand out. “Sure, yeah, my letter– now give it here.”

Bill’s palm rubbed harder into his forehead, skin wrinkling and pinching under his touch. He showed his other hand, backwards then forwards, as if trying to prove he had nothing on him. “You know, I only took it to put it in the mailbox– do your fever-ridden ass a favor– assuming you’d want it to get to Soda and Darry without any delay.”

Ponyboy stiffened. He had been very careful to keep their names from his lips the last few days, especially around Bill. He couldn’t know them. He couldn’t, unless–

“Did you read my letter?” Ponyboy spat, and his own health be damned, he was going to show Bill what a greaser could do. But Bill looked surprised at his anger, raising his arms up in surrender as Pony approached.

“No, no, of course not. I’m not like that,” he glanced at Ronny, then reached into the front chest pocket of his overalls, “See for yourself.”

Ponyboy snatched the letter from Bill, flipping it over and running a finger across the seal. He was right; the letter hadn’t been opened. He spun it around to the front, making sure the address was in his handwriting and not the product of a very impressive forgery. He circled his nail over the 8 in Route 48– the bottom was filled in by an ink blot he had tried to dab off and instead managed to stain half of his fingerprint onto the paper just next to his name. 

He whipped his head up, scrutinizing Bill. The older man itched at his beard, eyes squinting to avoid the sun. Unfazed.

“You said you took it to the mailbox,” Ponyboy accused him, trying and failing not to crinkle the envelope in his hands as anger curled them into fists.

“Didn’t get there yet, if that wasn’t obvious,” Bill snorted, and Ponyboy wondered how he found the gall to act put upon by his concern, “Only grabbed it this morning.”

“You–” Ponyboy cut himself off, stabbing his tongue into his cheek. It was pointless. Why were you in my desk, why were you in my room this morning, what were you looking for, what else did you find? Bill wouldn’t give him a straight answer to anything. “You… I’m going to check on Chester.”

Ponyboy went to storm past Bill, but his cousin caught him by the shoulder, pushing just firm enough to halt him, send him stumbling a step back. He kept his hand there, even as Pony made to shrug him off.

“Has anyone ever told you,” Bill said in a low voice, leaning close so that his mouth was inches from Pony’s ear, “that you talk in your sleep?”

An unkind hand on his shoulder, a few whispered words, and like a spell had been cast, Ponyboy found it hard to breathe. Why is it so hard to breathe?

“You called for them. And Johnny. Who’s Johnny, Ponykid?”

Memory seized him, and he couldn’t move, like he couldn’t move when– Bob grabbed him on the shoulder before he sent the first punch across his face, and he went down hard, on his elbows, they cracked into the concrete while his legs ended up on grass, and it wasn’t for long, because then it was one hand, two, three, more and more, and he was fighting to not go in, not let his head go under–

“Bill, let him go,” Uncle Ronny chimed in, a weak but desperate command. 

“I’m just curious,” Bill whined, his fingers loosening but not slipping away, “Worried, even, ‘cause– oof!”

The small goat who Pony had been petting a few minutes prior sent his body flying through the air right into Bill’s thighs, and his cousin stumbled back until his shoulders knocked into the fence. Ponyboy sucked in a heaving breath, taking the opportunity to flee the goat pen and hurry toward the barn. 

Despite his wariness, he couldn’t suppress a smile. I knew I named that goat. That’s Crash. 

He was only halfway between the pen and the barn when Uncle Ronny started calling for him. “Ponyboy, wait, c’mon back here a minute.”

Fuck, he groaned, already turning on his heel. He hated how fast he obliged the order, especially because he would have given Darry more trouble than that. What happened to being a tough hood and a JD? He considered that maybe disobedience required a safety net; he knew there was nothing he could do to lose his brother’s love. He knew Darry would never raise his first against him again. Meanwhile, after all the gruff kindness he had been shown the last few days, Ronny had regressed into the same unknowable force he presented as the first day they had met. When would he get hit again? He couldn’t ever know.

His ankle was better after an entire day spent off of it, but it twinged with pain as Ponyboy dragged his feet in the only form of protest he could afford. 

“Ponyboy, you’re steady?” Ronny asked as he shuffled into earshot.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied, just short of snapping. He wanted to cool-off and brush Chester and get the hell away from Bill, but his wants were seldom considered these days. His cousin was leaning against the gate, picking dirt out from under his nails. What Ponyboy wouldn’t give to throw one good punch at his confusing face, or better, watch Darry do it for him.

“You can get the well going, no trouble? Check the back acres?” Ronny followed-up, and he tipped his straw hat out of his eyes to look into Ponyboy’s. Searching. Tired.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Ponyboy muttered, adjusting the cap on his own head. Sweat was building at the nape of his neck as the midday sun rose higher and higher, he felt a drop glide down his skin and reach his shoulder blade before his sweatshirt absorbed it. He needed a shower.

“Right,” Ronny nodded, and then prodded at Bill’s crossed feet with the tip of his cane, “You, up. We’re gonna get your tires. Road’s oughta be dried up by now.”

Bill groaned, slipping his propped arm off the fence to stand straight. “Now’s no good, Pops, I’ve just about got the tractor tuned up– leave the engine alone too long and the mice build their nests, you know that.”

“Tractor’ll still be in the barn when we get back. An’ I told you to leave that alone,” Ronny gruffed, and Bill shrugged.

Clearly he don’t listen, Ponyboy sighed to himself. If Bill listened, he wouldn’t even be on the farm, because… Pony frowned as the two men bickered, and their nonsense took a backseat for a moment of review. He didn’t know why Bill was cast out. It wasn’t so much that he hadn’t thought to ask and more so he didn’t think he would get an answer. And for some reason, he thought almost knowing would feel worse than not knowing at all.

“Later– or tomorrow! C’mon, it’s not so different– one more night, or one more morning. You need more help.” 

“What I need is some goddamn respect.” Ronny dragged a hand down his face. He was shaking. He doesn’t hit him, Ponyboy noticed, tilting his head in curiosity. This is when he’d usually hit me, he noted with a bit more bitterness.

“I respect that you’re old, and maybe your mind is going, ‘cause it seems kickin’ me out was one bad decision in a mile long string of them.” Bill lurched toward Ronny, arms going out wide and bird-like. His infuriating air of playful mystery and indifference lifted, and for a moment, Ponyboy was seeing Bill. He moved without puppetting himself, more manic, more alive. It startled Pony into taking a half-step away from him; Bill was real, and he was mad. “You cast me aside, you sell half the land– our land!-- you pick up a stray,” Bill continued, pointing a finger at Ponyboy, “Just who are you tryna punish?”

“You think any of what I do is about punishment?” Ronny snapped, and his fist did rise in a momentary threat, but it must have been too much for his shriveled lungs. His knee almost buckled as he doubled over wheezing. Ponyboy lifted a hand, but he didn’t step forward. Ronny wouldn’t appreciate his help.

I can’t stand for this debate to go on all day, Pony cursed. That alone motivated him to clear his throat, “I can go with you, sir.”

“No,” Ronny popped up with his knuckles rubbing over his sternum. He looked pained, and it wasn’t clear if the situation or his chest was the primary stressor. “No, you oughta stay here.”

Ponyboy was ready to debate with his uncle, feeling like he had proved himself useful and trustworthy time and time again, but he saw Ronny’s eyes flick critically over to Bill, and he realized it wasn’t his trust under fire. Ronny didn't want to leave Bill alone on the farm.

He bit back a groan. If Bill wasn’t going to go with Ronny, and Ronny wasn’t going to let Pony come, then…

“Bill can take another bucket over to the well with me, if he don’t mind. Might be good to have two sets of hands,” Ponyboy volunteered, and Ronny looked at him blankly, raised brows framing a sallow face. He tried to look determined, mask his unease as a symptom of the unabating sun and not his own hesitation. The sooner Ronny gets the tires, the sooner Bill leaves, it’s as simple as that. He could be alone with Bill. He could.

Whatever motivations his cousin had, Bill came around Pony’s left side and threw an arm over his shoulders, almost giving him a faceful of damp armpit. Ponyboy felt like a mouse in a gluetrap, heartbeat thumping up his throat– if he opened his mouth, he was sure it could be heard crackling through as if his head were a phonograph. He kept his lips shut, scribbled on a smile.

“Knew you were coming around to me, cousin,” Bill chuffed, and he readjusted his arm further so Ponyboy’s neck was in the crook of his elbow, creating one of the sweatiest headlocks Pony had ever been placed in. Bill brought a hand around and dug his knuckles awkwardly into the DX cap, twisting the fabric in tight patches that burned into his scalp. “Never a shortage of things to do around here,” he continued, “been that way for a long time.”

Uncle Ronny was giving himself new wrinkles. Ponyboy wanted to shake him as his eyes couldn’t explain that neither of them were strong enough to force Bill to go anywhere, but he seemed to land on the same reasoning eventually. He nodded, and Ponyboy shoved off Bill’s arm.

“I’ll be back soon. Go inside if you feel like yer gonna keel,” Ronny instructed. Without any further guidance, he twisted away on his unsteady knee, hobbling around the goat pen and the side garden as he gunned straight for the truck.

Bill didn’t speak until Ronny was out of sight, and Ponyboy preferred it that way. Then the truck roared, and Bill turned to him with a half-smile pinned upon his face.

“C’mon, Ponykid. Daylight’s a’wasting.” Bill turned toward the barn and marched off, leaving Pony to follow. This better be the last daylight I have to spend with him.

Bill was surprisingly serious as he set his full attention on the tractor, and Ponyboy had a chance to slip out the back of the barn to the pasture with a dandy brush. Chester was standing half-covered by a rotted loafing shed, his hindquarters sticking out as his tail swished every few seconds to fend off flies; Pony squinted at one of the support beams and wondered how many heavy rains it had left before crumbling.

Chester stomped as he approached, dry grass crackling under his heavy hooves, and Ponyboy started talking. He hoped Chester would realize he was the one person left on the farm who treated him with kindness and thus choose to not kick him. He didn’t think he could jump out of the way in time to avoid a broken rib, and his lungs were not fit enough to support him through such an injury.

“Old boy, it’s just me,” Pony called from a few feet away. He glanced down and noticed his hooves did looked neat, polished and shapely. So Bill can do something right, at least, he thought, then stopped giving his cousin any further credit. “I wish I got a carrot or somethin’ for you, but I just got me and a brush, if you ain’t minding.” 

He rounded the corner and was met with a snort, and Ponyboy lingered at the opening, debating whether he should squeeze in next to the weary horse or keep his distance. If Chester was in a stormy mood, he could pin him against the tin wall, and then he would really be in trouble. 

“Don’t dare do anything that’s gotta make me call for Bill, ya hear?” He muttered as he stretched an arm out and let his hand rest on the top of Chester’s hindquarters, testing the horse’s patience. The muscle twitched beneath him, and Chester swung his tail with a little more force so gnarled white ropes of his coarse hair slapped against his fingers, but he didn’t kick.

Ponyboy thought he knew the horse well enough to discern a begrudging acceptance from a warning, and he slid alongside Chester and took the brush to his coat in earnest.

They must have let him out the day prior, when the paddock was slathered in mud, and Chester must have rolled in the mess, because Ponyboy was scrunching up his nose as dirt cascaded from his coat with every swipe of the brush.

“You’re only troubling yourself, doin’ things like that,” Pony muttered, and Chester huffed in response, his belly expanding wide before contracting, the skin pulling tight against his ribs. After sweeping over his right side, Pony backed out of the loaf shed and kept a trailing hand over Chester’s hindquarters as he prepared to take care of his left flank.

He started to get lost in the monotony of brushing, leaning on the wall of the shed as he moved his hand in large circles. His mind drifted to a memory, much brighter than the dust he was spitting around, of Soda taking him to the stables to meet Mickey Mouse. Soda liked all horses, but he loved Mickey, and he had encouraged Ponyboy to stretch up to his big head and scratch anywhere he could reach as Soda mucked the stalls, trusting that Mickey wouldn’t do a thing to hurt his brother as he worked.

Their parents hadn’t even let Soda go back to working at the stables after he needed surgery from his tumble in the ring; they knew he wouldn’t be able to resist getting on a horse again being surrounded by them all day. They were right, but it left a hoof-shaped hole in Soda’s heart to leave, and it was one he had tried to fill with drag-racing, up until their parents…

Their parents…

Ponyboy rested his head on Chester’s side and managed a wearier sigh than the old horse could produce. His mom used to barrel-race, he knew that much from photographs and the shoebox his parents had kept beneath their bed which held ribbons in all colors, but blue most of all. He only got the chance to see it once– he had been digging for Christmas presents, not memories– but now he wondered if Darry held onto it after he moved into their room. 

Add it to the list of things I want to see when I get home, Ponyboy thought ruefully, penciling it under the malt shop and Two-Bit’s grades. The list was getting long enough to fill two summers, and he barely had half of one left.

Chester whinnied, twisting his head around to nibble unsuccessfully at his shoulder, and Ponyboy scratched his fingers over the spot until the muscle relaxed under his touch.

He could have brushed Chester for hours, gone back into the barn for a hoof pick and a comb to tackle the clods in his mane, but a roaring engine startled both of them into ill-advised movement.

“Gah!” Pony shouted as Chester backed up in a panic, landing a hoof squarely– though briefly– on Pony’s toes. He cleared the loaf shed and squealed at the noise before trotting off in all his arthritic glory to a further area of the pasture.

Ponyboy dropped to the ground inside the shed, caring less about the engine and more about his foot. He propped his leg straight out in front of him and stretched forward, poking around the toe of his boot to see if he needed to rip it off. Though hand-me-downs, the missized boots worked in his favor for once as he realized the reinforcement around the toes prevented a break. His big toe wasn’t as impressed, and when he flexed it he felt it sting and throb.

It was on the same foot as his rotten ankle, and Ponyboy wondered how many more hits it could handle before it gave up on him. 

He pushed himself up using one of the horizontal boards along the wall, and walking with halted steps to compensate for his banged-up appendage, he took in the sight of Ronny’s enormous tractor idling outside the wide-open barn doors. Squinting, he followed the yellow machine up from wheel to cabin, where Bill was waving at him with a grin. He cut the engine as soon as Pony met his eyes, and quiet ruled the farm once more.

“You want to check on the wells with me?” Bill called out to him as Pony approached, trying and failing to not let his stumble show through his gait. If Bill noticed, he did not tease him for it, just waited for Ponyboy to get closer with his answer.

“We only have one well, I thought.” Ponyboy stopped a few paces from the tractor, staying clear of its huge wheels. 

“Pshaw, there’s two alright– now, I ain’t saying they both work, but there’s a second one on all this land.” Bill waved out at the property, and Pony followed his hand to sweep across the crops. He knew about the well as far as he had been forbidden from going there. 

It was a few days into Pony’s stay when Uncle Ronny took him to the back acres, and Ponyboy had noticed a large swatch of land untouched by tools or crops. He had tried to ask about it, but Ronny shut down, mumbled something about the old well and staying away from it, then smacked Pony when he failed to tear his eyes from the divot in the horizon. It was one of a hundred microlessons, and far less important to dwell on than other matters, like trying to get back to his brothers.

“I knew that,” Pony mumbled, conceding none of his turmoil.

“Sure you did,” Bill scoffed cheerily, “then how about it?”

The answer was he shouldn’t, because Ronny had forbidden it, and hanging around Bill was worse than laying down in a field of prickers for all it did to his nerves. He shouldn’t, because his foot hurt to walk on without even entertaining the thought of running, and the hens still needed water, and Bill had that look on his face, like his truth was rippling under the skin of his cheeks and forehead trying to tear out of the grinning mask he wore– he shouldn’t, he knew, it was no good.

“Sure, nothin’ better to do,” Ponyboy said, and he hauled himself up the side of the tractor and into the cab, sitting on the end of the cushioned bench seat.

What am I doing? He scolded himself, but even as he refused to look over at this cousin, he knew why he had chosen to join him. Bill was a liar, and a creep, but he wasn’t wrong about Ronny hiding something from him. Maybe something unforgivable. He thought of a smiling boy with curls, his arms full of goat, and a finger of dread traced over his spine. Then, there’s George. 

“You’re full of surprises,” Bill chuckled, and Pony crossed his arms over his chest, sneaking a glance at Bill while keeping his head straight toward the path ahead. Bill seemed… pleased. Ponyboy suppressed a shiver.

And you’re full of shit, Ponyboy retorted in the safety of his mind.

The tractor was hulking in size, but housed an outdated engine, and though it rolled through the fields at a crawl, the crops grew sparse far too quickly given how much property they had left to cover. Bill began to hum, and Ponyboy recognized it as a Hank Williams song, one of his bigger hits, and therefore harder to avoid hearing on the radio. “Move It On Over”. Between Stravinsky on cassette and his butchered muttering of the line the big dog’s moving in, Ponyboy thought Bill’s greatest sin might just be his music taste.

Ponyboy was bothered by the tune, but he preferred it to absolute silence, and he definitely would take it over a fumbling conversation that played out like a game of chess. He stared out of the cab’s windshield and inhaled the country air through his one working nostril, tapping his fingers on his arms. His letter stuck out of his jeans pocket, crinkling when he shifted his legs, but he didn’t want to fold it in half in order to make it fit. He was trying to keep the envelope neat, treat it like the precious hope it was.

He glanced at Bill again, who refused to leave “Move It On Over” and kept warbling through the ending chorus as a human-shaped scratched record. He was, and Ponyboy didn’t think it was wrong to say, kind of a freak. A freak who knew his brothers were Darry and Soda. Who knew about Johnny. Or at least, he knew their names. Ponyboy felt himself grow clammy, wondering what else he might have let slip while he was asleep, or worse to consider, how Bill must have watched him sleep to hear those names pass his lips.

“We’re here!” Bill announced, and he cut the engine and tucked the key in the same front pocket he had concealed the letter in. Ponyboy’s eyebrow twitched– there was no one around for miles, but he still felt he had to take the key with him? Ponyboy clambered off the tractor with hesitant steps, in part because of his banged-up foot and in part because he didn’t trust Bill to not drive off without him.

They approached the well, and Ponyboy’s boots crunched over a build up of weeds and old corn husks. Without any preamble, Bill started to orate the farm’s history as faithfully as any tour guide. “Y’know, Pop’s father snatched up all this land in 1889– he was dirtpoor, twenties, married the first woman he ever laid eyes on, so the story goes– and he started with, oh, three-hundred acres.”

“Three-hundred?” Ponyboy interjected, thinking back to the deed he found with two-hundred-and-forty acres claimed before the sale that settled them onto a measly forty.

“Three-hundred,” Bill confirmed, stepping up to the well and walking around its large opening while Ponyboy lingered a few yards away. “Wasn’t hard to afford, even for an indigent like gramps, see, ‘cause they just started letting folks take it all away from the Indians.”

For as well as he did in school, Ponyboy’s understanding of history focused more on cowboys and outlaws than anything else. Darry was the one who could spend a few hours of the week reading about a war he’d never heard of or a country he’d never see; Ponyboy lived in the real world, he preferred to read books that took him out of it for as long as they could. He didn’t know what Bill knew about Indians, or tribal land. Ponyboy thought of a boy in middle school who used to talk about being Muscogee, but he couldn’t remember seeing him at William Rogers High School, nor what significance it held to be part of a tribe.

“How’dyamean?” Pony asked, “Who took the land from them?”

Bill turned his head around like Pony had said something funny. “Oh, we did, kid. We all did. Just took and took and took, ‘cause we wanted it, and if someone’s in the way of what you want, you don’t let them stop you. That’s human nature, see.” 

Bill stooped to gather some stones, and he threw them one after another down the well. Pony waited for a splash that never came– he heard only the echoing ricochets of stone against concrete, striking back and forth until no sound returned to the surface. Bill tossed a rock, and Ponyboy caught it in the palm of his right hand. Bill tilted his chin, inviting him to walk closer to the well.

“We came and we forced them off, and then we kept coming– push west! Always west. And thousands of men lined up one morning and took off at the sound of a bullet and gobbled up the land in the name of expansion, and settlement, and blah,” Bill whipped a rock with more force, and it cracked into the concrete, “blah, blah. It was ours. Or gramps’, I guess to start.”

Ponyboy crept up toward the well with his rock held against his chest, as if to use it to protect his heart, or to use himself to protect the stone. He kept a couple paces away from the edge, but he leaned forward just enough to see the well appeared bottomless, and while there was no water, he noticed pipes jutting across at random intervals all along down the concrete. 

Bill chucked another rock, and Ponyboy watched it strike against the pipes and the concrete in a life-size version of pinball. “Then, of course, Pops takes over when he’s young, and he’s all alone, ‘cause his folks and his brothers all died of the Spanish flu, while he gets spared to take over three-hundred acres. And– are you ever gonna throw that, or what?”

Ponyboy pulled his eyes away from the well to find Bill staring at the rock in his hand like it had offended him. “Oh,” Pony said absently, more engaged by the history lesson than he would care to admit. “Yeah.”

He wound his arm back and launched the rock down into the well, and it struck the first pipe with such force it popped back up, almost escaping, before gravity took over and sent it down, clattering on its way to the bottom. Ponyboy couldn’t help but shuffle a little closer, trying to follow it further, witness its end– even a few feet from the edge, craning his neck, it eluded him. 

This well was exponentially deeper than the well Ponyboy was used to drawing from– it was clear from its network of pipes that it had serviced a far greater percentage of the farmland with irrigation. Bill’s exasperation over Ronny refusing to repair it seemed justified, as the land would be able to thrive with another working well.

Bill kept on: “He sells sixty acres off the cuff– can’t fault him for that, really– and he uses that money to pay off the tractor, and hire enough migrants to get through that first solo harvest.”

Ponyboy scanned the ground for another rock to throw, and he reached down and collected a few in his palm, the edge of a sharp one digging into tender skin as he squeezed them into his fist.

“He did it all himself for close to ten years before he went to Tulsa and met… my mother. Then, y’know, I entered the picture.”

Ponyboy felt compelled to launch the cluster of rocks all at once, and he stepped forward and whipped them into the well, inciting a cacophony of pings and clacks that got Bill to chuckle. 

“How’d Ronny meet my aunt?” Ponyboy asked, fishing for details he could try and verify with Darlene’s journal. 

Bill’s voice got steely, “I don’t want to talk about her.”

The shutdown took Ponyboy off guard; he had almost forgotten who he was dealing with. Bill needed things his way. He wasn’t telling the story for Ponyboy– somehow, it was self-serving in nature. Maybe he just wants to listen to himself monologue. He flipped up another rock and threw it wildly to cover his dejection.

“When I was twelve, Pops sent me off to boarding school to learn ‘more than he ever could afford’, or that’s what he told me,” Bill resumed as if Ponyboy hadn’t upset him, and it wasn’t lost on Pony that he skipped over the story of his own life, his childhood. George. “Came back at twenty, and we became better than father and son– we were partners. Y’know, the last few years, we’d been running this place like a dream.”

Bill began to pace around the circular opening, toe to heel like a tightrope walker, his arms rising parallel to the ground. “Good harvests, thanks to good, rainy seasons.”

He paused directly across from Ponyboy, and pointed at him. “But Oklahoma loves a drought. So last year, drought comes, and I’m thinking it’s about time we fixed this well before we lose half of our crops.” Bill chuckled dryly, shaking his head with his disapproval of the past. “The old man didn’t like that idea. Liked it even less with a fifth of whiskey under his belt.”

Bill sighed, and tilted his chin toward the sky, letting sunlight wash over his face and force his eyes closed. Without warning, he slipped the tractor keys out of his front pocket and dangled them above the well– Ponyboy stepped forward, an instinct to act, as if he could possibly move fast enough to catch them if Bill let them go.

In doing so, Ponyboy got right up to the lip of the well, but he didn’t want to look down, not yet, not until Bill retreated. “Forget like or don’t like, Ronny’s gonna hate you if you lose those keys,” Pony cautioned.

And he’ll hate me for letting it happen.

Bill grinned with a slow curl of his lips, inexplicably pleased by the reaction.“Relax, cousin, I’m teasing. I wouldn’t– oops!” He let the keys go, and Ponyboy threw an arm out but he knew they were gone, and he would be stuck in the middle of the backacres with his freak cousin and later, if he got to later, his uncle’s frustrations and– “You should see your face!”

Ponyboy blinked, and then Bill was shaking the keys across the way, having dropped them with his left hand and caught them with his right. Pony had been so focused on the keys, he hadn’t even seen Bill move to line up his trick.

“Ponykid, it’s like, you’re so trusting, you don’t even question the bad stuff. You just expect it to happen. I don’t know whether to tell you to lighten up or grow up.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Ponyboy bit out. He wasn’t a kid, or a guinea pig, or an insect in a jar, a thing to be studied and looked down upon. Bill dropped the keys back into the front pocket and smoothed his palm over the denim, laying it flat. He kept the hand on his chest, humming.

“I just don’t know what to make of you, that’s all,” Bill confessed. “I just mean– aren’t you ever gonna look down?”

Ponyboy risked taking his eyes off of Bill and leaned over the empty well, and he peered through the tangle of rusted pipes to see there was a bottom, and at the bottom was a pile of cracked, sullied, disturbingly white–

“Bones,” Ponyboy whispered, and he forced himself not to scramble back. There was a shallow layer of skeletal remains building up from the base of the well, and it seemed the recent rain had filled it in a few inches, making a handful of the smallest bones float.

He pushed past his malaise to study them– to float, he reasoned, they must be hollow, and therefore they must belong to birds. He could see a skull leaned against a lower pipe, half-submerged, and it was too small to be human. A raccoon, maybe. Squinting, picking over the remains, he saw nothing larger than his hand. They were all animal bones from what he could tell, and so he told the buzzing in the middle of his brain to stop, asked his heart to please end its pounding.

“See, if an animal falls in, they got no chance of getting out. A few of the craftier ones, they can climb up pipe by pipe until about halfway– then there’s that gap, four feet or so, to the next pipe– they get stuck.”

Ponyboy wasn’t surprised that animals had wandered off and fallen in: he’d fished his fair share of critters out of the working well. Frogs, mostly, trying to take advantage of a deep water source, but every now and then it would be a different creature, a furrier one, and if he didn’t get to them in time, he would be tasked with dragging out their limp, soggy bodies.

Ronny always threw them away, double bagged and discarded. Ponyboy didn’t tell his uncle, but when it fell on him to dispose of the corpses, he found himself digging holes around the back of the tool shed and burying them in shallow graves. Stunts like that attracted predators, coyotes and possums, spelling bad news for the hens. But he kept doing it. Kept digging.

Ponyboy was entranced by the bones, and he failed to notice two things: one, he was leaning closer, and closer, trying to determine how many species were among the dead, and more fatally, that Bill had crept around the mouth of the well until he was almost shoulder to shoulder with Pony.

“Ponyboy,” Bill said in a low voice– just his name, just shy of his ear– but it was enough to startle Pony into flinching, his bad ankle giving out as his weight shifted, his other foot catching on nothing, on air, on the opening of the well, and he was going to die, he was going to die, he shut his eyes and then there was a hand on his arm.

A hand. Bill’s hand. In an instant, his near-tumble was halted, and he was yanked back onto solid ground. Ponyboy fell away from the well straight onto his ass, road-burned elbows stinging as they thudded against the dirt a beat later. Bill stood there, his hand still stretched out, grasping around the space he had just pulled Ponyboy out of.

Bill… saved my life, Ponyboy thought in a mixture of abject horror, awe, and above all else, surprise. Whatever his own feelings, one look at Bill’s face revealed the older man was far more surprised by the interaction. When he blinked his wide eyes and caught Ponyboy looking, his features dropped into a careful display of indifference again, but Pony wouldn’t forget the bruising hand that had latched onto his elbow.

A reflex, maybe, nothing more. Ponyboy had thought Bill would be more likely to push him into a well than save him from teetering into one, and now he didn’t know what to think.

“Thanks,” Pony gasped out. His lungs were heavy in his chest. He wanted to get into bed and forget they had ever ventured to the old well.

“You oughta be more careful,” Bill chastised, “stay aware of where the fuck you’re standing.” He probably meant his words to bite with anger, but they came out sounding sideways, fury running parallel without touching. A slipping mask, a bad actor.

Ponyboy pushed himself to standing, then brushed his hands along his jeans to get the dirt off his palms. He patted down his pockets, noting more kicked up dust, and noticing more prominently what wasn’t there.

“Fuck,” Ponyboy hissed, and he risked looking into the well again to see his letter had fluttered all the way down and sat dully atop the water, growing soggy and limp and soon to disappear entirely. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Bill looked too, and the sight of the ruined letter helped restore his face to its usual portrait of manic distaste. He snorted, and Pony saw his lip twitch up. “Ain’t that a bitch, huh? You gonna go down and get it?”

Ponyboy shot him a withering glare. “Fuck off, Bill.”

“You just learn that word or something?”

Ponyboy groaned, and unable to stand being around the cursed well or his cousin any longer, turned on his heel and began to stomp away. He should have just folded the letter in half. He shouldn’t have cared if it got creased, as long as the sentences were legible, as long as he could still send it home. 

Worse, he couldn’t even remember what he had said in the letter. Couldn’t remember his own words, the thoughts he had wanted to express to his brothers. Did that mean he was forgetting them– or losing himself? He thought about running again, his bad ankle be damned, even if he knew there was no getting out of all that land on foot.

Ponyboy stalked over to the tractor and leaned against one of the massive wheels, angled away from Bill’s line of sight. He forced air in and out of his lungs, reminding his body he wasn’t actually breathing through a straw, and his mind was making things worse than the reality. He closed his eyes and tried to think of his family. They came in flashes– Darry at the sink doing dishes, Soda losing to Steve arm wrestling, Darry dozing off in Dad’s old recliner, Soda popping up from the ground after a failed flip– but then came flashes of Ronny holding the cornbread out to him, and Bill spraying him with mud, bones at the bottom of a well, a photograph of a beaming, missing boy, his aunt’s diary, parasitic, and all comfort was buried once more.

Frustrated, he scrunched his eyebrows and tried harder, so hard he almost missed the sound of a choking engine and a continuous horn. Ponyboy shoved off of the tire and stepped further into the barren field, and pulling his DX cap lower over his eyes to block the sun, he could make out his uncle’s green farm truck tearing up dust on its way to where he stood by the tractor.

“What in the hell…” Ponyboy wondered aloud as Bill walked up behind him muttering something more colorful. They watched as the truck skidded up, jerking to a dead stop, before Ronny popped out from the driver’s seat with a throaty yell.

“Ponyboy!” Ronny hollered, and Pony’s spine popped as he straightened. “Git in the truck!”

Sir, yes, sir, Ponyboy thought numbly, not willing to speak and make himself more of a target. He was in trouble, he knew, for breaking Ronny’s rule about the abandoned well and for letting Bill take the tractor. He wondered if Ronny would ever treat him kindly again, with the gruff pats to his shoulder and the small shakes to his knee, or if he would escalate discipline from fists to his cane.

Ponyboy braced himself as he passed Ronny, waiting for a cuff that never landed. Ronny’s eyes were locked onto Bill, and Ponyboy took that to be the gift it was and hurried into the passenger seat of the truck.

He watched Ronny and Bill go at it with the same detachment as watching a movie. It was surreal to consider that a few months ago, he hadn’t known of Ronny’s existence, and a few days ago he had never heard of Bill, and now he was growing used to their fights, their cruelties, their secrets. Pony pushed at his head, realizing the cottony feeling in his brain still hadn’t gone away. But this time, he wasn’t so sure it was a cold causing the issue. No, it reminded him of the days, weeks, months after Johnny’s death. The fog of grief.

It had taken almost a year to feel like he could see a way out, truly out, a world where the pain wasn’t impossible to hold. He didn’t think he could live his whole life going in and out of it, getting better just to get worse, just to have life kick him down in new and inventive ways. Kill his best friend. Send him to an isolated farmhouse. Make him lose his mind.

Maybe there’s somethin’ wrong with me and no one can fix it, Ponyboy considered, and there was no one around to tell him that wasn’t true. 

He stared at the arguing men. There was nothing physical going on, they kept roughly five feet of space between their wide-swinging arms, but it was heated nonetheless. Pony watched spittle fly off of Ronny’s lips and hit the ground in a foamy splatter, and while he couldn’t make out most of the conversation, he did hear his name shouted. Then he heard George’s name shouted. 

Bill threw his hands up at one point and clambered onto the tractor, and Ronny didn’t move until he had the engine started and the machinery turned toward the buildings. 

Time slipped as Ronny came into the truck fuming in silence, and Pony thought he should ask about the tires, but he couldn’t get the words to his lips. A few blinks later, and they were parked outside the farmhouse. Ronny was telling him something. He ought to listen, he really ought to, but he didn’t think it would matter.

Bill’s a liar, and Ronny’s a liar, and I’m a liar, it all just runs in the family. Some family. Maybe Soda and Darry take after all the good and I’m where I’m supposed to be, miles away from anyone I could hurt, ‘cause I’m bad. 

Ronny left him in the truck and started for the barn. Ponyboy didn’t mind. Being alone was good, he realized. He was supposed to be alone. He was born last because Soda and Darry already had each other by then, thus he was born as a spare part. The spare brother. 

That’s not true, idiot, you know that’s not true. He had considered himself a burden before, but never a spare, an expendable. He was loved. He was loved. He was staring at the bottom of a well filled with bones and seeing only his ruined letter. He was alone.

Ponyboy groaned, and he leaned forward in his seat until his head knocked against the glovebox. It popped open from the hit, and a stack of papers came crashing out, scattering along the footwell. Great, nice going, PB. He reached down, minding his skull with the hanging glovebox, and began to draw the papers into a pile. He glanced at the top page as he shuffled them together and proceeded to drop the entire stack as he saw his own eyes looking back at him. 

Pony snatched the page and scurried back in his seat, scanning the bolded letters on top spelling WANTED, and directly underneath there was a photo of Ponyboy next to a photo of Johnny, their names typed out along with their birthdays, hair color and eye color. 

He didn’t need to read the rest of the poster to know it was the BOLO issued for them following Bob’s murder– a murder which had occurred almost a year ago, and far before Uncle Ronny had entered into his life. On a hunch, Ponyboy flipped the page underneath that, and it was the newspaper article titled “Hoods turned Heroes!” which detailed the church rescue… and Darry’s custody battle.

“No, no, no…” Ponyboy muttered, flipping another page to find his school transcript, another to find his final essay for Mr. Syme, another, a copy of his birth certificate, the obituary for his parents, his school picture, and more, and more, so much of his life filed away in a glovebox he had never thought to open.

Bill’s a liar, but he was telling some kind of truth, Ponyboy realized. He had questions, but for a moment, with the story of his time on earth printed out neatly and held on his lap, he thought there was only one worth asking.

How can I use this to get me home?