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It wasn't often that Steve Randle was at the Curtis house without Soda, but here he was, waiting to eat dinner with the other two Curtis brothers. Soda was working the closing shift, so he wouldn’t be home until later– Steve knew he ought to have picked up the shift with his friend, but Soda had waved him off when he’d offered, and now he was sitting on the couch as Darry cooked dinner. “Ponyboy, go get the mail,” Darry directed, stirring the pot of pasta bubbling on the stove.
Pony rolled his eyes behind Darry’s back but got up, heading outside to the mailbox. When he got back, he was leafing through the envelopes. “Junk, junk, electric bill, and… something for Soda?” Steve’s eyebrows raised. Soda never got mail, but when he did, it was rarely good. Come to think about it, the last thing that Soda had got in the mail was the returned letter from Sandy.
Pony placed the other envelopes on the table in front of Steve, standing there and staring at the one for Soda. He gave Steve a sideways glance, which was more consideration than he usually got. “I know I shouldn’t open it, but…”
Steve shrugged, patting the spot on the couch next to him. “C'mon, sit. He won't care if we open it.” Flipping the letter over and slitting it open, Pony sat down next to Steve. He slid the paper out, unfolding it slowly.
“Fancy,” Steve commented, glancing at the thick, heavy paper. Pony nodded absentmindedly, already scanning the text inside. The longer he read, though, the more his face fell. By the time he finished the letter, he was pale as a ghost. Steve felt a lump of cold, sour dread settle in the pit of his stomach. “Pony? What’s it say?” The boy took a minute to collect himself before answering.
“He got drafted. They want him to join the army and go fight against Vietnam.”
Everything stopped, even the quiet clatter of Darry in the kitchen. For a second, Steve let himself believe he’d heard Ponyboy wrong, that it was a joke or something. He gave a hollow little laugh. “What?”
The look that Pony gave him was uncharacteristically vulnerable, eyes wide and wet. Steve had never seen the kid look so scared and sad before. “He's gonna go to war, Steve.”
Jesus Christ.
Pony placed the letter gently on the sofa, standing shakily and running to the kitchen, leaving Steve alone with his thoughts and the offending paper. Of course he had to pick it up and read it himself. He couldn't help it.
To Sodapop Patrick Curtis
731 N. St. Louis Ave
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74106
Greeting:
You are hereby ordered for induction into the Armed Forces of the United States, and to report …
He didn't read any more. He didn't need to. The letter fell unbidden to the coffee table as Steve stood and made for the door. He wasn't sure where he was going, just that he needed to be somewhere else. From the kitchen he could hear Darry speaking lowly to Ponyboy; the poor kid was in tears, by the sounds of things. Steve turned away, pushing open the front door and taking off down the street.
When he made it back to his father’s house, the red flag on their mailbox waved perkily at him, and his stomach turned. What could he do but look? And as he pulled that familiarly heavy envelope from the metal box, the inscription on the front made his heart drop.
Selective Service System
Order to Report For Induction
To: Steven Jacob Randle
He didn't open it. He couldn't bring himself to do it alone, and he couldn't open it with his father, so he walked himself back to the Curtis house. He must have been dragging his feet, because by the time he got there, Soda was home.
All three of the brothers were in the living room when he entered the house. Pony was still crying, tucked up in Soda’s lap like he was still four years old with a scraped knee that wanted bandaging, while his older brothers sat on the couch next to each other. Darry was the first to look up at Steve, motioning for him to come over. “You heard what’s goin’ on?” Wordlessly, Steve held up his own letter, and Darry’s eyebrow raised, ever so slightly. “Go on, you can open it with us.”
He did, and it said the exact same thing that Soda’s had, and Steve started feeling like he was going to have to sit down, so he did. It wasn't until a few moments later that he realised Soda had pulled him into the little dogpile on the couch. He looked up at him, and his friend gave him a sad little smile. “At least we're gonna go together?”
Steve dropped his head onto Soda’s shoulder, closing his eyes. He wouldn't cry, he really wouldn't. “Yeah. At least we’ll be together.”
The days leading up to when they had to report for induction were both the longest and shortest days Steve had ever lived through. He spent most of them trying to figure out how he felt about the draft. Each time he thought about it, he had to swallow down the anxiety that bubbled up in his stomach like acid. As a kid, he’d dreamed of being a soldier and fighting for his country, brandishing a broken branch gun at some imaginary villain to vanquish… so why was he this scared now that he was getting the chance?
Soda, for his part, was trying to keep a brave face. Steve had an inkling that it was for Ponyboy's sake, and his guess was confirmed when he stepped out onto the porch of the Curtis house the night before they were set to leave to find the boy staring off into space, half-smoked cigarette in hand. That wasn’t a good sign. Sodapop never smoked unless he wanted to look tuff or he needed calming down.
“Hey.” Steve cringed a bit as his voice split the quiet night, and Soda looked up, wiping at his eyes.
“Oh. Hey, Steve.” He gave a small smile, lifting his cigarette with shaky hands to take a drag. “You holdin' up OK?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Steve nodded at the cigarette, and Soda glanced at it sheepishly.
“Aw, it's nothing. Just wanted one tonight.” He brought it to his lips again and watched the smoke curl into the darkness before he spoke. “Stevie… do you wanna go and fight? Are you ready, I mean?” The nickname didn't go unnoticed– Soda hadn't called him that since they were kids.
Steve swallowed hard. “I don't got much of a choice, do I?”
“But if you did?” Soda was looking directly at him now, and he could see how bright the boy’s eyes were with tears. “What then, Stevie?”
“Of course I wouldn’t go fight. You think I wanna be part of this war any more than you do?” Steve slumped against the porch railing next to Soda with a sigh. “I think it’s funny how we used to dream about bein’ soldiers, and now here we both are, about to be ‘em, and we’re scared as shit.”
Soda leaned his head on Steve’s shoulder, tapping the ashes off his cigarette. “I was never made for fightin’.”
“I know, Soda.” Steve took the cigarette from his hand. Soda didn’t resist, just let him, watching as he took a long drag. “We can’t get outta this, though, we both know that. So we’re just gonna have to get through it together, savvy? I heard some soldiers never even get called to the frontlines. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Yeah, maybe we’ll get lucky,” Soda echoed. He wiped at his eyes again and tried to smile. “We’ll make it through OK, won’t we, Stevie?”
Steve nodded, even as his heart sank at the words, knowing he couldn’t promise that. “‘Course we will.”
The following day was a blur of hectic activity. Steve spent more time at the Curtises than at his own house– his father hadn’t been awake when he had to leave, so he just left. No point in waking him. The whole gang had come to see him and Soda off, though, which had simultaneously warmed his heart and made it very hard for him to keep from crying.
When the two of them had finally bid everyone goodbye and stepped into the hall they’d been told to go to, Soda gave Steve a quick, hopeless glance full of fear. Steve knocked his shoulder against his friend’s in a gesture he hoped would be comforting. “We just gotta stick together, yeah?”
Soda took a deep breath. “Yeah.”
They both got in line behind a winding queue of boys and men. There were some familiar faces, some unfamiliar, and one auburn head a few people in front of them caught Steve’s attention. “...Rodger?” he called out, and the boy’s head snapped up.
“Steve? Soda?” He ducked out of line and came to stand with the two. Rodger was one of Dallas’ friends, quiet, not one for hanging around with the gang. He was a medical student, if Steve remembered correctly, not quite a Soc but still a few rungs higher up that social ladder than anyone else from the East side. “You both got picked for the draft?”
Steve nodded. “You too? You didn't strike me as the soldier type.”
Rodger tried to smile, but it came off as more of a grimace. “There's always a need for doctors on the battlefield; I guess medical students count now, too.”
“At least we know we’ll be in good hands if somethin' happens,” Soda added, with no shortage of false humor.
Rodger gave a small nod at that. “Then I hope we get deployed to the same base. I’d feel better knowing you all were around.”
The boys fell silent after that. No one really felt like making small talk as the line crept forward. Eventually they reached the front and received their deployment instructions– matching, all three of them. California for basic training, then Vietnam. There was still a chance that none of them would end up leaving the country, and Soda said as much once they were out of earshot of the military personnel scattered around the room. “Maybe it'll just turn out to be a nice little vacation down in California, huh? We’ll be back before we know it, a little bit suntanned and a lot stronger.” He grinned, but it was too wide and full of nervous energy.
Rodger only played with his shirtsleeve, but Steve tried to grin back. “I sure hope you're right, Soda.”
It turned out the flight to California was all of their first times being on an airplane. If it hadn't been an army aircraft stuffed full with other boys being shipped off to the base in California, half scared to death and half champing at the bit to march into battle, Steve decided he might have enjoyed the experience.
Unsurprisingly, Soda got a real kick out of it, going on about how tuff it was and how he couldn't wait to tell Ponyboy as Rodger clung, white-knuckled, to his seat. “I can't wait until we’re on the other side of this,” he said softly, so only Soda and Steve could hear him.
Soda gave him a sympathetic smile. “Aw, it’ll be alright, Rodg. They can’t make us do much worse than this today.”
Well, that might have been true in Rodger’s case– the minute that they touched down at the base, he was whisked away to wherever they wanted the doctors to go without so much as a chance to say goodbye. The rest of the boys were escorted to an area for them to prepare for their training. It had all seemed pretty standard and OK until they’d heard the telltale buzzing sound of a pair of electric clippers.
Soda gave Steve a panicked look, pawing protectively at his blond tresses. “You think they’re gonna…?” He didn’t finish his sentence, craning his neck to see what the boys at the front of the line were going through. It wasn’t long before he and Steve were up there having a set of electric clippers run over their scalps. When they were done, Soda looked back mournfully at the golden curls scattered across the floor. “My tuff hair,” he lamented, rubbing a hand over his freshly-buzzed head.
Steve laughed, not because anything was particularly funny, but because he didn’t know what else to do. His friend scarcely looked like the Sodapop he knew. It wasn’t just the hair, though Steve figured that had probably been the boy’s breaking point. There was something that had changed in him, Steve could see it somewhere in his brown eyes. He had an odd, manic look about him that hadn’t been there before. It gave Steve a weird anticipatory feeling in the pit of his stomach, making his skin crawl. He wasn’t exactly excited in the first place, but now he really didn’t feel like anything good was going to happen in California.
In a way, he was right, only nothing much happened at all. The boys got used to waking up at what was affectionately dubbed the crack of ass, to drill sergeants barking orders at them and endless days of training that were always followed by mediocre meals and restless sleep. That meant it was almost refreshing when one morning, their sergeant allowed them to sleep in.
Steve woke feeling better than he had in days, even looking forward a little bit to the start of their daily routine. His good mood lasted all the way through breakfast, which was eggs: better than what they had grown accustomed to. Even Soda seemed to be in a more pleasant state of being, the light behind his eyes more like the familiar flicker of his old joy as he wolfed down his eggs. They weren’t great– honestly, they were so overcooked that they were green– but Soda seemed happy enough to be eating food with a little bit of colour again. “You think Pony puts food dye in his eggs when he’s missin’ me?”
Steve sighed. They’d received letters from home a few days ago: Soda had gotten one from Darry, one from Pony, and a short one from Johnny that had a note from Two-Bit attached. Steve had heard from Johnny and Two-Bit, as well as a short message from his dad, but not Darry or Pony. He wasn’t exactly upset about it, only Soda wouldn’t shut up about how much Pony missed him. “Sure, I bet he can’t wait for you to get home and fix him a purple omelet.”
He’d meant it to be sarcastic, but Soda’s eyes lit up at the idea. “Golly, Steve, you’re a genius! I’d never have thought of purple!”
Steve rolled his eyes. “That wasn’t a suggestion.” Soda pulled a face at him and stole some eggs from his plate in retaliation. Steve had just opened his mouth to complain when he was cut off by their sergeant, who stood in the middle of the room, expression grim and apologetic. He idly wondered why for a moment before it occurred to him. This was why they’d been allowed to sleep in, why they got a half-decent meal for once.
They were being sent out.
The rest of the day was rough, what with everyone being chock-full of nerves. Soda had finally shut up, but Steve desperately wished that he’d keep talking. Even as they made their way to the airstrip, he remained silent.
“Flyin’ is still pretty damn tuff,” Steve tried, but Soda had nothing to say, eyes fixed on some spot on the aircraft’s wall. He stayed that way until they landed an awfully long time later, when he finally looked at Steve. His eyes were big and scared, so wide and brown they almost looked like they belonged to a fawn.
“Stevie, I wanna go home,” he whispered, and Steve knew that he meant it, but it was too late. They were really in the thick of it now.
Being on the frontlines was exhausting, but Soda had always been an enthusiastic person, and even the war couldn’t knock that out of him. Each time he was called to fight, he loped into battle with that same dogged energy he used to throw into play-fighting with Steve on the living room floor. His smile, though… that was what had changed. The sunny, bright grin he’d always worn had faded and tarnished into a grim half-smile that quirked the corners of his mouth in a way Steve didn't recognise. That smile made Steve just as uncomfortable as the manic look had.
To be fair, though, he wasn’t faring much better. Steve had always been a dab hand with a broken bottle or in a fistfight, but he wasn’t anywhere near prepared for the physical and mental weight that a gun carried. It wears you out, going out day after day, only ordered to hunt and find and kill. Steve could feel it, heavy in his bones every night when he collapsed into his bunk, and he saw it in Soda too: the heavy hand with which he wrote letters to his brothers, the smaller and smaller portions he ate at mealtimes, and the way he squeezed his eyes tight shut whenever he pulled the trigger on his gun.
Not that it gave him any less deadly aim.
Really, the consolation for the two of them was that they were together. Steve wasn’t sure that he could have stomached everything alone. With Soda, he at least had a friend to joke with when they felt like it and confide in when they didn’t. When they could, the two of them would go out together on patrols and into combat, ready to have each other’s backs and make things feel a little less lonely and scary– at least, as much as that could be done for something as terrible as this.
They got into a sort of routine, after a while: go out together, do what they had to, and take their sweet time coming back. It was on one of those long trips back to base camp that Steve remembered something that he’d been wanting to tell Soda. It was rather convenient, considering he’d been looking to cheer up the other boy, who hadn’t been in a particularly talkative mood.
“I got a letter from Pony the other day.”
Soda looked up from the rock he’d been kicking in surprise. “What? Pony wrote to you?”
“Mm-hm,” Steve responded, hands in his pockets. “And you know what? He said he missed me. I’ll show you when we get back.”
His friend's jaw dropped as he leaned down to scoop up his rock. “I don't believe it! Hell, that kid acts like he hates you most of the time.”
“Yeah, well, sounds like an act is really all it is.” Steve grinned, feeling a little cheered.
Soda chuckled. “Maybe he just misses having someone other than Darry to kvetch about.”
“Hey!” Steve shoved Soda playfully. The blond boy tossed his rock lightly in Steve's general direction, but he ducked to pick up his own– considerably larger– and lob it back at Soda. His aim went wide, into the brush near Soda’s right side, but instead of the gentle crunch of crushed leaves, the rock landed with a cold metal clank.
It only took a split second for Steve to realise what he’d hit, and run. He barely got ten paces away before the clearing exploded.
When he was able to open his eyes again, he found himself on the ground, vision swimming. Steve pushed himself up gingerly, swaying as his ears rang. Nothing broken. He definitely had a few bruises, though, and he could feel mud and debris smeared across his face. He reached up to wipe the mud off, but it was warmer than it should have been. His stomach twisted into an unpleasant knot as he brought his hand to eye level. It came away wet and red with viscera, but if he wasn't hurt… His blood ran cold. “Soda?!”
No response.
“Sodapop!” His breath started coming in gasping sobs, more and more audible as the ringing in his ears began to fade. “Fuck, Soda, answer me!” He stumbled through the demolished clearing, scanning feverishly for the boy when–
Holy mother of God.
Soda lay crumpled in a heap near the far end of the clearing, as limp and helpless as a ragdoll. For one delusional moment, Steve thought the boy’s leg was half-buried under bracken. As he got closer, meaning to help move the debris away, his eyes focused a little better and he realised what he was seeing. Soda’s right leg– could the mangled, twisted stump of flesh even be called a leg anymore?– was torn off completely from the knee down, and what was left of it… Steve doubled over, gagging on hot bile that forced its way up his throat as his body rejected the sight in front of him. He wiped his mouth, forcing his eyes back to Soda. The boy’s eyelids fluttered, not fully open, and a strangled whimper escaped his mouth.
Steve didn't need to think, he just acted. He took the prostrate boy in his arms and ran. He was faintly aware that he was in tears, and that Soda’s leg was pouring blood all over his uniform, but he didn’t have the time or capacity to care. The two of them must have made quite the spectacle, because as they approached the base, the soldier on duty let out a loud “holy shit!”. He didn’t stop Steve from entering the camp and making a beeline for the makeshift infirmary.
“Help– someone, Christ, please!”
He was swarmed with medics within seconds, but one in particular caught his eye, auburn hair standing out against skin that quickly drained of colour. Rodger. The man shoved his way through the crowd, lifting Soda from Steve’s arms in a smooth, practised motion and laying him out on an empty cot. Steve was pushed out of the infirmary by a couple of medics who had taken it upon themselves to clear the area, but he shoved right back until he stood beside Rodger. “I’m staying with him.”
His friend didn't argue, just began wrapping a tourniquet around the most intact part of the leg. “I need sterile bandages and morphine, right away!” Another medic hurried over with the necessities, passing them over. Rodger got to work as quickly as possible, carefully packing the wound to stop the bleeding further and injecting morphine with gentle hands to block the pain.
Soda whimpered again, a quiet, painful sound that turned Steve’s stomach. It didn’t sound like the Sodapop he knew, it sounded like a dog that had been hit by a car. “It’ll be OK, Sodie,” he said quietly, reaching for the boy’s hand. He squeezed it tightly, and Soda’s fingers twitched in his. Steve hoped to God that it would reassure him enough to keep him fighting.
No one left Soda’s bedside that evening. Steve elected to stay even when Rodger explained the procedure they’d be performing to trim the dead tissue and clean the wound; he wanted to give Soda something else to focus on, and so he read him the letter Pony had sent.
“Dear Steve…”
The excision wasn’t so hard to watch, but it was difficult to listen to Soda’s cries as the medics worked. Rodger kept mumbling reassurances as he cut away the necrotic tissue and flushed the wound, but his brow remained furrowed and continued to do so each time that Soda screamed out in pain. Eventually they dosed him with enough morphine that he floated off into a sort of daze, which was when Rodger fixed Steve with a hard look. “You know we’re going to have to amputate.”
Steve’s head spun, but he nodded. “I want to stay.”
Rodger let his thoughtful gaze linger on the boy a moment longer before turning to his fellow medics. “Bone saw, please.”
The procedure was quick but graphic, and Steve had to work hard not to be sick again. When it was over, Rodger turned to him, peeling off his gloves. “I’m guessing you want to stay with him?”
“Is that OK?” His voice came out smaller than he’d meant it to.
Rodger sighed. “Not technically, but I’m staying too, so…”
They set up a cot next to Soda for Steve to sleep on. He lost count of how long he stayed there, holding Soda’s hand, reading to him, talking with him when he came up out of his drug-induced haze enough to speak. Rodger came in and out, changing dressings, administering still more morphine, bringing books for Steve to read aloud. “This one is called Black Beauty. It’s about a horse, I think he’d like it.” There was one dressing change, though, where something flickered across Rodger’s face that set a pool of dread forming in Steve’s stomach.
“What is it?” He leaned forward to try and get a look, but Rodger yanked the sheet up over Soda so fast Steve had to pull back.
“It’s nothing. You don’t need to worry about it.” But his face was paler than it had been a moment ago, and he strode off quickly to speak with the lead medic, exchanging words in a low, quiet tone. Later that night, Steve pulled back the sheets on his friend’s cot to check for himself, but all he saw was a few thin red lines, almost like veins, spidering their way up the bluish-pale skin on what was left of his leg. It was only veins, he told himself. Nothing to worry about. But when Soda came out of his drugged sleep next, he tossed and turned, face red with fever.
That didn’t seem normal.
Rodger worked day and night with his fellow medics, giving Soda this and that antibiotic, trying one dressing and then another compress, but his fever wouldn’t break and those awful red lines kept dragging up his leg. They weren’t giving the boy morphine anymore, but he was delirious even without it. At night, Steve would hear him cry out– first for Ponyboy, then for Darry, and finally for his mother, begging for someone to make him feel better. Every sob sent a knife into Steve’s heart, twisting and turning the longer Soda went without any positive change.
By the time Rodger took him aside and uttered the words blood poisoning, Steve had realised of his own volition that he was watching his best friend die. After that, he barely got sleep. He didn’t leave the infirmary anymore, despite the orders of his sergeant, who threatened him with a dishonourable discharge. Steve finally blew up at him after a particularly long night. “With all due respect, sir, FUCK YOU. I’m not leaving him. Send me home, I don’t care. Just send us home together.”
All too soon he got his wish. It was a cold, grey morning when someone trying to take Soda’s vitals couldn’t find a pulse. Steve had been drowsing, Black Beauty half-open in his lap, but the clamour roused him enough for him to understand what was going on. The worst part was how helpless he felt standing there watching Rodger perform CPR, hearing the awful wet snap of Soda’s ribs breaking under the pressure, witnessing his friend step back from the bed with a shake of his head.
“Sodapop Patrick Curtis, pronounced dead at 7:01 AM, January 20th, 1968.”
They sent Steve home the next day, in a little two-seater plane meant for carrying corpses. He sat silently next to the pilot, trying not to cry, trying not to think about the fact that the same man flying the plane had unceremoniously tipped the box containing his best friend in the world into the cargo hold. They warned him that he was going to get to Tulsa before the death notice would. He didn’t say anything to that. How could he?
When the army vehicle stopped in front of the Curtis house, Steve dragged himself out and up the front steps. His hand felt like lead as he knocked on the door, even as he knew it would be unlocked. Darry answered it.
“...Steve?” His voice was full of confusion. “What are you doing here? Where’s Soda?” He scanned the porch in search of his baby brother, and Steve nearly sobbed.
“Darry, he…” His voice broke, but he’d already said enough. Darry’s face shuttered, but he didn’t yell, didn’t punch the wall, didn’t anything. He just stood there, empty, lost.
“Is Steve at the door?” Pony ran down the hall at a wild pace, eyes wide and bright. “Is Soda home too?” He craned his neck, trying to spot Soda, but his eyes fell instead on the military truck idling in the road and the conspicuous box in the back. “What’s that?” He looked to Steve, whose eyes flickered with tears, and suddenly it must have clicked.
Ponyboy screamed like he’d just been stabbed clean through, and finally, right there on the porch, the three boys broke down.