Teasing Fate |The Outsiders|

10. Another Nail In The Coffin

"HE'S A GOOD ENGINEER TO BE A LAYIN' DEAD." - Johnny Cash (Casey Jones)

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Momma and Daddy didn't talk about who they were before Tulsa.

We heard about the schoolhouse and the hours Daddy spent beating the chalk dust from the erasers, Momma told us about the one general store in town and the sour candies she'd buy on her way home. But the schoolhouse remained just as nameless as our grandparents -- just faded shadows in the pictures Momma kept hidden under her bed. They were reckless and young before Tulsa, before us, but that part of them died the day Darry came home tangled in blue blankets wearing our Daddy's eyes. Where they were before Tulsa was an anonymous bundle of run-down shacks and farmland, a busted sign standing on the outskirts with letters too faded to be read. We would probably drive through it one day and they wouldn't even stop. Not to show us where they learned to read, not where they watched the horses race for days under the intense August sun. Who my parents were before Tulsa was just another skeleton in their closet.

Now, the only person who knew them before Tulsa was a skeleton in a coffin.

I should have realized something was wrong when they were both there when we were home from school. Ponyboy pushed to the front of our gang shamelessly, pulling Johhny up with him. I stood stuck in the middle, Two-Bit on one side of me and Steve on the other, talking loudly with Sodapop. Dally stood behind us, silent and skeptically as Momma pushed herself from her chair and wiped her eyes. Daddy always looked tired when he came home from work, but it didn't hold a candle to how he looked now. The bags under his eyes had never been more prominent, the grey in his hair was more visible than ever. His sigh was deep and quiet, his hand rested heavily on Momma's shoulder while she tried to keep the silent tears from trailing down. Behind Steve, Soda wrapped his hand around mine -- it gave me a little comfort as I prepared myself for the worst.

Momma's pills weren't working like they used to. Daddy got laid off. We lost the house. Something happened to Darry.

The thoughts raced through my mind like a stampede of horses, filling me with the worst fears I could muster without breaking down in tears right then and there. None of that happened though -- the real thing was a lot worse.

We called him Uncle Jim because he had been Daddy's best friend ever since they rolled into town. They worked together roofing and building houses, he and his wife swung by on the holidays. He was tall and slender, his skin was like copper and his eyes were just as dark as his hair. He kept it pretty long, just enough to be tied back and tucked flat against his back. When I was just learning, he used to sit on the front steps with Daddy and let me braid it when the boys started wrestling over a football. He always smelt of tobacco -- but he said it was for "ceremonial purposes" rather than just getting high. His wife was lovely and last I heard, they had a baby on the way. Uncle Jim loved us like his own flesh and blood -- and I mean all of us, even after he and Daddy had to bail Dally outta the cooler. We were the closest thing to family either of us had.

"There was an accident at work," Daddy starts nice and soft, "H-he slipped off the ladder, hit his head. Lucy said it ain't lookin' too good."

That night, we all sat in the living room not daring to speak -- barely daring to breathe. Us kids busied ourselves with our homework and the odd game of cards, but our hearts weren't in it. I ended up watching Ponyboy and Johnny as Darry flicked back and forth through television channels -- the weather, the news, cartoons, or some old cowboy flick I had never heard of. He was just a little kid -- Pony, I mean -- barely twelve years old. I looked back at Daddy, too, slumped his chair with the neck of an amber bottle grasped in his fist. He was the same age as Uncle Jim.