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April 10, 1966
When Darry was a kid, Sunday morning had meant getting up early, parking his butt on an uncomfortable wooden pew, and trying his best to stay awake through the sermon.
As much as he’d disliked going to church back then, it was worth it to make his mom happy. He could still picture the way she beamed at the sight of her boys in their carefully pressed clothes, cooing over their clean fingernails and carefully combed hair. He couldn’t bear to ruin it for her by complaining, even if the mass was boring and his stomach was rumbling and his shoes were pinching his toes.
It wasn’t all bad, though. During the seemingly never-ending homilies, his dad had done his best to keep them entertained with quiet games of tic-tac-toe and hangman on the back of the parish newsletter. Looking back, Darry suspected he’d done it for his own sake as much as his sons. Dad, like Sodapop, had always had a sort of frenetic energy to him. It must have killed him to have to sit quietly and act like a grown-up for once.
His mom, on the other hand, had been the picture of reverence. She’d kept her hands folded in her lap and her head bowed in respect, dutifully ignoring her husband’s whispers and her sons’ giggles. Darry had thought she’d never looked more beautiful than when she was wearing her nicest blue dress with her golden hair all done up in curls, delicate features illuminated by the light streaming in from the stained-glass window.
Since she’d died, Ponyboy was the only member of their family who still went to church with any regularity, and even then, it was pretty spotty after that time the gang embarrassed him. Darry was too busy for church, Soda was too hyperactive, and neither of them were known for their piety. But that morning, Pony had shyly asked Darry to come with him to Easter mass, and how could he deny the chance to make his brother happy?
Despite his disinterest in the mass itself, which had been as mind-numbing as he remembered, Darry had to admit that the walk home was shaping up to be downright lovely. The east side of Tulsa was far from idyllic, but that morning, the gentle breeze carried the sound of distant birds chirping and children laughing. If he concentrated hard enough, he could convince himself that he smelled the faint sweetness of the spring wildflowers growing through the cracks in the pavement. The company wasn’t bad, either.
Once the church had disappeared around a corner, Ponyboy pointedly cleared his throat, pulling Darry from his reverie. “Hey, Dar?” he asked, something odd in his voice. “Do you believe in heaven?”
That nearly stopped Darry in his tracks. “What?”
“Heaven. Do you believe in it?” he repeated.
“I — I’m not sure,” he hedged, tilting his head back and forth like he was rolling his thoughts from one side of his brain to the other. “Y’know, if you really want answers to questions like that, we can turn back and ask Father Brian. I’m sure he’d be happy to talk to you.”
Ponyboy rolled his eyes. “I don’t care what Father Brian thinks. I wanna know what you think.”
Darry, who considered himself firmly agnostic, didn’t know what he thought. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t any of his business whether there was or wasn’t a heaven. He wouldn’t know for sure until he died, so why waste his life agonizing over it? Still, he couldn’t deny that the concept of a life after this one brought him comfort, especially after…well, everything.
“I think,” he began after taking a deep inhale, “it’d be an awful shame if this was all there was to life. That we got to learn and grow and love while we’re here, and it all went away when we died. I dunno if I really believe there’s something after this, but I want there to be. Does that make any sense?”
Pony nodded. “I savvy.”
“What about you?” he asked as they stopped at a crosswalk.
Ponyboy looked back and forth, waiting for a break in traffic. “I’m not sure about all the other stuff,” he said, “but I think I believe in heaven.”
“How come?” Darry asked, curious.
“You have to promise not to laugh at me, okay?”
Darry rubbed the back of his brother’s head, careful not to mess up his hair too much. “I would never. Well, not about stuff like this, at least.”
Pony shook him off before starting across the street. With his back to Darry, he admitted, “Sometimes, I can feel them here with us.”
“Mom and Dad?” Darry had to jog a bit to catch up.
“Uh-huh. I don’t really know how to explain it, though. It’s like they’re here, but not. Like they’re just in the next room or somethin’. But not like ghosts — more like…guardian angels, I guess.”
“That sounds nice,” Darry said wistfully.
“It is.” Pony turned his head to look at him, something uneasy in his expression. “And I’ve been wonderin’…do you think Johnny and Dally are up there in heaven with ’em? I think I feel them sometimes, too. Not as often as Mom and Dad, but every once in a while, like when I’m smokin’ a pack of Winstons or readin’ a book on the porch.”
Darry simply hummed in response. He sure wasn’t qualified to answer that one. If he was, he wouldn’t still be roofing houses for a living.
Pony’s expression was earnest and open as he continued, reminding Darry of Sodapop. “I know they weren’t perfect, but they were still good people, right? I mean, they helped save those kids from the fire. Shouldn’t that be enough?”
Darry would have to mull that one over for a minute. As he thought, he shoved his hands in his pockets. Ponyboy seemed content to wait for his answer, busying himself with kicking a pebble down the sidewalk.
He hadn’t really considered the logistics of the afterlife before. Did heaven operate based on the same rules as mortality? Did the privilege you were born into stay with you for eternity?
If there truly was a life after this one like Father Brian said, he had to hope that the divine justice system weighed your heart, not just your actions. Not everyone was given a choice between good and bad; when you lived on the east side, it often came down to bad or worse. You did what was necessary to survive.
“Well,” Darry said after they’d traveled about a block in silence and Pony’s pebble had skittered into a sewer grate, “whoever decides who gets into heaven has gotta know that Johnny and Dal had…difficult circumstances in their lives. Things that made it hard for ‘em to always do the ‘right’ thing. I bet they go easy on people like them, y’know? Look at the person they are on the inside, not who they were forced to be.”
Pony furrowed his brow. “Does that mean they’ll go easy on us, too, when we die?”
“I hope so,” he responded, shrugging. A car whizzed past, traveling way above the speed limit. “But that don’t mean you should go rob a bank or nothin’.”
“Aw, shucks. There goes my Wednesday plans. Two-Bit’ll be devastated.” Pony gave a rueful shake of his head, but he was laughing. Darry joined him, tilting his face up toward the sun and enjoying its warmth.
As they walked past a rundown corner store, Darry loosened his necktie, which featured tiny ducks marching in straight lines. It was the most understated tie he’d found in his dad’s collection of novelty prints. Ponyboy’s was decidedly less subtle, festooned with artfully arranged bowling pins.
“How come you still go to church sometimes?” Darry asked out of nowhere.
They’d never really been the type of family to talk about this kind of stuff, not even when their parents were alive. Karen Curtis had been private about her faith, as she’d been about most things, so Darry never knew what compelled her to drag all of them all to St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church every week. Was it a sense of duty and obligation like the rest of them, or was she a true believer? He wished he’d asked her while he still had the chance, which was probably why he was compelled to ask Ponyboy now.
If Pony was taken off guard by his question, it didn’t show. He just took a moment to gather his thoughts as he loosened his own tie before replying, “It reminds me of Mom, I guess.”
“Same here.”
As he’d sat in the hard wooden pew that morning, Darry couldn’t help but remember a thousand Sundays just like it, the past sending echoes into the present. He’d half-expected to turn his head and see her there, sitting beside him like nothing had happened. He wondered if that was what Ponyboy was talking about when he said he still felt her presence sometimes.
After a second, Pony added, “It’s peaceful, too. Gives me time to think.”
Now that he really considered it, Darry understood why someone as introspective as Ponyboy found going to church appealing. He imagined his brother finding solace in the hushed atmosphere of the church, the routines of Eucharist and Communion quieting his mind.
“What kinds of things do you think about? I mean, you ain’t gotta tell me if you don’t wanna, but —”
Ponyboy waved off his concerns with a hand in the air. “Nah, it’s okay. Most of the time, it’s nothin’ real deep or anything. Mostly just Mom and Dad, our friends, you and Soda, school, how much I want a cigarette….” He ticked each item off on his fingers.
“And what are you thinkin’ about right now?”
The corner of Ponyboy’s mouth quirked up. “How nice it is to spend time with my big brother.” He paused, face falling before adding, “And how awful lonely it must be up there for Johnny and Dal. No friends up there with them, no family.”
Darry nudged his shoulder with the back of his hand. “Hey, they got each other. And you don’t think Mom and Dad would let ‘em go at it alone, do you?”
“I guess not.” Pony huffed out a monosyllabic chuckle. “Mom would definitely do her best to keep Dally in line.”
The thought made Darry smile. Mom had “zero tolerance for B.S.” — her words, not Darry’s — and could see through anyone’s crap, even Dally’s. But unlike Dally’s folks, her stern admonitions had always come from a place of kindness and care. Thanks to her perfect balance between tough love and genuine affection, Dally had grudgingly respected her, even when she was ripping into him for stealing cars and beating up kids half his size. In fact, Darry suspected he had even liked her, which was a rarity for the boy who hated the very concept of authority.
“I bet right now,” Darry said, “she’s smackin’ him upside the head for tossin’ crumpled-up paper through people’s halos.”
“Like heavenly basketball or somethin’,” Ponyboy said with a little snicker, pretending to score a slam dunk over Darry’s head.
Darry intercepted the imaginary ball and mimed dribbling it through his legs, which made Ponyboy laugh even harder.
They pretended to shoot hoops as they continued their journey past the hardware store and the diner. But once they’d gotten bored with messing around (and received a few odd looks from passersby), Pony grew contemplative once again. Darry could sense there was more on his mind.
“Dad wouldn’t let Johnny get too sad without us, dontcha think?” Pony asked, right on cue.
“Don’t you worry about him,” Darry replied. Their dad had liked all the boys well enough, but he’d had a particular soft spot for Johnny. Like his middle son, he’d had a magic grin that no one, not even Johnny, could resist. No sullen mood was a match for their dad — all it took was five minutes in his presence for Johnny to be in stitches, clutching his stomach while tears of mirth streamed down his face.
Darry continued, “I’m sure Johnny has laughed more since gettin’ up there than he did in his whole life down here.” The idea brought him comfort and sadness in equal measure, and based on the look on his brother’s face, he felt the same.
They continued walking, enjoying the mild weather and admiring the tiny green buds on the trees. Once they’d turned onto St. Louis Avenue and their home was nearly in sight, Pony paused suddenly and tugged Darry’s sleeve like a little kid.
“Are there houses in heaven?”
Darry bit back a smile. “I reckon there is. People gotta live somewhere, right?”
“But do you think everyone gets their own house? Or do Dally and Johnny live together?”
“I dunno, buddy. It’s heaven, right? I bet they can live wherever they want.”
Pony nodded to himself. “I hope they live right next door to Mom and Dad. That way, when we join them one day, we can all be neighbors. Just like we used to be.”
His childlike optimism brought the threat of tears to Darry’s eyes. What he wouldn’t give to have his brother’s steadfast hope in the face of so much tragedy, his belief that everything would be okay in the end. He sent a fleeting prayer of gratitude toward the heavens, just in case someone was listening.
Thank you for my brother. Thank you for not taking him away from me, too.
Darry covered his emotion by clearing his throat. “All of us? Even Steve?” he teased, nudging his brother towards home with a gentle hand on his back.
“I guess so,” Pony conceded, making a big show of letting out a long-suffering sigh. “I don’t want Soda to be mad at me for eternity.”
“Hey, if it came down to it, he’d choose you every time,” Darry told him, only half-joking. Soda loved his little brother more than anyone else in the world, even his best friend. There was no contest.
There was a short lull in the conversation after that. Ponyboy matched his stride with Darry’s so they were stepping in sync before saying, “You remember how long this walk seemed when we were kids?”
Darry shot him a look out of the corner of his eye. “Of course I do. I could never forget the way you and Soda whinied and complained about how your legs were too tired to keep goin’. I ended up givin’ y’all piggyback rides just to shut you up.”
Suddenly, Pony stopped short, face twisted into a frown as he looked at the cracked sidewalk under his feet.
Darry stopped, too, turning to face him. “What’s wrong with you?”
Pony’s frown became a pleading pout. “My legs are tired. I don’t think I can make it.”
“I walked right into that one, didn’t I?” He sighed, pretending to be put out, but he couldn’t seem to wipe the grin from his face. “Alright, climb aboard,” he said as he crouched down. Ponyboy gleefully hopped on, wrapping his legs around Darry’s waist and his arms around Darry’s neck.
“Oof, you’re heavier than you used to be,” Darry groaned, staggering forward dramatically. “I thought you were supposed to be a track star, y’know. A couple measly miles should be nothin’ to you.”
Pony giggled, hooking his chin over Darry’s shoulder. “And I thought you could squat twice my weight. So shut your mouth and giddy up.”
“Says the guy named Ponyboy,” Darry griped as he began galloping forward, jostling his precious cargo back and forth. Pony shrieked directly in his ear, but he sounded so delighted that Darry couldn’t even be mad.
Throughout his bumpy ride, Pony hung onto him for dear life, the sides of their faces pressed so close that Darry could feel his brother’s wide grin against his cheek. He desperately, naively hoped Ponyboy never got too big or too old or too mature for things like this.
As they approached the end of the driveway, Darry finally slowed to a stop, breathing harder than he would’ve liked to admit. “End of the line,” he announced, patting Pony’s shin. “Everybody off.”
With one last ebullient laugh, Ponyboy squeezed him tight around the shoulders in thanks, then hopped down and headed for the front door. But just as he was reaching for the doorknob, something gave him pause. He turned back to face Darry at the last second.
“D’ya think there are piggyback rides in heaven?” he asked.
Darry grinned at him. “If I get any say in it, there sure will be.”