Let It Be Me

Part 6

The four of us were piled into a tiny booth in the back of Ziggy's Diner so tightly that Soda and I were sitting hip to hip and my feet were touching Darry's under the table. I must have been deliriously tired by that point because I kept thinking back to Eva's comment about a Curtis brother sandwich and breaking out into a small chuckle. She did have a point. They were both ridiculously handsome, just like Pony. And Darry's well defined chest muscles were carved so tightly into his tee shirt that every time he lifted his arm to put his fork to his mouth they did a little dance for me. Eva would have been dying. I covered my mouth with my napkin, pretending to cough, hoping they wouldn't hear the giggle behind it. Soda grabbed the salt that was in front of me and started dousing everything on his plate with it.

"So, Pony told me you ain't gonna be at school no more" he said putting the salt back and reaching for the pepper. I crumpled my napkin into my palm and took a sip of juice.

"You guys talk about everything, don't you?" I asked, casually taking the spotlight off myself.

"Yeah, they do" Darry said tiredly. "Usually on school nights when Pony's supposed to be sleeping." Soda smiled.

"Aw lay off, Darry. The kid's in high school. He don't need a bed time." Darry shook his head and kept chewing his eggs. "Anyway," Soda turned back to me. "I know it's none of my business but" he tapped his fingers on his glass. "Well, as someone who dropped out himself, I can tell you that it ain't no picnic bein' a dropout."

I took a bite of my toast and chewed it slowly. I hadn't thought of myself as being a dropout before. The thought was unsettling.

"She don't need school" Dally made a face and leaned back coolly. "She aint' gonna use none of the stuff they teach anyway."

"A good education is important" Darry argued. Dally smirked.

"Good education." He mocked. "Cal, what were you learnin' about the last day you were there?" I thought for a second and then smiled.

"Beowulf."

Soda squinted. "What's a bay wolfe?" Dallas held his hand up like Soda had just proven his point.

"It's not a what, it's a who" Darry corrected him, pushing some hash browns around his plate with his fork. "Beowulf is the title character of an old English poem." Soda made a face.

"Yeah, in that case I'm with Dally on this one. Sorry."

Dally grinned and shook his head. "Christ, I can't tell you how many times I've had to break out the British poetry to get through life."

Darry put his fork down and looked at Dally and Soda, then back to me.

"What were you learning about Beowulf?" He asked sounding an awful lot like Mr. Florio. I shrugged.

"I don't know. The last thing I did was an essay on why Beowulf fought Grendel without weapons and what that showed about his character or something." He looked at me as though he was waiting for me to continue.

"Ok. And what did you say?"

"I said it showed that he had a big ego." For the tenth time I suddenly found myself wishing I had actually read the damn book. Darry picked up his fork again.

"He didn't fight the monster with weapons because he wanted to fight with honor. Because Grendel didn't use weapons and Beowulf wanted it to be a fair fight. See, if he had gone against his enemy with an unfair advantage there would be no honor in his victory." He took another bite of his eggs and swallowed. "It's saying that how you fight your battles sometimes says more about you than who wins."

I looked down at my plate and thought for a second. "Sort of like the skin on skin rule with Shepard's gang." Darry nodded.

"There you go" he pointed at me with his fork. "See, you're learnin' about life, kiddo. And it applies to more than just what's around you here in Tulsa. It's stuff you'll use even when you're out of this neighborhood."