Well, this chapter is mostly based on a true story I have chosen to exclude from the author's note here. Just know one of these beds does actually exist and it was made in like 1960 something. Special thanks to Zickachik who was even more excited for this than I was.

Disclaimer: The Usual.

Chapter 20

It was later that week when there was a knock on my door. I didn’t bother to glance up from where I was sewing my old shirts. I know, I just got new ones for our birthday, but the old ones were still good, if a little in need of mending.

“Yeah?” I asked, not used to anyone knocking.

“You planning on coming out anytime soon, Peps?” Darry asked and I shrugged.

“I’ve been pretty busy.”

“I can see that. Take a break?”

I sighed, setting the mending aside and waited for whatever Darry wanted to talk about. I knew him well enough by now to tell that he had something on his mind. I usually didn’t like the outcome when he got this way, but we were going to talk anyways.

“Listen,” he started and I wondered what he thought I was doing. “When you left, Pony had the bed to himself.”

Well, I wasn’t expecting that start for a conversation. Darry was always the odd one in the family, though.

“Yeah, and?” I asked.

“Even before that, you pretty much clung to your side of the bed.” Darry shrugged, looking like he was trying to stall his point. “And Sodapop cuddles.”

“Darry,” I sighed.

“I’m getting rid of the big bed,” Darry stated. “I’m going to bring up the old singles from the basement. Maybe that way Pony’ll get some sleep without feeling claustrophobic and Soda won’t wake up whenever Pony shoves him onto the floor.”

I blinked at him for a moment. He was getting rid of the bed in there? In my old room? That was half my bed. And suddenly, the conversation made so much more sense. I could imagine my look was probably closer to an indignant glare. Darry straightened up a bit more, as if to stand his ground for a fight.

“Pepsi,” Darry sighed. “The people from the state suggested we get Pony his own bed before you left. They started trying to get me to do something about it after the interviews they had just after Dally and Johnny died, but the nightmares were still bad then.”

Yeah, right after the state said we could all stay together, Pony’s dreams were terrible. He was probably scared we’d all get separated just after we all dodged a bullet on that very outcome. Was it any wonder he was dreaming about it?

“Pony’s not sleeping well. Apparently Soda likes to cuddle. So you want to get rid of the big bed. I get it.”

“But?” Darry said expectantly.

“Who says I have a ‘but’?” I asked and Darry frowned.

“You’ve always had an argument. I don’t think I’ve ever made a decision you didn’t like without a whole string of ‘buts’. So let’s hear it.”

I looked at Darry for a long moment. He was right. Normally, I would be mad and upset over the fact he was changing something so big in my life. The bed had been in our parents’ room, moved into Soda and Pony’s room just after the nightmares started. I’d had my own nightmares and I was fighting with Darry at the time, so I argued my way in to sharing a room with Ponyboy. Soda and Darry and both been confused, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. So Darry took over our parents’ room and Soda moved into our old room. In a way, Soda and Pony back in their first room, and me back in this one…It was one room switch short of things being the way they were before Mom and Dad died. Maybe it was just time. What was the point in arguing that? And it wasn’t like I’d been sleeping on that bed for the past couple months, either. All I really had to do was clean out the closet and I wouldn’t have anything left in that room.

“You think that after ‘Nam, I care about where I sleep at night?” I asked. “It’s a bed, Darry. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know it means something to you,” Darry replied.

I shrugged. Maybe it did, but that wasn’t the point anymore. The point was that there was always change and this was just more change. It was pretty simple, actually.

“Well, it sounds like you have your mind made up and it sounds like a good idea with how Soda and Pony are sleeping.” I shrugged, going back to the sewing. “Let me know when you need me to clean out the closet or whatever.”

“Actually, since you have tomorrow off, I was hoping you and Soda could work on getting those mattresses and the frames up here during his lunch break.”

“What about the old one?” I asked.

“Two-Bit and Pony are going to load it in the truck before school tomorrow. I’ll see if anyone wants it at work tomorrow and if not, I’m sure I can stick a sign on it and it’ll be gone.” He shrugged.

I nodded. Yep, he didn’t even have to put a sign on it. He just had to wander off for a few hours and it would be gone.

“Just make sure you wait for Sodapop. It took the pair of us to get it down there,” he informed me and I nodded.

“Yeah, I’ll wait for Sodapop.”

The next day did find both Sodapop and I struggling with the mattress to the first bed. I don’t know who Darry thought he was kidding if he thought Soda and I were going to manage this on our own. We were only half way up the stairs after what seemed like hours of straining muscles and sweaty hands. Someone had to have waterlogged it or something. There was no way a mattress could weigh so much. It was probably whatever they made the springs out of. Maybe it wasn’t springs at all and just full of rocks or bibles or something heavy as hell. All I knew was that it shouldn’t have taken as much effort to move the thing as it did to run maneuvers with a hundred pound pack on in the middle of a Vietnamese summer.

“This thing weighs a ton,” I gasped, pushing while Soda yanked.

“It weighs more going up,” Soda panted. “Than it did going down.”

“At least you’re just pulling,” I pointed out, leaning my shoulder into the shove a little more.

“At least you don’t have to find hand holds,” Soda returned, groaning as we got the mattress up another step.

It would have been easier if the mattress wasn’t as limp as a dead fish. I’d had survival packs that weighed less than this and supported me for weeks on end. I knew money was tight, but I was willing to pay for new beds personally if it meant I didn’t have to haul them up the stairs.

“Ok, new plan,” I huffed, shoving the thing up another step, while Soda lifted to keep it from catching on the step. “You and Pony start sleeping like the Vietnamese. Just roll out a pallet on the floor every night – weighs practically nothing.”

“They rolled up their beds every night?” Soda asked.

“Had to. The bedroom was every room when the house was only one room.”

Soda didn’t reply and we managed to get the mattress to the landing. Here is where it was going to get tough. The mattress had to make a tight right turn to get into the house. Whoever thought that one up was a real genius, let me tell ya.

“Here,” Soda panted, tugging on the mattress so it was basically jammed on the landing. I let go of it and leaned on the railing.

“How in the world did something so simple turn into this?” I gestured at the mattress and Soda shrugged.

“A lot of things start out like that,” he offered. “But the hard part’s over.”

“Grab us something to drink, will you?”

“After. We should at least get this one in the room.” Soda frowned.

“At least we got the frames up,” I commented.

“Yeah, but we still have to assemble them,” Soda sighed. “If I had known this was going to be such a big deal, I would have told both you and Pony to just push them together.”

“I would have suggested that, too.”

“Glad we agree.” Soda smiled. “Come on. On the count of three, I’ll lift and you shove.”

“Sure.” I nodded and waited for Soda to count.

“One. Two.” He took a firm grip on the mattress and I tensed, waiting to move it. “Three!”

I shoved, Soda pulled and then there was a crash. I looked over the mattress to see Soda was sprawled in the basement doorway. Crossing my arms over the top of the mattress, I leaned on them and observed my twin.

“I thought you said we weren’t taking a break?” I asked conversationally.

“Yeah, yeah. Be glad I’m the one on my back.” He nodded towards the stairs and I nodded in agreement. That would definitely warrant a trip to the hospital.

“Let’s give it another shove,” I suggested and Soda sighed, getting to his feet.

We pushed, pulled, and twisted, but it seemed like that mattress was bound and determined to give us grief to the very last second.

“Let’s pull it back and try going over the railing,” I finally suggested and Soda nodded.

There was only one problem with that.

“It’s stuck?” Soda asked, sounding like he couldn’t believe it.

“Yeah, worse than the sink that one time after Pony got the bright idea to pour the bacon grease down it,” I sighed.

“Well, that’s great. I have to be back at the DX in twenty minutes.”

“And I don’t plan on sitting down here all day with my thumb up my ass,” I replied.

“Well, what do you think we should do?”

“I have no freaking clue. I can plan out an intricate attack plan in the middle of the jungle, but I can’t get a damn mattress up my own stairs.”

“I can take an engine apart and fix most anything, but I’m in the same boat you are.” Soda grinned at me. “Still want that drink?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I think I’ll just climb over and we can wait to finish this up when Darry gets home.”

“You think you can make it?” Soda asked.

“Yeah.” I nodded.

The mattress wasn’t solid enough to climb on or over, so I had the option of climbing on the rail and past the mattress. Soda was still frowning at me, but I figured the stairs were stable enough, so the railings would be, too.

So I climbed up on the railing and steadied myself on the bare roof beams. My father, the craftsman of the house, had always wanted to put up a roof down here. It was one of the many plans he had. I sighed, not willing to think about it. I easily walked along the rail, thinking Steve or Darry would have been more graceful, but I knew no one was watching.

“Careful,” Soda ordered.

Well, Soda didn’t count.

I was about to tell him it was fine when there was a splintering sound. I think both Soda and I looked pretty comical right then with our eyes wide and our mouths open, but a moment later my feet were touching nothing but air and I had other concerns. I shoved myself forward against the roof beams I’d been holding onto and landed hard against the wall. I honestly slumped onto the landing, feeling my heart pound. I wasn’t used to excitement like that anymore. Neither was Soda if the way he was gripping the doorframe was any indication.

We both took a long breath and I smiled at Soda. He didn’t return it, instead stepping over me and grabbing the mattress. I glanced at where it was slipping back down the stairs with no railing to hold it in place. This was turning into the chore from hell. I got up and pulled on it, too, feeling victorious as it moved further up and along the landing. Suddenly it was loose and we were pulling too hard. Both Soda and I fell back onto the floor of the hallway off the kitchen, panting, half the mattress overflowing with us.

“Well, I guess we solved that problem.”

Soda nodded. “Darry’s not going to like that.”

“I think he’d like it even less if you two had nowhere to sleep tonight. I can always fix the railing tomorrow.”

“You get to tell him, then,” Soda delegated.

“Yeah, yeah,” I replied. “Should we get this down the hall before we collapse?”

“I suppose,” Soda sighed. “This time you pull and I’ll push.”

“Sure, when it’s easy you want to push,” I groaned, yanking the mattress a little further into the hall.

Soda helped turn it and a few minutes later we had it leaning up against the wall in the bedroom. Soda cursed as his shin connected with one of the bed frames and I nearly tripped backwards over the other.

“This is crazy.” I shook my head. “How did you two ever move in here with two beds?”

“It was better when they were put together,” Soda explained, rubbing his shin and glaring at where the bed frame he had tripped over was still sitting in pieces waiting to be put back together.

“Come on, I think we earned a couple Millers.”

Soda grinned, shaking his head. “How about a Miller and a Pepsi?”

“I think Pony drank it all. There’s Coke,” I offered, following Soda into the kitchen.

Soda had to get back to work not too long after we took our break. Somewhere along the line, he decided that we should wait for Darry before getting the other mattress. Now, I knew how heavy the thing would be and I knew that it was really hard to move, even with Soda helping, but I was bored. Many people can tell you that a bored Curtis led to disaster, but what did they know? Only my brothers knew how bad the disaster could really get. As it was, trying to move that mattress on my own was low on the disaster scale. It took me forty-five minutes to get the damn thing up the stairs and onto the landing. But even with the rail gone, there was a problem. See, when we’d got most of it into the hall, we could turn it. With no one to turn it, the mattress was jammed. I leaned as far on the mattress to see what the hold up was and wanted to groan.

When Soda and I had been snacking, he’d left the door to the hall closet open. From what I could see, if I pulled the mattress back, it was going to get caught on the latch and probably rip to hell. But as it was, I couldn’t push it forward. It was fully and thoroughly stuck. And because of the railing missing, I was trapped in the basement. Great. Yeah, that was my luck for you. At least Ponyboy and Two-Bit would be traipsing in right around four. And if they weren’t, then Darry would be home around six. That gave me anywhere from two to four hours to wait. I was the master of waiting. I’d spent a day solid in a tree waiting for a shot. A few hours in a cluttered basement should have been nothing.

Key word there was ‘should’. After thirty minutes of going through junk and another twenty of sitting on the stairs quietly, I was ready to pull my hair out. I’d forgotten that Darry moved everything interesting from the basement to the shed, so I couldn’t even fix the railing while I was waiting. There wasn’t even a screwdriver down here. Or if there was, I wasn’t sure where to find one. It was like he’d kid proofed the basement. Not that a lot of Mom’s junk wasn’t still hanging around, but I could tell Darry was slowly weeding it out. That broken birdcage she wanted Dad to fix if we ever got a bird, a few of those seed jars, and a couple of the broken pots were gone. I guess I really was bored if I was making notes on everything Darry changed.

“Alright, Pepsi,” I muttered to myself. “How are you going to pass four hours?”

It was about ten minutes later that I got the bright idea to climb on the stuff to get at the basement window. It was really high off the floor, but if I stacked everything right, it was an easy reach. Problem was the window was painted shut. Though that was probably a good idea in this neighborhood…

I sighed. I wondered if this was how life was for Soda? I mean, I got twitchy, but he practically never sat still.

There were a few techniques I’d learned over in ‘Nam to settle myself down and I thought it was ironic that something from over there was actually useful here. So I laid down on the floor and concentrated on my heart rate and deep breathing. The only problem with it was that I always fell asleep doing it.

“Hey, anybody home?”

I twitched, definitely not awake.

“Why’s this mattress half in the hallway?” Pony yelled. “Just like Pepsi and Soda to leave half way through the job…And it’s stuck, too. That’s just great.”

There were some noises upstairs and I assumed Ponyboy was doing something with the mattress.

“There, was that so hard?” He grumbled. “And then they probably still have the other one down there and…What did they do to the rail…Pepsi!”

I jolted back to awake and blinked up at where Pony was standing on the landing looking stricken.

“Oh god, don’t move!”

“Why?” I yawned as he dashed down the stairs.

“That whole railing collapsed! Why were you trying to move that by yourself?” He demanded and I frowned at him.

“Because I was bored.”

“You know what, lie still and I’ll go call for some help.”

“Why?” I asked, wiping a hand over my face.

“You fell from up there and you have to ask that?” He asked and I blinked.

I guess it kind of did look like I’d taken a spill from up there. In retrospect, I could have found another part of the floor to fall asleep on, further away from the pieces of the broken railing.

“I didn’t fall. It broke while Soda and I were moving the first mattress,” I explained. “We were both bruised up, but we beat the mattress.”

“Why were you on the floor then?” He frowned at me.

“Funny story. I got bored, tried to move the mattress, got stuck down here, and decided to take a nap out of pure boredom.” I shrugged.

“You were…napping?”

“Yeah.” I smiled, a chuckle forcing its way out at the look of disbelief on Pony’s face.

“It’s not funny!” Pony told me, arms crossed over his chest.

“Oh, come on. It is a little funny.”

He seemed to think on it for a moment before shaking his head and a small smile made it to his lips.

“Sometimes you remind me of Dad more than even Soda,” he commented and I blinked.

I could see where he was coming from because Dad liked a good joke about as much as Two-Bit did. I blinked because Soda and Dad were so alike in personality that it would have been hard to tell them apart if they looked like each other. The same could be said for Darry and Mom. Pony and I were the odd ones out on that, but it never bothered me because that made us more alike. To be compared with Dad was a compliment.

“Thanks.”

“So, I got that mattress unstuck. You want some help getting it the rest of the way to our room?” Pony asked, straightening up from where he had been kneeling beside me.

“Is it only you helping?” I asked and Pony stiffened.

“If you’re going to be like that –”

“No, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that it took both Soda and I a lot of effort to get the first one anywhere. I was hoping Darry was around because my arms feel like Jello.”

“Oh.” Pony blushed a little. “Darry’s not home, but if you push and I pull, we can manage.”

“I’m going to need another nap after this,” I sighed. “Give me a hand up.”

Pony offered me his hand and I took it, up on my feet a minute later. The kid was definitely a lot stronger than he looked.

“So, are you going to fix that?” he gestured towards the broken railing.

“Yeah, if I can ever find a hammer around here.” I shrugged.

“Kitchen drawer closest to the back door.”

“Since when?” I asked, climbing the stairs behind him.

“Since forever,” he replied, giving me a funny look.

I nodded and followed him upstairs, pushing the mattress into the room with Pony’s help. He managed to catch his shin on a piece of bed frame closest to the door and I smirked, wise to the mess by now. Pony glared at me before letting go of the mattress and stalking out of the room. I leaned the heavy thing against the wall and waited to see if he was coming back or not. He finally did come back with the hammer and a kitchen towel. The joints of the bed frame were meant to come apart and just needed to be beat back into place. I nodded at the decision to bring a towel to keep the wood from being marked up, too.

He sat down against the wall, leaning against the first mattress Soda and I had brought up while I tried to figure out which piece was going where. At this point, we hadn’t really spoken to each other in three months, so it didn’t surprise me that we fell into a quiet companionship. I wasn’t even sure we were ok or if he was mad at me still but I would take anything I could get at this point.

By the time both frames were back together and the mattresses were in their proper places, I had to admit that Soda was right. The room wasn’t so bad when everything was in place. They had enough room between the beds for a night table and one of Mom’s old woven rugs. Darry still wanted to swap my dresser in here for the smaller one in my room, but I figured I’d done more than my fair share of moving things today, so he could enlist someone else to do it later. With the smaller one in the room, they’d have a lot more room to move.

Ponyboy sighed and flopped down on the bed under the window, sinking into the mattress.

“I liked the big bed, but twelve years of sleeping on this one…” he trailed off, closing his eyes, ankles hanging off the end of the bed. “I was shorter then.”

“Yep,” I agreed flopping down on the other one, feeling a familiarity with it, too. “Hey Pony?”

“Yeah?” he asked.

“We have to move this one across the hall,” I offered.

Pony looked at me, groaning. “Why didn’t you think of that before we got everything settled?”

“I’m slow on the uptake sometimes.” I shrugged and he snorted in agreement. “Besides, I figure Soda’ll want his bed in here. He’s been really good about this game of musical beds.”

Pony nodded. “Yeah.”

We laid there for a few minutes, both just staring at the ceiling. I wanted to ask if this meant we were ok again, but I didn’t want to ruin whatever this comfortable feeling was between us with a dumb question. But in my mind, it was anything but dumb.

Pony sighed and got up, smirking a little at me. “Come on. If we get it done before Soda and Darry get home, they’ll have to do the dressers on their own.”

I nodded, getting to my feet and decided I was going to take what I could get. Things may not be good between us yet, but at least we were doing better. That was a good start.

Oh com'on, they had to grow up at some point!

Any comments at all are welcome and flames accepted.

See ya in the funny papers!!

Tens & Zickachik