by SE Hinton
“No!” Cherry cried. “Stop it!” She looked at Bob. “We’ll ride home with you. Just wait a minute.”
“Why?” Two-Bit demanded. “We ain’t scared of them.”
Cherry shuddered. “I can’t stand fights . . . I can’t stand them . . .”
I pulled her to one side. “I couldn’t use this,” I said, dropping the pop bottle. “I couldn’t ever cut anyone. . . .” I had to tell her that, because I’d seen her eyes when Two-Bit flicked out his switch.
“I know,” she said quietly, “but we’d better go with them. Ponyboy . . . I mean . . . if I see you in the hall at school or someplace and don’t say hi, well, it’s not personal or anything, but . . .”
“I know,” I said.
“We couldn’t let our parents see us with you all. You’re a nice boy and everything . . .”
“It’s okay,” I said, wishing I was dead and buried somewhere. Or at least that I had on a decent shirt. “We aren’t in the same class. Just don’t forget that some of us watch the sunset too.”
She looked at me quickly. “I could fall in love with Dallas Winston,” she said. “I hope I never see him again, or I will.”
She left me standing there with my mouth dropped open, and the blue Mustang vroomed off.
We walked on home, mostly in silence. I wanted to ask Johnny if those were the same Socs that had beaten him up, but I didn’t mention it. Johnny never talked about it and we never said anything.
“Well, those were two good-lookin’ girls if I ever saw any.” Two-Bit yawned as we sat down on the curb at the vacant lot. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket and tore it up.
“What was that?”
“Marcia’s number. Probably a phony one, too. I must have been outa my mind to ask for it. I think I’m a little soused.”
So he had been drinking. Two-Bit was smart. He knew the score. “Y’all goin’ home?” he asked.
“Not right now,” I said. I wanted to have another smoke and to watch the stars. I had to be in by twelve, but I thought I had plenty of time.
“I don’t know why I handed you that busted bottle,” Two-Bit said, getting to his feet. “You’d never use it.”
“Maybe I would have,” I said. “Where you headed?”
“Gonna go play a little snooker and hunt up a poker game. Maybe get rip-roarin’ drunk. I dunno. See y’all tomorrow.”
Johnny and I stretched out on our backs and looked at the stars. I was freezing—it was a cold night and all I had was that sweat shirt, but I could watch stars in sub-zero weather. I saw Johnny’s cigarette glowing in the dark and wondered vaguely what it was like inside a burning ember . . .
“It was because we’re greasers,” Johnny said, and I knew he was talking about Cherry. “We could have hurt her reputation.”
“I reckon,” I said, wondering if I ought to tell Johnny what she had said about Dallas.
“Man, that was a tuff car. Mustangs are tuff.”
“Big-time Socs, all right,” I said, a nervous bitterness growing inside me. It wasn’t fair for the Socs to have everything. We were as good as they were; it wasn’t our fault we were greasers. I couldn’t just take it or leave it, like Two-Bit, or ignore it and love life anyway, like Sodapop, or harden myself beyond caring, like Dally, or actually enjoy it, like Tim Shepard. I felt the tension growing inside of me and I knew something had to happen or I would explode.
“I can’t take much more.” Johnny spoke my own feelings. “I’ll kill myself or something.”
“Don’t,” I said, sitting up in alarm. “You can’t kill yourself, Johnny.”
“Well, I won’t. But I gotta do something. It seems like there’s gotta be someplace without greasers or Socs, with just people. Plain ordinary people.”
“Out of the big towns,” I said, lying back down. “In the country . . .”
In the country . . . I loved the country. I wanted to be out of towns and away from excitement. I only wanted to lie on my back under a tree and read a book or draw a picture, and not worry about being jumped or carrying a blade or ending up married to some scatterbrained broad with no sense. The country would be like that, I thought dreamily. I would have a yeller cur dog, like I used to, and Sodapop could get Mickey Mouse back and ride in all the rodeos he wanted to, and Darry would lose that cold, hard look and be like he used to be, eight months ago, before Mom and Dad were killed. Since I was dreaming I brought Mom and Dad back to life . . . Mom could bake some more chocolate cakes and Dad would drive the pickup out early to feed the cattle. He would slap Darry on the back and tell him he was getting to be a man, a regular chip off the block, and they would be as close as they used to be. Maybe Johnny could come and live with us, and the gang could come out on weekends, and maybe Dallas would see that there was some good in the world after all, and Mom would talk to him and make him grin in spite of himself. “You’ve got quite a mom,” Dally used to say. “She knows the score.” She could talk to Dallas and kept him from getting into a lot of trouble. My mother was golden and beautiful . . .
“Ponyboy”—Johnny was shaking me—“Hey, Pony, wake up.”
I sat up, shivering. The stars had moved. “Glory, what time is it?”
“I don’t know. I went to sleep, too, listening to you rattle on and on. You’d better get home. I think I’ll stay all night out here.” Johnny’s parents didn’t care if he came home or not.
“Okay.” I yawned. Gosh, but it was cold. “If you get cold or something come on over to our house.”
“Okay.”
I ran home, trembling at the thought of facing Darry. The porch light was on. Maybe they were asleep and I could sneak in, I thought. I peeked in the window. Sodapop was stretched out on the sofa, sound asleep, but Darry was in the armchair under the lamp, reading the newspaper. I gulped, and opened the door softly. Darry looked up from his paper. He was on his feet in a second. I stood there, chewing on my fingernail.
“Where the heck have you been? Do you know what time it is?” He was madder than I’d seen him in a long time. I shook my head wordlessly.
“Well, it’s two in the morning, kiddo. Another hour and I would have had the police out after you. Where were you, Ponyboy?”—his voice was rising—“Where in the almighty universe were you?”
It sounded dumb, even to me, when I stammered, “I . . . I went to sleep in the lot . . .”
“You what?” He was shouting, and Sodapop sat up and rubbed his eyes.
“Hey, Ponyboy,” he said sleepily, “where ya been?”
“I didn’t mean to.” I pleaded with Darry. “I was talking to Johnny and we both dropped off . . .”
“I reckon it never occurred to you that your brothers might be worrying their heads off and afraid to call the police because something like that could get you two thrown in a boys’ home so quick it’d make your head spin. And you were asleep in the lot? Ponyboy, what on earth is the matter with you? Can’t you use your head? You haven’t even got a coat on.”
I felt hot tears of anger and frustration rising. “I said I didn’t mean to . . .”
“I didn’t mean to!” Darry shouted, and I almost shook. “I didn’t think! I forgot! That’s all I hear out of you! Can’t you think of anything?”
“Darry . . .” Sodapop began, but Darry turned on him. “You keep your trap shut! I’m sick and tired of hearin’ you stick up for him.”
He should never yell at Soda. Nobody should ever holler at my brother. I exploded. “You don’t yell at him!” I shouted. Darry wheeled around and slapped me so hard that it knocked me against the door.
Suddenly it was deathly quiet. We had all frozen. Nobody in my family had ever hit me. Nobody. Soda was wide-eyed. Darry looked at the palm of his hand where it had turned red and then looked back at me. His eyes were huge. “Ponyboy . . .”
I turned and ran out the door and down the street as fast as I could. Darry screamed, “Pony, I didn’t mean to!” but I was at the lot by then and pretended I couldn’t hear. I was running a
way. It was plain to me that Darry didn’t want me around. And I wouldn’t stay if he did. He wasn’t ever going to hit me again.
“Johnny?” I called, and started when he rolled over and jumped up almost under my feet. “Come on, Johnny, we’re running away.”
Johnny asked no questions. We ran for several blocks until we were out of breath. Then we walked. I was crying by then. I finally just sat down on the curb and cried, burying my face in my arms. Johnny sat down beside me, one hand on my shoulder. “Easy, Ponyboy,” he said softly, “we’ll be okay.”
I finally calmed down and wiped my eyes on my bare arm. My breath was coming in quivering sobs. “Gotta cigarette?”
He handed me one and struck a match.
“Johnny, I’m scared.”
“Well, don’t be. You’re scarin’ me. What happened? I never seen you bawl like that.”
“I don’t very often. It was Darry. He hit me. I don’t know what happened, but I couldn’t take him hollering at me and hitting me too. I don’t know . . . sometimes we get along okay, then all of a sudden he blows up on me or else is naggin’ at me all the time. He didn’t use to be like that . . . we used to get along okay . . . before Mom and Dad died. Now he just can’t stand me.”
“I think I like it better when the old man’s hittin’ me.” Johnny sighed. “At least then I know he knows who I am. I walk in that house, and nobody says anything. I walk out, and nobody says anything. I stay away all night, and nobody notices. At least you got Soda. I ain’t got nobody.”
“Shoot,” I said, startled out of my misery, “you got the whole gang. Dally didn’t slug you tonight ’cause you’re the pet. I mean, golly, Johnny, you got the whole gang.”
“It ain’t the same as having your own folks care about you,” Johnny said simply. “It just ain’t the same.”
I was beginning to relax and wonder if running away was such a great idea. I was sleepy and freezing to death and I wanted to be home in bed, safe and warm under the covers with Soda’s arm across me. I decided I would go home and just not speak to Darry. It was my house as much as Darry’s, and if he wanted to pretend I wasn’t alive, that was just fine with me. He couldn’t stop me from living in my own house.
“Let’s walk to the park and back. Then maybe I’ll be cooled off enough to go home.”
“Okay,” Johnny said easily. “Okay.”
Things gotta get better, I figured. They couldn’t get worse. I was wrong.
Chapter 4
THE PARK WAS ABOUT two blocks square, with a fountain in the middle and a small swimming pool for the little kids. The pool was empty now in the fall, but the fountain was going merrily. Tall elm trees made the park shadowy and dark, and it would have been a good hangout, but we preferred our vacant lot, and the Shepard outfit liked the alleys down by the tracks, so the park was left to lovers and little kids.
Nobody was around at two-thirty in the morning, and it was a good place to relax and cool off. I couldn’t have gotten much cooler without turning into a popsicle. Johnny snapped up his jeans jacket and flipped up the collar.
“Ain’t you about to freeze to death, Pony?”
“You ain’t a’woofin’,” I said, rubbing my bare arms between drags on my cigarette. I started to say something about the film of ice developing on the outer edges of the fountain when a sudden blast from a car horn made us both jump. The blue Mustang was circling the park slowly.
Johnny swore under his breath, and I muttered, “What do they want? This is our territory. What are Socs doing this far east?”
Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know. But I bet they’re looking for us. We picked up their girls.”
“Oh, glory,” I said with a groan, “this is all I need to top off a perfect night.” I took one last drag on my weed and ground the stub under my heel. “Want to run for it?”
“It’s too late now,” Johnny said. “Here they come.”
Five Socs were coming straight at us, and from the way they were staggering I figured they were reeling pickled. That scared me. A cool deadly bluff could sometimes shake them off, but not if they outnumbered you five to two and were drunk. Johnny’s hand went to his back pocket and I remembered his switchblade. I wished for that broken bottle. I’d sure show them I could use it if I had to. Johnny was scared to death. I mean it. He was as white as a ghost and his eyes were wild-looking, like the eyes of an animal in a trap. We backed against the fountain and the Socs surrounded us. They smelled so heavily of whiskey and English Leather that I almost choked. I wished desperately that Darry and Soda would come along hunting for me. The four of us could handle them easily. But no one was around, and I knew Johnny and I were going to have to fight it out alone. Johnny had a blank, tough look on his face—you’d have had to know him to see the panic in his eyes. I stared at the Socs coolly. Maybe they could scare us to death, but we’d never let them have the satisfaction of knowing it.
It was Randy and Bob and three other Socs, and they recognized us. I knew Johnny recognized them; he was watching the moonlight glint off Bob’s rings with huge eyes.
“Hey, whatta ya know?” Bob said a little unsteadily, “here’s the little greasers that picked up our girls. Hey, greasers.”
“You’re outa your territory,” Johnny warned in a low voice. “You’d better watch it.”
Randy swore at us and they stepped in closer. Bob was eyeing Johnny. “Nup, pal, yer the ones who’d better watch it. Next time you want a broad, pick up yer own kind—dirt.”
I was getting mad. I was hating them enough to lose my head.
“You know what a greaser is?” Bob asked. “White trash with long hair.”
I felt the blood draining from my face. I’ve been cussed out and sworn at, but nothing ever hit me like that did. Johnnycake made a kind of gasp and his eyes were smoldering.
“You know what a Soc is?” I said, my voice shaking with rage. “White trash with Mustangs and madras.” And then, because I couldn’t think of anything bad enough to call them, I spit at them.
Bob shook his head, smiling slowly. “You could use a bath, greaser. And a good working over. And we’ve got all night to do it. Give the kid a bath, David.”
I ducked and tried to run for it, but the Soc caught my arm and twisted it behind my back, and shoved my face into the fountain. I fought, but the hand at the back of my neck was strong and I had to hold my breath. I’m dying, I thought, and wondered what was happening to Johnny. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I fought again desperately but only sucked in water. I’m drowning, I thought, they’ve gone too far . . . A red haze filled my mind and I slowly relaxed.
The next thing I knew I was lying on the pavement beside the fountain, coughing water and gasping. I lay there weakly, breathing in air and spitting out water. The wind blasted through my soaked sweat shirt and dripping hair. My teeth chattered unceasingly and I couldn’t stop them. I finally pushed myself up and leaned back against the fountain, the water running down my face. Then I saw Johnny.
He was sitting next to me, one elbow on his knee, and staring straight ahead. He was a strange greenish-white, and his eyes were huger than I’d ever seen them.
“I killed him,” he said slowly. “I killed that boy.”
Bob, the handsome Soc, was lying there in the moonlight, doubled up and still. A dark pool was growing from him, spreading slowly over the blue-white cement. I looked at Johnny’s hand. He was clutching his switchblade, and it was dark to the hilt. My stomach gave a violent jump and my blood turned icy.
“Johnny,” I managed to say, fighting the dizziness, “I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“Go ahead,” he said in the same steady voice. “I won’t look at you.”
I turned my head and was quietly sick for a minute. Then I leaned back and closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see Bob lying there.
This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be . . .
“You really killed him, huh, Johnny?”
“Yeah.”
His voice quavered slightly. “I had to. They were drowning you, Pony. They might have killed you. And they had a blade . . . they were gonna beat me up. . . .”
“Like . . .”—I swallowed—“like they did before?”
Johnny was quiet for a minute. “Yeah,” he said, “like they did before.”
Johnny told me what had happened: “They ran when I stabbed him. They all ran . . .”
A panic was rising in me as I listened to Johnny’s quiet voice go on and on. “Johnny!” I nearly screamed. “What are we gonna do? They put you in the electric chair for killing people!” I was shaking. I want a cigarette. I want a cigarette. I want a cigarette. We had smoked our last pack. “I’m scared, Johnny. What are we gonna do?”
Johnny jumped up and dragged me up by my sweat shirt. He shook me. “Calm down, Ponyboy. Get ahold of yourself.”
I hadn’t realized I was screaming. I shook loose. “Okay,” I said, “I’m okay now.”
Johnny looked around, slapping his pockets nervously. “We gotta get outa here. Get somewhere. Run away. The police’ll be here soon.” I was trembling, and it wasn’t all from cold. But Johnny, except for the fact that his hands were twitching, looked as cool as Darry ever had. “We’ll need money. And maybe a gun. And a plan.”
Money. Maybe a gun? A plan. Where in the world would we get these things?
“Dally,” Johnny said with finality. “Dally’ll get us outa here.”
I heaved a sigh. Why hadn’t I thought of that? But I never thought of anything. Dallas Winston could do anything.
“Where can we find him?”
“I think at Buck Merril’s place. There’s a party over there tonight. Dally said somethin’ about it this afternoon.”
Buck Merril was Dally’s rodeo partner. He was the one who’d got Dally the job as a jockey for the Slash J. Buck raised a few quarter horses, and made most of his money on fixed races and a little bootlegging. I was under strict orders from both Darry and Soda not to get caught within ten miles of his place, which was dandy with me. I didn’t like Buck Merril. He was a tall lanky cowboy with blond hair and buckteeth. Or he used to be bucktoothed before he had the front two knocked out in a fight. He was out of it. He dug Hank Williams—how gross can you get?