by SE Hinton
Buck answered the door when we knocked, and a roar of cheap music came with him. The clinking of glasses, loud, rough laughter and female giggles, and Hank Williams. It scraped on my raw nerves like sandpaper. A can of beer in one hand, Buck glared down at us. “Whatta ya want?”
“Dally!” Johnny gulped, looking back over his shoulder. “We gotta see Dally.”
“He’s busy,” Buck snapped, and someone in his living room yelled “A-ha!” and then “Yee-ha,” and the sound of it almost made my nerves snap.
“Tell him it’s Pony and Johnny,” I commanded. I knew Buck, and the only way you could get anything from him was to bully him. I guess that’s why Dallas could handle him so easily, although Buck was in his mid-twenties and Dally was seventeen. “He’ll come.”
Buck glared at me for a second, then stumbled off. He was pretty well crocked, which made me apprehensive. If Dally was drunk and in a dangerous mood. . . .
He appeared in a few minutes, clad only in a pair of low-cut blue jeans, scratching the hair on his chest. He was sober enough, and that surprised me. Maybe he hadn’t been there long.
“Okay, kids, whatta ya need me for?”
As Johnny told him the story, I studied Dally, trying to figure out what there was about this tough-looking hood that a girl like Cherry Valance could love. Towheaded and shifty-eyed, Dally was anything but handsome. Yet in his hard face there was character, pride, and a savage defiance of the world. He could never love Cherry Valance back. It would be a miracle if Dally loved anything. The fight for self-preservation had hardened him beyond caring.
He didn’t bat an eye when Johnny told him what had happened, only grinned and said “Good for you” when Johnny told how he had knifed the Soc. Finally Johnny finished. “We figured you could get us out if anyone could. I’m sorry we got you away from the party.”
“Oh, shoot, kid”—Dally glanced contemptuously over his shoulder—“I was in the bedroom.”
He suddenly stared at me. “Glory, but your ears can get red, Ponyboy.”
I was remembering what usually went on in the bedrooms at Buck’s parties. Then Dally grinned in amused realization. “It wasn’t anything like that, kid. I was asleep, or tryin’ to be, with all this racket. Hank Williams”—he rolled his eyes and added a few adjectives after ‘Hank Williams.’ “Me and Shepard had a run-in and I cracked some ribs. I just needed a place to lay over.” He rubbed his side ruefully. “Ol’ Tim sure can pack a punch. He won’t be able to see outa one eye for a week.” He looked us over and sighed. “Well, wait a sec and I’ll see what I can do about this mess.” Then he took a good look at me. “Ponyboy, are you wet?”
“Y-y-yes-s,” I stammered through chattering teeth.
“Glory hallelujah!” He opened the screen door and pulled me in, motioning for Johnny to follow. “You’ll die of pneumonia ’fore the cops ever get you.”
He half-dragged me into an empty bedroom, swearing at me all the way. “Get that sweat shirt off.” He threw a towel at me. “Dry off and wait here. At least Johnny’s got his jeans jacket. You ought to know better than to run away in just a sweat shirt, and a wet one at that. Don’t you ever use your head?” He sounded so much like Darry that I stared at him. He didn’t notice, and left us sitting on the bed.
Johnny lay back on it. “Wish I had me a weed.”
My knees were shaking as I finished drying off, sitting there in my jeans.
Dally appeared after a minute. He carefully shut the door. “Here”—he handed us a gun and a roll of bills—“the gun’s loaded. For Pete’s sake, Johnny, don’t point the thing at me. Here’s fifty bucks. That’s all I could get out of Merril tonight. He’s blowin’ his loot from that last race.”
You might have thought it was Dally who fixed those races for Buck, being a jockey and all, but it wasn’t. The last guy to suggest it lost three teeth. It’s the truth. Dally rode the ponies honestly and did his best to win. It was the only thing Dally did honestly.
“Pony, do Darry and Sodapop know about this?”
I shook my head. Dally sighed. “Boy howdy, I ain’t itchin’ to be the one to tell Darry and get my head busted.”
“Then don’t tell him,” I said. I hated to worry Sodapop, and would have liked to let him know I had gotten this far okay, but I didn’t care if Darry worried himself gray-headed. I was too tired to tell myself I was being mean and unreasonable. I convinced myself it wouldn’t be fair to make Dally tell him. Darry would beat him to death for giving us the money and the gun and getting us out of town.
“Here!” Dally handed me a shirt about sixty-million sizes too big. “It’s Buck’s—you an’ him ain’t exactly the same size, but it’s dry.” He handed me his worn brown leather jacket with the yellow sheep’s-wool lining. “It’ll get cold where you’re going, but you can’t risk being loaded down with blankets.”
I started buttoning up the shirt. It about swallowed me. “Hop the three-fifteen freight to Windrixville,” Dally instructed. “There’s an old abandoned church on top of Jay Mountain. There’s a pump in back so don’t worry about water. Buy a week’s supply of food as soon as you get there—this morning, before the story gets out, and then don’t so much as stick your noses out the door. I’ll be up there as soon as I think it’s clear. Man, I thought New York was the only place I could get mixed up in a murder rap.”
At the word “murder,” Johnny made a small noise in his throat and shuddered.
Dally walked us back to the door, turning off the porch light before we stepped out. “Git goin’!” He messed up Johnny’s hair. “Take care, kid,” he said softly.
“Sure, Dally, thanks.” And we ran into the darkness.
We crouched in the weeds beside the railroad tracks, listening to the whistle grow louder. The train slowed to a screaming halt. “Now,” whispered Johnny. We ran and pulled ourselves into an open boxcar. We pressed against the side, trying to hold our breath while we listened to the railroad workers walk up and down outside. One poked his head inside, and we froze. But he didn’t see us, and the boxcar rattled as the train started up.
“The first stop’ll be Windrixville,” Johnny said, laying the gun down gingerly. He shook his head. “I don’t see why he gave me this. I couldn’t shoot anybody.”
Then for the first time, really, I realized what we were in for. Johnny had killed someone. Quiet, soft-spoken little Johnny, who wouldn’t hurt a living thing on purpose, had taken a human life. We were really running away, with the police after us for murder and a loaded gun by our side. I wished we’d asked Dally for a pack of cigarettes. . . .
I stretched out and used Johnny’s legs for a pillow. Curling up, I was thankful for Dally’s jacket. It was too big, but it was warm. Not even the rattling of the train could keep me awake, and I went to sleep in a hoodlum’s jacket, with a gun lying next to my hand.
I was hardly awake when Johnny and I leaped off the train into a meadow. Not until I landed in the dew and got a wet shock did I realize what I was doing. Johnny must have woke me up and told me to jump, but I didn’t remember it. We lay in the tall weeds and damp grass, breathing heavily. The dawn was coming. It was lightening the sky in the east and a ray of gold touched the hills. The clouds were pink and meadow larks were singing. This is the country, I thought, half asleep. My dream’s come true and I’m in the country.
“Blast it, Ponyboy”—Johnny was rubbing his legs—“you must have put my legs to sleep. I can’t even stand up. I barely got off that train.”
“I’m sorry. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“That’s okay. I didn’t want to wake you up until I had to.”
“Now how do we find Jay Mountain?” I asked Johnny. I was still groggy with sleep and wanted to sleep forever right there in the dew and the dawn.
“Go ask someone. The story won’t be in the paper yet. Make like a farm boy taking a walk or something.”
“I don’t look like a farm boy,” I said. I suddenly thought of my long hair, combed back, and the s
louching stride I used from habit. I looked at Johnny. He didn’t look like any farm boy to me. He still reminded me of a lost puppy who had been kicked too often, but for the first time I saw him as a stranger might see him. He looked hard and tough, because of his black T-shirt and his blue jeans and jacket, and because his hair was heavily greased and so long. I saw how his hair curled behind his ears and I thought: We both need a haircut and some decent clothes. I looked down at my worn, faded blue jeans, my too-big shirt, and Dally’s worn-out jacket. They’ll know we’re hoods the minute they see us, I thought.
“I’ll have to stay here,” Johnny said, rubbing his legs. “You go down the road and ask the first person you see where Jay Mountain is.” He winced at the pain in his legs. “Then come back. And for Pete’s sake, run a comb through your hair and quit slouching down like a thug.”
So Johnny had noticed it too. I pulled a comb from my back pocket and combed my hair carefully. “I guess I look okay now, huh, Johnny?”
He was studying me. “You know, you look an awful lot like Sodapop, the way you’ve got your hair and everything. I mean, except your eyes are green.”
“They ain’t green, they’re gray,” I said, reddening. “And I look about as much like Soda as you do.” I got to my feet. “He’s good-looking.”
“Shoot,” Johnny said with a grin, “you are, too.”
I climbed over the barbed-wire fence without saying anything else. I could hear Johnny laughing at me, but I didn’t care. I went strolling down the red dirt road, hoping my natural color would come back before I met anyone. I wonder what Darry and Sodapop are doing now, I thought, yawning. Soda had the whole bed to himself for once. I bet Darry’s sorry he ever hit me. He’ll really get worried when he finds out Johnny and I killed that Soc. Then, for a moment, I pictured Sodapop’s face when he heard about it. I wish I was home, I thought absently, I wish I was home and still in bed. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m just dreaming . . .
It was only last night that Dally and I had sat down behind those girls at the Nightly Double. Glory, I thought with a bewildering feeling of being rushed, things are happening too quick. Too fast. I figured I couldn’t get into any worse trouble than murder. Johnny and I would be hiding for the rest of our lives. Nobody but Dally would know where we were, and he couldn’t tell anyone because he’d get jailed again for giving us that gun. If Johnny got caught, they’d give him the electric chair, and if they caught me, I’d be sent to a reformatory. I’d heard about reformatories from Curly Shepard and I didn’t want to go to one at all. So we’d have to be hermits for the rest of our lives, and never see anyone but Dally. Maybe I’d never see Darry or Sodapop again. Or even Two-Bit or Steve. I was in the country, but I knew I wasn’t going to like it as much as I’d thought I would. There are things worse than being a greaser.
I met a sunburned farmer driving a tractor down the road. I waved at him and he stopped.
“Could you tell me where Jay Mountain is?” I asked as politely as I could.
He pointed on down the road. “Follow this road to that big hill over there. That’s it. Taking a walk?”
“Yessir.” I managed to look sheepish. “We’re playing army and I’m supposed to report to headquarters there.”
I can lie so easily that it spooks me sometimes—Soda says it comes from reading so much. But then, Two-Bit lies all the time too, and he never opens a book.
“Boys will be boys,” the farmer said with a grin, and I thought dully that he sounded as corn-poney as Hank Williams. He went on and I walked back to where Johnny was waiting.
We climbed up the road to the church, although it was a lot farther away than it looked. The road got steeper with every step. I was feeling kind of drunk—I always do when I get too sleepy—and my legs got heavier and heavier. I guess Johnny was sleepier than I was—he had stayed awake on the train to make sure we got off at the right place. It took us about forty-five minutes to get there. We climbed in a back window. It was a small church, real old and spooky and spiderwebby. It gave me the creeps.
I’d been in church before. I used to go all the time, even after Mom and Dad were gone. Then one Sunday I talked Soda into coming with Johnny and me. He didn’t want to come unless Steve did, and Two-Bit decided he might as well come too. Dally was sleeping off a hangover, and Darry was working. When Johnny and I went, we sat in the back, trying to get something out of the sermon and avoiding the people, because we weren’t dressed so sharp most of the time. Nobody seemed to mind, and Johnny and I really liked to go. But that day . . . well, Soda can’t sit still long enough to enjoy a movie, much less a sermon. It wasn’t long before he and Steve and Two-Bit were throwing paper wads at each other and clowning around, and finally Steve dropped a hymn book with a bang—accidentally, of course. Everyone in the place turned around to look at us, and Johnny and I nearly crawled under the pews. And then Two-Bit waved at them.
I hadn’t been to church since.
But this church gave me a kind of creepy feeling. What do you call it? Premonition? I flopped down on the floor—and immediately decided not to do any more flopping. That floor was stone, and hard. Johnny stretched out beside me, resting his head on his arm. I started to say something to him, but I went to sleep before I could get the words out of my mouth. But Johnny didn’t notice. He was asleep, too.
Chapter 5
I WOKE UP LATE IN the afternoon. For a second I didn’t know where I was. You know how it is, when you wake up in a strange place and wonder where in the world you are, until memory comes rushing over you like a wave. I half convinced myself that I had dreamed everything that had happened the night before. I’m really home in bed, I thought. It’s late and both Darry and Sodapop are up. Darry’s cooking breakfast, and in a minute he and Soda will come in and drag me out of bed and wrestle me down and tickle me until I think I’ll die if they don’t stop. It’s me and Soda’s turn to do the dishes after we eat, and then we’ll all go outside and play football. Johnny and Two-Bit and I will get Darry on our side, since Johnny and I are so small and Darry’s the best player. It’ll go like the usual weekend morning. I tried telling myself that while I lay on the cold rock floor, wrapped up in Dally’s jacket and listening to the wind rushing through the trees’ dry leaves outside.
Finally I quit pretending and pushed myself up. I was stiff and sore from sleeping on that hard floor, but I had never slept so soundly. I was still groggy. I pushed off Johnny’s jeans jacket, which had somehow got thrown across me, and blinked, scratching my head. It was awful quiet, with just the sound of rushing wind in the trees. Suddenly I realized that Johnny wasn’t there.
“Johnny?” I called loudly, and that old wooden church echoed me, onny onny . . . I looked around wildly, almost panic-stricken, but then caught sight of some crooked lettering written in the dust of the floor. Went to get supplies. Be back soon. J.C.
I sighed, and went to the pump to get a drink. The water from it was like liquid ice and it tasted funny, but it was water. I splashed some on my face and that woke me up pretty quick. I wiped my face off on Johnny’s jacket and sat down on the back steps. The hill the church was on dropped off suddenly about twenty feet from the back door, and you could see for miles and miles. It was like sitting on the top of the world.
When you haven’t got anything to do, you remember things in spite of yourself. I could remember every detail of the whole night, but it had the unreal quality of a dream. It seemed much longer than twenty-four hours since Johnny and I had met Dally at the corner of Pickett and Sutton. Maybe it was. Maybe Johnny had been gone a whole week and I had just slept. Maybe he had already been worked over by the fuzz and was waiting to get the electric chair since he wouldn’t tell where I was. Maybe Dally had been killed in a car wreck or something and no one would ever know where I was, and I’d just die up here, alone, and turn into a skeleton. My over-active imagination was running away with me again. Sweat ran down my face and back, and I was trembling. My head swam, and I leaned back and closed my eyes. I gue
ss it was partly delayed shock. Finally my stomach calmed down and I relaxed a little, hoping that Johnny would remember cigarettes. I was scared, sitting there by myself.
I heard someone coming up through the dead leaves toward the back of the church, and I ducked inside the door. Then I heard a whistle, long and low, ending in a sudden high note. I knew that whistle well enough. It was used by us and the Shepard gang for “Who’s there?” I returned it carefully, then darted out the door so fast that I fell off the steps and sprawled flat under Johnny’s nose.
I propped myself on my elbows and grinned up at him. “Hey, Johnny. Fancy meetin’ you here.”
He looked down at me over a big package. “I swear, Ponyboy, you’re gettin’ to act more like Two-Bit every day.”
I tried unsuccessfully to cock an eyebrow. “Who’s acting?” I rolled over and sprang up, happy that someone was there. “What’d you get?”
“Come on inside. Dally told us to stay inside.”
We went in. Johnny dusted off a table with his jacket and started taking things out of the sack and lining them up neatly. “A week’s supply of baloney, two loaves of bread, a box of matches . . .” Johnny went on.
I got tired of watching him do it all, so I started digging into the sack myself. “Wheee!” I sat down on a dusty chair and stared. “A paperback copy of Gone with the Wind! How’d you know I always wanted one?”
Johnny reddened. “I remembered you sayin’ something about it once. And me and you went to see that movie, ’member? I thought you could maybe read it out loud and help kill time or something.”