The Outsiders (9 page)

“I’m sorry I cut your hair off, Ponyboy.”

“Oh, it ain’t that,” I said between bites of chocolate. “I mean, not all of it. I’m just a little spooky. I really don’t know what’s the matter. I’m just mixed up.”

“I know,” Johnny said through chattering teeth as we went inside. “Things have been happening so fast . . .” I put my arm across his shoulders to warm him up.

“Two-Bit shoulda been in that little one-horse store. Man, we’re in the middle of nowhere; the nearest house is two miles away. Things were layin’ out wide open, just
waitin’ for somebody slick like Two-Bit to come and pick ’em up. He coulda walked out with half the store.” He leaned back beside me, and I could feel him trembling. “Good ol’ Two-Bit,” he said in a quavering voice. He must have been as homesick as I was.

“Remember how he was wisecrackin’ last night?” I said. “Last night . . . just last night we were walkin’ Cherry and Marcia over to Two-Bit’s. Just last night we were layin’ in the lot, lookin’ up at the stars and dreaming . . .”

“Stop it!” Johnny gasped from between clenched teeth. “Shut up about last night! I killed a kid last night. He couldn’t of been over seventeen or eighteen, and I killed him. How’d you like to live with that?” He was crying. I held him like Soda had held him the day we found him lying in the lot.

“I didn’t mean to,” he finally blurted out, “but they were drownin’ you, and I was so scared . . .” He was quiet for a minute. “There sure is a lot of blood in people.”

He got up suddenly and began pacing back and forth, slapping his pockets.

“Whatta we gonna do?” I was crying by then. It was getting dark and I was cold and lonesome. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back, but the tears came anyway.

“This is my fault,” Johnny said in a miserable voice. He had stopped crying when I started. “For bringin’ a little thirteen-year-old kid along. You ought to go home. You can’t get into any trouble. You didn’t kill him.”

“No!” I screamed at him. “I’m fourteen! I’ve been fourteen for a month! And I’m in it as much as you are. I’ll stop crying in a minute . . . I can’t help it.”

He slumped down beside me. “I didn’t mean it like
that, Ponyboy. Don’t cry, Pony, we’ll be okay. Don’t cry . . .” I leaned against him and bawled until I went to sleep.

I woke up late that night. Johnny was resting against the wall and I was asleep on his shoulder. “Johnny?” I yawned. “You awake?” I was warm and sleepy.

“Yeah,” he said quietly.

“We ain’t gonna cry no more, are we?”

“Nope. We’re all cried out now. We’re gettin’ used to the idea. We’re gonna be okay now.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said drowsily. Then for the first time since Dally and I had sat down behind those girls at the Nightly Double, I relaxed. We could take whatever was coming now.

The next four or five days were the longest days I’ve ever spent in my life. We killed time by reading
Gone with the Wind
and playing poker. Johnny sure did like that book, although he didn’t know anything about the Civil War and even less about plantations, and I had to explain a lot of it to him. It amazed me how Johnny could get more meaning out of some of the stuff in there than I could—I was supposed to be the deep one. Johnny had failed a year in school and never made good grades—he couldn’t grasp anything that was shoved at him too fast, and I guess his teachers thought he was just plain dumb. But he wasn’t. He was just a little slow to get things, and he liked to explore things once he did get them. He was especially stuck on the Southern gentlemen—impressed with their manners and charm.

“I bet they were cool ol’ guys,” he said, his eyes glowing, after I had read the part about them riding into sure death
because they were gallant. “They remind me of Dally.”

“Dally?” I said, startled. “Shoot, he ain’t got any more manners than I do. And you saw how he treated those girls the other night. Soda’s more like them Southern boys.”

“Yeah . . . in the manners bit, and the charm, too, I guess,” Johnny said slowly, “but one night I saw Dally gettin’ picked up by the fuzz, and he kept real cool and calm the whole time. They was gettin’ him for breakin’ out the windows in the school building, and it was Two-Bit who did that. And Dally knew it. But he just took the sentence without battin’ an eye or even denyin’ it. That’s gallant.”

That was the first time I realized the extent of Johnny’s hero-worship for Dally Winston. Of all of us, Dally was the one I liked least. He didn’t have Soda’s understanding or dash, or Two-Bit’s humor, or even Darry’s superman qualities. But I realized that these three appealed to me because they were like the heroes in the novels I read. Dally was real. I liked my books and clouds and sunsets. Dally was so real he scared me.

Johnny and I never went to the front of the church. You could see the front from the road, and sometimes farm kids rode their horses by on their way to the store. So we stayed in the very back, usually sitting on the steps and looking across the valley. We could see for miles; see the ribbon of highway and the small dots that were houses and cars. We couldn’t watch the sunset, since the back faced east, but I loved to look at the colors of the fields and the soft shadings of the horizon.

One morning I woke up earlier than usual. Johnny and I slept huddled together for warmth—Dally had been right when he said it would get cold where we were going. Being
careful not to wake Johnny up, I went to sit on the steps and smoke a cigarette. The dawn was coming then. All the lower valley was covered with mist, and sometimes little pieces of it broke off and floated away in small clouds. The sky was lighter in the east, and the horizon was a thin golden line. The clouds changed from gray to pink, and the mist was touched with gold. There was a silent moment when everything held its breath, and then the sun rose. It was beautiful.

“Golly”—Johnny’s voice beside me made me jump—“that sure was pretty.”

“Yeah.” I sighed, wishing I had some paint to do a picture with while the sight was still fresh in my mind.

“The mist was what was pretty,” Johnny said. “All gold and silver.”

“Uhmmmm,” I said, trying to blow a smoke ring.

“Too bad it couldn’t stay like that all the time.”

“Nothing gold can stay.” I was remembering a poem I’d read once.

“What?”

Johnny was staring at me. “Where’d you learn that? That was what I meant.”

“Robert Frost wrote it. He meant more to it than I’m gettin’, though.” I was trying to find the meaning the poet had in mind, but it eluded me. “I always remembered it because I never quite got what he meant by it.”

“You know,” Johnny said slowly, “I never noticed colors and clouds and stuff until you kept reminding me about them. It seems like they were never there before.” He thought for a minute. “Your family sure is funny.”

“And what happens to be so funny about it?” I asked stiffly.

Johnny looked at me quickly. “I didn’t mean nothing. I meant, well, Soda kinda looks like your mother did, but he acts just exactly like your father. And Darry is the spittin’ image of your father, but he ain’t wild and laughing all the time like he was. He acts like your mother. And you don’t act like either one.”

“I know,” I said. “Well,” I said, thinking this over, “you ain’t like any of the gang. I mean, I couldn’t tell Two-Bit or Steve or even Darry about the sunrise and clouds and stuff. I couldn’t even remember that poem around them. I mean, they just don’t dig. Just you and Sodapop. And maybe Cherry Valance.”

Johnny shrugged. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I guess we’re different.”

“Shoot,” I said, blowing a perfect smoke ring, “maybe
they
are.”

By the fifth day I was so tired of baloney I nearly got sick every time I looked at it. We had eaten all our candy bars in the first two days. I was dying for a Pepsi. I’m what you might call a Pepsi addict. I drink them like a fiend, and
going for five days without one was about to kill me. Johnny promised to get some if we ran out of supplies and had to get some more, but that didn’t help me right then. I was smoking a lot more there than I usually did—I guess because it was something to do—although Johnny warned me that I would get sick smoking so much. We were careful with our cigarettes—if that old church ever caught fire there’d be no stopping it.

On the fifth day I had read up to Sherman’s siege of Atlanta in
Gone with the Wind
, owed Johnny a hundred and fifty bucks from poker games, smoked two packs of Camels, and as Johnny had predicted, got sick. I hadn’t eaten anything all day; and smoking on an empty stomach doesn’t make you feel real great. I curled up in a corner to sleep off the smoke. I was just about asleep when I heard, as if from a great distance, a low long whistle that went off in a sudden high note. I was too sleepy to pay any attention, although Johnny didn’t have any reason to be whistling like that. He was sitting on the back steps trying to read
Gone with the Wind
. I had almost decided that I had dreamed the outside world and there was nothing real but baloney sandwiches and the Civil War and the old church and the mist in the valley. It seemed to me that I had always lived in the church, or maybe lived during the Civil War and had somehow got transplanted. That shows you what a wild imagination I have.

A toe nudged me in the ribs. “Glory,” said a rough but familiar voice, “he looks different with his hair like that.”

I rolled over and sat up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and yawning. Suddenly I blinked.

“Hey, Dally!”

“Hey, Ponyboy!” He grinned down at me. “Or should I say Sleeping Beauty?”

I never thought I’d live to see the day when I would be so glad to see Dally Winston, but right then he meant one thing: contact with the outside world. And it suddenly became real and vital.

“How’s Sodapop? Are the fuzz after us? Is Darry all right? Do the boys know where we are? What . . .”

“Hold on, kid,” Dally broke in. “I can’t answer everything at once. You two want to go get something to eat first? I skipped breakfast and I’m about starved.”

“
You’re
starved?” Johnny was so indignant he nearly squeaked. I remembered the baloney.

“Is it safe to go out?” I asked eagerly.

“Yep.” Dally searched his shirt pocket for a cigarette, and finding none, said, “Gotta cancer stick, Johnnycake?”

Johnny tossed him a whole package.

“The fuzz won’t be lookin’ for you around here,” Dally said, lighting up. “They think you’ve lit out for Texas. I’ve got Buck’s T-bird parked down the road a little way. Goshamighty, boys, ain’t you been eatin’ anything?”

Johnny looked startled. “Yeah. Whatever gave you the idea we ain’t?”

Dally shook his head. “You’re both pale and you’ve lost weight. After this, get out in the sun more. You look like you’ve been through the mill.”

I started to say “Look who’s talking” but decided it would be safer not to. Dally needed a shave—a stubble of colorless beard covered his jaw—and he looked like he was the one who’d been sleeping in his clothes for a week
instead of us; I knew he hadn’t seen a barber in months. But it was safer not to get mouthy with Dally Winston.

“Hey, Ponyboy”—he fumbled with a piece of paper in his back pocket—“I gotta letter for you.”

“A letter? Who from?”

“The President, of course, stupid. It’s from Soda.”

“Sodapop?” I said, bewildered. “But how did he know . . . ?”

“He came over to Buck’s a couple of days ago for something and found that sweat shirt. I told him I didn’t know where you were, but he didn’t believe me. He gave me this letter and half his pay check to give you. Kid, you ought to see Darry. He’s takin’ this mighty hard . . .”

I wasn’t listening. I leaned back against the side of the church and read:

He could improve his spelling, I thought after reading it through three or four times. “How come you got hauled in?” I asked Dally.

“Shoot, kid”—he grinned wolfishly—“them boys at the station know me by now. I get hauled in for everything that happens in our turf. While I was there I kinda let it slip that y’all were headin’ for Texas. So that’s where they’re lookin’.”

He took a drag on his cigarette and cussed it good-naturedly for not being a Kool. Johnny listened in admiration. “You sure can cuss good, Dally.”

“Sure can,” Dally agreed wholeheartedly, proud of his vocabulary. “But don’t you kids get to pickin’ up my bad habits.”

He gave me a hard rub on the head. “Kid, I swear it don’t look like you with your hair all cut off. It used to look tuff. You and Soda had the coolest-lookin’ hair in town.”

“I know,” I said sourly. “I look lousy, but don’t rub it in.”

“Do y’all want somethin’ to eat or not?”

Johnny and I leaped up. “You’d better believe it.”

“Gee,” Johnny said wistfully, “it sure will be good to get into a car again.”

“Well,” Dally drawled, “I’ll give you a ride for your money.”

Dally always did like to drive fast, as if he didn’t care whether he got where he was going or not, and we came down the red dirt road off Jay Mountain doing eighty-five. I like fast driving and Johnny was crazy about drag races, but we both got a little green around the gills when Dally took a corner on two wheels with the brakes screaming. Maybe it was because we hadn’t been in a car for so long.