فصل 07

Chapter 7

NOW THERE WERE three of us sitting in the waiting room waiting to hear how Dally and Johnny were. Then the reporters and the police came. They asked too many questions too fast, and got me mixed up. If you want to know the truth, I wasn’t feeling real good in the first place. Kind of sick, really. And I’m scared of policemen anyway. The reporters fired one question right after another at me and got me so confused I didn’t know what was coming off. Darry finally told them I wasn’t in any shape to be yelled at so much and they slowed down a little. Darry’s kinda big.

Sodapop kept them in stitches. He’d grab one guy’s press hat and another’s camera and walk around interviewing the nurses and mimicking TV reporters. He tried to lift a policeman’s gun and grinned so crazily when he was caught that the policeman had to grin too. Soda can make anyone grin. I managed to get hold of some hair grease and comb my hair back so that it looked a little better before they got any pictures. I’d die if I got my picture in the paper with my hair looking so lousy. Darry and Sodapop were in the pictures too; Jerry Wood told me that if Sodapop and Darry hadn’t been so good-looking, they wouldn’t have taken so many. That was public appeal, he said.

Soda was really getting a kick out of all this. I guess he would have enjoyed it more if it hadn’t been so serious, but he couldn’t resist anything that caused that much excitement. I swear, sometimes he reminds me of a colt. A long-legged palomino colt that has to get his nose into everything. The reporters stared at him admiringly; I told you he looks like a movie star, and he kind of radiates.

Finally, even Sodapop got tired of the reporter— he gets bored with the same old thing after a time— and stretching out on the long bench, he put his head in Darry’s lap and went to sleep. I guess both of them were tired— it was late at night and I knew they hadn’t had much sleep during the week. Even while I was answering questions I remembered that it had been only a few hours since I was sleeping off a smoke in the corner of the church. Already it was an unreal dream and yet, at the time I couldn’t have imagined any other world. Finally, the reporters started to leave, along with the police. One of them turned and asked, “What would you do right now if you could do anything you wanted?”

I looked at him tiredly. “Take a bath.”

They thought that was pretty funny, but I meant it. I felt lousy. The hospital got real quiet after they left. The only noise was the nurse’s soft footsteps and Soda’s light breathing. Darry looked down at him and grinned half-heartedly. “He didn’t get much sleep this week,” he said softly. “He hardly slept at all.”

“Hhhmmmm,” Soda said drowsily, “you didn’t either.”

The nurses wouldn’t tell us anything about Johnny and Dally, so Darry got hold of the doctor. The doctor told us that he would talk only to the family, but Darry finally got it through the guy’s head that we were about as much family as Dally and Johnny had.

Dally would be okay after two or three days in the hospital, he said. One arm was badly burned and would be scarred for the rest of his life, but he would have full use of it in a couple of weeks. Dally’ll be okay, I thought. Dallas is always okay. He could take anything. It was Johnny I was worried about.

He was in critical condition. His back had been broken when that piece of timber fell on him. He was in severe shock and suffering from third-degree burns. They were doing everything they could to ease the pain, although since his back was broken he couldn’t even feel the burns below his waist. He kept calling for Dallas and Ponyboy. If he lived… If? Please, no, I thought. Please not “if.” The blood was draining from my face and Darry put an arm across my shoulder and squeezed hard…. Even if he lived he’d be crippled for the rest of his life. “You wanted it straight and you got it straight,” the doctor said. “Now go home and get some rest.”

I was trembling. A pain was growing in my throat and I wanted to cry, but greasers don’t cry in front of strangers. Some of us never cry at all. Like Dally and Two-Bit and Tim Shepard— they forgot how at an early age. Johnny crippled for life? I’m dreaming, I thought in panic, I’m dreaming. I’ll wake up at home or in the church and everything’ll be like it used to be. But I didn’t believe myself. Even if Johnny did live he’d be crippled and never play football or help us out in a rumble again. He’d have to stay in that house he hated, where he wasn’t wanted, and things could never be like they used to be. I didn’t trust myself to speak. If I said one word, the hard knot in my throat would swell and I’d be crying in spite of myself.

I took a deep breath and kept my mouth shut. Soda was awake by then, and although he looked stony-faced, as if he hadn’t heard a word the doctor had said, his eyes were bleak and stunned. Serious reality has a hard time coming through to Soda, but when it does, it hits him hard. He looked like I felt when I had seen that black-haired Soc lying doubled up and still in the moonlight.

Darry was rubbing the back of my head softly. “We’d better go home. We can’t do anything here.”

In our Ford I was suddenly overcome by sleepiness. I leaned back and closed my eyes and we were home before I knew it. Soda was shaking me gently. “Hey, Ponyboy, wake up. You still got to get to the house.”

“Hmmmmm,” I said sleepily, and lay down in the seat. I couldn’t have gotten up to save my life. I could hear Soda and Darry, but as if from a great distance.

“Oh, come on, Ponyboy,” Soda pleaded, shaking me a little harder, “we’re sleepy, too.”

I guess Darry was tired of fooling around, because he picked me up and carried me in.

“He’s getting mighty big to be carried,” Soda said. I wanted to tell him to shut up and let me sleep but I only yawned.

“He’s sure lost a lot of weight,” Darry said.

I thought sleepily that I should at least pull off my shoes but I didn’t. I went to sleep the minute Darry tossed me on the bed. I’d forgotten how soft a bed really was.

I WAS THE FIRST ONE up the next morning. Soda must have pulled my shoes and shirt off for me; I was still wearing my jeans. He must have been too sleepy to undress himself, though; he lay stretched out beside me fully clothed. I wiggled out from under his arm and pulled the blanket up over him, then went to take a shower. Asleep, he looked a lot younger than going-on-seventeen, but I had noticed that Johnny looked younger when he was asleep, too, so I figured everyone did. Maybe people are younger when they are asleep.

After my shower, I put on some clean clothes and spent five minutes or so hunting for a hint of beard on my face and mourning over my hair. That bum haircut made my ears stick out.

Darry was still asleep when I went into the kitchen to fix breakfast. The first one up has to fix breakfast and the other two do the dishes. That’s the rule around our house, and usually it’s Darry who fixes breakfast and me and Soda who are left with the dishes. I hunted through the icebox and found some eggs. We all like our eggs done differently. I like them hard, Darry likes them in a bacon-and-tomato sandwich, and Sodapop eats his with grape jelly. All three of us like chocolate cake for breakfast. Mom had never allowed it with ham and eggs, but Darry let Soda and me talk him into it. We really didn’t have to twist his arm; Darry loves chocolate cake as much as we do. Sodapop always makes sure there’s some in the icebox every night and if there isn’t he cooks one up real quick. I like Darry’s cakes better; Sodapop always puts too much sugar in the icing. I don’t see how he stands jelly and eggs and chocolate cake all at once, but he seems to like it. Darry drinks black coffee, and Sodapop and I drink chocolate milk. We could have coffee if we wanted it, but we like chocolate milk. All three of us are crazy about chocolate stuff. Soda says if they ever make a chocolate cigarette I’ll have it made.

“Anybody home?” a familiar voice called through the front screen, and Two-Bit and Steve came in. We always just stick our heads into each other’s houses and holler “Hey” and walk in. Our front door is always unlocked in case one of the boys is hacked off at his parents and needs a place to lay over and cool off. We never could tell who we’d find stretched out on the sofa in the morning. It was usually Steve, whose father told him about once a week to get out and never come back. It kind of bugs Steve, even if his old man does give him five or six bucks the next day to make up for it. Or it might be Dally, who lived anywhere he could. Once we even found Tim Shepard, leader of the Shepard gang and far from his own turf, reading the morning paper in the armchair. He merely looked up, said “Hi,” and strolled out without staying for breakfast. Two-Bit’s mother warned us about burglars, but Darry, flexing his muscles so that they bulged like oversized baseballs, drawled that he wasn’t afraid of any burglars, and that we didn’t really have anything worth taking. He’d risk a robbery, he said, if it meant keeping one of the boys from blowing up and robbing a gas station or something. So the door was never locked.

“In here!” I yelled, forgetting that Darry and Sodapop were still asleep. “Don’t slam the door.”

They slammed the door, of course, and Two-Bit came running into the kitchen. He caught me by the upper arms and swung me around, ignoring the fact that I had two uncooked eggs in my hand.

“Hey, Ponyboy,” he cried gleefully, “long time no see.”

You would have thought it had been five years instead of five days since I’d seen him last, but I didn’t mind. I like of Two-Bit; he’s a good buddy to have. He spun me into Steve, who gave me a playful slap on my bruised back and shoved me across the room. One of the eggs went flying. It landed on the clock and I tightened my grip on the other one, so that it crushed and ran all over my hand.

“Now look what you did,” I griped. “There went our breakfast. Can’t you two wait till I set the eggs down before you go shovin’ me all over the country?” I really was a little mad, because I had just realized how long it had been since I’d eaten anything. The last thing I’d eaten was a hot fudge sundae at the Dairy Queen in Windrixville, and I was hungry.

Two-Bit was walking in a slow circle around me, and I sighed because I knew what was coming.

“Man, dig baldy here!” He was staring at my head as he circled me. “I wouldn’t have believed it. I thought all the wild Indians in Oklahoma had been tamed. What little squaw’s got that tuff-lookin’ mop of yours, Ponyboy?”

“Aw, lay off,” I said. I wasn’t feeling too good in the first place, kind of like I was coming down with something. Two-Bit winked at Steve, and Steve said, “Why, he had to get a haircut to get his picture in the paper. They’d never believe a greasy lookin’ mug could be a hero. How do you like bein’ a hero, big shot?”

“How do I like what?”

“Being a hero. You know”— he shoved the morning paper at me impatiently— “like a big shot, even.”

I stared at the newspaper. On the front page of the second section was the headline: JUVENILE DELINQUENTS TURN HEROES.

“What I like is the ‘turn’ bit,” Two-Bit said, cleaning the egg up off the floor. “Y’all were heroes from the beginning. You just didn’t ‘turn’ all of a sudden.”

I hardly heard him. I was reading the paper. That whole page was covered with stories about us— the fight, the murder, the church burning, the Socs being drunk, everything. My picture was there, with Darry and Sodapop. The article told how Johnny and I had risked our lives saving those little kids, and there was a comment from one of the parents, who said that they would all have burned to death if it hadn’t been for us. It told the whole story of our fight with the Socs— only they didn’t say “Socs,” because most grownups don’t know about the battles that go on between us. They had interviewed Cherry Valance, and she said Bob had been drunk and that the boys had been looking for a fight when they took her home. Bob had told her he’d fix us for picking up his girl. His buddy Randy Adderson, who had helped lump us, also said it was their fault and that we’d only fought back in self-defense. But they were charging Johnny with manslaughter. Then I discovered that I was supposed to appear at juvenile court for running away, and Johnny was too, if he recovered. (Not if, I thought again. Why do they keep saying if?) For once, there weren’t any charges against Dally, and I knew he’d be mad because the paper made him out a hero for saving Johnny and didn’t say much about his police record, which he was kind of proud of. He’d kill those reporters if he got hold of them. There was another column about just Darry and Soda and me: how Darry worked on two jobs at once and made good at both of them, and about his outstanding record at school; it mentioned Sodapop dropping out of school so we could stay together, and that I made the honor roll at school all the time and might be a future track star. (Oh, yeah, I forgot— I’m on the A-squad track team, the youngest one. I’m a good runner.) Then it said we shouldn’t be separated after we had worked so hard to stay together.

The meaning of that last line finally hit me. “You mean…”— I swallowed hard— “that they’re thinking about putting me and Soda in a boys’ home or something?”

Steve was carefully combing back his hair in complicated swirls. “Somethin’ like that”

I sat down in a daze. We couldn’t get hauled off now. Not after me and Darry had finally got through to each other, and now that the big rumble was coming up and we would settle this Soc-greaser thing once and for all. Not now, when Johnny needed us and Dally was still in the hospital and wouldn’t be out for the rumble.

“No,” I said out loud, and Two-Bit, who was scraping the egg off the clock, turned to stare at me.

“No what?”

“No, they ain’t goin’ to put us in a boys’ home.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve said, cocksure that he and Sodapop could handle anything that came up. “They don’t do things like that to heroes. Where’re Soda and Superman?”

That was as far as he got, because Darry, shaved and dressed, came in behind Steve and lifted him up off the floor, then dropped him. We all call Darry “Superman” or “Muscles” at one time or another; but one time Steve made the mistake of referring to him as “all brawn and no brain,” and Darry almost shattered Steve’s jaw. Steve didn’t call him that again, but Darry never forgave him; Darry has never really gotten over not going to college. That was the only time I’ve ever seen Soda mad at Steve, although Soda attaches no importance to education. School bored him. No action.

Soda came running in. “Where’s that blue shirt I washed yesterday?” He took a swig of chocolate milk out of the container.

“Hate to tell you, buddy,” Steve said, still flat on the floor, “but you have to wear clothes to work. There’s a law or something.”

“Oh, yeah,” Soda said. “Where’re those wheat jeans, too?”

“I ironed. They’re in my closet,” Darry said. “Hurry up, you’re gonna be late.”

Soda ran back, muttering, “I’m hurryin’, I’m hurryin’.”

Steve followed him and in a second there was the general racket of a pillow fight. I absentmindedly watched Darry as he searched the icebox for chocolate cake.

“Darry,” I said suddenly, “did you know about the juvenile court?”

Without fuming to look at me he said evenly, “Yeah, the cops told me last night.”

I knew then that he realized we might get separated. I didn’t want to worry him any more, but I said, “I had one of those dreams last night. The one I can’t ever remember.”

Darry spun around to face me, genuine fear on his face. “What?”

I HAD A NIGHTMARE the night of Mom and Dad’s funeral. I’d had nightmares and wild dreams every once in a while when I was little, but nothing like this one. I woke up screaming bloody murder. And I never could remember what it was that had scared me. It scared Sodapop and Darry almost as bad as it scared me; for night after night, for weeks on end, I would dream this dream and wake up in a cold sweat or screaming. And I never could remember exactly what happened in it. Soda began sleeping with me, and it stopped recurring so often, but it happened often enough for Darry to take me to a doctor. The doctor said I had too much imagination. He had a simple cure, too: Study harder, read more, draw more, and play football more. After a hard game of football and four or five hours of reading, I was too exhausted, mentally and physically, to dream anything. But Darry never got over it, and every once in a while he would ask me if I ever dreamed any more.

“Was it very bad?” Two-Bit questioned. He knew the whole story, and having never dreamed about anything but blondes, he was interested.

“No,” I lied. I had awakened in a cold sweat and shivering, but Soda was dead to the world. I had just wiggled closer to him and stayed awake for a couple of hours, trembling under his arm. That dream always scared the heck out of me.

Darry started to say something, but before he could begin, Sodapop and Steve came in.

“You know what?” Sodapop said to no one in particular. “When we stomp the Socies good, me and Stevie here are gonna throw a big party and everybody can get stoned. Then we’ll go chase the Socs clear to Mexico.”

“Where you gonna get the dough, little man?” Darry had found the cake and was handing out pieces.

“I’ll think of somethin’,” Sodapop assured him between bites.

“You going to take Sandy to the party?” I asked, just to be saying something. Instant silence. I looked around. “What’s the deal?”

Sodapop was staring at his feet, but his ears were reddening. “No. She went to live with her grandmother in Florida.”

“How come?”

“Look,” Steve said, surprisingly angry, “does he have to draw you a picture? It was either that or get married, and her parents almost hit the roof at the idea of her marryin’ a sixteen-year-old kid.”

“Seventeen,” Soda said softly. “I’ll be seventeen in a couple of weeks.”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. Soda was no innocent; I had been in on bull sessions and his bragging was as loud as anyone’s. But never about Sandy. Not ever about Sandy. I remembered how her blue eyes had glowed when she looked at him, and I was sorry for her.

There was a heavy silence. Then Darry said, “We’d better get on to work, Pepsi-Cola.” Darry rarely called Soda by Dad’s pet nickname for him, but he did so then because he knew how miserable Sodapop was about Sandy.

“I hate to leave you here by yourself, Ponyboy,” Darry said slowly. “Maybe I ought to take the day off.”

“I’ve stayed by my lonesome before. You can’t afford a day off.”

“Yeah, but you just got back and I really ought to stay…”

“I’ll baby-sit him,” Two-Bit said, ducking as I took a swing at him. “I haven’t got anything better to do.”

“Why don’t you get a job?” Steve said. “Ever consider working for a living?”

“Work?” Two-Bit was aghast. “And ruin my rep? I wouldn’t be baby-sittin’the kid here if I knew of some good day-nursery open on Saturdays.”

I pulled his chair over backward and jumped on him, but he had me down in a second. I was kind of short on wind. I’ve got to cut out smoking or I won’t make track next year.

“Holler uncle.”

“Nope,” I said, struggling, but I didn’t have my usual strength.

Darry was pulling on his jacket. “You two do up the dishes. You can go to the movies if you want to before you go see Dally and Johnny.” He paused for a second, watching Two-Bit squash the heck out of me. “Two-Bit, lay off. He ain’t lookin’ so good. Ponyboy, you take a couple of aspirins and go easy. You smoke more than a pack today and I’ll skin you. Understood?”

“Yeah,” I said, getting to my feet. “You carry more than one bundle of roofing at a time today and me and Soda’ll skin you. Understood?”

He grinned one of his rare grins. “Yeah. See y’all this afternoon.”

“Bye,” I said. I heard our Ford’s vvrrrooooom and thought: Soda’s driving. And they left.

“…anyway, I was walking around downtown and started to take this short cut through an alley”— Two-Bit was telling me about one of his many exploits while we did the dishes. I mean, while I did the dishes. He was sitting on the cabinet, sharpening that black handled switchblade he was so proud of—“… and I ran into three guys. I says ‘Howdy’ and they just look at each other. Then one says ‘We would jump you but since you’re as slick as us we figger you don’t have nothin’ worth takin’.’ I says ‘Buddy, that’s the truth’ and went right on. Moral: What’s the safest thing to be when one is met by a gang of social outcasts in an alley?”

“A judo expert?” I suggested.

“No, another social outcast!” Two-Bit yelped, and nearly fell off the cabinet from laughing so hard. I had to grin, too. He saw things straight and made them into something funny.

“We’re gonna clean up the house,” I said. “The reporters or police or somebody might come by, and anyway, it’s time for those guys from the state to come by and check up on us.”

“This house ain’t messy. You oughtta see my house.”

“I have. And if you had the sense of a billy goat you’d try to help around your place instead of bumming around.”

“Shoot, kid, if I ever did that my mom would die of shock.”

I liked Two-Bit’s mother. She had the same good humor and easygoing ways that he did. She wasn’t lazy like him, but she let him get away with murder. I don’t know, though— it’s just about impossible to get mad at him.

When we had finished, I pulled on Dally’s brown leather jacket— the back was burned black— and we started for Tenth Street.

“I would drive us,” Two-Bit said as we walked up the street trying to thumb a ride, “but the brakes are out on my car. Almost killed me and Kathy the other night” He flipped the collar of his black leather jacket up to serve as a windbreak while he lit a cigarette. “You oughtta see Kathy’s brother. Now there’s a hood. He’s so greasy he glides when he walks. He goes to the barber for an oil change, not a haircut”

I would have laughed, but I had a terrific headache. We stopped at the Tasty Freeze to buy Cokes and rest up, and the blue Mustang that had been trailing us for eight blocks pulled in. I almost decided to run, and Two-Bit must have guessed this, for he shook his head ever so slightly and tossed me a cigarette. As I lit up, the Socs who had jumped Johnny and me at the park hopped out of the Mustang. I recognized Randy Adderson, Marcia’s boyfriend, and the tall guy that had almost drowned me. I hated them. It was their fault Bob was dead; their fault Johnny was dying; their fault Soda and I might get put in a boys’ home. I hated them as bitterly and as contemptuously as Dally Winston hated.

Two-Bit put an elbow on my shoulder and leaned against me, dragging on his cigarette. “You know the rules. No jazz before the rumble,” he said to the Socs.

“We know,” Randy said. He looked at me. “Come here. I want to talk to you.”

I glanced at Two-Bit. He shrugged. I followed Randy over to his car, out of earshot of the rest. We sat there in his car for a second, silent. Golly, that was the tuffest car I’ve ever been in.

“I read about you in the paper,” Randy said finally. “How come?”

I don’t know. Maybe I felt like playing hero.”

“I wouldn’t have. I would have let those kids burn to death.”

“You might not have. You might have done the same thing.”

Randy pulled out a cigarette and pressed in the car lighter. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. I would never have believed a greaser could pull something like that.”

” ‘Greaser’ didn’t have anything to do with it. My buddy over there wouldn’t have done it. Maybe you would have done the same thing, maybe a friend of yours wouldn’t have. It’s the individual.”

“I’m not going to show at the rumble tonight,” Randy said slowly.

I took a good look at him. He was seventeen or so, but he was already old. Like Dallas was old. Cherry had said her friends were too cool to feel anything, and yet she could remember watching sunsets. Randy was supposed to be too cool to feel anything, and yet there was pain in his eyes.

“I’m sick of all this. Sick and tired. Bob was a good guy. He was the best buddy a guy ever had. I mean, he was a good fighter and tuff and everything, but he was a real person too. You dig?”

I nodded.

“He’s dead— his mother has had a nervous breakdown. They spoiled him rotten. I mean, most parents would be proud of a kid like that— good-lookin’ and smart and everything, but they gave in to him all the time. He kept trying to make someone say ‘No’ and they never did. They never did. That was what he wanted. For somebody to tell him ‘No.’ To have somebody lay down the law, set the limits, give him something solid to stand on. That’s what we all want, really. One time…”— Randy tried to grin, but I could tell he was close to tears— “one time he came home drunker than anything. He thought sure they were gonna raise the roof. You know what they did? They thought it was something they’d done. They thought it was their fault— that they’d failed him and driven him to it or something. They took all the blame and didn’t do anything to him. If his old man had just belted him— just once, he might still be alive. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I couldn’t tell anyone else. My friends— they’d think I was off my rocker or turning soft. Maybe I am. I just know that I’m sick of this whole mess. That kid— your buddy, the one that got burned— he might die?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to think about Johnny.

“And tonight… people get hurt in rumbles, maybe killed. I’m sick of it because it doesn’t do any good. You can’t win, you know that, don’t you?” And when I remained silent he went on: “You can’t win, even if you whip us. You’ll still be where you were before— at the bottom. And we’ll still be the lucky ones with all the breaks. So it doesn’t do any good, the fighting and the killing. It doesn’t prove a thing. We’ll forget it if you win, or if you don’t. Greasers will still be greasers and Soes will still be Socs. Sometimes I think it’s the ones in the middle that are really the lucky stiffs…” He took a eep breath. “So I’d fight if I thought it’d do any good. I think I’m going to leave town. Take my little old Mustang and all the dough I can carry and get out.”

“Running away won’t help.”

“Oh, hell, I know it,” Randy half-sobbed, “but what can I do? I’m marked chicken if I punk out at the rumble, and I’d hate myself if I didn’t. I don’t know what to do.”

“I’d help you if I could,” I said. I remembered Cherry’s voice: Things are rough all over. I knew then what she meant.

He looked at me. “No, you wouldn’t. I’m a Soc. You get a little money and the whole world hates you.”

“No,” I said, “you hate the whole world.”

He just looked at me— from the way he looked he could have been ten years older than he was. I got out of the car. “You would have saved those kids if you had been there,” h said. “You’d have saved them the same as we did.”

“Thanks, grease,” he said, trying to grin. Then he stopped. “I didn’t mean that. I meant, thanks, kid.”

“My name’s Ponyboy,” I said. “Nice talkin’ to you, Randy.”

I walked over to Two-Bit, and Randy honked for his friends to come and get into the car.

“What’d he want?” Two-Bit asked. “What’d Mr. Super-Soc have to say?”

“He ain’t a Soc,” I said, “he’s just a guy. He just wanted to talk.”

“You want to see a movie before we go see Johnny and Dallas?”

“Nope,” I said, lighting up another weed. I still had a headache, but I felt better. Socs were just guys after all. Things were rough all over, but it was better that way. That way you could tell the other guy was human too.