The Outsiders (5 page)

Somehow the gang sensed what had happened. Two-Bit was suddenly there beside me, and for once his comical grin was gone and his dancing gray eyes were stormy. Darry had seen us from our porch and ran toward us, suddenly skidding to a halt. Dally was there, too, swearing under his breath, and turning away with a sick expression
on his face. I wondered about it vaguely. Dally had seen people killed on the streets of New York’s West Side. Why did he look sick now?

“Johnny?” Soda lifted him up and held him against his shoulder. He gave the limp body a slight shake. “Hey, Johnnycake.”

Johnny didn’t open his eyes, but there came a soft question. “Soda?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Sodapop said. “Don’t talk. You’re gonna be okay.”

“There was a whole bunch of them,” Johnny went on, swallowing, ignoring Soda’s command. “A blue Mustang full . . . I got so scared . . .” He tried to swear, but suddenly started crying, fighting to control himself, then sobbing all the more because he couldn’t. I had seen Johnny take a whipping with a two-by-four from his old man and never let out a whimper. That made it worse to see him break now. Soda just held him and pushed Johnny’s hair back out of his eyes. “It’s okay, Johnnycake, they’re gone now. It’s okay.”

Finally, between sobs, Johnny managed to gasp out his story. He had been hunting our football to practice a few kicks when a blue Mustang had pulled up beside the lot. There were four Socs in it. They had caught him and one of them had a lot of rings on his hand—that’s what had cut Johnny up so badly. It wasn’t just that they had beaten him half to death—he could take that. They had scared him. They had threatened him with everything under the sun. Johnny was high-strung anyway, a nervous wreck from getting belted every time he turned around and from hearing his parents fight all the time. Living in those conditions
might have turned someone else rebellious and bitter; it was killing Johnny. He had never been a coward. He was a good man in a rumble. He stuck up for the gang and kept his mouth shut good around cops. But after the night of the beating, Johnny was jumpier than ever. I didn’t think he’d ever get over it. Johnny never walked by himself after that. And Johnny, who was the most law-abiding of us, now carried in his back pocket a six-inch switchblade. He’d use it, too, if he ever got jumped again. They had scared him that much. He would kill the next person who jumped him. Nobody was ever going to beat him like that again. Not over his dead body . . .

I had nearly forgotten that Cherry was listening to me. But when I came back to reality and looked at her, I was startled to find her as white as a sheet.

“All Socs aren’t like that,” she said. “You have to believe me, Ponyboy. Not all of us are like that.”

“Sure,” I said.

“That’s like saying all you greasers are like Dallas Winston. I’ll bet he’s jumped a few people.”

I digested that. It was true. Dally had jumped people. He had told us stories about muggings in New York that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But not all of us were that bad.

Cherry no longer looked sick, only sad. “I’ll bet you think the Socs have it made. The rich kids, the West-side Socs. I’ll tell you something, Ponyboy, and it may come as a surprise. We have troubles you’ve never even heard of. You want to know something?” She looked me straight
in the eye. “Things are rough all over.”

“I believe you,” I said. “We’d better get back out there with the popcorn or Two-Bit’ll think I ran off with his money.”

We went back and watched the movie through again. Marcia and Two-Bit were hitting it off fine. Both had the same scatterbrained sense of humor. But Cherry and Johnny and I just sat there, looking at the movie and not talking. I quit worrying about everything and thought about how nice it was to sit with a girl without having to listen to her swear or to beat her off with a club. I knew Johnny liked it, too. He didn’t talk to girls much. Once, while Dallas was in reform school, Sylvia had started hanging on to Johnny and sweet-talking him and Steve got hold of her and told her if she tried any of her tricks with Johnny he’d personally beat the tar out of her. Then he gave Johnny a lecture on girls and how a sneaking little broad like Sylvia would get him into a lot of trouble. As a result, Johnny never spoke to girls much, but whether that was because he was scared of Steve or because he was shy, I couldn’t tell.

I got the same lecture from Two-Bit after we’d picked up a couple of girls downtown one day. I thought it was funny, because girls are one subject even Darry thinks I use my head about. And it really had been funny, because Two-Bit was half-crocked when he gave me the lecture, and he told me some stories that about made me want to crawl under the floor or something. But he had been talking about girls like Sylvia and the girls he and Dally and the rest picked up at drive-ins and downtown; he never said anything about Socy girls. So I figured it was all right
to be sitting there with them. Even if they did have their own troubles. I really couldn’t see what Socs would have to sweat about—good grades, good cars, good girls, madras and Mustangs and Corvairs—Man, I thought, if I had worries like that I’d consider myself lucky.

I know better now.

A
FTER THE MOVIE
was over it suddenly came to us that Cherry and Marcia didn’t have a way to get home. Two-Bit gallantly offered to walk them home—the west side of town was only about twenty miles away—but they wanted to call their parents and have them come and get them. Two-Bit finally talked them into letting us drive them home in his car. I think they were still half-scared of us. They were getting over it, though, as we walked to Two-Bit’s house to pick up the car. It seemed funny to me that Socs—if these girls were any example—were just like us. They liked the Beatles and thought Elvis Presley was out, and we thought the Beatles were rank and that Elvis was tuff, but that seemed the only difference to me. Of course greasy girls would have acted a lot tougher, but there was a basic sameness. I thought
maybe it was money that separated us.

“No,” Cherry said slowly when I said this. “It’s not just money. Part of it is, but not all. You greasers have a different set of values. You’re more emotional. We’re sophisticated—cool to the point of not feeling anything. Nothing is real with us. You know, sometimes I’ll catch myself talking to a girl-friend, and realize I don’t mean half of what I’m saying. I don’t really think a beer blast on the river bottom is super-cool, but I’ll rave about one to a girl-friend just to be saying something.” She smiled at me. “I never told anyone that. I think you’re the first person I’ve ever really gotten through to.”

She was coming through to me all right, probably because I was a greaser, and younger; she didn’t have to keep her guard up with me.

“Rat race is a perfect name for it,” she said. “We’re always going and going and going, and never asking where. Did you ever hear of having more than you wanted? So that you couldn’t want anything else and then started looking for something else to want? It seems like we’re always searching for something to satisfy us, and never finding it. Maybe if we could lose our cool we could.”

That was the truth. Socs were always behind a wall of aloofness, careful not to let their real selves show through. I had seen a social-club rumble once. The Socs even fought coldly and practically and impersonally.

“That’s why we’re separated,” I said. “It’s not money, it’s feeling—you don’t feel anything and we feel too violently.”

“And”—she was trying to hide a smile—“that’s probably why we take turns getting our names in the paper.”

Two-Bit and Marcia weren’t even listening to us. They
were engaged in some wild conversation that made no sense to anyone but themselves.

I have quite a rep for being quiet, almost as quiet as Johnny. Two-Bit always said he wondered why Johnny and I were such good buddies. “You must make such interestin’ conversation,” he’d say, cocking one eyebrow, “you keepin’ your mouth shut and Johnny not sayin’ anything.” But Johnny and I understood each other without saying anything. Nobody but Soda could really get me talking. Till I met Cherry Valance.

I don’t know why I could talk to her; maybe for the same reason she could talk to me. The first thing I knew I was telling her about Mickey Mouse, Soda’s horse. I had never told anyone about Soda’s horse. It was personal.

Soda had this buckskin horse, only it wasn’t his. It belonged to a guy who kept it at the stables where Soda used to work. Mickey Mouse was Soda’s horse, though. The first day Soda saw him he said, “There’s my horse,” and I never doubted it. I was about ten then. Sodapop is horsecrazy. I mean it. He’s always hanging around stables and rodeos, hopping on a horse every time he gets a chance. When I was ten I thought that Mickey Mouse and Soda looked alike and were alike. Mickey Mouse was a dark-gold buckskin, sassy and ornery, not much more than a colt. He’d come when Soda called him. He wouldn’t come for anyone else. That horse loved Soda. He’d stand there and chew on Soda’s sleeve or collar. Gosh, but Sodapop was crazy about that horse. He went down to see him every day. Mickey Mouse was a mean horse. He kicked other horses and was always getting into trouble. “I’ve got me a ornery pony,” Soda’d tell him, rubbing his
neck. “How come you’re so mean, Mickey Mouse?” Mickey Mouse would just chew on his sleeve and sometimes nip him. But not hard. He may have belonged to another guy, but he was Soda’s horse.

“Does Soda still have him?” Cherry asked.

“He got sold,” I said. “They came and got him one day and took him off. He was a real valuable horse. Pure quarter.”

She didn’t say anything else and I was glad. I couldn’t tell her that Soda had bawled all night long after they came and got Mickey Mouse. I had cried, too, if you want to know the truth, because Soda never really wanted anything except a horse, and he’d lost his. Soda had been twelve then, going-on-thirteen. He never let on to Mom and Dad how he felt, though, because we never had enough money and usually we had a hard time making ends meet. When you’re thirteen in our neighborhood you know the score. I kept saving my money for a year, thinking that someday I could buy Mickey Mouse back for Soda. You’re not so smart at ten.

“You read a lot, don’t you, Ponyboy?” Cherry asked.

I was startled. “Yeah. Why?”

She kind of shrugged. “I could just tell. I’ll bet you watch sunsets, too.” She was quiet for a minute after I nodded. “I used to watch them, too, before I got so busy . . .”

I pictured that, or tried to. Maybe Cherry stood still and watched the sun set while she was supposed to be taking the garbage out. Stood there and watched and forgot everything else until her big brother screamed at her to hurry up. I shook my head. It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back
steps was the same one. Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren’t so different. We saw the same sunset.

Marcia suddenly gasped. “Cherry, look what’s coming.”

We all looked and saw a blue Mustang coming down the street. Johnny made a small noise in his throat and when I looked at him he was white.

Marcia was shifting nervously. “What are we going to do?”

Cherry bit a fingernail. “Stand here,” she said. “There isn’t much else we can do.”

“Who is it?” Two-Bit asked. “The F.B.I.?”

“No,” Cherry said bleakly, “it’s Randy and Bob.”

“And,” Two-Bit added grimly, “a few other of the socially elite checkered-shirt set.”

“Your boyfriends?” Johnny’s voice was steady, but standing as close to him as I was, I could see he was trembling. I wondered why—Johnny was a nervous wreck, but he never was that jumpy.

Cherry started walking down the street. “Maybe they won’t see us. Act normal.”

“Who’s acting?” Two-Bit grinned. “I’m a natural normal.”

“Wish it was the other way around,” I muttered, and Two-Bit said, “Don’t get mouthy, Ponyboy.”

The Mustang passed us slowly and went right on by. Marcia sighed in relief. “That was close.”

Cherry turned to me. “Tell me about your oldest brother. You don’t talk much about him.”

I tried to think of something to say about Darry, and shrugged. “What’s to talk about? He’s big and handsome and likes to play football.”

“I mean, what’s he like? I feel like I know Soda from the
way you talk about him; tell me about Darry.” And when I was silent she urged me on. “Is he wild and reckless like Soda? Dreamy, like you?”

My face got hot as I bit my lip. Darry . . . what was Darry like? “He’s . . .” I started to say he was a good ol’ guy but I couldn’t. I burst out bitterly: “He’s not like Sodapop at all and he sure ain’t like me. He’s hard as a rock and about as human. He’s got eyes exactly like frozen ice. He thinks I’m a pain in the neck. He likes Soda—everybody likes Soda—but he can’t stand me. I bet he wishes he could stick me in a home somewhere, and he’d do it, too, if Soda’d let him.”

Two-Bit and Johnny were staring at me now. “No . . .” Two-Bit said, dumfounded. “No, Ponyboy, that ain’t right . . . you got it wrong . . .”

“Gee,” Johnny said softly, “I thought you and Darry and Soda got along real well . . .”

“Well, we don’t,” I snapped, feeling silly. I knew my ears were red by the way they were burning, and I was thankful for the darkness. I felt stupid. Compared to Johnny’s home, mine was heaven. At least Darry didn’t get drunk and beat me up or run me out of the house, and I had Sodapop to talk things over with. That made me mad, I mean making a fool of myself in front of everyone. “An’ you can shut your trap, Johnny Cade, ’cause we all know you ain’t wanted at home, either. And you can’t blame them.”

Johnny’s eyes went round and he winced as though I’d belted him. Two-Bit slapped me a good one across the side of the head, and hard.

“Shut your mouth, kid. If you wasn’t Soda’s kid brother
I’d beat the tar out of you. You know better than to talk to Johnny like that.” He put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “He didn’t mean it, Johnny.”

“I’m sorry,” I said miserably. Johnny was my buddy. “I was just mad.”

“It’s the truth,” Johnny said with a bleak grin. “I don’t care.”

“Shut up talkin’ like that,” Two-Bit said fiercely, messing up Johnny’s hair. “We couldn’t get along without you, so you can just shut up!”