The Outsiders (8 page)

“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 slouching 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.

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 guess 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.”

“Gee, thanks.” I put the book down reluctantly. I wanted to start it right then. “Peroxide? A deck of cards . . .” Suddenly I realized something. “Johnny, you ain’t thinking of . . .”

Johnny sat down and pulled out his knife. “We’re gonna cut our hair, and you’re gonna bleach yours.” He looked at the ground carefully. “They’ll have our descriptions in the paper. We can’t fit ’em.”

“Oh, no!” My hand flew to my hair. “No, Johnny, not my hair!”

It was my pride. It was long and silky, just like Soda’s, only a little redder. Our hair was tuff—we didn’t have to use much grease on it. Our hair labeled us greasers, too—it was our trademark. The one thing we were proud of. Maybe we couldn’t have Corvairs or madras shirts, but we could have hair.

“We’d have to anyway if we got caught. You know the first thing the judge does is make you get a haircut.”

“I don’t see why,” I said sourly. “Dally could just as easily mug somebody with short hair.”

“I don’t know either—it’s just a way of trying to break us. They can’t really do anything to guys like Curly Shepard or Tim; they’ve had about everything done to them. And they can’t take anything away from them because they don’t have anything in the first place. So they cut their hair.”

I looked at Johnny imploringly. Johnny sighed. “I’m gonna cut mine too, and wash the grease out, but I can’t bleach it. I’m too dark-skinned to look okay blond. Oh, come on, Ponyboy,” he pleaded. “It’ll grow back.”

“Okay,” I said, wide-eyed. “Get it over with.”

Johnny flipped out the razor-edge of his switch, took hold of my hair, and started sawing on it. I shuddered. “Not too short,” I begged. “Johnny, please . . .”

Finally it was over with. My hair looked funny, scattered over the floor in tufts. “It’s lighter than I thought it was,” I said, examining it. “Can I see what I look like now?”

“No,” Johnny said slowly, staring at me. “We gotta bleach it first.”

After I’d sat in the sun for fifteen minutes to dry the bleach, Johnny let me look in the old cracked mirror we’d found in a closet. I did a double take. My hair was even lighter than Sodapop’s. I’d never combed it to the side like that. It just didn’t look like me. It made me look younger, and scareder, too. Boy howdy, I thought, this really makes me look tuff. I look like a blasted pansy. I was miserable.

Johnny handed me the knife. He looked scared, too. “Cut the front and thin out the rest. I’ll comb it back after I wash it.”

“Johnny,” I said tiredly, “you can’t wash your hair in that freezing water in this weather. You’ll get a cold.”

He only shrugged. “Go ahead and cut it.”

I did the best I could. He went ahead and washed it anyway, using the bar of soap he’d bought. I was glad I had had to run away with him instead of with Two-Bit or Steve or Dally. That would be one thing they’d never think of—
soap. I gave him Dally’s jacket to wrap up in, and he sat shivering in the sunlight on the back steps, leaning against the door, combing his hair back. It was the first time I could see that he had eyebrows. He didn’t look like Johnny. His forehead was whiter where his bangs had been; it would have been funny if we hadn’t been so scared. He was still shivering with cold. “I guess,” he said weakly, “I guess we’re disguised.”

I leaned back next to him sullenly. “I guess so.”

“Oh, shoot,” Johnny said with fake cheerfulness, “it’s just hair.”

“Shoot nothing,” I snapped. “It took me a long time to get that hair just the way I wanted it. And besides, this just ain’t us. It’s like being in a Halloween costume we can’t get out of.”

“Well, we got to get used to it,” Johnny said with finality. “We’re in big trouble and it’s our looks or us.”

I started eating a candy bar. “I’m still tired,” I said. To my surprise, the ground blurred and I felt tears running down my cheeks. I brushed them off hurriedly. Johnny looked as miserable as I felt.