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.

Chapter 8

THE NURSES WOULDN’T let us see Johnny. He was in critical condition. No visitors. But Two-Bit wouldn’t take no for an answer. That was his buddy in there and he aimed to see him. We both begged and pleaded, but we were getting nowhere until the doctor found out what was going on.
“Let them go in,” he said to the nurse. “He’s been asking for them. It can’t hurt now.”
Two-Bit didn’t notice the expression in his voice. It’s true, I thought numbly, he is dying. We went in, practically on tiptoe, because the quietness of the hospital scared us. Johnny was lying still, with his eyes closed, but when Two-Bit said, “Hey, Johnnykid,” he opened them and looked at us, trying to grin. “Hey, y’all.”
The nurse, who was pulling the shades open, smiled and said, “So he can talk after all.”
Two-Bit looked around. “They treatin’ you okay, kid?”
“Don’t…” —Johnny gasped— “don’t let me put enough grease on my hair.”
“Don’t talk,” Two-Bit said, pulling up a chair, “just listen. We’ll bring you some hair grease next time. We’re havin’ the big rumble tonight”
Johnny’s huge black eyes widened a little, but he didn’t say anything.
“It’s too bad you and Dally can’t be in it. It’s the first big rumble we’ve had— not countin’ the time we whipped Shepard’s outfit”
“He came by,” Johnny said.
“Tim Shepard?”
Johnny nodded. “Came to see Dally.”
Tim and Dallas had always been buddies.
“Did you know you got your name in the paper for being a hero?”
Johnny almost grinned as he nodded. “Tuff enough,” he managed, and by the way his eyes were glowing, I figured Southern gentlemen had nothing on Johnny Cade.
I could see that even a few words were tiring him out; he was as pale as the pillow and looked awful. Two-Bit pretended not to notice.
“You want anything besides hair grease, kid?”
Johnny barely nodded. “The book”— he looked at me— “can you get another one?”
Two-Bit looked at me too. I hadn’t told him about Gone with the Wind.
“He wants a copy of Gone with the Wind so I can read it to him,” I explained. “You want to run down to the drugstore and get one?”
“Okay,” Two-Bit said cheerfully. “Don’t y’all run off.”
I sat down in Two-Bit’s chair and tried to think of something to say. “Dally’s gonna be okay,” I said finally. “And Darry and me, we’re okay now.”
I knew Johnny understood what I meant. We had always been close buddies, and those lonely days in the church strengthened our friendship. He tried to smile again, and then suddenly went white and closed his eyes tight.
“Johnny!” I said, alarmed. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, keeping his eyes closed. “Yeah, it just hurts sometimes. It usually don’t… I can’t feel anything below the middle of my back…”
He lay breathing heavily for a moment. “I’m pretty bad off, ain’t I, Pony?”
“You’ll be okay,” I said with fake cheerfulness. “You gotta be. We couldn’t get along without you.”
The truth of that last statement hit me. We couldn’t get along without him. We needed Johnny as much as he needed the gang. And for the same reason.
“I won’t be able to walk again,” Johnny started, then fal­tered. “Not even on crutches. Busted my back.”
“You’ll be okay,” I repeated firmly. Don’t start crying, I commanded myself, don’t start crying, you’ll scare Johnny.
“You want to know something, Ponyboy? I’m scared stiff. I used to talk about killing myself…” He drew a quivering breath. “I don’t want to die now. It ain’t long enough. Sixteen years ain’t long enough. I wouldn’t mind it so much if there wasn’t so much stuff I ain’t done yet— and so many things I ain’t seen. It’s not fair. You know what? That time we were in Windrixville was the only time I’ve been away from our neighborhood.”
“You ain’t gonna die,” I said, trying to hold my voice down. “And don’t get juiced up, because the doc won’t let us see you no more if you do.”
Sixteen years on the streets and you can learn a lot. But all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the streets and you see a lot. But all the wrong sights, not the sights you want to see.
Johnny closed his eyes and rested quietly for a minute. Years of living on the East Side teaches you how to shut off your emotions. If you didn’t, you would explode. You learn to cool it.
A nurse appeared in the doorway. “Johnny,” she said quietly, “your mother’s here to see you.”
Johnny opened his eyes. At first they were wide with surprise, then they darkened. “I don’t want to see her,” he said firmly.
“She’s your mother.”
“I said I don’t want to see her.” His voice was rising. “She’s probably come to tell me about all the trouble I’m causing her and about how glad her and the old man’ll be when I’m dead. Well, tell her to leave me alone. For once” —his voice broke— “for once just to leave me alone.” He was struggling to sit up, but he suddenly gasped, went whiter than the pillowcase, and passed out cold.
The nurse hurried me out the door. “I was afraid of something like this if he saw anyone.”
I ran into Two-Bit, who was coming in.
“You can’t see him now,” the nurse said, so Two-Bit handed her the book. “Make sure he can see it when he comes around.” She took it and closed the door behind her. Two-Bit stood and looked at the door a long time. “I wish it was any one of us except Johnny,” he said, and his voice was serious for once. “We could get along without anyone but Johnny.”
Turning abruptly, he said, “Let’s go see Dallas.”
As we walked out into the hall, we saw Johnny’s mother. I knew her. She was a little woman, with straight black hair and big black eyes like Johnny’s. But that was as far as the resemblance went. Johnnycake’s eyes were fearful and sensitive; hers were cheap and hard. As we passed her she was saying, “But I have a right to see him. He’s my son. After all the trouble his father and I’ve gone to to raise him, this is our reward: He’d rather see those no-count hoodlums than his own folks…” She saw us and gave us such a look of hatred that I almost backed up. “It was your fault. Always running around in the middle of the night getting jailed and heaven knows what else…” I thought she was going to cuss us out. I really did.
Two-Bit’s eyes got narrow and I was afraid he was going to start something. I don’t like to hear women get sworn at, even if they deserve it. “No wonder he hates your guts,” Two-Bit snapped. He was going to tell her off real good, but I shoved him along. I felt sick. No wonder Johnny didn’t want to see her. No wonder he stayed overnight at Two-Bit’s or at our house, and slept in the vacant lot in good weather. I remembered my mother… beautiful and golden, like Soda, and wise and firm, like Darry.
“Oh, lordy!” There was a catch in Two-Bit’s voice and he was closer to tears than I’d ever seen him. “He has to live with that.”
We hurried to the elevator to get to the next floor. I hoped the nurse would have enough sense not to let Johnny’s mother see him. It would kill him.

DALLY WAS ARGUING with one of the nurses when we came in. He grinned at us. “Man, am I glad to see you! These— hospital people won’t let me smoke, and I want out!”
We sat down, grinning at each other. Dally was his usual mean, ornery self. He was okay.
“Shepard came by to see me a while ago.”
“That’s what Johnny said. What’d he want?”
“Said he saw my picture in the paper and couldn’t believe it didn’t have ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ under it. He mostly came to rub it in about the rumble. Man, I hate not bein’ in that.”
Only last week Tim Shepard had cracked three of Dally’s ribs. But Dally and Tim Shepard had always been buddies; no matter how they fought, they were two of a kind, and they knew it.
Dally was grinning at me. “Kid, you scared the devil outa me the other day. I thought I’d killed you.”
“Me?” I said, puzzled. “Why?”
“When you jumped out of the church. I meant to hit you just hard enough to knock you down and put out the fire, but when you dropped like a ton of lead I thought I’d aimed too high and broke your neck.” He thought for a minute. “I’m glad I didn’t, though.”
“I’ll bet,” I said with a grin. I’d never liked Dally— but then, for the first time, I felt like he was my buddy. And all because he was glad he hadn’t killed me.
Dally looked out the window. “Uh…” —he sounded very casual— “how’s the kid?”
“We just left him,” Two-Bit said, and I could tell that he was debating whether to tell Dally the truth or not. “I don’t know about stuff like this… but… well, he seemed pretty bad to me. He passed out cold before we left him.”
Dally’s jaw line went white as he swore between clenched teeth.
“Two-Bit, you still got that fancy black-handled switch?”
“Yeah.”
“Give it here.”
Two-Bit reached into his back pocket for his prize possession. It was a jet handled switchblade, ten inches long, that would flash open at a mere breath. It was the reward of two hours of walking aimlessly around a hardware store to divert suspicion. He kept it razor sharp. As far as I knew, he had never pulled it on anyone; he used his plain pocketknife when he needed a blade. But it was his showpiece, his pride and joy— every time he ran into a new hood he pulled it out and showed off with it. Dally knew how much that knife meant to Two-Bit, and if he needed a blade bad enough to ask for it, well, he needed a blade. That was all there was to it. Two-Bit handed it over to Dally without a moment’s hesitation.
“We gotta win that fight tonight,” Dally said. His voice was hard. “We gotta get even with the Socs. For Johnny.”
He put the switch under his pillow and lay back, staring at the ceiling. We left. We knew better than to talk to Dally when his eyes were blazing and he was in a mood like that.
We decided to catch a bus home. I just didn’t feel much like walking or trying to hitch a ride. Two-Bit left me sitting on the bench at the bus stop while he went to a gas station to buy some cigarettes. I was kind of sick to my stomach and sort of groggy. I was nearly asleep when I felt someone’s hand on my forehead. I almost jumped out of my skin. Two-Bit was looking down at me worriedly. “You feel okay? You’re awful hot.”
“I’m all right,” I said, and when he looked at me as if he didn’t believe me, I got a little panicky. “Don’t tell Darry, okay? Come on, Two-Bit, be a buddy. I’ll be well by tonight. I’ll take a bunch of aspirins.”
“All right,” Two-Bit said reluctantly. “But Darry’ll kill me if you’re really sick and go ahead and fight anyway.”
“I’m okay,” I said, getting a little angry. “And if you keep your mouth shut, Darry won’t know a thing.”
“You know somethin’?” Two-Bit said as we were riding home on the bus. “You’d think you could get away with murder, living with your big brother and all, but Darry’s stricter with you than your folks were, ain’t he?”
“Yeah,” I said, “but they’d raised two boys before me. Darry hasn’t.”
“You know, the only thing that keeps Darry from bein’ a Soc is us.”
“I know” I said. I had known it for a long time. In spite of not having much money, the only reason Darry couldn’t be a Soc was us. The gang. Me and Soda. Darry was too smart to be a greaser. I don’t know how I knew, I just did. And I was kind of sorry.
I was silent most of the way home. I was thinking about the rumble. I had a sick feeling in my stomach and it wasn’t from being ill. It was the same kind of helplessness I’d felt that night Darry yelled at me for going to sleep in the lot. I had the same deathly fear that something was going to happen that none of us could stop. As we got off the bus I finally said it. “Tonight— I don’t like it one bit.”
Two-Bit pretended not to understand. “I never knew you to play chicken in a rumble before. Not even when you was a little kid.”
I knew he was trying to make me mad, but I took the bait anyway. “I ain’t chicken, Two-Bit Mathews, and you know it,” I said angrily. “Ain’t I a Curtis, same as Soda and Darry?”
Two-Bit couldn’t deny this, so I went on: “I mean, I got an awful feeling something’s gonna happen.”
“Somethin’ is gonna happen. We’re gonna stomp the Socs’ guts, that’s what.”
Two-Bit knew what I meant, but doggedly pretended not to. He seemed to feel that if you said something was all right, it immediately was, no matter what. He’s been that way all his life, and I don’t expect he’ll change. Sodapop would have understood, and we would have tried to figure it out together, but Two-Bit just ain’t Soda. Not by a long shot.
Cherry Valance was sitting in her Corvette by the vacant lot when we came by. Her long hair was pinned up, and in daylight she was even better looking. That Sting Ray was one tuff car. A bright red one. It was cool.
“Hi, Ponyboy,” she said. “Hi, Two-Bit.”
Two-Bit stopped. Apparently Cherry had shown up there before during the week Johnny and I had spent in Windrixville.
“What’s up with the big times?”
She tightened the strings on her ski jacket. “They play your way. No weapons, fair deal. Your rules.”
“You sure?”
She nodded. “Randy told me. He knows for sure.”
Two-Bit turned and started home. “Thanks, Cherry.”
“Ponyboy, stay a minute,” Cherry said. I stopped and went back to her car. “Randy’s not going to show up at the rumble.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I know.”
“He’s not scared. He’s just sick of fighting. Bob…” She swallowed, then went on quietly. “Bob was his best buddy. Since grade school.”
I thought of Soda and Steve. What if one of them saw the other killed? Would that make them stop fighting? No, I thought, maybe it would make Soda stop, but not Steve. He’d go on hating and fighting. Maybe that was what Bob would have done if it had been Randy instead of him.
“How’s Johnny?”
“Not so good,” I said. “Will you go up to see him?”
She shook her head. “No. I couldn’t.”
“Why not?” I demanded. It was the least she could do. It was her boyfriend who had caused it all… and then I stopped. Her boyfriend…
“I couldn’t,” she said in a quiet, desperate voice. “He killed Bob. Oh, maybe Bob asked for it. I know he did. But I couldn’t ever look at the person who killed him. You only knew his bad side. He could be sweet sometimes, and friendly. But when he got drunk… it was that part of him that beat up Johnny. I knew it was Bob when you told me the story. He was so proud of his rings. Why do people sell liquor to boys? Why? I know there’s a law against it, but kids get it anyway. I can’t go see Johnny. I know I’m too young to be in love and all that, but Bob was something special. He wasn’t just any boy. He had something that made people follow him, something that marked him different, maybe a little better, than the crowd. Do you know what I mean?”
I did. Cherry saw the same things in Dallas. That was why she was afraid to see him, afraid of loving him. I knew what she meant all right. But she also meant she wouldn’t go see Johnny because he had killed Bob. “That’s okay,” I said sharply. It wasn’t Johnny’s fault Bob was a booze-hound and Cherry went for boys who were bound for trouble. “I wouldn’t want you to see him. You’re a traitor to your own kind and not loyal to us. Do you think your spying for us makes up for the fact that you’re sitting there in a Corvette while my brother drops out of school to get a job? Don’t you ever feel sorry for us. Don’t you ever try to give us handouts and then feel high and mighty about it.”
I started to turn and walk off, but something in Cherry’s face made me stop. I was ashamed— I can’t stand to see girls cry. She wasn’t crying, but she was close to it.
“I wasn’t trying to give you charity, Ponyboy. I only wanted to help. I liked you from the start… the way you talked. You’re a nice kid, Ponyboy. Do you realize how scarce nice kids are nowadays? Wouldn’t you try to help me if you could?”
I would. I’d help her and Randy both, if I could. “Hey,” I said suddenly, “can you see the sunset real good from the West Side?”
She blinked, startled, then smiled. “Real good.”
“You can see it good from the East Side, too,” I said quietly.
“Thanks, Ponyboy.” She smiled through her tears. “You dig okay.”
She had green eyes. I went on, walking home slowly.

Chapter 9

IT WAS ALMOST six-thirty when I got home. The rumble was set for seven, so I was late for supper, as usual. I always come in late. I forget what time it is. Darry had cooked dinner: baked chicken and potatoes and corn— two chickens because all three of us eat like horses. Especially Darry. But although I love baked chicken, I could hardly swallow any. I swallowed five aspirins, though, when Darry and Soda weren’t looking. I do that all the time because I can’t sleep very well at night. Darry thinks I take just one, but I usually take four. I figured five would keep me going through the rumble and maybe get rid of my headache.
Then I hurried to take a shower and change clothes. Me and Soda and Darry always got spruced up before a rumble. And besides, we wanted to show those Socs we weren’t trash, that we were just as good as they were.
“Soda,” l called from the bathroom, “when did you start shaving?”
“When I was fifteen,” he yelled back.
“When did Darry?”
‘When he was thirteen. Why? You figgerin’ on growing a beard for the rumble?”
“You’re funny. We ought to send you in to the Reader’s Digest. I hear they pay a lot for funny things.”
Soda laughed and went right on playing poker with Steve in the living room. Darry had on a tight black T-shirt that showed every muscle on his chest and even the flat hard muscles of his stomach. I’d hate to be the Soc who takes a crack at him, I thought as I pulled on a clean T-shirt and a fresh pair of jeans. I wished my T-shirt was tighter— I have a pretty good build for my size, but I’d lost a lot of weight in Windrixville and it just didn’t fit right. It was a chilly night and Tshirts aren’t the warmest clothes in the world, but nobody ever gets cold in a rumble, and besides, jackets interfere with your swinging ability.
Soda and Steve and I had put on more hair oil than was necessary, but we wanted to show that we were greasers. Tonight we could be proud of it. Greasers may not have much, but they have a rep. That and long hair. (What kind of world is it where all I have to be proud of is a reputation for being a hood, and greasy hair? I don’t want to be a hood, but even if I don’t steal things and mug people and get boozed up, I’m marked lousy. Why should I be proud of it? Why should I even pretend to be proud of it?) Darry never went in for the long hair. His was short and clean all the time.
I sat in the armchair in the living room, waiting for the rest of the outfit to show up. But of course, tonight the only one coming would be Two-Bit; Johnny and Dallas wouldn’t show. Soda and Steve were playing cards and arguing as usual. Soda was keeping up a steady stream of wisecracks and clowning, and Steve had turned up the radio so loud that it almost broke my eardrums. Of course everybody listens to it loud like that, but it wasn’t just the best thing for a headache.
“You like fights, don’t you, Soda?” I asked suddenly.
“Yeah, sure.” He shrugged. “I like fights.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at me, puzzled. “It’s action. It’s a contest. Like a drag race or a dance or something.”
“Shoot,” said Steve, “I want to beat those Socs’ heads in. When I get in a fight I want to stomp the other guy good. I like it, too.”
“How come you like fights, Darry?” I asked, looking up at him as he stood behind me, leaning in the kitchen doorway. He gave me one of those looks that hide what he’s thinking, but Soda piped up: “He likes to show off his muscles.”
“I’m gonna show ‘em off on you, little buddy, if you get any mouthier.”
I digested what Soda had said. It was the truth. Darry liked anything that took strength, like weight lifting or playing football or roofing houses, even if he was proud of being smart too. Darry never said anything about it, but I knew he liked fights. I felt out of things. I’ll fight anyone anytime, but I don’t like to.
“I don’t know if you ought to be in this rumble, Pony,” Darry said slowly.
Oh, no, I thought in mortal fear, I’ve got to be in it. Right then the most important thing in my life was helping us whip the Socs. Don’t let him make me stay home now. I’ve got to be in it.
“How come? I’ve always come through before, ain’t I?”
“Yeah,” Darry said with a proud grin. “You fight real good for a kid your size. But you were in shape before. You’ve lost weight and you don’t look so great, kid. You’re tensed up too much.”
“Shoot,” said Soda, trying to get the ace out of his shoe without Steve’s seeing him, “we all get tensed up before a rumble. Let him fight tonight. Skin never hurt anyone— ­no weapons, no danger.”
“I’ll be okay,” I pleaded. “I’ll get hold of a little one, okay?”
“Well, Johnny won’t be there this time…” —Johnny and I sometimes ganged up on one big guy— “but then, Curly Shepard won’t be there either, or Dally, and we’ll need every man we can get.”
“What happened to Shepard?” I asked, remembering Tim Shepard’s kid brother. Curly, who was a tough, cool, hard-as-nails Tim in miniature, and I had once played chicken by holding our cigarette ends against each other’s fingers. We had stood there, clenching our teeth and gri­macing, with sweat pouring down our faces and the smell of burning flesh making us sick, each refusing to holler, until Tim happened to stroll by. When he saw that we were really burning holes in each other he cracked our heads together, swearing to kill us both if we ever pulled a stunt like that again. I still have the scar on my forefinger. Curly was an average downtown hood, tough and not real bright, but I liked him. He could take anything.
“He’s in the cooler,” Steve said, kicking the ace out of Soda’s shoe. “In the reformatory.”
Again? I thought, and said, “Let me fight, Darry. If it was blades or chains or something it’d be different. Nobody ever gets really hurt in a skin rumble.”
“Well”— Darry gave in— “I guess you can. But be careful, and if you get in a jam, holler and I’ll get you out.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said wearily. “How come you never worry about Sodapop as much? I don’t see you lecturin’ him.”
“Man”— Darry grinned and put his arm across Soda’s shoulders— “this is one kid brother I don’t have to worry about”
Soda punched him in the ribs affectionately.
“This kiddo can use his head.”
Sodapop looked down at me with mock superiority, but Darry went on: “You can see he uses it for one thing— to grow hair on.” He ducked Soda’s swing and took off for the door.
Two-Bit stuck his head in the door just as Darry went flying out of it. Leaping as he went off the steps, Darry turned a somersault in mid-air, hit the ground, and bounced up before Soda could catch him.
“Welup,” Two-Bit said cheerfully, cocking an eyebrow, “I see we are in prime condition for a rumble. Is everybody happy?”
“Yeah!” screamed Soda as he too did a flying somersault off the steps. He flipped up to walk on his hands and then did a no-hands cartwheel across the yard to beat Darry’s performance. The excitement was catching. Screeching like an Indian, Steve went running across the lawn in flying leaps, stopped suddenly, and flipped backward. We could all do acrobatics because Darry had taken a course at the Y and then spent a whole summer teaching us every­thing he’d learned on the grounds that it might come in handy in a fight. It did, but it also got Two-Bit and Soda jailed once. They were doing mid-air flips down a downtown sidewalk, walking on their hands and otherwise disturbing the public and the police. Leave it to those two to pull something like that.
With a happy whoop I did a no-hands cartwheel off the porch steps, hit the ground, and rolled to my feet. Two-Bit followed me in a similar manner.
“I am a greaser,” Sodapop chanted. “I am a JD and a hood. I blacken the name of our fair city. I beat up people. I rob gas stations. I am a menace to society. Man, do I have fun!”
“Greaser… greaser… greaser…” Steve singsonged. “O victim of environment, underprivileged, rotten, no-count hood!”
“Juvenile delinquent, you’re no good!” Darry shouted.
“Get thee hence, white trash,” Two-Bit said in a snobbish voice. “I am a Soc. I am the privileged and the well-dressed. I throw beer blasts, drive fancy cars, break windows at fancy parties.”
“And what do you do for fun?” I inquired in a serious, awed voice.
“I jump greasers!” Two-Bit screamed, and did a cart­wheel.
We settled down as we walked to the lot. Two-Bit was the only one wearing a jacket; he had a couple of cans of beer stuffed in it. He always gets high before a rumble. Before anything else, too, come to think of it. I shook my head. I’d hate to see the day when I had to get my nerve from a can. I’d tried drinking once before. The stuff tasted awful, I got sick, had a headache, and when Darry found out, he grounded me for two weeks. But that was the last time Id ever drink. Id seen too much of what drinking did for you at Johnny’s house.
“Hey, Two-Bit,” I said, deciding to complete my survey, “how come you like to fight?”
He looked at me as if I was off my nut. “Shoot, everybody fights.”
If everybody jumped in the Arkansas River, ol’ Two-Bit would be right on their heels. I had it then. Soda fought for fun, Steve for hatred, Darry for pride, and Two-Bit for conformity. Why do I fight? I thought, and couldn’t think of any real good reason. There isn’t any real good reason for fighting except self-defense.
“Listen, Soda, you and Ponyboy,” Darry said as we strode down the street, “if the fuzz show, you two beat it out of there. The rest of us can only get jailed. You two can get sent to a boys’ home.”
“Nobody in this neighborhood’s going to call the fuzz,” Steve said grimly. ‘They know what’d happen if they did.”
“All the same, you two blow at the first sign of trouble. You hear me?”
“You sure don’t need an amplifier,” Soda said, and stuck out his tongue at the back of Darry’s head. I stifled a giggle. If you want to see something funny, it’s a tough hood sticking his tongue out at his big brother.

TIM SHEPARD AND company were already waiting when we arrived at the vacant lot, along with a gang from Brumly, one of the suburbs. Tim was a lean, catlike eighteen-year-old who looked like the model JD you see in movies and magazines. He had the right curly black hair, smoldering dark eyes, and a long scar from temple to chin where a tramp had belted him with a broken pop bottle. He had a tough, hard look to him, and his nose had been broken twice. Like Dally’s, his smile was grim and bitter. He was one of those who enjoy being a hood. The rest of his bunch were the same way. The boys from Brumly, too. Young hoods— who would grow up to be old hoods. I’d never thought about it before, but they’d just get worse as they got older, not better. I looked at Darry. He wasn’t going to be any hood when he got old. He was going to get somewhere. Living the way we do would only make him more determined to get somewhere. That’s why he’s better than the rest of us, I thought. He’s going somewhere. And I was going to be like him. I wasn’t going to live in a lousy neighborhood all my life.
Tim had the tense, hungry look of an alley cat— that’s what he’s always reminded me of, an alley cat— and he was constantly restless. His boys ranged from fifteen to nineteen, hard-looking characters who were used to the strict discipline Tim gave out. That was the difference between his gang and ours— they had a leader and were organized; we were just buddies who stuck together— each man was his own leader. Maybe that was why we could whip them.
Tim and the leader of the Brumly outfit moved forward to shake hands with each of us— proving that our gangs were on the same side in this fight, although most of the guys in those two outfits weren’t exactly what Id like to call my friends. When Tim got to me he studied me, maybe remembering how his kid brother and I had played chicken. “You and the quiet black-headed kid were the ones who killed that Soc?”
“Yeah,” I said, pretending to be proud of it; then I thought of Cherry and Randy and got a sick feeling in my stomach.
“Good goin’, kid. Curly always said you were a good kid. Curly’s in the reformatory for the next six months.” Tim grinned ruefully, probably thinking of his roughneck, hard-headed brother. “He got caught breakin’ into a liquor store, the little…” He went on to call Curly every unprintable name under the sun— in Tim’s way of thinking, terms of affection.
I surveyed the scene with pride. I was the youngest one there. Even Curly, if he had been there, had turned fif­teen, so he was older than me. I could tell Darry realized this too, and although he was proud, I also knew he was worried. Shoot, I thought, I’ll fight so good this time he won’t ever worry about me again. I’ll show him that someone besides Sodapop can use his head.
One of the Brumly guys waved me over. We mostly stuck with our own outfits, so I was a little leery of going over to him, but I shrugged. He asked to borrow a weed, then lit up. “That big guy with y’all, you know him pretty well?”
“I ought to, he’s my brother,” I said. I couldn’t honestly say “Yes.” I knew Darry as well as he knew me, and that isn’t saying a whole lot.
“No kiddin’? I got a feelin’ he’s gonna be asked to start the fireworks around here. He a pretty good bopper?”
He meant rumbler. Those Brumly boys have weird vocabularies. l doubt if half of them can read a newspaper or spell much more than their names, and it comes out in their speech. I mean, you take a guy that calls a rumble “bop-action,” and you can tell he isn’t real educated.
“Yep,” I said. “But why him?”
He shrugged. “Why anybody else?”
I looked our outfits over. Most greasers don’t have real tuff builds or anything. They’re mostly lean and kind of panther-looking in a slouchy way. This is partly because they don’t eat much and partly because they’re slouchy. Darry looked like he could whip anyone there. I think most of the guys were nervous because of the ‘no weapons’ rule. I didn’t know about the Brumly boys, but I knew Shepard’s gang were used to fighting with anything they could get their hands on— bicycle chains, blades, pop bottles, pieces of pipe, pool sticks, or sometimes even heaters. I mean guns. I have a kind of lousy vocabulary, too, even if I am educated. Our gang never went in for weapons. We’re just not that rough. The only weapons we ever used were knives, and shoot, we carried them mostly just for looks. Like Two-Bit with his black-handled switch. None of us had ever really hurt anybody, or wanted to. Just Johnny. And he hadn’t wanted to.
“Hey, Curtis!” Tim yelled. I jumped.
“Which one?” I heard Soda yell back.
“The big one. Come on over here.”
The guy from Brumly looked at me. “What did I tell ya?”
I watched Darry going toward Tim and the leader of the Brumly boys. He shouldn’t be here, I thought suddenly. I shouldn’t be here and Steve shouldn’t be here and Soda shouldn’t be here and Two-Bit shouldn’t be here. We’re greasers, but not hoods, and we don’t belong with this bunch of future convicts. We could end up like them, I thought. We could. And the thought didn’t help my headache.
I went back to stand with Soda and Steve and Two-Bit then, because the Socs were arriving. Right on time. They came in four carloads, and filed out silently. I counted twenty-two of them. There were twenty of us, so I figured the odds were as even as we could get them. Darry always liked to take on two at a time anyway. They looked like they were all cut from the same piece of cloth: clean shaven with semi-Beatle haircuts, wearing striped or checkered shirts with light red or tan-colored jackets or madras ski jackets. They could just as easily have been going to the movies as to a rumble. That’s why people don’t ever think to blame the Socs and are always ready to jump on us. We look hoody and they look decent. It could be just the other way around— half of the hoods I know are pretty decent guys underneath all that grease, and from what I’ve heard, a lot of Socs are just cold-blooded mean— but people usually go by looks.
They lined up silently, facing us, and we lined up facing them. I looked for Randy but didn’t see him. I hoped he wasn’t there. A guy with a madras shirt stepped up. “Let’s get the rules straight— nothing but our fists, and the first to run lose. Right?”
Tim flipped away his beer can. “You savvy real good.”
There was an uneasy silence: Who was going to start it? Darry solved the problem. He stepped forward under the circle of light made by the street lamp. For a minute, everything looked unreal, like a scene out of a JD movie or something. Then Darry said, “I’ll take on anyone.”
He stood there, tall, broad-shouldered, his muscles taut under his T-shirt and his eyes glittering like ice. For a sec­ond it looked like there wasn’t anyone brave enough to take him on. Then there was a slight stir in the faceless mob of Socs, and a husky blond guy stepped forward. He looked at Darry and said quietly, “Hello, Darrel.”
Something flickered behind Darry’s eyes and then they were ice again. “Hello, Paul.”
I heard Soda give a kind of squeak and I realized that the blond was Paul Holden. He had been the best halfback on Darry’s football team at high school and he and Darry used to buddy it around all the time. He must be a junior in college by now, I thought. He was looking at Darry with an expression I couldn’t quite place, but disliked. Contempt? Pity? Hate? All three? Why? Because Darry was standing there representing all of us, and maybe Paul felt only contempt and pity and hate for greasers? Darry hadn’t moved a muscle or changed expression, but you could see he hated Paul now. It wasn’t only jealousy— Darry had aright to be jealous; he was ashamed to be on our side, ashamed to be seen with the Brumly boys, Shepard’s gang, maybe even us. Nobody realized it but me and Soda. It didn’t matter to anyone but me and Soda.
That’s stupid, I thought swiftly, they’ve both come here to fight and they’re both supposed to be smarter than that. What difference does the side make?
Then Paul said, “I’ll take you,” and something like a smile crossed Darry’s face. I knew Darry had thought he could take Paul any time. But that was two or three years ago. What if Paul was better now? I swallowed. Neither one of my brothers had ever been beaten in a fight, but I wasn’t exactly itching for someone to break the record.
They moved in a circle under the light, counterclockwise, eyeing each other, sizing each other up, maybe remembering old faults and wondering if they were still there. The rest of us waited with mounting tension. I was reminded of Jack London’s books— you know, where the wolf pack waits in silence for one of two members to go down in a fight. But it was different here. The moment either one swung a punch, the rumble would be on.
The silence grew heavier, and I could hear the harsh heavy breathing of the boys around me. Still Darry and the Soc walked slowly in a circle. Even I could feel their hatred. They used to be buddies, I thought, they used to be friends, and now they hate each other because one has to work for a living and the other comes from the West Side. They shouldn’t hate each other… I don’t hate the Socs any more… they shouldn’t hate…
“Hold up!” a familiar voice yelled. “Hold it!” Darry turned to see who it was, and Paul swung— a hard right to the jaw that would have felled anyone but Darry. The rumble was on. Dallas Winston ran to join us.
I couldn’t find a Soc my size, so I took the next-best size and jumped on him. Dallas was right beside me, already on top of someone.
“I thought you were in the hospital,” I yelled as the Soc knocked me to the ground and I rolled to avoid getting kicked.
“I was.” Dally was having a hard time because his left arm was still in bad shape. “I ain’t now.”
“How?” I managed to ask as the Soc I was fighting leaped on me and we rolled near Dally.
“Talked the nurse into it with Two-Bit’s switch. Don’t you know a rumble ain’t a rumble unless I’m in it?”
I couldn’t answer because the Soc, who was heavier than I took him for, had me pinned and was slugging the sense out of me. I thought dizzily that he was going to knock some of my teeth loose or break my nose or some­thing, and I knew I didn’t have a chance. But Darry was keeping an eye out for me; he caught that guy by the shoulder and half lifted him up before knocking him three feet with a sledge-hammer blow. I decided it would be fair for me to help Dally since he could use only one arm.
They were slugging it out, but Dallas was getting the worst of it, so I jumped on his Soc’s back, pulling his hair and pounding him. He reached back and caught me by the neck and threw me over his head to the ground. Tim Shepard, who was fighting two at once, accidentally stepped on me, knocking my breath out. I was up again as soon as I got my wind, and jumped right back on the Soc, trying my best to strangle him. While he was prying my fingers loose, Dally knocked him backward, so that all three of us rolled on the ground, gasping, cussing, and punching.
Somebody kicked me hard in the ribs and I yelped in spite of myself. Some Soc had knocked out one of our bunch and was kicking me as hard as he could. But I had both arms wrapped around the other Soc’s neck and refused to let go. Dally was slugging him, and I hung on desperately, although that other Soc was kicking me and you’d better believe it hurt. Finally he kicked me in the head so hard it stunned me, and I lay limp, trying to clear my mind and keep from blacking out. I could hear the racket, but only dimly through the buzzing in my ears. Numerous bruises along my back and on my face were throbbing, but I felt detached from the pain, as if it wasn’t really me feeling it.
“They’re running!” I heard a voice yell joyfully. “Look at the dirty— run!”
It seemed to me that the voice belonged to Two-Bit, but I couldn’t be sure. I tried to sit up, and saw that the Socs were getting into their cars and leaving. Tim Shepard was swearing blue and green because his nose was broken again, and the leader of the Brumly boys was working over one of his own men because he had broken the rules and used a piece of pipe in the fighting. Steve lay doubled up and groaning about ten feet from me. We found out later he had three broken ribs. Sodapop was beside him, talking in a low steady voice. I did a double take when I saw Two-Bit— blood was streaming down one side of his face and one hand was busted wide open; but he was grinning happily because the Socs were running.
“We won,” Darry announced in a tired voice. He was going to have a black eye and there was a cut across his forehead. “We beat the Socs.”
Dally stood beside me quietly for a minute, trying to grasp the fact that we had really beaten the Socs. Then, grabbing my shirt, he hauled me to my feet. “Come on!” He half dragged me down the street. “We’re goin’ to see Johnny.”
I tried to run but stumbled, and Dally impatiently shoved me along. “Hurry! He was gettin’ worse when I left. He wants to see you.”
I don’t know how Dallas could travel so fast and hard after being knocked around and having his sore arm hurt some more, but I tried to keep up with him. Track wasn’t ever like the running I did that night. I was still dizzy and had only a dim realization of where I was going and why.
Dally had Buck Merril’s T-bird parked in front of our house, and we hopped into it. I sat tight as Dally roared the car down the street. We were on Tenth when a siren came on behind us and I saw the reflection of the red light flashing in the windshield.
“Look sick,” Dally commanded. “I’ll say I’m taking you to the hospital, which’ll be truth enough.”
I leaned against the cold glass of the window and tried to look sick, which wasn’t too hard, feeling the way I did right then.
The policeman looked disgusted. “All right, buddy, where’s the fire?”
“The kid”— Dally jerked a thumb toward me— “he fell over on his motorcycle and I’m takin’ him to the hospital.”
I groaned, and it wasn’t all fake-out. I guess I looked pretty bad, too, being cut and bruised like I was.
The fuzz changed his tone. “Is he real bad? Do you need an escort?”
“How would I know if he’s bad or not? I ain’t no doc. Yeah, we could use an escort.” And as the policeman got back into his car I heard Dally hiss, “Sucker!”
With the siren ahead of us, we made record time getting to the hospital. All the way there Dally kept talking and talking about something, but I was too dizzy to make most of it out.
“I was crazy, you know that, kid? Crazy for wantin’ Johnny to stay outa trouble, for not wantin’ him to get hard. If he’d been like me he’d never have been in this mess. If he’d got smart like me he’d never have run into that church. That’s what you get for helpin’ people. Editorials in the paper and a lot of trouble…. You’d better wise up, Pony… you get tough like me and you don’t get hurt. You look out for yourself and nothin’ can touch you…”
He said a lot more stuff, but I didn’t get it all. I had a stupid feeling that Dally was out of his mind, the way he kept raving on and on, because Dallas never talked like that, but I think now I would have understood if I hadn’t been sick at the time.
The cop left us at the hospital as Dally pretended to help me out of the car. The minute the cop was gone; Dally let go of me so quick I almost fell. “Hurry!”
We ran through the lobby and crowded past people into the elevator. Several people yelled at us, I think because we were pretty racked-up looking, but Dally had nothing on his mind except Johnny, and I was too mixed up to know anything but that I had to follow Dally. When we finally got to Johnny’s room, the doctor stopped us. “I’m sorry, boys, but he’s dying.”
“We gotta see him,” Dally said, and flicked out Two-Bit’s switchblade. His voice was shaking. “We’re gonna see him and if you give me any static you’ll end up on your own operatin’ table.”
The doctor didn’t bat an eye. “You can see him, but it’s because you’re his friends, not because of that knife.”
Dally looked at him for a second, then put the knife back in his pocket. We both went into Johnny’s room, standing there for a second, getting our breath back in heavy gulps. It was awful quiet. It was scary quiet. I looked at Johnny. He was very still, and for a moment I thought in agony: He’s dead already. We’re too late.
Dally swallowed, wiping the sweat off his upper lip. “Johnnycake?” he said in a hoarse voice. “Johnny?”
Johnny stirred weakly, then opened his eyes. “Hey,” he managed softly.
“We won,” Dally panted. “We beat the Socs. We stomped them— chased them outa our territory.”
Johnny didn’t even try to grin at him. “Useless… fight­ing’s no good….” He was awful white.
Dally licked his lips nervously. “They’re still writing editorials about you in the paper. For being a hero and all.” He was talking too fast and too calmly. “Yeah, they’re calling you a hero now and heroizin’ all the greasers. We’re all proud of you, buddy.”
Johnny’s eyes glowed. Dally was proud of him. That was all Johnny had ever wanted.
“Ponyboy.”
I barely heard him. I came closer and leaned over to hear what he was going to say.
“Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold…” The pillow seemed to sink a little, and Johnny died.
You read about people looking peacefully asleep when they’re dead, but they don’t. Johnny just looked dead. Like a candle with the flame gone. I tried to say something, but I couldn’t make a sound.
Dally swallowed and reached over to push Johnny’s hair back. “Never could keep that hair back… that’s what you get for tryin’ to help people, you little punk, that’s what you get…”
Whirling suddenly, he slammed back against the wall. His face contracted in agony, and sweat streamed down his face.
“Damnit, Johnny…” he begged, slamming one fist against the wall, hammering it to make it obey his will. “Oh, damnit, Johnny, don’t die, please don’t die…”
He suddenly bolted through the door and down the hall.

Chapter 10

I WALKED DOWN THE hall in a daze. Dally had taken the car and I started the long walk home in a stupor. Johnny was dead. But he wasn’t. That still body back in the hospital wasn’t Johnny. Johnny was somewhere else— maybe asleep in the lot, or playing the pinball machine in the bowling alley, or sitting on the back steps of the church in Windrixville. I’d go home and walk by the lot, and Johnny would be sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette, and maybe we’d lie on our backs and watch the stars. He isn’t dead, I said to myself. He isn’t dead. And this time my dreaming worked. I convinced myself that he wasn’t dead.
I must have wandered around for hours; sometimes even out into the street, getting honked at and cussed out. I might have stumbled around all night except for a man who asked me if I wanted a ride.
“Huh? Oh. Yeah, I guess so,” I said. I got in. The man, who was in his mid-twenties, looked at me.
“Are you all right, kid? You look like you’ve been in a fight.”
“I have been. A rumble. I’m okay.” Johnny is not dead, I told myself, and I believed it.
“Hate to tell you this, kiddo,” the guy said dryly, “but you’re bleedin’ all over my car seats.”
I blinked. “I am?”
“Your head.”
I reached up to scratch the side of my head where it’d been itching for a while, and when I looked at my hand it was smeared with blood.
“Gosh, mister, I’m sorry,” I said, dumfounded.
“Don’t worry about it. This wreck’s been through worse. What’s your address? I’m not about to dump a hurt kid out on the streets this time of night.”
I told him. He drove me to my house, and I got out. “Thanks a lot.”
What was left of our gang was in the living room. Steve was stretched out on the sofa, his shirt unbuttoned and his side bandaged. His eyes were closed, but when the door shut behind me he opened them, and I suddenly wondered if my own eyes looked as feverish and bewildered as his. Soda had a wide cut on his lip and a bruise across his cheek. There was a Band-Aid over Darry’s forehead and he had a black eye. One side of Two-Bits face was taped up— I found out later he had four stitches in his cheek and seven in his hand where he had busted his knuckles open over a Soc’s head. They were lounging around, reading the paper and smoking.
Where’s the party? I thought dully. Weren’t Soda and Steve planning a party after the rumble? They all looked up when I walked in. Dairy leaped to his feet.
“Where have you been?”
Oh, let’s don’t start that again, I thought. He stopped suddenly.
“Ponyboy, what’s the matter?”
I looked at all of them, a little frightened. “Johnny… he’s dead.” My voice sounded strange, even to me. But he’s not dead, a voice in my head said. “We told him about beatin’ the Socs and… I don’t know, he just died.” He told me to stay gold, I remembered. What was he talking about?
There was a stricken silence. I don’t think any of us had realized how bad off Johnny really had been. Soda made a funny noise and looked like he was going to start crying. Two-Bit’s eyes were closed and his teeth were clenched, and I suddenly remembered Dally…. Dally pounding on the wall.
“Dallas is gone,” I said. “He ran out like the devil was after him. He’s gonna blow up. He couldn’t take it.”
How can I take it? I wondered. Dally is tougher than I am. Why can I take it when Dally can’t? And then I knew. Johnny was the only thing Dally loved. And now Johnny was gone.
“So he finally broke.” Two-Bit spoke everyone’s feel­ings. “So even Dally has a breaking point.”
I started shaking. Darry said something in a low voice to Soda.
“Ponyboy,” Soda said softly, like he was talking to an injured animal, “you look sick. Sit down.”
I backed up, just like a frightened animal, shaking my head. “I’m okay.” I felt sick. I felt as if any minute I was going to fall flat on my face, but I shook my head. “I don’t want to sit down.”
Darry took a step toward me, but I backed away. “Don’t touch me,” I said. My heart was pounding in slow thumps, throbbing at the side of my head, and I wondered if everyone else could hear it. Maybe that’s why they’re all looking at me, I thought, they can hear my heart beating…
The phone rang, and after a moment’s hesitation, Darry turned from me to it. He said “Hello” and then listened. He hung up quickly.
“It was Dally. He phoned from a booth. He’s, just robbed a grocery store and the cops are after him. We gotta hide him. He’ll be at the lot in a minute.”
We all left the house at a dead run, even Steve, and I wondered vaguely why no one was doing somersaults off the steps this time. Things were sliding in and out of focus, and it seemed funny to me that I couldn’t run in a straight line.

WE REACHED THE vacant lot just as Dally came in, running as hard as he could, from the opposite direction. The wail of a siren grew louder and then police car pulled up across the street from the lot. Doors slammed as the policemen leaped out. Dally had reached the circle of light under the street lamp, and skidding to a halt, he turned and jerked a black object from his waistband. I remembered his voice: I been carryin’ a heater. It ain’t loaded, but it sure does held a bluff.
It was only yesterday that Dally had told Johnny and me that. But yesterday was years ago. A lifetime ago.
Dally raised the gun, and I thought: You blasted fool. They don’t know you’re only bluffing. And even as the policemen’s guns spit fire into the night I knew that was what Dally wanted. He was jerked half around by the impact of the bullets, then slowly crumpled with a look of grim triumph on his face. He was dead before he hit the ground. But I knew that was what he wanted, even as the lot echoed with the cracks of shots, even as I begged silently— Please, not him… not him and Johnny both —I knew he would be dead, because Dally Winston wanted to be dead and he always got what he wanted.
Nobody would write editorials praising Dally. Two friends of mine had died that night: one a hero, the other a hoodlum. But I remembered Dally pulling Johnny through the window of the burning church; Dally giving us his gun, although it could mean jail for him; Dally risking his life for us, trying to keep Johnny out of trouble. And now he was a dead juvenile delinquent and there wouldn’t be any editorials in his favor. Dally didn’t die a hero. He died violent and young and desperate, just like we all knew he’d die someday. Just like Tim Shepard and Curly Shepard and the Brumly boys and the other guys we knew would die someday. But Johnny was right. He died gallant.
Steve stumbled forward with a sob, but Soda caught him by the shoulders.
“Easy, buddy, easy,” I heard him say softly, “there’s nothing we can do now.”
Nothing we can do… not for Dally or Johnny or Tim Shepard or any of us… My stomach gave a violent start and turned into a hunk of ice. The world was spinning around me, and blobs of faces and visions of things past were dancing in the red mist that covered the lot. It swirled into a mass of colors and I felt myself swaying on my feet. Someone cried, “Glory, look at the kid!”
And the ground rushed up to meet me very suddenly.

WHEN I WOKE UP it was light. It was awfully quiet. Too quiet. I mean, our house just isn’t naturally quiet. The radio’s usually going full blast and the TV is turned up loud and people are wrestling and knocking over lamps and tripping over the coffee table and yelling at each other. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. Something had happened… I couldn’t remember what. I blinked at Soda bewilderedly. He was sitting on the edge of the bed watching me.
“Soda…”— my voice sounded weak and hoarse— “is somebody sick?”
“Yeah.” His voice was oddly gentle “Go back to sleep now.”
An idea was slowly dawning on me. “Am I sick?”
He stroked my hair. “Yeah, you’re sick. Now be quiet.”
I had one more question. I was still kind of mixed up. “Is Darry sorry I’m sick?” I had a funny feeling that Darry was sad because I was sick. Everything seemed vague and hazy.
Soda gave me a funny look. He was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, he’s sorry you’re sick. Now please shut up, will ya, honey? Go back to sleep.”
I closed my eyes. I was awful tired.

WHEN I WOKE UP NEXT, it was daylight and I was hot under all the blankets on me. I was thirsty and hungry, but my stomach was so uneasy I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold anything down. Darry had pulled the armchair into the bedroom and was asleep in it. He should be at work, I thought. Why is he asleep in the armchair?
“Hey, Darry,” I said softly, shaking his knee. “Hey, Darry, wake up.”
He opened his eyes. “Ponyboy, you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I think so.”
Something had happened… but I still couldn’t remember it, although I was thinking a lot clearer than I was the last time I’d waked up.
He sighed in relief and pushed my hair back. “Gosh, kid, you had us scared to death.”
“What was the matter with me?”
He shook his head. “I told you you were in no condition for a rumble. Exhaustion, shock, minor concussion— and Two-Bit came blubberin’ over here with some tale about how you were running a fever before the rumble and how it was all his fault you were sick. He was pretty torn up that night,” Darry said. He was quiet for a minute. “We all were.”
And then I remembered. Dallas and Johnny were dead. Don’t think of them, I thought. (Don’t remember how Johnny was your buddy, don’t remember that he didn’t want to die. Don’t think of Dally breaking up in the hospital, crumpling under the street light. Try to think that Johnny is better off now, try to remember that Dally would have ended up like that sooner or later. Best of all, don’t think. Blank your mind. Don’t remember. Don’t remember.)
“Where’d I get a concussion?” I said. My head itched, but I couldn’t scratch it for the bandage. “How long have I been asleep?”
“You got a concussion from getting kicked in the head— Soda saw it. He landed all over that Soc. I’ve never seen him so mad. I think he could have whipped anyone, in the state he was in. Today’s Tuesday, and you’ve been asleep and delirious since Saturday night. Don’t you remember?”
“No,” I said slowly. “Darry, I’m not ever going to be able to make up the school I’ve missed. And I’ve still got to go to court and talk to the police about Bob’s getting killed. And now… with Dally…” —I took a deep breath— “Darry, do you think they’ll split us up? Put me in a home or something?”
He was silent. “I don’t know, baby. I just don’t know.”
I stared at the ceiling. What would it be like, I won­dered, staring at a different ceiling? What would it be like in a different bed, in a different room? There was a hard painful lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.
“Don’t you even remember being in the hospital?” Darry asked. He was trying to change the subject.
I shook my head. “I don’t remember.”
“You kept asking for me and Soda. Sometimes for Mom and Dad, too. But mostly for Soda.”
Something in his tone of voice made me look at him. Mostly for Soda. Did I ask for Darry at all, or was he just saying that?
“Darry…” I didn’t know quite what I wanted to say. But I had a sick feeling that maybe I hadn’t called for him while I was delirious, maybe I had only wanted Sodapop to be with me. What all had I said while I was sick? I couldn’t remember. I didn’t want to remember.
“Johnny left you his copy of Gone with the Wind. Told the nurse he wanted you to have it”
I looked at the paperback lying on the table. I didn’t want to finish it. I’d never get past the part where the Southern gentlemen go riding into sure death because they are gallant. Southern gentlemen with big black eyes in blue jeans and T-shirts, Southern gentlemen crumpling under street lights. Don’t remember. Don’t try to decide which one died gallant. Don’t remember.
“Where’s Soda?” I asked, and then I could have kicked myself. Why can’t you talk to Darry, you idiot? I said to myself. Why do you feel uncomfortable talking to Darry?
“Asleep, I hope. I thought he was going to go to sleep shaving this morning and cut his throat. I had to push him to bed, but he was out like a light in a second.”
Darry’s hopes that Soda was asleep were immediately ruined, because he came running in, clad only in a pair of blue jeans.
“Hey, Ponyboy!” he yelped, and leaped for me, but Darry caught him.
“No rough stuff, little buddy.”
So Soda had to content himself with bouncing up and down on the bed and pounding on my shoulder.
“Gosh, but you were sick. You feel okay now?”
“I’m okay. Just a little hungry.”
“I should think you would be,” Darry said. “You wouldn’t eat anything most of the time you were sick. How’d you like some mushroom soup?”
I suddenly realized just how empty I was. “Man, I’d like that just fine.”
“I’ll go make some. Sodapop, take it easy with him, okay?”
Soda looked back at him indignantly. “You’d think I was going to challenge him to a track meet or something right off the bat.”
“Oh, no,” I groaned. “Track meet. I guess this just about puts me out of every race. I won’t be back in condition for the meets. And the coach was counting on me.”
“Golly, there’s always next year,” Soda said. Soda never has grasped the importance Darry and I put on athletics. Like he never has understood why we went all-out for studying. “Don’t sweat it about some track meet.”
“Soda,” I said suddenly. “What all did I say while I was delirious?”
“Oh, you thought you were in Windrixville most of the time. Then you kept saying that Johnny didn’t mean to kill that Soc. Hey, I didn’t know you didn’t like baloney.”
I went cold. “I don’t like it. I never liked it”
Soda just looked at me. “You used to eat it. That’s why you wouldn’t eat anything while you were sick. You kept saying you didn’t like baloney, no matter what it was we were trying to get you to eat.”
“I don’t like it,” I repeated. “Soda, did I ask for Darry while I was sick?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, looking at me strangely. “You asked for him and me both. Sometimes Mom and Dad. And for Johnny.”
“Oh. I thought maybe I didn’t ask for Darry. It was bugging me.”
Soda grinned. “Well, you did, so don’t worry. We stayed with you so much that the doctor told us we were going to end up in the hospital ourselves if we didn’t get some sleep. But we didn’t get any anyway.”
I took a good look at him. He looked completely worn out; there were circles under his eyes and he had a tense, tired look to him. Yet his dark eyes were still laughing and carefree and reckless.
“You look beat,” I said frankly. “I bet you ain’t had three hours sleep since Saturday night.”
He grinned but didn’t deny it. “Scoot over.” He crawled over me and flopped down and before Darry came back in with the soup we were both asleep.

Chapter 11

I HAD TO STAY IN BED a whole week after that. That bugged me; I’m not the kind that can lie around looking at the ceiling all the time. I read most of the time, and drew pictures. One day I started flipping through one of Soda’s old yearbooks and came across a picture that seemed vaguely familiar. Not even when I read the name Robert Sheldon did it hit me who it was. And then I finally realized it was Bob. I took a real good long look at it.
The picture didn’t look a whole lot like the Bob I remembered, but nobody ever looks a whole lot like his picture in a yearbook anyway. He had been a sophomore that year— that would make him about eighteen when he died. Yeah, he was good-looking even then, with a grin that reminded me of Soda’s, a kind of reckless grin. He had been a handsome black-haired boy with dark eyes— maybe brown, like Soda’s, maybe dark-blue, like the Shepard boys’. Maybe he’d had black eyes. Like Johnny. I had never given Bob much thought— I hadn’t had time to think. But that day I wondered about him. What was he like?
I knew he liked to pick fights, had the usual Soc belief that living on the West Side made you Mr. Super-Tuff, looked good in dark wine-colored sweaters, and was proud of his rings. But what about the Bob Sheldon that Cherry Valance knew? She was a smart girl; she didn’t like him just because he was good-looking. Sweet and friendly, stands out from the crowd— that’s what she had said. A real person, the best buddy a guy ever had, kept trying to make somebody stop him— Randy had told me that. Did he have a kid brother who idolized him? Maybe a big brother who kept bugging him not to be so wild? His parents let him run wild— because they loved him too much or too little? Did they hate us now? I hoped they hated us, that they weren’t full of that pity-the-victims-of-environment junk the social workers kept handing Curly Shepard every time he got sent off to reform school. I’d rather have any­body’s hate than their pity. But, then, maybe they understood, like Cherry Valance. I looked at Bob’s picture and I could begin to see the person we had killed. A reckless, hot-tempered boy, cocky and scared stiff at the same time.
“Ponyboy.”
“Yeah?” I didn’t look up. I thought it was the doctor. He’d been coming over to see me almost every day, although he didn’t do much except talk to me.
“There’s a guy here to see you. Says he knows you.” Something in Darry’s voice made me look up, and his eyes were hard. “His name’s Randy.”
“Yeah, I know him,” I said.
“You want to see him?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
A few guys from school had dropped by to see me; I have quite a few friends at school even if I am younger than most of them and don’t talk much. But that’s what they are— school friends, not buddies. I had been glad to see them, but it bothered me because we live in kind of a lousy neighborhood and our house isn’t real great. It’s run-down looking and everything, and the inside’s kind of poor-looking, too, even though for a bunch of boys we do a pretty good job of house-cleaning. Most of my friends at school come from good homes, not filthy rich like the Socs, but middle class, anyway. It was a funny thing— it bugged me about my friends seeing our house. But I couldn’t have cared less about what Randy thought.
“Hi, Ponyboy.” Randy looked uncomfortable standing in the doorway.
“Hi, Randy,” I said. “Have a seat if you can find one.” Books were lying all over everything. He pushed a couple off a chair and sat down.
“How you feeling? Cherry told me your name was on the school bulletin.”
“I’m okay. You can’t really miss my name on any kind of bulletin.”
He still looked uncomfortable, although he tried to grin.
“Wanna smoke?” I offered him a weed, but he shook his head. “No, thanks. Uh, Ponyboy, one reason I came here was to see if you were okay, but you— we— got to go see the judge tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” I said, lighting a cigarette. “I know. Hey, holler if you see one of my brothers coming. I’ll catch it for smok­ing in bed.”
“My dad says for me to tell the truth and nobody can get hurt. He’s kind of upset about all this. I mean, my dad’s a good guy and everything, better than most, and I kind of let him down, being mixed up in all this.”
I just looked at him. That was the dumbest remark I ever heard anyone make. He thought he was mixed up in this? He didn’t kill anyone, he didn’t get his head busted in a rumble, it wasn’t his buddy that was shot down under a street light. Besides, what did he have to lose? His old man was rich, he could pay whatever fine there was for being drunk and picking a fight.
“I wouldn’t mind getting fined,” Randy said, “but I feel lousy about the old man. And it’s the first time I’ve felt anything in a long time.”
The only thing I’d felt in a long time was being scared. Scared stiff. I’d put off thinking about the judge and the hearing for as long as I could. Soda and Darry didn’t like to talk about it either, so we were all silently counting off the days while I was sick, counting the days that we had left together. But with Randy sticking solidly to the subject it was impossible to think about anything else. My cigarette started trembling.
“I guess your folks feel kind of awful about it, too.”
“My parents are dead. I live here with just Darry and Soda, my brothers.” I took a long drag on my cigarette. “That’s what’s worrying me. If the judge decides Darry isn’t a good guardian or something, I’m liable to get stuck in a home somewhere. That’s the rotten part of this deal. Darry is a good guardian; he makes me study and knows where I am and who I’m with all the time. I mean, we don’t get along so great sometimes, but he keeps me out of trouble, or did. My father didn’t yell at me as much as he does.”
“I didn’t know that” Randy looked worried, he really did. A Soc, even, worried because some kid greaser was on his way to a foster home or something. That was really funny. I don’t mean funny. You know what I mean.
“Listen to me, Pony. You didn’t do anything. It was your friend Johnny that had the knife…”
“I had it” I stopped him. He was looking at me strangely. “I had the knife. I killed Bob.”
Randy shook his head. “I saw it. You were almost drowned. It was the black-headed guy that had the switchblade. Bob scared him into doing it. I saw it.”
I was bewildered. “I killed him. I had a switchblade and I was scared they were going to beat me up.”
“No, kid, it was your friend, the one who died in the hospital…”
“Johnny is not dead.” My voice was shaking. “Johnny is not dead.”
“Hey, Randy” Darry stuck his head in the door. “I think you’d better go now.”
“Sure,” Randy said. He was still looking at me kind of funny. “See you around, Pony.”
“Don’t ever say anything to him about Johnny,” I heard Darry say in a low voice as they went out. “He’s still pretty racked up mentally and emotionally. The doc said he’d get over it if we gave him time.”
I swallowed hard and blinked. He was just like all the rest of the Socs. Cold-blooded mean. Johnny didn’t have anything to do with Bob’s getting killed.
“Ponyboy Curtis, put out that cigarette!”
“Okay, okay.” I put it out. “I ain’t going to go to sleep smoking, Darry. If you make me stay in bed there ain’t anywhere else I can smoke.”
“You’re not going to die if you don’t get a smoke. But if that bed catches on fire you will. You couldn’t make it to the door through that mess.”
“Well, golly, I can’t pick it up and Soda doesn’t, so I guess that leaves you.”
He was giving me one of those looks. “All right, all right,” I said, “that don’t leave you. Maybe Soda’ll straighten it up a little.”
“Maybe you can be a little neater, huh, little buddy?”
He’d never called me that before. Soda was the only one he ever called “little buddy.”
“Sure,” I said, “I’ll be more careful.”

Chapter 12

THE HEARING WASN’T anything like I thought it would be. Besides Darry and Soda and me, nobody was there except Randy and his parents and Cherry Valance and her parents and a couple of the other guys that had jumped Johnny and me that night. I don’t know what I expected the whole thing to be like— I guess I’ve been watching too many Perry Mason shows. Oh, yeah, the doctor was there and he had a long talk with the judge before the hearing. I didn’t know what he had to do with it then, but I do now.
First Randy was questioned. He looked a little nervous, and I wished they’d let him have a cigarette. I wished they’d let me have a cigarette; I was more than a little shaky myself. Darry had told me to keep my mouth shut no mat­ter what Randy and everybody said, that I’d get my turn. All the Socs told the same story and stuck mainly to the truth, except they said Johnny had killed Bob; but I figured I could straighten that point out when I got my turn. Cherry told them what had happened before and after Johnny and I had been jumped— I think I saw a couple of tears slide down her cheeks, but I’m not sure. Her voice was sure steady even if she was crying. The judge questioned everyone carefully, but nothing real emotional or exciting happened like it does on TV. He asked Darry and Soda a little bit about Dally, I think to check our background and find out what kind of guys we hung out with. Was he a real good buddy of ours? Darry said, “Yes, sir;’ looking straight at the judge, not flinching; but Soda looked at me like he was sentencing me to the electric chair before he gave the same answer. I was real proud of both of them. Dally had been one of our gang and we wouldn’t desert him. I thought the judge would never get around to questioning me. Man, I was scared almost stiff by the time he did. And you know what? They didn’t ask me a thing about Bob’s getting killed. All the judge did was ask me if I liked living with Darry, if I liked school, what kind of grades I made, and stuff like that. I couldn’t figure it out then, but later I found out what the doctor had been talking to the judge about. I guess I looked as scared as I really was, because the judge grinned at me and told me to quit chewing my fingernails. That’s a habit I have. Then he said I was acquitted and the whole case was closed. Just like that. Didn’t even give me a chance to talk much. But that didn’t bother me a lot. I didn’t feel like talking anyway.
I wish I could say that everything went back to normal, but it didn’t. Especially me. I started running into things, like the door, and kept tripping over the coffee table and losing things. I always have been kind of absent-minded, but man, then, I was lucky if I got home from school with the right notebook and with both shoes on. I walked all the way home once in my stocking feet and didn’t even notice it until Steve made some bright remark about it. I guess I’d left my shoes in the locker room at school, but I never did find them. And another thing, I quit eating. I used to eat like a horse, but all of a sudden I wasn’t hungry. Everything tasted like baloney. I was lousing up my schoolwork, too. I didn’t do too badly in math, because Darry checked over my homework in that and usually caught all my mistakes and made me do it again, but in English I really washed out. I used to make A’s in English, mostly because my teacher made us do compositions all the time. I mean, I know I don’t talk good English (Have you ever seen a hood that did?), but I can write it good when I try. At least, I could before. Now I was lucky to get a D on a composition.
It bothered my English teacher, the way I was goofing up, I mean. He’s a real good guy, who makes us think, and you can tell he’s interested in you as a person, too. One day he told me to stay in after the rest of the class left.
“Ponyboy, I’d like to talk to you about your grades.”
Man, I wished I could beat it out of there. I knew I was flunking out in that class, but golly, I couldn’t help it.
“There’s not much to talk about, judging from your scores. Pony, I’ll give it to you straight. You’re failing this class right now, but taking into consideration the circumstances, if you come up with a good semester theme, I’ll pass you with a C grade.”
“Taking into consideration the circumstances”­ —brother, was that ever a way to tell me he knew I was goofing up because I’d been in a lot of trouble. At least that was a roundabout way of putting it. The first week of school after the hearing had been awful. People I knew wouldn’t talk to me, and people I didn’t know would come right up and ask about the whole mess. Sometimes even teachers. And my history teacher— she acted as if she was scared of me, even though I’d never caused any trouble in her class. You can bet that made me feel real tuff.
“Yessir,” I said, “I’ll try. What’s the theme supposed to be on?”
“Anything you think is important enough to write about. And it isn’t a reference theme; I want your own ideas and your own experiences.”
My first trip to the zoo. Oh, boy, oh, boy. “Yessir,” I said, and got out of there as fast as I could.
At lunch hour I met Two-Bit and Steve out in the back parking lot and we drove over to a little neighborhood grocery store to buy cigarettes and Cokes and candy bars. The store was the grease hang-out and that was about all we ever had for lunch. The Socs were causing a lot of trouble in the school cafeteria— throwing silverware and stuff— and everybody tried to blame it on us greasers. We all got a big laugh out of that. Greasers rarely even eat in the cafeteria.
I was sitting on the fender of Steve’s car, smoking and drinking a Pepsi while he and Two-Bit were inside talking to some girls, yvhen a car drove up and three Socs got out. I just sat there and looked at them and took another swal­low of the Pepsi. I wasn’t scared. It was the oddest feeling in the world. I didn’t feel anything— scared, mad, or any­thing. Just zero.
“You’re the guy that killed Bob Sheldon,” one of them said. “And he was a friend of ours. We don’t like nobody killing our friends, especially greasers.”
Big deal. I busted the end off my bottle and held on to the neck and tossed away my cigarette “You get back into your car or you’ll get split.”
They looked kind of surprised, and one of them backed up.
“I mean it” I hopped off the car. “I’ve had about all I can take from you guys.” I started toward them, holding the bottle the way Tim Shepard holds a switch— out and away from myself, in a loose but firm hold. I guess they knew I meant business, because they got into their car and drove off.
“You really would have used that bottle, wouldn’t you?” Two-Bit had been watching from the store doorway. “Steve and me were backing you, but I guess we didn’t need to. You’d have really cut them up, huh?”
“I guess so,” I said with a sigh. I didn’t see what Two-Bit was sweating about— anyone else could have done the same thing and Two-Bit wouldn’t have thought about it twice.
“Ponyboy, listen, don’t get tough. You’re not like the rest of us and don’t try to be…”
What was the matter with Two-Bit? I knew as well as he did that if you got tough you didn’t get hurt. Get smart and nothing can touch you…
“What in the world are you doing?” Two-Bit’s voice broke into my thoughts.
I looked up at him. “Picking up the glass.”
He stared at me for a second, then grinned. “You little sonofagun,” he said in a relieved voice. I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I just went on picking up the glass from the bottle end and put it in a trash can. I didn’t want anyone to get a flat tire.
I tried to write that theme when I got home. I really did, mostly because Darry told me to or else. I thought about writing about Dad, but I couldn’t. It’s going to be a long time before I can even think about my parents. A long time. I tried writing about Soda’s horse, Mickey Mouse, but I couldn’t get it right; it always came out sounding corny. So I started writing names across the paper. Darrel Shaynne Curtis, Jr. Soda Patrick Curtis. Ponyboy Michael Curtis. Then I drew horses all over it. That was going to get a good grade like all git-out.
“Hey, did the mail come in yet?” Soda slammed the door and yelled for the mail, just the way he does every day when he comes home from work. I was in the bedroom, but I knew he would throw his jacket toward the sofa and miss it, take off his shoes, and go into the kitchen for a glass of chocolate milk, because that’s what he does every day of his life. He always runs around in his stocking feet— he doesn’t like shoes.
Then he did a funny thing. He came in and flopped down on the bed and started smoking a cigarette. He hardly ever smokes, except when something is really bugging him or when he wants to look tough. And he doesn’t have to impress us; we know he’s tough. So I figured something was bothering him. “How was work?”
“Okay.”
“Something wrong?”
He shook his head. I shrugged and went back to draw­ing horses.
Soda cooked dinner that night, and everything came out right. That was unusual, because he’s always trying something different. One time we had green pancakes. Green. I can tell you one thing: if you’ve got a brother like Sodapop, you’re never bored.
All through supper Soda was quiet, and he didn’t eat much. That was really unusual. Most of the time you can’t shut him up or fill him up. Darry didn’t seem to notice, so I didn’t say anything.
Then after supper me and Darry got into a fuss, about the fourth one we’d had that week. This one started because I hadn’t done anything on that theme, and I wanted to go for a ride. It used to be that I’d just stand there and let Darry yell at me, but lately I’d been yelling right back.
“What’s the sweat about my schoolwork?” I finally shouted. “I’ll have to get a job as soon as I get out of school anyway. Look at Soda. He’s doing okay, and he dropped out. You can just lay off!”
“You’re not going to drop out. Listen, with your brains and grades you could get a scholarship, and we could put you through college. But schoolwork’s not the point. You’re living in a vacuum, Pony, and you’re going to have to cut it out. Johnny and Dallas were our buddies, too, but you don’t just stop living because you lose someone. I thought you knew that by now. You don’t quit! And any­time you don’t like the way I’m running things you can get out.”
I went tight and cold. We never talked about Dallas or Johnny. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like me just to get out. Well, it’s not that easy, is it, Soda?” But when I looked at Soda I stopped. His face was white, and when he looked at me his eyes were wide with a pained expression. I suddenly remembered Curly Shepard’s face when he slipped off a telephone pole and broke his arm.
“Don’t… Oh, you guys, why can’t you…” He jumped up suddenly and bolted out the door. Darry and I were struck dumb. Darry picked up the envelope that Soda had dropped.
“It’s the letter he wrote Sandy,” Darry said without expression. “Returned unopened.”
So that was what had been bugging Soda all afternoon. And I hadn’t even bothered to find out. And while I was thinking about it, I realized that I never had paid much attention to Soda’s problems. Darry and I just took it for granted that he didn’t have any.
“When Sandy went to Florida… it wasn’t Soda, Ponyboy. He told me he loved her, but I guess she didn’t love him like he thought she did, because it wasn’t him.”
“You don’t have to draw me a picture,” I said.
“He wanted to marry her anyway, but she just left.” Darry was looking at me with a puzzled expression. “Why didn’t he tell you? I didn’t think he’d tell Steve or Two-Bit, but I thought he told you everything.”
“Maybe he tried,” I said. How many times had Soda started to tell me something, only to find I was daydream­ing or stuck in a book? He would always listen to me, no matter what he was doing.
“He cried every night that week you were gone,” Darry said slowly. “Both you and Sandy in the same week.” He put the envelope down. “Come on, let’s go after him.”
We chased him clear to the park. We were gaining on him, but he had a block’s head start.
“Circle around and cut him off,” Darry ordered. Even out of condition I was the best runner. “I’ll stay right behind him.”
I headed through the trees and cut him off halfway across the park. He veered off to the right, but I caught him in a flying tackle before he’d gone more than a couple of steps. It knocked the wind out of both of us. We lay there gasping for a minute or two, and then Soda sat up and brushed the grass off his shirt.
“You should have gone out for football instead of track.”
“Where did you think you were going?” I lay flat on my back and looked at him. Darry came up and dropped down beside us.
Soda shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just… I can’t stand to hear y’all fight. Sometimes… I just have to get out or… it’s like I’m the middleman in a tug o’ war and I’m being split in half. You dig?”
Darry gave me a startled look. Neither of us had realized what it was doing to Soda to hear us fight. I was sick and cold with shame. What he said was the truth. Darry and I did play tug of war with him, with never a thought to how much it was hurting him.
Soda was fiddling with some dead grass. “I mean, I can’t take sides. It’d be a lot easier if I could, but I see both sides. Darry yells too much and tries too hard and takes everything too serious, and Ponyboy, you don’t think enough, you don’t realize all Darry’s giving up just to give you a chance he missed out on. He could have stuck you in a home somewhere and worked his way through college. Ponyboy, I’m telling you the truth. I dropped out because I’m dumb. I really did try in school, but you saw my grades. Look, I’m happy working in a gas station with cars. You’d never be happy doing something like that. And Darry, you ought to try to understand him more, and quit bugging him about every little mistake he makes. He feels things differently than you do.” He gave us a pleading look. “Golly, you two, it’s bad enough having to listen to it, but when you start trying to get me to take sides…” Tears welled up in his eyes. “We’re all we’ve got left. We ought to be able to stick together against everything. If we don’t have each other, we don’t have anything. If you don’t have anything, you end up like Dallas… and I don’t mean dead, either. I mean like he was before. And that’s worse than dead. Please”— he wiped his eyes on his arm— “don’t fight anymore.”
Darry looked real worried. I suddenly realized that Darry was only twenty, that he wasn’t so much older that he couldn’t feel scared or hurt and as lost as the rest of us. I saw that I had expected Darry to do all the understanding without even trying to understand him. And he had given up a lot for Soda and me.
“Sure, little buddy,” Darry said softly. “We’re not going to fight anymore.”
“Hey, Ponyboy”— Soda gave me a tearful grin— “don’t you start crying, too. One bawl-baby in the family’s enough.”
“I’m not crying,” I said. Maybe I was. I don’t remember. Soda gave me a playful punch on the shoulder.
“No more fights. Okay, Ponyboy?” Darry said.
“Okay,” I said. And I meant it. Darry and I would prob­ably still have misunderstandings— we were too different not to— but no more fights. We couldn’t do anything to hurt Soda. Sodapop would always be the middleman, but that didn’t mean he had to keep getting pulled apart. Instead of Darry and me pulling me apart, he’d be pulling us together.
“Well,” Soda said, “I’m cold. How about going home?”
“Race you,” I challenged, leaping up. It was a real nice night for a race. The air was clear and cold and so clean it almost sparkled. The moon wasn’t out but the stars lit up everything. It was quiet except for the sound of our feet on the cement and the dry, scraping sound of leaves blowing across the street. It was a real nice night. I guess I was still out of shape, because we all three tied. No. I guess we all just wanted to stay together.
I still didn’t want to do my homework that night, though. I hunted around for a book to read, but I’d read everything in the house about fifty million times, even Darry’s copy of The Carpetbaggers, though he’d told me I wasn’t old enough to read it. I thought so too after I fin­ished it. Finally I picked up Gone with the Wind and looked at it for a long time. I knew Johnny was dead. I had known it all the time, even while I was sick and pretending he wasn’t. It was Johnny, not me, who had killed Bob —I knew that too. I had just thought that maybe if I played like Johnny wasn’t dead it wouldn’t hurt so much. The way Two-Bit, after the police had taken Dally’s body away, had griped because he had lost his switchblade when they searched Dallas,
“Is that all that’s bothering you, that switchblade?” a red-eyed Steve had snapped at him.
“No,” Two-Bit had said with a quivering sigh, “but that’s what I’m wishing was all that’s bothering me.”
But it still hurt anyway. You know a guy a long time, and I mean really know him, you don’t get used to the idea that he’s dead just overnight. Johnny was something more than a buddy to all of us. I guess he had listened to more beefs and more problems from more people than any of us. A guy that’ll really listen to you, listen and care about what you’re saying, is something rare. And I couldn’t forget him telling me that he hadn’t done enough, hadn’t been out of our neighborhood all his life— and then it was too late. I took a deep breath and opened the book. A slip of paper fell out on the floor and I picked it up.
Ponyboy, I asked the nurse to give you this book so you could finish it. It was Johnny’s handwriting. I went on reading, almost hearing Johnny’s quiet voice. The doctor came in a while ago but I knew anyway. I keep getting tireder and tireder. Listen, I don’t mind dying now. It’s worth it. It’s worth saving those kids. Their lives are worth more than mine, they have more to live for. Some of their parents came by to thank me and I know it was worth it. Tell Dally it’s worth it. I’m just going to miss you guys. I’ve been thinking about it, and that poem, that guy that wrote it, he meant you’re gold when you’re a kid, like green. When you’re a kid everything’s new, dawn. It’s just when you get used to everything that it’s day. Like the way you dig sunsets, Pony. That’s gold. Keep that way, it’s a good way to be. I want you to tell Dally to look at one. He’ll probably think you’re crazy, but ask for me. I don’t think he’s ever really seen a sunset. And don’t be so bugged over being a greaser. You still have a lot o f time to make yourself be what you want. There’s still lots of good in the world. Tell Dally. I don’t think he knows. Your buddy, Johnny.
Tell Dally. It was too late to tell Dally. Would he have listened? I doubted it. Suddenly it wasn’t only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going down under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn’t believe you if you did. It was too vast a problem to be just a personal thing. There should be some help, someone should tell them before it was too late. Someone should tell their side of the story, and maybe people would understand then and wouldn’t be so quick to judge a boy by the amount of hair oil he wore. It was important to me. I picked up the phone book and called my English teacher.
“Mr. Syme, this is Ponyboy. That theme— how long can it be?”
“Why, uh, not less than five pages.” He sounded a little surprised. I’d forgotten it was late at night.
“Can it be longer?”
“Certainly, Ponyboy, as long as you want it.”
“Thanks,” I said and hung up.
I sat down and picked up my pen and thought for a minute. Remembering. Remembering a handsome, dark boy with a reckless grin and a hot temper. A tough, tow-headed boy with a cigarette in his mouth and a bitter grin on his hard face. Remembering— and this time it didn’t hurt— a quiet, defeated-looking sixteen-year-old whose hair needed cutting badly and who had black eyes with a frightened expression to them. One week had taken all three of them. And I decided I could tell people, begin­ning with my English teacher. I wondered for a long time how to start that theme, how to start writing about something that was important to me. And I finally began like this: When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home…

Interviewing Sherri Doust, the instructor of my English 111 and 112 classes, reminded me of my state of mind and thought process 2 years ago. Fresh out of high school, I was eager to prove to everyone how great of a writer I was. I chose my major strictly on my writing capabilities and nothing else. However, when my first essay was returned and deemed below average, I knew I needed to focus if I wanted to succeed at the collegiate level. Equipped with a passion to prove to my parents I was in fact capable, and with some inadvertent help from the Bowling Green Police Department along the way, my number one priority became my school work. 

            Why did I just write about my state of being 2 years ago? It’s simple: because without Sherri’s challenging instruction, the friendship we created and my progression into a proficient college-level writer, I most likely would have been discouraged to the point of seeking occupations that merely required a high school diploma. Through her instruction I knew that my future was going to somehow be related to writing, a very profound discovery I must say. With that being said, I interviewed Sherri because I want to somewhat replicate her teaching style in my future classrooms. My questions focused on her grading strategies, what rewards she gets from teaching writing, and some background information that I wanted to know regarding her profession.

            To begin, every profession has its own rewards, and it’s those rewards that keep people coming back to their jobs. One of the questions I asked Sherri was what rewards she reaps from teaching entry level English classes. If I am going to be a teacher of writing, I want to know what other teachers view as the rewards of their profession. She actually responded with three different rewards. She claims that “one reward happens when students – usually those who fear writing and believes themselves to be incapable of it – have a “breakthrough” and realize that writing isn’t necessarily as awful as they thought (and that they can, indeed be successful in it).” This specific reward must be universal because I experienced a similar situation in high school and college. She also stated that another reward comes when a student who, due to the enjoyment of the challenge of her English 111 and 112 classes, continues on with other writing related courses. She certainly did challenge us quite a bit with her extremely detailed criticism and her ability to see and explain another side of an issue. Her third and final reward she explained in the interview was the potential for friendships to blossom between her and the students. During English 111 Sherri and I were beginning to get along with each other, but it wasn’t until English 112 in the following semester that we had developed one of the friendships that she explains as one of the prime benefits of teaching. Although we rarely see each other, we still communicate through Facebook and e-mail occasionally. She also explained that she still is close with a student that she had in English 112 five years ago. According to her, “such resulting friendships tell me that I must’ve done right by someone in some capacity.” I believe that I was a part each one of these rewards, and had I been assigned a different instructor, I might not have written this paper.

             My next area of focus was her grading strategies, the element of her class structure where I benefited the most. I really wanted to know what she thought about peer revision and whether or not she believes it has the potential to be the next great step in the writing process, a claim that I have heard from many instructors and professors. She explains that peer revision has the potential to be effective “in that, because they’re “outside” readers of an essay, they can point out areas where the author is falling short and/or failing to meet the audience’s needs.” However, she advances to state that only a handful of students take the peer revision workshops seriously, and understands why. According to Sherri, most students don’t feel qualified for the task and that the possibility of giving better feedback than the instructor is impossible. If she is ultimately going to be grading and commenting on the essay, then why should the student put forth an effort that will be ‘outdone’ by the instructor? Also, in such classes where a good portion of the students are experiencing difficulty with the collegiate essay, why should they spend valuable class time reviewing essays other than their own? Such questions and observations are the reason why peer revision will never become a part of my classroom structure (it is clearly appropriate for this class, however). I believe that students can benefit best from personal writing conferences with the instructor, especially in the high school setting. I am unable to recall any peer revision in high school. Had there been any, it’s safe to say that most of the classes would have turned into gossip central with maybe a couple students actually attempting to provide insightful feedback, and a couple is a very generous estimation.

            In addition to peer revision and its obstacles, I questioned her about her grading hierarchy and the different areas of student writing that she gives the most attention. She provided me with what she sees as the three most important areas: audience awareness, organization, and development. The essays that are assigned to students in the entry level classes almost expect that the student understands expository structure to the point that grammar and syntax errors are placed low on the grading hierarchy. This strategy has been taught in several of my English classes and deserves some interpretation. Obviously the proper audience must be selected and addressed to coincide with the assignment. If a student is writing an eleven page research paper, he should refrain from using slang terminology and the first person voice. Such choices work well when writing an opinion column for the newspaper, but using those devices in a research paper will hurt the credibility of the writer tremendously, and as a result, a passing grade will not be achieved.

            Organization and development are two that I believe play off of one another. The essay needs a coherent flow and structure in order to present the argument in a logical manner, thus making the argument readable and potentially persuasive. Through the organization, the development of the main ideas will make itself apparent. A solid persuasive essay will have well-developed arguments and possibly counterarguments depending on whether or not the assignment demands them. These big three areas are what most instructors at the university are adhering to currently, according to Sherri. However, grammar and syntax definitely don’t go unnoticed. She did state that the only time grammar and syntax receive more attention than the big three (the previous three areas mentioned) is when the errors are so prevalent that they begin to cloud the student’s ideas and arguments, an idea that can be chalked up to simple common sense.

            I believe that such a strategy has the potential to be implemented with great success at the secondary level. Grammar and syntax errors are merely a matter of simple correction, whereas the big three are what will ultimately decide one’s grade. If a paper is structured coherently, adheres to its audience and is developed into a readable essay, it has succeeded. As Sherri stated however, once the grammar and syntax errors are prevalent and problematic, then the student will need further assistance. If I witness a trend among several students, a lesson might be developed to address the problem, or personal writing conferences will be held with the students having difficulty.

            Considering her grading techniques and opinions about peer revision, she described her overall approach to teaching writing as one that is very realistic. She stated that “[she doesn’t] strive for her students to produce The Next Great American Novel (although that would be swell!); rather, [she] just wants them to be comfortable in their ability to write a collegiate-level paper.” Additionally, being an entry level English instructor, she wants to provide students with a basic set of essay writing skills that they can use in other courses. I will be adopting a similar realistic approach within my classrooms as well. In the high school setting, the students need realism, not in the theatrical and literary realm, but in a practical sense. High school is a very stressful time in many students’ lives, and if they have a teacher who can be realistic both through instruction and through their personality, the students will hopefully feel more at ease, creating an atmosphere that will be more conducive to produce solid writing (all while keeping fingers crossed, of course).

Finally, I wanted to gain a little insight about her academic background, specifically what she remembered about her first time teaching and why she teaches at the collegiate level. While I was thinking of questions to ask, I recalled that I have heard very few ‘first time teaching’ experiences. Sherri remembers being very intimidated. While she was standing in front of the 23 students, she was thinking that she was unqualified for the job and was left with the lingering thought of what she got herself into. Also, since she was in her mid-twenties at the time, she discovered that it was rather difficult to establish herself as an authority figure, being relatively close to the age of her students. I found this interesting because she had the bravery and courage to fight through her anxiety, something that I will probably need to do once I am presented with the same situation.

Lastly, I wanted to know why she has chosen to teach at the collegiate level rather than take her expertise to a high school. I often thought about applying to enroll in a graduate program, but as I tell everybody who asks me what I want to do with my life, all major decisions will come once I complete student teaching. Moving back on track, Sherri stated that she has never considered teaching any level but the collegiate and links that decision to the increased amount of flexibility and open-mindedness at the university compared to the secondary level. I disagree with this statement because although there are no state-mandated tests and content standards at the university, you can be equally as creative and open-minded in a high school classroom. Simply because a content standard says you are prohibited from teaching a certain poem, book or idea doesn’t mean you have to comply (I’m beginning to think I won’t last long in a high school). Teachers shouldn’t be robots despite what the government might advocate, nor should the teachers be teaching their students to become robots.

As previously stated, Sherri Doust is a big part of the reason why I decided to continue attending college. I interviewed her because if I am going to become a teacher, many of her teaching techniques will be incorporated into my classroom. There are other areas of her instruction that stretched far beyond the writing process, and that is what I hope to accomplish with my students. My greatest reward from teaching would be to find students like me and through a similar method that Sherri implemented, inspire them to realize their capabilities.

Teaches ENG 111 and 112 and a few scientific writing courses

I will be emailing her my questions

I would like to find out what areas of writing she weighs more heavily than others, if there is some sort of hierarchical structure to her grading process, how she deals with the student who is failing to meet the standards of ENG 111 and 112, and why she chose her profession.

What is the one thing every writing teacher should know?

What is the greatest reward from teaching writing? If there aren’t, why do you teach writing?

Is peer revision effective? If so, when is it useful?

What are your favorite topics for students to write about?

What types of papers do you enjoy grading and why?

How often do you change your teaching strategies?

Why did you enter this profession? Why the collegiate level?

                Most of what the two had difficulty with was word choice and sentence structure. Although after reading her work and witnessing her choose different words to better suit her argument, it seemed as if the tutor’s sole job was to act as a motivational tool. I would estimate that roughly 95% of the dialogue was the freshman, and the other 5% was feedback from the tutor and me. When a word sounded awkward or if there was a better word to suit her argument, she would suggest a word to the tutor, and the tutor would agree with her. This girl had no place in the writing center.

                One of the positive events I witnessed, despite the girl’s great writing ability, was the conversation the two engaged in concerning her topic. The topic was why couples choose to marry, even when the current divorce rate is 50%. Both the freshman and the tutor’s personal opinions were revealed in such discussion in a very respecting manner.  The warm environment was definitely created, and the result was a clear discussion of the topics.

                I’m realizing that I’m having difficulty thinking of things to write about after this observation. Even the tutor stated that she was the best writer she has ever encountered in such a program. I suppose the only trouble she has is finding someone to motivate her to actually do the assignment. She talked a great deal and it seemed to help her with the direction of her essay. Sometimes that might be all a student needs is someone to talk to about their essay. This girl obviously is poles apart from the normal attendees of the writing center, but maybe she is there for a different reason. She had a clear thesis statement and a cemented direction for her sources. Everything she read aloud sounded perfect. I really don’t know what else to say!

                She also posed a really interesting question to her students: should an author write for his audience or should he write to his own capability. The students failed to appropriately respond to the question which led to another discussion, but the question arose from the students’ confusion about an author’s vocabulary. It led to an activity that will definitely be implemented in my classroom, and that is the vocabulary word of the day. The word the students encountered trouble with was ‘smitten’. Maybe extra credit will be given to the student who brings me a definition and a sentence which properly utilizes the word.

                Mr. Wilde’s fifth grade classroom was very interesting as well. The ‘read aloud’ time and the discussion that followed was something that I never thought was possible in such an early grade level.  He was essentially teaching the author’s writing style in the context of the student’s writing. It took me until the 7^th or 8^th grade to escape the repetition of the ‘so’ and ‘then’ words. His main point was that the stylistic choices of the author made the story more important and interesting, whereas if the author had used such repetition of the above stated words, the work would be enormously boring. Obviously, at the fifth grade level, students are learning how to craft a paragraph. I believe his discussion about the author’s stylistic choices arose from the observation of the students using the repetitive words in their own writing. This type of discussion gets the students thinking about different ways to write a narrative other than starting every sentence with ‘then’.

                The ‘Monday Meeting’ looked like a great way to create a warm and inviting environment in a classroom. Everyone was to free-write for about 7 minutes about what happened during their weekends. What followed was the most intriguing part: everyone was visibly eager to share their stories. No one seemed to be attempting to ‘outdo’ one another, and no one seemed to be making fun of another’s writing. Definitely something I would never have expected in a 7^th grade classroom.

                The one thing I disagreed with (surprising?) was one of the classroom structures the teachers advocated. One of the alternatives to the U shape was the cluster shape in which the desks are separated into clusters of 3 or 4. I believe this type of structure would be the basis for much dissent throughout the class. Unless the situation is only temporary, I would never put my students into clusters.