Susan Hinton - The Outsiders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey, Dally!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Johnny tossed him a whole package.

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

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

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

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

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

“A letter? Who from?”

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

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

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

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

Ponyboy,

Well I guess you got into some trouble, huh? Darry and me nearly went nuts when you ran out like that. Darry is awful sorry he hit you. You know he didn’t mean it. And then you and Johnny turned up mising and what with that dead kid in the park and Dally getting hauled into the station, well it scared us something awful. The police came by to question us and we told them as much as we could. I can’t believe little old Johnny could kill somebody. I know Dally knows where you are, but you know him. He keeps his trap shut and won’t tell me nothing. Darry hasn’t got the slightest notion where you’re at and it is nearly killing him. I wish you’d come back and turn your selfves in but I guess you can’t since Johnny might get hurt. You sure are famous. You got a paragraph in the newspaper even. Take care and say hi to Johnny for us.

Sodapop Curtis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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