Susan Hinton - The Outsiders

“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 ol’ 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 jump 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 absent-mindedly watched Darry as he searched the icebox for chocolate cake.

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

Without turning 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.”