How Things Were

by Gypsy Love

Johnny's account of the beating in the vacant lot.

I knew we were poor and all. All of us, all us greasers. Of course I knew that. Our houses were all run down and most of our parents drank, drank away all the money, what little there was. And Two-bit's mom worked in some sleazy bar cause his dad took off on them. Ponyboy's parents were dead. My parents were violent alcoholics. And I knew how everyone else in town thought of us and treated us, and that would be like trash. You kind of start to believe it after awhile. I mean, my friends would do some things that would shock you. They'd steal anything. They'd mug people, beat up people, jump 'em and all kinds of shit. Not all of us, I ain't saying that. I never did that shit, and it wasn't cause I was afraid of getting in trouble. I didn't care about that. I got in trouble plenty. At home I was always in trouble, my old man was always hitting me. My mother was always screaming at me. And at school. I never did the homework and I flunked almost everything, and teachers were always yelling at me and keeping me after school when I went. I didn't go that often. I was just gonna quit. I didn't do that other shit because I thought it was wrong, like morally wrong. I don't know about religion or nothing, about God and all that shit but I kind of thought there was something, and if there wasn't there should be. I didn't do the shit Dally did because it made me feel bad.

A lot of people were afraid of us, and that would be the middle class kids, mostly. They looked at us like we might jump 'em, and Dally might, just for kicks. But they looked at me like that, too, and that made me feel weird. It was because of the jean jacket and the worn out jeans and the slicked back hair. It was all surface stuff. Nobody looked at socs like that and they were way worse than we ever were. But they looked all nice so nobody thought bad shit about 'em.

I didn't really like the way things were. I didn't like my lousy house and getting hit all the time just cause my old man was drunk and mean. I didn't like struggling with school, every time I read something the words would get all jumbled up. I didn't like feeling like everyone was in their own little categories and you couldn't get out, nothing you could do would get you out. I didn't like feeling like I was going nowhere. Sometimes I thought about killing myself, just ending the whole miserable mess of things somehow.

I knew how things were, you know. I knew how the socs had it out for us. But I didn't think about it all the time. I don't know. This one day I guess I just let my guard down. School hadn't sucked that day, by some miracle. My parents had laid off for a few days. I felt alright. And I was in the vacant lot kicking around a football by myself when I see that blue mustang cruising by. Sure, that was a soc car and I knew it. No one around here has enough money for a car like that. And they were kind of out of their territory. But they were there and I was alone and I thought, hoped, maybe they'd just drive by. I watched that car and then I watched five socs stumble out and I could tell they were all drunk, even from that far away I could smell it on them. That's when I ran.

I'm not that great at running or sports. I'm not very coordinated. And I'm small. I'm smaller than Ponyboy and he's only 14. That sucks. So I ran but I could hear them behind me and they were gaining. They were older, maybe by a year or so, but they also played football at the school, some of them. So even drunk it wasn't anything for them to outrun me. I'd never been jumped before. Dally had, but Dal invited a lot of his trouble on himself. He usually had some kind of weapon on him, too. I didn't have a weapon, but man when they grabbed the back of my jacket and dragged me backwards I sure wished for a switchblade or something, anything.

That whole beating isn't exactly clear in my mind. I think I might have blocked a lot of it out. I remember there was a guy with a lot of rings on his hands and he was the drunkest. He had been driving, I think. He held this little silver whisky flask. That flask was expensive, you could tell. Everything was expensive. The rings and their clothes and the car and that flask, all of it. Even then I felt like things weren't fair, like why did I have to have the shitty life and they got to have everything they could ever dream of?

They got a hold of me, one of them or two, I don't even know, but they held my arms and I tried to get away from them and kick at them or whatever but they were too strong, and there were too many of them. The guy with the rings, he said, "We're going to kill you," and it was so serious, the way he said it. I believed him.

He punched me, that guy with the rings, and I couldn't get away from those guys who were holding onto my arms, and then one of them kicked me in the stomach and the pain just exploded and I couldn't breathe. I felt blood running down the side of my face and out my nose and I was choking on it once I got my breath back, and I was wearing this white T-shirt that day and it was all splattered with blood. Things got hazy, like I was gonna pass out. I thought if I passed out they'd just keep beating me until they killed me, like that guy with the rings said.

I tensed up every time they punched me or kicked me, and the way they were holding my arms behind my back hurt, too. After awhile I just stopped struggling since it wasn't helping anyways. I closed my eyes at one point and maybe I wasn't even conscious, but I must have been because I could still feel pain. When I would open my eyes there were these little black dots in front of them, then the little black dots became one dark hole and I sunk into it. The next thing I knew I was laying on the ground and all the socs were gone, but Soda was there. He was staring at me in horror. I was probably all covered in blood and a mess.