The train gently rocked, and only Johnny was awake to feel it. Ponyboy slept, and he would let him sleep. He could make out the reddish brown color of his hair in the dim light, light from passing streetlights and the moon. But really, they were passing the streetlights, they were flying over the train tracks headed for God knew where. Windrixville. But where was that?
He could feel the metal of the gun in his hands, the cold metal. Could he shoot this gun at anybody? Yesterday he wouldn't have thought so, but now he wasn't so sure. He'd killed that boy at the park. There was more ruthlessness inside of him than he had known.
It didn't feel like it was going to be okay. The train rocked and he could see Ponyboy's smooth features as he slept, those handsome features like Soda. Johnny didn't think of it so often but he knew he wasn't as good looking as the Curtis brothers, not with the scar on his cheek and his black greasy hair falling in his eyes. Not being so small, so undernourished, so skittish and scared all the time.
Ponyboy was laying on Johnny's legs, on his thighs, and his legs were going numb. He wanted to move him and stretch out, stand up, get the blood flowing back into his legs but he wouldn't. He stroked his hair, that reddish brown lightly greased hair, and he felt the slickness on his fingertips. He wouldn't move despite the pain because he deserved that pain, he deserved everything because he killed the soc and caused all this. It was his fault. Ponyboy made a little moan in his sleep and Johnny held his breath, wondering if he'd wake up.
He didn't, he just settled himself more firmly into the pillow of Johnny's legs, and the train rolled on toward Windrixville, toward their new life, whatever it would be. But already Johnny was good at not thinking too far ahead. Before in his life thinking too far ahead just meant thinking about being hungry, thinking about a beating. It was better to enjoy playing pinball or smoking a cigarette in the vacant lot or eating a candy bar. So he could take this moment and have it, he could feel the rocking of the train and the wind as it came in the boxcar and caressed their cheeks and ruffled their hair. He could feel the rhythm of Ponyboy breathing and the weight of him across his legs.
Dawn touched the sky far to the east, one line of gold. Johnny saw it through his heavily lidded eyes, eyes that wanted to shut. All the adrenaline had left him and he was more exhausted than he had ever been, but he had to stay awake to get them off the train at the right spot, or they'd both sleep as the train gently rocked and they'd wake up in the arms of the cops. Uh uh. No. Johnny hated cops, hated and feared them. All he'd seen them do was haul his friends off to jail when it wasn't them that had done it, and he'd seen them beat greasers for no reason at all except kicks. Cops were on the socs' side.
It was almost time. They'd almost reached the place Dally had said. Ponyboy still slept, and Johnny traced one finger across his smooth cheek, tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans. Tried to wake up. It was almost time to go. But the rocking of the train was soothing, and his eyes slipped closed and stayed closed too long until he jerked himself awake, feeling the cold metal against his skin, feeling the weight of his friend across his legs.
He shook him, seeing the field they were supposed to get off at, and he wouldn't wake up at first.
"Pony, c'mon, man, wake up!" Johnny said, shaking his shoulder, feeling the relief as he lifted his head off his thighs.
"Jump!" he said, shoving him half awake into the field, and they landed with two thuds and rolled in the wet grass and neither saw the train as it left, they only heard it rattle the tracks and the ground and heard the air it sucked into its wake.
What now? There was no church, and Johnny blinked and looked around and rubbed his legs, trying to get the blood to flow back into them. He had somehow thought the church would be right here. Nothing was ever what he thought it would be.