It was after school this one day and I was hanging around my house but thinking of going to play football. What I was doing was smoking and watching T.V. I heard someone on our porch but I wasn't looking. Darry and Soda were at work, but it could be anybody else. It was Johnny, and he didn't knock or nothing. None of us ever did at each other's houses, except maybe Johnny's. Not that we knocked, but we kind of listened for sounds of screaming and fighting, and if there was a bunch of fighting going on we'd go somewhere else.
"Hey, man," he said, slouching down, digging in his pockets for his cigarettes.
"Hey," I said, glancing at him. His hair was almost completely in his eyes, and he moved his head quick to flip it out, but it just fell right back. He got his cigarettes out and took one from the pack and lit it, and I watched the smoke twirl away from it.
"Were you at school?" I said. I hadn't seen him, but sometimes I didn't. We were in the same grade but not any of the same classes. I was in all the smart classes that were filled with socs. He was in the remedial classes.
He shook his head no, and I couldn't believe he skipped again. If I skipped school as much as he did Darry would kill me, but I liked school. Johnny hated it.
He sat down and smoked, watched T.V. with me. We didn't say much. There wasn't all that much to say, and plus Johnny didn't talk much, not like Two-bit. Two-bit would ramble on and on, talking about nothing, jumping from one subject to another so fast you'd get dizzy. It was fun to listen to him sometimes, the off the wall things he said, but sometimes it was tiring. Same thing with Johnny. It was nice to not have someone babbling at you all the time, but sometimes it was too quiet.
I thought about him and school, and I knew he hated it and why. He really struggled with it, he couldn't read for shit, and math wasn't any easier for him. I did so many of his homework assignments. Once in a blue moon he had a paper to do, and I'd do it. But there was more to it than that. With his parents fighting all the time and his father beating him, it made it hard to concentrate in school. It was hard to pay attention in school if you spent the night sleeping outside on a park bench. I felt bad for Johnny, I really did.
I was about to ask him if he wanted to go play football with me when Soda and Steve and Eve and Sandy came in. They were all laughing and leaning into each other, and it seemed like they'd been drinking. I glanced at the clock. It was only four. I tried to raise one eyebrow at Soda but just ended up raising both of them, so instead of looking incredulous I looked surprised.
"Hey, Ponyboy," Soda said, falling onto the couch and kicking off his shoes. The girls all said hi to us, tilting their heads and smiling. Steve glared at me and Johnny, but mostly me. I got it. He didn't want us around, probably so him and Soda could make out with their girlfriends. It was fine with me. I was gonna take off anyway.
"C'mon, Johnny," I said, standing up and getting ready to go. Johnny stood up, too, not questioning me. He never did. If you said 'let's go,' he'd go with you.
Walking toward the lot where I thought I'd left the football, I couldn't help complaining about Steve.
"I can't stand him sometimes, really," I said.
"Aw, he's alright," Johnny said, but what did he know? Everyone loved him, he was the gang's pet. Even Dally loved him. He was the only one Dally hadn't punched upside the head for some reason or another.
"Yeah, but he thinks I'm such a tag along kid. It's just annoying," But I let it go. I guessed Steve wasn't so bad.
I found the football and we played for awhile until it started getting dark and we could hardly see, then we stopped. I was breathing hard but still I wanted a cigarette but I was out.
"Johnny, you got a cigarette?" I said, watching him put his jean jacket back on. He pulled out his pack but it was empty, too.
"Shit. Do you have any money?" I didn't have any money. Soda and Darry didn't get paid until Friday.
"Nope," he said without even checking. He never had money. His parents drank it all away. Luckily for him, though, they bought cigarettes.
The lot was halfway between my house and Johnny's, and we both looked toward both houses. There was no money at either, except maybe Steve had some money. But I didn't want to go to my house since Steve was bugging me. But going to Johnny's house was always risky, especially around this time.
Man, was I fiending a cigarette. It was even worse since I knew we didn't have any. At this point I'd risk going to Johnny's house to get a pack. We looked at each other and it was unspoken between us. I didn't want to go to my house, my look said. And Johnny looked sort of resigned but nodded. We'd go to his house.
We started walking there and we both felt the dread, but of course he felt it worse. I'd be fine at his house, and if his parents were yelling and throwing furniture I'd just leave. He was the one that got hurt there.
His house was like mine, the living room and small dining room and smaller kitchen, then the hall and the two bedrooms off of it. But his house was worse than mine because at our house Darry fixed the stuff that broke and we all of us cleaned, somewhat. Nobody really cleaned at Johnny's house, and stuff that broke stayed broke, and it was just more run down because of that. It smelled like cheap beer and wine and whiskey and sometimes rotting food. On the porch there was a pile of two-by-fours and a broken chair and more beer cans than you could count. Sometimes we brought them in for extra money, and sometimes we used the two-by-fours and broken furniture for the fires at the lot.
I didn't see or hear his parents, that was good. There were no lights on in his house and he didn't turn any on heading to his room. I followed him. I knew he kept a carton of cigarettes under his bed. His parents would get too drunk to remember how many they had, so he always snuck a few.
He turned the light on in his room, and I looked around. It had been awhile since I'd been there but nothing had changed. There was his narrow bed with the old blanket on it, his dresser that was rough, unpainted wood, the lamp, and ratty old blanket up in the window instead of a shade or curtain.
As he was grabbing a fresh pack or two and shoving them in his pockets we both heard the sound of a car pulling up and the slamming of a car door. We froze and looked at each other. Johnny's eyes were wide and nervous looking. He didn't look scared, just worried. I was worried, too, listening to the pounding sound of heavy boots coming up the porch and into the house.
"Let's go," Johnny said, and I nodded. We went to the end of the hall and were almost in the living room when we saw his dad. He had turned the living room light on and he stood by the door, blocking our exit. And he had been drinking already, too. I could smell it, I wondered if Johnny could. His eyes were still wide but the look had changed from worry to deep apprehension.
"Johnny," his father said, kind of low and threatening. He didn't seem to notice me and I shrunk back behind Johnny. This was the worst, to be at Johnny's house and trapped with his crazy father. I was inching back into the hall, Johnny stood where he was, staring back at his father.
"Did you go to school today?" he said, and now he leaned back and grabbed something from the porch. The question was just on the edge of angry, and I could tell his dad knew he didn't go. What I would have done was maybe lied and said I did go, but that I was late and didn't get counted as being there, or something like that. What Johnny did was admit it.
"No," he said, and I heard him swallow hard. His father was getting angrier, and Johnny's quiet "no," made him angrier still.
"No?" his dad said, and now I saw what he had in his hands, it was one of the two-by-fours. I stood in the darkness of the hallway and watched the whole thing like a play, "what do you mean, 'no,' ?"
"I didn't go," Johnny said in his quiet way, and he stared up at his father. I was shaking, literally shaking. God, the look in his old man's eyes. He looked like he could kill Johnny over it.
"You little worthless piece of shit," he said, and I saw clearly there was no where to go. He blocked the door and would reach Johnny if he tried to run in this small house.
"You're gonna get what's coming to you," his father said, and I watched in horrid fascination. He whipped him with that two-by-four hard, and Johnny closed his eyes and his whole body stiffened but he didn't make a sound, not one whimper. If that was me I'd have cried like a baby, probably. Johnny was tougher than I was. And when his father hit him with it again he just kept his eyes closed and didn't move.