Disclaimer: I don't own The Outsiders.
Title: "People Like You and Me"
Rating: T
POV: Dally's POV, starting from Johnny's jumping. I took the liberty of adding a few scenes here and there, with more to come...
A/N: This is the same as the first chapter, although it has a lot more "in-between" scenes. Review, please!
"A gun? Dally, I can't use this!" you say.
Well, fuck, kid, you sure don't point it like tha—you don't point it at me! That thing's loaded!
Damn it all.
You killed a guy. I just can't get over it.
Je-sus..."I thought New York was the only place I'd get caught up in a murder rap."
You two stare at me, as always, so I sigh.
"You take the 3:15 to Windrixville," I say. "There's an abandoned Church a little ways over Jay Mountain. It's an old hideout my cousin had—go there. And you're gonna need money—here's a fifty I got from Buck; it's all I could get. It should last you about a week. The first thing you do when you get off the train is get some supplies. There's a general store down the road. Then after that, you don't so much as stick your head out the door. When it's all clear, I'll come find you. But the train is gonna go soon, so you gotta be quick and get off at the right stop."
I don't see you as you run off. I've never been a guy for much believin'. I've never gone to Church or anything like that, and I think God is a pretty sick guy for letting all the shit in this world happen, but in that moment I trust something a little bigger than me—I trust you to go safe in the darkness.
I can't go after you right away because of—wait for it, you'll love this one—fucking car trouble.
Imagine that.
"Water leak," Steve says, closing the hood.
"How long?" I say.
"How much?" he says.
"Ha, ha—come on. I'm being serious, man."
"So am I," he says, and wipes off his hands.
Grumbling, I go inside, where Soda is delivering a monologue to Two-Bit.
"Darry is worryin' himself sick. He's working himself over—he keeps apologizing to Pony in his sleep. That is, when he does sleep," says Soda. He rubs at his face with a dirty towel. "Good God."
"Yuh-huh," says Two-Bit. "Hey, Dally. You seen Johnny anywhere?"
"Must still be with Pony," I say, knocking on his head with my fist. "Duh. Knock, knock, dumbass, anyone home?"
"Nope," he says almost blissfully.
"Where's Darry?"
"Still out."
"Why didn't you go with him?"
"He's a little...hysterical right now," says Two-Bit. "After...you know."
Yeah, I think, I know. More than is needed.
I turn to Soda. "What about you?"
Soda is just opening his mouth when there is a crash coming from the garage.
You know Steve, kid. You know he's a male Cherry, just without the good looks. A real spitfire, right?
"Hey, there, wanna polish, buddy?" he says, and hocks a good one right on their windshield.
Like I said...real spitfire.
The Soc that's sitting in the driver's seat gets out.
"Oh, how fun, another skull to crack," Steve says, smiling at the new arrival. "You wanna get it on in real sunlight, boyo? Got some real balls to bust?"
"Trash-talking grease," the Soc says, his lips curling into a toxic snarl, "my favorite kind of public enemy."
"That's public enemy Number One to you, motherfucker," Steve says.
So Steve is a big boy. You know that. He's got one of them pinned to the ground. But what he doesn't know—or maybe he forgets, who the hell knows—in the dark is that there are three more of them waiting for him in their car.
As for me—the garage door won't open. It's an ancient piece of shit and you gotta bang it like a drum sometimes to get it an inch out the threshold.
Another crash sounds.
"Is he alright?" Two-Bit says. "Who's in there?"
I'm pulling on the one end of the door when I hear that sickening click...black and clean.
"For the love of God, Two-Bit! There's Socs in there! They locked the damn door!" I scream. "Get Soda!"
You know how a fair fight is fair: one on one. This one is...well, you know, the usual.
Unfortunately.
"Wait...don't!" he says, banging his palm against the concrete.
"Wait, don't!" they mock, laughing, and hit Steve again upside the head with a wrench.
One of them jumps atop him. His head is split somewhere, and he's matted in blood, writhing with all his fury down on the ground. They have two of them kicking him in his side, while another one holds him down—
I look into the window and see Steve's face. His eyes are swollen, huge and black—
I see your face inside.
God.
"Hey, bitch-faces."
They look up.
I have a silver crowbar slung across my shoulder.
"You have three seconds to get off of him."
They get up slowly, howling like animals at me. My jaws click shut. I can smell them—they stink like rich rotting trash. No, wait, I take that back; that's offensive to trash. At least trash doesn't pretend it don't stink to high hell. Well, you know what they say, kid...if you put lipstick on a pig. "Look! The grease was mad enough to open the door and save his buddy from the bad guys...how sweet is that, George?"
"Very," says George.
"One," I say.
I slam the crowbar into George's face. He explodes in a puff of red.
His other three buddies suddenly stop laughing.
"Two."
I step in closer. They fall back into each other, flicking out their blades.
"G-God!" they shriek. Their eyes flash white and their veins start to stick out from their necks and throb. "You—y-you—! Stay the fuck away! You're fucking psycho, man! Absolute wackjo—"
"Three."
Not one of them is left conscious after that.
I toss the crowbar aside.
I don't want to turn around.
In the hallway, Soda, Two-Bit, and a couple of more people that work here are standing there staring at my back. Everyone's eyes are burning into the base of my skull, and I can feel them, hot and wide, pushing right through my brain like bullets.
"You can come in now," I say, even though no one seems to hear me. "But Steve's hurt...Soda."
Soda stares at me.
"Soda," I whisper. "Call an ambulance."
Nothing.
"Soda—did you hear me? I said call an ambulance."
He blinks and seems to snap a little out of it.
"Dally...?" he says. "Are you...?"
I sit down on a bench, put my head in my hands, and scream into my knees.
"Call. An ambulance. Now," I say.
"That was the hospital. Those boys'll be alright, I guess," Darry says, hanging up the phone. "That was quick thinking making it look like they got in a scuffle with each other. But we could have all been arrested because of that." He turns to face me. "What the hell were you thinking, almost killing them like that?"
I shrug. I was thinking the same thing I always think...how to get in my daily dose of whoop-ass. After all, every Soc counts double the points of a regular jackass.
"God damn," says Two-Bit, looking at his knees and shaking his head for the hundredth time. "The Socs were bad before, but now they're turning into real dickweeds."
"I'm not sure, but I think I heard some of them say they got some kinda blood feud going on. The newspapers are sayin' one of us killed one of them...in cold blood," says Soda. "Is that true?"
"I dunno about that, but I heard from a guy at the shop the other day that, a week ago, they started jumping each other. At night. Alone. So, he told me, one time they were gonna jump this random guy in the parking lot, right? Real hitch-and-ditch stuff. But they didn't even show up for days. Then, one night, boom, they slipped into the fucker's house while he was sleeping, tied him down to the bed, gagged him with a cloth, and just kept whaling on him with a baseball bat. Scary shit these days—they've gone absolutely shitty-shitty-bang-bang off the deep end. But that's their problem. I don't see what any of this has got to do with us. To be honest, I think they made up those stories just to have a fucking excuse to kill off the people they don't like. In any case, I don't like it. We gotta really watch our skins now, guys—some bad blood's definitely a-brewin'," Steve says. He's sitting in a chair with a perpetual migraine, utterly miserable whenever he sees bright light, so he sits near a window with the blinds drawn all the way down.
"Damn," says Darry. Getting up, he walks out the door, pulling on his coat even though it's almost ninety degrees outside. He's gone off to look for you and Pony again.
Soda stares after him. "Naw, man...it's...something else. You see what they did to Pony? I can't imagine what'd they done to him if we didn't all get there when we did. It's starting to make sense to me now...I mean, first it was Johnny, then Pony, and then you. Hell, now Dally—"
I look at him.
"Dally—"
Then he is quiet.
Then the others are quiet.
"Dally what?" I say.
"Nuthin'," he huffs, looking down too quickly.
"What?"
He says nothing, turning a slight shade of red.
"Soda."
I'm looking at the other two, who are looking at each other.
"What?"
Soda's trembling.
"Soda. Come on—"
"He's not telling you," Steve says sourly, shooting a glower at me. Shrugging, I roll my eyes and glance at Two-Bit, whose eyes narrow into two stone slits there in the light. His arms are locked together and he gives me a ghost of a shake of his head. Soda trembles so much he looks like he's going to blow up.
"Lord Almighty, will you guys lighten the fuck up?" I say.
All I hear next is a cry of, Fucking traitor! andSteve flies out from the chair, spearing himself into my side. I fall over and he's trying to get his licks in before I shove him back into the chair and his head bounces onto the back of it. Then Two-Bit pulls me back and my right fist, red with someone's blood, whirls around with a solid response. Sodapop just sits there on the sofa with his head buried in his lap, neither helping them or me.
I've never been so disgusted in all of my life.
"Ha! Ha! You think I'm a Soc? Me, a Soc?" I howl, pointing a thumb at my chest. "That's a motherfucking laugh and a half! What? What, bitches? You think I'm working for them? That I'm getting paid to tattle on you or some sick shit like that? You think I almost killed those fucking Socs with almost nothing but my own bare hands because they wouldn't obey my orders? Even after I busted open a steel garage door, swept in like fucking Superman and saved Steve from getting gutted like a fish?—oh, wait, no, I almost forgot to tell you, by the way, I'm also in the Mafia, I'm actually a crime boss named Lorenzo Pietrocarlo who smuggles Colombian goods across the border, and I was sent here to whack you fuckers one by one—what the hell are you thinking?"
I'm as huge as the sun, swelling hot inside that little house.
"Look at me! Don't you turn away—look the hell at me! Do I look like—anything like—that—that trash? Huh? Then tell me to my face, don't just fricking sit there! Pull your fucking heads out of the sand! I didn't do that for me, I didn't do it for them, I didn't do it for Greasers or Socs, I didn't do it for East or West, and I sure as hell didn't do for you, you selfish bastards! I did that, all of that, for Johnny, you motherfuckers!"
No one says anything.
Sodapop shivers. He does that a lot lately, especially when he's thinking. He says nothing, just looks down deep in his lap and holds his head in his hands. He looks tired, pathetically tired. Sometimes, now, he doesn't even change his clothes; he just collapses into bed and gets up the next morning wearing his DX get-up.
I go to the garage and sit all night in my busted car.
Dear Kid: Hope you're doing alright. We're all right here in Tulsa. Hot and dry, though.
Who knows these days? Someday it might just rain again.
Someday it might just be okay again.
"Steve," I say.
"What?"
"When you and Soda gonna get my car done?"
"Um, excuse me, Mr. Obvious, but in case you hadn't fucking noticed already, I just got my head bust open two days ago," he replies. He lets out a groan of exasperation as his head hits the back of his chair. I rub at the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger; I accidentally ripped open his wound when I shoved him.
It's so hot and dry here and we're all so goddamn tired and miserable. I wish you guys are here, but I know you can't come home yet. You and Pony probably would have been in that corner over there, laughing at something in a book; and the rest of us motherfuckers would have seen that, and maybe then we would have gotten a little more fuck-ass tolerable.
"Fuck it, Dally," says Two-Bit, his voice the closest it's ever been to being serious. "What's got you itchin' so much?"
"It's my car, you fuckster," I say. "I don't need to explain nothing to you."
Soda sighs, since he knows none of this is getting any of us anywhere. He slowly pushes his weight on his wrists as he gets up. "Alright, alright, I'm goin', I'm goin'. I'll take you to the garage. Come on."
"I'm comin' too, y'all," says Two-Bit. He ruffles Steve's hair as he leaps over him, just barely missing getting clipped in the arm by Steve's teeth.
The garage door swings open with a moan. I hate it in here. Cars are shining sparkling clean while cobwebs hang off the wall in droves. It's dark and it reeks of female Soc, bubblegum, Pepsi, gasoline and burning sweat. Damn, you gotta get some serious incense in here, Two-Bit coughs underneath his breath.
Soda cracks open the hood and peers inside. Two-Bit studies it closely. I fold my arms and try to look interested, but I might as well be looking at a fricking road map written in Chinese.
"Well, the leak isn't too bad," says Soda finally. "Not as bad as I thought it'd be."
"How long?"
"Usually with Steve, it's at most four hours. But he's down and I don't really specialize in fixing water leaks, so, um," he rubs his forehead with his palm, "I'd have to say about two days."
Two days! Fuck that shit!
I swear, even if the engine falls out, I'm slinging my shit to the wayside and walking all the fucking way to Windrixville. Yeah, that's worry. But it's worry that I won't get there in time. I have got to go. I—
"Soda!" Steve yells.
"What?"
"Get your ass out here!"
"You forget your keys or somethin'?"
"No—someone here's telling me they know Ponyboy and Johnny!"
Me and Two-Bit blink at each other—Soda's never ran so fast in his life.
"You," says Soda. It's the last thing I hear clearly, partly because I'm hiding in a garage with the famous Keith Matthews, the loudest drunk-ass motherfucker alive, and partly because the wind outside is starting to pick up.
Damn, kid, it's her—that red cat you and Pony like. She's standing with some dark-maned bitch clinging to her arm. They smack so hard of Soc, but obviously they tried to dress down for their visit to the West Side, since they're only wearing maybe two or three rings instead of the usual ten on each hand.
"Hello," smiles Cherry. "Yes, we..."
She smooths her skirt out.
For a minute there's nothing but the wind. Cherry tucks a strand of hair behind her ears and looks at—at—damn, what's her name—her friend, Maryann or Maria or Marcia or whoever the hell she is.
Cherry, Soda, Steve, Marilyn—they all start talking as if they knew each other all of their lives.
"I didn't know...would have..."
"...sorry, really, we didn't...our friend..."
"...ashamed...so sorry to...when I heard..."
"Yeah...yeah."
"It's pretty bad," I hear somebody say next.
Then, quietly, someone mentions you, and...a guy named...Bob...
...and nobody says nothing for forever.
God, I think. What happened?
When they start talking again, Steve and Soda are standing in front of the girls while me and Two-Bit are watching them through the gray square light of the garage window.
"God," I whisper.
"What?" says Two-Bit.
I nod towards Cherry. "It's that redheaded Soc. And she brought another bitch with her."
"Oh, you mean Pony and Johnnycake's great-grandmothers twice removed? Lemme see," he says, pushing me aside. "Hot damn!" he whoops. "They're as old as ever!"
I ignore him. "God, Two-Bit—what does she want?"
"I dunno. Go out and ask her," he says.
We look outside again. Soda and Steve are good-looking, and good with girls, so of course the Soc twins don't run away screaming bloody murder. Me and Two-Bit, though...they'd be swimming halfway across the Atlantic Ocean before we even looked at each other and said Shit.
They're talking for an awfully long time. From their low voices I can hear they're serious about something.
"Move your head, Two-Bit, I can't see."
"Sorry."
Outside, they're all nodding their heads in some kind of agreement.
"...must be pissed," Steve is saying.
"I know," says Cherry. She has this look on her face as if she wants to say something else, but closes her mouth as Marylou goes on about some weird-ass rumble going on in Socland.
I turn around. "No fucking way I'm talking to her."
"Chicken," says Two-Bit.
I stop in my tracks. "What did you just say?"
"Chicken," he says, this time more slowly. "Pussyfoot chicken."
"Oh," I say. "They'll never hear your dying screams."
He looks at me.
I look at him.
Nobody moves.
"Kentucky Fried Chicken," he says. "Lily-liver chicken. Chicken of the Sea."
"You little piece of shi—are you smashed again?"
"You know me best," he says affectionately. "Bwocka-bwocka, chicken shit!"
I land a last warning drive right into his stomach just as the two Soc girls walk towards the garage with Steve and Soda.
"Aw, yeah. It's gang-banging time," says Two-Bit, cracking his knuckles and laughing his head off.
"That's no way to talk about ladies, you asshole," I say, smacking him upside the head. "The proper way to say it is: Aw, yes, now it is time to gang-bang these two lovely female specimens."
"I'm sorry, Dally. Please pardon my fucking French."
"Go fuck yourself."
"I would if I was ambidextrous," he says, clapping his hands. "Hey, hey, hey!"
I flip open my lighter and take a thoughtful drag.
"Farthest you'll ever go," I say, tapping my weed.
"Miles more than you, ass-hat."
"Okay. Stop."
"Nah—this is too much fun. Ass-hat."
I smile at him, fingering something in my back pocket.
"I'm serious. I have a chain that can whip your ass to pieces."
"Ooh, kinky!"
The door opens with a creak so low we can't hear it. Cherry walks into the garage just as he says this.
"Oh man, look at you—you're a fire hydrant!" howls Two-Bit.
You'll never believe this, kid! Not in a million fuckin' years!
This is so rich.
"You're gonna be a spy for us?" I laugh. "You?"
Cherry-Berry just stares at me blankly, her face burning as red as her hair. "I—"
"So, uh, what's your get-off?" says Two-Bit when his laughter dies down a little.
"What?" she says.
"What's your get-off in all of this?" he says, leaning against the hood of my car. "I mean, do you get a piece of West Side to take home with you after all the fallout clears, or what?"
Her eyes widen. She looks once at Marion, then stomps up to us defiantly, a real fire burning now in her face.
"Oh my God!" she huffs. "I cannot believe you! Here I am, and all I want to do is help you, because I'm sick and tired of all this...this..insanity! All I want to do is put a stop to it all—all this, Greaser! Soc! East! West! Rich! Poor! Trash! Plastic! It's completely and utterly sickening and every one of us should be ashamed of ourselves for it! Now I'm offering to help you, to at least try to mend that bridge, and all you do is—is—"
I stare at her once and she stops: "—is—"
"You know what?" I say. "Grease or Soc, spy or no spy—whatever. It don't affect me one bit. Do whatever you want. I don't care. But if you want to become best buddies or some tree-hugger shit like that—just forget it, girlie."
I start to walk away when—
"Wait! Dally!"
Of fucking course...and so the dramatic cutaway begins.
I sigh and turn around.
"What do you want?" I ask.
"I just want to talk to you," she says.
She looks at me, her arms folded tight across her white sweater.
She stares...I stare back at her...I see that her eyes are green.
...Bitch.
"Well? Start talking," I say.
"N—Never mind," she says, and walks off with Marlene in tow. "Forget it."
When she's finally out of sight, I walk over to a Ford Steve and Soda have been working on instead of my car. My forehead hits the truck with a definite crack. I bang it a couple more times against the metal to make sure it's real and that I'm not having some kind of twisted nightmare.
"Hey. You all right, buddy?" says Two-Bit.
Oh Lord, Lord. Damn it all, I think, banging my head and hoping to kill all my brain cells in the process. I couldn't even take Sylvia...don't tell me this broad actually loves me...
...'cause I ain't got that much fucking time...
Luckily, Soda manages to pull his shit together the next day, and I have my car fixed. I'm ready to go, but then I'm trapped at the last minute...
By Darry.
Darry tracks me down and drags me across the whole damn neighborhood back to his place. He got off work early today. There's no one else in the house. Darry sits me down in a chair and won't let me leave—he's pacing the floor, pissed as hell—but I don't care. I ain't saying a word. And if he wants to dance, I can fucking take him any day, the crazy-ass motherfucker.
"You know," he keeps saying. "You know."
"Know what?" I say.
He doesn't say anything. He just walks back and slaps me. His palm whips into my face so fast I don't feel anything, yet I hear something crack. God damn! No wonder Ponyboy ran away from this psycho.
"Don't you play that game with me," he hisses. Grabbing my collar, he's breathing right in my face and I'm pretty sure my mouth is bleeding. "'Cause I can play far worse, buddy. You know. I know you know. Don't give me none of that shit. People are starting to talk. I've made myself physically sick staying up all night, every night, from that first night on, running a fine tooth-comb through the entire fucking Earth looking for those boys. You know I'm desperate. You know more than anyone that I can't call the police. And you know what I do to guys like you when I'm that desperate."
He blinks only once during that spiel; it was when he said from that first night on.
"You know," he continues, "you know everything, Dally Winston, and you're gonna stay cemented to this chair until you tell me everything, even if it takes me all fucking night—I don't got nothing else to do."
I say nothing.
"Where are they?" he says.
I prop my elbow on the armrest, cup my chin in my hand and just look up at him through my eyebrows. He can't use anything against me if all it is is silence.
"Dallas," says Darry, his nostrils flaring. I really don't like Darry. I think he's got a giant screw wound just a little too tight up his ass, but he's still the only guy on the planet who can call me by my full name and get away with it. I ain't that dumb. The guy does roofing for a living and can bench press three of me...I'll cover your ass, kid, but I ain't that dumb.
"Tell me, Dallas," he says. "Did they do it?"
The clock in the room ticks between us.
"That's what I thought," he says.
His eyes narrow in a flash of black as he walks away.
So Soda gave me this letter to give to sneak in to Ponyboy today. I wasn't really all too surprised; I knew he knew. Well, anyway, I'm pretty sure he didn't know how to spell half the words he wrote, but I still give him credit for trying. After all, the kid wrote it from his heart. He was real serious in telling me not to look at the letter, because he knows the first chance I get I'm gonna rip it open to see if he put any money in it. Soda has this pathetically long look on his face as he tells me this, so I don't do it.
I only hope he didn't write a fricking Hallmark Card. I hope Pony doesn't break down or something when he reads it, because you're his buddy, and you'd break down too, and then we'd have a sickeningly sappy mess on our hands. Then where would we be?
I whistle the code at the door. I hear you guys scatter and whisper in there—man, you are just not cut out for running from the law.
Come on. It's Dally, you motherfuckers, I think. Ring, ring. Pick up the telephone.
You open the door first. Your eyes are huge. I know it's gratitude bouncing around in there, or maybe something else, and I'd definitely prefer it over the blank one you had that one night, but I don't really like this look on your face. You're acting like I'm Gabriel come to life.
"Here's a letter for you," I say, ruffling Pony's blond hair.
Wait...blond? Oh, that's fucking rich. He looks like such a girl right now. But geez, I'd never have the balls to do that. Not in a million years. They could lock me up and do whatever they wanted, but nobody'd touch my hair...I'd kill them with their own pair of scissors before they even had a chance to breathe on me.
"Who's it from?" says Pony, blinking. He looks tired. I'm trying so hard not to smile. Fuck, I'd be miserable too, if I looked like Shirley Temple.
"From the President," I say, "of the United States of America. Who do you think it's from?"
He picks it up and I think about plugging my ears for the waterworks. But he just reads it, folds it up and tucks it in his pocket. You look at me, scuffing your foot against a random rock. You guys look absolutely terrible.
"You're in the papers. They're looking for you."
No one says nothing for a while.
Hmm.
"You hungry?"
The both of you almost knock me over rushing out the door, screaming something about bologna. Fuck, I think—what did you two do while I was gone?
Only one or two more chapters to go.