Chapter 9

The boys were gone. I was pacing. It was always like this during rumbles. I stayed home and paced and made lots of ice and set out the iodine and bandages and aspirin. It was the only time I ever bolted our door. I hated it. Before they left, Pony got it into his head to take an informal poll on why everyone liked to fight. I wish he'd asked me. I thought they were right stupid.

I looked at the clock. Seven-twenty. They were getting the hell pounded out of them, right this minute. I wanted so badly to just be with Johnny; I'd thought of running down to the hospital but there was no telling how long they'd be. Besides, I was the alibi – if the cops showed up, Pony and Soda were under strict orders to come right home, and if anyone asked, we'd been in all night in front of the TV. I even had it on in case anyone was to ask what we'd been watching.

Ten minutes later, the boys started to stumble back in. Steve looked the worst, it looked there was a hole clear through his face. Darry and Soda were banged up and bruised and Two-Bit was bleeding badly. I handed him an ice pack as Soda went fishing for the car keys to take Steve over to the clinic. Despite this, they were jubilant – the Socs, apparently, had gone running for the hills.

"Where's Ponyboy?" I asked, and Darry and Soda looked at each other as if they'd just noticed he wasn't there.

"He took off with Dally," Two-Bit said. "He's all right. I mean, he's a little beat up, but he's okay." He took the ice pack and went to get a beer from the fridge.

"Dally? Dally fought with a burned arm?" I asked.

"You ever know Dally to stay away from a fight?" Darry asked. Fair enough.

Steve and Soda were back in record time. I was amazed – the wait at the clinic was usually hours long. On the way out, Soda said, they'd seen Tim Shepard, but everyone else was either nursing their bruises at home or too drunk to realize they needed medical attention.

Two-Bit was in the same condition. It was almost an hour later before he finally settled down enough to let me look at his hand. "Two-Bit, you ought to go to the clinic yourself," I said, examining his raw knuckles.

"Nah. Wrap me up and I'm good," he said, taking another swallow of beer.

I was sitting on the arm of the sofa, painting iodine carefully on Two-Bit's hand, when Ponyboy staggered into the house. It was almost nine o'clock; Darry was just starting to worry. He looked awful. He looked beat up, but he looked sick, too.

"Where have you been?" Darry demanded, and then, seeing the sick look on Pony's face, amended gently, "Ponyboy, what's the matter?"

"Johnny … he's dead," Pony said, his voice hitching. "We told him about beatin' the Socs and … I don't know, he just died."

The room stopped. Everything stopped. Pony took a step toward me and I stood up, the bottle falling form my hand to shatter on the floor. "Ponyboy, you shut your mouth," I said.

Soda was looking from me to Pony like he couldn't decide where to go.

"Dally's gone, he couldn't take it --" Pony said. "He just ran out."

"Shut your mouth!" I cried. I took another step toward him, my hands out. He backed away, like I was going to hit him. Was I? Why was he lying? Why would he hurt me like that? Johnny wasn't dead, he was hurt and he had a busted back but he wasn't dead. Someone was holding me back and it was loud, so loud, who was screaming? Why was there screaming? Lemme go, I just want to put my hand on Pony's arm, just to push him, just a little, and make him stop –

Then Two-Bit shook me, hard, and smacked me across the face. The screaming stopped. It must have been me.

"Jesus Christ, Cinnamon, shut up," he said coldly. "You ain't gonna make him undead by hollerin' like that."

I closed my eyes. Someone was hugging me. Someone was crying. I didn't bother to look to see who it was.

The phone rang and I jumped away from the sound. Darry answered and listened for a second, then told us Dallas had just robbed a grocery store and we were going to meet him at the lot. No one told me not to come, so I went right along.

Dally was coming into the lot from the other end and we could hear sirens. He ran under the street light and pulled his gun from his waistband. His gun. His unloaded gun. But the cops didn't know that.

Soda and Steve were shrieking that the gun wasn't loaded. Two-Bit had stopped and was holding up his hands like he was being shot at himself. Dally hit the ground and we ran to him, stopping short of where he fell. The cops were radioing for an ambulance but it didn't matter. You could tell it didn't matter. Steve stumbled forward, crying, but Soda caught him and pulled him back.

Darry stepped in front of me, blocking my view. "Cinnamon, you don't want to see this."

He was too late – I'd seen my brother almost drowned, the boy I loved half-burned to death, a puddle of blood by a playground fountain. I opened my mouth to tell him that and something brushed my arm. It was Pony, swaying on his feet.

"Glory, look at the kid!" Two-Bit cried, and Pony's eyes rolled back in his head and he hit the pavement before I had a chance to try to catch him.

"The hell?" Soda cried, dropping to his knees beside him. "Pony? Ponyboy!" His hands were all over Pony's body, patting and probing – he thought he'd been shot, too.

"He fainted," Darry said, one hand on Soda's shoulder. "He just fainted."

"Darry." Soda had one hand on Pony's face. "He's on fire."

Though the ambulance had been called for Dallas, it was Pony they loaded up and took to the hospital. Soda went with him; Darry and I went back to the house and followed in our old Ford. Darry kept one hand on the wheel and one arm around me. For the second time in as many days, we were back at Saint Frank's, waiting for news. But this time, we were actual family and they let us stay with Ponyboy, for the most part. He had a fever of 104 and a concussion and was suffering from exhaustion and shock. I had no idea you could get sick from being too tired and too upset. He'd been kicked in the head during the rumble, and hitting the sidewalk hadn't helped.

There wasn't a lot to do except wait. The doctors bandaged his head and tried to break his fever with cool compresses. Soda and Darry stripped him down to his underwear but then Pony started shivering so badly his teeth rattled. The docs wanted to put a needle in him, to keep fluid in him, but Pony fought it and Darry couldn't bear to hold him down. They finally left us alone, telling us to call if anything changed or if Darry changed his mind about the needles, and telling us to try to make him drink.

I busied myself getting water and ice chips and clean cloths. I tried to put one on Pony's forehead but he jerked away from me, moaning for Sodapop.

Soda went to him immediately and took his hand. "I'm here, buddy, here I am."

Pony tried to push him away. "No … don't touch me, I want my brother." Tears were running down his face. "Where's Sodapop?" he whimpered. "Why's it so cold?"

"What's wrong with him?" I whispered to Darry.

"He's delirious," Darry answered. "His fever's so high he's hallucinating."

Pony kept whimpering and Soda got into the skinny gurney with him, somehow folding himself around Pony's back, and held him tight. Pony kept crying, but he was too weak to fight Soda off.

"He's so hot," Soda said, pushing Pony's damp hair off his forehead. "How can you be that hot and be okay?"

"Here." I handed Soda one of the cool rags. He pressed it to Pony's forehead and Pony jerked like it had acid on it. Darry took it away and ran it gently over Pony's face, his neck, his chest. Pony continued to make weak attempts to get away.

I left. I couldn't stand watching it. I backed out of the room then took off down the hallway. I didn't know I had an actual destination until I found myself in front of room 554.

Johnny wasn't there, of course. He was gone. That messy black hair, unruly smile, his hands that could touch the side of my face and make me feel all weak and flushed … all gone. Dally was gone, too, but he'd taken his own life. He just got the cops to help. He didn't want to live without Johnny. I didn't want to live without Johnny either, but I didn't want to get myself shot.

I thought of how Johnny scolded Dally, how Dally would mess up his hair or make sure he had money for a burger when his folks threw him out, and suddenly I realized that Johnny was the only thing Dallas loved. I'd lost my parents, and I'd lost Johnny, too, but I had my brothers. I loved all of them – Darry scared me sometimes, and we argued, but I knew we loved each other. How could you live without love? What would have happened to me if my brothers had been in the car with Mom and Dad that day? What would happen now, if Pony didn't get better? What if the state took me and Soda and Pony away? How could I live without my brothers?

I didn't know Darry had followed me until he sat down on the floor beside me and handed me his handkerchief. I completely lost my head and he pulled me into his lap and rocked me like I was still a little girl. "I know this is all too much, Cinnamon," he said soothingly. "But I'm here. I'm right here."

"Everyone's going, Darry," I sobbed. "Mom and Dad and Johnny, now Pony --"

"Pony's sick, he ain't dying," Darry said in that same calm voice. "He's not leaving us. We're not letting him."

The last time I'd cried like this was the day my parents died. Not right away, though. I couldn't think about it at first. I couldn't do anything. I was making coffee for the policemen and trying to bake a cake, of all things, when Johnny came in the back door with a bouquet of wildflowers, crying himself. If it hadn't been for Mom, he'd have had no earthly idea what motherly love was like. We cried together on the kitchen floor until I cried myself sick.

I was about to do that again unless I calmed down. I tried to take deep breaths. My little brother needed me.

I looked into Johnny's empty room. "Darry, where is he?" I whispered. "Do they call the funeral home right away?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Can we find out?" I asked. "I want to go if there's a service."

"Of course, baby. We'll all go. Of course we will." Darry smoothed my hair back and eased me gently to my feet. "Come on, before Soda thinks I couldn't find you."

I looked into the empty room one last time. "Maybe he's with Mom and Dad," I ventured. "He'd like that."

"Mom and Dad would too," Darry said.

Our parents had not been perfect, I thought as we went back to Pony's room. But even when I was mad and annoyed and embarrassed by them, I somehow always knew they were doing their best, and they loved each other and us. I never, ever doubted that. I never gave it a second thought. We were lucky to have them. I thought about never seeing Johnny again, and I thought that, much as I missed them, maybe Mom and Dad were lucky to have gone on together.