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“Hey, at least it ain’t ours, right?”
Johnny went to wipe the blood off his face with his sleeve when Dallas slapped his hand down and gave him a pointed look. “What?”
“You’re gonna ruin a perfectly good jacket doin’ that, and I heard a real fine guy got a five finger discount on that thing,” Dallas said, and Johnny thought he must have lost his mind, grinning like that after they wrecked a car. Dallas always seemed to be in the best moods right after he could’ve died though, so Johnny wasn’t all that surprised.
His face hurt like a bitch though.
Not wanting to show it, Johnny forced himself to smirk, hating himself for it a second later when his lip felt like he’d busted it all over again. “Yeah, that was real tuff of Two-bit to lift it for me wasn’t it?”
“Wise ass,” Dallas mumbled, shoving at Johnny’s shoulder. He turned to look at the busted car, and sighed. “Guess we oughta split before some good Samaritan comes along and starts asking questions, huh?”
“I reckon,” Johnny said, and he’d never say it to Dallas but he felt a little sick looking at the thing.
Dallas had been doing almost a hundred down one of the back roads and hit a corner too hard, the car slammed into a ditch before he could so much as hit the breaks. It was a miracle that neither of them was more banged up than they were. Johnny’s lip was split and he smacked his chin against the dash, and Dallas was bleeding from a cut on his temple, but it wasn’t too deep.
Dallas must’ve thought the same thing, because a second or two after he pushed Johnny along and they started walking, he said, “All that prayin’ Ponyboy’s been doin’ for us down at the church must’ve paid off real good upstairs.”
“Yeah.”
“God probably ain’t too happy we hot-wired the thing in the first place, but who knows, I ain’t no priest.”
“That’s for certain,” Johnny quipped, chin burning when he let out a shaky laugh as Dallas shoved him. “Man, Soda and Steve are gonna have a fit when they hear we were toolin’ around in a car like that and wrecked it.”
Dallas nodded as the two of them moved off the road and cut through the woods. It’d look real bad if a cop came by and saw the two of them strolling away from a car wreck looking as busted up as they were. One look at them and he’d know sure as hell it wasn’t theirs either.
“Oh yeah, poor Steve,” Dallas chuckled, “he didn’t get a chance to lift the hubcaps before we dropped it off at the bone yard.”
Johnny nodded, grinning, and looked over his shoulder back towards the road. “Think that’s the closest I’ll ever get to a car like again.”
“And ya went out in a blaze of glory,” Dallas said, slinging an arm over Johnny’s shoulder as he did. “And don’t be such a drag about that, ya hear? Me or one of the boys’ll swipe another one soon enough and we’ll get to bookin’ in that one without gettin’ in a damn wreck.”
“That’d be just fine wouldn’t it? Havin’ your own car like that?”
Dallas hummed wistfully in agreement and Johnny shoved his hands in his pockets. It was getting cold fast with the sun going down, and the jacket Dallas had swiped him was nice, but it was a long walk and he was going to start shivering soon enough.
Johnny could tell Dallas knew he was getting cold, he started walking closer so their arms were brushing once he dropped Johnny’s shoulder.
“Man, Darry’s gonna have it out with me once we get back to their place, seein’ you all busted up,” he said, and Johnny could see his breath while he was talking. “Don’t suppose he’ll give much thought to good ole me, I’m banged up more often than not, but every time you get so much as a paper cut everyone loses their heads.”
Glaring, Johnny bumped Dallas’ shoulder so he stumbled off, laughing in that breathy, almost manic sort of way that came after getting a rush from a fight or wrecking a car.
“Darry’ll lay into me just as much as you. He ain’t as bad with me as he is with Pony but he blew his lid when me and Steve got caught hustling down at Charlie’s last summer, remember?”
Dallas nodded and mussed Johnny’s hair, after Darry got done with him he’d practically thrown Johnny a party for scamming that much money at pool. They had different sets of morals, him and Darry. Johnny breaking the law was to him as Pony getting a hundred on some test was to Darry.
“That sure was tuff, y’all gettin’ that much scratch outta those outta towners,” Dallas said, pride bleeding out of every word. “Gotta be careful scammin’ guys like that though, they were from Texas weren’t they?”
“Yeah.”
Dallas shook his head. “They’re fuckin’ crazy down there man, piss off the wrong one of those guys and you’re itchin’ to shot, and they won’t lose no sleep over it either.”
Johnny nodded solemnly and they kept walking. They were taking the shortcut through the woods that all the east side kids had blazed over the years. It took a while to get through, but it kept you off the main roads for long enough, and was a good place to hideout if the cops were out looking for you.
The car they’d snagged was in a lot a ways off from the road, and close enough to their neighborhood that even if anyone saw them taking it they wouldn’t say anything, so he figured even if the cops thought Dallas had taken it, which with his record they would, they didn’t have anything really on him.
“These woods give me the creeps man,” Dallas said after a while, and Johnny felt the same way, he’d been looking over his shoulder the whole way. “Y’know junkies come out here to shoot up where nobody’ll find ‘em. Hell, I wouldn’t doubt a couple kids have OD’d ‘round here somewhere, dumbasses.”
“You ever done any hard stuff, Dal?” Johnny asked. He’d smoked grass with Dallas a few times, but he ran around downtown more than the rest of them, and they were pushing heavier stuff down there, even the papers had articles griping about it.
Dallas kicked at a rock in front of them and Johnny almost regretted asking, he looked like he’d gone serious all the sudden.
“Fuck no, man, you don’t mess around with that stuff,” Dallas almost spat. “That’ll get you killed, or at least hard time if ya get caught. Shoot, I knew guys who started playing around with that and six months later they’d be out beggin’ on the street.”
Dallas’ voice had gone flat there at the end, and Johnny studied the ground as they kept walking. Sometimes he forgot about Dallas being in New York and seeing that sort of stuff all the time, it was heavy.
“Anyway, if I ever found out you were messin’ with anything harder than grass I’d kill ya, saavy?”
He bumped Johnny’s shoulder again, sounding lighter than a second ago, and Johnny grinned. “You ain’t gotta worry about that Dally, nobody in their right mind’s gonna sell me shit lookin’ as young as I do.”
“You’re right about that.”
They were coming up on the edge of the woods, and Dallas pulled ahead a little, looking out onto the street before turning back and waving Johnny forward. “Let’s cut out man, cops probably ain’t found the car yet but once they do they’ll be all over our side of town.”
With that the two of them left the woods and made their way through the neighborhood quickly, keeping their heads down as they did. It didn’t matter much, most guys on the block were pretty bruised up from some scrap they’d gotten into, but it was better to be safe.
Once they got to the vacant lot they slowed down though. The lights were on in the Curtis’ house and Johnny felt the familiar mixture of anxiousness and guilt that built up in his stomach whenever he showed up there bloody. They couldn’t help feeling bad, but it never sat right having them make a fuss over him.
Dallas knew this, and looked over at him before reaching over and ruffling his hair. “Don’t get all bummed out, man. They’ll all be so hacked off at me for wrecking the car in the first place you won’t get much heat.”
Johnny just shrugged and swallowed the lump that was building in his throat as the two of them walked up to the door. Dallas, who was obviously jazzed up to tell the story of making off with a Corvair in the first place, threw the door open and Johnny followed, careful not to let it slam behind him.
Steve and Soda were splayed out on the couch when they walked in, and both looked up as Johnny trailed behind Dallas.
“Hey, where y’all been-” Soda started, cutting off when he took in the two of them.
Steve let out a low whistle from beside him and raised his eyebrows. “The hell happened to you two?”
“Got shipped off to Vietnam,” Dallas snapped sarcastically, ignoring Steve’s eye roll. “We made off with this real tuff Corvair and busted it.”
“A Corvair ?” Steve and Soda said in unison, both slack jawed.
Dallas grinned wide and dragged Johnny next to him to wrap an arm around his shoulder. “Me and the kid hot-wired it and were blazin’ it on the backroads, it was a thing of beauty, man.”
“‘Til you wrecked it?” Soda shot back, already standing and making his way over to Johnny, who did his best not to shrink back. “Y’all didn’t get that beat up, did you?”
Johnny opened his mouth to reassure Soda when Darry appeared and stomped up to Dallas. He must have heard the whole thing from the kitchen. “You crashed it? Where the hell is it?”
“Way out on the backroads,” Dallas said, lighting up a smoke from the pack they kept on the coffee table. “We split before the fuzz showed up, and ain’t nobody else saw us either.”
“Lucky you didn’t break your damn necks,” Darry bit out, and Johnny had the feeling that if he wasn’t there he’d have clobbered Dallas by now. Ever since their parents died Darry got awful riled up about messing around with cars like that. Johnny didn’t blame him.
Soda could tell Darry was more pissed than he was letting on, and he grabbed Johnny by the shoulder and steered him off into the kitchen where Two-bit was eating a slice of cake and grinning at him like he’d won the lottery instead of stolen a car.
“Sit down, I’ll go grab some stuff for your face,” Soda instructed, and Johnny sat down next to Two-bit without a word as he left.
Not a second later the older greaser pulled him into a loose headlock and was grinding his knuckles into his hair. “Little Johnny Cade made off with a Corvair? You’re really growin’ up kid, brings tears to my eyes.”
“Lay off, Two-bit,” Johnny griped, although he was smiling a bit as he shoved Two-bit off of him. That guy could lighten the mood at a funeral home. “And Dally’s the one that hotwired it, not me.”
“Nah, you were just the one riding shotgun while he was layin’ rubber out on those country roads,” Two-bit teased, shoving at Johnny’s head just as Soda walked back in with an arm full of bandages and rubbing alcohol and slapped his hand.
“Wanna rough him up anymore than he already is, Two-bit?”
Snorting, Two-bit dove back into his slice of cake and quirked an eyebrow. “Tuff kid like that? Never, he’d slug me one faster than I could raise a hand.”
He burst out laughing then and Soda rolled his eyes and poured some alcohol on a rag and pressed it to Johnny’s lip, who hissed in pain.
“It’s either this or havin’ some doctor chop it off once it gets infected,” Soda chided, and Johnny felt his heart skip a little from how much he sounded like his Mom used to right then.
Before he could get bummed out about it, Ponyboy walked down the stairs into the kitchen and stopped dead when he saw Johnny, eyes widening. “Damn, what happened to you?”
“Kid hot-wired a Corvair and wrecked it,” Two-bit answered before Johnny got the chance.
“Really?” Ponyboy asked, in awe. “Wish I could’ve been there with ya Johnnycake, tuff car like that-”
Darry’s voice rang in from the living room then. “Ponyboy Curtis if you ever do something like that I’ll beat you so bad you won’t be able to stand ‘til Christmas.”
Dallas must have shot back with some smart remark, because he stumbled into the kitchen laughing and walked behind Johnny to put his hands on his shoulders. “Don’t you worry about that Dar, me and the kid’ll bust up enough cars to cover him too.”
Johnny chuckled, only to wince when Soda pressed the rag down a little harder and gave him a pointed look, but his eyes were lit up enough for Johnny to know he wasn’t bent out of shape about it.
“Yep, this time next year we’ll all be seein’ little Johnnycake's picture up at the post office with ‘Wanted for Grand Theft Auto’ right there underneath it,” Two-bit said with a laugh that quickly turned into a yelp when Dallas smacked the back of his head. They were wrestling around on the floor a second later, something none of them could get away with with Dallas unless he was in a damn good mood, and Soda was shaking his head with a smile.
Johnny finally felt himself start to relax once Soda finished cleaning up his lip and started taking a good look at his already bruising chin.
Johnny tilted his head up to see Ponyboy look at him with wide eyes and shake his head.
“I can’t believe y’all really wrecked a Corvair .”