Work Text:
I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;
Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.
The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.
1.A MINOR BIRD
Dallas Winston and Buck Merill are three sheets to the wind and chain smoking cigarettes in the Lot, and it’s dark enough outside to lose track of the houses in the shadows. They’re rowdy in the dirt but nobody notices or cares– cops don’t come around here so often, and when they do it’s mostly just to haul Dally down to the station to pin some new shit on him he only ever really did half the time anyway. Sometimes less than that. Sometimes more. (Mostly more.)
It’s late enough to see the kiddies in the park come back home to bed, but Dallas can hear rabble rousing from the blocks nearby. He hasn’t seen the boys in hours but he likes Buck plenty fine for now– at least as fine as anyone for going on a bender with, not including Two-Bit. Buck is a piece of shit from their piece of shit trash neighborhood, and so they make due. Plus good ole Bucky rides broncos, which is tough and tuff. Dallas likes some horses like he likes cars. Sexy and dangerous and fast. He’s taking a swig of beer when Buck bumps his shoulder and jerks his chin across the yard.
“Eyyy, lookie here, it’s midget o’clock! ” Dally sing-songs as none other than Darry’s kid brother materializes out of the dark. Ponyboy’s a weird kid. He’s all distracted thinking and wary looks, all 14 years of him soaking wet. Too many fuckin books, Dallas thinks. It’s all a fuckin waste of time.
Pony shuffles in the dirt, nervous a minute, his trap shut tight like the rusted out hood on a clunker left out in the rain. His greasy hair is combed into meticulous plaits. Dallas waits for him to say something, but he doesn’t.
On second thought, Dallas thinks, this punk can get really fuckin annoying sometimes.
“What? You deaf or somethin? What’d you want or scram!”
“Hey old Dally. You got a minute?”
At that Buck rolls his eyes and climbs to his feet. He kicks Dallas in the leg and jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m out, I ain’t babysitting. Come over to my place, Dallas, Cindy’s there with some of the guys.”
“You playin that Hank Williams country trash?” Dallas grimaces, but Buck only shrugs.
Something shifts behind Ponyboy and then Dallas sees the quiet, dark outline of Johnny Cade, and the answer he had for Buck suddenly dries up in his mouth. Johnny is a little shorter than Pony, always lurking half a foot back, even though he’s older. His black eyes are bigger, like a deer or something. Some kind of little fuckin animal, always trailing behind. He’s the pet of the gang, sure, but he’s also just another little fuckin kid right now, and Dallas feels fuckin annoyed by little fuckin kids. But in the same breath, he’s resigned to it. It’s weird how this is kinda his job lately. It feels too soft. Dallas Winston is not soft.
“What’s up, uhhh, tweedle dee?” He addresses Johnny directly, whose face is slid into shadows far enough that Dallas barely catches the uptic of the corner of his mouth. Then he gives Buck a wave over the shoulder. “I dunno Buck, look at this, man, I guess I’m uhh, I’m the babysitter now, huh?”
Buck only rolls his eyes and goes.
“Awe, we didn’t mean to get ya out of nothin good, Dally,” Pony says after Buck is gone, “we was just havin a fight and thought you could settle it for us.” Ponyboy is reasonable and measured, even if he is weird. Kids like Pony would get shredded up in a place like New York City. Lickety split, no questions asked. Dallas watches as Ponyboy takes out two smokes, then passes one back to Johnny. He hesitates a second, then holds a third out to Dallas, who takes it without thanks.
“A fight? Oh yeah?” Dally leans on his knees, still down in the dirt, then scrapes a busted zippo across his jeans until it flares to life. He looks up at the boys with an eyebrow cocked, and lights the smoke. “And what’s that?”
“Who’s tuffer? John Wayne or Clint Eastwood?”
“The fuck you kiddin me?” Dallas laughs out loud. “You lousy punks. That’s what you wanted?”
Both boys look a little bit ashamed, then Dallas sighs and runs a hand through his white-blonde hair. Babysitting doesn’t suit him a red dime.
“...Eastwood!” He says after the incredulous pause. “It’s fuckin Eastwood ! Jesus, ask me somethin else stupid why don’t ya?”
Pony grins like he’s embarrassed, and his hand raises to hover over the perfect swirls of his hair. A nervous reaction. That kid is meticulous about his hair like Dally’s seen some teachers grade finals papers. Not that Dally’s been in a school any time recently.
“It’s just…” Johnny finally chimes in, real quiet-like, and it takes a second to register his voice a step back from Pony. He’s almost completely behind him. “I mean...who’s tuffer than you , Dal?”
It’s a strangely thrilling compliment. Dallas doesn’t know why.
After a beat he leans forward with his lighter out, feeling a little more magnanimous. He shakes it when both boys stay rooted to the spot.
“Hey stupid !” he barks, addressing both of them, and when they finally get it they both lean down to let Dallas light their smokes. He flicks the zippo closed with a sharp metallic snap, then stuffs it back in his pocket.
“What time is it? Ain’t it past bedtime for babies? Get the hell outta here, would ya?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Pony says, trying to look cool as he takes a casual stance. The smoke in his hand does make him seem a little older, it’s true. “Darry says I gotta be home in a minute anyway.”
“The fuck you’re bothering me for then? Go home! Before that big ape makes it my problem! Jeezus.”
Finally Pony gives a nod. “Yeah, alright. Thanks Dal, I know it was dumb. Johnny, you commin?”
They both look at Johnny, who takes a second drumming up his answer. Kid hates night.That’s obvious to Dallas, who can always tell when a guy hates something especially. But they all know it ain’t the dark that bothers him.
“...Nah,” Johnny eventually says in his small voice, wrapped up in his dark jeans jacket, and his hair wind-mussed over his dark forehead. “I guess I’ll go on home too.”
There’s a silence.
Suddenly, Dallas springs up from the ground, and beats the backs of his pants to knock off some of the dirt. That feels a little like a joke since Dallas is a little bit dirty all of the time, but he does it all the same.
“I’ll walk ya home, Johnnycake.” He volunteers with an enthusiasm Dally isn’t quite sure where it comes from.
All three of them say their goodbyes in a circle, smash out their smokes, and then Pony is off towards his house again, sneakers beating a path home through the dried grass.
2. THE DOOR IN THE DARK
The crickets and bugs and shit are loud as fuck in the trees and the grass, like they never are in New York. Dallas kinda likes it, he’s hard pressed to admit. He likes the open spaces, the smell of dirt, the lazy parties and the hot long days at the rodeo. And he likes this neighborhood too, even though it’s for chumps and hoods and old folks and people like Johnny’s parents, loud and mad and drunk. Dallas just lives wherever he’s at, which currently is on Buck Merrill's couch... And sometimes with a girl that he digs okay; she puts out and everything, and she’s a pretty tough old gal, but Dallas thinks he could probably forget about her in a second if she up and vanished one day. As he walks down the street shoulder-to-shoulder with the kid, he listens to the sound of the block around them. This is a grease neighborhood, their territory by right, and in every direction are the sounds of settling in for the evening. People on porches smoking cigarettes, arguing, laughing, final beers cracking, dogs rooting around in the yard one last time.
It’s the summer but Johnny still bundles himself up in his jacket like he’s cold. Maybe he’s not cold, Dallas thinks with half a sideways glance at him. Maybe he’s just hunkering down. He can relate to that. He looks up the block towards Johnny’s house on the corner, then back to the kid again. He’s got that look on his face like he’s dreading going home. Who could blame him? Who could blame him for anything?
“... Listen , Johnnycake,” He starts out, a little clunkier than he means. It’s not his style, he’s almost never awkward. Jesus . “You know you can ask me for, uhh… for…” For help . For some fucking help, with your fucking folks. “...Ah, shit, I don’t know. You get it, right?”
He never offers to help anyone, unless it’s to push-start Two-Bit’s old clunker, or to drag the boys around town all day so Darry can get the bills done while the house is quiet. He doesn’t know why he offers. He doesn’t know what he would do if Johnny actually took him up on it.
“Thanks.” Johnny says, but he doesn’t sound like he’s grateful. It sounds more tired, like he doesn’t want the help even if he needs it. Dallas can relate to that too. Or he used to be able to, when he was still some scummy, prickly little scrub in a dirty borough doing hood shit. Actually, had he ever stopped doing that? Tim Shepard probably had an opinion.
Dallas searches for something else to talk about as the silence stretches. Usually he could give a shit about what other people are thinking, but with Johnny it’s always an itch he just can’t scratch. This fuckin punk. “Hey, that was some movie the other night, huh?” His voice lifts hopefully.
It had been some trashy beach film at the drive in again. Forgettable for the most part, but there had been some tuff cars in it, and this brunette with a really small bra. If he’s honest, he can’t even remember what it was called.
Johnny just shrugs. “Sure.”
But that’s all. His eyes keep hedging up to the end of the block.
They finally come to a slow stop out front of the Cade residence, and like most nights there’s yelling coming from inside. When something breaks against the floor, Johnny sucks in his breath and closes in on himself, an anxious hand going up to tuck a stray piece of hair behind his ear. He doesn’t grease his hair too much, so it still flops over his forehead looking more overgrown than intentional. Nothing like Ponyboy’s. He’s so small, Dallas thinks. Dallas had been small like that once too. A long time ago. He knows what this is like. Dallas hates his old man like nothing else.
Johnny lays a hand on the chain link fence out front, seeming to brace himself to enter the fray. His fingers tighten around the pole, and his whole body goes taut and nervous. He’s always been a nervous kid, but it shows sometimes more than others.
“Well..? I should probably…” Johnny starts.
Something goes dry in Dally’s mouth and he runs a hand through his greaseless hair in frustration. It’s not fair a kid so soft should have to go through this stuff, even if it’s commonplace as beer and dirt and smokes around here. It’s all in the downturned angle of Johnny’s face, his dark eyelashes fluttering as he works up the courage to go inside. It’s too much , Dallas thinks. This isn’t New York. It’ll never be New York, even if things are rough all over. It shouldn't have to be like New York. It’s too much for him.
“...Goodnight I guess.” Johnny says belatedly, and takes his hand off the fence like he’s gonna go in, but he still stays rooted to the spot. The shadows of Johnny’s parents go back and forth across the stained yellow curtains, and Johnny looks dead-eyed into the dirt.
Forget this.
“Hey,” Dallas knocks the kid in the shoulder with the back of his hand. “Why don’t you, uh, come on over to Buck’s with me. You know, just for tonight. I just got the couch, nothin luxury, but it’s gotta be better than sleepin in the Lot.” He can see Johnny’s plan now, plain as day. He ain’t going in that house tonight. Or if he did, it’d just be to go around back to wait for Dallas to skedaddle, before sneaking out again before his folks saw him. Johnny doesn’t dig pity, but Dallas isn’t really sure who does.
The suggestion makes Johnny look up at him, and it hurts to see the flicker of hope in his eyes. Thank God he don’t take it the wrong way, but a dirty couch in a raucous house full of salty old rodeo dogs and broads who spit and curse shouldn’t make anybody look that relieved.
“Oh yeah?” He asks, like he’s almost afraid to hope.
“ Yeah !” Like Dallas would lie about something like that. It’s weird how strong his urge to throw a brick through the front window of the house is. “ Yeah , you got it, Johnnycake. Listen, you can come on back around tomorrow mornin when your folks is too hungover to say boo. How’s that sound?”
And there it is. That shy little quirk of the mouth that constitutes a smile for Johnny Cade. He don’t smile much in general, unless he’s dreaming up some stupid shit with Pony, or at one of Two-Bit’s cut up jokes, or when he’s in the rodeo stands for one of Dally’s rides. For some reason, that one really sticks. It’s one of the only times Dallas actually feels proud about something. He rides real good. Everybody says so.
“...Alright then. Just for tonight.” Johnny says in his quiet voice, and the deal is done.
3. THE FIGURE IN THE DOORWAY
Buck Merrill’s house is rowdy and bright when they push in through the front door, and just like Dallas had fuckin expected, Buck is playing some hot country garbage on his living room record player. Country is everywhere in Tulsa, it follows him around the rodeo like a bad smell, but Elvis Prestley is really where it’s at. Fats Domino. BB King. As long as it’s not Hank Fucking Williams, forever the malignant earworm in Dally’s ear. But tell Buck that. The halls are lined with people, not a huge party by any means but still big enough, and Dallas figures after he and Buck parted ways earlier that he must have rustled up the old gang just to keep the night rolling.
Cigarette smoke makes the air hazy as Dallas leads the way through the crowd, and he immediately catches the sidelong looks Johnny is getting from every direction, just a step behind him. This is a party for mean-eyed adults, not shitty little punks with bedtimes and homework. Dallas knocks fists with Tim Shepard and his brother Curly as they go by, and it’s obvious they both have been drinking a while when he sees Curly flipping his knife way high up in the air and catching it behind his back, like that dumb idiot’s not about to slice open his own hand. Tim’s shrewd face narrows unkindly at Johnny next, and then some drunk broad reaches out to drag a claw down the arm of Johnny’s jacket. She smiles flirtatiously at him but Johnny’s eyes just go big and he walks a little faster.
Upstairs is better. The music fades to a muffle and Dallas shoves a shoulder through a peeling door at the end of the hallway. The room is empty inside, except for a busted brown couch and a stack of cardboard boxes that barely constitutes a side table. The room had recently been vacated by some asshole roommate of Buck’s, who Dallas had never bothered to get to know on account of his increasingly erratic drug addiction. There’s still dust bunnies from under the missing furniture, and the wooden floor is scraped up to shit with drag marks. That, and spots where the planks are rotting the fuck through.
“Home sweet home!” Dallas sing-songs, and peels off his jacket. He drops it on the floor, because there’s nowhere else for it to go. After a second thought he peels off his shirt too. It’s muggy as hell in the house, especially with all the people drunk breathing downstairs. Johnny doesn't seem to notice. “Go ahead, make yourself comfortable! I don’t give a shit.”
“Gee Dal, it sure is nice of you to offer to-”
“-yeah, don’t sweat it , alright? Don’t worry about it. Don’t think about it. It’s nothin.” It is something though. It’s what he can give. It’s not much, but it’s what he’s got.
Johnny goes and sits on the end of the couch and drops his hands in his lap and looks around like a lost puppy. Dallas sighs and digs a pinkie in his ear.
“Alright, alright. Hold up, squirt.” He quips, and pushes out of the room. When he comes back with two beers in his hand a few minutes later, Johnny is still sitting in exactly the same spot.
Dallas presses one of the ice cold cans into Johnny’s open palm, then flops down on the other end of the couch and throws an arm around the back. He cracks his beer one handed and slurps the foam off the top. He’s not sure what to talk about again. He always knows what to talk about, he thinks half annoyed, he’s got a lot of good fuckin stories, sometimes the boys can’t even get him to shut up. So why is this hard?
Do you want to talk about it?
Should I pop a cap in your folks? You want me to?
Should I..? Should I…? What the fuck should I…? Jesus christ, he’s lousy at this.
“...You know, they wasn’t always like that.” Johnny whispers eventually in his small voice, his small hands circling around his beer can, and Dallas leans towards him a little to hear better. Johnny’s popped the tab but he’s just looking at it. He should take a sip, Dallas thinks. It’d help. “When I was little, they didn’t drink so much.”
You’re still little.
Dallas looks down at his own beer. A Falstaff, just like his old man drinks. It’s sort of ironic. The taste of it is tinny on his tongue. “Yeah well, it goes like that sometimes, don’t it? Shit goes sideways. It just does.” He takes a gulp.
“You ever think it stops? I mean all of it. You know, all that… noise. It’d sure feel nice to forget about everything for a little while. You know they hit me and stuff, and that’s what it is, but what’s worse is that sometimes I feel like they don’t even know I’m there? Like they ain’t even worried if I live or die. At least they care when they’re yellin at me, you know? Like they see me.”
Something primal rumbles red in Dally’s chest, and his fingers go tight around his beer can. “Hey. Hey . The boys care, alright? They care. You know what they’d do for you, you little shit? Huh? What they’d go through? You think I give a rat’s ass what my drunk old man thinks? He don’t give a shit if I’m alive or dead! He doesn’t , and that don’t bother me none! Haven’t seen that fat slob in years, and look at how good I turned out!”
Johnny looks at him sidelong and doubtful, but doesn’t say anything. Dallas doesn’t know what that look is about. Hey, he’s okay, isn’t he? He’s fine. New York was hard. New York almost crushed him. Tulsa is a walk in the fuckin park. No problems here.
“...I guess so.” Johnny trails off. Then he’s quiet again. He looks at his beer like it makes him a little sad, but then he takes a sip of it anyway. More silence.
Dallas clears his throat. “...Come on, how about we go, uhh, we go out to the drive-in again this weekend? Sodapop’s ditchin his girl so it’ll just be the boys, you dig? Pony too! I hear it’s a really keen double feature. Like monsters or somethin! It’ll be fun.”
He shrugs. “Sure.”
“Wow, are you some laugh riot tonight, huh?”
That makes Johnny look a little sheepish, and he self consciously plays with the tab on his can. “Sorry. I guess I dunno what else to say.” Well that makes the fuckin two of us.
“You don’t gotta say nothin . You think I’m a shrink? You think I got all the answers? Shit, kid.”
He’s not sure what he’d want Johnny to say even if he did wanna talk more. What more was there to actually talk about? Shit goes sideways. It just does.
After they finish their beers Dallas calls it a night. It’s early, but for some reason his head’s pounding now like somebody’s been rattling around in there, rooting through drawers and looking for loose change. Maybe it’s all this thinking about their shitty parents that’s got him riled up... He ain’t been that keen on working through the hard stuff since he came to Tulsa. He doesn’t particularly like working through anything, unless it’s a six-pack. He was forged in one of the places where violence was invented, he doesn’t wanna think of dark, quiet little Johnny Cade getting cracked in the head with a beer bottle on top of everything else.
“Scoot up.” He barks after he’s flipped off the light, and he joins Johnny on the couch. Dallas slumps down on one end and Johnny rests his head on the other. Somewhere in the middle, their legs find space next to each other. It’s a pretty big couch, actually.
“...Dal?” Johnny says in the dark after a few minutes, in a voice even smaller than the small voice he’s been using all night. It hits Dallas in an uncomfortable place somewhere below his ribs.
“ Don’t say thank you, you little scrub. Don’t you fuckin dare. You understand me?”
Don’t say thank you for something like this. For a measly three feet of dirty couch in an empty room, when you should be in your own fuckin bed getting some decent shut eye before going to school in the morning, just like a regular kid. Just like a regular fuckin kid.
The dark quiet drags on a little longer, a little heavier, and Johnny finally submits. “Okay.”
When Dallas wakes up in the morning, Johnny is quietly curled up on his feet like a dog.
4. A HUNDRED COLLARS
Dallas thinks he’s past New York. That he’s over it, moved on past it like he’s in a traffic lane, but he never really has. New York is the dark skin under his eyes, and the way his knuckles tremble sometimes, and the way he can wake up all at once with a hand on his blade, ready for a fight. He dreams about rusty old fire escapes and hot steaming New York summers, stinking of trash and stagnant water. He thinks about the kid he saw get murked down on the banks of the Hudson during a drug deal gone sideways one night, a puncture straight to the gut, how it took a while for him to die. How it was ugly. It changes you.
He’s been a lazy buzzard in Tulsa. Interested in everything but not so interested in too much either. He digs the rodeo, he digs Buck pushing trophies into his hands, the smell of horse shit and dust and metal, and Johnny Cade grinning at him in the stands. He digs all the boys too, even if he’d never say it. He likes Two-Bit with his hair in a stupid curl in the center of his stupid forehead, telling dumb fuckin jokes only he ever seems to think are funny. Dallas likes Steve because he’s sort of an asshole, and Sodapop because he’s a pushover, and a loverboy. Darry’s the only guy Dallas thinks he’d be afraid of if he was afraid of anything anymore, he’s so fuckin big. But Dallas isn’t afraid, so Darry just gets the respect. Dallas guesses he even likes Ponyboy, as weird as that sounds. He never thought he’d ever be friends with a squirt bookworm.
But some things don’t budge. New York never quite goes away. He still gets mad sometimes. So what. He’s a hothead, that’s always been true. That’s just New York talking, and maybe also just a little bit because that’s how he was born. New York likes to talk a lot. It’s in his blood, making him a little wild all the time, like cops chasing hoods all over oil-sheened streets in the heat. Gasoline on the back of his tongue with tobacco and adrenaline.
Dallas likes to fight like he likes to ride some horses. Riding horses in the rodeo is fighting, but just a fight is also a fight. He likes fighting the Shepard brothers, and they hate him right back for it, unless they’re all crushing beers together, or beating the shit out of some other poor unfortunate on a day when they’re all bored. Dallas knows he’s not in New York anymore when he can put a knife in Tim Shepard’s tire and all he gets for it is a black eye and some bruised ribs.
Believing in anything is still hard. Dallas would never say this to anyone but he thinks, maybe, if he tried, that he could believe in Tulsa one day. If he really tried. He wants to try, and he doesn’t. There’s always New York in the back of his mind, hot, dangerous, flighty New York, telling him what kind of man to be. And then there’s his dad, drunk and screaming as he shoves Dallas out the front door by his shirt. His old man is in the seam of blood that collects between Dally’s lips after he’s been punched. He leaves stains. Winstons are made of stains. And yet, maybe, maybe , Tulsa could be the one. It could be home. If he tried, if he tried. He thinks about Johnny Cade and he chews on his thumb and he thinks some days that he could survive here and be alright, as if New York had never even existed. He’s trying . He’s doing it. But then he’s got a fistful of some punk’s hair and a knife in his hand and his throat is full of hot bile and he thinks an alley cat will always be an alley cat, no matter how it changes its stripes.
5. THE GENERATIONS OF MEN
Dallas rides Johnny over to the Curtis House on his back in the morning, just like some stupid giddyup bronco. It makes the kid laugh and that feels good in a weird place in Dally’s stomach he’s not sure he understands. Everything about Johnny feels precious. It always has. It makes Dallas a little nervous sometimes.
The boys are frying eggs when they slam in the front door and Dallas dumps Johnny on the couch like a sack of flour.
“Well would you look at what the cat dragged in.” Darry says from the kitchen door with a spatula in his hand, slick and enormous, and Sodapop sticks his head around his boulder of a brother to grin at them too.
“Oh boy do you two look rotten !” Soda laughs. He’s half dressed, with a damp towel still over one shoulder. “What happened, ya’ll sleep in a dumpster?”
“Yeah, somethin like that.” Dallas says breezily, then kicks Johnny in the leg until he sits up on the couch and makes room for Dallas to hit the cushion next to him. He doesn’t resist the impulse to reach out and ruffle Johnny’s hair, and he’s really making a mess of it when Johnny shrinks back in dislike and shoves his hand off. “Call it, uhhh, father son bonding time! ”
The toilet flushes and Steve walks into the room, tucking his shirt back into his pants. “I’d kill myself if you were my dad, Dallas.” The walls in the house are paper thin, Dally is sure Steve was listening the whole time he was on the shitter.
“Yeah well, if you were my kid I’d toss you in the river, asshole.”
“Responsible.” Steve snorts and reaches out to clap hands with him. When he grins, Dallas can see the whistle gap in the front of his teeth.
Dally barks a sound that’s almost like a laugh. “Or drop your ass on a church step, fuckin pain in my ass little shit! Lucky if I see a fuckin nickel.”
Steve only rolls his eyes and goes to bother Sodapop back in the bedroom. When Soda yelps after a sharp crack, Dallas thinks it’s probably because Steve whipped him across the ass with the towel. Those two play rough and dirty. Nut taps and elbows to necks.
The Curtis house is comfortable and familiar. Dallas has spent more than his fair share of nights on their couch, staring at the lights sliding across the ceiling as cars cruised past in the dark. It has a smell that’s not so good, more like wood and dusty old canvas and chipping paint. It’s an old piece of shit house like all of their other neighbors, but the Curtis brothers keep it tidy. Darry would probably commit a murder if they didn’t. Dallas knows about how the brothers are afraid of getting sent off to a boy’s home. Dallas knows about those, except worse. He’s been in the kinds of reformatories that’d get you jumped for your bubblegum.
Ten minutes later, Johnny and Dallas are presented with eggs and potatoes. Maybe Tusla could be home, he thinks. Maybe he could live here. Maybe he has a family now. Maybe… maybe.. .
6. FOR ONCE, THEN, SOMETHING
Dallas stumbles down the lake shore towards the distant bonfire and turns his pulp of a face sideways to spit a lob of blood into the sand. The wind whips some of it back across his leg but he only grumbles, shakes it off, and wipes the back of a hand across his nose. A red smear spreads out sticky across his cheek. His nose might be broken, but old Dally’s had worse than that. Who cares about another fuckin crack in his head, it’s not like it matters. Chicks throw themselves at him all the time no matter how fucked up his face keeps getting. Dallas thinks that’s the dumbest idea any of them ever had, considering his track record with women, but then he thinks twice about how much he likes tits in his hands, so he changes his mind about it again.
Curly’s cousin’s step-brother Cal is in two gangs divorced from the Shepard gang, and it’s one big shitty joke but he’s definitely the black sheep of the family. Considering Tim and Curly, that’s saying something. Cal’s a mean SOB who cheats at cards and gets handsy with broads like even Dallas would second guess. Bad news from one of those fancier reformatories up north, no heater in his pocket but not far off. He’s got shit he’s spitting mad to prove, but fuckall why or to who doesn’t seem like the point. Dallas thinks he gets it. Being mad at everything. Knowing what it feels like to get stuck with a knife, breaking ribs, sitting smoking cigarettes alone in the middle of an empty car park at 2am, blood underneath his fingernails, wondering what the fuck happened. Fighting him had been an experience.
“Jesus Christ, the hell happened to you ??” Tim is the first to greet Dallas under the moon when he stumbles up to the bonfire, but then he looks like he figured it out right after saying it. “...I told you Cal had chains out tonight, he’s pissed as a cat in heat. You go out alone? You got a deathwish? That’s dumb for you, Dally. Serious.”
“Shoulda seen him . I knocked his block off good, that cocksucker.” Dallas grins sharp and dangerous through red teeth, then spits again. His lip is busted too, he realizes with some regret. Chains are dangerous. A lot worse than a blade sometimes. Dallas is surprised he still has all his teeth. It was that kind of fight. Dally can already see a handful of those trashy beach babes the Shepards like to keep in rotation shooting him interested looks from different directions in the party. A beach party, chicks, drugs, beer and all. The whole shebang. Dallas feels a little dizzy, but resists the urge to raise a hand to his head.
Sometimes Tim Shepard isn’t that much of a bastard. Sometimes he’s even kinda, sorta, alright . That is, if he doesn’t have a fist in Dally’s shirt and a blade in his hand. They get along sometimes. Over a beer. From time to time. He’s on good terms with Darry anyway, and that’s not nothing. “Pull up a chair, my man.” Tim says without pity, and shoves Dallas towards the fire. Dallas is a little too fucked up to do anything other than mutter something nonsensical back, and then he’s stumbling with his heavy body over to a chunk of log nearby. When he settles down onto it, all creaking joints and fresh trickles of blood, his head pounds like crazy. His bell got rung real good, he’s forced to admit then, despite giving as good as he got. Nothing a night of drinking can’t shake off. He’s not a baby.
Somebody’s got a little hand crank FM radio and The Everly Brothers are playing, but the sound is kinda far away. Like, behind the fire. Or, somewhere. Something. The world is going kinda wonky, like he’s looking through the glass bottom of a coke bottle. He thinks, fuck me, and shakes his head. Luckily the world comes a little more into focus after that. Blood is dripping off his chin into the sand between his boots.
A pair of pink painted toes step into his vision and Dallas looks up. It takes him a second to clock her, squinting against the flames. Right , right, it’s Barbara , his chick du jour, though he hasn’t thought of her once in probably a week. He’s been crashing at Buck’s, so besides getting lucky he doesn’t really see the point. All his chicks are kinda the same anyway. Always buttering him up, trying to get on his good side. He doesn’t really care.
“Dallas, you look awful!” She says, and reaches a hand out to touch his shoulder. He throws her hand off without thinking about it, and her worried look takes an annoyed twitch. “Haven't seen you in a week! You got another girl already? You heartbreaker.”
“I don’t got shit , alright? I got a headache . Fuck off.” He’s not in the mood. He doesn't wanna get laid, he wants to lie down . She looks at him angrily, then seems to change her mind.
She tries touching him again, running her fingernails down the arm of his jacket. He can feel all the little bumps from where the leather has been worn down. He looks at the ground, feeling his stomach knot up.
“Why don’t you come on back to my place, sweetheart?” She whispers. “I’ll kiss your bruises better.”
Pity feels disgusting. Finally Dallas shoves her off again, rougher than he means, but he doesn’t regret it. She’s annoying right now. His head hurts . “I said fuck off , didn’t I? What part of that you don’t get ?”
The girl falls back a step, and her face closes over. She bites her tongue, then hisses “ asshole ” and slips back off into the party. Dallas doesn’t track where she goes, only that she is gone. He can’t stand the pity. It makes him feel sick. Pity’s not for Winstons. He’s not a baby .
The bonfire is hot on Dally’s face, but the nighttime is a cool wind shaking up the backs of his clothes. He tries not to look so much like it, but he’s tired. He hasn’t seen the boys in a while. He’s been occupied. By other shit. Bumming around the rodeo with Buck. Stealing scrap copper from old houses to sell for scratch. Getting fall down drunk, going swimming, reading the same old comic books over and over again, until he falls asleep with them on his face. Torturing soces at the drive-in with Curly and his other hood pals. Boosting cars. Wondering what the fuck happened to him between New York and Tulsa. Hunting down Cal. That fuckin prick had caught his sleeve in a cadillac door and dragged him half a block, until his knees were bloody. Dallas thinks with a private hitch that shit always seems to go a little sideways if he doesn’t see his friends often enough. His real friends. His brothers , his traitor heart beats, even though New York says he shouldn’t love anybody like that.
He forgot to get a beer. It don’t matter. He changed his mind. He’s only sitting here for a few minutes until he can get his shit together. Then he’s gonna hobble back to Buck’s, take three shots of whiskey and pass out. Right, that idea feels good. Maybe he doesn’t have it in him to drink at this party after all. Maybe he doesn’t even want to be around people. Fuck you, that’s pity too, he thinks angrily at himself, and looks back up at the fire. He just needs a minute. The bonfire rises high and hot, and people pass in and out of strips of light and shadow. He’s dizzy again.
Ok, five minutes. He just needs five minutes, and then he’s gone.
Yellow and orange flames lick up at the night sky and shimmer out in a heat mirage. It makes the world go all wobbly, like looking through his glass coke bottle again, and finally Dallas puts a hand to his head and lets himself hiss a little. His fingertips come away red and sticky. A concussion probably, or a little more than probably. A log crackles and shifts, and then someone else is there. It takes a minute to notice this time too, but more because his new visitor is half a shadow and perfectly silent.
Dallas looks up at Johnny Cade. He dances in and out of light, his dark hair falling over darker eyes. He’s always been a quiet kid. Small and sweet and simple. It strikes Dallas strange right off the bat that he’s even here at all. This ain't the kind of party quiet little brats get invited to. Johnny’s developing a bad habit of being around for parties like these more often recently. They just look at each other. The stupid kid caught him off guard.
Johnny sucks in a breath like he’s gonna say something, worry plain on his dark face, then thinks better of it. He looks in both directions, apparently judging them well enough alone, and takes a halting step closer. Dally’s fingers are limp between his legs as he rests his elbows on his thighs. When he looks further up as Johnny gets nearby, a small dribble of blood slides down his throat from his split lip, then collects in the collar of his shirt. He keeps waiting for the kid to say something. The fuck are you here for? But the question only sits on Dally’s tongue like a disobedient dog.
Should I pop a cap in your folks? You want me to?
Should I..? Should I…? What the fuck should I…?
The kid’s quiet, but he’s not stupid. It’s a mystery what he’s thinking, until he finally yanks his bandanna out of his back pocket and spits on it, then gently takes Dally’s chin in hand and begins to dab at his lip. Everything goes away. The fire. The radio. Everyone. It all just stops.
Dallas should say something. Make some stupid joke, grin it all off like the blood on his face don’t mean boo. But it’s hard when his stomach is in his boots. He feels stupid, and that makes him mad, and then it makes him scared. But Johnny isn’t scary. What could he do? What has he ever done?
Johnny spits on the bandana again and moves to his forehead, turning Dally’s chin at an angle like a mother wiping a smudge off her child. There’s not a lot of room in Dally’s life for gentle things. He’s not a soft person. Cool wind blows up the back of his shirt as Dallas sits and lets himself be tended to. It’s weird. It feels good.
It almost feels wrong when Johnny eventually speaks. “...Hey old Dal. Where ya been?”
Not what happened to your face . Not come back home, asshole . Not you did it to yourself . Johnny’s a patient, sweet kid. Not like any of these mean-eyed broads. Too sweet. It’s getting to be a problem.
“You come lookin for me, squirt?” Dallas finally manages through a thick throat, and his grin is still a little pink. Johnny dabs at his nose a few more times, then stuffs his now much dirtier bandana back in his pocket. Dallas feels like his face is tingling, but weird, like pins and needles or something. “Ain’t it after bedtime for brats? The hell told you it was okay to come out to a hood fire? The boys know you’re up to this?”
“Yeah, well. Ain’t seen you in a while! And I wondered–” he stutters on the word–”we wondered, what, uhh, where you… how long you were gonna…? Well, you know.”
The revelation is slow and precious. “...You mean, ya missed me? Ya missed me, you little shit?” He thinks of Johnny asleep on his feet, curled up like a stray.
At that Johnny casts a sideways look like he’s embarrassed, and rubs a nervous knuckle under his nose. If he could track it in the dark, Dallas suspects the boy might have gone red. Cherry tomato style. “Ah geez, Dal, you don’t gotta say all that… The boys, they’re just worried. You ain’t been around. Thought, maybe, you was in trouble or somethin.”
“ Me ?” Dallas barks a laugh. “Trouble? Sure, but come on. You think I’m losin it? You come out here to rescue me, Johnnycake? That how it is? Like you’re my guardian angel or somethin? Because, listen. You , doin this ?” He gestures at the party around them, “ that’s dangerous. But me ? I’m unkillable. Me ? I’m gonna live forever .”
It’s a boastful thing to say through a mouthful of blood. He’s too proud to die. He never would. He wouldn’t give the universe the satisfaction. Johnny cracks a secret little grin, and Dally’s stomach makes another jolt towards his shoes.
Nobody ever missed Dallas Winston in New York. It’s not that kind of place. Not the parts Dallas haunted anyway. He looks at Johnny and wonders when he started caring what the boys thought about him. He wonders, sitting in the firelight, his face a mashed up pulp, what he must look like on the outside. It makes him uncomfortable. He’s afraid they all must see something desperate and dirty in him; a punk hood with a busted mug, in a bloody shirt and a torn up leather jacket, knees ripped out of his jeans and boots scuffed to shit. White-blonde hair wracked back from his darkening bruises like he doesn’t care enough to change anything about anything. He doesn’t even grease it.
Johnny must clock something squirrely on his face, because then he sticks out a hand and offers to haul him up off the log. After a long pause, Dallas takes it.
The kid don’t say nothin about it, but they both automatically head in the direction of Buck Merill’s piece of shit house. So , this is an escort mission, Dallas thinks curiously, glancing sideways at his little shadow, his sweet little Johnnycake, out in the dangerous dark chasing his tail because Dallas was gone too long and that matters for some reason. His little bird. No matter how he claps his hands, Johnny never flies away.
7. THE SOUND OF TREES
Back at Buck’s, Dallas rips his bloody shirt off and hits the couch, while Johnny pulls a book out of the back of his jeans and sits on the floor. “You’ll like this one, Dal, it’s real scary .”
Dallas wonders why the scrub just waltzed in here without a word, without asking , just assuming , like Dally isn’t busted up to all hell, like he isn’t tired, like he isn’t dangerous. Dallas Winston does not need a pet right now, but here they are anyway. The wind makes the old tree outside the window wrack the glass with twiggy, brittle fingers. He lies with his arms above his head and glances left, taking in the cover Johnny is holding up for him to look at. The drawing is a green tangle of jungle plants, with a boy with white-blonde hair peering through it all with a spear in his hand. Lord of the Flies.
“What’s that about?”
“Uhhh, sorta like, good and evil? Like everybody got both in them, but which one’s supposed to win?”
“Pony’s rubbin off on you too much, I didn’t know you was a big book reader.”
“I’m not!” Johnny is indignant and shy again, eyes skating awkwardly off to the side. “We read it in class this year, and I just… uhh, I just thought, you know, that it was keen, I guess. It kinda made me think of you.”
“Oh yeah?” Dallas is wry.
“Yeah! Well, uhh, sorta.” He frowns, then says more quietly, “You just seem… a little mixed up sometimes, Dal.” It’s not something he should say. It’s not something he should think .
No, don’t see me .
“Ah hell, kid. I ain’t mixed up or nothin . You think I don’t fuckin know where my head is at? You’d get killed for that shit in New York, and ain’t nobody killin me .”
Again Johnny looks embarrassed. Then he shoots Dallas a doubtful look, albeit a silent one. Good, shut the fuck up about it. What does it matter?
Lounging in the lurch, Dallas just sighs and looks up at the ceiling. “...Alright, Mr. Shakespeare fancy pants valedictorian, lets have it.” Secretly, nobody has ever read to Dallas before. Nobody has ever wiped blood off his chin either.
Johnny doesn't say anything for a minute. The room goes perfectly still, neither of them budging an inch. And then Johnny opens the book, and the sound of his fingers on the dry paper drags right down Dally’s spine.
“... ‘The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet and began to pick his way towards the lagoon…’ ”
Dallas drifts off to the sound of Johnny’s small voice with only one tender thought on his mind; If he ever lost Johnny Cade, he didn’t know what he would do.