Chapter Text
Johnny wasn’t fast enough, and now Pony was gone. As he knelt next to the cool body he had dragged from the fountain, Johnny turned to face Bob, who had yet to run off with the others. “I-I didn’t mean to.” Bob stumbled over his words. “Your hands held him down! You did mean to!” Johnny charged at him and began hitting him anywhere he could. His fist flew, but he never landed an actual punch in his grief. Bob kicked the kid off of him, sending Johnny into the dirt. Before Johnny could get back up, Bob was gone. Johnny just kind of lay there for a second. If he stared at the ground long enough, maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t look up to see Ponyboy lying motionless on the grass next to that wretched fountain. Jonny stared so long at the ground that he drifted into sleep.
Johnny awoke to sirens in the dark hours of the morning. Who died? He thought. He felt a hand on his neck. “This one’s alive,” a voice yells to some far-off place. Johnny was shaken, and he opened his eyes. He noted the uniform and badge that the man was wearing. “What’s goin’ on? I fall asleep in the lot?” The cop gave him a sympathetic look. “I don’t know what happened here, kid, but we gotta take you in for questioning.” Johnny looked around, confused. He sees tape being rolled out around the area. He noticed an ambulance, but the siren had now been shut off, and there was a body on a stretcher, covered by a white sheet, being pushed into it. As if a tidal wave had hit him, everything came rushing back. “They killed him… Ponyboy, they killed him!” Johnny tried to get up, to run to Pony so they couldn’t take him away, but strong hands held him down. Johnny thrashed, but it was no use. The officer was telling him something, probably trying to calm him down, but Johnny wasn’t focusing on that. All Johnny could do was watch as his friend was taken from him.
Johnny didn’t remember how it happened, but he ended up at the police station. He was sitting across from an officer, who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else than trying to get a kid to open up about watching his friend get murdered. He had a notepad in front of him and a pen in his hand, prepared to write down whatever Johnny told him. “Tell me everything you remember from last night.”
Johnny stayed quiet for a moment, wondering how to begin. “I had fallen asleep outside, and I woke up to Pony tellin’ me we had to go. We ran to the park, don’t know why. Pony said he’d had a fight with his brother, and he had hit him-”
“Who hit who?”
“Darrel hit Ponyboy, but I don’t think he really meant to. Darrel would never do anything to hurt either of his brothers.” The officer nodded as a sign for him to go on. “A blue Mustang pulled up. I recognized it from when the same socs jumped me a week ago. They started sayin’ how we were trying to pick up their girls and how greasers are white trash with long hair. Pony mouthed back. They said something about giving him a bath. Two of them tackled me and held me down.” Johnny stopped talking. He didn’t want to say it. He didn’t want to say how he had watched as his friend flailed about, how they brought him up only to push him back down, his movements getting weaker the longer he was under, until he stopped moving altogether. “They stuck him in the fountain and drowned him.” Johnny’s voice broke as he said it. He looked up to the window in the room to see Darrel and Soda running in. He could hear muffled yelling from Darrel; no doubt, he was demanding answers.
They’re gonna hate me.
“And then what happened, because all we know is that you were the one next to the body.”
“His name is Ponyboy.” Johnny practically cut the man off. “Was Ponyboy. Sorry.” Suddenly, the man looked a little softer. “Could you identify the names of the boys who you’re saying killed your friend?”
“I know the one who held his head in the water’s named Bob Sheldon. And there was Randy… don’t know his last name though. And I heard Bob call one of them Dave or David. Something like that. I couldn’t tell you the others’ names, but they were all friends with him.”
The man sent Johnny back out to the station's lobby. He was greeted by the two remaining Curtises, quickly embracing him. Johnny began to sob. “I’m so sorry, I couldn’t save him.” He took a shuddering breath between his sobs, “I’m so sorry,” he repeated. Darrel was shushing him with cries of his own mixed in, and Soda was sobbing with him. As much as Johnny felt sorry for himself losing his best friend, he knew that Darry and Soda had just lost their little brother. The guilt of being too slow, too scared, too weak, to save Pony was eating Johnny alive. Even if he could tell they didn’t blame him.
Darry pulled away, “We oughta let the others know now.” Darrel ran a hand over his face and took a deep breath. He walked up to the front desk and asked for a phone. The receptionist pointed him to a wall near the entrance. Johnny could hear Darrel’s broken voice trying to find the words to inform whichever of their friends was on the other line, and he began to count the ceiling tiles, because it was all he could do to keep himself from crying at the sight.
The rest of the day was a blur for Johnny. It seemed like he was just floating, expecting Pony to walk in the front door and tell him about the last movie he’d seen. He noticed cop cars headed to the west side of town. They seemed in no hurry, but Johnny could tell where they were going. They were heading to pick up a murderer. Why aren’t they going faster? Don’t they want to bring justice to Pony? Johnny thought. But of course, socs look out for socs, and the cops were definitely looking out for the socs. They weren’t looking forward to arresting Bob. His dad had money and would make their investigation as difficult as possible. Johnny thought it unfair. This kid who beat up greasers just for being greasers was still alive to be arrested (and if he’s being honest, probably bailed out too), and Pony, who watched sunsets and dreamt of leaving Tulsa, was lying on a mortuary table in the morgue. Pony had told Johnny once during a late night, sitting in the lot, that he felt like he was the cause of his parents’ deaths. Johnny thought it was a crazy prospect at the time. Pony wasn’t driving the train, so it wasn’t his fault. But then again, Johnny wasn’t holding Pony in the water, and he still felt a crushing sense of blame. Now he understood what Pony’d meant.