the church on Jay Mountain

The church on Jay Mountain is a small, old, abandoned wooden church located on a hilltop outside Windrixville, reachable by a steep road that takes about forty-five minutes to climb. It is the place where Ponyboy Curtis and Johnny Cade hide after Johnny kills Bob Sheldon in self-defense, following directions from Dallas Winston. The church is spooky and spiderwebby, with a stone floor, a back window they climb through, and a pump in back that provides cold, funny-tasting water. It is isolated: the nearest house is two miles away, and farm kids sometimes ride by on the road in front, so the boys stay in the very back, usually sitting on the steps that face east and looking across the valley for miles, seeing the ribbon of highway and the small dots of houses and cars. The church becomes a crucible of fear, friendship, and moral awakening, and its destruction by fire forces the boys into an act of heroism that changes the course of the story.

Hideout and Daily Life

Dally instructs Ponyboy and Johnny to hop the three-fifteen freight to Windrixville and hide in the abandoned church on top of Jay Mountain, telling them to buy a week's supply of food as soon as they arrive and not to stick their noses out the door. They climb in through a back window. The interior is cold and hard; they sleep huddled together on the stone floor for warmth, wrapped in Dally's jacket. Johnny leaves a note in the dust—"Went to get supplies. Be back soon. J.C."—and returns with a week's supply of baloney, two loaves of bread, matches, peroxide, a deck of cards, and a paperback copy of Gone with the Wind. They cut and bleach their hair as a disguise, a painful act that strips them of their greaser identity. They kill time by reading Gone with the Wind and playing poker. Johnny, who had failed a year in school and never made good grades, becomes deeply absorbed in the book, especially the Southern gentlemen, whom he compares to Dally. Ponyboy explains the Civil War and plantations to him. They smoke cigarettes carefully, knowing the old church could catch fire. Ponyboy grows sick of baloney and craves a Pepsi. On the fifth day, Dally arrives with a letter from Sodapop and news that the Socs and greasers are having all-out warfare. Johnny announces he wants to turn himself in, and Dally, though angry, agrees to drive them back.

The Fire and Rescue

As Dally drives them back down Jay Mountain, he suddenly slams on the brakes: the church is on fire. A crowd has gathered—a school picnic was happening, and the church is burning. Ponyboy realizes they must have dropped a lighted cigarette. A woman runs up saying some children are missing, and faint yelling is heard from inside the church. Ponyboy runs toward the church, thinking only "We started it." He smashes a window with a rock and pulls himself in; Johnny is right behind him. They find four or five little kids, about eight years old or younger, huddled in a corner. Johnny yells at them to shut up and starts tossing them out the window. Ponyboy follows, dropping kids as gently as he can. The roof is crashing down. Johnny shoves Ponyboy toward the window, and Ponyboy leaps out just as timber crashes behind him. He hears Johnny scream, and as he turns to go back, Dally clubs him across the back, knocking him unconscious. Dally then goes back into the burning church to save Johnny. All three are taken to the hospital. Johnny has a broken back and severe burns; Dally has a badly burned arm; Ponyboy suffers from smoke inhalation and a minor concussion. The rescue makes them front-page heroes, with the headline "JUVENILE DELINQUENTS TURN HEROES."

Aftermath and Significance

The church fire is the turning point of the novel. It transforms Ponyboy and Johnny from wanted fugitives into public heroes, and it leads directly to Johnny's decision to turn himself in—a decision that is overtaken by his fatal injuries. Johnny dies in the hospital, telling Ponyboy to "stay gold." The fire also reveals Dally's capacity for selflessness: he risks his life to save Johnny, and his subsequent breakdown after Johnny's death leads to his own death in a confrontation with police. For Ponyboy, the church becomes a symbol of both the worst and best of his experience—the terror of hiding, the intimacy of friendship, the guilt of causing the fire, and the courage of the rescue. It is the place where he and Johnny share the poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay," and where Johnny writes his final note, telling Ponyboy that "there's still lots of good in the world" and asking him to tell Dally to look at a sunset. The church's destruction by fire mirrors the destruction of the boys' innocence and the violent end of their childhood, but it also forges the moral clarity that Ponyboy carries into the novel's conclusion.