Johnny's beating
Johnny Cade, the gang's quiet, kicked-puppy youngest member, was already a boy shaped by violence before the Socs nearly killed him. His father beat him regularly, his mother ignored him except to scream, and he had learned to take a whipping with a two-by-four without a whimper. But the beating he suffered at the hands of four Socs in a blue Mustang one spring evening was of a different order entirely—a calculated, ring-handed assault that left him scarred for life and fundamentally altered the course of the story.
The Assault and Its Discovery
It was a warmish spring day, but by the time Ponyboy Curtis, Sodapop Curtis, and Steve Randle started for home from the DX station, it was getting chilly and dark. Passing the vacant lot at the corner of their block—a wide, open field where the gang played football and where rumbles sometimes broke out—Steve noticed something lying on the ground. It was Johnny's blue-jeans jacket, the only jacket he had. Slinging it over his shoulder, Steve stopped and examined it more carefully. There was a rust-colored stain across the collar. He looked at the ground and saw more stains on the grass. Then, across the lot, they all saw a dark, motionless hump and heard a low moan. Sodapop reached Johnny first. He was lying face down. When Sodapop turned him over gently, Ponyboy nearly got sick. Johnny's face was cut up, bruised, and swollen; a wide gash ran from his temple to his cheekbone, a scar he would carry all his life. His white T-shirt was splattered with blood. Ponyboy thought he might be dead—surely nobody could be beaten like that and live.
The Aftermath and Johnny's Transformation
The gang gathered around. Two-Bit Mathews, for once, lost his comical grin; his gray eyes were stormy. Darry Curtis ran from the porch. Dally Winston was there too, swearing under his breath and turning away with a sick expression—a reaction that struck Ponyboy as strange, since Dally had seen people killed on the streets of New York's West Side. Sodapop lifted Johnny and held him against his shoulder. Johnny, barely conscious, tried to speak: "There was a whole bunch of them... a blue Mustang full... I got so scared..." He tried to swear, then suddenly started crying, fighting to control himself, then sobbing all the more because he couldn't. Ponyboy had seen Johnny take a whipping from his father with a two-by-four and never let out a whimper; that made it worse to see him break now. Between sobs, Johnny managed to gasp out the story. He had been hunting their football to practice a few kicks when the blue Mustang pulled up. Four Socs caught him. One of them wore a lot of rings—that was what had cut Johnny up so badly. It wasn't just the beating; they had threatened him with everything under the sun. Johnny, already high-strung from being belted at home and from hearing his parents fight constantly, was a nervous wreck. Living in those conditions might have turned someone else rebellious and bitter; it was killing Johnny.
The Permanent Scar
After that night, Johnny was never the same. He became jumpier than ever, scared of his own shadow. He never walked alone again. And Johnny, who had been the most law-abiding of the greasers, now carried in his back pocket a six-inch switchblade. He would use it, too, if he ever got jumped again. They had scared him that much. He would kill the next person who jumped him. Nobody was ever going to beat him like that again. The beating also deepened his bond with the gang, who became his only real family. As Ponyboy reflected, if it hadn't been for the gang, Johnny would never have known what love and affection are. The event also cemented Johnny's hero-worship of Dally Winston, who was tough enough to survive anything. When Ponyboy later read Johnny a passage from Gone with the Wind about Southern gentlemen riding into sure death because they were gallant, Johnny said they reminded him of Dally—citing a night when Dally took a sentence for a crime Two-Bit had committed, without batting an eye or denying it. "That's gallant," Johnny said. The beating, and the fear it instilled, was the direct cause of Bob Sheldon's death. When the same blue Mustang and the same Socs—Bob Sheldon and his friends—confronted Johnny and Ponyboy in the park, Johnny's hand went to his switchblade. As they were drowning Ponyboy in the fountain, Johnny stabbed Bob. "I had to," he told Ponyboy afterward. "They were drowning you, Pony. They might have killed you. And they had a blade... they were gonna beat me up..." He added, "Like they did before." The beating was the wound that never healed, the trauma that drove Johnny to kill and, ultimately, to die a hero in the church fire, telling Ponyboy to "stay gold."
