A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

17But the one which had the most urgent influence in his life was, "You always win at sports."This "you" was collective. Everyone always won at sports. When you played a game you won,in the same way as when you sat down to a meal you ate it. It inevitably and naturallyfollowed. Finny never permitted himself to realize that when you won they lost. That wouldhave destroyed the perfect beauty which was sport. Nothing bad ever happened in sports; theywere the absolute good.He was disgusted with that summer's athletic program—a little tennis, some swimming,clumsy softball games, badminton. "Badminton!" he exploded the day it entered the schedule.He said nothing else, but the shocked, outraged, despairing note of anguish in the word said allthe rest. "Badminton!""At least it's not as bad as the seniors," I said, handing him the fragile racquet and the feyshuttlecock. "They're doing calisthenics.""What are they trying to do?" He swatted the shuttlecock the length of the locker room."Destroy us?" Humor infiltrated the outrage in his voice, which meant that he was thinking of away out.We went outside into the cordial afternoon sunshine. The playing fields were optimisticallygreen and empty before us. The tennis courts were full. The softball diamond was busy. Apattern of badminton nets swayed sensually in the breeze. Finny eyed them with quietastonishment. Far down the fields toward the river there was a wooden tower about ten feethigh where the instructor had stood to direct the senior calisthenics. It was empty now. Theseniors had been trotted off to the improvised obstacle course in the woods, or to have theirblood pressure taken again, or to undergo an insidious exercise in The Cage which consisted instepping up on a box and down again in rapid rhythm for five minutes. They were offsomewhere, shaping up for the war. All of the fields were ours.Finny began to walk slowly in the direction of the tower. Perhaps he was thinking that wemight carry it the rest of the way to the river and throw it in; perhaps he was just interested inlooking at it, as he was in everything. Whatever he thought, he forgot it when we reached thetower. Beside it someone had left a large and heavy leather-covered ball, a medicine ball.He picked it up. "Now this, you see, is everything in the world you need for sports. Whenthey discovered the circle they created sports. As for this thing," embracing the medicine ballin his left arm he held up the shuttlecock, contaminated, in his outstretched right, "this idiottickler, the only thing it's good for is eeny-meeny-miney-mo." He dropped the ball andproceeded to pick the feathers out of the shuttlecock, distastefully, as though removing ticksfrom a dog. The remaining rubber plug he then threw out of sight down the field, with a singlelunge ending in a powerful downward thrust of his wrist. Badminton was gone.He stood balancing the medicine ball, enjoying the feel of it. "All you really need is a roundball."Although he was rarely conscious of it, Phineas was always being watched, like the weather.