A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

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22"You can try it again and break it again. Tomorrow. We'll get the coach in here, and all theofficial timekeepers and I'll call up The Devonian to send a reporter and a photographer—"He climbed out of the pool. "I'm not going to do it again," he said quietly."Of course you are!""No, I just wanted to see if I could do it. Now I know. But I don't want to do it in public."Some other swimmers drifted in through the door. Finny glanced sharply at them. "By theway," he said in an even more subdued voice, "we aren't going to talk about this. It's justbetween you and me. Don't say anything about it, to . . . anyone.""Not say anything about it! When you broke the school record!""Sh-h-h-h-h!" He shot a blazing, agitated glance at me.I stopped and looked at him up and down. He didn't look directly back at me. "You're toogood to be true," I said after a while.He glanced at me, and then said, "Thanks a lot" in a somewhat expressionless voice.Was he trying to impress me or something? Not tell anybody? When he had broken a schoolrecord without a day of practice? I knew he was serious about it, so I didn't tell anybody.Perhaps for that reason his accomplishment took root in my mind and grew rapidly in thedarkness where I was forced to hide it. The Devon <strong>School</strong> record books contained a mistake, alie, and nobody knew it but Finny and me. A. Hopkins Parker was living in a fool's paradise,wherever he was. His defeated name remained in bronze on the school record plaque, whileFinny deliberately evaded an athletic honor. It was true that he had many already—theWinslow Galbraith Memorial Football Trophy for having brought the most Christiansportsmanship to the game during the 1941-1942 season, the Margaret Duke Bonaventuraribbon and prize for the student who conducted himself at hockey most like the way her sonhad done, the Devon <strong>School</strong> Contact Sport Award, Presented Each Year to That Student Who inthe Opinion of the Athletic Advisors Excels His Fellows in the Sportsmanlike Performance ofAny Game Involving Bodily Contact. But these were in the past, and they were prizes, notschool records. The sports Finny played officially—football, hockey, baseball, lacrosse—didn'thave school records. To switch to a new sport suddenly, just for a day, and immediately break arecord in it—that was about as neat a trick, as dazzling a reversal as I could, to be perfectlyhonest, possibly imagine. There was something inebriating in the suppleness of this feat. WhenI thought about it my head felt a little dizzy and my stomach began to tingle. It had, in oneword, glamour, absolute schoolboy glamour. When I looked down at that stop watch andrealized a split second before I permitted my face to show it or my voice to announce it thatFinny had broken a school record, I had experienced a feeling that also can be described in oneword—shock.To keep silent about this amazing happening deepened the shock for me. It made Finnyseem too unusual for—not friendship, but too unusual for rivalry. And there were fewrelationships among us at Devon not based on rivalry.
23"Swimming in pools is screwy anyway," he said after a long, unusual silence as we walkedtoward the dormitory. "The only real swimming is in the ocean." Then in the everyday,mediocre tone he used when he was proposing something really outrageous, he added, "Let'sgo to the beach."The beach was hours away by bicycle, forbidden, completely out of all bounds. Going thererisked expulsion, destroyed the studying I was going to do for an important test the nextmorning, blasted the reasonable amount of order I wanted to maintain in my life, and it alsoinvolved the kind of long, labored bicycle ride I hated. "All right," I said.We got our bikes and slipped away from Devon along a back road. Having invited me Finnynow felt he had to keep me entertained. He told long, wild stories about his childhood; as Ipumped panting up steep hills he glided along beside me, joking steadily. He analyzed mycharacter, and he insisted on knowing what I disliked most about him ("You're tooconventional," I said). He rode backward with no hands, he rode on his own handlebars, hejumped off and back on his moving bike as he had seen trick horseback riders do in the movies.He sang. Despite the steady musical undertone in his speaking voice Finny couldn't carry atune, and he couldn't remember the melody or the words to any song. But he loved listening tomusic, any music, and he liked to sing.We reached the beach late in the afternoon. The tide was high and the surf was heavy. Idived in and rode a couple of waves, but they had reached that stage of power in which youcould feel the whole strength of the ocean in them. The second wave, as it tore toward thebeach with me, spewed me a little ahead of it, encroaching rapidly; suddenly it wasimmeasurably bigger than I was, it rushed me from the control of gravity and took control ofme itself; the wave threw me down in a primitive plunge without a bottom, then there was abottom, grinding sand, and I skidded onto the shore. The wave hesitated, balanced there, andthen hissed back toward the deep water, its tentacles not quite interested enough in me to dragme with it.I made my way up on the beach and lay down. Finny came, ceremoniously took my pulse,and then went back into the ocean. He stayed in an hour, breaking off every few minutes tocome back to me and talk. The sand was so hot from the all-day sunshine that I had to brushthe top layer away in order to lie down on it, and Finny's progress across the beach became aseries of high, startled leaps.The ocean, throwing up foaming sun-sprays across some nearby rocks, was winter cold.This kind of sunshine and ocean, with the accumulating roar of the surf and the salty,adventurous, flirting wind from the sea, always intoxicated Phineas. He was everywhere, heenjoyed himself hugely, he laughed out loud at passing sea gulls. And he did everything hecould think of for me.We had dinner at a hot dog stand, with our backs to the ocean and its now cooler wind, ourfaces toward the heat of the cooking range. Then we walked on toward the center of the beach,where there was a subdued New England strip of honky-tonks. The Boardwalk lights againstthe deepening blue sky gained an ideal, starry beauty and the lights from the belt of honky-
Page 1 and 2: 1John KnowlesA Separate Peace
Page 4 and 5: 4Devon was both scholarly and very
Page 6 and 7: 6sprang out, fell through the tops
Page 8 and 9: 8a kitchen rattle from the wing of
Page 10 and 11: 10true and sincere; Finny always sa
Page 12 and 13: 12Withers, perched nervously behind
Page 14 and 15: 14of the great northern forests. I
Page 16 and 17: 163Yes, he had practically saved my
Page 18 and 19: 18Up the field the others at badmin
Page 20 and 21: 20that Finny could shine at it. He
Page 24 and 25: 24tonks and shooting galleries and
Page 26 and 27: 26But Finny gave me little time to
Page 28 and 29: 28was weakened by the very genuinen
Page 30 and 31: 30"Don't go." He said it very simpl
Page 32 and 33: 325None of us was allowed near the
Page 34 and 35: 34The door was slightly ajar, and I
Page 36 and 37: 36We found it fairly easily, on a s
Page 38 and 39: 38"Sure, I'll be there by Thanksgiv
Page 40 and 41: 40Still it had come to an end, in t
Page 42 and 43: 42"How many?""Who knows? Get some.
Page 44 and 45: 44The houses on either side were in
Page 46 and 47: 46"No, I wouldn't.""And I spent my
Page 48 and 49: 48"What?" I pulled quickly around i
Page 50 and 51: 50They laughed at him a little, and
Page 52 and 53: 52"I'm not sure, Leper, but I think
Page 54 and 55: 54After they had gone we laborers l
Page 56 and 57: 56To enlist. To slam the door impul
Page 58 and 59: 588"I can see I never should have l
Page 60 and 61: 60"So," Brinker curled his lip at m
Page 62 and 63: 62So the war swept over like a wave
Page 64 and 65: 64We went into the gym, along a mar
Page 66 and 67: 66you at the Funny Farm.""In a way,
Page 68 and 69: 68large rambling, doubtfully Coloni
Page 70 and 71: 709This was my first but not my las
Page 72 and 73:
72Giraud but Lepellier; we knew, be
Page 74 and 75:
74"Who wants a Winter Carnival?" he
Page 76 and 77:
76Still the sleek brown head bent m
Page 78 and 79:
78ELWIN LEPER LEPELLIER.
Page 80 and 81:
80escapes from is danger, death, th
Page 82 and 83:
82"That's what you say. But that's
Page 84 and 85:
84a good boy underneath," she must
Page 86 and 87:
86the Mess Hall, I had to eat every
Page 88 and 89:
88"How's Leper?" he asked in an off
Page 90 and 91:
90I didn't say anything."He must be
Page 92 and 93:
92never will.""You're so wrong I ca
Page 94 and 95:
94I believed you," he added hurried
Page 96 and 97:
96acoustics in the school. I couldn
Page 98 and 99:
98the tree did it by itself. It's a
Page 100 and 101:
100"Here! Go get him," said Brinker
Page 102 and 103:
102"I can't think of the name of th
Page 104 and 105:
104Dr. Stanpole stopped near the do
Page 106 and 107:
106hurt my stomach and I could feel
Page 108 and 109:
108and "psycho" and "sulfa," strang
Page 110 and 111:
110His face had been struggling to
Page 112 and 113:
11213The quadrangle surrounding the
Page 114 and 115:
114Brinker slid his fingers into th
Page 116 and 117:
116At the gym a platoon was undress
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