A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

41water, roaring with rage.I stopped in the middle of this hurrying day to remember him like that, and then, feelingrefreshed, I went on to the Crew House beside the tidewater river below the dam.We had never used this lower river, the Naguamsett, during the summer. It was ugly, saline,fringed with marsh, mud and seaweed. A few miles away it was joined to the ocean, so that itsmovements were governed by unimaginable factors like the Gulf Stream the Polar Ice Cap, andthe moon. It was nothing like the fresh-water Devon above the dam where we'd had so muchfun, all the summer. The Devon's course was determined by some familiar hills a little inland;it rose among highland farms and forests which we knew, passed at the end of its coursethrough the school grounds, and then threw itself with little spectacle over a small waterfallbeside the diving dam, and into the turbid Naguamsett.The Devon School was astride these two rivers.At the Crew House, Quackenbush, in the midst of some milling oarsmen in the damp mainroom, spotted me the instant I came in, with his dark expressionless eyes. Quackenbush wasthe crew manager, and there was something wrong about him. I didn't know exactly what itwas. In the throng of the winter terms at Devon we were at opposite extremities of the class,and to me there only came the disliked edge of Quackenbush's reputation. A clue to it was thathis first name was never used—I didn't even know what it was—and he had no nickname, noteven an unfriendly one."Late, Forrester," he said in his already-matured voice. He was a firmly masculine type;perhaps he was disliked only because he had matured before the rest of us."Yes, sorry, I got held up.""The crew waits for no man." He didn't seem to think this was a funny thing to say. I did,and had to chuckle."Well, if you think it's all a joke . . .""I didn't say it was a joke.""I've got to have some real help around here. This crew is going to win the New Englandscholastics, or my name isn't Cliff Quackenbush."With that blank filled, I took up my duties as assistant senior crew manager. There is nosuch position officially, but it sometimes came into existence through necessity, and was theopposite of a sinecure. It was all work and no advantages. The official assistant to the crewmanager was a member of the class below, and the following year he could come into thesenior managership with its rights and status. An assistant who was already a senior rankednowhere. Since I had applied for such a nonentity of a job, Quackenbush, who had known aslittle about me as I had about him, knew now."Get some towels," he said without looking at me, pointing at a door.