A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

61"I'll help," said Brinker."No," said Finny without looking at him, "I can manage all right.""How can you manage all right?" Brinker persisted aggressively."I can manage all right," Finny repeated with a set face.I could hardly believe it, but it was too plainly printed in the closed expression of his face tomistake, too discernible beneath the even tone of his voice: Phineas was shocked at the idea ofmy leaving. In some way he needed me. He needed me. I was the least trustworthy person hehad ever met. I knew that; he knew or should know that too. I had even told him. I had toldhim. But there was no mistaking the shield of remoteness in his face and voice. He wanted mearound. The war then passed away from me, and dreams of enlistment and escape and a cleanstart lost their meaning for me."Sure you can manage the shower all right," I said, "but what difference does it make?Come on. Brinker's always . . . Brinker's always getting there first. Enlist! What a nutty idea.It's just Brinker wanting to get there first again. I wouldn't enlist with you if you were GeneralMacArthur's eldest son."Brinker reared back arrogantly. "And who do you think I am!" But Finny hadn't heard that.His face had broken into a wide and dazzled smile at what I had said, lighting up his wholeface. "Enlist!" I drove on, "I wouldn't enlist with you if you were Elliott Roosevelt.""First cousin," said Brinker over his chin, "once removed.""He wouldn't enlist with you," Finny plunged in, "if you were Madame Chiang Kai-shek.""Well," I qualified in an undertone, "he really is Madame Chiang Kai-shek.""Well fan my brow," cried Finny, giving us his stunned look of total appalled horrifiedamazement, "who would have thought that! Chinese. The Yellow Peril, right here at Devon."And as far as the history of the Class of 1943 at the Devon School is concerned, this was theonly part of our conversation worth preserving. Brinker Hadley had been tagged with anickname at last, after four years of creating them for others and eluding one himself. "YellowPeril" Hadley swept through the school with the speed of a flu epidemic, and it must be said tohis credit that Brinker took it well enough except when, in its inevitable abbreviation, peoplesometimes called him "Yellow" instead of "Peril."But in a week I had forgotten that, and I have never since forgotten the dazed look onFinny's face when he thought that on the first day of his return to Devon I was going to deserthim. I didn't know why he had chosen me, why it was only to me that he could show the mosthumbling sides of his handicap. I didn't care. For the war was no longer eroding the peacefulsummertime stillness I had prized so much at Devon, and although the playing fields werecrusted under a foot of congealed snow and the river was now a hard gray-white lane of icebetween gaunt trees, peace had come back to Devon for me.