A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

75higher, a forged draft registration card, and $4.13 from the Headmaster's DiscretionaryBenevolent Fund. Brinker placed this last prize on the table with such silent dignity that we allthought it was better not to ask any questions about it.Phineas sat behind the table in a heavily carved black walnut chair; the arms ended in twolions' heads, and the legs ended in paws gripping wheels now sunk in the snow. He had madethe purchase that morning. Phineas bought things only on impulse and only when he had themoney, and since the two states rarely coincided his purchases were few and strange.Chet Douglass stood next to him holding his trumpet. Finny had regretfully given up theplan of inviting the school band to supply music, since it would have spread news of ourcarnival to every corner of the campus. Chet in any case was an improvement over thatcacophony. He was a slim, fair-skinned boy with a ball of curly auburn hair curving over hisforehead, and he devoted himself to playing two things, tennis and the trumpet. He did bothwith such easy, inborn skill that after observing him I had begun to think that I could mastereither one any weekend I tried. Much like the rest of us on the surface, he had an underlyingobliging and considerate strain which barred him from being a really important member of theclass. You had to be rude at least sometimes and edgy often to be credited with "personality,"and without that accolade no one at Devon could be anyone. No one, with the exception ofcourse of Phineas.To the left of the Prize Table Brinker straddled his cache of cider; behind him was the clumpof evergreens, and behind them there was after all a gentle rise, where the Ski Jump Committeewas pounding snow into a little take-off ramp whose lip was perhaps a foot higher than theslope of the rise. From there our line of snow statues, unrecognizable artistic attacks on theHeadmaster, Mr. Ludsbury, Mr. Patch-Withers, Dr. Stanpole, the new dietitian, and HazelBrewster curved in an enclosing half-circle to the icy, muddy, lisping edge of the tidewaterNaguamsett and back to the other side of the Prize Table.When the ski jump was ready there was a certain amount of milling around; twenty boys,tightly reined in all winter, stood now as though with the bit firmly clamped between theirteeth, ready to stampede. Phineas should have started the sports events but he was absorbed incataloguing the prizes. All eyes swung next upon Brinker. He had been holding a pose abovehis cider of Gibraltar invulnerability; he continued to gaze challengingly around him until hebegan to realize that wherever he looked, calculating eyes looked back."All right, all right," he said roughly, "let's get started."The ragged circle around him moved perceptibly closer."Let's get going," he yelled. "Come on, Finny. What's first?"Phineas had one of those minds which could record what is happening in the backgroundand do nothing about it because something else was preoccupying him. He seemed to sinkdeeper into his list."Phineas!" Brinker pronounced his name with a maximum use of the teeth. "What is next?"