A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

88"How's Leper?" he asked in an offhand way."Oh Leper's—how would he be? You know Leper—" The fight was moving toward us; Istalled a little more, a stray snowball caught Finny on the side of the face, he shot one back, Iseized some ammunition from the ground and we were engulfed.Someone knocked me down; I pushed Brinker over a small slope; someone was trying totackle me from behind. Everywhere there was the smell of vitality in clothes, the vitalsomething in wool and flannel and corduroy which spring releases. I had forgotten that thisexisted, this smell which instead of the first robin, or the first bud or leaf, means to me thatspring has come. I had always welcomed vitality and energy and warmth radiating from thickand sturdy winter clothes. It made me happy, but I kept wondering about next spring, aboutwhether khaki, or suntans or whatever the uniform of the season was, had this aura of promisein it. I felt fairly sure it didn't.The fight veered. Finny had recruited me and others as allies, so that two sides fighting itout had been taking form. Suddenly he turned his fire against me, he betrayed several of hisother friends; he went over to the other, to Brinker's side for a short time, enough to ensure thathis betrayal of them would heighten the disorder. Loyalties became hopelessly entangled. Noone was going to win or lose after all. Somewhere in the maze Brinker's sense of generalshipdisappeared, and he too became as slippery as an Arab, as intriguing as a eunuch. We ended thefight in the only way possible; all of us turned on Phineas. Slowly, with a steadily wideninggrin, he was driven down beneath a blizzard of snowballs.When he had surrendered I bent cheerfully over to help him up, seizing his wrist to stop thefinal treacherous snowball he had ready, and he remarked, "Well I guess that takes care of theHitler Youth outing for one day." All of us laughed. On the way back to the gym he said, "Thatwas a good fight. I thought it was pretty funny, didn't you?"Hours later it occurred to me to ask him, "Do you think you ought to get into fights likethat? After all, there's your leg—""Stanpole said something about not falling again, but I'm very careful.""Christ, don't break it again!""No, of course I won't break it again. Isn't the bone supposed to be stronger when it growstogether over a place where it's been broken once?""Yes, I think it is.""I think so too. In fact I think I can feel it getting stronger.""You think you can? Can you feel it?""Yes, I think so."