A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School

89"Thank God.""What?""I said that's good.""Yes, I guess it is. I guess that's good, all right."After dinner that night Brinker came to our room to pay us one of his formal calls. Ourroom had by this time of year the exhausted look of a place where two people had lived toolong without taking any interest in their surroundings. Our cots at either end of the room weresway-backed beneath their pink and brown cotton spreads. The walls, which were much fartheroff white than normal, expressed two forgotten interests: Finny had scotch-taped newspaperpictures of the Roosevelt-Churchill meeting above his cot ("They're the two most important ofthe old men," he had explained, "getting together to make up what to tell us next about thewar"). Over my cot I had long ago taped pictures which together amounted to a barefaced lieabout my background—weepingly romantic views of plantation mansions, moss-hung trees bymoonlight, lazy roads winding dustily past the cabins of the Negroes. When asked about them Ihad acquired an accent appropriate to a town three states south of my own, and I hadtransmitted the impression, without actually stating it, that this was the old family place. But bynow I no longer needed this vivid false identity; now I was acquiring, I felt, a sense of my ownreal authority and worth, I had had many new experiences and I was growing up."How's Leper?" said Brinker as he came in."Yeah," said Phineas, "I meant to ask you before.""Leper? Why he's—he's on leave." But my resentment against having to mislead peopleseemed to be growing stronger every day. "As a matter of fact Leper is 'Absent Without Leave,'he just took off by himself.""Leper?" both of them exclaimed together."Yes," I shrugged, "Leper. Leper's not the little rabbit we used to know any more.""Nobody can change that much," said Brinker in his new tough-minded way.Finny said, "He just didn't like the army, I bet. Why should he? What's the point of itanyway?""Phineas," Brinker said with dignity, "please don't give us your infantile lecture on worldaffairs at this time." And to me, "He was too scared to stay, wasn't he?"I narrowed my eyes as though thinking hard about that. Finally I said, "Yes, I think youcould put it that way.""He panicked."