A_Separate_Peace_-_Full_Text

42
"How many?"
"Who knows? Get some. As many as you can carry. That won't be too many."
Jobs like mine were usually taken by boys with some physical disability, since everyone had
to take part in sports and this was all disabled boys could do. As I walked toward the door I
supposed that Quackenbush was studying me to see if he could detect a limp. But I knew that
his flat black eyes would never detect my trouble.
Quackenbush felt mellower by the end of the afternoon as we stood on the float in front of
the Crew House, gathering up towels.
"You never rowed did you." He opened the conversation like that, without pause or question
mark. His voice sounded almost too mature, as though he were putting it on a little; he sounded
as though he were speaking through a tube.
"No, I never did."
"I rowed on the lightweight crew for two years."
He had a tough bantam body, easily detectable under the tight sweat shirt he wore. "I wrestle
in the winter," he went on. "What are you doing in the winter?"
"I don't know, manage something else."
"You're a senior aren't you?"
He knew that I was a senior. "Yeah."
"Starting a little late to manage teams aren't you?"
"Am I?"
"Damn right you are!" He put indignant conviction into this, pouncing on the first sprig of
assertiveness in me.
"Well, it doesn't matter."
"Yes it matters."
"I don't think it does."
"Go to hell Forrester. Who the hell are you anyway."
I turned with an inward groan to look at him. Quackenbush wasn't going to let me just do
the work for him like the automaton I wished to be. We were going to have to be pitted against
each other. It was easy enough now to see why. For Quackenbush had been systematically
disliked since he first set foot in Devon, with careless, disinterested insults coming at him from
the beginning, voting for and applauding the class leaders through years of attaining nothing he
wanted for himself. I didn't want to add to his humiliations; I even sympathized with his