A_Separate_Peace_-_Full_Text

46
"No, I wouldn't."
"And I spent my money on a long-distance call! All for nothing. Well, it's spent, on you too.
So start talking, pal. And it better be good. Start with sports. What are you going out for?"
"Crew. Well, not exactly crew. Managing crew. Assistant crew manager."
"Assistant crew manager!"
"I don't think I've got the job—"
"Assistant crew manager!"
"I got in a fight this after—"
"Assistant crew manager!" No voice could course with dumfoundment like Finny's "You
are crazy!"
"Listen, Finny, I don't care about being a big man on the campus or anything."
"Whaaat?" Much more clearly than anything in Mr. Ludsbury's study I could see his face
now, grimacing in wide, obsessed stupefaction. "Who said anything about whoever they are!"
"Well then what are you so worked up for?"
"What do you want to manage crew for? What do you want to manage for? What's that got
to do with sports?"
The point was, the grace of it was, that it had nothing to do with sports. For I wanted no
more of sports. They were barred from me, as though when Dr. Stanpole said, "Sports are
finished" he had been speaking of me. I didn't trust myself in them, and I didn't trust anyone
else. It was as though football players were really bent on crushing the life out of each other, as
though boxers were in combat to the death, as though even a tennis ball might turn into a
bullet. This didn't seem completely crazy imagination in 1942, when jumping out of trees stood
for abandoning a torpedoed ship. Later, in the school swimming pool, we were given the
second stage in that rehearsal: after you hit the water you made big splashes with your hands,
to scatter the flaming oil which would be on the surface.
So to Phineas I said, "I'm too busy for sports," and he went into his incoherent groans and
jumbles of words, and I thought the issue was settled until at the end he said, "Listen, pal, if I
can't play sports, you're going to play them for me," and I lost part of myself to him then, and a
soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to
become a part of Phineas.