Chapter 12

Someone had rushed to get Dr. Stanpole, and others rushed to get Phil, the wrestling coach who knew first aid. The foyer and staircase were crowded quickly. Everyone seemed very calm, even Finny. The doctor said it was his leg, but a much cleaner break. They rushed him in his car over to the infirmary. I snuck over to see what was going on. All I could hear were monotonous voices that were going to, “bore Finny to death”(173). I started to think of some funny things while I listened to them talk. Once the doctor left, I snuck in through the window. “I thought at first he was going to get out of bed and help me through the window” (176). He was struggling to unleash his hate against me. I had felt alone and not part of anything. I went and got breakfast, and when I went back to the dorm there was a note telling me to get Finny’s things and bring them to him. When I got there he was different, “I noticed that as he tried to slide a hairbrush out from under a flap holding it in the case his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t get it out. Seeing that released me on the spot” (181). Then Finny told me something I didn’t know. He desperately wanted to be in the war He had been mailing everyone to see if he was use, but no one accepted him. I told him how he wouldn’t be good in the war, and he told me that he could believe that the tree incident wasn’t anything personal. After classes I went to the infirmary, and Dr, Stanpole wasn’t patrolling the halls like he usually does. About ten minutes later, he came out and said, “This is something I think boys of your generation are going to see a lot of. Your friend is dead” (185). I was shaking, I didn’t understand. He said the bone marrow must have gone to his heart and stopped it. I did not cry when I heard this, not even at the funeral. You don’t cry when it’s your own funeral.

Chapter 11

When I got back from Devon, Finny and the boys were in the far fields having a snowball fight. I started to walk away because I didn't want to talk about Leper, but Finny hit me and came running over. Before I could answer him, the other boy moved the fight to us. Once we got back to the room Brinker said, "I'll bet he cracked up, didn't he?... Some morning they don't get out of bed with everybody else. They just lie there crying" (149). He had no idea how right he was. There was little left at Devon, there were V-12's, V-5's, and other military choices. One morning after chapel, Brinker held me aside and said, "Yes, pity him. And if you don't watch out he's going to start pitying himself" (152). Brinker had said the reason I wasn't enlisting was to stay back with Finny. The next day when I came back from chapel, I saw Finny making people who walked up the staircase sing "A Mighty Fortress is Our God". He loved and appreciated music so much. We went back to the room and I helped hit with Caesar, which he had to pass Latin to graduate. Finny then says that he saw Leper. "I saw Leper hiding in the shrubbery next to the chapel... He looked at me like I was a gorilla or something" (155). The war was finally real for Finny. At 10:05 p.m, Brinker and others came into our room and we slyly went into the Assembly room. Brinker said, "Let us pray", and we did. Brinker made Finny get up, and then do his investigation. Finny did not think someone was in the tree with him, so I went along. To get the facts, they got Leper, who told the story. Almost at the end, Leper said that he wasnt a fool, and stopped telling. Finny left the building saying, "I don’t care"(168). He left crying. We then heard his body clumsily fall down the stairs.

Chapter 10

I took trains and buses to get to Leper's house in Vermont. Once I got there I could tell that no one was going to drive me over to his house. Once I got there, he let me in and started talking about which rooms were useful, and the rooms "Where people can't figure out what to do with themselves" (133). We started talking and I asked him what he had escaped from. He seemed more weird, had had no manners left at all. He told me how the army put him in the Section Eight discharge, which meant he was psycho. He started yelling at me and saying how I was a "savage underneath" (137). I noticed that Leper never looked at his mother, but he was an ideal son. After lunch we went out for a walk, and things were much less harsh. He then said, "Snow White with Brinkers face on her. There's a picture", and then bursted into sobs. After gathering himself, he said that ideas like that are what made him psycho. He said the army had turned everything inside out. He started telling me his crazy moments, with every gory detail. I told him to shut up, but he kept going. I yelled at him, "I don't give a damn! Do you understand that? This has nothing to do with me (143)! I ran in the opposite direction of his house, towards the middle of town.

Chapter 9

Leper had enlisted in the war, yet it still didn't seem real to me. Early in January, a recruiter had came and shown us some pictures. Everything looked nice and it was the cleanest war images I had ever seen. This was a turning point in Lepers life. He said, "It's all right to miss seeing the trees and the countryside and all the other things when you've got to be in a hurry. And when you're in a war you've got to be in a hurry" (116). Within the next week he was gone. We matched all the newspaper stories with Leper. We made jokes that torpedoed and bombed countries. Finny didn’t take part of these jokes in the butt room, and soon took me away from them too. “How do you expect to be an athlete if you smoke like a forest fire” (119)? From then it was just Finny and I, training to the Olympics. Finny decided to have a Winter Carnival, which brought out the peace again for a while. At the end Brownie Perkins had brought me out a telegram. It said, “I have escaped and need help… My safety depends on you coming at once” (129). It was from Leper, and he needed my help.

Chapter 8

Phineas was very happy to be back. He was very sarcastic and made fun of my clothing first off. Then he started complaining about how there were no maids. That night that Phineas came back I started saying prayers again. He wouldn't stop talking the whole night, and when we woke up we complained again about there being no maids. Every morning I'm sure he looked down to see if his leg had recovered yet. After he saw that it wasn't he would say, "Hand me my crutches, will you (98)? The next morning Brinker busted in saying, "You read to en-Finny" (98)! Finny was very curious, and didn't want me to enlist at all. We started to make a joke out of it, but Brinker was still serious. He got the nickname "Yellow Peril", and he hated when we just called him yellow. Finny wanted to walk to the gym, which was surprising because there was ice and snow on the ground. When we got there he was sweating and out of breathe. Surprisingly he walked right past the Trophy room, and into the locker room. Again he jokingly complained about the maids, and he started looking around. When I said, I don't know, sports don't seem so important with the war on" (106), Finny asked me if I really believed there was a war going on. When we started talking more about the war, I asked Finny why he was the only one who got America's plan, and he responded, "Because I’ve suffered" (108). I didn't know what to say, so I started doing the pull-ups he had told me to do before the conversation. We both never spoke of his bitterness again, and he told me that I was training to be in the 1944 Olympics. Mr. Ludsbury stopped us as we were going in, and when we told him about the Olympics, he left out a chuckle.

Chapter 7

After I took a shower, Brinker Hadley came in to visit. He said, "I can see you have a real influence around here. This big room all to yourself. I wish I knew how to manage things like you" (79), as he sat down. It did seem right for him to be congratulating me, but I like Brinker, almost everyone did. Then he said, "I bet you knew all the time Finny wouldn't be back this fall. That's why you picked him for a roommate, right" (79)? I quickly turned around and faced him. I said, "No, of course not. How could I do a thing like that in advance" (79)? He then said that I had fixed it. I turned around and started moving books pointlessly and my voice sounded too strained every time I spoke. He was accusing me, and then I told him the truth will out. I got up and suggested we went down to the Butt Room, which wasn't the best of ideas. Brinker made a joke to all the other boys that I "did away with my roommate". He was making me mad, but I decided to go along to make it look like all it was was a joke. After leaving, I head a boy say, "Funny, he came all the way down here and didn't even have a smoke" (83). After that no one seemed to track me, or do anything at all. Brinker started to write a few short poems about the war going on outside Devon. The snow had fallen early this winter, and the trains needed to be shoveled out. We would get paid just like on the farms, so everyone volunteered, but Leper. On my shortcut over to the train I saw Leper skiing, and he talked about how skiing is supposed to be admiring the forest and land around you. Shoveling has hard work, and war became a little more real to us when a train of soldiers came by. They were not much older than us and gave the impressing of being more elite. This inspired Brinker to enlist. When I opened my dorm door, there was Finny, and everything that happened that day had faded away. 

Chapter 6

The first sermon at Devon was to show that if you broke the rules, then they broke you. All the classrooms were crowded. I had the same dorm that Finny and I shared in over the summer session, but this time Leper Lepellier wasn't across the hall. Brinker Hadley now lived there and when I went to visit to him I stopped. I didn't want to see the tray of snails that Leper collected replaced Brinker's flies. I realized I was late for my afternoon appointment; I never used to be late. I was supposed to be at the Crew house. On my way over I stopped on the footbridge and thought of Finny. Instead of thinking of the tree or pain, I thought of his favorite tricks. When I got to the Crew House, Quackenbush, the crew manager, said, "Late, Forrester" (68). He then told me to, "Get some towels" (69). A job like this was usually for boys with physical disabilities. He had a built body, and talked in a mature voice. He was systematically disliked throughout the school, and was very ignorant to who I was. "You, Quackenbush, don't know anything about who I am. Or anything else" (71). This really sparked him, and he called me a maimed son-of-a-bitch, so I hit him hard across the face. We fell into the water, and his rage was extinguished. I then said slowly, "The next time you all anybody maimed, you better make sure they are first" (71). I fought that battle for Finny. I never pictured myself being Finny defender, and in some way I felt like I did that for myself. On my way back to the dorm, I came across Mr. Ludsbury. I told him that I had slipped into the river, and he said, "Yes I think you have slipped in any number of ways since last year" (73). If only I had. He then said I had a call in his study, and it was Finny wishing me a happy first day. All I could hear was friendliness and affection in his voice. He said I was crazy at his house, and just wanted to make sure I was okay and didn't let anyone else room with me. I told him I was going out for assistant crew manager, and he was left dumbfounded. Finny said it had nothing to do with sports, and he was right, I wanted nothing to do with sports. Then he said, "Listen, pal, if I can't play sports, you're going to play them for me." (77). And that’s when I lost part of myself to Finny. 

Chapter 5

No one was allowed near the infirmary for a long time. I had heard that one of his legs was "shattered". I wasn't sure if that meant broken cleanly or badly, but I didn't ask. Everyone talked about Finny to me, but I didn't really want to hear anything else. I was surprise that no one suspected me of doing anything. I had to be alone and empty my mind and who I was to myself. One night, I decided to put on his clothes, and I felt like a nobleman or a Spanish grandee. When I looked in the mirror thought, all I could see what Phineas. After that I felt as though, "I would never stumble through the confusions of my own character again" (54). That night I slept well, but in the morning I faced reality in what I had done to Finny. That morning Dr. Stanpole called me over and said "Finny's better" (54)! I talked to the doctor, but he didn't say much except, "Sports are finished for him, after an accident like that. Of course" (55). I was dumbfounded. He told me I had to help him get through this, but I wasn't sure if I could. I started to cry once he put his hand on my shoulder. "I cried for Phineas and for myself and f or this doctor who believed in facing things." Dr. Stanpole told me that Finny asked for me, and at an instant I stopped crying and went to see him. When I walked in I saw his left leg in white bindings suspended a little above the bed. He also had an IV in him. I noticed he had lost his tan, and his eyes no longer were full of humor. I started to talk to him about how I made him fall out of the tree, but I wanted to see what he had thought happened first. "What happened there at that tree?... How did you fall, how could you off like that" (57)? He said that he had just fallen, and that something jiggled. Then he told me how he had looked at me to reach and get a hold of. After he said that I flinched away and said, "to drag me down too" (57)! I was jumpy and cautious. I asked him again if he remembered what made him fall, and he said he must of just lost his balance. He told me he had a "feeling", but to forget about it. He was apologizing for the truth. I couldn't believe I had thought we were competitors. I felt so guilty I had to tell him the truth. When I was about to tell him, Dr. Stanpole came in, and then a nurse. He was taken back in an ambulance to his home in Boston. The summer session had ended and hen it was time to go back in the winter, I found myself stopping at the North Station in Boston. I showed up at Phineas' house, yet he wasn't all surprised. I felt horrible telling Finny what really happened in his own house, but I sat down next to him and told him exactly what happened. We started arguing and it struck me that I was just injuring him again. I had to take it back, but I couldn’t here. A few moments later, I asked and he said he would be back at Devon before Thanksgiving. 

Chapter 4

When we woke up, I saw dawn for the first time. At first it was dead looking, and then the colors began to pierce the sky. It looks to be around 6:30, and I had an important trigonometry test at ten. Finny woke and up and took a short swim, even after I said there wasn't enough time. He had lost the money, so we didn't have any time for breakfast either. When I got to Devon and looked at the test, I knew it would be the first one I had ever flunked. After the test Finny gave me little time to catch up on what was happening in trig because we had a Blitzball game and a Super Suicide Society meeting. That night Finny told me I work too hard. "You know all about History and English and French and everything else. What good will trigonometry do you"(43)? I told him you have to pass it to graduate, and then he went on about how I wanted to be head of the class. Maybe I did want to be head of the class; it’s a pretty good goal to have anyway. Plus, he was good at sports and won all those trophies and awards. If he had those and I won the Ne Plus Ultra Scholastic Achievement Citation, then we would be even. I then asked him, "You wouldn't mind if I wound up head of the class, would you" (44)? He brought up Chet Douglas being around too, and then answered with a half-smile, "I'd kill myself out of jealous envy" (44). I believed him. Everything I knew began to jumble. I wasn't sure if I could trust anyone anymore. Then I thought how Phineas and I were already even. I hated him for breaking the swimming record first try, and he hated me for getting an A in every course but one last term. Then I realized that Finny deliberately had been trying to disrupt my studies. After this, I became quite a student. Chet Douglas was my only rival, but he easily got distracted in learning. Finny was the best athlete in the school, and a poor student. I was a pretty good athlete though, so the scales tilted slightly towards me. Surprisingly in these few weeks we got along well. Exams were coming up, and I starting studying in our room after supper and then Finny came in and said, "Elwin 'Leper' Lepellier has announced his intention to make the leap this very night" (49). Of course he wouldn’t jump, and Finny just put him up to it to stop my last chance of studying.  Finny then said he didn’t know I actually needed to study to get good grades. He told me I couldn’t go and that I had to study. I didn’t like him telling me what to do, so I went. Finny suggested a double jump and we started up the tree. Once we got onto the limb, I took a step towards him and jounced it. Finny lost his balance and looked at me for an instant with interest and then fell sideways.  He hit little branches as he fell and then finally he hit the bank with an unnatural thud. Without any fear, I jumped off the limb and into the river.

Chapter 3

The Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session was a success. Eight of us were in our room and everyone was asking questions, but no one asked about such a club. We met every night, and opened the meeting by jumping off the tree ourselves. Finny created many rules without even noticing it, and I hated it. Every time the limb seemed higher and every thing scarier. I went to the meetings every night, even though I never felt like going, but never protested against it. In the afternoon we went outside and headed far down the fields toward a wooden tower that was about ten feet tall. We walked over and Finny noticed a large, heavy, leather-covered medicine ball. "Now this, you see, is everything in the world you need for sports. When they discovered the circle they discovered sports" (28). Finny hated the sport of badminton. As others came, he started to think of a way everyone could get some exercise. Bobby Zane suggested we call it Blitzkrieg, but in conclusion it was called Blitzball. Finny threw the ball at me, and yelled at me to run, and I ran toward the river. The object of the game was to knock the person down who had the ball. You couldn't use your arms and when you did knock them down, it was your turn for possession. Everyone played it, and Phineas had unconsciously made it to favor his athletic gifts. One day, Finny saw that A. Hopkins Parker held the school swimming record at 100 yards free style in 53.0 seconds. I told him, "He graduated before we got here" (34). Finny was insulted, and decided to try and break it himself. I found a stopwatch in the office and said, "On your mark-Go"(35)! We swam without losing his pace and came up with an interested expression. He had beaten the record by .7 second. When I was talking of ways to show everyone, Finny told me he was going to do it again, and not to tell anybody. I wasn't sure why he didn't want anyone to know, but I kept it a secret anyway. Then he said, "Let's go to the beach" (37). Going there was forbidden, and it also threw away any time I had for studying. We biked there and Finny felt that he had to entertain me the whole ride. When we reached the beach in the afternoon, the tide was high and the surf was heavy. The waves were very strong and ground me onto the shore. We had dinner at a hot dog stand, one glass of beer, and then slept on the beach. Finny then told me how I was his best pal, and I started to say it back, but then something held me back.

Chapter 2

Noticing that we weren't at dinner last night, Mr. Prud'homme stopped at our door. Finny explained how were had been swimming in the river, had a wrestling match, had to watch a sunset anyone would want to see, and then has to see some friends on business. The more Finny talked, the less stern Mr. Prud'homme got. I wasn't sure, but they might have an unregulated friendliness between them. Finny started talking about the tree again, which was probably more forbidden than skipping a meal, and how he had to do it in case they lowered the draft age to seventeen. After Finny's speech, Mr. Prud'homme stared at him and that was all there was to it. Because of Phineas' personality, the whole school loosened its grip on all the students. I also think that we reminded them of what peace was like; We had no draft board, no physical exams, no tests, or anything. We were the careless and wild life that the war was fighting to preserve. After Mr. Prud'homme left, Finny and I began to get dressed. He pulled out a very pink shirt that's made him look like a fairy. He claimed to wear it as an emblem. "I was reading in the paper today that we bombed Central Europe for the first time the other day" (18). Finny said he was wearing the shirt to celebrate because we didn't have a flag to hang out the window. After history class, the sternest master Mr. Patch-Withers asked him about it. He was amused at what Finny had to say, and it was then that I realized that he could get away with anything. Mr. Patch-Withers had the traditional tea for the Upper Middle Class at the Headmasters house where his wife would also be present. Finny started to talk about the Central Europe bombing, and starting spreading the discussion to others. It was amazing how he got Mrs. Patch-withers in on it too. "We must also be careful with works of art, if they are permanent value" (19). She added to Finny's list of what should and shouldn't be bombed. As the conversation went on, Finny unbuttoned his seersucker jacket, and revealed his belt, which was actually the Devon School tie. Mrs. Patch-Withers noticed and I thought he wasn't going to get away with it, but he did. He said that it tied in with the shirt and showed how everything, even the school, was connected to the war. On the way to the river, we talked about how we didn't really believe the bombings. As we were climbing up the tree, we decided to form a suicide society. "The Suicide Society of the Summer Session" (24), I said, which Finny then added super before it. As we got on the limb, I lost my balance and I panicked and then Finny's arm shot out to save me. We both made good jumps, but I couldn't get over that he practically saved my life, yet he was the one who made me go into the tree in the first place.