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.