Our absence from dinner had been noticed. The following morning—the clean-washed shine of
summer mornings in the north country—Mr. Prud’homme stopped at our door. He was broad-
shouldered, grave, and he wore a gray business suit. He did not have the careless, almost British
look of most of the Devon Masters, because he was a substitute for the summer. He enforced
such rules as he knew; missing dinner was one of them.
We had been swimming in the river, Finny explained; then there had been a wrestling match,
then there was that sunset that anybody would want to watch, then there’d been several friends
we had to see on business—he rambled on, his voice soaring and plunging in its vibrant sound
box, his eyes now and then widening to fire a flash of green across the room. Standing in the
shadows, with the bright window behind him, he blazed with sunburned health. As Mr.
Prud’homme looked at him and listened to the scatterbrained eloquence of his explanation, he
could be seen rapidly losing his grip on sternness.
“If you hadn’t already missed nine meals in the last two weeks …” he broke in.
But Finny pressed his advantage. Not because he wanted to be forgiven for missing the meal—
that didn’t interest him at all, he might have rather enjoyed the punishment if it was done in some
novel and unknown way. He pressed his advantage because he saw that Mr. Prud’homme was
pleased, won over in spite of himself. The Master was slipping from his official position
momentarily, and it was just possible, if Phineas pressed hard enough, that there might be a flow
of simple, unregulated friendliness between them, and such flows were one of Finny’s reasons
for living.
“The real reason, sir, was that we just had to jump out of that tree. You know that tree …” I
knew, Mr. Prud’homme must have known, Finny knew, if he stopped to think, that jumping out
of the tree was even more forbidden than missing a meal. “We had to do that, naturally,” he went on, “because we’re all getting ready for the war. What if they lower the draft age to seventeen?
Gene and I are both going to be seventeen at the end of the summer, which is a very convenient
time since it’s the start of the academic year and there’s never any doubt about which class you
should be in. Leper Lepellier is already seventeen, and if I’m not mistaken he will be draftable
before the end of this next academic year, and so conceivably he ought to have been in the class
ahead, he ought to have been a senior now, if you see what I mean, so that he would have been
graduated and been all set to be drafted. But we’re all right, Gene and I are perfectly all right.
There isn’t any question that we are conforming in every possible way to everything that’s
happening and everything that’s going to happen. It’s all a question of birthdays, unless you want
to be more specific and look at it from the sexual point of view, which I have never cared to do
myself, since it’s a question of my mother and my father, and I have never felt I wanted to think
about their sexual lives too much.” Everything he said was true and sincere; Finny always said
what he happened to be thinking, and if this stunned people then he was surprised.
Mr. Prud’homme released his breath with a sort of amazed laugh, stared at Finny for a while, and
that was all there was to it.
This was the way the Masters tended to treat us that summer. They seemed to be modifying their
usual attitude of floating, chronic disapproval. During the winter most of them regarded anything
unexpected in a student with suspicion, seeming to feel that anything we said or did was
potentially illegal. Now on these clear June days in New Hampshire they appeared to uncoil,
they seemed to believe that we were with them about half the time, and only spent the other half
trying to make fools of them. A streak of tolerance was detectable; Finny decided that they were
beginning to show commendable signs of maturity.
It was partly his doing. The Devon faculty had never before experienced a student who combined
a calm ignorance of the rules with a winning urge to be good, who seemed to love the school
truly and deeply, and never more than when he was breaking the regulations, a model boy who
was most comfortable in the truant’s corner. The faculty threw up its hands over Phineas, and so
loosened its grip on all of us.
But there was another reason. I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of
sixteen. We were registered with no draft board, we had taken no physical examinations. No one
had ever tested us for hernia or color blindness. Trick knees and punctured eardrums were minor
complaints and not yet disabilities which would separate a few from the fate of the rest. We were
careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being
fought to preserve. Anyway, they were more indulgent toward us than at any other time; they
snapped at the heels of the seniors, driving and molding and arming them for the war. They
noticed our games tolerantly. We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not
bound up with destruction.
Phineas was the essence of this careless peace. Not that he was unconcerned about the war. After
Mr. Prud’homme left he began to dress, that is he began reaching for whatever clothes were
nearest, some of them mine. Then he stopped to consider, and went over to the dresser. Out of
one of the drawers he lifted a finely woven broadcloth shirt, carefully cut, and very pink. “What’s that thing?”
“This is a tablecloth,” he said out of the side of his mouth.
“No, cut it out. What is it?”
“This,” he then answered with some pride, “is going to be my emblem. Ma sent it up last week.
Did you ever see stuff like this, and a color like this? It doesn’t even button all the way down.
You have to pull it over your head, like this.”
“Over your head? Pink! It makes you look like a fairy!”
“Does it?” He used this preoccupied tone when he was thinking of something more interesting
than what you had said. But his mind always recorded what was said and played it back to him
when there was time, so as he was buttoning the high collar in front of the mirror he said mildly,
“I wonder what would happen if I looked like a fairy to everyone.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Well, in case suitors begin clamoring at the door, you can tell them I’m wearing this as an
emblem.” He turned around to let me admire it. “I was reading in the paper that we bombed
Central Europe for the first time the other day.” Only someone who knew Phineas as well as I
did could realize that he was not changing the subject. I waited quietly for him to make whatever
fantastic connection there might be between this and his shirt. “Well, we’ve got to do something
to celebrate. We haven’t got a flag, we can’t float Old Glory proudly out the window. So I’m
going to wear this, as an emblem.”
He did wear it. No one else in the school could have done so without some risk of having it torn
from his back. When the sternest of the Summer Sessions Masters, old Mr. Patch-Withers, came
up to him after history class and asked about it, I watched his drawn but pink face become pinker
with amusement as Finny politely explained the meaning of the shirt.
It was hypnotism. I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn’t
help envying him that a little, which was perfectly normal. There was no harm in envying even
your best friend a little.
In the afternoon Mr. Patch-Withers, who was substitute Headmaster for the summer, offered the
traditional term tea to the Upper Middle class. It was held in the deserted Headmaster’s house,
and Mr. Patch-Withers’ wife trembled at every cup tinkle. We were in a kind of sun porch and
conservatory combined, spacious and damp and without many plants. Those there were had large
nonflowering stalks, with big barbaric leaves. The chocolate brown wicker furniture shot out
menacing twigs, and three dozen of us stood tensely teetering our cups amid the wicker and
leaves, trying hard not to sound as inane in our conversation with the four present Masters and
their wives as they sounded to us. Phineas had soaked and brushed his hair for the occasion. This gave his head a sleek look, which
was contradicted by the surprised, honest expression which he wore on his face. His ears, I had
never noticed before, were fairly small and set close to his head, and combined with his plastered
hair they now gave his bold nose and cheekbones the sharp look of a prow.
He alone talked easily. He discussed the bombing of Central Europe. No one else happened to
have seen the story, and since Phineas could not recall exactly what target in which country had
been hit, or whether it was the American, British, or even Russian air force which had hit it, or
what day he read it in which newspaper, the discussion was one-sided.
That didn’t matter. It was the event which counted. But after a while Finny felt he should carry
the discussion to others. “I think we ought to bomb the daylights out of them, as long as we don’t
hit any women or children or old people, don’t you?” he was saying to Mrs. Patch-Withers,
perched nervously behind her urn. “Or hospitals,” he went on. “And naturally no schools. Or
churches.”
“We must also be careful about works of art,” she put in, “if they are of permanent value.”
“A lot of nonsense,” Mr. Patch-Withers grumbled, with a flushed face. “How do you expect our
boys to be as precise as that thousands of feet up with bombs weighing tons! Look at what the
Germans did to Amsterdam! Look at what they did to Coventry!”
“The Germans aren’t the Central Europeans, dear,” his wife said very gently.
He didn’t like being brought up short. But he seemed to be just able to bear it, from his wife.
After a temperamental pause he said gruffly, “There isn’t any ‘permanent art’ in Central Europe
anyway.”
Finny was enjoying this. He unbuttoned his seersucker jacket, as though he needed greater body
freedom for the discussion. Mrs. Patch-Withers’ glance then happened to fall on his belt. In a
tentative voice she said, “Isn’t that the … our …” Her husband looked; I panicked. In his haste
that morning Finny had not unexpectedly used a tie for a belt. But this morning the first tie at
hand had been the Devon School tie.
This time he wasn’t going to get away with it. I could feel myself becoming unexpectedly
excited at that. Mr. Patch-Withers’ face was reaching a brilliant shade, and his wife’s head fell as
though before the guillotine. Even Finny seemed to color a little, unless it was the reflection from
his pink shirt. But his expression was composed, and he said in his resonant voice, “I wore this,
you see, because it goes with the shirt and it all ties in together—I didn’t mean that to be a pun, I
don’t think they’re very funny, especially in polite company, do you?—it all ties in together with
what we’ve been talking about, this bombing in Central Europe, because when you come right
down to it the school is involved in everything that happens in the war, it’s all the same war and
the same world, and I think Devon ought to be included. I don’t know whether you think the way
I do on that". Mr. Patch-Withers’ face had been shifting expressions and changing colors continuously, and
now it settled into fixed surprise. “I never heard anything so illogical as that in my life!” He
didn’t sound very indignant, though. “That’s probably the strangest tribute this school has had in
a hundred and sixty years.” He seemed pleased or amused in some unknown corner of his mind.
Phineas was going to get away with even this.
His eyes gave their wider, magical gleam and his voice continued on a more compelling level,
“Although I have to admit I didn’t think of that when I put it on this morning.” He smiled
pleasantly after supplying this interesting additional information. Mr. Patch-Withers settled into
a hearty silence at this, and so Finny added, “I’m glad I put on something for a belt! I certainly
would hate the embarrassment of having my pants fall down at the Headmaster’s tea. Of course
he isn’t here. But it would be just as embarrassing in front of you and Mrs. Patch-Withers,” and
he smiled politely down at her.
Mr. Patch-Withers’ laughter surprised us all, including himself. His face, whose shades we had
often labeled, now achieved a new one. Phineas was very happy; sour and stern Mr. Patch-
Withers had been given a good laugh for once, and he had done it! He broke into the charmed,
thoughtless grin of a man fulfilled.
He had gotten away with everything. I felt a sudden stab of disappointment. That was because I
just wanted to see some more excitement; that must have been it.
We left the party, both of us feeling fine. I laughed along with Finny, my best friend, and also
unique, able to get away with anything at all. And not because he was a conniver either; I was
sure of that. He got away with everything because of the extraordinary kind of person he was. It
was quite a compliment to me, as a matter of fact, to have such a person choose me for his best
friend.
Finny never left anything alone, not when it was well enough, not when it was perfect. “Let’s go
jump in the river,” he said under his breath as we went out of the sun porch. He forced
compliance by leaning against me as we walked along, changing my direction; like a police car
squeezing me to the side of the road, he directed me unwillingly toward the gym and the river.
“We need to clear our heads of that party,” he said, “all that talk!”
“Yes. It sure was boring. Who did most of the talking anyway?”
Finny concentrated. “Mr. Patch-Withers was pretty gassy, and his wife, and …”
“Yeah. And?”
Turning a look of mock shock on me, “You don’t mean to infer that I talked too much!”
Returning, with interest, his gaping shock, “You? Talk too much? How can you accuse me of
accusing you of that!” As I said, this was my sarcastic summer. It was only long after that I
recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak. We walked along through the shining afternoon to the river. “I don’t really believe we bombed
Central Europe, do you?” said Finny thoughtfully. The dormitories we passed were massive and
almost anonymous behind their thick layers of ivy, big, old-looking leaves you would have
thought stayed there winter and summer, permanent hanging gardens in New Hampshire.
Between the buildings, elms curved so high that you ceased to remember their height until you
looked above the familiar trunks and the lowest umbrellas of leaves and took in the lofty
complex they held high above, branches and branches of branches, a world of branches with an
infinity of leaves. They too seemed permanent and never-changing, an untouched, unreachable
world high in space, like the ornamental towers and spires of a great church, too high to be
enjoyed, too high for anything, great and remote and never useful. “No, I don’t think I believe it
either,” I answered.
Far ahead of us four boys, looking like white flags on the endless green playing fields, crossed
toward the tennis courts. To the right of them the gym meditated behind its gray walls, the high,
wide, oval-topped windows shining back at the sun. Beyond the gym and the fields began the
woods, our, the Devon School’s woods, which in my imagination were the beginning of the great
northern forests. I thought that, from the Devon Woods, trees reached in an unbroken, widening
corridor so far to the north that no one had ever seen the other end, somewhere up in the far
unorganized tips of Canada. We seemed to be playing on the tame fringe of the last and greatest
wilderness. I never found out whether this is so and perhaps it is.
Bombs in Central Europe were completely unreal to us here, not because we couldn’t imagine
it—a thousand newspaper photographs and newsreels had given us a pretty accurate idea of such
a sight—but because our place here was too fair for us to accept something like that. We spent
that summer in complete selfishness, I’m happy to say. The people in the world who could be
selfish in the summer of 1942 were a small band, and I’m glad we took advantage of it.
“The first person who says anything unpleasant will get a swift kick in the ass,” said Finny
reflectively as we came to the river.
“All right.”
“Are you still afraid to jump out of the tree?”
There’s something unpleasant about that question, isn’t there?”
“That question? No, of course not. It depends on how you answer it.”
“Afraid to jump out of that tree? I expect it’ll be a very pleasant jump.”
After we had swum around in the water for a while Finny said, “Will you do me the pleasure of
jumping out of the tree first?’
“My pleasure.” Rigid, I began climbing the rungs, slightly reassured by having Finny right behind me. “We’ll
jump together to cement our partnership,” he said. “We’ll form a suicide society, and the
membership requirement is one jump out of this tree.”
“A suicide society,” I said stiffly. “The Suicide Society of the Summer Session.”
“Good! The Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session! How’s that?”
“That’s fine, that’s okay.”
We were standing on a limb, I a little farther out than Finny. I turned to say something else, some
stalling remark, something to delay even a few seconds more, and then I realized that in turning I
had begun to lose my balance. There was a moment of total, impersonal panic, and then Finny’s
hand shot out and grabbed my arm, and with my balance restored, the panic immediately
disappeared. I turned back toward the river, moved a few more steps along the limb, sprang far
out and fell into the deep water. Finny also made a good jump, and the Super Suicide Society of
the Summer Session was officially established.
It was only after dinner, when I was on my way alone to the library, that the full danger I had
brushed on the limb shook me again. If Finny hadn’t come up right behind me … if he hadn’t
been there … I could have fallen on the bank and broken my back! if I had fallen awkwardly
enough I could have been killed. Finny had practically saved my life.
