None of us was allowed near the infirmary during the next days, but I heard all the rumors that
came out of it. Eventually a fact emerged; it was one of his legs, which had been "shattered." I
couldn't figure out exactly what this word meant, whether it meant broken in one or several
places, cleanly or badly, and I didn't ask. I learned no more, although the subject was discussed
endlessly. Out of my hearing people must have talked of other things, but everyone talked about
Phineas to me. I suppose this was only natural. I had been right beside bin when it happened, I
was his roommate.
The effect of his injury on the masters seemed deeper than after other disasters I remembered
there. It was as though they felt it was especially unfair that it should strike one of the sixteen-
year-olds, one of the few young men who could be free and happy in the summer of 1942.
I couldn't go on hearing about it much longer. If anyone had been suspicious of me, I might have
developed some strength to defend myself. But there was nothing. No one suspected. Phineas
must still be too sick, or too noble, to tell them. I spent as much time as I could alone in our room, trying to empty my mind of every thought, to
forget where I was, even who I was. One evening when I was dressing for dinner in this numbed
frame of mind, an idea occurred to me, the first with any energy behind it since Finny fell from
the tree. I decided to put on his clothes. We wore the same size, and although he always
criticized mine he used to wear them frequently, quickly forgetting what belonged to him and
what to me. I never forgot, and that evening I put on his cordovan shoes, his pants, and I looked
for and finally found his pink shirt, neatly laundered in a drawer. Its high, somewhat stiff collar
against my neck, the wide cuffs touching my wrists, the rich material against my skin excited a
sense of strangeness and distinction; I felt like some nobleman, some Spanish grandee.
But when I looked in the mirror it was no remote aristocrat I had become, no character out of
daydreams. I was Phineas, Phineas to the life. I even had his humorous expression in my face,
his sharp, optimistic awareness. I had no idea why this gave me such intense relief, but it
seemed, standing there in Finny's triumphant shirt, that I would never stumble through the
confusions of my own character again.
I didn't go down to dinner. The sense of transformation stayed with me throughout the evening,
and even when I undressed and went to bed. That night I slept easily, and it was only on waking
up that this illusion was gone, and I was confronted with myself, and what I had done to Finny.
Sooner or later it had to happen, and that morning it did. "Finny's better!" Dr. Stanpole called to
me on the chapel steps over the organ recessional thundering behind us. I made my way haltingly
